“He’ll burn up, too,” I marveled. “All his family and guards, and his precious tower.”
“Maybe not,” Rachel said. “The building is designed for self-containment. Thermal insulation, closed air circulation, reinforced heat-resistant materials. Even the windows are special blast-proof panes. Nero could burn the city down around him, and his tower would be the only thing left standing.”
Meg crumpled her empty Yoo-hoo box. “Sounds like him.”
Will studied the plans. “I’m not an expert on reading these things, but where are the access points to the vats?”
“There’s only one,” Rachel said. “Sealed off, automated, heavily guarded, and under constant surveillance. Even if you could break or sneak through, you wouldn’t have enough time to disable the generators before Nero pushed his panic button.”
“Unless,” Nico said, “you tunneled your way into those reservoirs from underneath. You could sabotage his whole delivery system without Nero ever knowing.”
“Aaand we’re back to that terrible idea,” Will said.
“They’re the best tunnelers in the world,” Nico insisted. “They could get through all that concrete and steel and Celestial bronze with no one even noticing. This is our part of the plan, Will. While Apollo and Meg are getting themselves captured, keeping Nero distracted, we go underground and take out his doomsday weapon.”
“Hold on, Nico,” I said. “It’s high time you explained who these cave-runners are.”
The son of Hades fixed his dark eyes on me as if I were another layer of concrete to dig through. “A few months ago, I made contact with the troglodytes.”
I choked on a laugh. Nico’s claim was the most ridiculous thing I’d heard since Mars swore to me that Elvis Presley was alive on, well, Mars.
“Troglodytes are a myth,” I said.
Nico frowned. “A god is telling a demigod that something is a myth?”
“Oh, you know what I mean! They aren’t real. That trashy author Aelian made them up to sell more copies of his books back in ancient Rome. A race of subterranean humanoids who eat lizards and fight bulls? Please. I’ve never seen them. Not once in my millennia of life.”
“Did it ever occur to you,” Nico said, “that troglodytes might go out of their way to hide from a sun god? They hate the light.”
“Well, I—”
“Did you ever actually look for them?” Nico persisted.
“Well, no, but—”
“They’re real,” Will confirmed. “Unfortunately, Nico found them.”
I tried to process this information. I’d never taken Aelian’s stories about the troglodytes seriously. To be fair, though, I hadn’t believed in rocs, either, until the day one flew over my sun chariot and bowel-bombed me. That was a bad day for me, the roc, and several countries that my swerving chariot set on fire.
“If you say so. But do you know how to find the troglodytes again?” I asked. “Do you think they would help us?”
“Those are two different questions,” Nico said. “But I think I can convince them to help. Maybe. If they like the gift I got them. And if they don’t kill us on sight.”
“I love this plan,” Will grumbled.
“Guys,” Rachel said, “you forgot about me.”
I stared at her. “What do you mean?”
“I’m coming, too.”
“Certainly not!” I protested. “You’re mortal!”
“And essential,” Rachel said. “Your prophecy told you so. A Dare reveals the path that was unknown. All I’ve done so far is show you blueprints, but I can do more. I can see things you can’t. Besides, I’ve got a personal stake in this. If you don’t survive the Tower of Nero, you can’t fight Python. And if you can’t defeat him…”
Her voice faltered. She swallowed and doubled over, choking.
At first, I thought some of her Yoo-hoo might have gone down the wrong way. I patted her on the back unhelpfully. Then she sat up again, her back rigid, her eyes glowing. Smoke billowed from her mouth, which is not something normally caused by chocolate drinks.
Will, Nico, and Meg scooted away in their beanbags.
I would have done the same, but for half a second I thought I understood what was happening: a prophecy! Her Delphic powers had broken through!
Then, with sickening dread, I realized this smoke was the wrong color: pallid yellow instead of dark green. And the stench…sour and decayed, like it was wafting straight from Python’s armpits.
When Rachel spoke, it was with Python’s voice—a gravely rumble, charged with malice.
“Apollo’s flesh and blood shall soon be mine.
Alone he must descend into the dark,
This sibyl never again to see his sign,
Lest grappling with me till his final spark
The god dissolves, leaving not a mark.”
The smoke dissipated. Rachel slumped against me, her body limp.
CRASH! A sound like shattering metal shook my bones. I was so terrified, I wasn’t sure if the noise was from somewhere outside, or if it was just my nervous system shutting down.
Nico got up and ran to the windows. Meg scrambled over to help me with Rachel. Will checked her pulse and started to say, “We need to get her—”
“Hey!” Nico turned from the window, his face pale with shock. “We have to get out of here now. The cows are attacking.”
IN NO CONTEXT CAN THE COWS ARE ATTACKING be considered good news.
Will picked up Rachel in a firefighter’s carry—for a gentle healer, he was deceptively strong—and together we jogged over to join Nico at the window.
In the railyard below, the cows were staging a revolution. They’d busted through the sides of their cattle cars like an avalanche through a picket fence and were now stampeding toward the Dare residence. I suspected the cattle hadn’t been trapped in those cars at all. They’d simply been waiting for the right moment to break out and kill us.
They were beautiful in a nightmarish way. Each was twice the size of a normal bovine, with bright blue eyes and shaggy red hair
