With that, he beckoned to Juno. Our little duckbill seemed reluctant to go toward him, yet helpless to resist. Grudgingly, as if being pulled by an invisible leash, Juno plodded to the dais and lumbered up its three steps to the clawed feet of Set.
Anya flared: “Don’t!”
I strained with every atom of my being to break free of Set’s mental bonds. As I struggled I watched with horrified eyes as Set picked up Juno like a weightless toy. The baby duckbill squirmed, frightened, but could no more escape Set’s grasp than I could break free.
“Don’t!” Anya screamed again.
Set lifted Juno’s head up and sank his teeth into her soft unprotected throat. Blood gushed over him. The baby dinosaur gave a single piercing, whistling shriek that ended in a bubbling of blood. Its yellow eyes faded, its clumsy legs went limp.
I sensed Set’s smirking, smug feeling of triumph and power. He let Juno’s dead body, still twitching, fall to his feet and laughed mentally at Anya’s anguish.
And dropped his guard just a fraction. Enough for me to burst loose and hurl myself up the dais, my fingers reaching for Set’s red-scaled throat.
He swatted me with a backhand slap as easily as I might swat a fly. I was knocked sideways, tumbled down the dais, landing flat on my back, stunned and almost unconscious.
CHAPTER 22
Through a blood red haze I saw Set still on his throne. He had barely moved to deal with me.
“You think that I keep you paralyzed out of fear that you might attack me?” His voice in my buzzing brain was mocking. “Puny ape, I could crush your bones with ease. Fear me! For I am far mightier than you.”
Forcing the pain away, pumping extra blood to my head to drive away the wooziness, I pulled myself up to a sitting position, then got slowly, warily to my feet.
“You are not convinced?”
Anya was still locked into immobility, but the look on her face was awful: a mixture of loathing and helpless terror. Juno’s dead body lay sprawled clumsily at the foot of the dais in a welling pool of blood.
I could move. I took a step toward that throne and the monster sitting upon it.
Set rose to his full height and stepped down to the floor. He towered over me, several heads taller, a shoulder-span wider, his red scales glittering in the torchlight, his eyes burning with an amused contempt that overlay eternal hatred.
My senses went into hyperdrive and everything around me slowed. I saw the veins in Set’s skull pulsing, saw transparent eyelids flicking back and forth across the red slits of his pupils. I could see the muscles in Anya’s arms and legs tensing, straining to break free of Set’s mental control. In vain.
I went into a defensive crouch, hands up in front of my face, backing away from Set. He advanced toward me in total confidence, arms by his sides, the talons of his feet clicking on the smooth bare floor like a metronome counting off time.
I dove at his knees in a rolling block. Knock him down and his size advantage is lessened, I thought. But fast as I was, his reflexes were even faster. He caught me in the ribs with a kick that sent me sailing. I hit the floor painfully hard. With an effort I climbed to my feet. He was still advancing on me, hissing softly in his reptilian equivalent to laughter.
I feinted left, then drove my right fist toward his groin with all the strength in me. He blocked the blow with one huge hand and grabbed me by the throat with the other. Lifting me off my feet, he raised my head to his own level. We were face-to-face, me with my feet dangling a yard or more off the floor, the breath slowly being squeezed out of me.
Set’s face was in front of me, so close that I could smell the rancid hot breath hissing from his sharp-toothed mouth, see the glistening blood of Juno drying on his pointed chin. He was choking me to death and enjoying it.