It creeped Alex out: Eight million people lived in this city — or used to — and so far they hadn’t seen a single soul.
The van rolled slowly through the gap and was suddenly buffeted with bumps and barks and scratches. The dogs had chased them down. Alex looked to his right and saw a large black mutt just below him. It leapt up, scratching at the window. Specks of foamy drool dotted the safety glass as the dog snapped off a quick, hoarse bark.
Todtman cleared the opening and floored it.
The dogs disappeared again into the smoky night.
“Man,” said Luke. “Those were some hungry dogs.”
“Not hungry,” said Ren. “Rabid.”
Alex nervously eyed the gobs of virulent drool on the other side of his window as the hot wind outside stretched and dried them.
As they drove deeper into the city, houses and apartment buildings shouldered up from the sidewalks on either side, and Alex was relieved to see the occasional sliver of light slipping through closed blinds.
“Where is everybody?” said Ren.
“There’s someone!” said Luke, leaning between the seats and pointing. Alex turned and saw a shadowy figure making slow progress across the street. Todtman took his foot of the gas and slowed down as they approached. But as the minivan rolled slowly forward, its headlights hit the figure — and lit its tattered linen.
The mummy swung around and gaped at them, faintly glowing reddish orbs where its eyes should have been. Releasing a ragged, wordless scream, it charged straight at the van’s dented hood.
“Gott im Himmel,” mumbled Todtman as he stomped the gas and swung the wheel.
The minivan sideswiped the charging mummy as it swerved past — one lumbering old heap striking another — sending the tightly wrapped corpse bouncing up onto the curb.
Alex swung his head around and saw the creature already pushing itself to its feet and setting off after them. Just behind him, he saw the crazed dogs appear at a full run one streetlight back.
There was a loud screech of metal on metal as Todtman rammed the minivan between two more abandoned cars, one in each lane. Alex saw his mom wake up and look around, and he climbed one row back to sit next to her.
“It might be better to travel at night,” she said to him. “When Cairo seems too dangerous even for The Order.”
Alex nodded and craned his neck to check the time on the dashboard clock: 11:58 p.m. The problem, of course, was that a city dangerous for The Order was infinitely more dangerous for everyone else. As the clock flicked to 11:59, Ren called out from the front seat: “What is that up there?”
Alex looked where she was pointing and saw a shifting shape on the roof of a low-slung industrial complex, outlined against the moon. At first, he couldn’t tell what it was. The image kept shifting. Pieces tore off it and flitted away as other fragments dove in to rejoin it. But as they passed directly underneath, he got a better look.
The shape was that of a large man.
And the pieces tearing free and diving back looked like oversized wasps, purple-black in the moonlight. They grew larger and more defined the farther they flew, but up close they were small. Small and shifting and numerous: hundreds, maybe thousands, of shadowy swarming shapes.
His mom spoke beside him. Her words were so soft that he barely heard them over the rumble of the van. But he didn’t really need to. He was thinking the same thing.
“Death Walker.”
Todtman punched the gas and accelerated out of sight of the grim figure, but the image of swarming evil stayed in Alex’s mind as the old van wound deeper into the city’s desolate warehouse district.
Stiff from the long trip and in various states of injury and exhaustion, the crew crept along the moonlit street like a determined intensive care unit. The Order’s secret headquarters was the last looming structure in a row of dark, deserted warehouses.
“We’re here,” whispered Todtman.
“Cool,” said Alex, looking up at the blank black windows. “Should we have, like, a plan?”
“We will catch them off guard and move quickly,” said Todtman, but he said it while hobbling along with the speed and grace of a three-legged turtle. “We know the Spells are in ‘the seat of power.’ The last thing they will expect is for us to come straight to them in the middle of the night.”
“Yeah, don’t sweat it, cuz,” added Luke. “I got your back.”
Alex looked over at him. Maybe the plan was crazy enough to work: While The Order probably thought they were fleeing for their lives, they’d rush in and grab the Spells. And with Luke’s cheetah, they had more firepower than ever. Maybe they had a chance.
As they approached a small side door, Alex pulled his scarab out from under his collar and felt its reassuring weight in his hand. The weight in his other arm was less reassuring. It would be hard to fight while helping his mom stay on her feet.
They reached the door.
“Unguarded,” said Ren.
“Seemingly unguarded,” cautioned Todtman.
But Alex barely heard them. Now that he believed they could succeed, he’d finally asked himself a more complex question: What if they did? In a cell or on the run, it had been easy enough to concentrate on escape. But what if the Lost Spells really were in there? The plan was to use them to close the rift between the worlds of the living and the worlds of the dead — to undo the damage that had been done when that doorway had been opened to save his life. The risk — the one no one seemed willing to talk about — was that it would undo him, too.
Alex heard a click as Todtman used his amulet to unlock the door. “Okay,” said the scholar. “Carefully now.”
Todtman pushed open the door, and Luke ducked inside for a look, but Alex could barely focus on the danger ahead of them. His mind was churning. Back when they were still searching for his mom, he’d blamed himself for all the trouble his second shot at life had caused, and he’d been ready to sacrifice himself to make it right.
But finding his mom had changed things, and the story she’d just told him had changed them more. He’d chewed over those words in the dark: His father’s obsessive search for the Spells was the reason he’d been sick in the first place. The wheels of all this had been set in motion before he could even walk.
And if all that was true, he wasn’t the cause of all this trouble. He was the first victim.
Alex wondered, deep down, if maybe he had sacrificed enough. If maybe there was another way. The Spells were so powerful, after all. How close had his mom been to puzzling out a solution with them? Maybe —
“All clear,” said Luke, pulling his head back out the dark gap of the open door.
The group slipped inside. Weak moonlight shone gauzily into the huge, hangar-like space from rows of dirty windows twenty feet up. The friends stood silently as their eyes adjusted to the dim light.
“Nothing,” whispered Ren. “It’s empty.”
Todtman knelt down and rubbed the floor with one finger. “Stone dust,” he said. “This is where they carved the statues that they now inhabit. I saw the blocks the last time I was here.”
Alex felt his mom’s weight sink down against his arm and shoulder as she relaxed a little and let out a long, jagged breath. He pushed the toe of one boot along the concrete floor and felt the stony grit. So this was where The Order had begun turning themselves into ten-foot-tall monsters.
“There are doors in the back there,” said Luke.
Alex stared where he pointed, but all he saw was blackness.
“Are you sure?” he said.
“Totally,” said Luke, and as he turned toward him, Alex saw that his eyes were glowing a soft green. Just like a cheetah’s.
“Can you see in the dark?” asked Alex.
“I guess so.”
Alex tried to stay quiet as they crept across the floor, but supporting his mom was hard work, and his huffing breath echoed through the cavernous space, mixing with the soft plinks of Todtman’s staff.
As they go
t closer, he saw three doors. The first one was the heaviest, and it seemed to have been blown out from the inside. The heavy steel bar that had once secured it lay bent almost in half on the floor nearby.
Alex saw nothing but blackness inside and stepped aside for Luke to take a look with his cat eyes. “Anything?”
“Nuh-uh,” said Luke. “It’s like a vault or something. No windows, no nothing.”
And the other two rooms were just abandoned offices. Alex heard Ren take a corner too tightly in the dark and slam her shin into the side of a desk.
“Ow!” she huffed, and then: “This is ridiculous!”
She took three quick strides over to the wall. “No, Ren, don’t!” hissed Todtman, but it was too late.
She flicked on the lights.
Alex stood blinking in the sudden brightness. When the stars and swirls cleared away, he saw everything there was to see. It wasn’t much.
“Empty,” said Ren. “This whole place has been cleared out.”
Alex’s mom settled into an office chair as the others searched around for hidden doorways, passages leading down, anything at all. They even used their amulets to probe the walls and floors. After half an hour, Todtman called a halt to it.
“Nothing,” he agreed. “Whatever was in here is gone.”
They returned to the main room and looked around the modest old warehouse under the weak electric light.
“This isn’t the seat of power anymore, is it?” said Alex.
Todtman smacked the floor angrily with his scuffed staff. “I don’t think it ever was.”
The Amulet Keepers were quiet for a few moments, and then they heard the banging on the corrugated steel walls of the warehouse. Something was outside — or some things.
Todtman looked up at the old fixtures above them. “The lights have attracted attention,” he said. “We should leave.”
“But where are we going?” asked Ren as they hustled toward the same door they’d come in.
“To see an old friend,” said Todtman. “If he is still alive.”
“There it is,” said Alex’s mom as a familiar red edifice rose up in front of them.
The battered old minivan had made it back to the city’s center. It had even started on the first try — a good thing since there’d been a dozen glowing red eyes approaching its rearview mirror at the time.
A massive brick building loomed above the electric haze of Tahrir Square. Once again, they had returned to the mighty Egyptian Museum.
They parked the stalwart van on a side street and made their way to the museum’s massive front doors. No alarm sounded as Alex used the scarab to unlock the heavy double doors. He took one last look behind them as they slipped inside, to see if they’d been followed. All he saw were shifting shadows and dancing moonlight in the eerily empty square.
Inside, the legendary museum was lit only by dim lights from a few display cases and red exit signs. Scattered around these deep shadows, he knew, were some 120,000 exhibits. What Alex didn’t see were any people, or any signs of recent activity at all. Once teeming with a daily army of tourists, the place now felt like an especially epic, million-square-foot attic.
Moving through the first room, Alex’s mom had stepped free of his supporting arm, as if the building itself had given her strength. Alex used his suddenly free hand to trace a finger across a glass display case, drawing a track in the thin layer of dust.
“I’m afraid I’ve let the place go a bit,” came a voice. “But we get very few visitors these days.”
Alex’s heart skipped a beat or three as the words echoed through the hall. But the voice was familiar, and so was the man stepping out of the shadows along the far wall.
Dr. Hesaan — he never had told them his first name — bowed slightly. As surprised as they were by his sudden appearance, he seemed equally surprised to see the new addition to their party. “Dr. Bauer,” he said. “It is good to see you … ” He trailed off before adding “alive.”
She managed a quick smile. “You know I can’t stay away from this place.”
Alex was relieved to not hear quite as much ragged raspiness in her voice this time — and reassured by her friendly rapport with the man. The last time they’d seen the old curator, he’d been attempting to guard the closed museum with only a cricket bat.
“Where’s your bat?” asked Alex.
“I don’t have much use for it anymore,” Hesaan said, shrugging slightly. “Only a lunatic would break in. This museum, like the rest of the city, is now run by The Order.”
The friends bristled visibly.
“Relax,” said Hesaan. “I hate them just as much as you do.”
“But you work for them,” said Ren skeptically.
Another shrug. “I work for the museum. I take care of it, as I always have. They simply allow me to.”
“Why would they do that?” said Ren, still not convinced. “The last time I saw you, you were charging at them with your cricket bat.”
“They allow it because I am the most qualified,” he said. “I am the most familiar with this old building — and this much older collection — and its various needs.”
Ren signaled she had another question by raising her right hand slightly, but Hesaan kept going. “You have to understand, for you this is a museum: old artifacts and old altars to old gods. To The Order, it is their religion.”
Alex looked over at his mom to see what she thought of that. When she nodded in understanding, he did, too. The arrangement seemed clear enough. It was an uneasy truce between enemies, carved out over a small piece of common ground.
“We each have our part to play in this, my old friend,” said Todtman to Hesaan. “And I am hoping you might be able to help us find some answers.”
“I will do my best,” said Hesaan. He stepped toward Todtman and exchanged the sort of quick, awkward hug at which academics have always excelled. “But first, it is late. Let me find you someplace to stay, something to eat. As you can see, I have plenty of extra space.” He raised his voice slightly on the final word, and Alex heard it echo through the lacquered wood and polished marble of the empty museum: space-ace-ace.
Ren balled up her fist again, not to release a flash of spirit-zapping light this time, but to release … what? She was matched off with Luke in a game of rock-paper-scissors. At stake was the third-best sleeping spot in the old employee lounge where they were spending the night. Dr. Bauer and Todtman were the obvious choices for the two couches, and now Ren had her eye on the large woolen rug between them. She’d already defeated Alex, three to two. So far Luke had thrown two straight papers, and she’d cut through them with back-to-back scissors. Now she eyed her opponent carefully. He wouldn’t throw the same thing again … would he?
“One, two,” counted Alex. Ren and Luke drew back their hands. “Three!”
Ren threw her hand out, first two fingers V’d into scissors. She looked over at Luke’s hand, spread out flat: paper. She smiled. Of course he would.
“I thought it had to win sooner or later,” muttered Luke, shaking his head.
But there was one last item of business before the group could get some much-needed sleep. A few minutes later, all drowsy eyes were on Ren once again. She took a deep breath and raised her hand toward her amulet.
“Ask it where the Lost Spells are,” said Alex.
It had never answered that particular question in the past, and the look she shot him said: Why would it start now?
Todtman volunteered an alternative: “Ask it where the seat of power is.”
The ibis was an ancient amulet, not Google, and as Ren’s hand hovered over the pale stone, she told herself all the things that had helped her get a handle on its power. It didn’t offer answers, she reminded herself. It only gave her information: scenes from the past or present, possibilities for the future. And whatever it gave her was more than she had now. Extra credit. She formed the familiar, comforting words in her head.
Then she closed her eyes and wrappe
d her hand around the cool stone. She tried to think the words of Todtman’s question as clearly as possible: Where is the seat — But before she could finish, another question popped into her head, fully formed and all but screaming for an answer: Are my parents okay?
She’d already tried to call home from Hesaan’s office phone, but the line had been as dead as the museum’s remaining mummies. Now, though, her ibis offered an open line. An image flashed through her mind’s eye. The door of their apartment, seen from the inside, with the chain latched and one of the good chairs from the living room table wedged under the doorknob.
As the scene unfolded the door began to shake, the chain rattled, and the chair wobbled. Something was outside the apartment, not knocking on the door but beating on it.
Ren gasped and opened her eyes. Her amulet fell from her hand.
“What did it show you?” said Todtman.
Ren shook her head.
“What?” he insisted.
She looked up at him, blinking away the tears that were just now beginning to appear. “Home,” she said. “It showed me home.”
Todtman looked at her sternly, but Alex’s mom cut in before he could respond. “We’re all tired,” she said softly. “We’ll try again in the morning. Okay, Ren?”
Ren nodded. She was tired: desperately, eye-flutteringly tired after their marathon day. But she also knew how important this was. The world was going up in flames, and they were at a standstill. She would try her best in the morning. She would focus hard and ask the question out loud. Still, she didn’t hold out much hope. “It doesn’t matter what I ask it,” she said softly. “The ibis is in my head. It knows what I want to know.”
She stretched out on the heavy rug, her body surrendering to her exhaustion even as her mind continued to pick at what she’d just seen — Was it the present, or a future they could still prevent?
She heard Dr. Bauer shift on the couch above her and looked up to find her looking down. “We are all worried about home,” she whispered. “We will fix this.”
The Final Kingdom Page 6