Jake Ransom and the Howling Sphinx (10 page)

Jake lifted the remains of his shredded pack like a shield.

The scout grinned, its jaws gaping wider, teeth glinting.

It stepped toward him.

Suddenly a warbling trill rose all around.

The raptor froze—so did Jake.

The blue daffodil to his right exploded like a geyser. But rather than plant roots, a skinny shape leaped out of the sand. A cloak billowed, showering sand over Jake's head. From under the cloak, a small man or a boy appeared, landing on his feet, bearing aloft a long spear. Down the slope on both sides of Jake, eruptions of sand produced more cloaked figures.

The first one shook back the cowl of his cloak. Most of his head remained hidden beneath a hooded leather mask that covered head, eyes, and nose. The hunter was equipped with a set of goggles fitted to a periscope—a scope camouflaged to look like a daffodil. He spit out a breathing tube that ran up the stem of the scope. The periscope must allow the hunter both to see and breathe while buried.

With a war cry, the small hunter lunged at the raptor with his spear.

Others hurled what looked like ripe tomatoes at the rest of the pack. Where the fruits hit, they detonated with loud
bang
s. A few exploded into flashes of fire. The pack of raptors—already skittish after the ambush—leaped in
surprise and fled.

The cloaked hunter and the lead raptor were left, circling each other. The fighters looked evenly matched. The hunter would thrust out with his spear, but the raptor would dodge and snap, catching only air.

As they continued their deadly dance, the other hunters chased after the pack, yelling, lobbing more firebombs.

Below, the small hunter continued his solo battle with the lone remaining raptor. Had the ambushers trapped this one beast, separating it from the pack on purpose?

By now, Jake's friends must have realized he was missing. Or maybe they heard the commotion and bomb blasts.

Kady yelled from a distance. “Jake! Where are you?”

Jake feared hollering back, afraid it would distract the hunter from his deadly battle with the raptor. Only yards away, human and beast circled, mixing feints and attacks, parries and blows.

Then the hunter made a misstep. He danced back, and his heel hit a loose rock—the same one Jake had tripped on earlier. Losing his poised balance, he fell hard onto his backside. The butt of his spear jarred deep into the loose sand of the dune.

The raptor lunged, jaws wide.

Jake slid down the slope and screamed with all his might.

The raptor's attack faltered. The hunter retreated, abandoning
his spear. Jaws snapped after the escaping prey and caught the hunter's cloak. With a toss of its head, the raptor dragged its prize closer. The beast bared the hooked claw it used for gutting prey.

Jake couldn't reach the trapped hunter in time, but he spotted something orange-red in the sand. One of the firebombs. It must have slipped from an ambusher's sack. He dove for it, snatched the bomb, shoulder rolled, and flung the gourd as he came up.

It struck near the tail of the raptor, shooting a blast of fire.

The monster screeched, bolting straight up in the air. The cloak ripped out of the raptor's jaws, and the hunter was flung away. The beast landed, neck stretched low, hissing in fury. Its tail smoked. Flames still flickered up from the sand.

The raptor looked around—then backed away a step, then another. It must have realized it had been abandoned by its pack. Hurt and spooked, it flung its muscular tail, swung around, and raced across the sand. Reaching the top of the dune, it bounded over the ridge and vanished.

Jake turned to the hunter, who was still dazed from hitting the sand so hard. He crossed to help the guy up, but the hunter sprang to his feet on his own.

“You fool!” he shouted.

Jake stopped in his tracks, shocked. The words felt like a slap in the face. He stared over at those goggled eyes.

“How dare you interrupt a royal hunt?”

Royal hunt?

Jake bristled at the hunter's attitude. He had just saved this guy's life. A sharp edge entered his voice. “I was only trying to—”

“Silence! Who gave you permission to speak?”

About this time, the other hunters returned. They flowed over the ridge and surrounded Jake. Several dropped to a knee, facing the small hunter. They bowed their foreheads to their fists. The posture was vaguely familiar to Jake, but his brain was too frazzled.

The small hunter raised an arm to encompass half of the party. “Run down this one's companions. Shackle them.”

“But we didn't do anything!” Jake blurted out.

The hunter took a pose of amused disdain. He eyed Jake up and down. “From your strange appearance and garb, you are all clearly escaped slaves from some outlying village. So perhaps this hunt has not been a total waste after all. Your lives now belong to me.”

Jake took a threatening step forward, but a pair of spears crossed before him, blocking him.

“Put him in shackles! The rest of the hunt is ruined for the day.”

Jake was driven to his knees.

The leader reached up and tore off his leather hood and goggles, revealing his face for the first time. Black
hair came tumbling down. Violet eyes stared haughtily down at Jake. Lips smirked at his surprise. The leader was much younger than Jake had thought. No older than Jake himself. But that wasn't the biggest shock.

“You're … you're a girl!”

Under straight bangs, her eyes were elaborately painted. Blue and crimson lines—possibly tattoos—extended from the outer corner of each eye to her hairline. Jake had seen paintings of such facial decorations.

On the walls of Egyptian tombs.

“I am more than a
girl
,” she said. “I am the daughter of the Glory of Ra, he who walks the world like a giant: the pharaoh Neferhotep, the glorious ruler of all of Deshret.”

A grandiose wave of her arm encompassed the entire world, along with the sun, moon, and stars. And she clearly believed it.

“You should be proud.” She swung away with a sweep of her shredded cloak. “You are now slave to Princess Nefertiti.”

The mushroom-shaped pinnacle was even farther away than Jake had thought. In the desert, distances proved to be deceptive. He and the others were marched slowly, their ankles bound in rough bronze shackles. Their hands were weighted down in front of them by cuffs.

While they were being chained, the princess had momentarily been attracted to their magnetite wristbands. “What pretty slave bracelets …”

Nefertiti had examined them all, and had even tried removing Kady's. Jake's sister looked ready to slap off the girl's tattoos.

Of course, the bands couldn't be removed.

The princess gave up with a shrug. “We can always cut them off,” she decided.

Jake feared she wasn't talking about the bands but about their hands.

As they were marched toward the towering rock, Kady
wore a sour expression. “How come whenever we land here, we end up prisoners?”

Jake didn't bother answering as he shuffled in his shackles. He had more important questions in his head.
Where exactly are we? And why did we end up here instead of in Calypsos?

He guessed it had to do with the door they used to get here. Last time, the gold Mayan pyramid at the British Museum had dropped them into the shadow of the great Temple of Kukulkan in the valley of Calypsos. This time they'd been transported from an Egyptian tomb exhibit to the middle of a desert.

He stared over at the arrogant princess. According to Jake's history books, Nefertiti had been a queen of Egypt during the Eighteenth Dynasty. Though not of noble birth, she was so beautiful that the pharaoh married her. Over time, she grew to be one of the most powerful women in Egyptian history. Then at the age of thirty, she suddenly vanished. Archaeologists had been puzzling over this mystery for ages. Had she died? Had she fallen out of favor with the pharaoh? Where had she gone?

Jake believed here was the answer. Queen Nefertiti and some of her people must have been transported to Pangaea, like all the other Lost Tribes. But these people hadn't landed near the valley of Calypsos. They had ended up in this desert. He studied his captors. They must be the direct descendants of that lost group. Perhaps Princess
Nefertiti was even from the queen's own bloodline.

As they crossed the desert, Nefertiti turned her attention to Bach'uuk. She fingered his brow, pinched his ear, and pulled on his hair, as if he were some prized pig she was judging.

She finally concluded, “What a strange creature. He'll be quite the amusement at the palace.”

“He's not a creature!” Marika piped up. “He's just as much a person as you or me.”

This earned an arched eyebrow from Nefertiti. “Perhaps as much a person as
you
, but certainly not
me
.”

Jake realized that these people must not have met a member of the Neanderthal tribe; but from the princess's total lack of surprise at seeing Jake's party, he figured that other foreigners must have crossed through occasionally or been dropped into this harsh land. Clearly those lost newcomers were never accepted as equals.

Nefertiti confirmed this. “I will find what village you slaves escaped from and make sure your masters are punished for letting you go.”

“We're not escaped slaves,” Marika said. “We're not slaves at all.”

Pindor tried to wave her to be quiet by clinking his chains. He clearly did not want to upset their captors. Or maybe it was something else. Jake's Roman friend had not taken his eyes off Nefertiti since first seeing her. He didn't even seem to mind being shackled, going all moon-eyed.

Marika looked to Jake for help.

Jake spoke firmly, knowing the princess's arrogance could only be met with strength. “My friend speaks the truth. We're not from any village here, but from another land. Far from here.”

“From Calypsos,” Marika added.

The name caused Nefertiti to trip a step. She swung to face them, stopping the entire party with a wave of her arm. “Did you say Calypsos?”

Marika seemed taken aback by the vehemence of her response. Under the steely-eyed gaze of the princess, she merely nodded and nudged Pindor, who also bobbed his head.

Jake didn't bother explaining where he and Kady had come from.

Nefertiti stalked back over to them. “You say you're from beyond our borders. No one has come through the Great Wind since before my great-great grandmother's time. When we were still living in the great city of Ankh Tawy.” She pointed toward the strange, blurry horizon. “Those outlanders came to my ancestors and claimed that they, too, were from a cursed place named Calypsos.”

Marika found her voice again. “We
are
from Calypsos. And it's not cursed.”

“Not cursed.” This earned a harsh laugh. Nefertiti's face darkened. “It was those same outlanders who disturbed the sleeping Sphinx of Ankh Tawy. The monster
woke and howled to the skies, casting the Great Wind down upon us. It blew us like pebbles into these blasted lands, exiling us forever from our true home.”

Jake didn't understand what she was talking about, but it didn't sound good for them. He was right.

“If you are from Calypsos, then you are evil. And such evil must be destroyed.” Nefertiti turned on a heel and strode away.

Jake and the others were prodded with spears at their backs. They were driven faster, harder. He stared around at the other Egyptians. Before, there had been mostly amusement on their faces. Now fear glinted, and outright hostility.

“Great,” Kady said, noting the same. “You all couldn't just keep your mouths shut.”

By the time they reached the rocky pinnacle, the blistering sun had climbed directly overhead. Exhausted and worn-out, Jake swore that the temperature dropped fifty degrees as he stepped into the thin shadow of the peak. He glanced back the way they'd come. Sunlight scorched the desert. He imagined that hell was probably cooler.

The hike had taken over an hour. They'd been given water, and Jake was allowed to share his sunblock spray—until Princess Nefertiti snatched it away, sniffing at it with suspicion.

Despite the sunblock, he still felt like a burned French fry.

At the rock, an unusual sight greeted them. Two muscular black men, both wearing bronze slave collars, flanked a winding staircase that climbed the peak. Each held a leash attached to a calf-sized dinosaur. The four-legged beasts with tall, spiny fins sprouting from their backs like Chinese fans looked like Komodo dragons.

Dimetrodons
, Jake realized, the carnivorous sail-backed dinosaurs from the Permian period.

Their handlers tugged the leashes as the pair hissed and slashed with their claws at the approaching group.

Nefertiti strode between the beasts as if they weren't there. One of the slaves cast her a withering glance as she passed, but this was also missed.