The Tyrant's Tomb

and see us. Or smell us. Oh, human body odor, why did you have to be so
pungent after several hours of hiking?
Against the far wall, between two massive stone pillars, sat a
sarcophagus chiseled with bas relief images of monsters and wild animals,
much like the creatures on the Tilden Park carousel. Lounging across the
sarcophagus lid was the thing that had once been Tarquinius Superbus. His
robes had not been laundered in several thousand years. They hung off him
in moldering shreds. His body had withered to a blackened skeleton. Patches
of moss clung to his jawbone and cranium, giving him a grotesque beard and
hairdo. Tendrils of glowing purple gas slithered through his rib cage and
circled his joints, coiling up his neck and into his skull, lighting his eye
sockets fiery violet.
Whatever that purple light was, it seemed to be holding Tarquin together.
It probably wasn’t his soul. I doubted Tarquin ever had one of those. More
likely it was his sheer ambition and hatred, a stubborn refusal to give up no
matter how long he’d been dead.
The king seemed to be in the midst of scolding the two skeleton guards
Hazel had manipulated.
“Did I call you?” demanded the king. “No, I did not. So why are you
here?”
The skeletons looked at each other as if wondering the same thing.
“Get back to your posts!” Tarquin shouted.
The guards marched back the way they had come.
This left three eurynomoi and half a dozen zombies milling around in the
room, though I got the feeling there might be more directly beneath our
balcony. Even worse, the zombies—vrykolakai, whatever you wanted to call
them—were former Roman legionnaires. Most were still dressed for battle in
dented armor and torn clothing, their skin puffy, their lips blue, gaping
wounds in their chests and limbs.
The pain in my gut became almost intolerable. The words from the
Burning Maze prophecy were stuck on replay in my mind: Apollo faces
death. Apollo faces death.
Next to me, Lavinia trembled, her eyes tearing up. Her gaze was fixed on
one of the dead legionnaires: a young man with long brown hair, the left side
of his face badly burned. A former friend, I guessed. Hazel gripped Lavinia’s
shoulder—perhaps to comfort her, perhaps to remind her to be silent. Meg