I thought about the fiery man last night in Phoenix—how he’d fried one of his servants into a grease spot. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to meet him face-to-face again.
“Bast,” I said, “if you’re a goddess, can’t you just snap your fingers and disintegrate those guys? Or wave your hand and teleport us away?”
“Wouldn’t that be nice? But my power in this host is limited.”
“You mean Muffin?” Sadie asked. “But you’re not a cat anymore.”
“She’s still my host, Sadie, my anchor on this side of the Duat—and a very imperfect one. Your call for help allowed me to assume human shape, but that alone takes a great deal of power. Besides, even when I’m in a powerful host, Set’s magic is stronger than mine.”
“Could you please say something I actually understand?” I pleaded.
“Carter, we don’t have time for a full discussion on gods and hosts and the limits of magic! We have to get you to safety.”
Bast floored the accelerator and shot up the middle of the bridge. The four carriers with the sedan raced after us, blurring the air as they moved, but no cars swerved to avoid them. No one panicked or even looked at them.
“How can people not see them?” I said. “Don’t they notice four copper men in skirts running up the bridge with a weird black box?”
Bast shrugged. “Cats can hear many sounds you can’t. Some animals see things in the ultraviolet spectrum that are invisible to humans. Magic is similar. Did you notice the mansion when you first arrived?”
“Well...no.”
“And you are born to magic,” Bast said. “Imagine how hard it would be for a regular mortal.”
“Born to magic?” I remembered what Amos had said about our family being in the House of Life for a long time. “If magic, like, runs in the family, why haven’t I ever been able to do it before?”
Bast smiled in the mirror. “Your sister understands.”
Sadie’s ears turned red. “No, I don’t! I still can’t believe you’re a goddess. All these years, you’ve been eating crunchy treats, sleeping on my head—”
“I made a deal with your father,” Bast said. “He let me remain in the world as long as I assumed a minor form, a normal housecat, so I could protect and watch over you. It was the least I could do after—” She stopped abruptly.
A horrible thought occurred to me. My stomach fluttered, and it had nothing to do with how fast we were going. “After our mom’s death?” I guessed.
Bast stared straight ahead out the windshield.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” I said. “Dad and Mom did some kind of magic ritual at Cleopatra’s Needle. Something went wrong. Our mom died and...and they released you?”
“That’s not important right now,” Bast said. “The point is I agreed to look after Sadie. And I will.”
She was hiding something. I was sure of it, but her tone made it clear that the subject was closed.
“If you gods are so powerful and helpful,” I said, “why does the House of Life forbid magicians from summoning you?”
Bast swerved into the fast lane. “Magicians are paranoid. Your best hope is to stay with me. We’ll get as far away as possible from New York. Then we’ll get help and challenge Set.”
“What help?” Sadie asked.
Bast raised an eyebrow. “Why, we’ll summon more gods, of course.”
Chapter 10. Bast Goes Green
[Sadie, stop it! Yeah, I’m getting to that part.] Sorry, she keeps trying to distract me by setting fire to my—never mind. Where was I?
We barreled off the Williamsburg Bridge into Manhattan and headed north on Clinton Street.
“They’re still following,” Sadie warned.
Sure enough, the carriers were only a block behind us, weaving around cars and trampling over sidewalk displays of tourist junk.
“We’ll buy some time.” Bast growled deep in her throat—a sound so low and powerful it made my teeth buzz. She yanked the wheel and swerved right onto East Houston.
I looked back. Just as the carriers turned the corner, a horde of cats materialized all around them. Some jumped from windows. Some ran from the sidewalks and alleys. Some crawled from the storm drains. All of them converged on the carriers in a wave of fur and claws—climbing up their copper legs, scratching their backs, clinging to their faces, and weighing down the sedan box. The carriers stumbled, dropping the box. They began blindly swatting at the cats. Two cars swerved to avoid the animals and collided, blocking the entire street, and the carriers went down under the mass of angry felines. We turned onto the FDR Drive, and the scene disappeared from view.
“Nice,” I admitted.
“It won’t hold them long,” Bast said. “Now—Central Park!”
Bast ditched the Lexus at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“We’ll run from here,” she said. “It’s just behind the museum.”
When she said run, she meant it. Sadie and I had to sprint to keep up, and Bast wasn’t even breaking a sweat. She didn’t stop for little things like hot dog stands or parked cars. Anything under ten feet tall she leaped over with ease, leaving us to scramble around the obstacles as best we could.
We ran into the park on the East Drive. As soon as we turned north, the obelisk loomed above us. A little over seventy feet tall, it looked like an exact copy of the needle in London. It was tucked away on a grassy hill, so it actually felt isolated, which is hard to achieve in the center of New York. There was no one around except a couple of joggers farther down the path. I could hear the traffic behind us on Fifth Avenue, but even that seemed far away.
We stopped at the obelisk’s base. Bast sniffed the air as if smelling for trouble. Once I was standing still, I realized just how cold I was. The sun was directly overhead, but the wind ripped right through my borrowed linen clothes.
“I wish I’d grabbed something warmer,” I muttered. “A wool coat would be nice.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” Bast said, scanning the horizon. “You’re dressed for magic.”
Sadie shivered. “We have to freeze to be magical?”
“Magicians avoid animal products,” Bast said absently. “Fur, leather, wool, any of that. The residual life aura can interfere with spells.”
“My boots seem all right,” Sadie noted.
“Leather,” Bast said with distaste. “You may have a higher tolerance, so a bit of leather won’t bother your magic. I don’t know. But linen clothing is always best, or cotton—plant material. At any rate, Sadie, I think we’re clear for the moment. There’s a window of auspicious time starting right now, at eleven thirty, but it won’t last long. Get started.”
Sadie blinked. “Me? Why me? You’re the goddess!”
“I’m not good at portals,” Bast said. “Cats are protectors. Just control your emotions. Panic or fear will kill a spell. We have to get out of here before Set summons the other gods to his cause.”
I frowned. “You mean Set’s got, like, other evil gods on speed dial?”
Bast glanced nervously toward the trees. “Evil and good may not be the best way to think of it, Carter. As a magician, you must think about chaos and order. Those are the two forces that control the universe. Set is all about chaos.”
“But what about the other gods Dad released?” I persisted. “Aren’t they good guys? Isis, Osiris, Horus, Nephthys—where are they?”
Bast fixed her eyes on me. “That’s a good question, Carter.”
A Siamese cat broke through the bushes and ran up to Bast. They looked at each other for a moment. Then the Siamese dashed away.
“The carriers are close,” Bast announced. “And something else...something much stronger, closing in from the east. I think the carriers’ master has grown impatient.”
My heart did a flip. “Set is coming?”
“No,” Bast said. “Perhaps a minion. Or an ally. My cats are having trouble describing what they’re seeing, and I don’t want to find out. Sadie, now is the time. Just concentrate on opening a gateway to the Duat. I’ll keep off the attackers. Combat magic is my specialty.”
“Like what you did in the mansion?” I asked.
Bast showed her pointed teeth. “No, that was just combat.”
The woods rustled, and the carriers emerged. Their sedan chair’s shroud had been shredded by cat claws. The carriers themselves were scratched and dented. One walked with a limp, his leg bent backward at the knee. Another had a car fender wrapped around his neck.
The four metal men carefully set down their sedan chair. They looked at us and drew golden metal clubs from their belts.
“Sadie, get to work,” Bast ordered. “Carter, you’re welcome to help me.”
The cat goddess unsheathed her knives. Her body began to glow with a green hue. An aura surrounded her, growing larger, like a bubble of energy, and lifting her off the ground. The aura took shape until Bast was encased in a holographic projection about four times her normal size. It was an image of the goddess in her ancient form—a twenty-foot-tall woman with the head of a cat. Floating in midair in the center of the hologram, Bast stepped forward. The giant cat goddess moved with her. It didn’t seem possible that a see-through image could have substance, but its foot shook the ground. Bast raised her hand. The glowing green warrior did the same, unsheathing claws as long and sharp as rapiers. Bast swiped the sidewalk in front of her and shredded the pavement to concrete ribbons. She turned and smiled at me. The giant cat’s head did likewise, baring horrible fangs that could’ve bitten me in half.
“This,” Bast said, “is combat magic.”
At first I was too stunned to do anything but watch as Bast launched her green war machine into the middle of the carriers.
She slashed one carrier to pieces with a single swipe, then stepped on another and flattened him into a metal pancake. The other two carriers attacked her holographic legs, but their metal clubs bounced harmlessly off the ghostly light with showers of sparks.
Meanwhile Sadie stood in front of the obelisk with her arms raised, shouting: “Open, you stupid piece of rock!”
Finally I drew my sword. My hands were shaking. I didn’t want to charge into battle, but I felt like I should help. And if I had to fight, I figured having a twenty-foot-tall glowing cat warrior on my side was the way to do it. “Sadie, I—I’m going to help Bast. Keep trying!”
“I am!”
I ran forward just as Bast sliced the other two carriers apart like loaves of bread. With relief, I thought: Well, that’s it.
Then all four carriers began to re-form. The flat one peeled himself off the pavement. The sliced ones’ pieces clicked together like magnets, and the carriers stood up good as new.
“Carter, help me hack them apart!” Bast called. “They need to be in smaller pieces!”
I tried to stay out of Bast’s way as she sliced and stomped. Then as soon as she disabled a carrier, I went to work chopping its remains into smaller pieces. They seemed more like Play-Doh than metal, because my blade mashed them up pretty easily.