The Hidden Oracle

“Come now,” Nero said. “Meg knows there are good nature spirits, and bad ones. This geyser god was annoying. He kept asking us to fill out surveys. Besides, he shouldn’t have ventured so far from his source of power. He was quite easy to capture. His steam, as you can see, didn’t do us much good anyway.”

“And the five demigods?” I demanded. “Did you ‘use’ them, too?”

“Of course. I didn’t plan on luring them here, but every time we attacked the gates, the grove started wailing. I suppose it was calling for help, and the demigods couldn’t resist. The first to wander in was this one.” He pointed to Cecil Markowitz. “The last two were your own children—Austin and Kayla, yes? They showed up after we forced Paulie to steam-broil the trees. I guess the grove was quite nervous about that attempt. We got two demigods for the price of one!”

I lost control. I let out a guttural howl and charged the emperor, intending to wring his hairy excuse for a neck. The Germani would have killed me before I ever got that far, but I was saved the indignity. I tripped over a human pelvis and belly-surfed through the bones.

“Apollo!” Meg ran toward me.

I rolled over and kicked at her like a fussy child. “I don’t need your help! Don’t you understand who your protector is? He’s a monster! He’s the emperor who—”

“Don’t say it,” Nero warned. “If you say ‘who fiddled while Rome burned,’ I will have Vince and Gary flay you for a set of hide armor. You know as well as I do, Apollo, we didn’t have fiddles back then. And I did not start the Great Fire of Rome.”

I struggled to my feet. “But you profited from it.”

Facing Nero, I remembered all the tawdry details of his rule—the extravagance and cruelty that had made him so embarrassing to me, his forefather. Nero was that relative you never wanted to invite to Lupercalia dinner.

“Meg,” I said, “your stepfather watched as seventy percent of Rome was destroyed. Tens of thousands died.”

“I was thirty miles away in Antium!” Nero snarled. “I rushed back to the city and personally led the fire brigades!”

“Only when the fire threatened your palace.”

Nero rolled his eyes. “I can’t help it if I arrived just in time to save the most important building!”

Meg cupped her hands over her ears. “Stop arguing. Please.”

I didn’t stop. Talking seemed better than my other options, like helping Nero or dying.

“After the Great Fire,” I told her, “instead of rebuilding the houses on Palatine Hill, Nero leveled the neighborhood and built a new palace—the Domus Aurea.”

Nero got a dreamy look on his face. “Ah, yes…the House of Gold. It was beautiful, Meg! I had my own lake, three hundred rooms, frescoes of gold, mosaics done in pearls and diamonds—I could finally live like a human being!”

“You had the nerve to put a hundred-foot-tall bronze statue in your front lawn!” I said. “A statue of yourself as Sol-Apollo, the sun god. In other words, you claimed to be me.”

“Indeed,” Nero agreed. “Even after I died, that statue lived on. I understand it became famous as the Colossus of Nero! They moved it to the gladiators’ amphitheater and everyone began calling the theater after the statue—the Colosseum.” Nero puffed up his chest. “Yes…the statue was the perfect choice.”

His tone sounded even more sinister than usual.

“What are you talking about?” I demanded.

“Hmm? Oh, nothing.” He checked his watch…a mauve-and-gold Rolex. “The point is, I had style! The people loved me!”

I shook my head. “They turned against you. The people of Rome were sure you’d started the Great Fire, so you scapegoated the Christians.”

I was aware that this arguing was pointless. If Meg had hidden her true identity all this time, I doubted I could change her mind now. But perhaps I could stall long enough for the cavalry to arrive. If only I had a cavalry.

Nero waved dismissively. “But the Christians were terrorists, you see. Perhaps they didn’t start the fire, but they were causing all sorts of other trouble. I recognized that before anyone else!”

“He fed them to the lions,” I told Meg. “He burned them as human torches, the way he will burn these six.”

Meg’s face turned green. She gazed at the unconscious prisoners on the stakes. “Nero, you wouldn’t—”

“They will be released,” Nero promised, “as long as Apollo cooperates.”