The Serpent's Shadow (Kane Chronicles #3)(96)

How did I know this? His skin looked more solid, glistening with golden red scales. His mouth was a pink cavern with fangs. His eyes glowed, and his cobra’s hood spread so wide, it blocked a quarter of the sky.

Before him stood Ra, a shining apparition too bright to look at directly. If I glanced from the corner of my eye, however, I could see Zia at the center of the light. She now wore the clothes of an Egyptian princess—a silky dress of white and gold, a golden necklace and armbands. Even her staff and wand were gilded. Her image danced in the hot vapor, causing the serpent to misjudge her location every time he struck.

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. He was growing stronger and larger. Zia wasn’t so fortunate. If I concentrated, I could sense her life force, her ka, growing weaker. The luminous glow at the center of her chest was becoming smaller and more concentrated, like a flame reduced to a pilot light.

Meanwhile, our feline friend Bast was doing her best to distract her old enemy. 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.

Sadie scanned the area with alarm. “Where’s Bes?”

The dwarf god had disappeared. 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. The plains of Giza were littered with big stone blocks, trenches, and old building foundations from previous excavations. Under a nearby car-sized wedge of limestone, the dwarf god’s head was sticking out.

“Bes!” Sadie cried as we ran to his side. “Are you all right?”

He glared up at us. “Do I look all right, kid? I have a ten-ton block of limestone on my chest. Snake-breath over there knocked me flat and dropped this thing on top of me. Most blatant act of dwarf cruelty ever!”

“Can you move it?” I asked.

He gave me a look almost as ugly as his Boo! face. “Gee, Carter, I didn’t think of that. It’s so comfortable under here. Of course I can’t move it, you dolt! Blocks of stone don’t scare easily. Help a dwarf out, huh?”

“Stand back,” I told Sadie.

I summoned the strength of Horus. Blue light encased my hand, and I karate-chopped the stone. It cracked right down the middle, falling on either side of the dwarf god.

It would’ve been more impressive if I hadn’t yelped like a puppy and cradled my fingers. Apparently I needed to work on the karate trick more, because my hand felt like it was boiling in oil. I was pretty sure I’d broken some bones in there.

“All right?” Sadie asked.

“Yeah,” I lied.

Bes climbed to his feet. “Thanks, kid. Now it’s time for some snake-bashing.”

We ran to help Zia, which turned out to be a bad idea. She glanced over and saw us—and, just for a moment, she was distracted.

“Carter, thank the gods!” She spoke in two-part harmony—partly her, partly the deep commanding voice of Ra, which was a little hard to take. Call me close-minded, but hearing my girlfriend talk like a five-thousand-year-old male god was not on my top ten list of Things I Find Attractive. Still, I was so glad to see her, I almost didn’t care.

She lobbed another fireball down the throat of Apophis. “You’re just in time. Our snaky friend is getting stro—”

“Look out!” Sadie screamed.

This time, Apophis wasn’t fazed by the fire. He struck immediately—and he didn’t miss. His mouth hit like a wrecking ball.

When Apophis rose again, Zia was gone. There was a crater in the sand where she’d been standing, and a human-sized lump illuminated the snake’s gullet from the inside, glowing as it traveled down his throat.

Sadie tells me that I went a little insane. Honestly, I don’t remember. The next thing I can recall, my voice was raw from screaming, and I was staggering away from Apophis, my magic almost exhausted, my broken hand throbbing, my crook and flail smoking with red-gray ooze—the blood of Chaos.

Apophis had three gashes in his neck that weren’t closing. Otherwise, he looked fine. It’s hard to tell if a snake has an expression, but I was pretty sure he was gloating.

“As it was foretold!” He spoke aloud, and the earth shook. Cracks spread across the desert as if it had suddenly become thin ice. The sky turned black, lit only by stars and streaks of red lightning. The temperature began to drop. “You cannot cheat destiny, Carter Kane! I have swallowed Ra. Now the end of the world is at hand!”

Sadie fell to her knees and sobbed. Despair swept over me, worse than the cold. I felt Horus’s power fail, and I was just Carter Kane again. All around us, in different levels of the Duat, gods and magicians stopped battling as terror spread through their ranks.

With catlike agility, Bast landed next to me, breathing hard. Her hair was puffed out so much, it looked like a sea urchin covered with sand. Her bodysuit was ripped and torn. She had a nasty bruise on the left side of her jaw. Her knives were steaming and pitted with corrosion from the serpent’s poison.

“No,” she said firmly. “No, no, no. What’s our plan?”

“Plan?” I tried to make sense of her question. Zia was gone. We’d failed. The ancient prophecy had come true, and I would die knowing that I was a complete and utter loser. I looked at Sadie, but she seemed just as shell-shocked.