The Hidden Oracle (29 page)

Vince and Gary glowered at me.

“They have serpent tattoos,” I noted, “like those street thugs you sent to attack me.”

Nero shrugged. “I have many servants. Cade and Mikey are quite low on the pay scale. Their only job was to rattle you a bit, welcome you to my city.”

“
Your
city.” I found it just like Nero to go claiming major metropolitan areas that clearly belonged to me. “And these two gentlemen…they are actually Germani from the ancient times? How?”

Nero made a snide little barking sound in the back of his nose. I’d forgotten how much I hated his laugh.

“Lord Apollo, please,” he said. “Even before Gaea commandeered the Doors of Death, souls escaped from Erebos all the time. It was quite easy for a god-emperor such as myself to call back my followers.”

“A god-emperor?” I growled. “You mean a delusional ex-emperor.”

Nero arched his eyebrows. “What made
you
a god, Apollo…back when you were one? Wasn’t it the power of your name, your sway over those who believed in you? I am no different.” He glanced to his left. “Vince, fall on your spear, please.”

Without hesitation, Vince planted the butt of his spear against the ground. He braced the point under his rib cage.

“Stop,” Nero said. “I changed my mind.”

Vince betrayed no relief. In fact, his eyes tightened with faint disappointment. He brought his spear back to his side.

Nero grinned at me. “You see? I hold the power of life and death over my worshippers, like any proper god should.”

I felt like I’d swallowed some gel capsule larvae. “The Germani were always crazy, much like you.”

Nero put his hand to his chest. “I’m hurt! My barbarian friends are loyal subjects of the Julian dynasty! And, of course, we are all descended from you, Lord Apollo.”

I didn’t need the reminder. I’d been so proud of my son, the original Octavian, later Caesar Augustus. After his death, his descendants became increasingly arrogant and unstable (which I blamed on their mortal DNA; they certainly didn’t get those qualities from me). Nero had been the last of the Julian line. I had not wept when he died. Now here he was, as grotesque and chinless as ever.

Meg stood at my shoulder. “Wh-what do you want, Nero?”

Considering she was facing the man who killed her father, she sounded remarkably calm. I was grateful for her strength. It gave me hope to have a skilled dimachaerus and a ravenous peach baby at my side. Still, I did not like our odds against two Germani.

Nero’s eyes gleamed. “Straight to the point. I’ve always admired that about you, Meg. Really, it’s simple. You and Apollo will open the gates of Dodona for me. Then these six”—he gestured to the staked prisoners—“will be released.”

I shook my head. “You’ll destroy the grove. Then you’ll kill us.”

The emperor made that horrible bark again. “Not unless you force me to. I’m a reasonable god-emperor, Apollo! I’d much rather have the Grove of Dodona under my control if it can be managed, but I certainly can’t allow
you
to use it. You had your chance at being the guardian of the Oracles. You failed miserably. Now it’s my responsibility. Mine…and my partners’.”

“The two other emperors,” I said. “Who are they?”

Nero shrugged. “Good Romans—men who, like me, have the willpower to do what is needed.”

“Triumvirates have never worked. They always lead to civil war.”

He smiled as if that idea did not bother him. “The three of us have come to an agreement. We have divided up the new empire…by which I mean North America. Once we have the Oracles, we’ll expand and do what Romans have always done best—conquer the world.”

I could only stare at him. “You truly learned nothing from your previous reign.”

“Oh, but I did! I’ve had centuries to reflect, plan, and prepare. Do you have any idea how annoying it is to be a god-emperor, unable to die but unable to fully live? There was a period of about three hundred years during the Middle Ages when my name was almost forgotten. I was little more than a mirage! Thank goodness for the Renaissance, when our Classical greatness was remembered. And then came the Internet. Oh, gods, I
love
the Internet! It is impossible for me to fade completely now. I am immortal on Wikipedia!”

I winced. I was now fully convinced of Nero’s insanity. Wikipedia was always getting stuff wrong about me.

He rolled his hand. “Yes, yes. You think I am crazy. I could explain my plans and prove otherwise, but I have a lot on my plate today. I need you and Meg to open those gates. They’ve resisted my best efforts, but together you two can do it. Apollo, you have an affinity with Oracles. Meg has a way with trees. Get to it. Please and thank you.”

“We would rather die,” I said. “Wouldn’t we, Meg?”

No response.

I glanced over. A silvery streak glistened on Meg’s cheek. At first I thought one of her rhinestones had melted. Then I realized she was crying.

“Meg?”

Nero clasped his hands as if in prayer. “Oh, my. It seems we’ve had a slight miscommunication. You see, Apollo, Meg brought you here, just as I asked her to. Well done, my sweet.”

Meg wiped her face. “I—I didn’t mean…”

My heart compressed to the size of a pebble. “Meg, no. I can’t believe—”

I reached for her. Peaches snarled and inserted himself between us. I realized the karpos was not here to protect us from Nero. He was defending Meg from
me.

“Meg?” I said. “This man killed your father! He’s a murderer!”

She stared at the ground. When she spoke, her voice was even more tortured than mine was when I sang in the anthill. “The
Beast
killed my father. This is Nero. He’s—he’s my stepfather.”

I could not fully grasp this before Nero spread his arms.

“That’s right, my darling,” he said. “And you’ve done a wonderful job. Come to Papa.”

I school McCaffrey

Yo, girl, your stepdad is wack

Why won’t she listen?

I HAD BEEN BETRAYED BEFORE.

The memories came flooding back to me in a painful tide. Once, my former girlfriend Cyrene took up with Ares just to get back at me. Another time, Artemis shot me in the groin because I was flirting with her Hunters. In 1928, Alexander Fleming failed to give me credit for inspiring his discovery of penicillin. I mean,
ouch
. That stung.

But I couldn’t remember
ever
being so wrong about someone as I had been about Meg. Well…at least not since Irving Berlin.
“Alexander’s Ragtime Band”?
I remember telling him.
You’ll never make it big with a corny song like that!

“Meg, we are friends.” My voice sounded petulant even to myself. “How could you do this to me?”

Meg looked down at her red sneakers—the primary-colored shoes of a traitor. “I tried to tell you, to warn you.”

“She has a good heart.” Nero smiled. “But, Apollo, you and Meg have been friends for just a few days—and only because I
asked
Meg to befriend you. I have been Meg’s stepfather, protector, and caretaker for years. She is a member of the Imperial Household.”

I stared at my beloved Dumpster waif. Yes, somehow over the past week she had become beloved to me. I could not imagine her as Imperial
anything
—definitely not as a part of Nero’s entourage.

“I risked my life for you,” I said in amazement. “And that actually
means
something, because I can die!”

Nero clapped politely. “We’re all impressed, Apollo. Now, if you’d open the gates. They’ve defied me for too long.”

I tried to glare at Meg, but my heart wasn’t in it. I felt too hurt and vulnerable. We gods do not like feeling vulnerable. Besides, Meg wasn’t even looking at me.

In a daze, I turned to the oak tree gates. I saw now that their fused trunks were marred from Nero’s previous efforts—chain-saw scars, burn marks, bites from ax blades, even some bullet holes. All these had barely chipped the outer bark. The most damaged area was an inch-deep impression in the shape of a human hand, where the wood had bubbled and peeled away. I glanced at the unconscious face of Paulie the geyser god, strung up and bound with the five demigods.

“Nero, what have you done?”

“Oh, a number of things! We found a way into this antechamber weeks ago. The Labyrinth has a convenient opening in the myrmekes’ nest. But getting through these gates—”

“You forced the palikos to help you?” I had to restrain myself from throwing my wind chimes at the emperor. “You used a nature spirit to destroy nature? Meg, how can you tolerate this?”

Peaches growled. For once I had the feeling that the grain spirit might be in agreement with me. Meg’s expression was as closed up as the gates. She stared intently at the bones littering the field.

“Come now,” Nero said. “Meg knows there are good nature spirits, and bad ones. This geyser god was annoying. He kept asking us to fill out surveys. Besides, he shouldn’t have ventured so far from his source of power. He was quite easy to capture. His steam, as you can see, didn’t do us much good anyway.”

“And the five demigods?” I demanded. “Did you ‘use’ them, too?”

“Of course. I didn’t plan on luring them here, but every time we attacked the gates, the grove started wailing. I suppose it was calling for help, and the demigods couldn’t resist. The first to wander in was this one.” He pointed to Cecil Markowitz. “The last two were your own children—Austin and Kayla, yes? They showed up after we forced Paulie to steam-broil the trees. I guess the grove was quite nervous about that attempt. We got two demigods for the price of one!”

I lost control. I let out a guttural howl and charged the emperor, intending to wring his hairy excuse for a neck. The Germani would have killed me before I ever got that far, but I was saved the indignity. I tripped over a human pelvis and belly-surfed through the bones.

“Apollo!” Meg ran toward me.

I rolled over and kicked at her like a fussy child. “I don’t need
your
help! Don’t you understand who your protector is? He’s a monster! He’s the emperor who—”

“Don’t say it,” Nero warned. “If you say ‘who fiddled while Rome burned,’ I will have Vince and Gary flay you for a set of hide armor. You know as well as I do, Apollo, we didn’t
have
fiddles back then. And I did
not
start the Great Fire of Rome.”

I struggled to my feet. “But you profited from it.”

Facing Nero, I remembered all the tawdry details of his rule—the extravagance and cruelty that had made him so embarrassing to me, his forefather. Nero was that relative you never wanted to invite to Lupercalia dinner.

“Meg,” I said, “your stepfather watched as seventy percent of Rome was destroyed. Tens of thousands died.”

“I was thirty miles away in Antium!” Nero snarled. “I rushed back to the city and personally led the fire brigades!”

“Only when the fire threatened your palace.”

Nero rolled his eyes. “I can’t help it if I arrived just in time to save the most important building!”

Meg cupped her hands over her ears. “Stop arguing. Please.”

I didn’t stop. Talking seemed better than my other options, like helping Nero or dying.

“After the Great Fire,” I told her, “instead of rebuilding the houses on Palatine Hill, Nero leveled the neighborhood and built a new palace—the Domus Aurea.”

Nero got a dreamy look on his face. “Ah, yes…the House of Gold. It was beautiful, Meg! I had my own lake, three hundred rooms, frescoes of gold, mosaics done in pearls and diamonds—I could finally live like a human being!”

“You had the nerve to put a hundred-foot-tall bronze statue in your front lawn!” I said. “A statue of yourself as Sol-Apollo, the sun god. In other words, you claimed to be
me
.”

“Indeed,” Nero agreed. “Even after I died, that statue lived on. I understand it became famous as the Colossus of Nero! They moved it to the gladiators’ amphitheater and everyone began calling the theater after the statue—
the Colosseum
.” Nero puffed up his chest. “Yes…the statue was the perfect choice.”

His tone sounded even more sinister than usual.

“What are you talking about?” I demanded.

“Hmm? Oh, nothing.” He checked his watch…a mauve-and-gold Rolex. “The point is, I had style! The people loved me!”

I shook my head. “They turned against you. The people of Rome were sure you’d started the Great Fire, so you scapegoated the Christians.”

I was aware that this arguing was pointless. If Meg had hidden her true identity all this time, I doubted I could change her mind now. But perhaps I could stall long enough for the cavalry to arrive. If only I
had
a cavalry.

Nero waved dismissively. “But the Christians were terrorists, you see. Perhaps they didn’t start the fire, but they were causing all sorts of other trouble. I recognized that before anyone else!”

“He fed them to the lions,” I told Meg. “He burned them as human torches, the way he will burn these six.”

Meg’s face turned green. She gazed at the unconscious prisoners on the stakes. “Nero, you wouldn’t—”

“They will be released,” Nero promised, “as long as Apollo cooperates.”

“Meg, you can’t trust him,” I said. “The last time he did this, he strung up Christians all over his backyard and burned them to illuminate his garden party. I was there. I remember the screaming.”