The Staff of Serapis(9)

Sadie grunted. ‘You sound like my brother. Tell me, how often do monsters give you the luxury of Googling them before they attack?’

‘Never,’ Annabeth admitted.

‘Well, there you are. Carter – he would love to spend hours in the library, reading up on every hostile demon we might face, highlighting the important bits and making flash cards for me to study. Sadly, when demons attack, they don’t give us any warning, and they rarely bother to identify themselves.’

‘So what’s your standard operating procedure?’

‘Forge ahead,’ Sadie said. ‘Think on my feet. When necessary, blast enemies into teeny-tiny bits.’

‘Great. You’d fit right in with my friends.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment. That door, you think?’

A set of steps led to a basement entrance. A single two-by-four was nailed across the doorway in a half-hearted attempt to keep out trespassers, but the door itself was slightly ajar.

Annabeth was about to suggest scouting the perimeter. She didn’t trust such an easy way in, but Sadie didn’t wait. The young magician trotted down the steps and slipped inside.

Annabeth’s only choice was to follow.

As it turned out, if they’d come through any other door, they would have died.

The whole interior of the building was a cavernous shell, thirty storeys tall, swirling with a maelstrom of bricks, pipes, boards and other debris, along with glowing Greek symbols, hieroglyphs and red neon tufts of energy. The scene was both terrifying and beautiful – as if a tornado had been caught, illuminated from within and put on permanent display.

Because they’d entered on the basement level, Sadie and Annabeth were protected in a shallow stairwell – a kind of trench in the concrete. If they’d walked into the storm on ground level, they would’ve been ripped to shreds.

As Annabeth watched, a twisted steel girder flew overhead at race-car speed. Dozens of bricks sped by like a school of fish. A fiery red hieroglyph slammed into a flying sheet of plywood, and the wood ignited like tissue paper.

‘Up there,’ Sadie whispered.

She pointed to the top of the building, where part of the thirtieth floor was still intact – a crumbling ledge jutting out into the void. It was hard to see through the swirling rubble and red haze, but Annabeth could discern a bulky humanoid shape standing at the precipice, his arms spread as if welcoming the storm.

‘What’s he doing?’ Sadie murmured.

Annabeth flinched as a helix of copper pipes spun a few inches over her head. She stared into the debris and began noticing patterns like she had with the Duat: a swirl of boards and nails coming together to form a platform frame, a cluster of bricks assembling like Lego to make an arch.

‘He’s building something,’ she realized.

‘Building what, a disaster?’ Sadie asked. ‘This place reminds me of the Realm of Chaos. And, believe me, that was not my favourite holiday spot.’

Annabeth glanced over. She wondered if Chaos meant the same thing for Egyptians as it did for Greeks. Annabeth had had her own close call with Chaos, and if Sadie had been there, too … well, the magician must be even tougher than she seemed.

‘The storm isn’t completely random,’ Annabeth said. ‘See there? And there? Bits of material are coming together, forming some kind of structure inside the building.’

Sadie frowned. ‘Looks like bricks in a blender to me.’

Annabeth wasn’t sure how to explain it, but she’d studied architecture and engineering long enough to recognize the details. Copper piping was reconnecting like arteries and veins in a circulatory system. Sections of old walls were piecing themselves together to form a new jigsaw puzzle. Every so often, more bricks or girders peeled off the outer walls to join the tornado.

‘He’s cannibalizing the building,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how long the outer walls will last.’

Sadie swore under her breath. ‘Please tell me he’s not building a pyramid. Anything but that.’

Annabeth wondered why an Egyptian magician would hate pyramids, but she shook her head. ‘I’d guess it’s some kind of conical tower. There’s only one way to know for sure.’

‘Ask the builder.’ Sadie gazed up at the remnant of the thirtieth floor.

The man on the ledge hadn’t moved, but Annabeth could swear he’d grown larger. Red light swirled around him. In silhouette, he looked like he was wearing a tall angular top hat à la Abe Lincoln.

Sadie shouldered her backpack. ‘So, if that’s our mystery god, where’s the –’

Right on cue, a three-part howl cut through the din. At the opposite end of the building, a set of metal doors burst open and the crab monster loped inside.