The Red Pyramid (Kane Chronicles #1)(104)

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.

“There’s a supply locker aboard,” Amos offered, “if you’d like fresh clothes.”

“But where are we?”

“White Sands,” Carter told me. “In New Mexico. It’s a government range for testing missiles. Amos said no one would look for us here, so we gave you some time to heal. It’s about seven in the evening, still the twenty-eighth. Twelve hours or so until Set...you know.”

“But...” Too many questions swam round in my mind. The last thing I remembered, I’d been at the river talking to Nephthys. Her voice had seemed to come from the other side of the world. She’d spoken faintly through the current—so hard to understand, yet quite insistent. She’d told me she was sheltered far away in a sleeping host, which I couldn’t make sense of. She’d said she could not appear in person, but that she would send a message. Then the water had started to boil.

“We were attacked.” Carter stroked Muffin’s head, and I finally noticed that the amulet—Bast’s amulet—was missing. “Sadie, I’ve got some bad news.”

He told me what had happened, and I closed my eyes. I started to weep. Embarrassing, yes, but I couldn’t help it. Over the last few days, I’d lost everything—my home, my ordinary life, my father. I’d been almost killed half a dozen times. My mother’s death, which I’d never gotten over to begin with, hurt like a reopened wound. And now Bast was gone too?

When Anubis had questioned me in the Underworld, he’d wanted to know what I would sacrifice to save the world.

What haven’t I sacrificed already? I wanted to scream. What have I got left?

Carter came over and gave me Muffin, who purred in my arms, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t Bast.

“She’ll come back, won’t she?” I looked at Amos imploringly. “I mean she’s immortal, isn’t she?”

Amos tugged at the rim of his hat. “Sadie...I just don’t know. It seems she sacrificed herself to defeat Sobek. Bast forced him back to the Duat at the expense of her own life force. She even spared Muffin, her host, probably with the last shred of her power. If that’s true, it would be very difficult for Bast to come back. Perhaps some day, in a few hundred years—”

“No, not a few hundred years! I can’t—” My voice broke.