The Tyrant's Tomb

“The Greeks call them vrykolakai,” I said. “Usually, it’s rare to see even
one.”
“There were hundreds,” Frank said. “Along with dozens of those other
ghoul things, the eurynomoi, acting as herders. We cut them down. They just
kept coming. You’d think having a fire-breathing dragon would’ve been a
game-changer, but Festus could only do so much. The undead aren’t as
flammable as you might think.”
Hades had explained that to me once, in one of his famously awkward
“too much information” attempts at small talk. Flames didn’t deter the
undead. They just wandered right through, no matter how extra crispy they
became. That’s why he didn’t use the Phlegethon, the River of Fire, as the
boundary of his kingdom. Running water, however, especially the dark
magical waters of the River Styx, was a different story….
I studied the glittering current of the Little Tiber. Suddenly a line of the
Dark Prophecy made sense to me. “Bodies fill the Tiber beyond count. You
stopped them at the river.”
Frank nodded. “They don’t like freshwater. That’s where we turned the
battle. But that line about ‘bodies beyond count’? It doesn’t mean what you
think.”
“Then what—?”
“HALT!” yelled a voice right in front of me.
I’d been so lost in Frank’s story, I hadn’t realized how close we were
getting to the city. I hadn’t even noticed the statue on the side of the road
until it screamed at me.
Terminus, the god of boundaries, looked just as I remembered him. From
the waist up, he was a finely sculpted man with a large nose, curly hair, and a
disgruntled expression (which may have been because no one had ever
carved him a pair of arms). From the waist down, he was a block of white
marble. I used to tease him that he should try skinny jeans, as they’d be very
slimming. From the way he glowered at me now, I guessed he remembered
those insults.
“Well, well,” he said. “Who do we have here?”
I sighed. “Terminus, can we not?”
“No!” he barked. “No, we cannot not. I need to see identification.”
Frank cleared his throat. “Uh, Terminus…” He tapped the praetor’s
laurels on his breastplate.
“Yes, Praetor Frank Zhang. You are good to go. But your friend here—”