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up like Ryan was a wild jostle from Danielson, who waved his arms and
shrieked, "No! Stop this!"
At the same second, Krysty and Dean bolted from the doorway of the building,
pushing Danielson out of their path. Light flashed, but the energy bolt
cleaved nothing but air.
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J.B. tucked and rolled across the ground, snatch-ing up Set's fallen rod. He
raised it hastily, surprised by its light weight. He sighted down it, framing
Anubis between the V tip. As with the Uzi, nothing happened.
Serapis began a charging run toward the nearest chariot, yelling wordlessly in
panic. Jak, Mildred, Krysty and Dean all fired at him more or less
si-multaneously, the combined gunshots making an ex-tended thunderclap of
noise. Four rounds of different grains and calibers struck Serapis in the
chest, in the ribs, in the hip and the side of his helmeted head. The horn on
the right side sheared away as he stag-gered and jerked from the multiple
impacts. He twisted this way and that before crashing headlong to the ground.
The pair of bird-headed Incarnates, Horus and Thoth, screeched and swept their
rods in left-to-right arcs. Krysty and Dean lunged in opposite directions,
each squeezing off a shot as they did so, and missing with both.
A nimbus of wavery blue sprang from Danielson's chest. He husked out a loud
"Ah!" before careening backward, fetching up against the splin-tery wall of
the storage building and sliding down it to the ground.
Sighting down the barrel of her ZKR target re-volver, Mildred triggered a shot
at
Thoth. A splash of blood bloomed on the back of his right hand, and the silver
shaft dropped from suddenly nerve-dead fingers.
The crane-head pivoted toward her, the human mouth beneath the long beak
opening to utter a shriek of pain and anger. Krysty shot him through the
heart.
Arms flung wide like a pair of featherless wings, he lifted up on his toes and
fell face first to the sand, a banner of blood trailing from the hole in his
left pectoral.
The long beak of his helmet dug into the ground, propping up his head and neck
at a grotesque angle. Immediately after, five blaster bar-rels trained on
Horus.
"Enough!" Anubis's maddened yell rolled and echoed through the air. "No more
or he dies!"
The jackal-headed man stood over Ryan's pros-trate form, one sandaled foot on
his chest, the prongs of his rod touching the hollow of his throat, as if he
were planting a victory flag.
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The five fingers tensed on five triggers, the blaster bores dropping slightly.
The broad shoulders of Ho-rus sagged briefly in relief, then straightened. He
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gestured with his silver rod. "Drop your weapons, or my brother will send this
heretic into the care of the ushabti
."
The jeweled hawk eyes turned toward Krysty. "You red-haired woman. You are the
guest of Pharaoh and will be treated as such."
No one moved. The scene in the blood-spattered, corpse-littered street froze
like a three-dimensional diorama. The steady, unremitting blaze of the sun
added to the dreamy, unreal quality of the tableau.
"Did you not understand?" Anubis snarled, dig-ging the prongs into Ryan's
neck.
"I understand perfectly," Ryan said. Then he shot the jackal-headed man three
times between the legs.
Anubis howled, releasing his metauh rod so he could clasp at the tatters of
his testicle sac. Blood from the bullet-severed femoral artery squirted out in
a long stream between his clutching fingers.
While the arid air still vibrated with the sound of the triggered rounds and
Anubis's agonized scream, Jak, Krysty, Dean and Mildred all fired in perfect
synchronization at Horus. The hawk head flew away in fragments, the bullets
tearing through neck liga-ments, cartilage and cervical vertebrae. The human
face dissolved in a wet, red blur. By the time he fell sideways, there was
nothing identifiable remaining of either the hawk or human head.
Ryan struggled to rise, but he only shambled to one knee. His face was covered
with sweat, his lungs felt shriveled and he labored for breath. Al-though his
vision was shot through with swimming gray spots, he saw the death convulsions
of
Anubis. Blood gushed from the wounds in his groin as he lay on his side,
cutting a crimson runnel through the sand beneath him. As he watched, the
jackal-headed man's struggles to cling to life ceased, and he jerked in
postmortem spasms.
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Then the medley of his friends' voices filled his ears, and hands pulled him
to his feet. Krysty fought back sobs, clinging to him. Ryan's face was pale
and drawn, glistening with perspiration.
"I'm all right," he said, stroking her hair with trembling fingers. He reached
out for Dean, who took and placed his hand on his shoulder for sup-port.
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