The Tyrant’s Tomb by Rick Riordan

I didn’t do it.

Explosion? I don’t know her.

Probably Greg’s fault.

A THIRD-DEGREE BURNwas the least painful thing I carried from that tunnel.

I staggered into the open, my back sizzling, my hands steaming, every muscle in my body feeling like it had been scored with razorblades. Before me spread the remaining forces of the emperors: hundreds of battle-ready warriors. In the distance, stretched across the bay, fifty yachts waited, primed to fire their doomsday artillery.

None of that hurt as much as knowing I had left Frank Zhang in the flames.

Caligula was gone. I could feel it—like the earth heaved a sigh of relief as his consciousness disintegrated in a blast of superheated plasma. But, oh, the cost. Frank. Beautiful, awkward, lumbering, brave, strong, sweet, noble Frank.

I would have sobbed, but my tear ducts were as dry as Mojave gulches.

The enemy forces looked as stunned as I was. Even the Germani were slack-jawed. It takes a lot to shock an imperial bodyguard. Watching your bosses get blown up in a massive fiery belch from the side of a mountain—that will do it.

Behind me, a barely human voice gurgled, “URGSSHHH.”

I turned.

I was too dead inside to feel fear or disgust. Of course Commodus was still alive. He crawled out of the smoke-filled cavern on his elbows, his armor half-melted, his skin coated with ash. His once-beautiful face looked like a burnt loaf of tomato bread.

I hadn’t hobbled him well enough. Somehow, I’d missed his ligaments. I’d messed up everything, even Frank’s last request.

None of the troops rushed to the emperor’s aid. They remained frozen in disbelief. Perhaps they didn’t recognize this wrecked creature as Commodus. Perhaps they thought he was doing another one of his spectacles and they were waiting for the right moment to applaud.

Incredibly, Commodus struggled to his feet. He wobbled like a 1975 Elvis.

“SHIPS!” he croaked. He slurred the word so badly, for a moment I thought he’d yelled something else. I suppose his troops thought the same thing, since they did nothing.

“FIRE!” Commodus groaned, which again could have simply meant HEY, LOOK, I’M ON FIRE.

I only understood his order a heartbeat later, when Gregorix yelled, “SIGNAL THE YACHTS!”

I choked on my tongue.

Commodus gave me a ghastly smile. His eyes glittered with hatred.

I don’t know where I found the strength, but I charged and tackled him. We hit the asphalt, my legs straddling his chest, my hands wrapped around his throat as they had been thousands of years before, the first time I killed him. This time, I felt no bittersweet regret, no lingering sense of love. Commodus fought, but his fists were like paper. I let loose a guttural roar—a song with only one note: pure rage, and only one volume: maximum.

Under the onslaught of sound, Commodus crumbled to ash.

My voice faltered. I stared at my empty palms. I stood and backed away, horrified. The charred outline of the emperor’s body remained on the asphalt. I could still feel the pulse of his carotid arteries under my fingers. What had I done? In my thousands of years of life, I’d never destroyed someone with my voice. When I sang, people would often say I “killed it,” but they never meant that literally.

The emperors’ troops stared at me in astonishment. Given another moment, they surely would have attacked, but their attention was diverted by a flare gun going off nearby. A tennis-ball-size globe of orange fire arced into the sky, trailing Tang-colored smoke.

The troops turned toward the bay, waiting for the fireworks show that would destroy Camp Jupiter. I’ll admit—as tired and helpless and emotionally shattered as I was, all I could do was watch, too.

On fifty aft decks, green dots flickered as the Greek fire charges were uncovered in their mortars. I imagined pandos technicians scrambling about, inputting their final coordinates.

PLEASE, ARTEMIS,I prayed. NOW WOULD BE A GREAT TIME TO SHOW UP.

The weapons fired. Fifty green fireballs rose into the sky, like emeralds on a floating necklace, illuminating the entire bay. They rose straight upward, struggling to gain altitude.

My fear turned to confusion. I knew a few things about flying. You couldn’t take off at a ninety-degree angle. If I tried that in the sun chariot…well, first of all, I would’ve fallen off and looked really stupid. But also, the horses could never have made such a steep climb. They would have toppled into each other and crashed back into the gates of the Sun Palace. You’d have an eastern sunrise, followed immediately by an eastern sunset and lots of angry whinnying.

Why would the mortars be aimed like that?

The green fireballs climbed another fifty feet. A hundred feet. Slowed. On Highway 24, the entire enemy army mimicked their movements, standing up straighter and straighter as the projectiles rose, until all the Germani, Khromandae, and other assorted baddies were on their tippy-toes, poised as if levitating. The fireballs stopped and hovered in midair.

Then the emeralds fell straight down, right onto the yachts from which they had come.

The display of mayhem was worthy of the emperors themselves. Fifty yachts exploded in green mushroom clouds, sending confetti of shattered wood, metal, and tiny little flaming monster bodies into the air. Caligula’s multi-billion-dollar fleet was reduced to a string of burning oil slicks on the surface of the bay.

I may have laughed. I know that was quite insensitive, considering the environmental impact of the disaster. Also terribly inappropriate, given how heartbroken I felt about Frank. But I couldn’t help it.

The enemy troops turned as one to stare at me.

Oh, right,I reminded myself. I am still facing hundreds of hostiles.

But they didn’t look very hostile. Their expressions were stunned and unsure.

I had destroyed Commodus with a shout. I had helped burn Caligula to cinders. Despite my humble appearance, the troops had probably heard rumors that I was once a god. Was it possible, they’d be wondering, that I had somehow caused the fleet’s destruction?

In point of fact, I had no idea what had gone wrong with the fleet’s weapons. I doubted it was Artemis. It just didn’t feel like something she would do. As for Lavinia…I didn’t see how she could’ve pulled off a trick like that with just some fauns, a few dryads, and some chewing gum.

I knew it wasn’t me.

But the army didn’t know that.

I cobbled together the last shreds of my courage. I channeled my old sense of arrogance, from back in the days when I loved to take credit for things I didn’t do (as long as they were good and impressive). I gave Gregorix and his army a cruel, emperor-like smile.

“BOO!” I shouted.

The troops broke and ran. They scattered down the highway in a panic, some leaping straight over the guardrails and into the void just to get away from me faster. Only the poor tortured pegasi stayed put, since they had no choice. They were still fastened in their harnesses, the chariot wheels staked to the asphalt to keep the animals from bolting. In any case, I doubted they would have wanted to follow their tormentors.

I fell to my knees. My gut wound throbbed. My charred back had gone numb. My heart seemed to be pumping cold, liquid lead. I would be dead soon. Or undead. It hardly mattered. The two emperors were gone. Their fleet was destroyed. Frank was no more.

On the bay, the burning oil pools belched columns of smoke that turned orange in the light of the blood moon. It was without a doubt the loveliest trash fire I’d ever beheld.

After a moment of shocked silence, the Bay Area emergency services seem to register the new problem. The East Bay had already been deemed a disaster area. With the tunnel closure and the mysterious string of wildfires and explosions in the hills, sirens had been wailing across the flatlands. Emergency lights flickered everywhere on the jammed streets.

Now Coast Guard vessels joined the party, cutting across the water to reach the burning oil spills. Police and news helicopters veered toward the scene from a dozen different directions as if being pulled by a magnet. The Mist would be working overtime tonight.

I was tempted to just lie down on the road and go to sleep. I knew if I did that, I would die, but at least there would be no more pain. Oh, Frank.

And why hadn’t Artemis come to help me? I wasn’t mad at her. I understood all too well how gods could be, all the different reasons they might not show up when you called. Still, it hurt, being ignored by my own sister.

An indignant huff jarred me from my thoughts. The pegasi were glaring at me. The one on the left had a blind eye, poor thing, but he shook his bridle and made a raspberry kind of sound as if to say, GET OVER YOURSELF, DUDE.

The pegasus was correct. Other people were hurting. Some of them needed my help. Tarquin was still alive—I could feel it in my zombie-infected blood. Hazel and Meg might well be fighting undead in the streets of New Rome.

I wouldn’t be much good to them, but I had to try. Either I could die with my friends, or they could cut off my head after I turned into a brain-eater, which was what friends were for.

I rose and staggered toward the pegasi.

“I’m so sorry this happened to you,” I told them. “You are beautiful animals and you deserve better.”

One Eye grunted as if to say, YA THINK?

“I’ll free you now, if you’ll let me.”

I fumbled with their tack and harness. I found an abandoned dagger on the asphalt and cut away the barbed wire and spiked cuffs that had been digging into the animals’ flesh. I carefully avoided their hooves in case they decided I was worth a kick in the head.

Then I started humming Dean Martin’s “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head,” because that’s just the kind of awful week I was having.

“There,” I said when the pegasi were free. “I have no right to ask anything of you, but if you could see your way to giving me a ride over the hills, my friends are in danger.”

The pegasus on the right, who still had both eyes but whose ears had been cruelly snipped, whinnied an emphatic NO! He trotted toward the College Avenue exit, then stopped halfway and looked back at his friend.

One Eye grunted and tossed his mane. I imagined his silent exchange with Short Ears went something like this.

One Eye: I’m gonna give this pathetic loser a ride. You go ahead. I’ll catch up.

Short Ears: You’re crazy, man. If he gives you any trouble, kick him in the head.

One Eye: You know I will.

Short Ears trotted off into the night. I couldn’t blame him for leaving. I hoped he would find a safe place to rest and heal.

One Eye nickered at me. Well?

I took one last look at the Caldecott Tunnel, the interior still a maelstrom of green flames. Even without fuel, Greek fire would just keep burning and burning, and that conflagration had been started with Frank’s life force—a final, thermal burst of heroism that had vaporized Caligula. I didn’t pretend to understand what Frank had done, or why he had made that choice, but I understood he’d felt it was the only way. He’d burned brightly, all right. The last word Caligula had heard as he got blasted into tiny particles of soot was Jason.

I stepped closer to the tunnel. I could barely get within fifty feet without the breath being sucked out of my lungs.

“FRANK!” I yelled. “FRANK?”

It was hopeless, I knew. There was no way Frank could have survived that. Caligula’s immortal body had disintegrated instantly. Frank couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds longer, held together by sheer courage and force of will, just to be sure he took Caligula down with him.

I wished I could cry. I vaguely recalled having tear ducts, once upon a time.

Now all I had was despair, and the knowledge that as long as I wasn’t dead, I had to try to help my remaining friends, no matter how much I hurt.

“I’m so sorry,” I said to the flames.

The flames didn’t answer. They didn’t care who or what they destroyed.

I fixed my gaze on the crest of the hill. Hazel, Meg, and the last of the Twelfth Legion were on the other side, fighting off the undead. That’s where I needed to be.

“Okay,” I told One Eye. “I’m ready.”