DRIVING THE DREAM CHARIOT DID NOT go well. If the dream police had been on patrol, they would have pulled me over and given me a ticket.
Immediately, a psychic crosswind caught my consciousness. I tumbled through the floor, falling past stairwells and offices and broom closets, swirling into the bowels of the tower like I’d been flushed down the cosmic toilet. (Which is a disgusting plumbing fixture, by the way. No one ever cleans it.) GO UP, GO UP! I willed my dream, but I couldn’t seem to find the reins.
I plummeted straight through a vat of Greek fire. That was different. I hit the tunnels below Manhattan, glancing around desperately for any sign of my friends and the troglodytes, but I was traveling too fast, spinning like a pinwheel. I broke through into the Labyrinth and hurtled sideways, swept along by a current of superheated ether.
I can do this, I told myself. It’s just like driving a chariot. Except with no horses. Or chariot. Or body.
I ordered my dream to take me to Meg—the person I most wanted to see. I imagined my hands reaching out, grasping reins. Just when I thought I
had them, my dreamscape stabilized. I found myself back in the caverns of Delphi, volcanic gasses layering the air, the dark shape of Python moving heavily in the shadows.
“So, I have you again,” he gloated. “You shall perish—”
“I don’t have time for you right now.” My voice surprised me almost as
much as it did the reptile.
“What?”
“Gotta go.” I lashed the reins of my dream.
“How dare you! You cannot—”
I rocketed into reverse like I was tied to a rubber band.
Why backward? I hated sitting backward in a moving vehicle, but I suppose the dream was still trying to show me who was boss. I did a roller- coaster rewind through the Labyrinth, the mortal tunnels, the stairwells of the tower. Finally, I lurched to a stop. My stomach clenched, and I retched up…well, whatever ethereal spirit-stuff one can retch in the dream world.
My head and stomach orbited each other like wobbly lava planets. I found myself on my knees in an extravagant bedroom. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked Midtown all the way to the Hudson River. The cityscape was still mercifully un-torched.
Meg McCaffrey was busy trashing the bedroom. Even without her blades, she was doing an A+ demolition job with a broken chair leg, which she swung wildly into just about everything. Meanwhile, a Germanus stood blocking the only exit, his arms folded, his expression unimpressed. A woman in an old-fashioned black-and-white maid’s uniform wrung her hands and winced every time something went CRASH. She held a stack of what looked like party dresses draped over one arm.
“Miss,” said the maid, “if you could just choose an outfit for tonight.
Perhaps if you didn’t…Oh. Oh, that was an antique. No, that’s fine. I’ll get another— OH! Very well, Miss, if you don’t like those bed linens I can— There’s no need to shred them, Miss!”
Meg’s tantrum raised my spirits considerably. That’s it, my friend! I thought. Give them Tartarus! Meg threw her broken chair leg into a lamp, then picked up another whole chair and raised it over her head, ready to hurl it at the window.
A faint knock on the bedroom door made her freeze. The Germanus stepped aside, opened the door, and bowed as Nero swept into the room.
“Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry.” The emperor’s voice oozed sympathy.
“Come. Sit with me.”
He moved smoothly to the bed and sat at the edge, patting the ripped comforter next to him.
I silently rooted for Meg to brain him with the chair. He was right there, in easy reach. But I realized that was Nero’s intention…to make himself seem to be at Meg’s mercy. To make her responsible for choosing violence.
And if she did, he would be free to punish her.
She put down the chair, but she didn’t go to Nero. She turned her back and crossed her arms. Her lips trembled. I wanted so badly to go to her, to shield her. I wanted to drive my dream chariot into Nero’s face, but I could only watch.
“I know you feel terrible,” Nero said, “after what you did to your friend.”
She wheeled around. “After what I DID?!”
She picked up the chair again and threw it across the room—but not at Nero. It whanged off the window, leaving a smudge but no cracks. I caught the flicker of a smile on Nero’s face—a smile of satisfaction—before his expression fixed back into a mask of sympathy. “Yes, dear. This anger comes from guilt. You led Apollo here. You understood what that meant, what would happen. But you did it anyway. That must be so painful… knowing you brought him to his end.”
Her arms trembled. “I—no. You cut off—” She gagged, clearly unable to say the words. She stared down at her own fists, clenched as if they might fly off her wrists if left unattended.
“You can’t blame yourself,” Nero said in a tone that somehow implied, This is all your fault.
“Luguselwa made the wrong choice. You know that. You must have understood what would happen. You are too smart to be blind. We’ve talked about consequences so often.” He sighed with regret. “Perhaps Cassius was too harsh, taking her hands.” He tilted his head. “If you like, I can punish him for that.”
“What?” Meg was shaking, as if no longer sure where to direct the giant cannon of her anger. “No! It wasn’t him. It was—”
She choked on the obvious answer: YOU.
With Nero sitting right in front of her, talking in gentle tones, giving her his full attention, she faltered.
Meg! I shouted, but no sound came forth. Meg, keep smashing things!
“You have a kind heart,” Nero said with another sigh. “You care about Apollo. About Lu. I understand that. And when you unleash the Beast…”
He spread his hands. “I know that is unsettling. But it isn’t over, Meg. Will you sit with me? I’m not asking for a hug, or for you to stop being angry.
But I have some news that may make you feel better.”
He patted the mattress again. The maid wrung her hands. The Germanus picked his teeth.
Meg wavered. I could imagine the thoughts racing through her head: Is the news about Apollo? Will you offer to let him go if I cooperate? Is Lu still alive? Will she be released? And if I don’t play along with your wishes, will I be endangering them?
Nero’s unspoken message seemed to hang in the air: This is all your fault, but you can still make it right.
Slowly, Meg moved to the bed. She sat, her posture stiff and guarded. I wanted to lunge between her and Nero, to insert myself in the gap and make sure he could not get any closer, but I feared his influence was worse than physical.…He was worming his way into her mind.
“Here is the good news, Meg,” he said. “We will always have each other. I will never abandon you. You can never make a mistake so great I will not take you back. Lu betrayed you when she betrayed me. Apollo was unreliable, selfish, and—dare I say—a narcissist. But I know you. I have raised you. This is your home.”
Oh, gods, I thought. Nero was so good at being evil, and so evil at being good, he made the words lose their meaning. He could tell you the floor was the ceiling with such conviction you might start believing it, especially since any disagreement would unleash the Beast.
I marveled how such a man could rise to be emperor of Rome. Then I marveled how such a man could ever lose control of Rome. It was easy to see how he’d gotten the mobs on his side.
Meg shivered, but whether from rage or despair, I couldn’t be sure.
“There, there.” Nero put an arm around her shoulders. “You can cry. It’s all right. I’m here.”
A cold knot formed in my gut. I suspected that as soon as Meg’s tears fell, the game would be over. All the independence she’d built and fought so hard to maintain would crumble. She would fold herself against Nero’s chest, just as she’d done as a little girl, after Nero killed her real father. The
Meg I knew would disappear under the twisted, tortured mess Nero had spent years cultivating.
The scene lost cohesion—perhaps because I was too upset to control my dream. Or perhaps I simply couldn’t bear to watch what happened next. I tumbled down through the tower, floor after floor, trying to regain the reins.
I’m not done, I insisted. I need more information!
Unfortunately, I got it.
I stopped in front of a golden door—never a good sign, golden doors.
The dream swept me inside a small vault. I felt as if I’d entered a reactor core. Intense heat threatened to burn my dream-self into a cloud of dream- ashes. The air smelled heavy and toxic. Before me, floating above a pedestal of Stygian iron, was the fasces of Nero—a five-foot-tall golden ax, bundled with wooden rods and lashed together by gold cords. The ceremonial weapon pulsed with power—exponentially more than the two fasces Meg and I had destroyed at Sutro Tower.
The meaning of this dawned on me…whispered into my brain like a line of Python’s poisoned prophecy. The three emperors of the Triumvirate hadn’t just linked themselves through a corporation. Their life forces, their ambitions, their greed and malice, had entwined over the centuries. By killing Commodus and Caligula, I had consolidated all the power of the Triumvirate into the fasces of Nero. I had made the surviving emperor three times as powerful and harder to kill. Even if the fasces were unguarded,
destroying it would be difficult.
And the fasces was not unguarded.
Behind the glowing ax, his hands spread as if in benediction, the guardian stood. His body was humanoid, seven feet tall. Patches of gold fur covered his muscular chest, arms, and legs. His feathery white wings reminded me of one of Zeus’s wind spirits, or the angels that Christians liked to paint.
His face, however, was not angelic. He had the shaggy-maned visage of a lion, ears rimmed with black fur, mouth open to reveal fangs and a panting red tongue. His huge golden eyes radiated a sort of sleepy, self- confident strength.
But the strangest thing about the guardian was the serpent that encircled his body from ankles to neck—a slithering spiral of green flesh that corkscrewed around him like an endless escalator—a snake with no head or tail.
The lion man saw me. My dream state was nothing to him. Those gold eyes locked onto me and would not let me go. They turned me and examined me as if I were a trog boy’s crystal sphere.
He communicated wordlessly. He told me he was the leontocephaline, a creation of Mithras, a Persian god so secretive even we Olympians had never really understood him. In Mithras’s name, the leontocephaline had overseen the movement of the stars and the phases of the zodiac. He had also been the keeper of Mithras’s great specter of immortality, but that had been lost eons ago. Now the leontocephaline had been given a new job, a new symbol of power to guard.
Just looking at him threatened to tear my mind apart. I tried to ask him questions. I understood that fighting him was impossible. He was eternal.
He could no more be killed than one could kill time. He guarded the immortality of Nero, but wasn’t there any way…?
Oh, yes. He could be bargained with. I saw what he wanted. The realization made my soul curl up like a squashed spider.
Nero was clever. Horribly, evilly clever. He had set a trap with his own symbol of power. He was cynically betting that I would never pay the price.
At last, his point made, the leontocephaline released me. My dream-self snapped back into my body.
I sat up in bed, gasping and soaked in sweat.
“About time,” Lu said.
Incredibly, she was on her feet, pacing the cell. My healing power must have done more than just soothe her amputation wounds. She wobbled a bit, but she did not look like someone who’d been using crutches and leg braces just a day ago. Even the bruises on her face had faded.
“You…You look better,” I noted. “How long was I out?”
“Too long. Gunther brought dinner an hour ago.” She nodded to a new platter of food on the floor. “He said he’d be back soon to get us for the party. But the fool was careless. He left us silverware!”
She brandished her stumps.
Oh, gods. What had she done? Somehow, she had managed to attach a fork to one stump and a knife to the other. She had inserted the handles into the folds of her bandages, then fastened them in place with…Wait. Was that my surgical tape?
I looked at the foot of my bed. Sure enough, my pack was open, the contents scattered about.
I tried to ask how and why at the same time, so it came out as “Hawhy?”
“If you have enough time, some tape, and a set of working teeth, you can do a lot,” Lu said proudly. “I couldn’t wait for you to wake up. Didn’t know when Gunther would be back. Sorry about the mess.”
“I—”
“You can help.” She tested her silverware attachments with a few kung fu jabs. “I tied these babies on as tight as I could, but you can wrap them one more time. I have to be able to use them in combat.”
“Er—”
She plopped down on the sofa next to me. “While you work, you can tell me what you learned.”
I was not about to argue with someone who could poke me in the eye with a fork. I was dubious about the effectiveness of her new combat attachments, but I didn’t say anything. I understood that this was about Luguselwa taking charge of her situation, not giving up, doing what she could with what she had. When you’ve gone through a life-changing shock, positive thinking is the most effective weapon you can wield.
I wrapped her utensils more tightly in place while explaining what I’d seen in my dream drive: Meg trying not to crumble under the influence of Nero, the emperor’s fasces floating in its radioactive room, and the leontocephaline, waiting for us to try and take it.
“We’d best hurry, then.” Lu grimaced. “Tighter with that tape.”
My efforts obviously hurt her, judging from the crinkles around her eyes, but I did as she asked.
“Right,” she said, swiping the air with her utensils. “That’ll have to do.”
I tried for a supportive smile. I wasn’t sure Captain Fork and Knife would have much luck against Gunther or the leontocephaline, but if we met a hostile rib-eye steak, Lu would be queen of the combat.
“And no sign of the other thing?” she asked.
I wished I could’ve told her yes. I had wanted so badly to see visions of the entire troglodyte corporation digging into Nero’s basement and disabling his fire vats. I would have settled for a dream of Nico, Will, and Rachel charging to our rescue, yelling loudly and waving noisemakers.
“Nothing,” I said. “But we still have time.”
“Yeah,” Lu agreed. “Minutes and minutes. Then the party starts and the city burns. But, okay. Let’s concentrate on what we can do. I have a plan to get us out of here.”
A cold shiver ran down my neck as I thought about my silent conversation with the guardian of the fasces. “And I have a plan for what to do when we get out.”
Then we both said together, “You’re not going to like it.”
“Oh, joy.” I sighed. “Let’s hear yours first.”
