Jake Atlas and the Hunt for the Feathered God Read online

  “What?” Pan said. “But we can’t go back to how it was before.”

  “We were all safe before,” Mum replied.

  “We hated each other before,” Pan said. “You and Dad were bored stiff teaching at that college. So instead of treasure hunting, you want to be miserable for the rest of your lives?”

  “I would never be miserable,” Mum said, “if I knew you were safe.”

  “But we can’t go back anyway,” I said. “We’re wanted criminals.”

  “I am confident that we can convince the authorities there was a misunderstanding,” Mum replied.

  “Misunderstanding?” Pan said. “Jake blew up a tomb! He did actually do that, remember?”

  Mum winced, as if the memory caused her physical pain. “Yes, I remember. All too well.”

  What did that mean? Did she fear it would happen again? Was Mum trying to protect us by keeping us away from danger? Or did she just not trust me? Did she fear I might do something that crazy again?

  My arms began to tremble. Something was boiling up inside me. A volcano. “But we have a clue,” I protested. “We have to follow it.”

  “We’re not saying we can’t,” Dad replied. “From libraries, after school or at weekends.”

  “Libraries?” I scoffed. “We should be out there kicking butt!”

  “Watch your language, please,” Mum warned.

  “You watch yours.”

  I was out of breath and out of ideas. I could tell that Mum and Dad had made up their minds, but how could we just act as if the past few months had never even happened? Treasure hunting was all I wanted to do, the only thing I was good at. Before this, I was no good – a thief, a troublemaker. I was scared of that person, the old Jake Atlas. Treasure hunting had given me a focus, a way to use those skills for something good. We’d trained, worked hard, but it wasn’t good enough for Mum and Dad. Or at least, I wasn’t good enough.

  “It’s me, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Jake?” Mum asked.

  “Pan is a genius,” I replied. “You know she’s good enough for this. But you don’t think I am. You’ve never trusted me at all.”

  “You need more time, Jake, to learn composure. Today, with that scorpion—”

  “I had a plan!” I insisted. “It would have worked.”

  Mum and Pan broke into another argument, as my sister defended me, insisting we’d never actually encounter a giant scorpion. I didn’t listen. The volcano inside me was about to erupt.

  “Mum, I’m sorry,” I said.

  “For what, Jake?”

  I grabbed the stun gun and shot her.

  It wasn’t something I’d planned. I mean, who plans to shoot their mum? I barely even knew what I’d done until it had happened, and then I was even more shocked than Mum.

  I staggered back, staring, as a stun dart fired from the tip of the umbrella and dug into Mum’s arm. Mum had flipped at me for far smaller crimes, but now she remained weirdly calm. I think she saw the panic in my eyes, and understood how desperate I felt.

  “Jake, put that weapon down,” she said, still so calmly. “It’s a stun gun, loaded with xylazine. You know that your father and I built up immunity to that drug decades ago.”

  I did know that. But there was something Mum didn’t know.

  “Mum,” I gasped. “It’s not xylazine.”

  Her eyes widened. I think she was about to say something else but her legs gave way and she collapsed, unconscious, to the carpet.

  Dad edged closer, arms out and palms raised. “Jake,” he breathed, “give me that weapon. Don’t do anything silly.”

  Don’t do anything silly? I’d just shot my mum with a stun gun! And now I had to shoot Dad too. There was no chance now that he’d let us go after the Snake Lady at that auction. Not while he was conscious, anyway.

  The stun gun trembled in my grip. I had to be careful; Dad looked big and clumsy, but I’d seen how good he was at fighting, and how fast.

  “Jake,” Sami warned, “Put the gun down.”

  “It’s not a gun!” I insisted. “It’s just a stun gun!”

  “Do not shoot me, Jake,” Dad added.

  “I’m not going to shoot you, Dad. Stop saying shoot. It’s just a stun gun.”

  “Jake…” Pan hissed.

  She wasn’t convinced about this plan either, and I couldn’t blame her. There was no going back now, though.

  “It’s just for twelve hours, Dad,” I said. “You look tired, so it’s a nice long sleep. We’ll find the clue. Then we can still do this as a proper family.”

  “Proper family?” Dad said. “Jake, you’re aiming a gun at your father.”

  “A stun gun, Dad. And I’m really, really sorry.”

  I think I screamed as I fired again, but my memory is a bit of a blur. The dart hit Dad in the chest. He stumbled back and then forward, slurring his words as the drug rushed through his bloodstream. “Jake…” he rasped. “Don’t… Too dangerous…”

  The umbrella fell from my hands and I edged further back, shaking almost as hard as Dad, as he swayed from side to side like a drunk staggering from a pub. Finally, he slumped to the floor beside Mum.

  Sami rushed to them, cursing in Arabic. He took their pulses and lifted their eyelids to examine their pupils. They were both fast asleep; nothing worse.

  “They’re unconscious,” he gasped. He whirled around, yelling so loud he sprayed me with spit. “You just shot your parents!”

  “I didn’t have a choice!”

  “Yes, you did! The choice was shoot your parents or don’t shoot your parents! And you shot your parents!”

  “He’s got a point, Jake,” Pan said. She leaned over Mum and Dad, grimacing. “They’re going to be so mad when they wake up.”

  I closed my eyes and groaned, wishing I’d thought about this more. Maybe Mum was right; I was too reckless for this job. Look at what I’d just done! Right then I only knew one thing for sure: we had to make this worth it.

  6

  The moment I walked into the auction house, I felt an urge to do something crazy, to charge at one of the display cabinets and knock it to the floor. I used to get the same feeling at the museums where Mum and Dad gave lectures. They were hot and stuffy and so serious, and everyone was looking down at me. I just wanted to cause some trouble – any trouble.

  I breathed in deeply, held the breath and let it out slowly. The last thing we wanted to do was draw attention to ourselves. We needed to focus – was the Snake Lady here right now?

  Everyone was too caught up in their own worlds to notice us anyway. Around the entrance hall, posh-looking men and women peered into glass cases displaying the various antiquities that were up for sale: garishly painted pots, gold jewellery, fragments of stone sculptures. A banner at the side of the hall announced the auction: TREASURES OF PRE-COLUMBIAN ART. It showed a golden sun disc with a face carved in its centre, and a jade snake that was coiled and grinning.

  “What does Pre-Columbian mean?” I asked.

  “It means before Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas,” Pan explained. “In the year 1492. After that the Spanish conquered a lot of Central and South America.”

  “So where do the Aztecs fit in? That’s what the Snake Lady is after, right? Something from the Aztecs.”

  “Their civilization was in Mexico. They were conquered by the Spanish too, and basically wiped out.”

  “Ouch.”

  As I followed Pan through the crowds I realized how much Mum and Dad would have hated this place. There were some amazing antiquities on display, but this was no museum: everything here was for sale. Rich people buying up history to hoard it in private collections stood against everything Mum and Dad became treasure hunters for.

  A man in a blazer and cravat glanced at us over the top of his spectacles and sneered, as if we were something he’d just discovered on the sole of his fiercely polished shoe. I sneered back and muttered a few things I shouldn’t admit to muttering, and the guy hurried off t
owards a security guard at the entrance.

  Pan dragged me deeper into the crowd. “Don’t cause trouble. We have to blend in.”

  “Blend in?”

  I glanced down at my dirty jeans and yogurt-stained T-shirt, and wished we’d planned this better. Getting here this morning had been a scramble. It had taken ages to drag Mum and Dad to their bedroom and tuck them in for their stun-drugged sleep. After that we’d had to convince Sami to drive us to London in his van. The journey had taken several hours from Kit’s mansion in Yorkshire. In the end we’d arrived minutes before the auction, with no plan for what to do next.

  Now that we were here, my guts twisted up with nerves. We’d spent three months looking for the Snake Lady; I’d become obsessed with finding her. But now that we might actually be close, part of me didn’t want to find her. The truth is, I’d forgotten how much she scared me. I remembered how close she’d come to killing us in Egypt.

  No, we had to find her. After what I’d done to Mum and Dad our only hope of ever being treasure hunters was to find a clue to the next emerald tablet, and one they couldn’t ignore.

  Pan pulled me towards the next room. “The auction is about to start.”

  The auction chamber was packed. About a hundred people sat in rows around the large sky-lit hall, shifting in their seats to get a better look at a stage where an auctioneer – the snooty-looking guy in charge of the sale – stood at a wooden podium.

  “Do you see her?” Pan hissed.

  We stood at the back, scanning the crowds for the Snake Lady, but people kept getting up and moving around to greet someone or talk on their phones. We knew the Snake Lady would be here in disguise, if she was there at all.

  The auctioneer banged a little wooden hammer against his podium, and everyone settled down. He glared at them as if he was guarding school children at detention rather than about to make a fortune flogging ancient relics.

  “Right, let’s get on with this, ladies and gentlemen. The first item for sale today is this rather fabulous clay drinking vessel painted with an image of an Inca god.”

  The crowd sat up to get a better look as a stagehand raised the antiquity for everyone to see. Most of the buyers had what looked like a table tennis bat with a number on the paddle, which they raised to bid on an item.

  “I shall begin the bidding at five thousand pounds. Will anyone bid five thousand pounds? Yes, you, sir, good. Do I have ten thousand?”

  After that, the auctioneer talked at machine-gun speed, raising the price by ten grand each time someone waggled a paddle, and then banging the hammer against his podium to signal that the highest bid had won. You wouldn’t believe the amount of money stuff went for. That clay cup went for seventy grand! A cup!

  Pan was fascinated by it all. She kept gripping my arm as the stagehands brought in new items.

  “Jake, I recognize that from Mum and Dad’s books. It’s Olmec. And that’s Mayan! Those were the civilizations that came before the Aztecs in Mexico.”

  My eyes remained on the crowd, but all I could see were the backs of people’s heads.

  The auctioneer cleared his throat. “Now we come to the final item in the sale; this rare Aztec codex from the time of the Spanish Conquest. This magnificent document is one of four, the other three having already been sold at auctions earlier this year.”

  Pan’s grip tightened on my arm. “That’s it, Jake! The Aztec codex.”

  This was the item we thought the Snake Lady was here to buy. It didn’t look like it could be worth much – a scrap of brownish paper painted with colourful figures. It looked like an old, dirty comic book.

  The auctioneer banged his hammer. “I shall begin the bidding at five thousand—”

  “One million pounds.”

  A gasp swept across the room.

  The auctioneer stared. “I… Did you say a million?”

  He tapped his hammer on its stand, weakly this time. He looked dazed. “I… Any further bids? No. Sold for, um, one million pounds.”

  The room erupted in claps and whispers. Everyone in the crowd shot up from their seats to get a look at the buyer. Pan cursed as we moved around the scrum of posh people, trying to get a look. They’d blocked our view, but I didn’t need to see to know who had bought the codex.

  “It’s her,” I said. “It’s the Snake Lady.”

  “Can you see her?” Pan asked.

  “I just know, Pan. Who else would pay a million for something when the bidding is only at five grand?”

  Pan understood. The People of the Snake seemed to have unlimited funds. They needed the codex, so they made sure they got it. Price wasn’t an issue. But even so, we had to see the Snake Lady if we hoped to follow her. Glancing around the room, I spotted security cameras mounted in high corners. I pressed my comms bud deeper into my ear.

  “Sami?”

  He’d insisted on staying close in his van, and on us wearing ear buds so he could remain in contact.

  “I’m here,” he replied.

  “Can you hack into the CCTV system to see who’s in the middle of that crowd?”

  “I can,” Sami muttered. “Except that’s—”

  “Illegal, I know, Sami. But it’s important. Can you do it?”

  “Hold on,” Sami said. “All right, I’m watching the feed now, but I can’t see the buyer. Whoever it is, the person must be short.”

  “It’s her,” I said.

  “We don’t know that, Jake,” Sami warned. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  I was desperate to do something stupid – to scream about a bomb, or smash one of the relics –to get the crowd to clear. But I forced myself to stay cool, to think.

  “Jake,” Pan warned, “we’ve got trouble.”

  A security guard was heading for us, tipped off – I guessed – by the posh guy I’d scowled at earlier. The guard spoke into his radio, and one of his colleagues approached from the other direction. We were going to get thrown out. We’d lose the Snake Lady.

  Think! Think, Jake!

  “Sami?” I said. “Can you bring up the blueprints for this building? And yes, I know it’s illegal.”

  “All right,” he replied. “I’ve got them.”

  “What room has the Snake Lady gone into?”

  “We don’t know that it is her, Jake.”

  “What room, Sami?”

  “A side annex off the auction hall.”

  “Jake,” Pan hissed. “The guards are coming.”

  “Is there another way out from that annex, Sami?” I asked.

  “Yes, there’s an exit onto St George Street.”

  “That’s where she’ll come out,” I said. “People buy stuff worth a fortune here. The auction house must help them leave securely through a different exit to everyone else. Sami, meet us with the van at the main Bond Street entrance in thirty seconds. And I need you to do one more thing.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Set off the fire alarms.”

  “What?”

  “We’re about to get caught. We need a distraction. It’s either the fire alarms or I’ll smash an ancient relic.”

  I’d barely finished that sentence when alarms began to shriek around the auction hall, a noise so piercing it caused people to cover their ears. The security guards immediately turned away from us and began to guide the crowds surging for the main exit. Pan and I moved among them, back through the entrance hall. I shoved one guy out of the way and shoulder-barged past a couple of others, ignoring their protests. One of the guards spotted us and reached to grab Pan, but she stamped a heel into his foot and he tumbled back, more out of shock than pain.

  I pulled Pan with me out onto Bond Street, where Sami’s van was waiting. Its side door opened and we piled in.

  “Get to St George’s Street!” I cried.

  But the road was blocked with traffic as people rushing from the auction house hailed taxis or scrambled into private cars. I leaned from the passenger seat, trying to look through the crowds and the rain th
at had begun to batter the windscreen. We needed to see the car the Snake Lady got into, to follow her…

  “Drive on the pavement,” I demanded.

  “Jake, this is central London,” Sami shot back. “I’m not driving on the pavement.”

  “Please, Sami!”

  “Jake, no!”

  Think, Jake, think!

  “Can you hack into the street CCTV at the St George Street exit?”

  Sami tapped the van’s dashboard, and part of the windscreen turned into a high-definition computer screen. After a few seconds the screen changed to show a black-and-white blizzard. Static.

  “This is strange,” he muttered. “The camera for that street isn’t working.”

  It wasn’t strange. It made perfect sense – the Snake Lady’s organization had disabled the camera so she wouldn’t be seen. I cursed, and punched the seat. I was so tightly wound that I almost hit Pan too. She touched my shoulder.

  “Jake,” she said, “breathe.”

  She could see that I was freaking out. I had to remember my training, to think past my panic and make a plan. I closed my eyes and breathed in. My mind cleared, changing from a muddy puddle to a crystal clear pool. In an instant I knew what to do.

  I scrambled to the back of the van, flipped open the armrest of the seat and pressed a button hidden beneath. A side panel of the van slid open, revealing various mounted gadgets that Sami kept ready for missions. I pulled a sleek silver rifle from the rack.

  “Is this the tracker gun?” I asked.

  “That’s a stun gun,” Sami replied.

  I grabbed another device. “This?”

  “That’s an actual gun.”

  “Which one is the tracker gun, Sami?”

  “The one that looks like a tracker gun!”

  “I don’t know what a tracker gun looks like!”

  “Why not? You had a lesson!”

  “I didn’t listen in that lesson!”

  “Why are you yelling at me about this?”

  I didn’t know – my blood was up. The Snake Lady was getting away.

  “Here,” Pan said, taking one of the weapons. “It’s this one.”

  The tracker gun didn’t look like a gun at all. It was disguised as a fancy gold pen, but with a tiny silver arrowhead poking from its tip. I remembered now: the tip was the GPS tracker. As it fired it spread open and used magnets to cling onto any metal surface it hit.