The Cult of Dionysus

Apollo

When our dragon declared war on Indiana, I knew it was going to be a bad day.

We've been traveling northwest for three weeks, and Festus has never shown such hostility toward a state. Georgia he ignored. Virginia he seemed to enjoy, despite our battle with the Cyclopes of Richmond. Ohio he tolerated, even after our encounter with Potina, the Roman goddess of childhood drinks, who pursued us in the form of a giant red pitcher emblazoned with a smiley face.

Yet for some reason, Festus decides he does not like Indiana. He lands on the cupola of the Indiana Statehouse, flaps his metallic wings, and blows a cone of fire that incinerates the state flag right off the flagpole.

"Whoa, buddy!" Leo pulls the dragon's reins. "We've talked about this. No blowtorching public monuments!"

Behind him on the dragon's spine, Calypso grips Festus's scales for balance. "Could we please get to the ground? Gently this time?"

For a formerly immortal sorceress who once controlled air spirits, Calypso is not a fan of flying. Cold wind blows her chestnut hair into my face, making me blink and spit.

That's right. I, the most important passenger, the youth who had once been the glorious god Apollo, am forced to sit in the back of the dragon. Oh, the indignities I have suffered since Zeus stripped me of my divine powers! It isn't enough that I am now a sixteen-year-old mortal with the ghastly alias Lester Papadopoulos. It isn't enough that I have to toil upon the earth doing (ugh) heroic quests until I can find a way back into my father's good graces, or that I have a case of acne which simply will not respond to over-the-counter zit medicine or Aphrodite's special face wash. Despite my New York State junior driver's license, Leo Valdez doesn't trust me to operate his aerial bronze steed!

Festus's claws scrabble for a hold on the green copper dome, which is much too small for a dragon his size. I have a flashback to the time I installed a life-size statue of the muse Calliope on my sun chariot and the extra weight of the hood ornament made me nosedive into China and create the Gobi Desert.

Leo glances back, his face streaked with soot. "Apollo, you sense anything?"

"Why is it my job to sense things? Just because I used to be a god of prophecy—"

"You're the one who's been having visions," Calypso reminds me. "You said your friend Meg would be here."

Just hearing Meg's name gives me a twinge of pain. "That doesn't mean I can pinpoint her location with my mind! Zeus has revoked my access to GPS!"

"GPS?" Calypso asks.

"Godly positioning systems."

"That's not a real thing!"

"Guys, cool it." Leo pats the dragon's neck. "Apollo, just try, will you? Does this look like the city you dreamed about or not?"

I scan the horizon.

Indiana is flat country—highways crisscrossing scrubby brown plains, shadows of winter clouds floating above urban sprawl. Around us rises a meager cluster of downtown high-rises—stacks of stone and glass like layered wedges of black and white licorice. (Not the yummy kind of licorice, either; the nasty variety that sits for eons in your stepmother's candy bowl on the coffee table. And, no, Hera, why would I be talking about you?)

After falling to earth in New York City, then flying to Miami, I find Indianapolis desolate and uninspiring, as if one proper New York neighborhood—Midtown, perhaps—has been stretched out to encompass the entire area of Manhattan, then relieved of two-thirds of its population and vigorously power-washed.

I can think of no reason why an evil triumvirate of ancient Roman emperors would take interest in such a location. Nor can I imagine why Meg McCaffrey would be sent here to capture me. Yet my visions have been clear. I have seen this skyline. I have heard my old enemy Nero give orders to Meg: Go west. Capture Apollo before he can find the next Oracle. If you cannot bring him to me alive, kill him.