They stayed off the main roads after that. Ren was in the front seat, helping navigate with a crumpled old map, and Luke was conked out in back. As impressive as the cheetah amulet had been, it seemed to take a physical toll on him. After a few more miles, they pulled into a gas station convenience store to get food, gas, and a better map.

When Alex climbed back into the backseat to bring his mom aspirin and water, he was surprised to find her awake again. “You should be resting,” he said.

“Not right now,” she said, patting the seat next to her. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

“What?” said Alex. “Is it your side? Should we try to find a hospital?”

She shook her head and answered softly. “It’s your father,” she said as the old van pulled back out onto the road and headed into the dusk. “You deserve to know.”

As Todtman switched on the headlights, Ren puzzled out the new map, and Luke ate half their food, Alex sat absolutely still and listened to the story of how he came to be.

“We met in Alexandria,” she said. “We were both young and both in love: with each other, and with archaeology.”

Alex tried to picture the monster he’d met as a young student with a head full of pyramids and hieroglyphs. As a grad student in love.

“We were both so passionate about our work,” his mother continued. Amir, your father … He was obsessed with finding the Lost Spells even then. I searched with him — and when you were born, you came, too. But the search took us to dark places, searching every secret and forbidden site we could find. These were cursed places no child should have been. I didn’t realize until it was too late the toll it was taking — on you, on your health.”

Alex couldn’t believe it: an entire childhood of pain. Sickness the doctors could never fix. He looked up at his mom, but she was staring straight ahead now, into the past. “That’s when you left him?” he said, hoping — almost needing — to hear her say yes.

She shook her head. “That’s when I tried,” she said. “But he had discovered something else. The mask. Its power fueled his obsession, turned it into something more like madness. He used the mask’s power to control me, to keep me close. It wasn’t until I discovered something of equal power that I could break free.”

“The scarab,” said Alex, touching the amulet.

His mom nodded. “The scarab. But by then the damage had been done … Honey, I am so sorry. More sorry than you will ever know.”

But she was wrong. He knew exactly. He looked up at her, and this time he caught a glimpse of her blue-gray eyes. For the first time, he truly understood the depth behind them. She’d had a life before him, one with triumphs and mistakes of her own. She hadn’t understood the damage those dark places were doing to him, but she’d paid the price as much as he had. She’d worried and fretted over him every single day since. She’d cared for and eventually saved him — at great cost to her, at great cost to everyone.

My mom didn’t know the danger, he thought, but my dad didn’t care. He couldn’t find the words to say any of this to his mom. Instead, he leaned across the seat and wrapped his arms around her as she wrapped hers around him.

After hours of driving, a low glow lit the horizon: city lights caught in a suffocating net of heavy smog.

Cairo.

“Mom, look,” he whispered. But she was resting again, her eyes closed, her breathing shallow — and this was no longer the Cairo she had told him about. When he was a kid, she’d made the crazy traffic, wild outside bazaars, and winding side alleys sound like a loud vibrant adventure. No more. This was a haunted city now, the death-shrouded capital of a country in crisis.

He felt the fear building inside him as they reached the edge of the city and drove toward. The Order’s headquarters on the other side of the capital. Alex stared out at the dark streets as the unflappable German drove steadily onward. Alex could already see an open fire burning a few blocks away, flickering flames illuminating a plume of rising smoke. Most of the streetlights were burned out or broken. Todtman slowed down to steer around a car abandoned in the middle of the road. As soon as they cleared it, a pack of stray dogs met them on the other side, barking fiercely. Todtman stepped on the gas, and the mangy mongrels began to chase them, an interchangeable mass of matted fur and snapping teeth.

They lost the dogs and passed the fire, but soon the four-lane road narrowed. Stacked sandbags funneled them into a single lane at the center. Todtman slowed the minivan again, and they all eyed the checkpoint nervously. But there were no armed men this time. No men at all.

It creeped Alex out: Eight million people lived in this city — or used to — and so far they hadn’t seen a single soul.

The van rolled slowly through the gap and was suddenly buffeted with bumps and barks and scratches. The dogs had chased them down. Alex looked to his right and saw a large black mutt just below him. It leapt up, scratching at the window. Specks of foamy drool dotted the safety glass as the dog snapped off a quick, hoarse bark.

Todtman cleared the opening and floored it.

The dogs disappeared again into the smoky night.

“Man,” said Luke. “Those were some hungry dogs.”

“Not hungry,” said Ren. “Rabid.”

Alex nervously eyed the gobs of virulent drool on the other side of his window as the hot wind outside stretched and dried them.

As they drove deeper into the city, houses and apartment buildings shouldered up from the sidewalks on either side, and Alex was relieved to see the occasional sliver of light slipping through closed blinds.

“Where is everybody?” said Ren.

“There’s someone!” said Luke, leaning between the seats and pointing. Alex turned and saw a shadowy figure making slow progress across the street. Todtman took his foot of the gas and slowed down as they approached. But as the minivan rolled slowly forward, its headlights hit the figure — and lit its tattered linen.

The mummy swung around and gaped at them, faintly glowing reddish orbs where its eyes should have been. Releasing a ragged, wordless scream, it charged straight at the van’s dented hood.

“Gott im Himmel,” mumbled Todtman as he stomped the gas and swung the wheel.

The minivan sideswiped the charging mummy as it swerved past — one lumbering old heap striking another — sending the tightly wrapped corpse bouncing up onto the curb.

Alex swung his head around and saw the creature already pushing itself to its feet and setting off after them. Just behind him, he saw the crazed dogs appear at a full run one streetlight back.

There was a loud screech of metal on metal as Todtman rammed the minivan between two more abandoned cars, one in each lane. Alex saw his mom wake up and look around, and he climbed one row back to sit next to her.

“It might be better to travel at night,” she said to him. “When Cairo seems too dangerous even for The Order.”

Alex nodded and craned his neck to check the time on the dashboard clock: 11:58 p.m. The problem, of course, was that a city dangerous for The Order was infinitely more dangerous for everyone else. As the clock flicked to 11:59, Ren called out from the front seat: “What is that up there?”

Alex looked where she was pointing and saw a shifting shape on the roof of a low-slung industrial complex, outlined against the moon. At first, he couldn’t tell what it was. The image kept shifting. Pieces tore off it and flitted away as other fragments dove in to rejoin it. But as they passed directly underneath, he got a better look.

The shape was that of a large man.

And the pieces tearing free and diving back looked like oversized wasps, purple-black in the moonlight. They grew larger and more defined the farther they flew, but up close they were small. Small and shifting and numerous: hundreds, maybe thousands, of shadowy swarming shapes.

His mom spoke beside him. Her words were so soft that he barely heard them over the rumble of the van. But he didn’t really need to. He was thinking the same thing.

“Death Walker.”

Todtman punched the gas and accelerated out of sight of the grim figure, but the image of swarming evil stayed in Alex’s mind as the old van wound deeper into the city’s desolate warehouse district.