The Red Pyramid -1 Read Online Free PDF Page A

and mouthed the word Run! before the coffin sank into the floor, as if the ground had turned to water.

    "Dad!" I screamed.

    Sadie threw her stone, but it sailed harmlessly through the fiery man's head.

    He turned, and for one terrible moment, his face appeared in the flames. What I saw made no sense. It was as if someone had superimposed two different faces on top of each other--one almost human, with pale skin, cruel, angular features, and glowing red eyes, the other like an animal with dark fur and sharp fangs. Worse than a dog or a wolf or a lion--some animal I'd never seen before. Those red eyes stared at me, and I knew I was going to die.

    Behind me, heavy footsteps echoed on the marble floor of the Great Court. Voices were barking orders. The security guards, maybe the police--but they'd never get here in time.

    The fiery man lunged at us. A few inches from my face, something shoved him backward. The air sparked with electricity. The amulet around my neck grew uncomfortably hot.

    The fiery man hissed, regarding me more carefully. "So...it's you."

    The building shook again. At the opposite end of the room, part of the wall exploded in a brilliant flash of light. Two people stepped through the gap--the man and the girl we'd seen at the Needle, their robes swirling around them. Both of them held staffs.

    The fiery man snarled. He looked at me one last time and said, "Soon, boy."

    Then the entire room erupted in flames. A blast of heat sucked all the air of out my lungs and I crumpled to the floor.

    The last thing I remember, the man with the forked beard and the girl in blue were standing over me. I heard the security guards running and shouting, getting closer. The girl crouched over me and drew a long curved knife from her belt.

    "We must act quickly," she told the man.

    "Not yet," he said with some reluctance. His thick accent sounded French. "We must be sure before we destroy them."

    I closed my eyes and drifted into unconsciousness.

S A D I E

3. Imprisoned with My Cat
    [Give me the bloody mic.]

    Hullo. Sadie here. My brother's a rubbish storyteller. Sorry about that. But now you've got me, so all is well.

    Let's see. The explosion. Rosetta Stone in a billion pieces. Fiery evil bloke. Dad boxed in a coffin. Creepy Frenchman and Arab girl with the knife. Us passing out. Right.

    So when I woke up, the police were rushing about as you might expect. They separated me from my brother. I didn't really mind that part. He's a pain anyway. But they locked me in the curator's office for ages. And yes, they used our bicycle chain to do it. Cretins.

    I was shattered, of course. I'd just been knocked out by a fiery whatever-it-was. I'd watched my dad get packed in a sarcophagus and shot through the floor. I tried to tell the police about all that, but did they care? No.

    Worst of all: I had a lingering chill, as if someone was pushing ice-cold needles into the back of my neck. It had started when I looked at those blue glowing words Dad had drawn on the Rosetta Stone and I knew what they meant. A family disease, perhaps? Can knowledge of boring Egyptian stuff be hereditary? With my luck.

    Long after my gum had gone stale, a policewoman finally retrieved me from the curator's office.
    She asked me no questions. She just trundled me into a police car and took me home. Even then, I wasn't allowed to explain to Gran and Gramps. The policewoman just tossed me into my room

    and I waited. And waited.

    I don't like waiting.

    I paced the floor. My room was nothing posh, just an attic space with a window and a bed and a desk. There wasn't much to do. Muffin sniffed my legs and her tail puffed up like a bottlebrush. I suppose she doesn't fancy the smell of museums. She hissed and disappeared under the bed.

    "Thanks a lot," I muttered.

    I opened the door, but the policewoman was standing guard.

    "The inspector will be with you in a moment," she told me. "Please stay inside."

    I could see downstairs--just a glimpse of