The friends hustled down the dim corridor, deeper into the earth. Ren shot another look over her shoulder, knowing the gentle curve of the tunnel would hide any pursuers until they were right on top of them — and nearly ran into a heavy door. The tunnel in front of her had ended.
“Think we reached the end of the cellblock,” said Luke.
Ren looked over at him and something occurred to her. He could have taken off running toward daylight at any time — definitely when that sheut appeared — but he was still here. She grudgingly gave him one point and turned back toward the door. It was bigger than the others and with no barred window. If this length of tunnel really was just a cellblock, was another one next? Would they find Alex’s mom and Todtman on the other side — or something much worse?
But Alex was already gripping his scarab. He reached out with the amulet’s energy, probing the inside of the lock, pushing against it. The heavy lock turned.
Luke nodded and lowered himself into a wide athletic stance, as if there might be a charging running back on the other side of the door.
Ren considered the question. Was she ready? Were they? She took one more quick look back over her shoulder — and now she was ready. “Yeek!” she squeaked. Because barreling down the sloped tunnel was a menacing menagerie of enemies.
There were half a dozen of them, some living, some living dead.
The first thing Alex noticed was the mummy. Its ragged wrapping betrayed its formidable age, and though it dragged one leg slightly, it was still moving at a full run.
Three guards were on either side of the sprinting corpse, two of them already reaching for the pistols at their waists. Uh-oh, thought Alex as he tugged the heavy door open and Ren and Luke ducked under his arm and through.
Alex took one last glimpse and saw two more figures behind the others. The first was a man clad all in crimson: bloodred robes and a ruby red headdress. Was he a wizard? A priest? A raspberry? Gliding silently beside him was a creature of inky blackness. This one was more than a mere shadow. Alex could already feel its deathly chill.
He quickly ducked inside the door and pulled it closed as the first bullets thunked and pinged into the other side.
He reached for his amulet. The ancient energy surged through him, mixing potently with his fear and adrenaline. He found a weak point in the lock — a small gear deep inside — and snapped it off. “That ought to hold ’em!” he crowed.
“I doubt it,” muttered Ren.
But with his hearing clearing and a thick door blocking their pursuers, Alex was more optimistic.
Ahead of them was another cellblock, and a familiar face pushed outward between the bars of the nearest cell. He recognized the froggy features immediately — the sloping chin, the bulging eyes.
“TODTMAN!” screamed Ren.
“Hallo, Ren!” he called in his crisp German accent. But even as he said it, the smile fell from his bar-pinched face. “Look out behind you!”
The friends turned too late. The gliding apparition had come straight through the thick door and was swarming over Luke.
“Aah, get it off!” he shouted.
Ren grabbed her amulet and felt the ibis’s edges press sharply into her palm. She felt its power surge through her, a prickling, electric rush. Then she raised her right hand in a fist and opened it suddenly. “Go!” she shouted.
Once again, a blast of concentrated moonlight brightened the dim tunnel. But this spirit was different: bigger and darker and more dangerous. It didn’t vanish. It steamed. Gray vapor hissed upward from the inky edges of its frame. Its head spun around, and two glowing eyes focused on Ren.
“Uh-oh,” she mumbled.
The ghostly presence released Luke, who fell to the floor clutching his arms to his chest and shivering visibly. Then it rushed toward Ren. She heard the click behind her, the creaking arc of a door unaccustomed to opening, but she didn’t dare look back.
Instead, she took a deep breath and opened her fist once more. “Go!”
FWOOP!
The thing shimmered and steamed in the second blast of light, and for just a moment it seemed to stumble in its stepless movement. But the moment passed and it resumed its swift attack. As Ren bumbled backward, the toe of her left boot caught the heel of the right.
“Guh,” she said as she went down in a heap.
The spirit shot forward and loomed over her. She felt its lifeless chill.
And then — Oh no! — a second dark silhouette appeared in front of her, slicing in from the side. I’m done for! she thought. Her last thought was of her family, who she missed more than anything. But that’s when she realized what she was seeing.
It wasn’t the front of another spirit. It was the back of Dr. Ernst Todtman in his trademark black suit. In his first act as a free man, he had stepped in front of the onrushing menace. The evil presence enveloped him, as it had Luke, and for a moment he seemed to be completely eclipsed by it.
Then it broke apart like a wave hitting a rock. For a moment, it hung shredded in the air around him, like a flock of scattered crows. Then it pulled back and began to re-form, the dark patches reconnecting like liquid pooling in the air.
Pushing it all back was the silver chain and falcon amulet hanging loosely from Todtman’s left hand.
“Ready, Ren!” he called.
She gathered herself and took hold of her own amulet. The spirit had almost entirely re-formed now. But as the last few wisps rejoined its hanging frame, Todtman swung his left hand, and the falcon amulet sliced the apparition’s head clean off. “Now!” called Todtman.
The spirit’s head hung in the air like a black balloon; its glowing eyes blinked twice in seeming disbelief. Ren aimed her blast right between them.
FWOOP!
The floating orb hissed and steamed and then Ren heard the faintest pop! and it was gone. The rest of its body fell to the floor and faded into nothingness.
For a few long seconds, everyone was silent. All Ren could hear was her own labored breathing and her own pounding heart. As she began to calm down, she managed a few words: “What was that? Another sheut?”
“No,” said Todtman. “The taxonomy of the Egyptian afterlife is long and complex … ” Ren smiled despite her frayed nerves: Such a Todtman thing to say. “But that was older, more dangerous. A dark khu, perhaps.”
“Felt like a walk-in freezer,” said Luke, rising to his feet, still hugging himself and shivering slightly. “But it’s good to see you again, Dr. T.”
Todtman did a quick double take. Ren wasn’t sure if it was because no one had ever called him that before, or because last he’d heard, Luke was a traitor and a spy.
“He’s okay, I think,” said Ren, offering the firmest endorsement she felt ready for. “Anyway, we let him out. And he’s right: It is nice to see you.”
“Yeah,” agreed Alex. “I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again.” He looked around the little group. “Any of you.”
Todtman was not an overly emotional man, but he flashed a big, froggy smile now. “Well, then,” he said, glancing back toward his cell. “There is someone else here I am sure you will be glad to see.”
“Mom?” Alex called, rushing past Todtman into the cell.
Todtman grabbed his shoulder. “Be careful. She is badly hurt.”
Badly hurt? Alex shook Todtman off and darted inside.
“Alex, honey, is that you?” he heard.
And there she was, holding her side and just now rising from a cot. “Hi, hun,” she said, her voice soft and hesitant.
Holding her side … Oh no.
“Are you okay, Mom?” said Alex. “Are you hurt?”
The dim light from the hallway filtered in through the door, and the little lamp shone weakly from the floor, but her face remained in shadow. Alex stepped forward, his arms already open to hug her. Over the last few weeks, he’d lost her and found her and lost her again, and he wouldn’t let it happen anymore.
She put her arm out to block him. “Careful,” she warned.
Alex stopped short. “You’re hurt.”
“It’s my ribs,” she said. “Mostly.”
Alex took the news like a kick to his own ribs.
“What happened?” asked Ren from the door.
Dr. Bauer managed a quick, mischievous grin. “What, you think you’re the only ones who can try to escape? After they caught me, they threw me back into Todtman’s cell — so that he could take care of me.”
“I tried to tell them, I am a doctor of Egyptology,” said the German ruefully. “I begged them to get her a real doctor.”
Not knowing what else to do, Alex reached out and gently took his mom’s hand. She leaned down to wrap him in an awkward one-armed hug.
Ever the pragmatist, Todtman cut the emotional reunion short. “We have to go now,” he said sharply.
Alex’s mom straightened up and wiped a tear from her eye. “I can walk, but I’ll just slow you down.”
Todtman gestured down at his own bad leg, crippled by a scorpion sting in their battle with the first Death Walker in New York: “That is my job.”
For a moment, the two old friends shared the smallest of smiles. Alex was watching them intently and smiled when his mom did, a sort of sympathetic reflex. He’d grown up sharing the same small apartment with her, their schedules wrapping around each other like vines. Early morning drop-offs on the way to work, doctor’s visits scheduled for half-days. They knew each other’s moods and expressions the way ship captains know the tides.
The moment was broken by another sound echoing down the tunnel. It was the cry of a mummy, the ragged, rattling product of a time-shriveled tongue. A second hoarse cry rose up to answer the first. Their pursuers had broken through and were on the way.
The hobbled crew hurried down the hallway as best they could. Dr. Bauer had one arm pressed against her injured left side, and Alex, doing his best to support her, pressed against her right. Their pursuers were so close that they could see their dim shadows playing at the edge of the curved tunnel, a nightmarish mix of stretched and distorted shapes, arms and heads and gun barrels.
“The tunnel branches off up here!” called Ren, who’d rushed ahead of the others.
Alex rounded the corner and saw the two passages, like gaping mouths in the earth. Ren was standing with her eyes closed, focused on the ibis amulet clutched in her hand, but her feet were tapping nervously. The amulet’s main power was information. It gave her images to interpret: scenes from the past, present, or future, and she was trying to find out which way led to freedom.
As Alex watched, her eyes flew open.
“I can’t get anything clear — it takes time to interpret —”
But their time was up. Behind them, the twisty shadows and angry shouts were drawing closer.
“If we’re going to guess, I’d go left,” said his mom. “To the sun.”
It was a cryptic comment, but her son understood immediately. In ancient Egypt, everything had been oriented around the north-flowing Nile. The maps were drawn with south at the top instead of the bottom, making the eastern bank on the left and the western bank on the right. For the Egyptians, the eastern bank represented the sunlit land of the living. The Order still followed the old ways, which meant the friends needed to go left to leave these tombs and find the sun.
Todtman seemed to understand, too. “Good thinking. Alex, buy us some time,” he called. “They must not see which tunnel we take.”
Alex nodded. As the others hurried to the left, he grasped the scarab. His pulse pounded; his eyes focused. The scarab was a symbol of rebirth, but rebirth took many forms in Egypt. Alex extended his right hand and whispered: “The wind that comes before the rain.” Instantly, a whipping column of wind shot back up the tunnel. Confused shouts rose up, only to be drowned out by the hurricane howl. The shadows were beaten back, disappearing from view.
Alex gave it everything he had. When it was over, he stood gulping down air, the bright, hot cinder of a headache just beginning to burn in his skull. He turned to see the others disappearing into the shadows fifteen yards down the tunnel.
Except for one. As Alex turned to hustle after them, he was surprised to find Luke waiting beside him. “Let’s go, cuz,” he said. “That won’t hold ’em for long.”
The boys rushed up the tunnel. The sounds of argument and confusion grew behind them as the hunting party debated directions. Soon, the voices faded.
Silent and fast, the boys raced toward the others. The way was harder here, but they didn’t mind at all.
It was harder because this tunnel had begun sloping ever so slightly upward.