The Son of Sobek (2 page)

I mean I
literally
punched him out of his shoes. He rocketed from the river with a loud
suck-plop!
And the last thing I saw was his bare feet achieving escape velocity as he flew backwards and disappeared from sight.

No, I didn’t feel good about it. Well … maybe a tiny bit good. But I also felt mortified. Even if the guy was a jerk, magicians weren’t supposed to go around sucker-punching kids into orbit with the Fist of Horus.

‘Oh, great.’ I hit myself on the forehead.

I started to wade across the marsh, worried that I’d actually killed the guy. ‘Man, I’m sorry!’ I yelled, hoping he could hear me. ‘Are you –?’

The wave came out of nowhere.

A twenty-foot wall of water slammed into me and pushed me back into the river. I came up spluttering, a horrible taste like fish food in my mouth. I blinked the gunk out of my eyes just in time to see Camper Boy leaping towards me ninja-style, his sword raised.

I lifted my
khopesh
to deflect the blow. I just managed to keep my head from being cleaved in half, but Camper Boy was strong and quick. As I reeled backwards, he struck again and again. Each time, I was able to parry, but I could tell I was outmatched. His blade was lighter and quicker, and – yes, I’ll admit it – he was a better swordsman.

I wanted to explain that I’d made a mistake. I wasn’t really his enemy. But I needed all my concentration just to keep from getting sliced down the middle.

Camper Boy, however, had no trouble talking.

‘Now I get it,’ he said, swinging at my head. ‘You’re some kind of monster.’

CLANG!
I intercepted the strike and staggered back.

‘I’m not a monster,’ I managed.

To beat this guy, I’d have to use more than just a sword. The problem was I didn’t want to hurt him. Despite the fact that he was trying to chop me into a Kane-flavoured barbecue sandwich, I still felt bad for starting the fight.

He swung again, and I had no choice. I used my wand this time, catching his blade in the crook of ivory and channelling a burst of magic straight up his arm. The air between us flashed and crackled. Camper Boy stumbled back. Blue sparks of sorcery popped around him, as if my spell didn’t know quite what to do with him. Who
was
this guy?

‘You said the crocodile was
yours
.’ Camper Boy scowled, anger blazing in his green eyes. ‘You lost your pet, I suppose. Maybe you’re a spirit from the Underworld, come through the Doors of Death?’

Before I could even process that question, he thrust out his free hand. The river reversed course and swept me off my feet.

I managed to get up, but I was getting really tired of drinking swamp water. Meanwhile, Camper Boy charged again, his sword raised for the kill. In desperation, I dropped my wand. I thrust my hand into my backpack, and my fingers closed round the piece of rope.

I threw it and yelled the command word ‘
TAS!
’ –
bind –
just as Camper Boy’s bronze blade cut into my wrist.

My whole arm erupted in agony. My vision tunnelled. Yellow spots danced before my eyes. I dropped my sword and clutched my wrist, gasping for breath, everything forgotten except the excruciating pain.

In the back of my mind, I knew Camper Boy could kill me easily. For some reason he didn’t. A wave of nausea made me double over.

I forced myself to look at the wound. There was a lot of blood, but I remembered something Jaz had told me once in the infirmary at Brooklyn House: cuts usually looked a lot worse than they were. I hoped that was true. I fished a piece of papyrus out of my backpack and pressed it against the wound as a makeshift bandage.

The pain was still horrible, but the nausea became more manageable. My thoughts started to clear, and I wondered why I hadn’t been skewered yet.

Camper Boy was sitting nearby in waist-deep water, looking dejected. My magic rope had wrapped round his sword arm, then lashed his hand to the side of his head. Unable to let go of his sword, he looked like he had a single reindeer antler sprouting next to his ear. He tugged at the rope with his free hand, but of course he couldn’t make any progress.

Finally he just sighed and glared at me. ‘I’m really starting to hate you.’

‘Hate
me
?’ I protested. ‘I’m gushing blood here! And you started all this by calling me a half-blood!’

‘Oh, please.’ Camper Boy rose unsteadily, his sword antenna making him top-heavy. ‘You can’t be mortal. If you were, my sword would’ve passed right through you. If you’re not a spirit or a monster, you’ve got to be a half-blood. A rogue demigod from Kronos’s army, I’d guess.’

Most of what this guy said, I didn’t understand. But one thing sank in.

‘So when you said “half-blood” …’

He stared at me like I was an idiot. ‘I meant
demigod
. Yeah. What did you
think
I meant?’

I tried to process that. I’d heard the term
demigod
before, but it wasn’t an Egyptian concept. Maybe this guy was sensing that I was bound to Horus, that I could channel the god’s power … but why did he describe everything so strangely?

‘What are you?’ I demanded. ‘Part combat magician, part water elementalist? What nome are you with?’

The kid laughed bitterly. ‘Dude, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t hang out with gnomes. Satyrs, sometimes. Even Cyclopes. But not gnomes.’

The blood loss must have been making me dizzy. His words bounced around in my head like lottery balls:
Cyclopes
,
satyrs
,
demigods
,
Kronos.
Earlier he’d mentioned Ares. That was a Greek god, not Egyptian.

I felt like the Duat was opening underneath me, threatening to pull me into the depths.
Greek … not Egyptian.

An idea started forming in my mind. I didn’t like it. In fact, it scared the holy Horus out of me.

Despite all the swamp water I’d swallowed, my throat felt dry. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry about hitting you with that fist spell. It was an accident. But the thing I don’t understand … it should have killed you. It didn’t. That doesn’t make sense.’

‘Don’t sound so disappointed,’ he muttered. ‘But, while we’re on the subject, you should be dead too. Not many people can fight me that well. And my sword should have vaporized your crocodile.’

‘For the last time, it’s not
my
crocodile.’

‘Okay, whatever.’ Camper Boy looked dubious. ‘The point is I stuck that crocodile pretty good, but I just made it angry. Celestial bronze should’ve turned it to dust.’

‘Celestial bronze?’

Our conversation was cut short by a scream from the nearby neighbourhood – the terrified voice of a kid.

My heart did a slow roll. I really was an idiot. I’d forgotten why we were here.

I locked eyes with Camper Boy. ‘We’ve got to stop the crocodile.’

‘Truce,’ he suggested.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘We can continue killing each other after the crocodile is taken care of.’

‘Deal. Now, could you please untie my sword hand from my head? I feel like a freaking unicorn.’

I won’t say we trusted each other, but at least now we had a common cause. He summoned his shoes out of the river – I had no idea how – and put them on. Then he helped me bind my hand with a strip of linen and waited while I swigged down half of my healing potion.

After that, I felt good enough to race after him towards the sound of the screaming.

I thought I was in pretty good shape – what with combat magic practice, hauling heavy artefacts and playing basketball with Khufu and his baboon friends (baboons don’t mess around when it comes to hoops). Nevertheless, I had to struggle to keep up with Camper Boy.

Which reminded me, I was getting tired of calling him that.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked, wheezing as I ran behind him.

He gave me a cautious glance. ‘I’m not sure I should tell you. Names can be dangerous.’

He was right, of course. Names held power. A while back, my sister, Sadie, had learned my
ren
, my secret name, and it still caused me all sorts of anxiety. Even with someone’s common name, a skilled magician could work all kinds of mischief.

‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘I’ll go first. I’m Carter.’

I guess he believed me. The lines around his eyes relaxed a bit.

‘Percy,’ he offered.

That struck me as an unusual name – British, maybe, though the kid spoke and acted very much like an American.

We jumped a rotten log and finally made it out of the marsh. We’d started climbing a grassy slope towards the nearest houses when I realized more than one voice was screaming up there now. Not a good sign.

‘Just to warn you,’ I told Percy, ‘you can’t kill the monster.’

‘Watch me,’ Percy grumbled.

‘No, I mean it’s
immortal.
’

‘I’ve heard that before. I’ve vaporized plenty of
immortals
and sent them back to Tartarus.’

Tartarus? I thought.

Talking to Percy was giving me a serious headache. It reminded me of the time my dad took me to Scotland for one of his Egyptology lectures. I’d tried to talk with some of the locals and I knew they were speaking English, but every other sentence seemed to slip into an alternate language – different words, different pronunciations – and I’d wonder what the heck they were saying. Percy was like that. He and I
almost
spoke the same language – magic, monsters, et cetera. But his vocabulary was completely wrong.

‘No,’ I tried again, halfway up the hill. ‘This monster is a
petsuchos –
a son of Sobek.’

‘Who’s Sobek?’ he asked.

‘Lord of crocodiles. Egyptian god.’

That stopped him in his tracks. He stared at me, and I could swear the air between us turned electric. A voice, very deep in my mind, said:
Shut up. Don’t tell him any more.

Percy glanced at the
khopesh
I’d retrieved from the river, then the wand in my belt. ‘Where are you from? Honestly.’

‘Originally?’ I asked. ‘Los Angeles. Now I live in Brooklyn.’

That didn’t seem to make him feel any better. ‘So this monster, this
pet-suck-o
or whatever –’

‘
Petsuchos
,’ I said. ‘It’s a Greek word, but the monster is Egyptian. It was like the mascot of Sobek’s temple, worshipped as a living god.’

Percy grunted. ‘You sound like Annabeth.’

‘Who?’

‘Nothing. Just skip the history lesson. How do we kill it?’

‘I told you –’

From above came another scream, followed by a loud
CRUNCH
, like the sound made by a metal compactor.

We sprinted to the top of the hill, then hopped the fence of somebody’s backyard and ran into a residential cul-de-sac.

Except for the giant crocodile in the middle of the street, the neighbourhood could have been Anywhere, USA. Ringing the cul-de-sac were half a dozen single-storey homes with well-kept front lawns, economy cars in the driveways, mailboxes at the kerb, flags hanging above the front porches.

Unfortunately, the all-American scene was kind of ruined by the monster, who was busily eating a green Prius hatchback with a bumper sticker that read
MY POODLE IS SMARTER THAN YOUR HONOUR STUDENT
. Maybe the
petsuchos
thought the Toyota was another crocodile, and he was asserting his dominance. Maybe he just didn’t like poodles and/or honour students.

Whatever the case, on dry land the crocodile looked even scarier than he had in the water. He was about forty feet long, as tall as a delivery truck, with a tail so massive and powerful it overturned cars every time it swished. His skin glistened blackish green and gushed water that pooled around his feet. I remembered Sobek once telling me that his divine sweat created the rivers of the world. Yuck. I guessed this monster had the same holy perspiration. Double yuck.

The creature’s eyes glowed with a sickly yellow light. His jagged teeth gleamed white. But the weirdest thing about him was his bling. Round his neck hung an elaborate collar of gold chains and enough precious stones to buy a private island.

The necklace was how I had realized the monster was a
petsuchos
, back at the marsh
.
I’d read that the sacred animal of Sobek wore something just like it back in Egypt, though what the monster was doing in a Long Island neighbourhood, I had no idea.

As Percy and I took in the scene, the crocodile clamped down and bit the green Prius in half, spraying glass and metal and pieces of airbag across the lawns.

As soon as he dropped the wreckage, half a dozen kids appeared from nowhere – apparently they’d been hiding behind some of the other cars – and charged the monster, screaming at the top of their lungs.

I couldn’t believe it. They were just elementary-age kids, armed with nothing but water balloons and Super Soakers. I guessed that they were on summer break and had been cooling off with a water fight when the monster interrupted them.

There were no adults in sight. Maybe they were all at work. Maybe they were inside, passed out from fright.

The kids looked angry rather than scared. They ran round the crocodile, lobbing water balloons that splashed harmlessly against the monster’s hide.

Useless and stupid? Yes. But I couldn’t help admiring their bravery. They were trying their best to face down a monster that had invaded their neighbourhood.

Maybe they saw the crocodile for what it was. Maybe their mortal brains made them think it was an escaped elephant from the zoo, or a crazed FedEx delivery driver with a death wish.

Whatever they saw, they were in danger.

My throat closed up. I thought about my initiates back at Brooklyn House, who were no older than these kids, and my protective ‘big brother’ instincts kicked in. I charged into the street, yelling, ‘Get away from it! Run!’

Then I threw my wand straight at the crocodile’s head. ‘
Sa-mir!
’

The wand hit the croc on the snout, and blue light rippled across his body. All over the monster’s hide, the hieroglyph for
pain
flickered: