A/N: I DO NOT own The Kane Chronicles, Immortals, or The Mummy trilogy (you'll understand the last part during the first two attacks on the Kanes.)

The Alexander Chronicles

Part II: Egypt

Book I: Egyptian New Year

Chapter III: The Library and Attacks

I have to agree with Sadie sometimes, Carter is crazy! He actually seemed to think that going to the library might be dangerous. Come on, what could be so dangerous in a library? Khufu the baboon briefly tried to stop us, but Sadie bribed him to ignore us. Oddly though, the library was protected by thick oak doors covered by steel chains and padlocked. Sadie was about to ha-di the doors open, when I stopped her. "Why waste the energy when I have a weapon that would work?" I grabbed the Epirus Bow and shot an arrow. The arrow got us in, as I knew it would, but it did more than destroy the padlock, it OBLITERATED the door, leaving only splinters behind.

Inside, the library was purely amazing, done like the inside of an Egyptian tomb, with images of their god of the earth and goddess of the sky on the floor and roof respectively. (Speaking of them, I don't understand Sadie's jokes about Nut, I always heard her name pronounced like the newt lizard.) The walls were all honeycombed, with papyrus scrolls on the inside, no modern books at all, and probably none that I could read. Luckily Carter mentioned that none of the cubbies would be booby-trapped since this was a library not a tomb. I started looking around while Carter and Sadie investigated their dad's workbag. As I suspected, there was nothing in the library I could read, although Ra did provide translations for the titles, like The Book of the Heavenly Cow (supposedly a book about Hathor,) The Book of Slaying Apophis, and, of course, the famous Book of the Dead. Then I found a book that Ra insisted I read: The Blood of the Pharaohs, a book that listed every single family with royal Egyptian blood. At the top of the scroll, it would have a large cartouche with a name inside, and Ra explained that that name was the name of the original host, or their family name if they were young enough, and each name under it belonged to the descendants, until one got to the next host name. There were few that Ra would translate, but among them were Khufu-one of his hosts, his son and grandson Khafre and Menakaure, and beneath them was my mother's name: Summers, confirming his story. Later in the scroll, we discovered a family name I did not expect to see: Ptolemy. Under that name was "the goddess Cleopatra who is beloved of her father," clearly a reference to that most famous seductress, Cleopatra VII. Under her name was that of her son, Caesarion, and startling enough were other names, suggesting that just maybe, Caesarion really had survived the assassination attempt by Octavian Caesar as Venus had claimed. Just then, Ra insisted I look down at the names again, and boy was I in for a shock. Under the Ptolemy heading, I saw many names that were instantly recognizable: Castellan, di Angelo, Chase, Grace, Jackson, Summers. Was it really possible?

I sat down in shock, until Carter and Sadie started talking about the Demon Days. According to Carter, Geb and Nut had conceived five children, but because of a prophecy, Ra tried to prevent them from being born. In response, Nut gambled with Khons (the Egyptian moon god, their version of Selene) and created five more days in the year. She had one of her children on each of the days, Osiris, Isis, Horus, Set, then Nephthys on the final day. The Demon Days were the last five days of the year, meaning we had to stop Set by December 30. Carter only made one mistake in his telling. "The thing is, one of these guys, Set, was a really bad dude. Like, the villain of Egyptian mythology. The god of evil and chaos and desert storms."

"Not quite, Carter. Set was no more the god of evil than Pluto was. He was a villain, sure, but not that evil. The closest thing to that is the enormous snake Apophis who tried to eat Ra's sun boat each day. Even Set was preferred to that snake." Yeah, I know, surprising amount of knowledge for someone who hardly knows any Egyptian myths, but hey, it is possible to learn things from TV, in this case, Stargate SG:1. Carter seemed ready to argue with me, until we heard an explosion out in the Great Room.

We ran from the library, only to find Khufu the baboon going nuts and Phillip the crocodile was battling two creatures that Carter quickly identified as longnecks or serpopards, until the terrace collapsed, taking both the crocodile and monsters down into the East River. We thought we were safe, until a cloud of dust appeared and hit the walls, which were all covered with hieroglyphs. We all stared in confusion, especially when a feminine voice incanted a spell, until the images of the Egyptians came to life-sort of. As it turns out, the images were hiding mummies, and all of them turned to attack us.

Or at least, so it seemed. I yelled at the Kanes to separate, and the mummies all turned to go after me! I quickly activated Ventus and started shooting them, but the arrows did no good! Damn, these were the kind of incidents that really made me wish Nico was here, at least he could get rid of them easily! I really didn't want to risk close combat with them, even with my Greco-Roman combat style, so I pulled out the Epirus bow and decided to try it. Fortunately, there were no more explosions when it hit the mummies, it just killed them. (If you can kill a mummy. How can you kill something that is technically a reanimated corpse?) Carter managed to grab a khopesh blade off one of the wall displays that hadn't been destroyed and quickly decapitated a mummy when it got too close. Before he did though, I noticed the mark of Juno in its' eyes: the peacock feather. Sons of Dis, can't she leave me alone for just two days? Then we got even more trouble as the serpopards returned and broke the magical barriers around the house.

Sadie had become so desperate that she tried something so crazy that I shouldn't be surprised that it worked. She ordered her cat to protect her, and to our surprise, the cat turned into a human who then destroyed the serpopards by getting their necks tied into knots and then slicing their heads off. The woman (who eventually introduced herself as the cat goddess Bast) told us that we needed to get to Manhattan in order to use a portal and summon more deities. She led us through the industrial yard (destroying a wrecking ball in the process) and stole a car (though she claimed that, as a cat, it was hers because she saw it.)

It was a good thing that she did steal the car, because copper men that Bast called carriers started chasing us, and they were followed by weird, animalistic mummies who looked far fiercer than their predecessors, and if it were possible, even fiercer than some of the monsters I've seen. (Among them Cerberus, he's nothing more than an overgrown puppy and loves playtime with me or Nico. Makes it hard to believe that we were ever scared of him!) I quickly unbuckled and pulled out the Epirus Bow. "Alex, what the bloody hell do you think you're doing? Sit down or you could die!"

"If someone doesn't take out those mummies and carriers, we will die, Sadie! So unless you're willing to risk mortal lives and try to ha-di them, my bow is the only way to kill them!" I yelled back. Ignoring any more protests, I took careful aim and shot the nearest carriers. Unfortunately, shooting them allowed the mummies to get closer, and again I spotted the peacock feather in their eyes. For the first time, I was wondering about the wisdom of declaring war on Juno as I had four months ago. While I was pondering that, Carter asked why the mortals didn't react to the carriers and mummies. "It's because the Mist hides them from their view. Anything the mortals don't understand, the Mist changes to something that they can understand. For example, three years ago my cousin dueled a god with a sword, and the mist changed the swords to guns and attributed explosions caused by the god to a gas explosion caused by a recent earthquake. Mist is a very useful tool and very mysterious," I answered between shots. Bast continued the explanation by mentioning that even those of us born to the world of immortals could be fooled by the Mist, and that her plan included releasing more gods.

Then Carter asked another good question. "Bast, if you're a goddess, can't you just snap your fingers and disintegrate those guys? Or wave your hand and teleport us away?"

"He has a point. I know another god who drove a dozen people completely and totally insane from across the country just because my cousin asked him too. Why can't you do something like that to the carriers?" I asked.

"That would be nice, wouldn't it? But my power in this host is limited." Sadie asked if she meant Muffin the cat. "She's still my host, Sadie, my anchor on this side of the Duat-and a very imperfect one at that. Your call for help allowed me to assume human shape, but that alone takes a great deal of my power. Besides, even when I'm in a powerful host, Set's magic is stronger than mine."

"And why do you need a host? Those other gods that I know don't need hosts! They can change form to whatever they want, and can even look like they're forty feet tall!"

Bast considered me carefully before answering. "Egypt is one of the oldest civilizations still around. Unfortunately a consequence of that is that those of us that belong to Egypt's pantheon belong more to a spiritual realm than this one. The gods that you know are stronger in this realm because they are younger than us, and took more of an interest in the affairs of mortals and as a consequence are able to do more things in this realm."

By the time we arrived at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, all the mummies had been killed and the carriers had been left far behind us and were probably still in the East Village. Bast then told Sadie to open a portal somewhere while she dealt with a threat that was coming. Now, I wasn't going to let her fight alone, so I stayed with the cat goddess who quickly formed a golden avatar of her hieroglyphic self-the cat headed woman that any good Egyptologist would easily identify as Bast.

Sadie failed to open the portal, and by the time the opportunity had passed, an army of scorpions had appeared from the bushes and I pulled my sword, ready for anything, or so I thought. When a woman came forward in the midst of the scorpions wearing a super-sized scorpion on her head, I realized that I had no idea what I was getting into. Bast quickly identified the woman as Serqet, goddess of scorpions and ordered us to get inside a temple for protection, I gladly followed that order and ran.