The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo, #5)

by Rick Riordan

“I will not resort to threatening you—” “He’s threatening us!” Tempest flailed. She slammed Wasp on the back so hard the communal eyeball popped right out of her socket. Wasp snatched it—and with a terrible show of fumbling, intentionally chucked it over her shoulder, right into my lap. I screamed. The sisters screamed, too. Anger, now bereft of guidance, swerved all over the road, sending my stomach into my esophagus. “He’s stolen our eye!” cried Tempest. “We can’t see!” “I have not!” I yelped. “It’s disgusting!” Meg whooped with pleasure. “THIS. IS. SO. COOL!”

Nico di Angelo wasn’t physically imposing like Sherman Yang. He didn’t have Reyna Ramírez-Arellano’s air of authority, or Hazel Levesque’s commanding presence when she charged into battle on horseback. But Nico wasn’t someone I would ever want as an enemy. He was deceptively quiet. He appeared anemic and frail. He kept himself on the periphery. But Will was right about how much Nico had been through. He had been born in Mussolini’s Italy. He had survived decades in the time-warp reality of the Lotus Casino. He’d emerged in modern times disoriented and culture-shocked, arrived at Camp Half-Blood, and promptly lost his sister Bianca to a dangerous quest. He had wandered the Labyrinth in self-imposed exile, being tortured and brainwashed by a malevolent ghost. He’d overcome everyone’s distrust and emerged from the Battle of Manhattan as a hero. He’d been captured by giants during the rise of Gaea. He’d wandered Tartarus alone and somehow managed to come out alive. And through it all, he’d struggled with his upbringing as a conservative Catholic Italian male from the 1930s and finally learned to accept himself as a young gay man. Anyone who could survive all that had more resilience than Stygian iron.

Meg studied them warily. “Nico, how soon can you shadow us out?” “Catch…my…breath…first,” he said between gulps of air. “Please,” Will agreed. “If he’s too tired, he might teleport us into a vat of Cheez Whiz in Venezuela.” “Okay…” said Nico. “We didn’t end up in the vat.” “Pretty close,” Will said. “Definitely in the middle of Venezuela’s biggest Cheez Whiz processing plant.” “That was one time,” Nico grumbled.

Nico snorted and began to stir. “Wh-what—?” “It’s okay,” Will reassured him. “You’re with friends.” “Friends?” Nico sat up, bleary-eyed. “Friends.” Will gave us a warning look, as if suggesting we shouldn’t startle Nico with any sudden moves. I gathered Nico was a grumpy napper like his father, Hades. Wake up Hades prematurely and you were likely to end up as a nuclear-blast shadow on his bedroom wall. Nico rubbed his eyes and frowned at me. I tried to look harmless. “Apollo,” he said. “Right. I remember.” “Good,” Will said. “But you’re still groggy. Have a Kit Kat.” “Yes, doctor,” Nico muttered.

I suspected that wasn’t what Jason Grace would want, either. When he’d told me to remember being human, he’d meant building on pain and tragedy, overcoming it, learning from it. That was something gods never did. We just complained. To be human is to move forward, to adapt, to believe in your ability to make things better. That is the only way to make the pain and sacrifice mean something.

My son Asclepius, god of medicine, used to chide me about helping those with disabilities. You can help them if they ask. But wait for them to ask. It’s their choice to make, not yours.

A mortal security guard in tactical riot gear rounded the corner, barreling toward me with his handgun raised. Not being well prepared, I screamed and threw Gunther’s sword at him. By some miracle, the hilt hit him in the face and knocked him down. THAT IS NOT NORMALLY HOW ONE USETH A SWORD, the arrow said. “Always a critic,” I grumbled.

Leader Guy spat. “Now, I kill you.” He raised his sword…and froze. His face turned pale. His skin began to shrivel. His beard fell out whisker by whisker like dead pine needles. Finally, his skin crumbled away, along with his clothes and flesh, until Leader Guy was nothing but a bleached-white skeleton, holding a sword in his bony hands. Standing behind him, his hand on the skeleton’s shoulder, was Nico di Angelo. “That’s better,” Nico said. “Now stand down.” The skeleton obeyed, lowering its sword and stepping away from me.

“Hey, guys,” he said. “We having fun yet?” “Austin,” Kayla said with relief. “I need to lure this bull outside. Can you—?” She pointed at me. “We playing pass-the-Apollo?” Austin grinned. “Sure. C’mon, Dad. I got you.”

Austin ran to the junction of the corridor and yelled, “Hey, idiots! You’re all gonna die!” Then he put his mouthpiece to his lips and blasted out “Pop Goes the Weasel.” Even without the insults, that particular song, when played by a child of Apollo, will cause a stampede 100 percent of the time. I pressed myself against the wall by the elevator as Austin dashed toward the library, pursued by fifty or sixty angry screaming party guests and Germani.

I felt a surge of gratitude and exasperation. Those stupid, beautiful Greek demigods, those brave, wonderful fools. I wanted to punch them all and then give them a big hug.

Behind me, a familiar voice roared, “STOP!” The tone was so commanding even Nero’s guards and family members turned toward the broken blast doors. On the threshold stood Will Solace, radiating brilliant light. At his left was Luguselwa, alive and well, her stumps now outfitted with daggers instead of silverware. At Will’s right was Rachel Elizabeth Dare, holding a large ax wrapped in a golden bundle of rods: the fasces of Nero. “No one hits my boyfriend,” Will thundered. “And no one kills my dad!”

Rachel pulled out a blue plastic hairbrush and threw it at the nearest barbarian, beaning him in the eye and making him howl.