The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo #5) - Rick Riordan Page 0,91
Nero’s chest. I was thinking how good it would feel to make this shot when someone leaped out of nowhere and stabbed me in the ribs.
Clever Apollo! I had found one of the missing demigods.
It was one of Nero’s older boys—Lucius, perhaps? I would have apologized for not remembering his name, but since he had just driven a dagger into my side and now had me locked in a death embrace, I decided we could dispense with formalities. My vision swam. My lungs refused to fill with air.
Across the room, Meg fought bare-handed against Aemillia and the third missing demigod, who had apparently also been waiting in ambush.
Lucius drove his knife in deeper. I struggled, sensing with detached medical interest that my ribs had done their job. They’d deflected the blade from my vital organs, which was great except for the excruciating pain of having a knife embedded between my skin and rib cage, and the massive amount of blood now soaking through my shirt.
I couldn’t shake Lucius. He was too strong, too close. In desperation, I yanked back my fist and gave him a big thumbs-up right in the eye.
He screamed and staggered away. Eye injuries—the absolute worst. I’m a medical god and they even make me squeamish.
I didn’t have the strength to nock another arrow. I stumbled, trying to stay conscious as I slipped in my own blood. It’s always a fun time when Apollo goes to war.
Through the haze of agony, I saw Nero smiling triumphantly, holding aloft a remote control. “Finally!”
No, I prayed. Zeus, Artemis, Leto, anybody. NO!
I couldn’t stop the emperor. Meg was too far away, barely holding her own against her two siblings. The bull had been battered into a pile of bones. Nico had dispatched the wolf-man but now faced a line of angry Germani between him and the throne.
“It’s over!” Nero gloated. “Death to my enemies!”
And he pushed the button.
DEATH TO MY ENEMIES WAS AN EXCELLENT battle cry. A true classic, delivered with conviction!
Some of the drama was lost, however, when Nero pushed the button and the shades on the windows began to lower.
The emperor uttered a curse—perhaps one Meg had taught him—and dove into his sofa cushions, looking for the correct correct remote.
Meg had disarmed Aemillia, as she’d promised, and was now swinging her borrowed sword while more and more of her foster siblings encircled her, anxious to have a part in taking her down.
Nico waded through the Germani. They outnumbered him more than ten to one, but they quickly developed a healthy respect for his Stygian iron blade. Even barbarians can master a steep learning curve if it is sharp and painful enough. Nico couldn’t last forever against so many, though, especially since their spears had a longer reach and Nico could only see through his right eye. Vercorix barked at his men, ordering them to surround di Angelo. Unfortunately, the grizzled lieutenant seemed much better at mustering his forces than he was at delivering remote controls.
As for me, how can I explain the difficulties of using a bow after being stabbed in the side? I was not dead yet, which confirmed that the blade had missed all my important arteries and organs, but raising my arm made me want to scream in pain. Actually aiming and drawing my bow was torture worse than anything in the Fields of Punishment, and Hades can quote me on that.
I’d lost blood. I was sweating and shivering. Nevertheless, my friends needed me. I had to do what I could.
“Mountain Dew, Mountain Dew,” I muttered, trying to clear my head.
First, I kicked Lucius in the face and knocked him out, because the sneaky little so-and-so deserved it. Then I fired an arrow at one of the other imperial demigods, who was about to stab Meg in the back. I was reluctant to kill, remembering Cassius’s terrified face in the elevator, but I hit my target in the ankle, causing him to scream and do the chicken walk around the throne room. That was satisfying.
My real problem was Nero. With Meg and Nico overwhelmed, the emperor had plenty of time to fish through his sofa cushions for remotes. The fact that his blast doors were destroyed did not seem to dampen his enthusiasm for flooding the tower with poison gas. Perhaps, being a minor god, he would be immune. Perhaps he gargled with Sassanid gas every morning.
I fired at the emperor’s center mass—a shot that should have split his sternum. Instead, the arrow shattered on