The Tyrant's Tomb

“No, that’s the Roy Rogers,” Caligula said. “Mine is the Shirley
Temple.”
“And you’re sure this is what modern warriors drink when they go into
battle?”
“Absolutely,” Caligula said. “Now enjoy the ride, my friend. You have
five whole days to work on your tan and get your vision back. Then we’ll
have some lovely carnage in the Bay Area!”
The scene vanished, and I fell into cold darkness.
I found myself in a dimly lit stone chamber filled with shuffling,
stinking, groaning undead. Some were as withered as Egyptian mummies.
Others looked almost alive except for the ghastly wounds that had killed
them. At the far end of the room, between two rough-hewn columns, sat…a
presence, wreathed in a magenta haze. It raised its skeletal visage, fixing me
with its burning purple eyes—the same eyes that had stared out at me from
the possessed ghoul in the tunnel—and began to laugh.
My gut wound ignited like a line of gunpowder.
I woke, screaming in agony. I found myself shaking and sweating in a
strange room.
“You too?” Meg asked.
She stood next to my cot, leaning out an open window and digging in a
flower box. Her gardening belt’s pockets sagged with bulbs, seed packets,
and tools. In one muddy hand, she held a trowel. Children of Demeter. You
can’t take them anywhere without them playing in the dirt.
“Wh-what’s going on?” I tried to sit up, which was a mistake.
My gut wound really was a fiery line of agony. I looked down and found
my bare midsection wrapped in bandages that smelled of healing herbs and
ointments. If the camp’s healers had already treated me, why was I still in so
much pain?
“Where are we?” I croaked.
“Coffee shop.”
Even by Meg’s standards, that statement seemed ridiculous.
Our room had no coffee bar, no espresso machine, no barista, no yummy
pastries. It was a simple whitewashed cube with a cot against either wall, an
open window between them, and a trapdoor in the far corner, which led me
to believe we were on an upper story. We might have been in a prison cell,
except there were no bars on the window, and a prison cot would have been