The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo #5) - Rick Riordan Page 0,80

some menthol-scented healing ointment on my busted nose. “Oh, Dad. I’m afraid you’re going to have a scar.”

“I know.” I giggled. “I’m so glad to see you.”

Kayla managed a weak smile. “You, too. Been a crazy afternoon. Nico and those trogs infiltrated the building from below. The rest of us hit the tower on several levels at once, overwhelmed their security. The Hermes cabin disarmed a lot of the traps and turrets and whatnot, but we’ve still got fierce fighting pretty much everywhere.”

“Are we winning?” I asked.

A Germanus screamed as Sherman Yang, head counselor of Ares cabin, threw him off the side of the building.

“Hard to tell,” Kayla said. “Chiron told the newbies this was a field trip. Like a training exercise. They gotta learn sooner or later.”

I scanned the terrace. Many of those first-time campers, some no older than eleven or twelve, were fighting wide-eyed alongside their cabinmates, trying to imitate whatever their counselors were doing. They seemed so very young, but then again, they were demigods. They’d probably already survived numerous terrifying events in their short lives. And Kayla was right—adventures would not wait for them to be ready. They had to jump in, sooner better than later.

“Rosamie!” Chiron called. “Sword higher, dear!”

The young girl grinned and lifted her blade, intercepting the strike of a security guard’s baton. She smacked her foe across the face with the flat of her blade. “Do we have field trips every week? This is cool!”

Chiron gave her a pained smile, then continued shooting down enemies.

Kayla bandaged my face as best she could—wrapping white gauze around my nose and making me go cross-eyed. I imagined I looked like the Partially Invisible Man, which made me giggle again.

Kayla grimaced. “Okay, we gotta clear your head. Drink this.” She lifted a vial to my lips.

“Nectar?”

“Definitely not nectar.”

The taste exploded in my mouth. Immediately, I realized what she was giving me and why: Mountain Dew, the glowing-lime-green elixir of perfect sobriety. I don’t know what effect it has on mortals, but ask any supernatural entity and they will tell you, Mountain Dew’s combination of sweetness, caffeine, and otherworldly je-ne-sais-quoi-peut-être-radioactif taste is enough to bring complete focus and seriousness to any god. My eyesight cleared. My giddiness evaporated. I had zero desire to giggle. A grim sense of danger and impending death gripped my heart. Mountain Dew is the equivalent of the enslaved servant who would ride behind the emperor during his triumphal parades, whispering, Remember, you are mortal, and you will die to keep him from getting a big head.

“Meg,” I said, recalling what was most important. “I need to find Meg.”

Kayla nodded grimly. “Then that’s what we’ll do. I brought you some extra arrows. Thought you might need them.”

“You are the most thoughtful daughter ever.”

She blushed right down to the red roots of her hair. “Can you walk? Let’s get moving.”

We ran inside and turned down a corridor that Kayla thought might lead to the stairwell. We pushed through another set of doors and found ourselves in the Dining Room of Disaster.

Under different circumstances, it might have been a lovely place for a dinner party: a table big enough for twenty guests, a Tiffany chandelier, a huge marble fireplace, and wood-paneled walls with niches for marble busts—each depicting the face of the same Roman emperor. (If you guessed Nero, you win a Mountain Dew.)

Not part of the dinner plans: a red forest bull had somehow found its way into the room and was now chasing a group of young demigods around the table while they yelled insults and pelted it with Nero’s golden plates, cups, and cutlery. The bull didn’t seem to realize it could simply smash through the dining table and trample the demigods, but I suspected it would eventually figure that out.

“Ugh, these things,” said Kayla when she saw the bull.

I thought this would make an excellent description in the camp’s encyclopedia of monsters. Ugh, these things was really all you needed to know about tauri silvestres.

“They can’t be killed,” I warned as we joined the other demigods in their game of ring-around-the-dining-table.

“Yeah, I know.” Kayla’s tone told me she’d already had a crash course in forest bulls during her field-trip fun. “Hey, guys,” she said to her young comrades. “We need to lure this thing outside. If we can trick it off the edge of the terrace—”

At the opposite end of room, the doors burst open. My son Austin appeared, his tenor sax at the ready. Finding himself right next to the