Raphael picked up Anubis’s fang off the altar.
“Raphael!” I screamed.
The statues jumped, breaking their coats of clay, and grabbed Raphael. He clamped the one in front of him in a death grip. I rushed them from one side, Roman from the other. The clay-covered man in front of me unhinged his jaw and sank his fangs into Raphael’s side. My hands closed about his neck. I squeezed, crushing bone and cartilage, and jerked the corpse aside, hurling if off the pyramid. Roman stabbed his staff into the spine of the second man and then Raphael opened his hands and the third cultist fell, lifeless.
Raphael fell. I caught him and lowered him down.
His blue eyes were wide open. “It’s hot.”
I jerked my knife from my belt, grabbed Raphael’s ACU top and cut it, stripping it off. Two bites, one on the right arm and the other on the torso. I yanked my backpack open, grabbed Doolittle’s antivenom gun, and shot it into the first bite.
“Don’t move.” Don’t die. Don’t die, Raphael. Don’t die.
I sank two more shots into him and then three more into the other bite.
“Behind you,” Raphael barked.
I whipped around. The fourth statue snapped upright right next to the snake’s head, half-hidden by the serpent’s skull. Roman charged it.
The clay-smeared man howled something wordless and angry. Roman shoved his staff into the man’s chest. The scream turned to a gurgle, as blood spilled from the cultist’s mouth. Roman freed the staff with a sharp jerk, stumbled back, and slid down, leaving a bloody smudge on the clay Apep’s neck.
“The knife,” Raphael squeezed out. His body bucked in my hands, rigid.
I shot more antivenom into him. It was all I could do.
“The knife,” he croaked.
I reached for Anubis’s fang, which had fallen from his hand.
A man’s hand snatched it before I could touch it.
“I’ll take that, thank you!” Anapa strode to Apep.
Roman blocked his way. The god backhanded him. Roman crashed into the altar. Anapa raised the knife. A jackal howled, loud, deafening.
I lunged at him and hit an invisible wall. It tossed me back and I fell on Raphael.
Anapa plunged the knife into Apep’s skull.
The clay serpent shuddered. The pyramid shook under us. Cracks sprang on Apep’s blunt nose. The colossal head rose, teetered upright, and fell backward. The clay serpent slid off the pyramid into the mud.
“The show will go on after all!” Anapa spun around, grinning with a mouth full of jackal teeth. “Here we go.”
“You fucking bastard!” I snarled.
Raphael shook under my hands. He was going into convulsions.
“I must have my myth.” Anapa laughed and vanished.
The swamp shook. A flock of birds rose from the trees, darkening the sky.
“Snakes.” Roman pushed himself from the altar.
“What?”
“Flying snakes.” He planted the staff into the pyramid and began to chant. Darkness swirled around his feet, flashes of pure black emptiness suffused with silver lightning.
The cloud headed for us. Raphael’s limbs shook, gripped by a spasm. I pried his jaws open and forced the handle of the knife into his mouth. I had no more antivenom. I’d injected him with our entire supply.
A deep-voiced bell tolled, echoed by the distant silvery ringing of smaller bells. Eerie male voices chanted in tune to Roman’s incantations. The snakes swarmed above us, turning the sky black.
Wind twisted about Roman. I hugged Raphael to me.
The snakes plunged at us…and hit an invisible wall, as if a transparent half-sphere shielded us from their onslaught. They touched the wall and slid along the edge of the spell, turning smaller, darker, losing their wings, until they finally landed on the side of the pyramid and slid down into the mud as plain rat snakes.
Raphael gripped my hand, struggling to say something. His eyes rolled back in his head.
I clenched him to me. No, this wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. The antivenom had to work. It had to…
The last of the snakes fell. Roman dropped to his knees, out of breath, his face pale.
A loud hiss rolled through the swamp as if a thousand snakes opened their mouths in unison. I leaned forward.
Below us a serpent the size of a cargo train circled the pyramid, sliding through the mud. His body shimmered and twisted with a constantly moving mosaic of brown and yellow.
Raphael’s heels drummed the ground. He was dying. He was dying and I was out of antivenom.
“Now would be a good time to make some choices,” Anapa said next to me.
I grabbed his leg, jerked him down, and locked my hands around his throat. They never touched his skin. A barrier of magic held me back. I squeezed, straining with all my strength. He smiled.
The pyramid shook as the colossal snake curved around it.
“You,” I snarled. “You!”
A titanic serpent’s head rose, hovering above us. A long tongue slivered out of the lipless mouth to taste the air.
“You know what you have to do,” Anapa said. His head melted, changing shape, and suddenly my hands touched the thick, furry throat of a Jackal.
I gripped it. “I’ll kill you.”
“Give me what I want and he will live,” the Jackal said.
I didn’t hesitate for a second. “Do it and you can have me.”
A yellow sheen rolled over the Jackal’s eyes.
“Andrea?” Raphael said behind me, his voice almost normal. “Andrea?”
My feet left the ground. I floated up, weightless. The Jackal floated next to me, huge as a three-story house, his head shaggy with fur, his yellow eyes bottomless. Raphael was screaming something down below.
I love you, darling.
I love you.
Forgive me.
The Jackal opened its mouth and gulped me. Magic flowed from me, binding me, anchoring me inside the Jackal, connecting us and circulating out of him into me and back to him. We merged, the monstrous beast and I, and suddenly we were once again solid and the old enemy reared its ugly head in front of us.
Apep hissed and struck.
We dodged, lithe and fast.
The serpent smashed into the corner of the pyramid. The entire pathetic mud pile shook and careened. Humans screamed. Morons. Small pathetic morons wriggling in the mud building their mud-hill temple.
Apep coiled himself, his head swaying back and forth. We ran around him, mashing the mud with our paws and snarling. Apep opened its mouth, the magic roiling inside its dark maw.
We yipped and barked, baiting it.
Apep struck, like a coiled spring, and missed.
We danced around it, so fast, so clever.
Stupid snake. Foolish, foolish, weak snake.
Apep lunged. Fangs struck our paw. We snapped our teeth and it let go.
Little humans cheered. Venom coursed through our veins. No matter. We had enough magic to cleanse our blood easily.
We danced around the serpent. It turned, but not fast enough. We bit its tail and ran, dragging it around the floodplain, its blood a burning inferno on our tongue.
Look at us pulling your god by its tail. Look at us, little things. Look at me. I am Inepu. I am the better god.
Apep coiled back and struck, but I opened my mouth and danced away, too fast for it. Apep gathered itself into a spiral.
I circled it. Bite from the left. The snake mouth met me and I withdrew.
Strike from the right. Again the snake mouth barred my way.
I will win. I will endure.
I will triumph.
I am Inepu.
My magic was weakening. My worshipers were still few. So few. But not as few as Apep’s.
I snapped my teeth, lunging low.
Apep shot out. Its fangs pierced my fur and skin. Fire and night rolled into my veins, threatening to end me. I let the serpent bite me and just as it let go, I bit its neck, sinking my teeth deep into its flesh.
Die. Die…
Go back into nothing. Dissolve and be forgotten, so I will stand in your place.
Apep writhed in my jaws, whipping its body at me, clenching, coiling, but I held on and bit harder and harder.
The last of my magic was almost spent.
My fangs found bone. I jerked the body of my enemy up and bit down with all my might.
Apep hung limp in my jaws.
I held him high, showing everyone my triumph.
Witness my might. Remember it.
In the mud, small things knelt. I felt the first stirring of devotion, the delicious addictive splashes of their faith.
Worship me. Feed me.
The pliant flesh in my mouth turned to clay. The serpent’s body crumbled and I released it. It crashed into the mud in chunks of clay. I howled, announcing my victory.
The small things fled. No matter. They would remember me. Soon, when I recovered, I would find them and add them to my worshippers. The current of faith would flow.
I stood there, exhausted, exhilarated, intoxicated by my power. Invincible.
I was a god.
Weakness flooded me, slowly. The last of my magic was spent. I staggered to their former god’s ruined temple. I let go of my form and assumed my new human shape. Healthy. Beautiful. Full of magic and so blissfully easy to heal.
I studied my perfectly formed fingers, my arms, my long, muscled legs.
I was beautiful.
A man walked toward me through the mud. What was the name…
Raphael.
Raphael!
I crushed the small voice inside me, smothering it.
The man kept walking. He had a strange look on his face. Humans are curious creatures. This one was…angry? No…grieving, perhaps, but no, that wasn’t quite right either.
Perhaps I should kill—
The magic jerked me back. I had forgotten. I had made the bargain. I had promised he would live.
The human was close now. Determination. That was it. I needed to retreat, to fold myself into the limit of the human mind, but not yet. Not yet. I had just vanquished my enemy. I deserved this, deserved the worship, the taste of power to come.
Perhaps he was coming to kill me. But then any damage he could do, I would heal.
I raised my arms. “What do you think of my body?”
The human attacked. I saw it, saw the glove on his hand with long pale metal claws, and I willed my magic to shield me, but too little was left.