He frowned in thought. ‘Speaking of numbers, we need to take stock. Figure out who’s here and when they arrived.’

He ticked off each group on his fingers: ‘Okay. Sphinx got here first, twenty-four hours ago, presumably accompanied by his advisors and military muscle. He’s a whole day ahead of us.’

Zoe nodded. ‘Second were the Omega monks led by Brother Ezekiel. We saw their crashed jet outside.’

‘Third was Dion, with some Squires of the Golden Eight. We overheard Sphinx ordering him to come here from Mont Blanc to help. And finally, Rastor and us.’

Lily said, ‘We’re behind again—’

A loud noise from the low end of the entry tunnel cut her off.

An explosion.

Jack spun instinctively, ready to run, but he caught himself.

He didn’t want to rush around inside this place. Who knew what traps and snares lay in it.

He looked at the tunnel around them.

Its stone steps stretched from wall to wall.

Lowering his glowstick closer to the ground, he noted that one of the steps was not cut from stone.

It was made of some kind of metal. It shone dully.

‘A shining stair,’ Jack said softly. ‘Lily. You translated some of those phrases on Imhotep’s skull before. What was it you said about a shining stair?’

Lily looked at the mummified skull in her pack, the head of the Egyptian architect and thinker, Imhotep, covered in tattoos:

She read one set of Thoth glyphs on it.

‘These markings say, Once you pass the shining stair, there is no going back.’

Jack frowned. ‘It’s a threshold of some ki—’

‘Captain Jack,’ Easton interrupted a little urgently.

‘Yes?’

‘One more thing about Vandals. Mephisto was unusual Vandal. Lived alone. Killed his partner as joke. Usually Vandals work in pairs.’

Jack spun, alarmed. ‘Wait, what?’

He snapped to look up at the dark recess in the roof of the tunnel above them just as a second Vandal came leaping out of it, teeth bared, knife raised and shrieking in animal rage!

The small red-faced assassin slammed down on top of Jack and the two of them went tumbling down the stairs, bouncing on the metal step—

—and instantly an ominous groaning sound came from within the recess in the ceiling.

The sound of stone grinding against stone.

Booby trap.

Lily and Zoe looked up at the noise, while Easton dived to help Jack.

The diminutive Vandal was a ball of ferocious energy. Knife in hand, it hissed fiercely as it leapt at Easton, only to be caught in mid-leap, literally snatched out of the air by—one of Easton’s palemen.

It was the paleman whose eyeless metal face had been scratched as it had rolled under the lowering stone slab closing off the Labyrinth, leaving a curved mark that resembled a crooked smile.

The emotionless automaton held the writhing Vandal three feet off the ground with one robotic hand. Its grip was vice-like.