The Tyrant's Tomb

Sing it with me: Who’s
Afraid of the Big Good Wolf?
Me. That would be me.
LUPA WAS BOTH ANGRY and hungry.
I didn’t claim to be fluent in Wolf, but I’d spent enough time around my
sister’s pack to understand the basics. Feelings were the easiest to read.
Lupa, like all her kind, spoke in a combination of glances, snarls, ear
twitches, postures, and pheromones. It was quite an elegant language, though
not well-suited to rhyming couplets. Believe me, I’d tried. Nothing rhymes
with grr-rrr-row-rrr.
Lupa was trembling with fury over Jason’s death. The ketones on her
breath indicated she had not eaten in days. The anger made her hungry. The
hunger made her angry. And her twitching nostrils told her that I was the
nearest, most convenient sack of mortal meat.
Nevertheless, I followed her into Jupiter’s massive temple. I had little
choice.
Ringing the open-air pavilion, columns the size of redwoods supported a
domed, gilded ceiling. The floor was a colorful mosaic of Latin inscriptions:
prophecies, memorials, dire warnings to praise Jupiter or face his lightning.
In the center, behind a marble altar, rose a massive golden statue of Dad
himself: Jupiter Optimus Maximus, draped in a purple silk toga big enough
to be a ship’s sail. He looked stern, wise, and paternal, though he was only
one of those in real life.