The Tyrant's Tomb

“Is your birthday coming up?” Frank asked as we continued.
“Congratulations!”
“It shouldn’t be.” I stared at my license. “April eighth, it says here. That
can’t be right. I was born on the seventh day of the seventh month. Of
course, the months were different back then. Let’s see, the month of
Gamelion? But that was in the wintertime—”
“How do gods celebrate, anyway?” Frank mused. “Are you seventeen
now? Or four thousand and seventeen? Do you eat cake?”
He sounded hopeful about that last part, as if imagining a monstrous
gold-frosted confection with seventeen Roman candles on the top.
I tried to calculate my correct day of birth. The effort made my head
pound. Even when I’d had a godly memory, I hated keeping track of dates:
the old lunar calendar, the Julian calendar, the Gregorian calendar, leap year,
daylight savings time. Ugh. Couldn’t we just call every day Apolloday and
be done with it?
Yet Zeus had definitely assigned me a new birthdate: April 8. Why?
Seven was my sacred number. The date 4/8 had no sevens. The sum wasn’t
even divisible by seven. Why would Zeus mark my birthday as four days
from now?
I stopped in my tracks, as if my own legs had turned into a marble
pedestal. In my dream, Caligula had insisted that his pandai finish their work
by the time the blood moon rose in five days. If what I observed had
happened last night…that meant there were only four days left from today,
which would make doomsday April 8, Lester’s birthday.
“What is it?” Frank asked. “Why is your face gray?”
“I—I think my father left me a warning,” I said. “Or perhaps a threat?
And Terminus just pointed it out to me.”
“How can your birthday be a threat?”
“I’m mortal now. Birthdays are always a threat.” I fought down a wave
of anxiety. I wanted to turn and run, but there was nowhere to go—only
forward into New Rome, to gather more unwelcome information about my
impending doom.
“Lead on, Frank Zhang,” I said halfheartedly, slipping my license back in
my wallet. “Perhaps Tyson and Ella will have some answers.”
New Rome…the likeliest city on earth to find Olympian gods lurking in
disguise. (Followed closely by New York, then Cozumel during spring