I sighted the second sentry, midway up, a blond woman, and squeezed the trigger.
Two more shots. Two more people turned into corpses. Minimal casualties. People like to note “minimal” and forget about “casualties,” but it’s the casualties that wake you up at night.
I picked off another guard, close to the path, and jumped to my feet. We ran straight ahead, single file, Raphael in the lead, his knife out, the wicked curve sharp.
A man noticed us and swung his rifle, blocking our way. Before he could pull the trigger, Raphael sliced and kept moving. The man crumpled down.
We kept going, pounding our way down the wooden walkway. A woman shot into our way, eyes wide and terrified. She opened her mouth, baring twin fangs, and lunged at Raphael. His knife flashed again. The woman fell against the side of a house.
A shout rang from the left—another guard had noticed us. Two rifles snapped up. I fired faster than they did.
The walkway ended. We jumped into the mud, sinking in up to midshin, and waded through toward the pyramid looming ahead.
Bullets whistled past me. I turned around. A woman with a rifle at two o’clock. Aim, squeeze, take half a second to confirm that her body splashed into the mud.
Roman lagged behind. He was moving fast for a human, but not for a shapeshifter.
“Raphael!” I called.
He turned around and doubled back.
“No, I’ve got this,” Roman said.
Raphael picked him up out of the mud and we raced to the pyramid.
The clay body of Apep wound about the structure, and I finally realized why the entire thing wasn’t collapsing under its terrible weight—steel beams and the edge of concrete poked out from beneath the clay. The cultists had used some sort of structure as a base. How the hell had they gotten it down into the swamp?
Raphael set Roman down and they began climbing. I lingered. The sentries had done an about-face and were running toward us. I fired. The bullet took the first man in the stomach. He dropped into the mud. I fired again, knocking the second runner out of the lineup. They scattered, taking cover behind the huts.
I turned around and followed the men up the pyramid.
Shots rang out. A bullet bit into my side. Argh. Not silver, but it hurt like hell. My body clenched and expelled it. I kept climbing.
Another bullet burrowed into the mud an inch from my head. I shifted sideways, moving along the side of the structure, trying to put the thickness of the pyramid between me and the shooters.
A hail of gunfire tore from one of the huts.
“Honey!” Raphael called. He was above me, shielding Roman with his body.
I turned, pressing my back against the mud, and raised my rifle. The muzzle flash gave the shooter away—third hut on the left, in the window, a faint outline of a man’s head. I squeezed the trigger. The rifle barked, and a man’s head jerked back. The gunfire died. I turned around and kept climbing.
Above me Raphael and Roman climbed up onto the flat top of the pyramid. I grabbed the edge, pulled myself up, just as Raphael stepped toward the altar…
The magic wave drowned us. Oh no.
The clay statue of a man in front of me opened its eyes. Its human eyes. The clay figures weren’t statues. They were actual people, smeared with a thick layer of mud and left to bake, motionless, under the sun.
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 f**king 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.