The Staff of Serapis Page 3

  Annabeth tried to relax.

  She began to discern patterns in the air: currents flowing between the layers of reality, vapour trails of magic streaming off cars and buildings. The site of the train wreck glowed green. Sadie had a golden aura with misty plumes spreading behind her like wings.

  Where the dog monster once lay, the ground smouldered like live coals. Crimson tendrils snaked away from the site, following the direction in which the monster had fled.

  Annabeth focused on the derelict apartment building in the distance, and her heartbeat doubled. The tower glowed red from the inside – light seeping through the boarded-up windows, shooting through cracks in the crumbling walls. Dark clouds swirled overhead, and more tendrils of red energy flowed towards the building from all over the landscape, as if being drawn into the vortex.

  The scene reminded Annabeth of Charybdis, the whirlpool-inhaling monster she’d once encountered in the Sea of Monsters. It wasn’t a happy memory.

  ‘That apartment building,’ she said. ‘It’s attracting red light from all over the place.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Sadie said. ‘In Egyptian magic, red is bad. It means evil and chaos.’

  ‘So that’s where the dog monster is heading,’ Annabeth guessed. ‘To merge with the other piece of the sceptre –’

  ‘And to find its master, I’d wager.’

  Annabeth knew she should get up. They had to hurry. But, looking at the swirling layers of magic, she was afraid to move.

  She’d spent her whole life learning about the Mist – the magical boundary that separated the mortal world from the world of Greek monsters and gods. But she’d never thought of the Mist as an actual curtain.

  What had Sadie called it – the Duat?

  Annabeth wondered if the Mist and the Duat were related, or maybe even the same thing. The number of veils she could see was overwhelming – like a tapestry folded in on itself a hundred times.

  She didn’t trust herself to stand. Panic, and you’ll drown.

  Sadie offered her hand. Her eyes were full of sympathy. ‘Look, I know it’s a lot, but nothing has changed. You’re still the same tough-skinned, rucksack-wielding demigod you’ve always been. And now you have a lovely dagger as well.’

  Annabeth felt the blood rise to her face. Normally she would’ve been the one giving the pep talk.

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, of course.’ She accepted Sadie’s hand. ‘Let’s go find a god.’

  A chain-link fence ringed the building, but they squeezed through a gap and picked their way across a field of spear grass and broken concrete.

  The enchanted gloop on Annabeth’s eyes seemed to be wearing off. The world no longer looked so multilayered and kaleidoscopic, but that was fine with her. She didn’t need special vision to know the tower was full of bad magic.

  Up close, the red glow in the windows was even more radiant. The plywood rattled. The brick walls groaned. Hieroglyphic birds and stick figures formed in the air and floated inside. Even the graffiti seemed to vibrate on the walls, as if the symbols were trying to come alive.

  Whatever was inside the building, its power tugged at Annabeth too, the same way Crabby had on the train.

  She gripped her new bronze dagger, realizing it was too small and too short to provide much offensive power. But that’s why Annabeth liked daggers: they kept her focused. A child of Athena should never rely on a blade if she could use her wits instead. Intelligence won wars, not brute force.

  Unfortunately, Annabeth’s wits weren’t working very well at the moment.

  ‘Wish I knew what we were dealing with,’ she muttered as they crept towards the building. ‘I like to do research first – arm myself with knowledge.’

  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 ledg
e 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.

  Unfortunately, the beast now had all three heads – wolf, lion and dog. Its long spiral shell glowed with Greek and hieroglyphic inscriptions. Completely ignoring the flying debris, the monster clambered inside on its six forelegs, then leaped into the air. The storm carried it upward, spiralling through the chaos.

  ‘It’s heading for its master,’ Annabeth said. ‘We have to stop it.’

  ‘Lovely,’ Sadie grumbled. ‘This is going to drain me.’

  ‘What will?’

  Sadie raised her staff. ‘N’dah.’

  A golden hieroglyph blazed in the air above them:

  And suddenly they were surrounded in a sphere of light.

  Annabeth’s spine tingled. She’d been encased in a protective bubble like this once before, when she, Percy and Grover had used magic pearls to escape the Underworld. The experience had been … claustrophobic.

  ‘This will shield us from the storm?’ she asked.

  ‘Hopefully.’ Sadie’s face was now beaded with sweat. ‘Come on.’

  She led the way up the steps.

  Immediately, their shield was put to the test. A flying kitchen counter would have decapitated them, but it shattered against Sadie’s force field. Chunks of marble swirled harmlessly around them.

  ‘Brilliant,’ Sadie said. ‘Now, hold the staff while I turn into a bird.’

  ‘Wait. What?’

  Sadie rolled her eyes. ‘We’re thinking on our feet, remember? I’ll fly up there and stop the staff monster. You try to distract that god … whoever he is. Get his attention.’

  ‘Fine, but I’m no magician. I can’t maintain a spell.’

  ‘The shield will hold for a few minutes, as long as you use the staff.’

  ‘But what about you? If you’re not inside the shield –’

  ‘I have an idea. It might even work.’

  Sadie fished something out of her pack – a small animal figurine. She curled her fingers round it, then began to change form.

  Annabeth had seen people turn into animals before, but it never got easier to watch. Sadie shrank to a tenth of her size. Her nose elongated into a beak. Her hair and clothes and backpack melted into a sleek coat of feathers. She became a small bird of prey – a kite, maybe – her blue eyes now brilliant gold. With the little figurine still clutched in her talons, Sadie spread her wings and launched herself into the storm.

  Annabeth winced as a cluster of bricks ploughed into her friend – but somehow the debris went straight through without turning Sadie into feather puree. Sadie’s form just shimmered as if she were travelling under a deep layer of water.

  Sadie was in the Duat, Annabeth realized – flying on a different level of reality.

  The idea made Annabeth’s mind heat up with possibilities. If a demigod could learn to pass through walls like that, run straight through monsters …

  But that was a conversation for another time. Right now she needed to move. She charged up the steps and into the maelstrom. Metal bars and copper pipes clanged against her force field. The golden sphere flashed a little more dimly each time it deflected debris.

  She raised Sadie’s staff in one hand and her new dagger in the other. In the magical torrent, the Celestial bronze blade guttered like a dying torch.

  ‘Hey!’ she yelled at ledge far above. ‘Mr God Person!’

  No response. Her voice probably couldn’t carry over the storm.

  The shell of the building started to groan. Mortar trickled from the walls and swirled into the mix like candy-floss tufts.

  Sadie the hawk was still alive, flying towards the three-headed monster as it spiralled upward. The beast was about halfway to the top now, flailing its legs and glowing ever more brightly, as if soaking up the power of the tornado.

  Annabeth was running out of time.

  She reached into her memory, sifting through old myths, the most obscure tales Chiron had ever told her at camp. When she was younger, she’d been like a sponge, soaking up every fact and name.

  The three-headed staff. The god of Alexandria, Egypt.

  The god’s name came to her. At least, she hoped she was right.

  One of the first lessons she’d learned as a demigod: Names have power. You never said the name of a god or monster unless you were prepared to draw its attention.

  Annabeth took a deep breath. She shouted at the top of her lungs: ‘SERAPIS!’

  The storm slowed. Huge sections of pipe hovered in midair. Clouds of bricks and timber froze and hung suspended.

  Becalmed in the middle of the tornado, the three-headed monster tried to stand. Sadie swooped overhead, opened her talons and dropped her figurine, which instantly grew into a full-sized camel.

  The shaggy dromedary slammed into the monster’s back. Both creatures tumbled out of the air and crashed to the floor in a tangle of limbs and heads. The staff monster continued to struggle, but the camel lay on top of it with its legs splayed, bleating and spitting and basically going limp like a thousand-pound toddler throwing a tantrum.

  From the thirtieth-floor ledge, a man’s voice boomed: ‘WHO DARES INTERRUPT MY TRIUMPHAL RISE?’

  ‘I do!’ yelled Annabeth. ‘Come down and face me!’

  She didn’t like taking credit for other people’s camels, but she wanted to keep the god focused on her so Sadie could do … whatever Sadie decided to do. The young magician clearly had some good tricks up her sleeve.

  The god Serapis leaped from his ledge. He plummeted thirty storeys and landed on his feet in the middle of the ground floor, an easy dagger throw away from Annabeth.

  Not that she was tempted to attack.

  Serapis stood fifteen feet tall. He wore only a pair of swimming trunks in a Hawaiian floral pattern. His body rippled with muscles. His bronze skin was covered in shimmering tattoos of hieroglyphs, Greek letters and other languages Annabeth didn’t recognize.

  His face was framed with long, nappy hair like Rastafarian dreadlocks. A curly Greek beard grew down to his collarbone. His eyes were sea green – so much like Percy’s that Annabeth got goosebumps.

  Normally she didn’t like hairy bearded dudes, but she had to admit this god was attractive in an older, wild-surfer kind of way.

  His headgear, however, ruined the look. What Annabeth had taken for a stovepipe hat was actually a cylindrical wicker basket embroidered with images of pansies.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘Is that a flowerpot on your head?’

  Serapis raised his bushy brown eyebrows. He patted his head as if he’d forgotten about the basket. A few wheat seeds spilled from the top. ‘That’s a modius, silly girl. It’s one of my holy symbols! The grain basket represents the Underworld, which I control.’

  ‘Uh, you do?’

  ‘Of course!’ Serapis glowered. ‘Or I did, and soon I will again. But who are you to criticize my fashion choices? A Greek demigod, by the smell of you, carrying a Celestial bronze weapon and an Egyptian staff from the House of Life. Which are you – hero or magician?’

  Annabeth’s hands trembled. Flowerpot hat or no, Serapis radiated power. Standing so near him, Annabeth felt watery inside, as if her heart, her stomach and her courage were all melting.

  Get a hold of yourself, she thought. You’ve met plenty of gods before.

  But Serapis was different. His presence felt fundamentally wrong – as if simply by being here he was pulling Annabeth’s world inside out.

  Twenty feet behind the god, Sadie the bird landed and changed back to human form. She gestured to Annabeth: finger to lips (shh), then rolled her hand (keep him talking). She began rooting quietly throu
gh her bag.

  Annabeth had no idea what her friend was planning, but she forced herself to meet Serapis’s eyes. ‘Who says I’m not both – magician and demigod? Now, explain why you’re here!’

  Serapis’s face darkened. Then, to Annabeth’s surprise, he threw back his head and laughed, spilling more grain from his modius. ‘I see! Trying to impress me, eh? You think yourself worthy of being my high priestess?’

  Annabeth gulped. There was only one answer to a question like that. ‘Of course I’m worthy! Why, I was once the magna mater of Athena’s cult! But are you worthy of my service?’

  ‘HA!’ Serapis grinned. ‘A big mother of Athena’s cult, eh? Let’s see how tough you are.’

  He flicked his hand. A bathtub flew out of the air, straight at Annabeth’s force field. The porcelain burst into shrapnel against the golden sphere, but Sadie’s staff became so hot that Annabeth had to drop it. The white wood burned to ashes.

  Great, she thought. Two minutes, and I’ve already ruined Sadie’s staff.

  Her protective shield was gone. She faced a fifteen-foot-tall god with only her usual weapons – a tiny dagger and a lot of attitude.

  To Annabeth’s left, the three-headed monster was still struggling to get out from under the camel, but the camel was heavy, stubborn and fabulously uncoordinated. Every time the monster tried to push it off, the camel farted with gusto and splayed its legs even further.

  Meanwhile, Sadie had taken a piece of chalk from her bag. She scribbled furiously on the concrete floor behind Serapis, perhaps writing a nice epitaph to commemorate their imminent death.

  Annabeth recalled a quote her friend Frank had once shared with her – something from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.

  When weak, act strong.

  Annabeth stood straight and laughed in Serapis’s face. ‘Throw things at me all you want, Lord Serapis. I don’t even need a staff to defend myself. My powers are too great! Or perhaps you want to stop wasting my time and tell me how I may serve you, assuming I agree to become your new high priestess.’

  The god’s face glowed with outrage.

  Annabeth was sure he would drop the entire whirlwind of debris on her, and there was no way she’d be able to stop it. She considered throwing her dagger at the god’s eye, the way her friend Rachel had once distracted the Titan Kronos, but Annabeth didn’t trust her aim.