Soon we were flying over the East River.
Our ride through the Duat seemed bumpier than usual, like airplane turbulence, except with ghostly wailing and heavy fog. I was glad I’d had a light dinner. My stomach churned.
The boat shuddered as Freak brought us out of the Duat. Below us spread a different nighttime landscape—the lights of Memphis, Tennessee, curving along the banks of the Mississippi River.
On the shoreline rose a glassy black pyramid—an abandoned sports arena that Thoth had appropriated for his home. Bursts of multicolored light peppered the air, reflections rippling across the pyramid. At first I thought Thoth was hosting a fireworks exhibition. Then I realized his pyramid was under attack.
Clambering up the sides was a gruesome assortment of demons—humanoid figures with chicken feet or paws or insect legs. Some had fur. Some had scales or shells like tortoises. Instead of heads, many had weapons or tools sprouting from their necks—hammers, swords, axes, chain saws, even a few screwdrivers.
At least a hundred demons were climbing toward the top, digging their claws into the seams of the glass. Some tried to smash their way through, but wherever they struck, the pyramid flickered with blue light, repelling their attacks. Winged demons swirled through the air, screeching and diving at a small group of defenders.
Thoth stood at the peak. He looked like a scruffy college lab assistant in a white medical coat, jeans, and T-shirt, a day-old beard, and wild Einstein hair—which doesn’t sound very intimidating, but you should see him in combat. He threw glowing hieroglyphs like grenades, causing iridescent explosions all around him. Meanwhile his assistants, a troop of baboons and long-beaked birds called ibises, engaged the enemy. The baboons slammed basketballs into the demons, sending them toppling back down the pyramid. The ibises ran between the monsters’ legs, jabbing their beaks in the most sensitive places they could find.
As we flew closer, I lowered my vision into the Duat. The scene there was even scarier. The demons were connected by red coils of energy that formed one massive translucent serpent. The monster encircled the entire pyramid. At the top, Thoth shone in his ancient form—a giant, white-kilted man with the head of an ibis, hurling bolts of energy at his enemies.
Walt whistled. “How can the mortals not notice a battle like that?”
I wasn’t sure, but I remembered some of the recent disaster news. Huge storms had been causing floods all along the Mississippi River, including here in Memphis. Hundreds of people had been displaced. Magicians might be able to see what was really happening, but any regular mortals still in the city probably thought this was just a major thunderstorm.
“I’ll help Thoth,” I said. “You stay in the boat.”
“No,” Walt said. “Bast said I should use magic only in an emergency. This qualifies.”
I knew Sadie would kill me if I let Walt get hurt. On the other hand, Walt’s tone told me he wasn’t going to back down. He can be almost as stubborn as my sister when he wants to be.
“Fine,” I said. “Hold on.”
A year ago, if I’d faced a fight like this, I would have curled into a ball and tried to hide. Even our battle at the Red Pyramid last Christmas seemed minor compared to dive-bombing an army of demons with no backup except one sick guy and a slightly dysfunctional griffin.
But a lot had happened in the past year. Now this was just another bad day in the life of the Kane family.
Freak came screaming down out of the night sky and banked hard to the right, shooting across the side of the pyramid. He gulped down smaller demons and shredded the larger ones with his buzz-saw wings. Some that survived got run over by our boat.
As Freak began to climb again, Walt and I jumped out, scrambling for footing on the glassy slope. Walt threw an amulet. In a flash of light, a golden sphinx appeared, with a lion’s body and the head of a woman. After our experience at the Dallas Museum, I didn’t much care for sphinxes, but thankfully this one was on our side.
Walt jumped on its back and rode into battle. The sphinx snarled and pounced on a reptilian demon, tearing it to pieces. Other monsters scattered. I couldn’t blame them. A massive gold lion would have been scary enough, but the growling woman’s head made it even more horrifying, with merciless emerald eyes, a shining Egyptian crown, and a fanged mouth with way too much lipstick.
As for me, I summoned my khopesh from the Duat. I called on the power of Horus, and the glowing blue avatar of the war god formed around me. Soon I was encased in a twenty-foot-tall hawk-headed apparition.
I stepped forward. The avatar mirrored my movements. I swiped my sword at the nearest demons, and the avatar’s massive glowing blade plowed them down like bowling pins. Two of the monsters actually had bowling pins for heads, so I guess that was appropriate.