“Carter, are you mad? Our friends are hurt and I’ve got a flaming scroll stuck to my hand. The window’s open. Help me get Jaz and Walt out of here!”
She had a point. This might be our only chance to get our friends out alive. But I also knew what those seven fires were now, and I knew that if I didn’t go after them, a lot of innocent people were going to get hurt.
I muttered an Egyptian curse—the cussing kind, not the magic kind—and ran to join the wedding party.
The main ballroom was in chaos. Guests were running everywhere, screaming and knocking over tables. A guy in a tuxedo had fallen into the wedding cake and was crawling around with a plastic bride-and-groom decoration stuck to his rear. A musician was trying to run away with a snare drum on his foot.
The white fires had solidified enough so that I could make out their forms—somewhere between canine and human, with elongated arms and crooked legs. They glowed like superheated gas as they raced through the ballroom, circling the pillars that surrounded the dance floor. One passed straight through a bridesmaid. The lady’s eyes turned milky white, and she crumpled to the floor, shivering and coughing.
I felt like curling into a ball myself. I didn’t know any spells that could fight these things, and if one of them touched me…
Suddenly the griffin swooped down out of nowhere, followed closely by Sadie’s magic rope, which was still trying to bind it. The griffin snapped up one of the fire creatures in a single gulp and kept flying. Wisps of smoke came out of its nostrils, but otherwise, eating the white fire didn’t seem to bother it.
“Hey!” I yelled.
Too late, I realized my mistake.
The griffin turned toward me, which slowed it down just enough for Sadie’s magic rope to wrap around its back legs.
“SQUAWWWWK!” The griffin crashed into a buffet table. The rope grew longer, winding around the monster’s body while its high-speed wings shredded the table, the floor, and plates of sandwiches like an out-of-control wood chipper.
Wedding guests began clearing the ballroom. Most ran for the elevators, but dozens were unconscious or shaking in fits, their eyes glowing white. Others were stuck under piles of debris. Alarms were blaring, and the white fires—six of them now—were still completely out of control.
I ran toward the griffin, which was rolling around, trying in vain to bite at the rope. “Calm down!” I yelled. “Let me help you, stupid!”
“FREEEEK!” The griffin’s tail swept over my head and just missed decapitating me.
I took a deep breath. I was mostly a combat mag
ician. I’d never been good at hieroglyph spells, but I pointed my sword at the monster and said: “Ha-tep.”
A green hieroglyph—the symbol for Be at peace—burned in the air, right at the tip of my blade:
The griffin stopped thrashing. The buzzing of its wings slowed. Chaos and screaming still filled the ballroom, but I tried to stay calm as I approached the monster.
“You recognize me, don’t you?” I held out my hand, and another symbol blazed above my palm—a symbol I could always summon, the Eye of Horus:
“You’re a sacred animal of Horus, aren’t you? That’s why you obey me.”
The griffin blinked at the war god’s mark. It ruffled its neck feathers and squawked in complaint, squirming under the rope that was slowly wrapping around its body.
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “My sister’s a loser. Just hang on. I’ll untie you.”
Somewhere behind me, Sadie yelled, “Carter!”
I turned and saw her and Walt stumbling toward me, half-carrying Jaz between them. Sadie was still doing her Statue of Liberty impression, holding the flaming scroll in one hand. Walt was on his feet and his eyes weren’t glowing anymore, but Jaz was slumped over like all the bones in her body had turned to jelly.
They dodged a fiery spirit and a few crazy wedding guests and somehow made it across the ballroom.
Walt stared the griffin. “How did you calm it down?”
“Griffins are servants of Horus,” I said. “They pulled his chariot in battle. I think it recognized my connection to him.”
The griffin shrieked impatiently and thrashed its tail, knocking over a stone column.
“Not very calm,” Sadie noticed. She glanced up at the glass dome, forty feet above, where the tiny figure of Khufu was waving at us frantically. “We need to get Jaz out of here now,” she said.
“I’m fine,” Jaz muttered.