Rick Riordan - The Red Pyramid

Eww. I decided not to swim in rivers anymore. I glanced back, looking for Khufu and Sadie, but they were nowhere in sight. Hopefully Khufu had gotten Sadie to safety, or at least found a good place to hide.

Sobek charged, and he brought the river with him. A massive wave smashed into me, toppling me to the ground, but Bast jumped and came down on Sobek’s back in full avatar form. The weight hardly seemed to bother him. He tried to grab her without any luck. She slashed repeatedly at his arms, back and neck, but his green skin seemed to heal as quickly as she could cut him.

I struggled to my feet, which in avatar form is like trying to get up with a mattress strapped to your chest. Sobek finally managed to grab Bast and throw her off. She tumbled to a stop without getting hurt, but her blue aura was flickering. She was losing power.

We played tag team with the crocodile god-stabbing and slashing-but the more we wounded him, the more enraged and powerful he seemed to get.

“More minions!” he shouted. “Come to me!”

That couldn’t be good. Another round of giant crocs and we’d be dead.

Why don’t we get minions? I complained to Horus, but he didn’t answer. I could feel him struggling to channel his power through me, trying to keep up our combat magic.

Sobek’s fist smashed into Bast, and she went flying again. This time when she hit the ground, her avatar flickered off completely.

I charged, trying to draw Sobek’s attention. Unfortunately, it worked. Sobek turned and blasted me with water. While I was blind, he slapped me so hard I flew across the riverbank, tumbling through the reeds.

My avatar collapsed. I sat up groggily and found Khufu and Sadie right next to me, Sadie still passed out and bleeding, Khufu desperately murmuring in Baboon and stroking her forehead.

Sobek stepped out of the water and grinned at me. Far downstream in the dim evening light, about a quarter of a mile away, I could see two wake lines in the river, coming toward us fast-Sobek’s reinforcements.

From the river, Bast yelled, “Carter, hurry! Get Sadie out of here!”

Her face went pale with strain, and her cat warrior avatar appeared around her one more time. It was weak, though-barely substantial.

“Don’t!” I called. “You’ll die!”

I tried to summon the falcon warrior, but the effort made my insides burn with pain. I was out of power, and Horus’s spirit was slumbering, completely spent.

“Go!” Bast yelled. “And tell your father I kept my promise.”

“NO!”

She leaped at Sobek. The two grappled-Bast slashing furiously across his face while Sobek howled in pain. The two gods toppled into the water, and down they went.

I ran to the riverbank. The river bubbled and frothed. Then a green explosion lit the entire length of the Rio Grande, and a small black-and-gold creature shot out of the river as if it had been tossed. It landed on the grass at my feet-a wet, unconscious, half-dead cat.

“Bast?” I picked up the cat gingerly. It wore Bast’s collar, but as I watched, the talisman of the goddess crumbled to dust. It wasn’t Bast anymore. Only Muffin.

Tears stung my eyes. Sobek had been defeated, forced back to the Duat or something, but there were still two wake lines coming toward us in the river, close enough now that I could see the monsters’ green backs and beady eyes.

I cradled the cat against my chest and turned toward Khufu. “Come on, we have to-”

I froze, because standing right behind Khufu and my sister, glaring at me, was a different crocodile-one that was pure white.

We’re dead, I thought. And then, Wait…a white crocodile?

It opened its mouth and lunged-straight over me. I turned and saw it slam into the two other crocodiles-the giant green ones that had been about to kill me.

“Philip?” I said in amazement, as the crocodiles thrashed and fought.

“Yes,” said a man’s voice.

I turned again and saw the impossible. Uncle Amos was kneeling next to Sadie, frowning as he examined her head wound. He looked up at me urgently. “Philip will keep Sobek’s minions busy, but not for long. Follow me now, and we have a slim chance of surviving!”

S A D I E

I’M GLAD CARTER TOLD THAT LAST BIT-partly because I was unconscious when it happened, partly because I can’t talk about what Bast did without going to pieces.

Ah, but more on that later.

I woke feeling as if someone had overinflated my head. My eyes weren’t seeing the same things. Out my left, I saw a baboon bum, out my right, my long-lost uncle Amos. Naturally, I decided to focus on the right.

“Amos?”

He laid a cool cloth on my forehead. “Rest, child. You had quite a concussion.”

That at least I could believe.

As my eyes began to focus, I saw we were outside under a starry night sky. I was lying on a blanket on what felt like soft sand. Khufu stood next to me, his colorful side a bit too close to my face. He was stirring a pot over a small fire, and whatever he was cooking smelled like burning tar. Carter sat nearby at the top of a sand dune, looking despondent and holding…was that Muffin in his lap?

Amos appeared much as he had when we last saw him, ages ago. He wore his blue suit with matching coat and fedora. His long hair was neatly braided, and his round glasses glinted in the sun. He appeared fresh and rested-not like someone who’d been the prisoner of Set.

“How did you-”

“Get away from Set?” His expression darkened. “I was a fool to go looking for him, Sadie. I had no idea how powerful he’d become. His spirit is tied to the red pyramid.”

“So…he doesn’t have a human host?”

Amos shook his head. “He doesn’t need one as long as he has the pyramid. As it gets closer to completion, he gets stronger and stronger. I sneaked into his lair under the mountain and walked right into a trap. I’m ashamed to say he took me without a fight.”

He gestured at his suit, showing off how perfectly fine he was. “Not a scratch. Just-bam. I was frozen like a statue. Set stood me outside his pyramid like a trophy and let his demons laugh and mock me as they passed by.”

“Did you see Dad?” I asked.

His shoulders slumped. “I heard the demons talking. The coffin is inside the pyramid. They’re planning to use Osiris’s power to augment the storm. When Set unleashes it at sunrise-and it will be quite an explosion-Osiris and your father will be obliterated. Osiris will be exiled so deep into the Duat he may never rise again.”

My head began to throb. I couldn’t believe we had so little time, and if Amos couldn’t save Dad, how could Carter and I?

“But you got away,” I said, grasping for any good news. “So there must be weaknesses in his defenses or-”

“The magic that froze me eventually began to weaken. I concentrated my energy and worked my way out of the binding. It took many hours, but finally I broke free. I sneaked out at midday, when the demons were sleeping. It was much too easy.”

“It doesn’t sound easy,” I said.

Amos shook his head, obviously troubled. “Set allowed me to escape. I don’t know why, but I shouldn’t be alive. It’s a trick of some sort. I’m afraid…” Whatever he was going to say, he changed his mind. “At any rate, my first thought was to find you, so I summoned my boat.”

He gestured behind him. I managed to lift my head and saw we were in a strange desert of white dunes that stretched as far as I could see in the starlight. The sand under my fingers was so fine and white, it might’ve been sugar. Amos’s boat, the same one that had carried us from the Thames to Brooklyn, was beached at the top of a nearby dune, canted at a precarious angle as if it had been thrown there.