Four words on an unknown number.
We know you're here.
I stared at my phone for a solid ten seconds. Then I showed it to Luna, who read it, set it face down on the table, and started lacing her boots without a word. Which was somehow more frightening than if she'd panicked.
"We move now," Sebastian said from the doorway. Already in his coat. Already holding his sword under it. I had no idea when he'd gotten to the door. He was just suddenly there, the way he was always suddenly somewhere.
"I thought we were waiting for dark," I said.
"We waited too long." He looked at my phone. "They are not warning us. They are testing our reaction time."
Luna stood, blades already on her. Two daggers, one short sword across her back, all of it concealed under a jacket that somehow hid all of it without making her look like she was smuggling furniture. Hunter training, I assumed. I grabbed my bag and stood up feeling significantly less prepared.
Lunox landed on my shoulder, wings tight. "The map," she said quietly.
I'd almost forgotten. I grabbed it. The red ring around Cairo was gone — the entire map completely dark for the first time since I'd had it. Whatever that meant, it wasn't good.
We left.
Cairo at night was different.
Not quieter — the city didn't really do quiet — but differently textured. The hard afternoon light was gone, replaced by the warm orange glow of streetlamps and shop fronts. People still moved, restaurants were open, music came from somewhere a few streets over. The air had cooled maybe four degrees, which after the afternoon felt almost generous.
Sebastian led us away from the safe house immediately, through a route that turned twice before we'd gone fifty metres.
"Counter-surveillance pattern," Luna murmured to me as we walked.
"You know what that is?"
"I've been doing it since I was fifteen, Eli, keep up."
I kept up.
For ten minutes nothing happened. Normal streets. Normal people. Lunox sat completely still on my shoulder, which was how I knew something was wrong — she was never completely still.
"Two," she said, very quietly. "Behind us. Left side. They have been following since the second turn."
I didn't look back. Luna had already made a tiny gesture with two fingers down by her side — she'd clocked them before Lunox spoke.
Sebastian said nothing. But he turned left at the next street instead of continuing straight.
I counted to five in my head. Then I heard footsteps adjust behind us.
"Still there," Lunox confirmed.
"What do we do?" I kept my voice barely above a breath.
"We split," Luna said. "Sebastian takes you to Giza. I deal with the tail."
"Alone?"
She gave me a sideways look that communicated very efficiently that this was not a serious question. "There are two of them."
"That's not—"
"Sebastian." Her voice was low but firm. "Take him. Now."
Sebastian turned down a narrow alley between two buildings without breaking stride. I followed. Behind us I heard Luna's footsteps change direction — not running, just decisively turning — and then nothing because the alley swallowed all sound from the street.
I hated that she was back there alone.
I kept moving.
Sebastian navigated by instinct, or memory, or something I didn't have a word for. He moved through Cairo's back streets without hesitation, no phone, no map, every turn chosen with the quiet confidence of someone reading a city the way other people read signposts.
"You've been here a lot," I said.
"Yes."
"How many times?"
"Many."
Helpful as always. I let it sit for about thirty seconds before I tried a different angle. "The people following us. How did they find the safe house?"
"They likely didn't," Sebastian said. "They found us at the airport. Followed us here."
"The red ring on the map — the watchers around Cairo—"
"Were already in place before we landed." He said it evenly. "They knew Egypt was next."
"How?"
A pause. Just short enough to be almost unnoticeable. "The Crimson Society has extensive intelligence. They have studied the Cain bloodline for centuries."
Same answer as before. Same clean door closing in my face.
Lunox shifted on my shoulder. Not a warning exactly. Just a small, deliberate movement that only I could feel.
I filed it.
We cleared the city gradually, the buildings spacing out, the streets widening. The Giza plateau came into view from a distance — impossible to miss even at night. The pyramids were lit from below by soft yellow light, enormous and completely unbothered by the eight million people living in their shadow.
I'd seen pictures. A thousand pictures. They still stopped me cold.
"Keep moving," Sebastian said.
"Give me two seconds."
"We don't have—"
"Two seconds, Sebastian."
He stopped.
I looked at them. The Great Pyramid. Khafre. Menkaure. Sitting there like they'd always sat there and always would, long after everything that currently felt important had turned to dust. There was something deeply weird about standing here with cosmic powers I barely understood, chasing a trial left by beings older than history, while three of humanity's most famous structures just existed in the background like they were completely normal.
"Old power," Lunox said softly near my ear. "Like I said."
"Yeah," I said. "Good old or complicated old?"
"Both."
"Every time."
We moved toward the plateau.
The tourist areas were closed, roped off, security lights on the paths. Sebastian took us wide around the perimeter, through unlitancient stone walls that were just sitting in the sand with no signage or fencing, until we reached a section of the base of the Great Pyramid that looked exactly like every other section of the base.
Then the map in my jacket pocket went warm.
Not just warm. Hot.
I pulled it out. The darkness was gone. Egypt blazed on the surface, the dot over Giza pulsing fast, and at the center a symbol appeared I hadn't seen before. Not Egyptian exactly — older, rougher, the kind of mark that preceded the civilisation built on top of it.
"Here," Lunox said.
I pressed my hand to the stone.
It sounded like something exhaling, deep inside the rock. A line appeared — a seam, perfect and straight, where no seam had been a second before. Stone ground against stone, slow and heavy, and behind it was darkness and ancient air and something I could feel from three feet away, pulling at the vampire part of me like a hand reaching for something it recognised.
The Trial of Life and Death was right there.
My phone buzzed.
Luna.
One message.
There weren't two of them. There were six. Run.