Jake Ransom and the Howling Sphinx

  Stunned, Jake flashed back to three months ago. Again he was back in the prehistoric world of Calypsos huddled in the doorway to the great Temple of Kukulkan as the Skull King stalked toward him, armored in shadows, with blazing eyes. Kalverum Rex was a rogue alchemist who dabbled in blood magic, twisting natural creatures into monstrous creations. His goal was to rule all of Pangaea and bend every inhabitant to his will. Jake had stopped him once before, challenging him and staring him full in the face.

  Jake gazed into those same eyes now. As he did so, the world darkened at the edges until all he saw were those fiery eyes. They burned through him, down to his bones, making it impossible to move. He fought against it, feeling himself slipping away—

  Then a horn blared, deafeningly loud. The smoky creature shattered away as the horn dissolved into the blare of a fire engine’s siren. The world snapped back into focus. Jake turned as the lumbering red truck pulled to the curb.

  Chaos followed.

  Someone examined him, ran hands over his body, dragged him away, and planted him on a park bench down the street. Besides a little singed hair (which smelled awful), he was unscathed. He’d not even cut his bare feet on any broken glass. A heavy blanket was dropped over his shoulders. The same was done to Brandon.

  All the while, Jake kept his focus on the burning school. Arcs of water sprayed into the heart of the inferno. He kept watch for the return of the fiery demon.

  He nudged Brandon next to him. “You didn’t see … inside the school … a monster with fiery eyes.…”

  Brandon shook his head a bit too quickly and eyed Jake as if he were a few fries short of a Happy Meal.

  After a few breaths, Jake realized his friend was right. Dazed and shocked, his stunned mind must have blurred the real world with his nightmares of Pangaea.

  Off to the side, a policeman was interviewing a witness, a burly man who held the leash of something that looked like a cross between a rat and a dust mop.

  “—then the car comes rolling down the hill, gaining speed.” The man pointed to the steep grade of Hollyhock Lane and pantomimed the sedan’s trajectory with his whole arm. “It plowed straight past me and across the intersection, then crashed through the window. Darn lucky no one was killed.”

  It wasn’t luck, Jake thought. If I’d been a second slower …

  The policeman jotted in his notepad. “And no one was behind the wheel?”

  “Not that I could see,” the witness said.

  The policeman scowled and shook his head. “Someone must have left his car running on that hill and forgot to set the parking brake. And you’re sure you didn’t see anyone suspicious hanging around. Or someone take off running.”

  “Sorry. I wasn’t really looking in that direction. I was watching the crash.”

  The policeman sighed in exasperation, and Jake felt like doing the same. So it was just an accident.

  Jake stood up and shed the blanket.

  “What are you doing?” Brandon asked. “They told us to stay until our parents got here—” His friend’s words choked off as he realized what he’d said.

  Brandon stammered an apology, but Jake waved away his friend’s concern. If Jake had to wait for his parents, it would be a very long wait.

  He stared toward the commotion down the street: emergency lights flared, sirens squawked, and firefighters shouted. But he saw and heard none of it. Instead he pictured his mother and father. His last memory of them was forever locked in a photo. They’d been posing at an archaeological dig in Central America, wearing goofy smiles, dressed in khaki safari outfits, holding aloft a carved Mayan glyph stone. They’d vanished a week after the photo was taken.

  That had been three years ago. They were never seen again. Investigators assumed bandits had killed his parents—but Jake knew that wasn’t true. He knew there was more to their story, and it continued in Pangaea.

  Three months ago, Jake and his sister, Kady, had been accidentally transported to that savage, prehistoric land. They’d made friends, survived a war, and, in the end, discovered a cryptic clue to the true fate of their parents.

  In his mind’s eye, Jake returned to the prehistoric valley of Calypsos and walked again into the great Temple of Kukulkan, past its crystal heart, and down to the inner vault that held a vast Mayan calendar wheel made of gold. He pictured again discovering his father’s pocket watch abandoned in the gears of those mighty wheels. He had memorized the words his mother had inscribed on the back.

  To my beloved Richard,

  A bit of gold to mark our tenth revolution

  around the sun together.

  With all the love under the stars,

  Penelope

  It had been an anniversary gift. But as many times as Jake walked that path in his head, he still found no answers. What did the watch mean? Were his mother and father still alive? Were they lost in time?

  Jake didn’t know.

  All he knew was that he had to find out the truth.

  Even now, standing barefoot in the street in his martial arts uniform, his fingers tightened into a fist of determination. He no longer had the patience to wait here. His mountain bike was parked a block away. Right now, all he wanted to do was get back home.

  As Jake turned to tell his friend he was leaving, a gangly man burst from the crowd, fell upon Brandon, and scooped him into a bear hug.

  “Son, are you okay?”

  Whatever response Brandon had was buried in his father’s chest. Jake could see the clear resemblance in the pair: the dark eyes, the black hair. Sometimes Jake held up that last photo of his parents and compared it to his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He had his father’s height and sandy hair but his mother’s blue eyes and small nose. Staring into the mirror offered him a bit of comfort, a way to bring them both closer in a small way.

  Jake continued to watch father and son hug. He could not look away from such raw affection. Grief and longing burned through him, tempered by a cold vein of jealousy. He knew it wasn’t fair to feel that way, but he couldn’t help it.

  Brandon broke from his father’s embrace, his face pinched with worry. “Jake, if you want, my dad can drive you home, too.”

  Jake retreated two steps and shook his head. He had to swallow hard to clear his throat. “I … I’ve got my bike.”

  “Son,” Brandon’s father said to Jake, “it’s no trouble.”

  Jake bristled at the casual use of the word son. The man was not his father.

  “Thank you, Mr. Phan. But I’d rather go by myself.”

  Brandon’s father waited a moment longer, then slipped an arm around his son’s shoulder. “If you’re sure …”

  Jake nodded and headed toward his bike. As he walked, the sun-baked concrete began to burn his bare feet. He increased his pace, but it wasn’t the heat that drove him onward. He had to get away.

  Reaching his bike, he gave one last glance toward the smoldering school. It looked like any further training would be delayed for at least a week. In the meantime, he had lots to keep him busy. Books and piles of articles waited for him at home. Plus, he and Uncle Edward had a field trip planned for tomorrow to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. There was a new Egyptian exhibit opening in a couple of days, and a friend of Edward’s had arranged an early behind-the-scene tour.

  Jake began to turn away when he caught a glimpse of a large man over by the fire truck, his shape clouded by a billow of smoke. The figure stuck out from the crowd—not only because of his black pinstripe suit, but also because of his massive size. The mountain of a man slipped back behind the fire engine and disappeared.

  Recognition flared through Jake.

  It couldn’t be …

  He mouthed the man’s name as if trying to summon him back into sight. “Morgan Drummond.”

  But the man didn’t reappear, and Jake grew less sure.

  Obscured by the smoke, the figure could have been anyone: the firehouse’s captain, the chief of police. Besides, what would Drummon
d be doing here? Jake had last seen the man at the British Museum in London. Drummond was head of security for Bledsworth Sundries and Industries, the corporation that had sponsored his parents’ last dig before they had vanished.

  Suspicion ran through him.

  Jake didn’t understand what the corporation had to do with his parents’ disappearance, but there had to be some connection.

  He remembered the tie tack worn by Morgan Drummond. It had been sculpted into the shape of a griffin, representing the corporate logo for Bledsworth Sundries and Industries. The mythological monster was half eagle and half lion. In Pangaea, Jake had found the same symbol burned into the sword of a grakyl lord, the leader of one of the monstrous legions of the Skull King. Even the grakyl themselves looked somewhat like griffins.

  But how was it all connected?

  Jake continued to stare down the street, watching for another glimpse of the man. After a full minute, he finally gave up with a shake of his head. It couldn’t have been Drummond.

  Jake unlocked his bike, yanked it free of the rack, and aimed for home. He had a long way to go.

  As he pedaled away, he kept checking over his shoulder, still uneasy. He remembered the way the hairs on his neck had prickled with warning before the sedan came smashing through the school’s front window.

  Those same hairs still stood on end.

  With a crunch of stones, Jake swung his bike off the main road and onto the crushed stone driveway that led through the rolling acres of his family’s estate. The ride from town had helped clear Jake’s head; but he still felt uneasy, haunted by those fiery eyes in the smoke.

  As he passed through the wrought-iron gates, Jake waved to the two stone ravens perched atop the pillars to either side. The birds were the namesakes for his family’s estate: Ravensgate Manor.

  “Hey, Edgar. Hey, Poe,” he called to the statues as he passed under their baleful gazes.

  The pair of ravens had been nicknamed by his great-great-grandfather, Augustus Bartholomew Ransom, back in the nineteenth century. Augustus had been school friends with the writer Edgar Allan Poe, whose poem “The Raven” had become a favorite of his. It was even said that one of those stone ravens had been the inspiration behind Poe’s poem. Over the centuries, an ongoing debate raged among family members as to which raven was the source of that inspiration.

  Edgar or Poe.

  Jake placed his money on the raven to the right. With its bowed head and hooded eyes, Poe always gave him a bit of the creeps. But like an eccentric pair of uncles, the two ravens had grown to be as much a part of the family and its history as anyone.

  And at least those two weren’t going anywhere.

  Jake pedaled onward, winding through a hardwood forest of sugar maples and black oaks. Eventually the woods gave way to a sprawling English garden. In the center rose the manor house of Ravensgate, built in a Tudor style with stone turrets, timber-framed gables, and a slate roof gone mossy with age. It had started as a country farmhouse, meant only as a family retreat from the city. But over the centuries, it had been added to and expanded into its current sprawl.

  The front entrance, though, remained the same. Even the door came from that original farmhouse: constructed of stout oak hewn from the hills around here, bound in straps of copper, and secured with square-headed nails.

  Jake squeezed his bike’s brakes and slowed as he swung toward the front of the house. A circular driveway wound past the entrance. He immediately spotted a car parked near the flagstone steps that led up to the front door.

  Jake noted two strange things immediately.

  The front door was ajar—something Aunt Matilda would never have allowed. But more disturbing, Jake recognized the car parked at the stoop. It was a black sedan, identical to the one that had smashed into the school.

  He was sure of it.

  Same make, same model.

  It was too much of a coincidence to ignore.

  Nerves jangled with warning. Jake’s blood went cold. He dropped his bike and ran in a low crouch toward the house.

  Something was wrong.

  From inside the house, a loud crash echoed out, accompanied by the tinkle of broken glass. Next came something that stopped his heart: a scream of pain and anguish.

  His Aunt Matilda.

  2

  BROKEN CABINETS

  Jake had left his backpack and clothes back at the dojang, along with his cell phone. He had no way to call for help, and riding to a neighbor’s house would take too long. He had to reach a phone inside.

  Rather than rush headlong through the front door, he sprinted to the side of the house and pried open a window. It led into a glass-roofed conservatory, where his mother had once grown prized orchids, specimens collected from around the world. It was empty now, the orchids long gone. Jake would still sometimes come here to read, especially in winter when it was the hottest place in the house. The warmth on a cold winter’s day felt like his mother’s embrace.

  Hiking his leg over the windowsill, he scrambled inside and dropped to the stone floor. The summer heat had turned the place into a sauna. Pebbles of sweat immediately formed on his brow. Staying low, he scooted to the swinging doors that led from the conservatory to a side hall. The kitchen lay only a few steps away.

  He listened at the conservatory door, his ears straining for any sound. But all remained quiet—which set his heart to pounding harder in his throat. How many intruders were in the house? What had happened to Aunt Matilda and Uncle Edward?

  Jake eased open the door and leaned out. A narrow hallway extended a few yards and ended at the main passageway that cut the large manor house into two halves. He found himself staring at a Greek statue across the far hall. Above the sculpture’s head was the portrait of one of Jake’s ancestors: Bartholomew Jackson Ransom, the founder of Ravensgate, the famed Egyptian explorer. He stood posed next to a camel. Other portraits hung up and down the hall, marking other generations, each following in Bartholomew’s footsteps to become explorers.

  As Jake stepped out of the conservatory, he heard footsteps coming down the main passageway toward him. Jake flattened himself against the oak-paneled wall. A figure crossed the opening to the side hall and continued toward the rear of the house.

  It was a skeleton of a man, toweringly tall and spider-thin. He carried a steel bat in one hand. As he disappeared out of sight, his harsh voice swelled, full of menace.

  “Where is it? Tell me now, or there’ll be more trouble!”

  His question was punctuated by a loud crash of splintering wood. Broken glass skittered across the limestone floor. A rough-skinned rock rolled into view. But it wasn’t a rock. Jake knew that it was a fossilized tyrannosaurus egg. For more than a century, it had rested in the Cabinet of Curiosities of his great-great-grandfather Augustus.

  The skeletal thief must have used his steel bat to smash open that cabinet. The main passageway was full of other display cases, each cabinet belonging to an ancestor, preserving treasures and artifacts collected by that explorer.

  There was even a cabinet started by his father and mother out there.

  White-hot anger surged through Jake as he pictured the would-be thief smashing that case into kindling. The fear that had held him in place burned away. He edged toward the kitchen. There was a telephone on the wall beside the pantry.

  As he reached the kitchen door, he heard Aunt Matilda cry out from the front of the house. “We don’t know what you’re talking about! Leave Edward alone. Please!”

  A slap of flesh sounded from the same direction, followed by a deep groan: masculine and heavy, yet still angry. Uncle Edward. Someone had just hit him. That meant there was at least one other intruder over by his aunt and uncle.

  Barefooted, Jake slipped silently into the kitchen. He hurried to the phone, lifted the receiver from the wall, and dialed 911. He put the phone to his ear but heard nothing. No dial tone. Jake’s heart climbed into his throat. They must have cut the phone line.

  Now what?

/>   Before he could decide, a large hand clamped over his mouth and nose. Massive arms yanked him to a stone-hard chest. Jake fought, but it was like wrestling a Greek statue come to life.

  Hot breath hissed at him. “Quit squirming, lad.”

  The voice was a low whisper, meant for his ears only, but it still held a familiar British lilt.

  Jake twisted enough to catch a glimpse of his captor. Craggy features, granite gray eyes, black hair clipped to his skull. The man’s lipless mouth twisted into a stern grimace. Jake flinched with recognition. So he hadn’t been mistaken back at town.

  Morgan Drummond.

  “I’m trying to help you, boy. So calm down.”

  From the furtiveness of his words, the man was plainly trying not to be heard by the intruders. Jake didn’t trust Morgan—not fully—but at the moment, he didn’t have any other choice.

  When Jake nodded, Morgan let go of him and waved him into a crouch. “You stay here. Out of sight.”

  The head of security for Bledsworth Sundries and Industries had shed his suit jacket and wore only a tight pullover shirt. He pulled a black pistol from a shoulder holster and rushed toward the dining room that connected to the main hall near the back of the house.

  Once Morgan was gone, Jake didn’t wait. He wasn’t going to hide while his aunt and uncle were in danger. Moving silently, he slipped out the same door he’d entered and returned to the side hall. As he stepped out, Morgan Drummond’s voice boomed like a cannon blast from the rear of the house.

  “DROP YOUR WEAPON! ON THE GROUND!”

  A sharp curse answered him, followed by the crack of a pistol.

  The tall, skinny thief dove into the side hall from the main passageway. A bullet ricocheted off the limestone floor at the man’s heels. The skeleton with the bat was trying to escape.

  Jake couldn’t get out of the way in time.

  The thief fell right onto him. The steel bat clanked across the floor.