I couldn’t stop the emperor. Meg was too far away, barely holding her own against her two siblings. The bull had been battered into a pile of bones. Nico had dispatched the wolf-man but now faced a line of angry Germani between him and the throne.
“It’s over!” Nero gloated. “Death to my enemies!”
And he pushed the button.
DEATH TO MY ENEMIES WAS AN EXCELLENT battle cry. A true classic, delivered with conviction!
Some of the drama was lost, however, when Nero pushed the button and the shades on the windows began to lower.
The emperor uttered a curse—perhaps one Meg had taught him—and dove into his sofa cushions, looking for the correct correct remote.
Meg had disarmed Aemillia, as she’d promised, and was now swinging her borrowed sword while more and more of her foster siblings encircled her, anxious to have a part in taking her down.
Nico waded through the Germani. They outnumbered him more than ten to one, but they quickly developed a healthy respect for his Stygian iron blade. Even barbarians can master a steep learning curve if it is sharp and painful enough. Nico couldn’t last forever against so many, though, especially since their spears had a longer reach and Nico could only see through his right eye. Vercorix barked at his men, ordering them to surround di Angelo. Unfortunately, the grizzled lieutenant seemed much better at mustering his forces than he was at delivering remote controls.
As for me, how can I explain the difficulties of using a bow after being stabbed in the side? I was not dead yet, which confirmed that the blade had missed all my important arteries and organs, but raising my arm made me want to scream in pain. Actually aiming and drawing my bow was torture worse than anything in the Fields of Punishment, and Hades can quote me on that.
I’d lost blood. I was sweating and shivering. Nevertheless, my friends needed me. I had to do what I could.
“Mountain Dew, Mountain Dew,” I muttered, trying to clear my head.
First, I kicked Lucius in the face and knocked him out, because the sneaky little so-and-so deserved it. Then I fired an arrow at one of the other imperial demigods, who was about to stab Meg in the back. I was reluctant to kill, remembering Cassius’s terrified face in the elevator, but I hit my target in the ankle, causing him to scream and do the chicken walk around the throne room. That was satisfying.
My real problem was Nero. With Meg and Nico overwhelmed, the emperor had plenty of time to fish through his sofa cushions for remotes. The fact that his blast doors were destroyed did not seem to dampen his enthusiasm for flooding the tower with poison gas. Perhaps, being a minor god, he would be immune. Perhaps he gargled with Sassanid gas every morning.
I fired at the emperor’s center mass—a shot that should have split his sternum. Instead, the arrow shattered on his toga. The garment had some form of protective magic, perhaps. Either that, or it was made by a really good tailor. With a great deal of pain, I nocked another arrow. This time I targeted Nero’s head. I was reloading much too slowly. Every shot was an ordeal for my tortured body, but my aim was true. The arrow hit him right between the eyes. And shattered uselessly.
He scowled at me from across the room. “Stop that!” Then he went back to searching for his remote.
My spirits fell even further. Clearly, Nero was still invulnerable. Luguselwa had failed to destroy his fasces. That meant we faced an emperor who had three times the power of Caligula or Commodus, and they hadn’t exactly been pushovers. If Nero ever stopped obsessing about his poison-gas gadget and actually attacked us, we would be dead.
New strategy. I aimed at the remote controls. As he picked up the next one, I shot it out of his hand.
Nero snarled and grabbed another. I couldn’t fire fast enough.
He pointed the gadget at me and mashed the buttons like this might erase me from existence. Instead, three giant TV screens lowered from the ceiling and flickered to life. The first showed local news: a live feed from a helicopter circling this very tower. Apparently, we were on fire. So much for the tower being indestructible. The second screen showed a PGA tournament. The third was split between Fox News and MSNBC, which side by side should have been enough to cause an antimatter explosion. I suppose it was a sign of Nero’s apolitical bent, or perhaps his multiple personalities, that he watched them both.
Nero growled in frustration and tossed the remote away. “Apollo, stop fighting me! You will die anyway. Don’t you understand that? It’s me or the reptile!”
The statement rattled me, making my next shot go wide. It hit the groin of the long-suffering Vercorix, who went cross-legged in pain as the arrow corroded his body to ash.
“Dude,” I muttered. “I am so sorry.”
At the far end of the room, behind Nero’s dais, more barbarians appeared, marching to the emperor’s defense with their spears ready. Did Nero have a broom closet packed with reinforcements back there? That was totally unfair.
Meg was still encircled by her foster siblings. She’d managed to get a shield, but she was hopelessly outnumbered. I understood her desire to abandon the dual scimitars Nero had given her, but I was starting to question the timing of that decision. Also, she seemed determined not to kill her attackers, but her foster siblings had no such reservations. The other demigods closed in around her, their confident smirks indicating that they sensed imminent victory.
Nico was losing steam against the Germani. His sword seemed to become ten pounds heavier every time he swung it.
I reached for my quivers and realized I had only one arrow left to shoot, not including my Shakespearean life coach from Dodona.
Nero pulled out yet another remote. Before I could take aim, he pressed a button.
