The Tyrant's Tomb

“It’s the only way,” he agreed. “We’re still on high alert. Everyone is
edgy. There’s so much to do since the battle….”
He said the word battle the same way Hazel had, as if it was a singular,
terrible turning point in history.
Like all the divinations Meg and I had retrieved during our adventures,
the Dark Prophecy’s nightmarish prediction about Camp Jupiter remained
burned into my mind:
The words that memory wrought are set to fire,
Ere new moon rises o’er the Devil’s Mount.
The changeling lord shall face a challenge dire,
Till bodies fill the Tiber beyond count.
After hearing that, Leo Valdez had raced across country on his bronze
dragon, hoping to warn the camp. According to Leo, he had arrived just in
time, but the toll had still been horrendous.
Frank must have read my pained expression.
“It would’ve been worse if it hadn’t been for you,” he said, which only
made me feel guiltier. “If you hadn’t sent Leo here to warn us. One day, out
of nowhere, he just flew right in.”
“That must have been quite a shock,” I said. “Since you thought Leo was
dead.”
Frank’s dark eyes glittered like they still belonged to a raven. “Yeah. We
were so mad at him for making us worry, we lined up and took turns hitting
him.”
“We did that at Camp Half-Blood, too,” I said. “Greek minds think
alike.”
“Mmm.” Frank’s gaze drifted toward the horizon. “We had about twentyfour
hours to prepare. It helped. But it wasn’t enough. They came from over
there.”
He pointed north to the Berkeley Hills. “They swarmed. Only way to
describe it. I’d fought undead before, but this…” He shook his head. “Hazel
called them zombies. My grandmother would have called them jiangshi. The
Romans have a lot of words for them: immortuos, lamia, nuntius.”
“Messenger,” I said, translating the last word. It had always seemed an
odd term to me. A messenger from whom? Not Hades. He hated it when
corpses wandered around the mortal world. It made him look like a sloppy
warden.