Before I could finish, my vision went black.
I snapped awake, back in my own body at the Washington Monument. “Leave now!”
Carter and Bast jumped in surprise. They were already awake, packing their things.
“What’s wrong?” Carter asked.
I told them about my vision while I frantically searched my pockets. Nothing. I checked my magician’s bag. Tucked inside with my wand and rod were three plane tickets and a sealed envelope.
Bast examined the tickets. “Excellent! First class serves salmon.”
“But what about Set’s minion?” I asked.
Carter glanced out the window. His eyes widened. “Yeah, um...it’s here.”
C A R T E R
21. Aunt Kitty to the Rescue
I’D SEEN PICTURES OF THE CREATURE BEFORE, but pictures didn’t come close to capturing how horrible it was in real life.
“The Set animal,” Bast said, confirming my fear.
Far below, the creature prowled the base of the monument, le
aving tracks in the new-fallen snow. I had trouble judging its size, but it must’ve been at least as big as a horse, with legs just as long. It had an unnaturally lean, muscled body with shiny reddish gray fur. You could almost mistake it for a huge greyhound—except for the tail and the head. The tail was reptilian, forked at the end with triangular points, like squid tentacles. It lashed around as if it had a mind of its own.
The creature’s head was the strangest part. Its oversize ears stuck straight up like rabbit ears, but they were shaped more like ice cream cones, curled inward and wider on the top than the bottom. They could rotate almost three hundred and sixty degrees, so they could hear anything. The creature’s snout was long and curved like an anteater’s—only anteaters don’t have razor-sharp teeth.
“Its eyes are glowing,” I said. “That can’t be good.”
“How can you see that far?” Sadie demanded.
She stood next to me, squinting at the tiny figure in the snow, and I realized she had a point. The animal was at least five hundred feet below us. How was I able to see its eyes?
“You still have the sight of the falcon,” Bast guessed. “And you’re right, Carter. The glowing eyes mean the creature has caught our scent.”
I looked at her and almost jumped out of my skin. Her hair was sticking straight up all over her head, like she’d stuck her finger in a light socket.
“Um, Bast?” I asked.
“What?”
Sadie and I exchanged looks. She mouthed the word scared. Then I remembered how Muffin’s tail would always poof up when something startled her.
“Nothing,” I said, though if the Set animal was so dangerous that it gave our goddess light-socket hair, that had to be a very bad sign. “How do we get out of here?”
“You don’t understand,” Bast said. “The Set animal is the perfect hunter. If it has our scent, there is no stopping it.”
“Why is it called the ‘Set animal’?” Sadie asked nervously. “Doesn’t it have a name?”
“If it did,” Bast said, “you would not want to speak it. It is merely known as the Set animal—the Red Lord’s symbolic creature. It shares his strength, cunning...and his evil nature.”
“Lovely,” Sadie said.
The animal sniffed at the monument and recoiled, snarling.
“It doesn’t seem to like the obelisk,” I noticed.