Valley of Kings Read online

  “This way! Leave the bags!” said Todtman, his cane already clacking down the sidewalk.

  Alex looked over at the people blocking the opening in the wall. They were a tangled mass of intertwined arms and legs, but he saw other arms now, other hands. The Order’s thugs were already pushing their way through.

  And then a flash of crimson light lit the Egyptian dusk and people began to fall to the ground.

  “Over here!” called Todtman, cutting through a double strand of police tape with a swipe of his cane and turning down a side alley.

  They’d come to Egypt to battle the Death Walkers and to find the Lost Spells and, hopefully, Alex’s mom. But once again, they were the ones being hunted.

  Alex hustled down the alley alongside Ren. Todtman was half a limp ahead, and Luke had fallen back to serve as rear guard.

  Ren gave Alex a quick look: Here we go again.

  Her own amulet, an ibis she’d been given deep under that London cemetery, bounced at her neck. Unlike him, she hadn’t reached for it once during the encounter. He knew she still didn’t trust it — or the magic that powered it — but he wished she would. Because it could provide the one thing they needed most: answers.

  As the sky above them darkened, the alleyway behind them lit up a brilliant red. A scream split the air like a knife.

  “I can’t outrun them,” said Todtman, grimacing with every rushed step on his injured leg as they turned onto a broader service alley behind a row of apartment buildings.

  “I can help,” said Ren, rushing up to Todtman. At not quite four-and-a-half feet tall, she was essentially crutch-sized.

  But Todtman had a different strategy in mind. He lifted his cane and pointed toward a small garage, its roll-down metal door halfway open. “We’ll take cover in there,” he said.

  “There?” said Ren skeptically.

  Alex looked at the slice of deep darkness inside, but it wasn’t the possibility of spiders or scorpions or last week’s trash inside that worried him. It was the possibility of trapping themselves.

  Suddenly, he heard voices in the side alley they’d just come from. Their pursuers had picked up their trail again.

  “Hurry!” said Todtman, once again limping over without his cane to avoid its noisy beat.

  He ducked stiffly under the roll-gate, and the others filed in after him like a line of ducklings. Alex crouched down in the gray light of the service alley and straightened up into darkness. His first whiff of the air inside told him he’d been right about the garbage.

  “We need to close this,” said Todtman.

  Luke was already leaning into it. “Stuck,” he grunted. “Stuck bad.”

  “Step back, please,” said Todtman. “Alex?”

  Alex reached up, wrapped his left hand around his amulet, and felt the electric thrill of its power surge through his system. A few feet away, Todtman did the same.

  “Go,” whispered Todtman.

  Alex lifted his right hand, spread his fingers, and then pushed them slowly toward the ground. One side of the door was farther down. The other side is jammed, thought Alex, and he concentrated on that one. The old gate groaned in response but did little more than shift and shiver.

  “More,” said Todtman.

  Alex pushed harder. Todtman must have, too, because suddenly the gate snapped shut with a loud metallic rumble.

  Way too loud! thought Alex.

  If The Order had already made the turn into the service alley, then the friends had just closed the lid on their own coffin.

  Everyone held their breath.

  Alex risked a few whispered words: “Ren, use your amulet. Can you see anything?”

  No response.

  In the darkness of their pungent sardine can, he couldn’t tell if she was ignoring him or already holding her mysterious ibis, trying to puzzle out whatever image it gave her.

  He heard footsteps. Voices.

  The sounds came through the gate so clearly — conducted by the metal — that Alex briefly wondered if they could hear his own hammering heartbeat on the other side.

  “It sounds like they knocked something over,” said one of the thugs. “Check the ground.”

  Alex tried to count the footsteps. How many of them were there? Then a new voice stopped him cold.

  “The German will try to cloud your mind.” It was a woman’s voice, dry and scratchy, as desolate as a desert wind. “Do not look him in the eyes. Shoot him first.”

  Guns. The Order thugs had only carried knives in London. They don’t fear the law here, he realized. We’re on their turf, and they fear nothing.

  Alex heard a faint sound coming from somewhere behind the garage, like raindrops or soft footsteps.

  “Wait!” It was a man’s voice, directly outside.

  Alex stiffened. He pictured the metal gate flying up and bullets filling the darkness. His amulet could do amazing things, but he had no illusions that it could stop bullets. A sense of hopelessness filled him. A sudden fear that his mom would never know what happened to him — and he would never know what happened to her.

  Another sound, farther off, like a single loud hand-clap.

  “That door!” said the same man. “Someone just closed it!”

  Footsteps again, this time hard and heading away.

  “This way,” hissed Todtman. Weak light flooded in, a gray rectangle appearing in the wall as the doctor opened a side door. “Quickly,” he whispered. “It won’t take them long to realize their mistake.”

  There was commotion behind them as the door that had just been closed was broken down. Wood splintered, and Alex turned just in time to see the last figure in line glide silently into the house: a very thin woman wearing a pale white mask — the skull of a lioness. A shiver went through him. Peshwar.

  As she disappeared inside, the doorway lit up red. The Order had followed the wrong trail and someone else had just paid the price.

  Todtman led them to the end of the alley. He didn’t risk using his cane until they made a quick turn onto a side street. Farther from the big buildings of the main avenues, the city changed. Houses were smaller and closer together; everything was concrete or brick in shades of gray or brown or tan. Mangy-looking stray dogs picked at scattered garbage piles. One of the stray dogs started following them, and not in a friendly way. Its fur was matted and stained, white foam dripping ominously from its mouth.

  Here and there, tantalizing scents of strong spices and simmering food wafted out of open windows. But so too did loud, angry arguments. Emergency sirens echoed down the narrow streets.

  The twilight settled around them like a gray shawl, the first streetlights just now blinking on. To Alex, this was scarier than total darkness. At least you could hide in darkness. “What happened back there?” he said.

  “Someone picked the wrong time to take out the trash,” said Ren.

  “They almost added us to the pile,” said Luke. “They had guns and maybe like a laser or something. They were going to go full-on Call of Duty on us!”

  “That wasn’t a laser,” said Alex.

  Luke looked at him and then glanced down at Alex’s scarab beetle amulet as it reflected the soft glow of a streetlight. Luke made the connection. “All right, bug boy, a magic laser — a maser. I don’t want to get hit by it either way —”

  There was a low growl right behind them. They looked back. The mangy dog was closer now. As it crossed under the streetlight, the white foam around its mouth seemed to glow. Todtman led them away, onto another side street.

  “Do you think we lost Peshwar?” Alex asked.

  “We will not lose her until her hunt is over,” he said. “One way or the other.”

  A few blocks later, Todtman came to a stop outside an abandoned three-story building. Its windows were boarded up or painted over, and the front door was layered with notices from the city: CONDEMNED.

  “Uh, guys?” said Ren. The dog had appeared again behind them, circling toward Ren: the smallest target. Alex instinctivel
y stepped between her and the filthy hound. It was close now, one quick lunge and snap away. He didn’t want to hurt the thing but … His hand slid up toward his scarab as he looked back toward Todtman, standing by the door.

  “How do we get in?” said Alex. “There’s not even a doorbell.”

  “Not as such,” said Todtman, reaching up and wrapping his hand around his amulet.

  Almost immediately, Alex heard movement inside.

  A voice came through the doorway, and the stray dog cocked its head. Memories of some long-lost home, Alex thought, and his hand fell away from his amulet. Poor thing.

  Sirens wailed in the distance; somewhere, a gunshot.

  The door opened, and the rabid dog slunk away.

  The door swung shut behind them with a thick THUNK. The man who’d slammed it exhaled, clearly relieved to have the chaos of Cairo shut out once more.

  “Hello, I’m Jinn,” he said, a thick Egyptian accent decorating his seamless English. “Of course, that’s not my real name. And this is my little urban Shangri-la.” He gestured at the large, dimly lit room. “I steal the electricity.”

  Alex looked around. The place seemed to be from another world — or at least another time. He wasn’t surprised to see all the ancient Egyptian touches — this was a colleague of Todtman’s after all, and they were in Egypt. He’d just never seen these kinds of ancient treasures look so … lived in. The leaves of a houseplant spilled out of an alabaster bowl that had to be at least two thousand years old. A square of tattered, hieroglyph-covered cloth hung on the wall like a poster for a rock band.

  “Nice stuff,” said Luke. “Any way we could get our things back?”

  Todtman chuckled softly. “Our bags have been taken and sold by now. We can buy new supplies tomorrow.”

  “Let me show you to your rooms upstairs,” said Jinn.

  “Great,” said Luke. “I can put all of my nonexistent stuff away.”

  There was a scuttling sound above them. Alex, Ren, and Luke all froze and looked up at the ceiling.

  “Are there other people here?” said Ren, her shoulders tensing.

  “Yes,” said Jinn.

  Ren relaxed a little.

  “But I’m pretty sure those were rats.”

  Ren lay awake, wondering how a building could be abandoned and inhabited at the same time. Sure, she understood why it might be helpful for a building to look abandoned. You could avoid drawing attention to your huge heap of ancient artifacts, for example. You could study things that Jinn had gently described as “outside of university interests.”

  But wouldn’t you want to fix things up a bit? This place had rats scurrying around under the floorboards. Actual R-A-T-S rats.

  Weak light filtered in the window to her little room, along with ominous sounds: screams and bangs. A siren wailed by on the street below, its flashing light painting Ren’s wall red-blue-red-blue. It receded into the distance, leaving her nerves vibrating like a strummed guitar. “This building is protected,” Jinn had said without much conviction. “But let me know if it isn’t.”

  Ren shivered in the warm night and pulled her thin sheet in tight. It wasn’t the sirens that had her so spooked, or even the spirits. It was their cause. Two words formed in her head, clear and horrible: Death Walker. She was sure there was one here. She’d seen the way they plagued cities: scorpions in New York, blood rain in London, and now voices in Cairo.

  The Death Walkers were beings evil enough that they knew they would fail the weighing of the heart ceremony — a test to get into the afterlife — and powerful enough to do something about it. They had clung to the edge of the afterlife, in between life and death, waiting for an opportunity to escape. An opportunity Alex’s mom had given them.

  Now they were free and they were getting more powerful. How could this little group of friends hiding in a run-down house stop something so strong? Ren glanced over at the ibis amulet on her night table. Todtman and Alex were confident with their amulets. She was not.

  The pale stone ibis shone softly, the image of an elegant, long-necked bird. She took it off to sleep, because she didn’t want it in her head when she dreamed. She wondered what would happen if she took hold of it now. The first time she’d used it, it had given her clear images, clear answers. But since then, it seemed to get harder to use the more she tried.

  She’d just have to try harder.

  Back in school, they’d called her Plus Ten Ren for the sheer volume of extra credit she plowed through. She wasn’t going to give up here. Ren threw her sheet to the side, took a deep breath, and reached over and plucked the ibis from the nightstand. She formed a question in her mind: What are we dealing with? Then rephrased on the fly: What are we up against? As soon as her hand closed around the ancient amulet and the electric energy began coursing through her veins, images flooded her mind.

  An old warehouse, dark and empty; the sort of generic disposable cell phone Todtman had given each of them; a swirl of wind-whipped sand on a rocky desert landscape … The rapid-fire barrage knocked all words, and all sense, straight out of her head. She let go with a gasp, the amulet thunking down on the nightstand. What had she seen? What did it mean?

  She looked at the little ibis, glowing softly in the dim light. She wanted to leave it there but forced herself to reach for it once more. “Try harder,” she whispered. She formed a new plan. She’d try moving some small object, or maybe opening the door — things the others could do easily with their amulets. But as soon as she grasped the ibis, another barrage of images stopped her cold: the swirl of wind-whipped sand again; a steep, rocky slope; the blazing sun. She felt like the amulet was shouting at her in a language she didn’t understand.

  What did any of those things have to do with Cairo?

  She felt like a failure, and she hated that. She got the same sick feeling she did when she couldn’t understand some key concept in class, when she was too confused to move on but too embarrassed to ask the teacher to repeat it.

  She’d felt that way with negative numbers. They just hadn’t seemed fair to her: How can a number be negative? And she had nearly failed that test. Her father — her brilliant father — had tried to hide his disappointment when he found out, but she’d cried anyway. Now she felt a fresh tear forming in the corner of her eye and wiped it away quickly.

  She dropped the ibis back on the table and flopped over in bed, turning her back on the thing. Forget magic amulets, she told herself. The test it was giving her wasn’t one she wanted to take — not now and honestly not ever. What she needed was a sleeping pill. They had a big day tomorrow. They were going to the Egyptian Museum to meet with Todtman’s Supreme Council contact. It had been the first museum to shut down once the Walkers had risen and the mummies had started moving. Todtman had said the man had information about the Lost Spells, and his hushed and hopeful tone had hinted at even more. Those were the kinds of things you needed energy for. She forced her eyes shut.

  And that’s when she heard a scratching at the door.

  Her eyes snapped back open. She waited, listened. There it was again: two more scratches — small, sharp claws on old wood — and then the telltale head bump.

  Ren threw back the threadbare sheet and got up. The wood felt oily and half-rotten under her bare feet.

  She reached the door, paused for just a second, and then slowly cracked it open. The creature slipped inside, a strand of its ragged linen wrappings catching momentarily on the door frame. Ren’s breath caught just slightly — it was a sight she might never fully get used to.

  And then … The last place she’d seen this mummified cat was 3,500 miles away. Ren had covered the distance by plane — but how had the cat done it? It definitely wasn’t on those bony little paws.

  “Mmrack,” it said softly.

  “Hi, Pai,” said Ren.

  She wasn’t ready to let most of the magic and mystery she encountered into her carefully ordered world, but this strange cat she was happy to let in.

  There wer
e rats here, after all.

  Alex was quickly learning that the first step in hunting down a Death Walker or lost Egyptian antiquities was a stop at the closest museum. They skirted the edge of Tahrir Square and then hustled across the courtyard. It wasn’t safe to be out in the open for long, even so early in the morning. This was The Order’s home turf.

  Still, Alex stared in wonder. Palm trees swayed overhead and the mighty Egyptian Museum loomed before them.

  His mom had told him stories of this place the way other moms told stories of Winnie the Pooh, but its massive redbrick walls looked even more striking than he’d imagined. Large marble plaques along the front listed the dynasties of ancient Egypt. And inside, he knew, was an unmatched collection of the art and artifacts of that lost world.

  “Yes, it’s beautiful,” said Todtman, clacking up behind him. “Now hurry!”

  As they started up the steps to the grand archway at the entrance, the massive front door swung open like a bank vault. A stocky man in a rumpled suit appeared inside. “Quickly,” he said.

  Alex looked behind him, checking to see if they were being followed. But then he realized that this man’s body language — blocking the door as if trying to keep a dog inside — indicated that he was less concerned about what might get into the museum than what might slip out.

  The little group left the bright light and rising heat of Egypt’s present and was ushered into the cool, shadowy realm of Egypt’s past.

  “I am Mr. Hesaan, and on behalf of the Supreme Council of Antiquities I welcome you!” said the man, stepping forward to shake Todtman’s hand. “Especially you, my old friend.”

  But the welcome was cut short as the big door swung shut and a chorus of dry, skittering whispers rose up and faded like a swirl of dead leaves.

  “Yes,” said the man, diligently turning a series of large locks with a ring of keys. “This place is haunted now. Quite haunted. The whole city is, but especially” — he clicked the last lock shut and turned back toward the massive hall — “this place.”