The Dark Prophecy (The Trials of Apollo, #2)

by Rick Riordan

I, the most important passenger, the youth who had once been the glorious god Apollo, was forced to sit in the back of the dragon.

That should have been physically impossible, of course, but like any decent god, demigod, or engineer, Leo Valdez refused to be stopped by the laws of physics.

I won’t die here, I promised myself. I’m much too important to bite it in Indiana.

Fortunately, I have a natural talent for focusing everyone’s attention on me. “I volunteer for death!” I shouted.

“Lo!” I said. “I arrived at Camp Half-Blood as Lester Papadopoulos!” “A pathetic mortal!” Calypso chorused. “Most worthless of teens!”

“Poison!” Calypso cried. “Like the breath of Lester Papadopoulos, most worthless of teens!” I resisted the urge to push Calypso into the flower bed.

Meanwhile, Leo was making his way toward the bulldozer under the guise of an interpretive dance routine, spinning and gasping and pantomiming my words. He looked like a hallucinating ballerina in boxer shorts, but the blemmyae politely got out of his way.

Hey, babe. I just saw your sisters get chased off a cliff and plummet to their deaths. You want to catch a movie or something?

couldn’t very well let them go SPLAT after they’d entrusted me with their lives. Now Hermes? Sure, he might have let them die. He would’ve found that hilarious. Hermes is a twisted little scamp. But Apollo? No. I had to honor such courage and panache!

In all, the boy reminded me somewhat of Nico di Angelo, the son of Hades, if Nico were slightly older, more vicious, and had been raised by jackals.

I may have whimpered. I had never been so happy to see anyone in my life, and that includes Hyacinthus the time he wore that amazing tuxedo on our date night, so you know I mean it.

“Moderately well?” I bit back a few nasty comments. I wondered if demigods ever felt the need to restrain themselves when facing ungrateful gods like this. No. Surely not. I was special and different. And I deserved better treatment.

Ever since my famous battle with Python, I’ve had a phobia of scaly reptilian creatures. (Especially if you include my stepmother, Hera. BOOM!)

I frowned. “That was much too easy.” “Hey.” Meg poked me in the back of the neck. “Remember what Percy told us? Never say stuff like We made it or That was easy. You’ll jinx us!” “My entire existence is a jinx.” “Pedal faster.”

We were ten feet away when we triggered the First Law of Percy Jackson.

Leo turned and grinned. “Who’s the best?” “Me?” I asked, but my spirits quickly fell. “You didn’t mean me, did you?”

On the list of things that freaked me out, seven-year-old girls who giggled about death were right at the top, along with reptiles and talking weapons.

I felt a bit silly giving this advice to a girl who regularly fought monsters with golden swords, but I had promised Bill Nye the Science Guy I would always promote safe laboratory practices.

The girl’s name came to me: Thalia Grace. Artemis’s lieutenant, the leader of the Hunters, had personally come to rescue me.

“Save Apollo!” she yelled. My spirits soared. Yes, thank you! I wanted to yell. FINALLY someone has their priorities straight!

the same way the goddess Demeter had looked, ages ago, standing in front of Zeus’s throne, her voice full of pain and disbelief: Will you actually let Hades get away with kidnapping my daughter Persephone?

The Hunters cheered. I may have cheered also. I always love it when courageous heroes volunteer to fight battles I don’t want to fight.

I had never considered that growing older, grayer, and thicker might make someone more beautiful. Yet that seemed to be the case for Emmie.

“Leo, stop.” Calypso gave Emmie an apologetic frown. “He jokes more when he’s nervous. He also jokes worse when he’s nervous.” “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Leo inserted carrot fangs in his mouth and snarled.

But with the exception of my sister, had I ever shared so many experiences with anyone? I realized, gods help me, that I was going to miss these two.

“Yes,” I found myself saying. “Yes, I would die to save Meg McCaffrey.”

(Those silly Roman demigods were always drowning.)

She did not believe she deserved to survive. What saved us was a simultaneous thought: I cannot give up. Apollo/Meg needs me.

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.

Melodramatic to the end, Commodus pressed his palms against his eye sockets and screamed, “MY EYES!”

Belatedly, I realized how much danger I’d been in. I had actually managed to reveal my true divine form. I had become pure light. Stupid Apollo! Amazing, wonderful, stupid Apollo! This mortal body was not meant for channeling such power. I was fortunate I hadn’t burned up instantly like an antique flashbulb.

The two bumped fists as if they hadn’t spent the last few days talking about how much they wanted to kill each other. They would have made fine Olympian gods.

“Hello, Grover Underwood. I am Apollo. This is Meg. And you, my lucky friend, have been summoned to lead us through the Labyrinth.”