The Tyrant's Tomb

both. Mortals weren’t nearly as used to vehicles hurtling off highway
overpasses as I was.
I stared at our pink-haired friend. “Lavinia, what are you doing here?”
“Secret mission,” she announced.
“That’s cacaseca,” Reyna grumbled. “You left your post. You’re in so
much trouble.”
Lavinia’s nature-spirit friends looked jumpy, like they were on the verge
of scattering, but their pink-frosted leader calmed them with a glance.
Reyna’s greyhounds didn’t snarl or attack, which I guessed meant they’d
detected no lies from Lavinia.
“All due respect, Praetor,” she said, “but it looks like you’re in more
trouble than I am at the moment. Harold, Felipe—stabilize her leg and let’s
get her out of this parking lot before more mortals arrive. Reginald, push
Meg’s cart. Lotoya, retrieve whatever supplies they have in the truck, please.
I’ll help Apollo. We make for those woods. Now!”
Lavinia’s definition of woods was generous. I would’ve called it a gulley
where shopping carts went to die. Still, her People’s Park platoon worked
with surprising efficiency. In a matter of minutes, they had us all safely
hidden in the ditch among the broken carts and trash-festooned trees, just as
emergency vehicles came wailing into the parking lot.
Harold and Felipe splinted Reyna’s leg—which only caused her to
scream and throw up a little. Two other fauns constructed a stretcher for her
out of branches and old clothing while Aurum and Argentum tried to help by
bringing them sticks…or perhaps they just wanted to play fetch. Reginald
extricated Meg from her shopping cart and revived her with hand-fed bits of
ambrosia.
A couple of dryads checked me for injuries—meaning even more injuries
than I’d had before—but there wasn’t much they could do. They didn’t like
the look of my zombie-infected face, or the way the undead infection made
me smell. Unfortunately, my condition was beyond any nature-spirit healing.
As they moved off, one muttered to her friend, “Once it gets fully
dark…”
“I know,” said her friend. “With a blood moon tonight? Poor guy…”
I decided to ignore them. It seemed the best way to avoid bursting into
tears.