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—straig
ht 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
31. I Deliver a Love Note
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?