فصل 34

Uber’s got nothing

Lyft is weak. And taxis? Nah

My ride is da mom

AUSTIN HAD FREED THE OTHER PRISONERS.

They looked like they had been dipped in a vat of glue and cotton swabs, but otherwise they seemed remarkably undamaged. Ellis Wakefield staggered around with his fists clenched, looking for something to punch. Cecil Markowitz, son of Hermes, sat on the ground trying to clean his sneakers with a deer’s thighbone. Austin—resourceful boy!—had produced a canteen of water and was washing the Greek fire off of Kayla’s face. Miranda Gardiner, the head counselor of Demeter, knelt by the place where the dryads had sacrificed themselves. She wept silently.

Paulie the palikos floated toward me. Like his partner, Pete, his lower half was all steam. From the waist up he looked like a slimmer, more abused version of his geyser buddy. His mud skin was cracked like a parched riverbed. His face was withered, as if every bit of moisture had been squeezed out of him. Looking at the damage Nero had done to him, I added a few more items to a mental list I was preparing: Ways to Torture an Emperor in the Fields of Punishment.

“You saved me,” Paulie said with amazement. “Bring it in!”

He threw his arms around me. His power was so diminished that his body heat did not kill me, but it did open up my sinuses quite well.

“You should get home,” I said. “Pete is worried, and you need to regain your strength.”

“Ah, man…” Paulie wiped a steaming tear from his face. “Yeah, I’m gone. But anything you ever need—a free steam cleaning, some PR work, a mud scrub, you name it.”

As he dissolved into mist, I called after him. “And Paulie? I’d give the Woods at Camp Half-Blood a ten for customer satisfaction.”

Paulie beamed with gratitude. He tried to hug me again, but he was already ninety percent steam. All I got was a humid waft of mud-scented air. Then he was gone.

The five demigods gathered around me.

Miranda looked past me at the grove of Dodona. Her eyes were still puffy from crying, but she had beautiful irises the color of new foliage. “So, the voices I heard from that grove…It’s really an oracle? Those trees can give us prophecies?”

I shivered, thinking of the oak trees’ limerick. “Perhaps.”

“Can I see—?”

“No,” I said. “Not until we understand the place better.”

I had already lost one daughter of Demeter today. I didn’t intend to lose another.

“I don’t get it,” Ellis grumbled. “You’re Apollo? Like, the Apollo.”

“I’m afraid so. It’s a long story.”

“Oh, gods…” Kayla scanned the clearing. “I thought I heard Meg’s voice earlier. Did I dream that? Was she with you? Is she okay?”

The others looked at me for an explanation. Their expressions were so fragile and tentative, I decided I couldn’t break down in front of them.

“She’s…alive,” I managed. “She had to leave.”

“What?” Kayla asked. “Why?”

“Nero,” I said. “She…she went after Nero.”

“Hold up.” Austin raised his fingers like goalposts. “When you say Nero…”

I did my best to explain how the mad emperor had captured them. They deserved to know. As I recounted the story, Nero’s words kept replaying in my mind: My wrecking crew will be here any minute. Once Camp Half-Blood is destroyed, I’ll make it my new front lawn!

I wanted to think this was just bluster. Nero had always loved threats and grandiose statements. Unlike me, he was a terrible poet. He used flowery language like…well, like every sentence was a pungent bouquet of metaphors. (Oh, that’s another good one. Jotting that down.)

Why had he kept checking his watch? And what wrecking crew could he have been talking about? I had a flashback to my dream of the sun bus careening toward a giant bronze face.

I felt like I was free-falling again. Nero’s plan became horribly clear. After dividing the few demigods defending the camp, he had meant to burn this grove. But that was only part of his attack….

“Oh, gods,” I said. “The Colossus.”

The five demigods shifted uneasily.

“What Colossus?” Kayla asked. “You mean the Colossus of Rhodes?”

“No,” I said. “The Colossus Neronis.”

Cecil scratched his head. “The Colossus Neurotic?”

Ellis Wakefield snorted. “You’re a Colossus Neurotic, Markowitz. Apollo’s talking about the big replica of Nero that stood outside the amphitheater in Rome, right?”

“I’m afraid so,” I said. “While we’re standing here, Nero is going to try to destroy Camp Half-Blood. And the Colossus will be his wrecking crew.”

Miranda flinched. “You mean a giant statue is about to stomp on camp? I thought the Colossus was destroyed centuries ago.”

Ellis frowned. “Supposedly, so was the Athena Parthenos. Now it’s sitting on top of Half-Blood Hill.”

The others’ expressions turned grim. When a child of Ares makes a valid point, you know the situation is serious.

“Speaking of Athena…” Austin picked some incendiary fluff off his shoulder. “Won’t the statue protect us? I mean, that’s what she’s there for, right?”

“She will try,” I guessed. “But you must understand, the Athena Parthenos draws her power from her followers. The more demigods under her care, the more formidable her magic. And right now—”

“The camp is practically empty,” Miranda finished.

“Not only that,” I said, “but the Athena Parthenos is roughly forty feet tall. If memory serves, Nero’s Colossus was more than twice that.”

Ellis grunted. “So they’re not in the same weight class. It’s an uneven match.”

Cecil Markowitz stood a little straighter. “Guys…did you feel that?”

I thought he might be playing one of his Hermes pranks. Then the ground shook again, ever so slightly. From somewhere in the distance came a rumbling sound like a battleship scraping over a sandbar.

“Please tell me that was thunder,” Kayla said.

Ellis cocked his head, listening. “It’s a war machine. A big automaton wading ashore about half a klick from here. We need to get to camp right now.”

No one argued with Ellis’s assessment. I supposed he could distinguish between the sounds of war machines the same way I could pick out an off-tune violin in a Rachmaninoff symphony.

To their credit, the demigods rose to the challenge. Despite the fact that they’d been recently bound, doused in flammable substances, and staked like human tiki torches, they closed ranks and faced me with determination in their eyes.

“How do we get out of here?” Austin asked. “The myrmekes’ lair?”

I felt suddenly suffocated, partly because I had five people looking at me as if I knew what to do. I didn’t. In fact, if you want to know a secret, we gods usually don’t. When confronted for answers, we usually say something Rhea-like: You will have to find out for yourself! Or True wisdom must be earned! But I didn’t think that would fly in this situation.

Also, I had no desire to plunge back into the ants’ nest. Even if we made it through alive, it would take much too long. Then we would have to run perhaps half the length of the forest.

I stared at the Vince-shaped hole in the canopy. “I don’t suppose any of you can fly?”

They shook their heads.

“I can cook,” Cecil offered.

Ellis smacked him on the shoulder.

I looked back at the myrmekes’ tunnel. The solution came to me like a voice whispering in my ear: You know someone who can fly, stupid.

It was a risky idea. Then again, rushing off to fight a giant automaton was also not the safest plan of action.

“I think there’s a way,” I said. “But I’ll need your help.”

Austin balled his fists. “Anything you need. We’re ready to fight.”

“Actually…I don’t need you to fight. I need you to lay down a beat.”

My next important discovery: Children of Hermes cannot rap. At all.

Bless his conniving little heart, Cecil Markowitz tried his best, but he kept throwing off my rhythm section with his spastic clapping and terrible air mic noises. After a few trial runs, I demoted him to dancer. His job would be to shimmy back and forth and wave his hands, which he did with the enthusiasm of a tent-revival preacher.

The others managed to keep up. They still looked like half-plucked, highly combustible chickens, but they bopped with the proper amount of soul.

I launched into “Mama,” my throat reinforced with water and cough drops from Kayla’s belt pack. (Ingenious girl! Who brings cough drops on a three-legged death race?)

I sang directly into the mouth of the myrmekes’ tunnel, trusting the acoustics to carry my message. We did not have to wait long. The earth began to rumble beneath our feet. I kept singing. I had warned my comrades not to stop laying down the righteous beat until the song was over.

Still, I almost lost it when the ground exploded. I had been watching the tunnel, but Mama did not use tunnels. She exited wherever she wanted—in this case, straight out of the earth twenty yards away, spraying dirt, grass, and small boulders in all directions. She scuttled forward, mandibles clacking, wings buzzing, dark Teflon eyes focused on me. Her abdomen was no longer swollen, so I assumed she had finished depositing her most recent batch of killer-ant larvae. I hoped this meant she would be in a good mood, not a hungry mood.

Behind her, two winged soldiers clambered out of the earth. I had not been expecting bonus ants. (Really, bonus ants is not a term most people would like to hear.) They flanked the queen, their antennae quivering.

I finished my ode, then dropped to one knee, spreading my arms as I had before.

“Mama,” I said, “we need a ride.”

My logic was this: Mothers were used to giving rides. With thousands upon thousands of offspring, I assumed the queen ant would be the ultimate soccer mom. And indeed, Mama grabbed me with her mandibles and tossed me over her head.

Despite what the demigods may tell you, I did not flail, scream, or land in a way that damaged my sensitive parts. I landed heroically, straddling the queen’s neck, which was no larger than the back of an average warhorse. I shouted to my comrades, “Join me! It’s perfectly safe!”

For some reason, they hesitated. The ants did not. The queen tossed Kayla just behind me. The soldier ants followed Mama’s lead—snapping up two demigods each and throwing them aboard.

The three myrmekes revved their wings with a noise like radiator fan blades. Kayla grabbed my waist.

“Is this really safe?” she yelled.

“Perfectly!” I hoped I was right. “Perhaps even safer than the sun chariot!”

“Didn’t the sun chariot almost destroy the world once?”

“Well, twice,” I said. “Three times, if you count the day I let Thalia Grace drive, but—”

“Forget I asked!”

Mama launched herself into the sky. The canopy of twisted branches blocked our path, but Mama didn’t pay any more attention to them than she had to the ton of solid earth she’d plowed through.

I yelled, “Duck!”

We flattened ourselves against Mama’s armored head as she smashed through the trees, leaving a thousand wooden splinters embedded in my back. It felt so good to fly again, I didn’t care. We soared above the woods and banked to the east.

For two or three seconds, I was exhilarated.

Then I heard the screaming from Camp Half-Blood.