“Look at us, all knocked out.” Anapa smiled. “Lots of magic is released when you kill a god. Look at me there. See, I only have one fang? It broke off in the snake’s neck. Took me two days to grow a new one.”

The light faded. The four gods still lay prone on the ground. Little figures swarmed Apep, chopping his body to pieces.

“Who are they?” I asked.

“Saii. His priests. They’re trying to save parts of him. That one took a scale. And this one got a vertebrae.”

“Those four are eating the corpse.” Raphael pointed at the four figures on all fours biting Apep’s side.

“They are devouring his flesh, so it will live through them. Nasty business.”

The final person pried Anubis’s fang from Apep’s dead body and the figures ran away.

“Of course, we chased them, but they were crafty,” Anapa said. “They scattered to the four winds, hoping to eventually reunite and resurrect their god.” Anapa clapped his hands. The mural faded. “And that brings us to our current calamity, gentlemen and the lady, of course.”

The god smiled and pointed at Raphael. “You cost me my fang. It was dipped in metal and made to look like a knife, but inside it’s still my tooth with the blood of Apep in it. It was in the vault of that damned ruin and you had to buy it out from under me.” He turned to Roman. “You lost the staff carved from the vertebrae of Apep and his rib. They hid it in a room full of magical artifacts, so their magic would mask its location from me. You found it, took it out, and instead of taking it someplace safe, you practically served it back to them on a silver platter. Your own holy relic. Here is your award for stupidity. Congratulations.”

Roman opened his mouth and clamped it shut.

Anapa turned to me. “And you helped them both, stuck your nose where it didn’t belong, set the other furballs on me, and made my life difficult all around. I can’t move around the city, because there are two of your kind following me like a tail follows a dog. And half of the time, one of them is a cat. Do you have any idea how much I despise cats?”

Anapa took a long, calming breath. “Right now, Apep’s cult has the staff, the fang, and likely at least a few descendants of the Saii, the four priests who engaged in that creative gastronomy. So the question is, what are we going to do about it?”

“What happens if Apep is resurrected?” Raphael asked.