CHAPTER 15

In the morning I awoke alone in the hospital room. Doolittle delivered a huge breakfast to me and stood over me while I ate every last piece of scrambled eggs, sirloin tips, and pancakes. I gobbled it up and escaped the medical ward to go look for Roman.

I found the priest of the Evil God in a corner of the northern courtyard. It was one of those small outside spaces within the Keep, shielded by a tall wall and made to provide relative privacy. To get to it, I had to pass through the stone arch, cut in the bottom of a stocky tower, and midway to it, I heard high-pitched giggles.

The black volhv sat on a bench, surrounded by a gaggle of kids, and was making small things disappear from his hands and reappear behind their ears and in their hair. A female werejackal discreetly watched him from the wall. Visitors to the Keep were never left unsupervised, especially around children.

I leaned against the wall and watched the volhv, too. There was something so joyous about Roman. It was as if part of his life was so bleak and dark that he felt the need to live the rest of it to its fullest, squeezing every bit of fun and happiness out of it. Even his martyred, put-upon sighs had a slightly mocking quality about them, as if he only pretended to be upset.

Roman saw me. “Okay, that’s enough magic for today. Scatter now. Scatter, scatter, scatter.”

The kids took off. Roman spread his arms. “Can’t help it. I’m just popular.”

I smiled and sat by him on the bench. “I have a serious question.”

“I will give a serious answer.”

“Can a god be killed?”

The humor drained from Roman’s face. “Well, that depends on if you’re a pantheist or Marxist.”

“What’s the difference?”

“The first believes that divinity is the universe. The two are synonymous and nonexistent without each other. The second believes in anthropocentrism, seeing man in the center of the universe, and god as just an invention of human conscience. Of course, if you follow Nietzsche, you can kill God just by thinking about him.”

Ask a priest a question, get an enigmatic answer. Didn’t matter what religion…“Roman,” I said. “Can I kill Anubis?”

“I’m trying to answer. Anubis is a deity, a collection of specific concepts and beliefs. You can’t kill a concept, because to do so you must destroy every human being who is aware of it. Your best bet would be to identify everyone who entertained the idea of his existence and shoot them in the head.”

“So the answer is a no?”

Roman sighed. “I didn’t finish. You want simple answers to very complicated questions. The wrong questions. The question you should be asking isn’t whether a god can be killed, but what is Anubis. You must understand the nature of a thing before you can end its existence. In Anubis’s case, his divinity is partial. He requires a mortal form to survive the periods of technology. His mortal form is just that—mortal. You know its nature. You know where to cut and how you can break it. You can end Anubis’s mortal form. Will it end Anubis? There are no certainties in this world, but I would theorize that no, it will not. As long as there is a cult of Anubis, devoted to veneration of his specific concept with a specific image, he will continue. He will be reborn.”

“How quickly?” I asked.

“How quickly will he come back if you nuke him?” Roman frowned. “His grasp on his corporeal form is tenuous. The fact that he could be killed in itself is devastating to his divinity. People don’t like to believe in gods who can be murdered and remain dead; they much prefer to believe in rebirth. If I were him, I would’ve waited a couple hundred years before I decided to get my toes wet in this magic and technology mess. So the simple answer is, he will return. But not in my lifetime and likely not in that of our children or grandchildren. I would prepare anyway, because when he does come back, he’ll be pissed off.”

“So his mortal body can die?”

“Yes. It’s just a body. Unfortunately, it’s a body with huge magical potential. I don’t know what his reserves are, but he’ll use every drop of them to defend himself. He’s been very conservative with his shows of power so far, which probably means he’s hoarding it for this final battle with Apep in case we fail.”

If the mortal body was the most likely target, then fighting him in my dreams would be futile.

Roman patted my back. “Cheer up, deadly girl. Things have a way of working themselves out.”

Not this time. But I wouldn’t go meekly to the slaughter. No, I would fight him for the lives of the people I loved to the bitter end. Win or lose, Anapa would regret meeting me.

Raphael strode through the arch, followed by Ascanio. Raphael was in black jeans and a black T-shirt that complemented his hair and showed off his carved biceps. Ascanio had somehow managed to copy his outfit so precisely he looked like Raphael’s younger brother.

Raphael saw Roman, registered his hand on my back, and focused on him like a shark.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m sitting and talking to a pretty girl.” The volhv regarded him with a slightly mocking air. “We were having a lovely time until you showed up.”

“That’s nice. How about you go somewhere else,” Raphael told him.

“I’m really tired of you telling me what to do,” Roman said.

They’d bickered the entire way back from the fight with the draugr. My arm hurt too much to pay attention, but apparently during the battle on the hill, someone had run the wrong way and the two of them had managed to collide, which disrupted Roman’s binding. They blamed each other. The fact that Raphael and I had barely gotten back together and he wasn’t inclined to tolerate men in my vicinity wasn’t helping either.

“Go. Away,” Raphael said.

The volhv leaned back, his arms behind his head. “How about you go fuck yourself.”

Nice repartee. Not.

Raphael smiled. “Big talk for a man in a dress.”

“It’s not a dress. It’s robes, which are my work clothes. You know, work? The thing real men do?”

Uh-oh.

“Real men, huh?” Raphael was still smiling, and the hint of insanity in his eyes made him look slightly unhinged.

“What was your job again?” Roman frowned, pretending to think. “Ah yes. Don’t you stand there and look pretty to impress female visitors? You’re really good at that. No real skill involved. Not much of a retirement for that kind of thing, though. Doesn’t help to keep a wife and kids fed either. Unless you find a rich old lady and hope she puts you in her will…”

He did not just say that.

Raphael froze, momentarily stricken speechless.

“How old would the old lady have to be?” Ascanio asked. “Old like forty?”

“Go back to Aunt B and stay with her,” Raphael said. His voice was eerily calm. Uh-oh.

“Yes, Alpha.” Ascanio spun on his heel and took off.

Raphael had removed him from immediate danger.

“What are you two doing?” I asked them. “Don’t we have a bigger fish to fry?”

“Stay out of it,” Raphael told me. “This is between him and me.”

I knew that look. It was his “I will do this or die trying” look.

“I have to concur,” Roman said. “This is an A-B conversation.”

Two idiots. “Fine,” I said. “Knock yourselves out.”

Raphael focused on Roman with the unwavering concentration of a predator sighting his prey. “Right now. Let’s go.”

Roman grinned. “Sure.”

Raphael stretched, rolling his head left to right.

Roman stood, picked up his staff, and spun it like a Shaolin monk bent on a rampage. Raphael squared his shoulders.

Men. Enough said.

Roman leaned forward. Wind swirled around his feet. The black volhv shot forward, as if his black boots had wings. Raphael stepped out of the way, letting Roman pass him, spun, jumped up, and kicked Roman between the shoulder blades.

The wizard flew into the wall, but didn’t hit it, because an invisible cushion of air stopped his fall. He dropped down to his feet and turned. “Hmm.”

Raphael had a frighteningly grim look on his face.

Roman’s lips moved. A cocoon of black threads slid from the ground in twisted streams, wrapping themselves around him, not quite touching.

Raphael lunged, shockingly fast.

The black threads snapped, binding around Raphael’s wrist. Roman leaned back and drove a crushing sidekick into the top of Raphael’s hip. It sounded like a sledgehammer pounding into a stud. I’d seen it before. It was a sambo kick, part of a personal defense martial art the Russians practiced. Ow. Ow, ow, ow.

Raphael grabbed the black threads and pulled. Roman strained, pulling back.

A small boy ran through the stone arch and headed for the two of them. I jumped off the bench, ran, and caught him.

“Hi!” he said.

I lifted him off the ground. My rebroken arm screamed a little and I shifted his weight to the other. “Hi.”

“They’re fighting!” the boy told me, pointing at the two men.

“Yes, they are. Where are your parents?”

A couple ran through the arch, a tall man and a dark-haired woman in her late thirties, followed by a teenage girl.

“Dylan!” The woman reached for the boy. “I’m so, so sorry. We just wanted to pay our respects to the alpha. We were told he would be here. We didn’t mean to interrupt. We’re trying to get admitted into Clan Bouda…”

I looked at her face, and recognition punched me in the gut.

Michelle.

Michelle Carver, who put a nail through my hand when I was five, because she thought it was funny to hear me scream. Michelle Carver, who pelted me with bricks, after Candy broke my legs. All I could do was crawl and Michelle chased me and threw bricks and rocks at my head. Michelle, who cheered while the bitch alpha beat my mother to a bloody pulp. Michelle “Hit her again, Candy!”

I had killed every last one of them. Every last one, except her. She had gone missing a couple of years before I came back and wiped that sadistic clan of bouda bitches off the face of the planet. I had tried to find her, but she had done a good job of covering her tracks.

Raphael let go of the threads. “Andrea?”

I was holding Michelle Carver’s child in my hands.

I let go of the boy. He slid to the ground.

“Andrea?” All blood drained from Michelle’s face. “Andrea Nash?”

She backed away from me.

Raphael started toward me.

“Do you know what she is?” A hysterical note vibrated in Michelle’s voice. “She’s beastkin.”

The world suddenly became very simple. I moved. Her mate tried to stand in my way. I backhanded him, and he went flying. I grabbed Michelle by her throat and drove her into the wall, pinning her in place. My arm had fur, and my hand had claws, and Michelle’s blood squirting under her skin through her jugular tickled my fingers.

“Tell me again what I am.” I smashed the back of her head into the brick. “Tell me again.”

Michelle croaked in my grip. She made no move to shift. She had no warrior form. She was never the strongest. No, she just liked to yip on the sidelines, picking on someone weaker out of fear. It changed nothing.

“This woman did something bad to you?” Roman asked.

“This woman tortured me and my mother.”

Roman shrugged. “If you want to do her, do it quick. I’ll go watch the entrance for you.”

He was gone. All that was left was me and Michelle’s pale, soft throat. The world was red. So, so red, and every time I exhaled, it was growing angrier and redder.

Raphael’s hand rested on my shoulder. He stroked me, firm fingers caressing my fur. “You have the right. It would feel good.”

It would feel great. He had no fucking idea how great it would be. I wanted to tell him that I finally caught her. I had told Raphael about her before. I wanted to tell him now how much I wanted to rip her apart, but all that came out was a snarl.

“I know you.” Raphael put his arms around me, his mouth close to my ear, his voice soothing. “If you kill her in front of her children, it will haunt you for the rest of your life. Let go, babe. Let her go.”

No! No, she didn’t get to get away with this. No! Everybody else had paid, she would pay, too.

My injured arm hurt. The pain was so raw, so fresh.

She would pay. This weak, cruel waste of a human being. This piece of shit that tormented my childhood. She was the reason I’d woken up holding the fucking butcher knife. She was the reason Doolittle had had to take a saw to my arm. She would pay!

“Let her go, honey. Let her go, Andi. For your own sake. For me. For us.” Raphael kissed my fur just below my ear. “Let her go.”

I wanted to sink into the red. I wanted to see her blood on my hands. But his voice held me back.

“Stand down,” he said. “Her children are watching. Stand down, honey.”

I heard a tiny high-pitched sound, wailing at my side, and I realized it was the little boy bawling in hysterical fear. His sister sobbed.

“You are better than this, Andi. Do the right thing. Walk away.”

As I forced my fingers open, all the pain of my memories and all my frustration tore out of me in a sharp short scream. I spun and walked away, to the other wall, as far away from her as I could.

“She’s beastkin,” Michelle breathed out. “She’s—”

“She’s the clan beta and my mate,” Raphael said.

Michelle staggered back as if he had hit her.

Raphael’s eyes were two burning pools of blood-red fire. “Your application to the clan is denied. Gather your family and leave. If you’re in my territory by sundown, I’ll hunt you down and drag you before the clans to be tried for torture, abuse of a child, and whatever other charges our lawyers will level against you. You will be found guilty, you will suffer, and you will be executed. Your children will become the wards of the Pack and they’ll loathe your name by the time they grow up.”

Michelle picked up the prone body of her husband. Her daughter grabbed the boy and they ran out.

Raphael walked to me and wrapped his arms around me.

My anger broke out in tortured sobs. Tears wet my eyes. “I had her.”

“I know.”

“In my hands.”

“I love you,” he whispered. “I love you, I’m proud of you. It was the right thing.”

“No!” I couldn’t stop crying. I wasn’t sad, I just couldn’t contain it. “She should be dead. That would be the right thing.”

“For her, but not for you. It would eat you alive. It’s not who you are.”

I crumpled down on the ground and cried. I’d learned not to cry back then, because the more I cried, the more excited they would get, but I could cry now. Nobody would stop me, and so I sat there and let it all pour out, while Raphael held me and whispered calm, loving nonsense into my ears.

I could not kill Michelle. I couldn’t scar her children the way she had scarred me. But I could join the Pack and make sure that no other little girl had to face my choices. No other little bouda would be hiding, scared and alone, dreading to be found and abused again. Not on my watch. Not as long as I breathed.

Gradually my sobs died down. We sat together, Raphael and I.

“For the record, I had him,” Raphael said. I could tell by his voice he was baiting me. There was comfort in the familiar needling, and right now I desperately needed it.

“Didn’t look that way from where I stood. He had you all wrapped up.”

“That’s what you think,” he said.

“That is what I think.”

“Handling that purple carpet must’ve done some permanent damage,” Raphael said.

“To you.”

He leaned over and murmured, “I’m not the one with purple stains on my butt.”

Oh, it’s like this, then? “Would you like to be?”

He grinned and nodded.

“Maybe you needed backup to help you with Roman,” I told him.

“I don’t need backup. I can take him with one hand tied behind my back.”

“He had one hand tied behind your back.”

“Maybe it looked like that from where you were sitting…”

That’s how Jim’s messenger found us, sitting on the ground, bickering and flirting. Jim’s teams had returned from the Warren, the poor neighborhood by White Street, and they had brought information about Gloria back with them.

I sat at a large conference table filled with food and reports. Jim sat across from me, and Chandra, Clan Jackal’s designated expert on ancient Egypt, sat to my left. Between us teetered small mountains of paperwork—all of the information Jim’s team had squeezed out of the inhabitants of the Warren. Derek joined us after the first fifteen minutes. We were looking for clues. Somewhere at this very moment, Gloria’s associates were preparing to raise Apep from the dead. We needed to know where that location could be, and Gloria was our only link.

We’d been at it for hours. So far I had made two piles: a big pile of stuff I’d gone through and didn’t consider relevant, and a very tiny pile of paper that might be something. I’d covered half a legal pad in notes. I was hungry again. The lunch hour came and went without us finding a smoking gun.

“It would be nice if there was a map,” Chandra said. “With a town circled on it.”

“And a note that said ‘Secret Hideout Here’?” Derek added.

I scrutinized the paper in front of me. Gloria had used a private shipping service, which was faster and more reliable than the post office, but which also forced their customers to declare the exact contents of their packages. In the event your package decided to sprout tentacles when the magic hit, they wanted to be prepared for that eventuality.

This particular operative, whose name was Douglas, had tracked down the shipping company Gloria used and offered their rep an outrageous bribe for the manifest of everything delivered to Gloria’s doorstep. Handmade soap, thirty bucks a bar. Expensive perfume. Pricy bath salts. Someone was living high.

Doolittle walked through the door. “Shouldn’t you be resting?”

“I’m saving the world,” I told him.

Doolittle looked mournful. “I’ll make us some hot chocolate.”

I went down the list of deliveries: books, blah-blah, more soap, antimosquito cream. Hmm. Georgia was in the grip of a drought. I hadn’t seen a mosquito in ages.

“Mosquito cream,” I said.

Derek raised his pen. “Boots. She went down to Carlos’s Footwear and got herself a pair of rubber boots two days before you killed her. Some kids from the Warren nagged her for change and she told them to piss off.”

Fatal mistake. Never upset the street kids.

“So we have water,” Jim said.

“In the original myth, Apep lived in the river,” Chandra said.

“Could he be somewhere in the Chattahoochee?” Derek asked.

“No.” Jim tapped the paper. “Too risky. The Chattahoochee is too shallow and too well patrolled. Half of the city’s shipping comes through it. The army would napalm a giant snake the moment they saw it.”

“So we either have lakes in the north or…” Derek pulled out a map. “Or the Suwanee.”

“The Suwanee River would work,” Jim said. “It’s deep and black water.”

I dug through the manifests. “She put in an order with the teamsters for a large crate shipment to be shipped a couple of weeks ago. Supposedly glassware. It’s going to…Waycross.”

“Waycross, Georgia?” Jim asked.

“Yep.”

“That’s right on the edge of the Okefenokee swamp,” Derek said.

“There are also crate orders for Augusta and Tallahassee,” I said.

“We need a confirmation.” Jim dug through his papers.

Derek and I burrowed into our stacks.

“Pontoon!” Derek announced twenty minutes later. “She bought a pontoon boat.”

“When?” I looked through my notes on the shipping records.

“On the fourteenth. Took it off the lot.”

“She shipped a large crate of antiques down to Folkston on the fifteenth. Where is Folkston?”

“The east edge of the Okefenokee.” Jim rose. “We got her.”

“You can’t be involved,” I reminded him.

“No, we can’t help you fight,” Jim said. “There is a difference. Nobody says we can’t scout the swamp and mark the way for you. You won’t go in blind.”

“I’ll get on the phone,” Derek said.

They left the room.

Doolittle put a cup of hot chocolate in front of me. “Drink this before you go.”

I sipped it. It had to be half sugar. “It’s delicious.”

Doolittle patted my arm. “It’s good for you. A little sugar goes a long way.”

Little, huh?

“Thank you,” I told him. “You were always kind to me. Not many people are. I will never forget it.”

“You are coming back.” Doolittle fixed me with his stare.

“Sure.” I got up and hugged him.

Raphael, Roman, and I rode the ley line out of Atlanta. The magic current ran whether the magic was up or down, but when tech ruled, like it did now, the ley line speed dropped to a mere forty miles per hour. It took us several hours to get there. The magic finally spat us and our cargo out right between Waycross and Folkston into the open arms of a shapeshifter woman with a Pack Jeep. She was short, dark-haired, and had a sprinkling of freckles on her nose.

“Here is your ride.” She held out the keys. Raphael took them. “Go down that road, take the right fork, then the second left. You’ll come to the pier. There are two pontoon boats there. Take them. The way through the swamp is marked with strips of white fabric. Good luck.”

She walked away.

We loaded the cargo into the Jeep, and me and my Heckler & Koch UMP submachine gun called shotgun. Roman crawled into the backseat.

Twenty minutes later we pulled up before the wooden pier. In front of us a narrow channel curved into the green wall of trees and underbrush. Two pontoon boats floated on the water the color of black tea.

A crate sat on the pier. On the side someone had written in black marker, “A present from Uncle Jim.”

Raphael pulled the top off the crate. Pixilated ACUs—Army Combat Uniforms—in lovely randomized patterns of greens and browns, perfect for the swamp.

“I like this uncle.” I found the shortest set and stripped off my jeans.

Roman opened his eyes wide, as if he had never seen a woman in underwear before.

Raphael threw a set at him. “Don’t just stand there.”

“You want me to wear these?” Roman looked at the ACUs and put his hand over his chest, as if protecting his black robe. “That’s not right.”

“You have a problem with pants?” Raphael asked.

Roman pulled his robe apart, revealing a pair of black jeans underneath. “I always wear my pants. I just don’t want to deal with that retarded outfit. I don’t even know how to put it on.”

“Wear the fatigues,” I told him. “It won’t kill you. Not wearing them might.”

Roman sighed, rolled his eyes, and stripped off his robe and jeans, revealing a muscled torso. Well. Someone worked out. Roman pulled on the fatigue pants, grabbed the black boots, folded the bottom of the pants in a practiced move, and stuffed his feet into his boots.

Hmmm.

Next he took the ACU top and rolled up both sleeves in a perfectly even summer regulation cuff. Raphael stared at him. Roman pulled the ACU on and flexed. “Makes your arm bigger, see?”

“You asshole,” I punched him in the shoulder.

“Gentle! I bruise easily.” He rubbed his carved biceps and I caught a glimpse of a tattoo on his arm: a skull wearing a beret. Army Ranger.

Now I had seen everything.

I stood on the bow of a pontoon boat and held binoculars to my eyes. Raphael sat at the helm. Roman piloted the second vessel behind us. He’d brought some sort of leather harness, which he had fit over his ACUs, and stuck his staff through it. It looked silly protruding over his shoulder.

A river stretched in front of me, its waters blue-black and half hidden by lily pads and water weeds. Strange trees bordered it, couched in the brush and reeds, tall, their trunks bare and bloated at the root where they thrust from the water, then narrowing as they rose to spread in a canopy of fresh bright green. They looked prehistoric. This was not my country.

“Cypresses,” Raphael told me, when I had asked about them a minute ago. “They are buttresses against the hurricanes.”

We made our way through the labyrinth of waterways and false islands made of floating peat and covered with grass. The air smelled of water, fish, and mud. Somewhere to the left a gator roared, the sound ripping from its throat deep, powerful, and primeval, as if the swamp itself roared into our faces. There was a strange serene beauty in this ancient, wet riot of life, but I wasn’t in the mood to appreciate it.

Ahead the river forked, flowing around an island, a dense mess of underbrush and cypresses. A small piece of white cloth dangled from the low-lying bush, dead center of the river. In the past when Jim’s people had left markers, they were to the left or to the right, indicating which way we had to turn. This one was straight on.

“Island coming up,” I said. “I don’t think we’re going around this time.”

“Got it.”

Since last night, Raphael had said exactly sixteen words to me. He was distancing himself. It was probably better this way.

The boat slid into the muddy shore. I jumped out into the soggy soup of mud and water and pulled back the canvas covering the bottom of the boat. Guns stared at me, wrapped lovingly in plastic to keep the moisture out. Two shotguns. A Heckler & Koch UMP submachine gun. And my baby, a Parker-Hale M-85, my sniper rifle of choice. They didn’t make them anymore. She was a gift from my sniper instructor and she let me put a bullet into the center of a man’s forehead at nine hundred and sixty meters. She had never failed me.

I took the rifle and one shotgun, Raphael shouldered the backpack filled with ammunition and grabbed the UMP and the other shotgun. A moment later Roman docked and pulled back his own canvas, gathering up a giant rucksack filled with magic paraphernalia, and picked up my compound bow and two quivers filled with arrows. We set off through the swamp, moving as quietly as the wet ground allowed.

The ground climbed up. There must’ve been an outcropping of rock under all that mud. We kept going up the gently rising hill.

Raphael stopped. A moment later I smelled it, too—smoke. We bent low, moving up the hill in complete silence, until finally we went to ground at its end.

A small city spread out in front of the hill, stretching across the floodplain. Huts and shacks made of wood, tents, premanufactured buildings, all connected by wooden walkways, radiating from a circular channel in the center. Muddy water filled the channel, draining off into the floodplain. In its center a massive structure stretched to the sky. At least three hundred feet tall, it resembled a spiral of smooth coils, wide at the ground and narrow as it twisted about the base again and again, reaching to the flat top.

A clay spiral. Roman’s prophecy was coming true.

“They built an enormous dog turd,” Raphael murmured.

“It’s a snake,” Roman said. “Look, see the head is resting on the top, and the snake is curling down around the pyramid. They’ve made their god out of clay, and then they’ll animate him. It’s very clever, actually.”

The coils at the bottom of the pyramid were at least eighteen feet tall. I put the binoculars to my eyes. The top of the pyramid was flat. The head of a colossal clay snake rested on one side, its eyes closed, Roman’s coveted staff thrust through the beginning of the snake’s neck. Next to the serpent three clay man-shaped statues sat, their legs crossed, their arms resting on their knees. Behind them a short stubby altar rose. On the altar lay Anubis’s fang.

I shifted the view down to the huts and counted, two, five, eight, ten, twelve…Thirty-two buildings. People walked to and fro, both men and women. A group of kids carrying fishing rods jumped off the walkway and splashed through the muddy water, heading into the swamp. A woman and a younger girl cleaned fish on a wooden table. A cat sat by their feet, waiting for a handout.

Let’s say four people per structure. That’s a hundred and twenty-eight people. At least. Some buildings looked significantly larger than others.

They killed four of our people. We had come here with the idea to shoot every cultist in sight. This was a search-and-destroy type of mission. I had no problem killing the adults, but nobody ever said anything about children being present.

An unmistakable wail of an infant in distress tickled my ears. You’ve got to be kidding me.

Roman sighed next to me. “Why? Why do they always bring babies into it?”

“Probably to feed them to the snake,” Raphael said.

Our original plan waved good-bye at us, stuck its thumb in its mouth, strained, and exploded. We had to stop the ritual. We had to get revenge for Nick, his son, and the families of other shapeshifters. And we had to make sure not to murder any kids.

“We could try for the knife,” I said.

“What? We run all the way to the top in the open?” Roman stared at me.

“The magic is down. Now is the best time to hit them.” I glanced at Raphael, looking for support. “No knife, no Apep.”

“What did I miss?” Anapa popped out of thin air and crouched down next to Roman, oblivious to mud staining his thousand-dollar suit.

“We’re going to get your tooth,” Raphael told him.

“Excellent.” He lay down on his back and put his arms behind his head. “Go on. Do your thing.”

“We need a diversion.” Raphael looked at Roman.

The volhv furrowed his eyebrows. “What are you looking at me for? The magic’s down.”

“I have explosives in my bag,” I offered. “If someone sets them off, it would buy us some time.”

We looked at Anapa.

“Who me?” He blinked.

“So you’re not going to help at all?” Roman chided him.

Anapa sighed.

I pulled the backpack open and took out flash grenades. “Look, this is simple. Pull the pins like this.” I pantomimed pulling the pins. “Throw. Run the other way. You’re the god of knowledge, you can do it.”

Anapa peered at the grenades. “Very well. Where do you want them thrown?”

I pointed to the left strand of trees. “There. In five minutes.”

“Very well.” Anapa took the grenades and walked off down the hill into the brush, looking absurdly out of place.

“Think he will do it?” Roman asked.

“We’ll find out.” Raphael was looking at the pyramid with the intense focus of a predator. He slung the shotgun over his shoulder.

I pulled my sniper rifle out of its plastic, chambered a round, and looked through the scope. Two people were guarding the path to the snake pyramid, two more were up on the slope, and then one last one was only a few feet under the snake’s head.

I took deep even breaths. Steady.

The man under the snake’s head was looking straight at me. He was older, with a careworn face and wrinkles. He looked so ordinary. What the hell was he even doing here on the slope, trying to resurrect an ancient god?

Steady.

The explosion flared on the left, tearing the silence with its thunder. It’s funny how a sudden threat separates people: two-thirds of the swamp city ran to their huts like good little civilians in danger, while the remaining third, armed with rifles and bows, dashed toward the explosion, trying to eliminate the danger.

I fired. A wet, red flower blossomed in the middle of the older man’s forehead. He pitched back and crumpled onto the clay body of his god.

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 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.

He thrust his metal claws into my chest and scoured my heart.

It burned! It burned like fire. Pain writhed through me, tearing me apart. I’d never felt an agony like this, an all-consuming, terrible pain. I shoved him back, but the pain didn’t stop.

The claws had broken off. They ripped my heart apart. My magic streamed past it, unable to remove them. I couldn’t heal the damage.

I was dying.

I screamed, and the trees shook from my howl.

I flailed, trying to rip the metal out of me.

No. No, I would not die today. I tore myself from my new form and fled, into the mud, into the sludge, where my old form slumped, discarded.

The world slammed into me in an explosion of pain. Silver burned in my heart.

“I got you,” Raphael was holding me. “I’ve got you.”

I was dying.

Suddenly Doolittle was there with the scalpel.

Where had he even come from? Was I hallucinating before death?

“It’s okay,” Raphael crooned in my ear.

Doolittle sliced my chest open. “Expel this silver if you want to live!”

“Do it, Andrea!” Raphael snarled.

I pushed against the burning points of pain. Doolittle dug in my open chest with forceps. I screamed.

“Expel!”

I couldn’t breathe. My chest was on fire, and the unbearable, terrible pain burned inside me like an inferno.

The first shard slid out of me. Doolittle plucked it out with forceps.

The world dimmed, as if someone was blowing out its candles one by one. Doolittle raised his hand. I caught a glimpse of a syringe. Doolittle plunged it down. The needle bit me in the heart.

The darkness tore in a blinding flash of light and adrenaline.

“Silver!” Raphael screamed at me. “Get it out!”

I strained. Another shard slid free.

“Do it, Andrea!” Raphael growled.

“Expel,” Doolittle commanded.

It hurt and I was so tired.

Another shard left me.

“Last one,” Doolittle barked.

The world went black.

It was so cold and quiet. Can I please stay here…

I opened my eyes to agony and Doolittle massaging my heart with his fingers.

I screamed, but my voice was just a hoarse croak.

The last point of agony slid out of me. Raphael laid me flat. Doolittle knelt over me. His hands were bloody. He was holding some sort of surgical instrument. A woman handed him gauze. A cooling sensation spread through my insides. I was going numb.

Behind him I saw Anapa stagger to his feet.

Eyes lit up in the swamp. I saw them with shocking clarity, hundreds of eyes.

A flood of furry bodies poured from the underbrush. Jackals. Dozens upon dozens of them, and in the lead were the huge, muscled shapes of shapeshifters in their warrior form. Clan Jackal had arrived.

They circled Anapa.

“We will take the child now,” a gray shapeshifter in a warrior shape said.

“Give us the child.”

Anapa smiled a lopsided grin that bared his teeth and thrust his arms up. Magic flowed from him in a slow wave.

The Jackals pushed against it.

The enormous alpha in front howled. Hundreds of voices answered in a chorus of howls, barks, and yips.

Anapa pushed.

Clan Jackal gained a foot. Another foot.

Anapa clenched his teeth. There were too many of them and he was too weakened.

“Give us the child,” snarling voices demanded.

“Return the child.”

“Return!”

“Stop!” Magic pulsed, knocking the first few Jackals back. Others took their place. He didn’t have enough juice to disappear. I had been inside him, and I knew. He’d spent everything on that fight.

“Here!” He spat. “Have her.”

A little girl materialized in the middle of the Jackal pack. One of the warriors snatched her and ran toward us. The Jackals kept moving, step by step, tightening the ring.

“I gave you what you wanted!”

The Jackals closed in, one step at a time, eyes on fire, fangs gleaming.

“Stop!”

They swarmed him. He screamed, but not for very long.

I sat on a muddy log. My heart was beating inside me. Doolittle had mended it through a gaping hole in my chest, while I screamed, and then he’d repaired my rib cage, and then he had sealed my wounds. He sat next to me now, wiping my blood off his hands with a wet rag. His eyes were red. He had a terrible look on his face.

Raphael knelt by him. “Thank you.”

Doolittle shook his head. “I didn’t hear that. What did you say?”

Raphael leaned closer. “I said, thank—”

Doolittle grabbed his throat and smashed his head into Raphael’s face. It was the most vicious head butt I had ever seen. Raphael fell back. Doolittle snarled something under his breath and walked away.

Raphael shook his head. Blood gushed from his broken nose.

“I think he’s mad at you,” I told him.

“He’ll get over it.” Raphael grinned at me.

“How did you know I wouldn’t die?”

“I didn’t.”

“Took a chance, huh?”

He nodded. “We had nothing to lose.”

Behind him the Jackals had dismantled one of the huts and dragged Anapa’s dismembered corpse onto a pile of wood. Two shapeshifters in warrior form dumped fuel onto the boards and set it on fire.

“How did you know Anapa would panic?” I asked.

“When you told me he had started as a shapeshifter, I went to the Jackals looking for their research on Anubis’s weaknesses. They took it very seriously. Half of the Clan was digging up information. They said that in ancient Egypt, when Anubis was still human, silver was virtually unknown. The Egyptians started getting it later, through imports, and even then it was highly prized. There was no reason he would know how silver affected shapeshifters from personal experience. Roman said that he would likely retreat to the old Anapa body if he was threatened. Clan Jackal trailed us. His ego was so colossal, he didn’t view them as a threat.”

“He didn’t even notice them,” I told him.

“The hardest part was talking Doolittle into that emergency open-heart surgery. He really didn’t want to do it. We argued for hours. He thought you wouldn’t survive.” Raphael swallowed. He looked sick.

“What’s the matter with you? Is it the poison?”

“I just realized you died on me twice.” Raphael rolled to his feet and staggered off.

“Where are you going?”

“I need a minute.”

He stumbled into the bushes and I heard him vomit.

A shadow came over me. Roman sat on a log next to me. He was carrying something long and wrapped in plastic.

“Nice guy,” Roman said. “An asshole, but he loves you.”

“I love him, too.” I petted his hand. “Thank you for everything. I had fun.”

“I had fun, too.” He grinned. “Look what I got.” He pulled the plastic back. The Bone Staff.

“You got it?”

He nodded. “Spent an hour digging through that clay. Worth every minute.” He leaned over and kissed my cheek. “I’ll see you around. You call if you need anything, yes?”

“Yes,” I agreed. “You call me, too. I owe you some help. As long as I don’t have to sacrifice any babies, I’ll be there.”

“I’ll count on it.”

He walked off and Raphael took his place, rinsing his mouth with water from a canteen. Around us, the shapeshifters were herding the snake people into a group. I was covered in mud, blood, and swampy muck. Raphael looked even worse, his hair smeared with gore. I really wanted to go back home, take a shower, and sleep for a year.

“Help me off the log?” I asked him.

“No. We’re going to get you a nice stretcher and carry you down to the boats.”

“I’m okay to walk. My chest hurts a little, but I can make it.”

“You are certifiable,” he told me. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic bag.

“What’s this?”

“I swore that if we made it through today, I would do this.” Raphael pulled a small plastic box out of the bag and got down on his knees in the mud.

This was crazy.

He opened the box. A white engagement ring with a band shaped like a beast’s paw lay on a small velvet pillow, with a beautiful sapphire clasped in its tiny white claws.

“I’m fucked up,” he said. “I have many faults. But I promise if you marry me, I will love you and take care of you for the rest of our lives.”

I stared at him.

“If you put up with me, I will put up with whatever you can throw my way,” he said. “Bad days, good days, ‘I’ll cut you if you look at me the wrong way’ days. I’ll take them all.”

I knew I had to say something.

“If you kill her with this after everything I’ve done,” Doolittle said behind me. “You will never leave this swamp.”

Raphael searched my face, anxious. “Andi?”

“Yes,” I told him. “In sickness and in health, poor, rich, I don’t care.”

He was still looking at me, as if he hadn’t heard.

“Yes, Raphael.” I laughed or cried, I wasn’t sure. “Yes.”

“Put the ring on her, you fool,” Doolittle said.

Raphael slipped the ring on my finger and I hugged him.

“I’d kiss you,” Raphael said. “But I need to brush my teeth and I’m covered in blood.”

“I don’t care,” I told him. “Kiss me anyway.”