The family was huddled inside, trembling with fear, their eyes wide. My first thought: Why are they hiding from me?
“I won’t hurt you,” I promised. They stared at me blankly, and I wished I could speak Spanish.
Then the water churned around me, and I realized they weren’t scared of me. My next thought: Man, I’m stupid.
Horus’s voice yelled: Jump!
I sprang out of the water as if shot from a cannon—twenty, thirty feet into the air. No way I should’ve been able to do that, but it was a good thing, because a monster erupted from the river beneath me.
At first all I saw were hundreds of teeth—a pink maw three times as big as me. Somehow I managed to flip and land on my feet in the shallows. I was facing a crocodile as long as our RV—and that was just the half sticking out of the water. Its gray-green skin was ridged with thick plates like a camouflage suit of armor, and its eyes were the color of moldy milk.
The family screamed and started scrambling up the banks. That caught the crocodile’s attention. He instinctively turned toward the louder, more interesting prey. I’d always thought of crocodiles as slow animals, but when it charged the immigrants, I’d never seen anything move so fast.
Use the distraction, Horus urged. Get behind it and strike.
Instead I yelled, “Sadie, Bast, help!” and I threw my wand.
Bad throw. The wand hit the river right in front of the croc, then skipped off the water like a stone, smacked the croc between the eyes, and shot back into my hand.
I doubt I did any damage, but the croc glanced over at me, annoyed.
Or you can smack it with a stick, Horus muttered.
I charged forward, yelling to keep the croc’s attention. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the family scrambl
ing to safety. Khufu ran along behind them, waving his arms and barking to herd them out of harm’s way. I wasn’t sure if they were running from the croc or the crazy monkey, but as long as they kept running, I didn’t care.
I couldn’t see what was happening with Bast and Sadie. I heard shouting and splashing behind me, but before I could look, the crocodile lunged.
I ducked to the left, slashing with my sword. The blade just bounced off the croc’s hide. The monster thrashed sideways, and its snout would’ve bashed my head in; but I instinctively raised my wand and the croc slammed into a wall of force, bouncing off as if I were protected by a giant invisible energy bubble.
I tried to summon the falcon warrior, but it was too hard to concentrate with a six-ton reptile trying to bite me in half.
Then I heard Bast scream, “NO!” and I knew immediately, without even looking, that something was wrong with Sadie.
Desperation and rage turned my nerves to steel. I thrust out my wand and the wall of energy surged outward, slamming into the crocodile so hard, it went flying through the air, tumbling out of the river and onto the Mexican shore. While it was on its back, flailing and off balance, I leaped, raising my sword, which was now glowing in my hands, and drove the blade into the monster’s belly. I held on while the crocodile thrashed, slowly disintegrating from its snout to the tip of its tail, until I stood in the middle of a giant pile of wet sand.
I turned and saw Bast battling a crocodile just as big as mine. The crocodile lunged, and Bast dropped beneath it, raking her knives across its throat. The croc melted into the river until it was only a smoky cloud of sand, but the damage had been done: Sadie lay in a crumpled heap on the riverbank.
By the time I got there, Khufu and Bast were already at her side. Blood trickled from Sadie’s scalp. Her face was a nasty shade of yellow.
“What happened?” I asked.
“It came out of nowhere,” Bast said miserably. “Its tail hit Sadie and sent her flying. She never had a chance. Is she...?”
Khufu put his hand on Sadie’s forehead and made popping noises with his mouth.
Bast sighed with relief. “Khufu says she’ll live, but we have to get her out of here. Those crocodiles could mean...”
Her voice trailed off. In the middle of the river, the water was boiling. Rising from it was a figure so horrible, I knew we were doomed.
“Could mean that,” Bast said grimly.
To start with, the guy was twenty feet tall—and I don’t mean with a glowing avatar. He was all flesh and blood. His chest and arms were human, but he had light green skin, and his waist was wrapped in a green armored kilt like reptile hide. He had the head of a crocodile, a massive mouth filled with white crooked teeth, and eyes that glistened with green mucus (yeah, I know—real attractive). His black hair hung in plaits down to his shoulders, and bull’s horns curved from his head. If that wasn’t weird enough, he appeared to be sweating at an unbelievable rate—oily water poured off him in torrents and pooled in the river.
He raised his staff—a length of green wood as big as a telephone pole.
Bast yelled, “Move!” and pulled me back as the crocodile man smashed a five-foot-deep trench in the riverbank where I’d been standing.