BLOOD OF OLYMPUS

A woman lay twisted in agony, her mouth open to scream, her arms thrown overhead. A man knelt
with his head bowed, as if accepting the inevitable.
Reyna stared with a mixture of horror and revulsion. She’d read about such figures, but she’d never
seen them in person. After the eruption of Vesuvius, volcanic ash had buried the city and hardened to
rock around dying Pompeians. Their bodies had disintegrated, leaving behind human-shaped pockets
of air. Early archaeologists had poured plaster into the holes and made these casts – creepy replicas
of Ancient Romans.
Reyna found it disturbing, wrong, that these people’s dying moments were on display like clothes
in a shop window, yet she couldn’t look away.
All her life she’d dreamed about coming to Italy. She had assumed it would never happen. The
ancient lands were forbidden to modern demigods; the area was simply too dangerous. Nevertheless,
she wanted to follow in the footsteps of Aeneas, son of Aphrodite, the first demigod to settle here
after the Trojan War. She wanted to see the original Tiber River, where Lupa the wolf goddess saved
Romulus and Remus.
But Pompeii? Reyna had never wanted to come here. The site of Rome’s most infamous disaster,
an entire city swallowed by the earth … After Reyna’s nightmares, that hit a little too close to home.
So far in the ancient lands, she’d only seen one place on her wish list: Diocletian’s Palace in Split,
and even that visit had hardly gone the way she’d imagined. Reyna used to dream about going there
with Jason to admire their favourite emperor’s home. She pictured romantic walks with him through
the old city, sunset picnics on the parapets.
Instead, Reyna had arrived in Croatia not with him but with a dozen angry wind spirits on her tail.
She’d fought her way through ghosts in the palace. On her way out, gryphons had attacked, mortally
wounding her pegasus. The closest she’d got to Jason was finding a note he’d left for her under a bust
of Diocletian in the basement.
She would only have painful memories of that place.
Don’t be bitter, she chided herself. Aeneas suffered, too. So did Romulus, Diocletian and all the
rest. Romans don’t complain about hardship.
Staring at the plaster death figures in the museum window, she wondered what they had been
thinking as they curled up to die in the ashes. Probably not: Well, we’re Romans! We shouldn’t
complain!
A gust of wind blew through the ruins, making a hollow moan. Sunlight flashed against the window,
momentarily blinding her.
With a start, Reyna looked up. The sun was directly overhead. How could it be noon already?
She’d left the House of the Faun just after breakfast. She’d only been standing here a few minutes …
hadn’t she?
She tore herself from the museum display and hurried off, trying to shake the feeling that the dead
Pompeians were whispering behind her back.
The rest of the afternoon was unnervingly quiet.
Reyna kept watch while Coach Hedge slept, but there was nothing much to guard against. Tourists