“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.