“Do I look all right, kid? I have a ten-ton block of limestone on my chest. “Bes!” Sadie cried as we ran to his side.
Under a nearby car-sized wedge of limestone, the dwarf god’s head was sticking out.
The plains of Giza were littered with big stone blocks, trenches, and old building foundations from previous excavations. I was beginning to fear the worst when a small grumpy voice near the edge of the storm called, “Some help, maybe?” I hadn’t paid much attention to the ruins around us. “Where’s Bes?” The dwarf god had disappeared. Over and over she jumped on the serpent’s back, slashing with her knives and mewling in anger, but Apophis just shook her off, throwing her back into the storm. Meanwhile, our feline friend Bast was doing her best to distract her old enemy. The luminous glow at the center of her chest was becoming smaller and more concentrated, like a flame reduced to a pilot light. If I concentrated, I could sense her life force, her ka, growing weaker. Zia shot tracers of red flame toward Apophis-blinding his eyes and burning away patches of his skin-but the damage seemed to heal almost instantly. Her image danced in the hot vapor, causing the serpent to misjudge her location every time he struck. She now wore the clothes of an Egyptian princess-a silky dress of white and gold, a golden necklace and armbands. If I glanced from the corner of my eye, however, I could see Zia at the center of the light. Before him stood Ra, a shining apparition too bright to look at directly. His eyes glowed, and his cobra’s hood spread so wide, it blocked a quarter of the sky. How did I know this? His skin looked more solid, glistening with golden red scales. Above us rose the true head of the serpent-or at least the manifestation that held most of his power. Walls of red and gray smoke swirled around us, but the roar died in the center as if we’d stepped into the eye of a hurricane. Finally we reached the middle of the Chaos storm.
“We’re running out of gods!” Sadie cried.
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