J.B. depressed the trigger of his Uzi, but nothing happened. He instantly realized that sand had worked its way into the blaster, fouling the trigger and firing pin. The double prongs of a metauh rod swept toward him. What saved him from ending 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.
J.B. tucked and rolled across the ground, snatching 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 simultaneously, the combined gunshots making an extended 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 staggered 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 splintery wall of the storage building and sliding down it to the ground.
Sighting down the barrel of her ZKR target revolver, 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 barrels 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 prostrate 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.
The five fingers tensed on five triggers, the blaster bores dropping slightly. The broad shoulders of Horus sagged briefly in relief, then straightened. He 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, digging 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 ligaments, 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. Although 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.