Jake Atlas and the Hunt for the Feathered God

by Rob Lloyd Jones

  Pan tried to hand it to me, but I shoved it back into her hands.

  “You have to do this,” I said. “Get to St George’s Street, see which car the Snake Lady gets into and fire the tracker at it. Then we can follow her.”

  “What? Why me? Jake, you do the action stuff.”

  “Stop saying that, Pan, that’s crazy. You’re the best shot by far.”

  We’d all seen her sharpshooting in Egypt, when she took down the Snake Lady’s mercenaries with a stun gun. Pan knew I was right, but she still looked horrified. I didn’t blame her; this wasn’t a training simulator. It was a real mission.

  “Jake, I … I don’t think I can.”

  “Pan, you’ve got this,” I said. “Just aim and fire.”

  “Aim and fire,” Pan repeated, in a voice as shaky as her hands. She looked back at us as she opened the van door. “At least there won’t be any giant scorpions.”

  “You hope,” I replied.

  She ran into the crowds and the rain.

  I slid the door shut and we waited, listening to the rain on the van roof, praying Pan pulled it off.

  “Your parents should be waking up around now,” Sami said. “I’m in so much trouble.”

  We were all in so much trouble. If this didn’t work, treasure-hunting was over, and the Snake Lady had won. I’d do my best to shield Sami from my parents’ anger. I’d tell them that I’d forced him to help, but even so, I’d be amazed if they ever spoke to him again. He didn’t deserve that – he’d looked out for us since Egypt, helped us every step of the way. He wasn’t just our friend: he’d become part of our family.

  “I’m sorry, Sami,” I replied. “We shouldn’t have got you into this.”

  Sami smiled. “Your parents got me into this over thirty years ago, when they first became treasure hunters. I joined them very willingly, and I’m here by my own choice now, too.”

  For a second I forgot about Pan and our mission and I seized the opportunity to learn more about Sami’s past adventures with my mum and dad.

  “Did you go on every mission with them?” I asked.

  “Not all, but many. I was always in the comms van, keeping watch.”

  “You had their backs.”

  “Not that they needed me. Your parents knew what they were doing. They didn’t take risks.”

  I looked away, trying not to show how much that comment upset me. “You mean like I do?”

  “Your parents wanted to rescue artefacts for museums, but other hunters were paid well to find those treasures first, often very dangerous people. Your mother and father knew that, but they believed in what they were doing. They planned everything very carefully. They didn’t just charge into tombs, even though at times that meant they might fail, and the relics would be lost.”

  “I can be like that too, Sami.”

  “Maybe, Jake. That is what your parents wish. But I wonder if that is for the best.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Sami hesitated, choosing his words carefully. “Your sister is a genius. Her value to the team is clear. Your parents know your value too, but it scares them, Jake, especially your mother. In truth, it terrifies her.”

  “I don’t understand, Sami. What value? What scares them?”

  Sami was about to answer, when a thump on the side of the van caused us to jump. I slid the door open, and there was Pan. She was soaked, but smiling. She held up the tracker gun.

  “Bull’s-eye,” she said.

  “You saw her?” I asked. “You actually saw the Snake Lady?”

  She clambered in, wiping rain from her face with her coat sleeve. “Not exactly,” she replied. “I saw someone leave through that other exit. The security guards helped the person into a car, and I got it with the tracker. But I didn’t see who it was for sure.”

  That was enough for me. It had to be her. The Snake Lady thought she was so clever, but we were on to her.

  I pulled the door shut and barked to Sami, “Let’s go!”

  7

  It was getting dark by the time we hit the motorway. The rain was coming down so hard we could barely see ten metres ahead, even with the windscreen wipers going at full speed. Other cars were smudges of red and orange light. The rain was so loud on the van roof that we had to wear our smart-goggles and speak to each other through their microphones.

  “Are you sure we’re still following her?” Pan asked, rubbing mist from the window to see outside.

  Sami tried to explain how the tracker worked, using words like “triangulate” and “global positioning satellites” which made more sense to Pan than me. The result was a flashing light on a street map, projected onto part of the van windshield – the light we were following. We hoped it was the Snake Lady, but couldn’t be sure.

  “We’re heading into Sussex,” Sami said.

  I checked my watch. If Sami’s drug worked as he said, Mum and Dad had already been awake for a few hours. I noticed Pan grimace slightly as she gazed out of the window, and wondered if she was thinking about it too.

  We followed the tracking signal for another hour as it led us deeper into the countryside along pitch-black country lanes. Lightning flashes revealed rolling hills, a creepy old windmill, horses staring from the rain.

  “Why is she coming all the way out here?” Pan asked. “Do you think it’s a trap?”

  “Switch to night vision,” I said.

  The headlights cut out, and we saw the road ahead through the green filter of night vision.

  “The car we’re following has stopped,” Sami said. “Half a mile up ahead.”

  “Keep going. Slowly.”

  The van rattled as we crawled along a pot-holed lane, past thatched cottages and a village primary school. We stopped.

  “The signal is coming from outside that house,” Sami said.

  Pan and I shifted into the front of the van to see through the night-vision screen. My heart was pounding harder than the rain on the roof, but what I saw left me confused. From what we knew, the People of the Snake were a powerful organization, able to influence governments, destroy monuments, do whatever they liked. Their headquarters inside the mountain in Egypt had been ultra high-tech.

  But this was just a cottage. The car we’d followed was parked outside a white cottage with perfectly symmetrical windows and neatly trimmed hedges, like a child’s drawing of a house. There was a farm shed nearby, and a village pub with hanging baskets and steamed-up windows. The place wasn’t scary. It was … pretty.

  “Sami,” I said, “can you scan the house with thermal imaging?”

  “Already have,” he replied. “Nothing unusual. I see heat signals from one person and a small animal.”

  “A mutant animal?” I asked.

  “A dog, I think.”

  “Try an infrared scan.”

  “Done that too,” Sami said. “And ultrasonic. There’s nothing unusual about that house, Jake. Either someone is blocking the signals, or it’s just … someone’s home.”

  “We need to see more,” I insisted.

  “No, we do not,” Sami replied. “We don’t even know who we followed here.”

  “It’s the Snake Lady, Sami. It’s Marjorie. She’s just spent a million pounds on a document that could have cost a tenth of that, then driven to the middle of mud-soaked nowhere. She’s not just watching TV. That’s not her.”

  “Jake, you barely know this woman,” Pan said.

  “I know enough.”

  “You’re obsessed with her.”

  Maybe Pan was right. I had thought about her a lot over the past few months. In fact, I hadn’t thought about much else. She’d tried to kill us, but I didn’t entirely hate her. In a weird way, Pan and I had her to thank for something, although we never would. It was her organization that had forced my parents to come out of retirement as treasure hunters. That was the only reason Pan and I had found out about Mum and Dad’s past, and had a chance to make it our future.

  “We can’t go back to how things were,
Pan. Do you remember how bad that was? You and I didn’t talk. We didn’t even know Mum and Dad, not the real them. But in Egypt, the Atlas family worked.”

  “We can still work, Jake.”

  “No, Pan, they’ll never let me do this unless I prove that I can. Then they’ll trust me.”

  “Trust you? You shot them, Jake!”

  “It was a stun gun!”

  We sat in silence for a moment, listening to the rain on the roof.

  “Jake,” Pan said finally, “we’ve done well. We’ve found something. Maybe this is their headquarters, or maybe it’s—”

  I don’t know what else it might have been, because right then I threw open the van door and ran for the house. I guess Mum was right; I am reckless. And that was about to get me in more trouble than I’d ever known.

  8

  “Jake! Wait for me, you idiot.”

  I glanced back and grinned as I saw Pan rushing after me from Sami’s van. I was very happy to take a few insults from my sister in exchange for her coming with me. I really hadn’t fancied sneaking around the Snake Lady’s house alone; the place may have looked like a sweet country cottage, but my heart had begun to beat as if I was running towards a torture chamber.

  The closer we got to the place, the more it made sense. In Egypt the Snake Lady had acted so sweet and kind while also plotting to kill us. This house seemed just right for her – sweet on the outside, but with something much darker going on within, I was convinced

  “Stay low,” Pan hissed.

  We hid behind the hedge that fronted the house and slid on our smart-goggles. The rain had eased a little, and my night vision could just pick out Sami’s van down the lane.

  He spoke to us through the goggles’ microphone. “You’re right outside the house,” he said.

  “We know, Sami,” Pan replied.

  “Come on,” I whispered.

  Pan hissed a protest, but I was already off – darting from behind the hedge and across the cottage’s small front garden. I tried to remember my training, and look for traps or alarms, but it was hard to concentrate. I wasn’t just scared of the Snake Lady or being caught, but also of failing. It would confirm Mum and Dad’s suspicions that we weren’t ready to be treasure hunters. Or at least that I wasn’t.

  “Jake, get down!”

  We sank to the grass beneath a sash window. Firelight flickered from inside the house. I heard classical music: an opera singer wailing. One of those annoying, yappy-type dogs began to bark.

  “Sami,” I whispered. “Can you tell us where she is in the house?”

  I expected him to grumble, but instead there was silence.

  The yapping grew louder, competing with the opera singer. The volume caused the window to tremble in its wooden frame.

  We scrambled through a gate, to a glass-panelled door at the back of the house. A muddy pair of wellies sat beside a dog bowl, and a doormat with the message HOME SWEET HOME. It was all fake, I was certain. The doormat may as well have said SECRET EVIL HEADQUARTERS.

  Pan examined the door frame with her goggles. “Don’t see anything odd. No wires, lasers or heat sensors around the grooves. It’s just … a door.”

  “Then we should open it.”

  I slid the skeleton key from my belt and used it on the lock. There was a soft clunk, and the door opened.

  “Good old Sami,” I breathed.

  I grasped the handle, but Pan grabbed my arm.

  “You said we’d only look.”

  “We are looking,” I replied.

  It was a dumb thing to say, but I couldn’t stop myself now – I had to see more. The door opened without any sound. The dog had gone silent too, although the opera singer was still screeching – an annoying sound like an alarm going off.

  “Looks like we’re in a kitchen,” I whispered.

  “Really?” Pan shot back. “Was it the sink or the fridge that gave it away? Jake, this is just someone’s home. Let’s go.”

  It wasn’t. I had that feeling in my belly, that instinct I had learned to trust. There were eggs in a helter-skelter holder. A basket for the dog. A reminder note on the fridge to pay the milkman. It was all so boring, so normal.

  It wasn’t right at all.

  I crept across terracotta tiles, through a doorway and into a dining room with wood-panelled walls and a wood-beamed ceiling. Moonlight cast a shadow across a long oak table that had just one chair. A vase at its centre looked expensive, like an antique. The opera music was coming from the next room.

  “Jake,” Pan hissed. “We need to go now.”

  I can’t explain the next few seconds. Had I agreed, maybe everything would have been different. But something in me refused. A cosy cottage, cheesy doormats, opera… This was all so wrong.

  I think Pan said something else. She might have even tried to grab my arm and pull me back, but I didn’t hear, and barely even noticed. I just stood, staring at the entrance to the next room, listening to the music, and realizing something for the first time.

  She knew we were here.

  I don’t know how I was so certain, I just was. The Snake Lady had known we were following her, and she knew we were here, right now, in her home.

  She was in the next room.

  She was waiting.

  9

  The moment I saw her I froze. I don’t just mean I stood still; it was as if my insides had literally turned to ice, the blood frozen solid in my veins.

  The Snake Lady was facing the fire, so all we could see was her white hair and the black woollen cape she wore, but I knew she was smiling. That smug grin had haunted my dreams: cheekbones popping out. Ruby lips curled into a sneer.

  She spoke in that candyfloss voice, sweet but sickly.

  “Darlings!” she said. “Welcome!”

  That’s right, you witch, we found you.

  That was what I wish I had said. Instead, I slid my smart-goggles off and stared. It was as if she had me under a spell, an ice queen’s magic. I’d thought about this moment for so long, being face to face again with the Snake Lady. I’d practised it in my head, and even in the mirror. But now I was here I didn’t know what to say or how to act.

  She turned. Firelight glinted off her perfect white teeth. I stepped back an inch, more out of shock than fear. I’d pictured her so often, but in none of those daydreams had she been so pretty. Her cheekbones and painted lips, her pale skin and snow-white hair catching the firelight… She looked more like a film star than a villain. Only her eyes reassured me that she was as horrible as we remembered. They were so dark – almost no whites at all – but also shiny and bright. We called her the Snake Lady but her eyes looked more like those of a shark.

  She stepped closer. Her dog – a little brown thing that looked like a bigger dog’s poo – scuttled by her feet, wagging its tail frantically.

  “Darlings,” she said. “I would not move if I were you.”

  “Yeah?” Pan shot back. “Why not?”

  “Because you have broken into my house. You are currently surrounded by an electromagnetic force field. An invisible cage, if you like. It is a horrible device, and I hate to use it, but I am a poor frightened woman who lives alone. I was forced to defend myself.”

  “You’re lying,” Pan spat.

  “Am I?”

  I wasn’t so sure. I couldn’t see any gadgets in the wall panels that might generate the force field, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. We’d seen the crazy technology the People of the Snake used at their headquarters in Egypt.

  She slid leather gloves from her hands, folded them neatly and set them down on a side table. “Now,” she said, “who are you?”

  I dared a step forward, so the firelight caught my face. “I’m afraid it’s us again, Marjorie,” I said.

  Her black eyes stared. “No, seriously. Who are you?”

  “I…”

  Words caught at the back of my throat. She didn’t recognize us?

  “We’re … Jake and Pandora Atlas,” Pan sai
d.

  “Do we know each other?” she asked.

  Was she serious? She had tried to kill us! We’d blown up her headquarters, stolen an emerald tablet that she’d spent a fortune trying to find.

  “We… You know, in Egypt…” I stammered.

  At last her eyes lit up. “Oh! Oh, yes of course! But whatever are you doing here in my— Wait, have you been thinking about me ever since then? You have, haven’t you? You’ve been trying to find me. Am I your nemesis? Oh, how utterly delightful.”

  Anger boiled inside me unlike any I’d felt since, well, the last time I saw this woman. She had a way of making me feel like I was the last to be picked for a school sports team. She knew exactly who we were. She was just messing with our heads.

  “You tried to recruit us!” I yelled.

  Her smile vanished, and her marble eyes gleamed. “And you refused,” she replied. “But I shall give you another chance.”

  “Chance?”

  “To work for me.”

  I laughed, but her face was totally serious.

  “We don’t need to work for you,” Pan replied. “We’ve deciphered the emerald tablet. Mum and Dad are going after the next one right now. They’ve probably already got it.”

  “Really? Then why are you here spying on me?”

  She definitely knew who we were, and that we’d run out of clues.

  She picked up a document from the side table and slid it from a protective plastic slip. It was the Aztec codex she’d bought at the auction. Up close, it looked even feebler than it had in the auction room – a tiny slip of paper, with those cartoonish Aztec gods.

  The Snake Lady held it close to the fire, considering it in the flickering light.

  “This just cost me a million pounds,” she said.

  She threw it on the fire.

  “Hey!” Pan cried. “That belongs in a museum!”

  The codex was already ash. Pan swore at her, but I wasn’t surprised. In Egypt this woman and her mercenaries had destroyed tombs and priceless treasures. They were trying to hide a secret about a forgotten ancient civilization. No, not forgotten – erased. It made sense that she’d burn the codex.