Jason Hunter and the Treasure of Hathor

Jason Hunter and the Treasure of Hathor - Book 3

CHAPTER 1

Jason Hunter glanced over his shoulder at the darkening jungle. It wouldn't be long before the gulangal emerged from their burrows to begin the night's hunt. He and his friends would be easy prey once those predators picked up their scent.

Ularu uttered a curse and slammed his hand against the face of the cliff. "I don't understand! The door always opened when I pressed here!"

Jason couldn't see any sign of a door in the smooth rock, even though Ularu insisted it was there. Supposedly, a long flight of stairs behind it led up to Ardemesius' cliffside home.

"Maybe Ardemesius was opening it for you," Kevin Hayashi said.

Ularu grunted.

"What now?" Jason asked. "Is there somewhere we can go to be safe until morning?"

The Ilphran guide scowled. "Nowhere." He looked up. "We have to climb."

"You gotta be kidding me," Kevin said. "It's straight up!"

"Climb or get eaten." Ularu shifted his rifle onto his back, tested a foothold, and started pulling himself up the cliff.

Amelia Reis shifted her camera around so it lay against her back. She looked at Jason, shrugged, and started up after the Ilphran.

Kevin followed her with his eyes and sighed. "Jason, why do I let you talk me into these things?"

"What else could we do, Kev?"

It had taken them several days to recuperate from the grueling ordeal they endured to recover the Quetzcatán Talic. Sitting on the beach near the Ilphran village, they all agreed that the best way to learn about the mysterious Assessment was to return to Ardemesius' dwelling. The old scholar must have collected tons of information over the centuries. All they had to do was find it.

It had taken Jason four days to convince Ularu to take them there.

He watched Amelia move nimbly up the sheer cliff. At times she seemed impatient with Ularu's halting efforts to find hand and toe holds. "Has she done this before?"

"I think she went rock climbing a few times when she lived in China."

Jason shook his head. Amelia was constantly surprising him.

A piercing cry in the distance made both boys turn and stare into the jungle. The nearest trees were only a few yards away, so close to the cliff that their branches brushed the gray rock. The setting sun had turned everything beyond into a forbidding gloom.

"Come on, you guys!" Amelia called down. "What are you waiting for?"

"Go ahead, Kevin," Jason said. He didn't know if the Hand of Osiris would protect him from the gulangal, but it was more than Kevin had going for him. Of course, that wasn't saying much.

Joining his Amulon Talic to the Kutharian and the Quetzcatán Talics to make the Hand had supposedly produced one of the most powerful objects in the universe. Too bad it didn't work. It was a struggle to get the stupid thing to do anything he wanted, and it wouldn't do anything at all unless Amelia and Kevin were both touching him.

A chorus of distant screams brought him back to the moment. He understood the timbre of those sounds. The gulangal had caught the humans' scent. Jason dropped his Ilphran backpack and started climbing. The cliff wasn't exactly vertical, which helped, but the rock was slippery from rain and cold to the touch. It didn't take long for his fingers to start hurting.