The Dark Prophecy by Rick Riordan

Waystation damaged

Commodus will pay for this

And I don’t take cash

I REMEMBER VERY LITTLEabout the trip back.

Somehow, Peaches and his two friends carried Meg and me out of the cave and to the Mercedes. More disturbingly, the three karpoi somehow drove us to Indianapolis while Meg sat muttering and shivering in the passenger seat and I lay groaning in the back.

Don’t ask me how three karpoi combined forces to drive an automobile. I can’t tell you which of them used the wheel, the brake, or the gas pedal. It’s not the sort of behavior you expect from edible fruit.

All I know is that by the time I regained more or less full consciousness, we had reached the city limits.

My broken forearm was wrapped in leaves glued together with sap. I had no memory of how this came to pass, but the arm felt better—still sore, but not excruciating. I counted myself lucky the peach spirits had not tried to plant me and water me.

I managed to sit upright just as the peach spirits curbed the Mercedes on Capital Avenue. Ahead of us, police cars blocked the road. Large red signs on sawhorses announced: GAS LEAK EMERGENCY. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE!

A gas leak. Leo Valdez had been right again. Assuming he was still alive, he’d be insufferable about this for weeks.

A few blocks beyond the barricades, a column of black smoke rose from the approximate location of the Waystation. My heart fractured more painfully than my arm. I glanced at the Mercedes’s dashboard clock. We had been gone less than four hours. It felt like a lifetime—a godly lifetime.

I scanned the sky. I saw no reassuring bronze dragon flying overhead, no helpful griffins defending their nest. If the Waystation had fallen…No, I had to think positive. I wouldn’t let my fears attract any more prophetic bee swarms today.

“Peaches,” I said. “I need you—”

I turned my gaze forward and nearly jumped through the car ceiling.

Peaches and his two friends were staring at me, their chins in a line atop the driver’s seat back like See-No-Evil, Peel-No-Evil, and Eat-No-Evil.

“Ah…yes. Hi,” I said. “Please, I need you to stay with Meg. Protect her at all costs.”

Peaches Prime bared his razor-sharp teeth and snarled, “Peaches.”

I took this as agreement.

“I have to check on our friends at the Waystation,” I said. “If I don’t come back…” The words stuck in my throat. “…then you’ll have to search for the Throne of Memory. Getting Meg into that chair is the only way to heal her mind.”

I stared at the three pairs of glowing green eyes. I couldn’t tell if the karpoi understood what I was saying, and I didn’t know how they could possibly follow my instructions. If the battle was over and the Throne of Memory had been taken or destroyed…No. That was bee-pollen thinking!

“Just…take care of her,” I pleaded.

I stepped out of the car and valiantly threw up on the sidewalk. Pink emojis danced across my eyes. I hobbled down the street, my arm covered in sap and leaves, my damp clothes smelling of bat guano and snake excrement. It was not my most glorious charge into battle.

No one stopped me at the barricades. The officers on duty (regular mortals, I guessed) looked more interested in their smartphone screens than in the smoke rising behind them. Perhaps the Mist concealed the true situation. Perhaps they figured if a ragged street person wanted to stumble toward a gas-leak emergency, they weren’t going to stop him. Or perhaps they were engrossed in an epic Pokémon Go gym battle.

A block inside the cordoned zone, I saw the first burning bulldozer. I suspected it had driven over a land mine specially modified by Leo Valdez, since along with being half-demolished and in flames it was also splattered with smiley-face stickers and gobs of whipped cream.

I hobbled faster. I spotted more disabled bulldozers, scattered rubble, totaled cars, and piles of monster dust, but no bodies. That raised my spirits a little. Just around the corner from the Union Station roundabout, I heard clanging swords ahead—then a gunshot and something that sounded like thunder.

I had never been so happy to hear a battle in progress. It meant not everyone was dead.

I ran. My weary legs screamed in protest. Every time my shoes hit the pavement, a jarring pain shot up my forearm.

I turned the corner and found myself in combat. Charging toward me with murder in his eyes was a demigod warrior—some teenage boy I’d never seen, wearing Roman-style armor over his street clothes. Fortunately, he’d already been badly beaten up. His eyes were almost swollen shut. His bronze chest plate was dented like a metal roof after a hailstorm. He could barely hold his sword. I wasn’t in much better shape, but I was running on anger and desperation. I managed to unsling my ukulele and slam the demigod in the face.

He crumpled at my feet.

I was feeling pretty proud of my heroic act until I looked up. In the middle of the roundabout, on top of the fountain and surrounded by Cyclopes, my favorite graduate accounting student, Olujime, stood like an ancient war god, swinging a bronze weapon that resembled a double-wide hockey stick. Each sweep sent crackling tendrils of electricity through his enemies. Every hit disintegrated a Cyclops.

I liked Jimmy even more now. I’d never had much affection for Cyclopes. Still…something was strange about his use of lightning. I could always recognize the power of Zeus in action. I’d been zapped by his bolts often enough. Jimmy’s electricity was different—a more humid scent of ozone, a darker red hue to the flashes. I wished I could ask him about that, but he looked a little busy.

Smaller fights raged here and there across the roundabout. The Waystation’s defenders appeared to have the upper hand. Hunter Kowalski leaped from foe to foe, shooting down blemmyae, wolf-headed warriors, and wild centaurs with ease. She had an uncanny ability to fire on the move, avoid counterstrikes, and target her victims’ kneecaps. As an archer, I was impressed. If I’d still had my godly powers, I would have blessed her with fabulous prizes like a magic quiver and possibly a signed copy of my greatest-hits anthology on classic vinyl.

In the hotel drive-through, Sssssarah the dracaena sat propped against a mailbox, her snake-tail legs curled around her, her neck swollen to the size of a basketball. I ran to her aid, afraid she might be wounded. Then I realized the lump in her throat was in the shape of a Gallic war helmet. Her chest and belly were also quite bloated.

She smiled at me lazily. “’Sssssup?”

“Sssssarah,” I said, “did you swallow a Germanus whole?”

“No.” She belched. The smell was definitely barbarian, with a hint of clove. “Well, perhapsssss.”

“Where are the others?” I ducked as a silver arrow flew over my head, shattering the windshield of a nearby Subaru. “Where’s Commodus?”

Sssssarah pointed toward the Waystation. “In there, I think. He killed a path into the building.”

She didn’t sound too concerned about this, probably because she was sated and sleepy. The pillar of dark smoke I’d noticed earlier was pouring from a hole in the roof of the Waystation. Even more distressing, lying across the green shingles like an insect part stuck on flypaper was the detached bronze wing of a dragon.

Rage boiled inside me. Whether the sun chariot or Festus or a school bus, no one messes with my ride.

The main doors of the Union Station building had been blown wide open. I charged inside past piles of monster dust and bricks, burning pieces of furniture, and a centaur hanging upside down, kicking and whinnying in a net trap.

In one stairwell, a wounded Hunter of Artemis groaned in pain as a comrade bound her bleeding leg. A few feet farther on, a demigod I didn’t recognize lay unmoving on the floor. I knelt next to him—a boy of about sixteen, my mortal age. I felt no pulse. I didn’t know whose side he had fought on, but that didn’t matter. Either way, his death was a terrible waste. I had begun to think that perhaps demigod lives were not as disposable as we gods liked to believe.

I ran through more corridors, trusting the Waystation to send me in the right direction. I burst into the library where I’d sat last night. The scene within hit me like the explosion from one of Britomartis’s bouncing mines.

Lying across the table was the body of a griffin. With a sob of horror, I rushed to her side. Heloise’s left wing was folded across her body like a shroud. Her head lay bent at an unnatural angle. The floor around her was piled with broken weapons, dented armor, and monster dust. She had died fighting off a host of enemies…but she had died.

My eyes burned. I cradled her head, breathing in the clean smell of hay and molting feathers. “Oh, Heloise. You saved me. Why couldn’t I save you?”

Where was her mate, Abelard? Was their egg safe? I wasn’t sure which thought was more terrible: the whole family of griffins dead, or the father and the griffin chick forced to live with the devastating loss of Heloise.

I kissed her beak. Proper grieving would have to wait. Other friends might still be in need of help.

With newfound energy, I bounded up a staircase two steps at a time.

I stormed through a set of doors into the main hall.

The scene was eerily calm. Smoke flooded out the gaping hole of the roof, billowing from the loft where a smoldering bulldozer chassis was, inexplicably, lodged nose-down. Heloise and Abelard’s nest appeared to be intact, but there were no signs of the male griffin or the egg. In Josephine’s workshop area, sprawled across the floor, lay the severed head and neck of Festus, his ruby eyes dark and lifeless. The rest of his body was nowhere to be seen.

Sofas had been smashed and overturned. Kitchen appliances were riddled with bullet holes. The scope of damage was heartbreaking.

But the most serious problem was the standoff around the dining table.

On the side nearest me stood Josephine, Calypso, Lityerses, and Thalia Grace. Thalia had her bow drawn. Lit brandished his sword. Calypso raised her bare hands, martial arts–style, and Josephine hefted her submachine gun, Little Bertha.

On the far side of the table stood Commodus himself, smiling brilliantly despite a bleeding diagonal cut across his face. Imperial gold armor gleamed over his purple tunic. He held his blade, a gold spatha, casually at his side.

To either side of him stood a Germanus bodyguard. The barbarian on the right had his arm clamped around Emmie’s neck, his other hand pressing a pistol crossbow against Emmie’s head. Georgina stood with her mother, Emmie hugging the little girl tightly to her chest. Alas, the little girl seemed to have fully recovered her wits only to be faced with this fresh horror.

To Commodus’s left, a second Germanus held Leo Valdez in a similar hostage stance.

I clenched my fists. “Villainy! Commodus, let them go!”

“Hello, Lester!” Commodus beamed. “You’re just in time for the fun!”