The Red Pyramid Read online

  Dad’s workbag was heavy on my shoulder. The curved sword I’d strapped across my back felt cold against my thin linen clothes. I’d started to sweat during the serpopard attack, and now my perspiration felt like it was turning to ice.

  I looked around for more monsters, but the yard seemed abandoned. Old construction equipment lay in rusting heaps—a bulldozer, a crane with a wrecking ball, a couple of cement mixers. Piles of sheet metal and stacks of crates made a maze of obstacles between the house and the street a few hundred yards away.

  We were about halfway across the yard when an old gray tomcat stepped in our path. One of his ears was torn. His left eye was swollen shut. Judging from his scars, he’d spent most of his life fighting.

  Bast crouched and stared at the cat. He looked up at her calmly.

  “Thank you,” Bast said.

  The old tomcat trotted off toward the river.

  “What was that about?” Sadie asked.

  “One of my subjects, offering help. He’ll spread the news about our predicament. Soon every cat in New York will be on alert.”

  “He was so battered,” Sadie said. “If he’s your subject, couldn’t you heal him?”

  “And take away his marks of honor? A cat’s battle scars are part of his identity. I couldn’t—” Suddenly Bast tensed. She dragged us behind a stack of crates.

  “What is it?” I whispered.

  She flexed her wrists and her knives slid into her hands. She peeped over the top of the crates, every muscle in her body trembling. I tried to see what she was looking at, but there was nothing except the old wrecking-ball crane.

  Bast’s mouth twitched with excitement. Her eyes were fixed on the huge metal ball. I’d seen kittens look like that when they stalked catnip toy mice, or pieces of string, or rubber balls....Balls? No. Bast was an ancient goddess. Surely she wouldn’t—

  “This could be it.” She shifted her weight. “Stay very very still.”

  “There’s no one there,” Sadie hissed.

  I started to say, “Um...”

  Bast lunged over the crates. She flew thirty feet through the air, knives flashing, and landed on the wrecking ball with such force that she broke the chain. The cat goddess and the huge metal sphere smashed into the dirt and went rolling across the yard.

  “Rowww!” Bast wailed. The wrecking ball rolled straight over her, but she didn’t appear hurt. She leaped off and pounced again. Her knives sliced through the metal like wet clay. Within seconds, the wrecking ball was reduced to a mound of scraps.

  Bast sheathed her blades. “Safe now!”

  Sadie and I looked at each other.

  “You saved us from a metal ball,” Sadie said.

  “You never know,” Bast said. “It could’ve been hostile.”

  Just then a deep boom! shook the ground. I looked back at the mansion. Tendrils of blue fire curled from the top windows.

  “Come on,” Bast said. “Our time is up!”

  I thought maybe she’d whisk us off by magic, or at least hail a taxi. Instead, Bast borrowed a silver Lexus convertible.

  “Oh, yes,” she purred. “I like this one! Come along, children.”

  “But this isn’t yours,” I pointed out.

  “My dear, I’m a cat. Everything I see is mine.” She touched the ignition and the keyhole sparked. The engine began to purr. [No, Sadie. Not like a cat, like an engine.]

  “Bast,” I said, “you can’t just—”

  Sadie elbowed me. “We’ll work out how to return it later, Carter. Right now we’ve got an emergency.”

  She pointed back toward the mansion. Blue flames and smoke now billowed from every window. But that wasn’t the scary part—coming down the stairs were four men carrying a large box, like an oversize coffin with long handles sticking out at both ends. The box was covered with a black shroud and looked big enough for at least two bodies. The four men wore only kilts and sandals. Their coppery skin glinted in the sun as if made of metal.

  “Oh, that’s bad,” Bast said. “In the car, please.”

  I decided not to ask questions. Sadie beat me to the shotgun seat so I climbed in back. The four metallic guys with the box were racing across the yard, coming straight for us at an unbelievable speed. Before I even had my seat belt on, Bast hit the gas.

  We tore through the streets of Brooklyn, weaving insanely through traffic, riding over sidewalks, narrowly missing pedestrians.

  Bast drove with reflexes that were...well, catlike. Any human trying to drive so fast would’ve had a dozen wrecks, but she got us safely onto the Williamsburg Bridge.

  I thought for sure we must’ve lost our pursuers, but when I looked back, the four copper men with the black box were weaving in and out of traffic. They appeared to be jogging at a normal pace, but they passed cars that were doing fifty. Their bodies blurred like choppy images in an old movie, as if they were out of sync with the regular stream of time.

  “What are they?” I asked. “Shabti?”

  “No, carriers.” Bast glanced in the rearview mirror. “Summoned straight from the Duat. They’ll stop at nothing to find their victims, throw them in the sedan—”

  “The what?” Sadie interrupted.

  “The large box,” Bast said. “It’s a kind of carriage. The carriers capture you, beat you senseless, throw you in, and carry you back to their master. They never lose their prey, and they never give up.”

  “But what do they want us for?”

  “Trust me,” Bast growled, “you don’t want to know.”

  I thought about the fiery man last night in Phoenix—how he’d fried one of his servants into a grease spot. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to meet him face-to-face again.

  “Bast,” I said, “if you’re a goddess, can’t you just snap your fingers and disintegrate those guys? Or wave your hand and teleport us away?”

  “Wouldn’t that be nice? But my power in this host is limited.”

  “You mean Muffin?” Sadie asked. “But you’re not a cat anymore.”

  “She’s still my host, Sadie, my anchor on this side of the Duat—and a very imperfect one. Your call for help allowed me to assume human shape, but that alone takes a great deal of power. Besides, even when I’m in a powerful host, Set’s magic is stronger than mine.”

  “Could you please say something I actually understand?” I pleaded.

  “Carter, we don’t have time for a full discussion on gods and hosts and the limits of magic! We have to get you to safety.”

  Bast floored the accelerator and shot up the middle of the bridge. The four carriers with the sedan raced after us, blurring the air as they moved, but no cars swerved to avoid them. No one panicked or even looked at them.

  “How can people not see them?” I said. “Don’t they notice four copper men in skirts running up the bridge with a weird black box?”

  Bast shrugged. “Cats can hear many sounds you can’t. Some animals see things in the ultraviolet spectrum that are invisible to humans. Magic is similar. Did you notice the mansion when you first arrived?”

  “Well...no.”

  “And you are born to magic,” Bast said. “Imagine how hard it would be for a regular mortal.”

  “Born to magic?” I remembered what Amos had said about our family being in the House of Life for a long time. “If magic, like, runs in the family, why haven’t I ever been able to do it before?”

  Bast smiled in the mirror. “Your sister understands.”

  Sadie’s ears turned red. “No, I don’t! I still can’t believe you’re a goddess. All these years, you’ve been eating crunchy treats, sleeping on my head—”

  “I made a deal with your father,” Bast said. “He let me remain in the world as long as I assumed a minor form, a normal housecat, so I could protect and watch over you. It was the least I could do after—” She stopped abruptly.

  A horrible thought occurred to me. My stomach fluttered, and it had nothing to do with how fast we were going. “After our mom’s death?” I guesse
d.

  Bast stared straight ahead out the windshield.

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” I said. “Dad and Mom did some kind of magic ritual at Cleopatra’s Needle. Something went wrong. Our mom died and...and they released you?”

  “That’s not important right now,” Bast said. “The point is I agreed to look after Sadie. And I will.”

  She was hiding something. I was sure of it, but her tone made it clear that the subject was closed.

  “If you gods are so powerful and helpful,” I said, “why does the House of Life forbid magicians from summoning you?”

  Bast swerved into the fast lane. “Magicians are paranoid. Your best hope is to stay with me. We’ll get as far away as possible from New York. Then we’ll get help and challenge Set.”

  “What help?” Sadie asked.

  Bast raised an eyebrow. “Why, we’ll summon more gods, of course.”

  C A R T E R

  10. Bast Goes Green

  [Sadie, stop it! Yeah, I’m getting to that part.] Sorry, she keeps trying to distract me by setting fire to my—never mind. Where was I?

  We barreled off the Williamsburg Bridge into Manhattan and headed north on Clinton Street.

  “They’re still following,” Sadie warned.

  Sure enough, the carriers were only a block behind us, weaving around cars and trampling over sidewalk displays of tourist junk.

  “We’ll buy some time.” Bast growled deep in her throat—a sound so low and powerful it made my teeth buzz. She yanked the wheel and swerved right onto East Houston.

  I looked back. Just as the carriers turned the corner, a horde of cats materialized all around them. Some jumped from windows. Some ran from the sidewalks and alleys. Some crawled from the storm drains. All of them converged on the carriers in a wave of fur and claws—climbing up their copper legs, scratching their backs, clinging to their faces, and weighing down the sedan box. The carriers stumbled, dropping the box. They began blindly swatting at the cats. Two cars swerved to avoid the animals and collided, blocking the entire street, and the carriers went down under the mass of angry felines. We turned onto the FDR Drive, and the scene disappeared from view.

  “Nice,” I admitted.

  “It won’t hold them long,” Bast said. “Now—Central Park!”

  Bast ditched the Lexus at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

  “We’ll run from here,” she said. “It’s just behind the museum.”

  When she said run, she meant it. Sadie and I had to sprint to keep up, and Bast wasn’t even breaking a sweat. She didn’t stop for little things like hot dog stands or parked cars. Anything under ten feet tall she leaped over with ease, leaving us to scramble around the obstacles as best we could.

  We ran into the park on the East Drive. As soon as we turned north, the obelisk loomed above us. A little over seventy feet tall, it looked like an exact copy of the needle in London. It was tucked away on a grassy hill, so it actually felt isolated, which is hard to achieve in the center of New York. There was no one around except a couple of joggers farther down the path. I could hear the traffic behind us on Fifth Avenue, but even that seemed far away.

  We stopped at the obelisk’s base. Bast sniffed the air as if smelling for trouble. Once I was standing still, I realized just how cold I was. The sun was directly overhead, but the wind ripped right through my borrowed linen clothes.

  “I wish I’d grabbed something warmer,” I muttered. “A wool coat would be nice.”

  “No, it wouldn’t,” Bast said, scanning the horizon. “You’re dressed for magic.”

  Sadie shivered. “We have to freeze to be magical?”

  “Magicians avoid animal products,” Bast said absently. “Fur, leather, wool, any of that. The residual life aura can interfere with spells.”

  “My boots seem all right,” Sadie noted.

  “Leather,” Bast said with distaste. “You may have a higher tolerance, so a bit of leather won’t bother your magic. I don’t know. But linen clothing is always best, or cotton—plant material. At any rate, Sadie, I think we’re clear for the moment. There’s a window of auspicious time starting right now, at eleven thirty, but it won’t last long. Get started.”

  Sadie blinked. “Me? Why me? You’re the goddess!”

  “I’m not good at portals,” Bast said. “Cats are protectors. Just control your emotions. Panic or fear will kill a spell. We have to get out of here before Set summons the other gods to his cause.”

  I frowned. “You mean Set’s got, like, other evil gods on speed dial?”

  Bast glanced nervously toward the trees. “Evil and good may not be the best way to think of it, Carter. As a magician, you must think about chaos and order. Those are the two forces that control the universe. Set is all about chaos.”

  “But what about the other gods Dad released?” I persisted. “Aren’t they good guys? Isis, Osiris, Horus, Nephthys—where are they?”

  Bast fixed her eyes on me. “That’s a good question, Carter.”

  A Siamese cat broke through the bushes and ran up to Bast. They looked at each other for a moment. Then the Siamese dashed away.

  “The carriers are close,” Bast announced. “And something else...something much stronger, closing in from the east. I think the carriers’ master has grown impatient.”

  My heart did a flip. “Set is coming?”

  “No,” Bast said. “Perhaps a minion. Or an ally. My cats are having trouble describing what they’re seeing, and I don’t want to find out. Sadie, now is the time. Just concentrate on opening a gateway to the Duat. I’ll keep off the attackers. Combat magic is my specialty.”

  “Like what you did in the mansion?” I asked.

  Bast showed her pointed teeth. “No, that was just combat.”

  The woods rustled, and the carriers emerged. Their sedan chair’s shroud had been shredded by cat claws. The carriers themselves were scratched and dented. One walked with a limp, his leg bent backward at the knee. Another had a car fender wrapped around his neck.

  The four metal men carefully set down their sedan chair. They looked at us and drew golden metal clubs from their belts.

  “Sadie, get to work,” Bast ordered. “Carter, you’re welcome to help me.”

  The cat goddess unsheathed her knives. Her body began to glow with a green hue. An aura surrounded her, growing larger, like a bubble of energy, and lifting her off the ground. The aura took shape until Bast was encased in a holographic projection about four times her normal size. It was an image of the goddess in her ancient form—a twenty-foot-tall woman with the head of a cat. Floating in midair in the center of the hologram, Bast stepped forward. The giant cat goddess moved with her. It didn’t seem possible that a see-through image could have substance, but its foot shook the ground. Bast raised her hand. The glowing green warrior did the same, unsheathing claws as long and sharp as rapiers. Bast swiped the sidewalk in front of her and shredded the pavement to concrete ribbons. She turned and smiled at me. The giant cat’s head did likewise, baring horrible fangs that could’ve bitten me in half.

  “This,” Bast said, “is combat magic.”

  At first I was too stunned to do anything but watch as Bast launched her green war machine into the middle of the carriers.

  She slashed one carrier to pieces with a single swipe, then stepped on another and flattened him into a metal pancake. The other two carriers attacked her holographic legs, but their metal clubs bounced harmlessly off the ghostly light with showers of sparks.

  Meanwhile Sadie stood in front of the obelisk with her arms raised, shouting: “Open, you stupid piece of rock!”

  Finally I drew my sword. My hands were shaking. I didn’t want to charge into battle, but I felt like I should help. And if I had to fight, I figured having a twenty-foot-tall glowing cat warrior on my side was the way to do it. “Sadie, I—I’m going to help Bast. Keep trying!”

  “I am!”

  I ran forward just as Bast sliced the other two carriers apart like loaves of
bread. With relief, I thought: Well, that’s it.

  Then all four carriers began to re-form. The flat one peeled himself off the pavement. The sliced ones’ pieces clicked together like magnets, and the carriers stood up good as new.

  “Carter, help me hack them apart!” Bast called. “They need to be in smaller pieces!”

  I tried to stay out of Bast’s way as she sliced and stomped. Then as soon as she disabled a carrier, I went to work chopping its remains into smaller pieces. They seemed more like Play-Doh than metal, because my blade mashed them up pretty easily.

  Another few minutes and I was surrounded by piles of coppery rubble. Bast made a glowing fist and smashed the sedan into kindling.

  “That wasn’t so hard,” I said. “What were we running for?”

  Inside her glowing shell, Bast’s face was coated with sweat. It hadn’t occurred to me that a goddess could get tired, but her magic avatar must’ve taken a lot of effort.

  “We’re not safe yet,” she warned. “Sadie, how’s it coming?”

  “It’s not,” Sadie complained. “Isn’t there another way?”

  Before Bast could answer, the bushes rustled with a new sound—like rain, except more slithery.

  A chill ran up my back. “What...what is that?”

  “No,” Bast murmured. “It can’t be. Not her.”

  Then the bushes exploded. A thousand brown creepy-crawlies poured from the woods in a carpet of grossness—all pincers and stinging tails.

  I wanted to yell, “Scorpions!” But my voice wouldn’t work. My legs started trembling. I hate scorpions. They’re everywhere in Egypt. Many times I’d found them in my hotel bed or shower. Once I’d even found one in my sock.

  “Sadie!” Bast called urgently.

  “Nothing!” Sadie moaned.

  The scorpions kept coming—thousands upon thousands. Out of the woods a woman appeared, walking fearlessly through the middle of the arachnids. She wore brown robes with gold jewelry glinting around her neck and arms. Her long black hair was cut Ancient Egyptian–style with a strange crown on top. Then I realized it wasn’t a crown—she had a live, supersize scorpion nesting on her head. Millions of the little nasties swirled around her like she was the center of their storm.