The Red Pyramid

8. Muffin Plays with Knives

OUR BABOON WAS GOING completely sky goddess-which is to say, nuts.

He swung from column to column, bouncing along the balconies, overturning pots and statues. Then he ran back to the terrace windows, stared outside for a moment, and proceeded to go berserk again.

Muffin was also at the window. She crouched on all fours with her tail twitching as if she were stalking a bird.

“Perhaps it’s just a passing flamingo,” I suggested hopefully, but I’m not sure Carter could hear me over the screaming baboon.

We ran to the glass doors. At first I didn’t see any problem. Then water exploded from the pool, and my heart nearly jumped out of my chest. Two enormous creatures, most definitely not flamingos, were thrashing about with our crocodile, Philip of Macedonia.

I couldn’t make out what they were, only that they were fighting Philip two against one. They disappeared under the boiling water, and Khufu ran screaming through the Great Room again, bonking himself on the head with his empty Cheerios box, which I must say was not particularly helpful.

“Longnecks,” Carter said incredulously. “Sadie, did you see those things?”

I couldn’t find an answer. Then one of the creatures was thrown out of the pool. It slammed into the doors right in front of us, and I jumped back in alarm. On the other side of the glass was the most terrifying animal I’d ever seen. Its body was like a leopard’s-lean and sinewy, with golden spotted fur-but its neck was completely wrong. It was green and scaly and at least as long as the rest of its body. It had a cat’s head, but no normal cat’s. When it turned its glowing red eyes towards us, it howled, showing a forked tongue and fangs dripping with green venom.

I realized my legs were shaking and I was making a very undignified whimpering sound.

The cat-serpent jumped back into the pool to join its companion in beating up Philip, who spun and snapped but seemed unable to hurt his attackers.

“We have to help Philip!” I cried. “He’ll be killed!”

I reached for the door handle, but Muffin growled at me.

Carter said, “Sadie, no! You heard Amos. We can’t open the doors for any reason. The house is protected by magic. Philip will have to beat them on his own.”

“But what if he can’t? Philip!”

The old crocodile turned. For a second his pink reptilian eye focused on me as if he could sense my concern. Then the cat-snakes bit at his underbelly and Philip rose up so that only the tip of his tail still touched the water. His body began to glow. A low hum filled the air, like an airplane engine starting up. When Philip came down, he slammed into the terrace with all his might.

The entire house shook. Cracks appeared in the concrete terrace outside, and the swimming pool split right down the middle as the far end crumbled into empty space.

“No!” I cried.

But the edge of the terrace ripped free, plunging Philip and the monsters straight into the East River.

My whole body began to tremble. “He sacrificed himself. He killed the monsters.”

“Sadie…” Carter’s voice was faint. “What if he didn’t? What if they come back?”

“Don’t say that!”

“I-I recognized them, Sadie. Those creatures. Come on.”

“Where?” I demanded, but he ran straight back to the library.

Carter marched up to the shabti who’d helped us before. “Bring me the…gah, what’s it called?”

“What?” I asked.

“Something Dad showed me. It’s a big stone plate or something. Had a picture of the first pharaoh, the guy who united Upper and Lower Egypt into one kingdom. His name…” His eyes lit up. “Narmer! Bring me the Narmer Plate!”

Nothing happened.

“No,” Carter decided. “Not a plate. It was…one of those things that holds paint. A palette. Bring me the Narmer Palette!”

The empty-handed shabti didn’t move, but across the room, the statue with the little hook came to life. He jumped off his pedestal and disappeared in a cloud of dust. A heartbeat later, he reappeared on the table. At his feet was a wedge of flat gray stone, shaped like a shield and about as long as my forearm.

“No!” Carter protested. “I meant a picture of it! Oh great, I think this is the real artifact. The shabti must’ve stolen it from the Cairo Museum. We’ve got to return-”

“Hang on,” I said. “We might as well have a look.”

The surface of the stone was carved with the picture of a man smashing another man in the face with what looked like a spoon.

“That’s Narmer with the spoon,” I guessed. “Angry because the other bloke stole his breakfast cereal?”

Carter shook his head. “He’s conquering his enemies and uniting Egypt. See his hat? That’s the crown of Lower Egypt, before the two countries united.”

“The bit that looks like a bowling pin?”

“You’re impossible,” Carter grumbled.

“He looks like Dad, doesn’t he?”

“Sadie, be serious!”

“I am serious. Look at his profile.”

Carter decided to ignore me. He examined the stone like he was afraid to touch it. “I need to see the back but I don’t want to turn it over. We might damage-”

I grabbed the stone and flipped it over.

“Sadie! You could’ve broken it!”

“That’s what mend spells are for, yes?”

We examined the back of the stone, and I had to admit I was impressed by Carter’s memory. Two cat-snake monsters stood in the center of the palette, their necks entwined. On either side, Egyptian men with ropes were trying to capture the creatures.

“They’re called serpopards,” Carter said. “Serpent leopards.”

“Fascinating,” I said. “But what are serpopards?”

“No one knows exactly. Dad thought they were creatures of chaos-very bad news, and they’ve been around forever. This stone is one of the oldest artifacts from Egypt. Those pictures were carved five thousand years ago.”

“So why are five-thousand-year-old monsters attacking our house?”

“Last night, in Phoenix, the fiery man ordered his servants to capture us. He said to send the longnecks first.”

I had a metallic taste in my mouth, and I wished I hadn’t chewed my last piece of gum. “Well…good thing they’re at the bottom of the East River.”

Just then Khufu rushed into the library, screaming and slapping his head.

“Suppose I shouldn’t have said that,” I muttered.

Carter told the shabti to return the Narmer Palette, and both statue and stone disappeared. Then we followed the baboon upstairs.

The serpopards were back, their fur wet and slimy from the river, and they weren’t happy. They prowled the broken ledge of the terrace, their snake necks whipping round as they sniffed the doors, looking for a way in. They spit poison that steamed and bubbled on the glass. Their forked tongues darted in and out.

“Agh, agh!” Khufu picked up Muffin, who was sitting on the sofa, and offered me the cat.

“I really don’t think that will help,” I told him.

“AGH!” Khufu insisted.

Neither Muffin nor cat ended in -o, so I guessed Khufu was not trying to offer me a snack, but I didn’t know what he was on about. I took the cat just to shut him up.

“Mrow?” Muffin looked up at me.

“It’ll be all right,” I promised, trying not to sound scared out of my mind. “The house is protected by magic.”

“Sadie,” Carter said. “They’ve found something.”

The serpopards had converged at the left-hand door and were intently sniffing the handle.

“Isn’t it locked?” I asked.

Both monsters smashed their ugly faces against the glass. The door shuddered. Blue hieroglyphs glowed along the doorframe, but their light was faint.

“I don’t like this,” Carter murmured.

I prayed that the monsters would give up. Or that perhaps Philip of Macedonia would climb back to the terrace (do crocodiles climb?) and renew the fight.

Instead, the monsters smashed their heads against the glass again. This time a web of cracks appeared. The blue hieroglyphs flickered and died.

“AGH!” Khufu screamed. He waved his hand vaguely at the cat.

“Maybe if I try the ha-di spell,” I said.

Carter shook his head. “You almost fainted after you blew up those doors. I don’t want you passing out, or worse.”

Carter once again surprised me. He tugged a strange sword from one of Amos’s wall displays. The blade had an odd crescent-moon curve and looked horribly impractical.

“You can’t be serious,” I said.

“Unless-unless you’ve got a better idea,” he stammered, his face beading with perspiration. “It’s me, you, and the baboon against those things.”

I’m sure Carter was trying to be brave in his own extremely unbrave way, but he was shaking worse than I was. If anyone was going to pass out, I feared it would be him, and I didn’t fancy him doing that while holding a sharp object.

Then the serpopards struck a third time, and the door shattered. We backed up to the foot of Thoth’s statue as the creatures stalked into the great room. Khufu threw his basketball, which bounced harmlessly off the first monster’s head. Then he launched himself at the serpopard.

“Khufu, don’t!” Carter yelled.

But the baboon sank his fangs into the monster’s neck. The serpopard lashed around, trying to bite him. Khufu leaped off, but the monster was quick. It used its head like a bat and smacked poor Khufu in midair, sending him straight through the shattered door, over the broken terrace, and into the void.

I wanted to sob, but there wasn’t time. The serpopards came toward us. We couldn’t outrun them. Carter raised his sword. I pointed my hand at the first monster and tried to speak the ha-di spell, but my voice stuck in my throat.

“Mrow!” Muffin said, more insistently. Why was the cat still nestled in my arm and not running away in terror?

Then I remembered something Amos had said: Muffin will protect you. Was that what Khufu had been trying to remind me? It seemed impossible, but I stammered, “M-muffin, I order you to protect us.”

I tossed her on the floor. Just for a moment, the silver pendant on her collar seemed to gleam. Then the cat arched her back leisurely, sat down, and began licking a front paw. Well, really, what was I expecting-heroics?

The two red-eyed monsters bared their fangs. They raised their heads and prepared to strike-and an explosion of dry air blasted through the room. It was so powerful, it knocked Carter and me to the floor. The serpopards stumbled and backed away.

I staggered to my feet and realized that the center of the blast had been Muffin. My cat was no longer there. In her place was a woman-small and lithe like a gymnast. Her jet-black hair was tied in a ponytail. She wore a skintight leopard-skin jumpsuit and Muffin’s pendant around her neck.

She turned and grinned at me, and her eyes were still Muffin’s-yellow with black feline pupils. “About time,” she chided.

The serpopards got over their shock and charged the cat woman. Their heads struck with lightning speed. They should’ve ripped her in two, but the cat lady leaped straight up, flipping three times, and landed above them, perched on the mantel.

She flexed her wrists, and two enormous knives shot from her sleeves into her hands. “A-a-ah, fun!”

The monsters charged. She launched herself between them, dancing and dodging with incredible grace, letting them lash at her futilely while she threaded their necks together. When she stepped away, the serpopards were hopelessly intertwined. The more they struggled, the tighter the knots became. They trampled back and forth, knocking over furniture and roaring in frustration.

“Poor things,” the cat woman purred. “Let me help.”

Her knives flashed, and the two monsters’ heads thudded to the floor at her feet. Their bodies collapsed and dissolved into enormous piles of sand.

“So much for my playthings,” the woman said sadly. “From sand they come, and to sand they return.”

She turned towards us, and the knives shot back into her sleeves. “Carter, Sadie, we should leave. Worse will be coming.”

Carter made a choking sound. “Worse? Who-how-what-”

“All in good time.” The woman stretched her arms above her head with great satisfaction. “So good to be in human form again! Now, Sadie, can you open us a door through the Duat, please?”

I blinked. “Um…no. I mean-I don’t know how.”

The woman narrowed her eyes, clearly disappointed. “Shame. We’ll need more power, then. An obelisk.”

“But that’s in London,” I protested. “We can’t-”

“There’s a nearer one in Central Park. I try to avoid Manhattan, but this is an emergency. We’ll just pop over and open a portal.”

“A portal to where?” I demanded. “Who are you, and why are you my cat?”

The woman smiled. “For now, we just want a portal out of danger. As for my name, it’s not Muffin, thank you very much. It’s-”

“Bast,” Carter interrupted. “Your pendant-it’s the symbol of Bast, goddess of cats. I thought it was just decoration but…that’s you, isn’t it?”

“Very good, Carter,” Bast said. “Now come, while we can still make it out of here alive.”

C A R T E R