The Red Pyramid (Kane Chronicles 1)

“Don’t be that way,” Amos chided. “It’s only for a few minutes. Follow me.”

He melted into a heavier, darker bit of storm and raced towards the mountain. Following wasn’t easy. At first I could only float. Every wind threatened to take some part of me away. I tried swirling and found it helped keep my particles together. Then I imagined myself filling with helium, and suddenly I was off.

I couldn’t be sure if Carter and Zia were following or not. When you’re a storm, your vision isn’t human. I could vaguely sense what was around me, but what I “saw” was scattered and fuzzy, as if through heavy static.

I headed towards the mountain, which was an almost irresistible beacon to my storm self. It glowed with heat, pressure, and turbulence—everything a little dust devil like me could want.

I followed Amos to a ridge on the side of the mountain, but I returned to human form a little too soon. I tumbled out of the sky and knocked Carter to the ground.

“Ouch,” he groaned.

“Sorry,” I offered, though mostly I was concentrating on not getting sick. My stomach still felt like it was mostly storm.

Zia and Amos stood next to us, peeping into a crevice between two large sandstone boulders. Red light seeped from within and made their faces look devilish.

Zia turned to us. Judging from her expression, what she’d seen wasn’t good. “Only the pyramidion left.”

“The what?” I looked through the crevice, and the view was almost as disorienting as being a storm cloud. The entire mountain was hollowed out, just as Carter had described. The cavern floor was about six hundred meters below us. Fires blazed everywhere, bathing the rock walls in blood-colored light. A giant crimson pyramid dominated the cave, and at its base, masses of demons milled about like a rock concert crowd waiting for the show to begin. High above them, eye-level to us, two magic barges manned by crews of demons floated slowly, ceremoniously towards the pyramid. Suspended in a mesh of ropes between the boats was the only piece of the pyramid not yet installed—a golden capstone to top off the structure.

“They know they’ve won,” Carter guessed. “They’re making a show of it.”

“Yes,” Amos said.

“Well, let’s blow up the boats or something!” I said.

Amos looked at me. “Is that your strategy, honestly?”

His tone made me feel completely stupid. Looking down on the demon army, the enormous pyramid...what had I been thinking? I couldn’t battle this. I was a bloody twelve-year-old.

“We have to try,” Carter said. “Dad’s in there.”

That shook me out of my self-pity. If we were going to die, at least we would do it trying to rescue my father (oh, and North America, too, I suppose).

“Right,” I said. “We fly to those boats. We stop them from placing the capstone—”

“Pyramidion,” Zia corrected.

“Whatever. Then we fly into the pyramid and find Dad.”

“And when Set tries to stop you?” Amos asked.

I glanced at Zia, who was silently warning me not to say more.

“First things first,” I said. “How do we fly to the boats?”

“As a storm,” Amos suggested.

“No!” the rest of us said.

“I will not be part of more chaos magic,” Zia insisted. “It is not natural.”

Amos waved at the spectacle below us. “Tell me this is natural. You have another plan?”

“Birds,” I said, hating myself for even considering it. “I’ll become a kite. Carter can do a falcon.”

“Sadie,” Carter warned, “what if—”

“I have to try.” I looked away before I could lose my resolve. “Zia, it’s been almost ten hours since your pillar of fire, hasn’t it? Still no magic?”