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.