Blind God's bluff

The chanting stumbled to a stop. The lion man and the croc man dragged Silver off the scale and hauled him toward the edge of the pit.

And, just standing there like an idiot, I realized I was running out of time to do anything about it. I shouldered the M16 and shot the croc man in the head. He reeled backward. I shifted my aim and shot the lion man. He dropped, too.

I hoped that at that point, silver me would make a run for it, and he did. But staggering, not sprinting, like he was still dazed.

I lost sight of him when giants rushed my three buddies and me. We’d been lucky until then. Caught up in their ceremony, the monsters hadn’t noticed Red’s glow as we sneaked up on them. But it would have been hard to miss the bang and flash of the rifle.

With their long legs, the creatures came on fast. I switched to three-round bursts and blasted away for all I was worth. It didn’t look like it was going to be enough. One of the giants would charge into striking distance, and that would probably be that.

But then a hippo man fell down clutching his crotch and bellowing. Shadow me whirled away from him and used the axe in his ghostly-looking hands to hack a croc man’s leg in two. The whole thing was one smooth blur of movement.

As I went on shooting, I saw that Red and my twin were fighting, too. Not with the kung-fu-master-goes- berserk speed and fury of Shadow. I couldn’t match that, either. But, mostly taking cheap shots at giants who were busy trying to kill him or me, they were doing all right.

In fact, we were winning. And I was happy about it until I shot a hippo man in the chest. When he went down, I saw what was behind him. A crocodile man had recaptured Silver and wrestled him to the edge of the pit.

I aimed for the giant’s head and pulled the trigger. The M16 was empty. The croc man shoved Silver into the hole, looked across it at me, and made a gesture that’s apparently as old as ancient Egypt. Then he turned around and ran.

Down in the pit, something gave a rasping hiss. It was like the voices of some of the animal men, but louder. Much louder.

I ran to the edge of the hole, looked down, and gasped. The thing at the bottom was huge. Its reptilian head belonged on a dinosaur, though you couldn’t honestly say the same for the lion’s mane at the back of the skull.

The body was mostly hippo, but with a big cat’s forelegs and claws. Long, tapering, and scaly, the tail switched back to crocodile.

Silver had his back against the wall. The creature reared up on its hind legs, ready to smash down on him like an avalanche.

I yelled and threw the M16 at it, and the rifle bounced off its spine. It didn’t even seem to notice.

But when it plunged down-and I flinched-it didn’t plunge all the way to the target. Its paws thumped to a stop in front of Silver’s body, and it snarled like something had hurt it.

It was a little hard to see through the shine, but Silver’s face had a tight, strained expression on it. I realized he’d made an invisible wall, just like I had earlier in the evening.

But my wall hadn’t even held back brownwings for long. Silver wasn’t likely to do much better against Godzilla. Snarling, the monster started slashing away at the barrier with its claws, and the other me jerked with every blow, just like they were ripping into him.

I had to help him, but reinforcing his wall didn’t seem like the answer. Even if I still had enough mojo, the thing in the hole would knock it down eventually.

I needed to haul Silver out of the pit. But it was way too deep for me just to reach down and grab his hand.

Could I make a rope the way I’d made the rifle? Probably not, running on empty like I was. I looked around.

The dead giants were wearing what I supposed were loincloths twisted around their hips in a complicated, almost diaper-ish way. I ran to the nearest body and started pulling at the folds.

About that time, the rest of the squad came trotting up. It was good to see we were all still okay. So far.

“What are you doing?” asked my twin.

“We can knot these together,” I said. “Get more. Fast!”

He and Red hopped to it. Crouching, bloody axe in hand, Shadow stood guard in case there were any giants left that wanted another crack at us. He might not have wanted to fight before, but he was into it now. Even with his face all smudged and dim, he gave off an eager viciousness.

When I judged the makeshift rope was long enough, we rushed it to the pit. Where-thank God-Silver was still holding out, and the Beast That Ate Cairo was still snarling and clawing away. We dropped the line, and I had a bad moment when it stopped partway down. I thought Silver had put a roof on his invisible fort. He hadn’t, though. The rope had just caught on top of the wall, and it flopped on down a second later.

Silver grabbed it, and, exhausted though he was, managed to hold on as we pulled him up. The monster roared even louder, then fell sprawling when it took another swing at the wall, and the obstacle suddenly wasn’t there anymore.

We let Silver sit, slumped and gasping, on the floor. “What now?” asked my twin.

I felt like asking why I had to be the one to think of everything. Instead, still going with my gut, I told him, “We need to put ourselves… our self… whatever back together. Everybody join hands.”

Shadow threw away his axe, which clanked on the stone. I ended up holding hands with him and Red. His fingers were ice cold, and Red’s were toasty warm.

I pictured the Thunderbird and wished us smooshed into one person.

Everything seemed to spin. Suddenly I had five strings of thoughts jabbering in my brain, which I don’t recommend unless you want to go crazy or at least develop a migraine. Fortunately, it only lasted an instant, and then there was only one of me again.

Okay, I thought. If I could pull off one more trick, maybe I’d come out of this all right.

The first time I’d run around in my spirit body, I’d felt a connection between it and the flesh, blood, and bones it had jumped out of. Now that the monsters had stopped messing with me, maybe I could feel the same thing again. I tried, straining like you’d strain to hear something faint and far away.

Off to the left. I hoped. The tug was so soft that I wondered if I was just imagining it. But I tried to think positive and ran at the spot. When my feet came off the ground, and running turned into flying, I knew I was right.

The temple vanished, and the candlelit ballroom appeared. It seemed bright compared to where I’d just been. I was thrilled to be back until I felt the fingers twisted in my hair.

They belonged to Wotan, and they were holding my head up to stretch out my neck. He had his other arm cocked back to punch me.

Sitting down and already grabbed is a piss-poor posture for self-defense. Still, I managed to throw up my arm to block. The punch slammed into it and jammed it into my Adam’s apple. Which hurt, but at least didn’t crush my windpipe or break my spine.

Wotan snarled and pulled back his fist for another try.

“No!” I croaked. “No!” It was all I knew to say. After all the scary, mysterious shit that had happened in the temple, I’d lost track of what was going on this world, and what reason he had to attack me.

My whining worked about as well as you’d expect. But the Pharaoh said, “Hold on.” And that did make Wotan hesitate.

“He’s awake,” Leticia said.

“He was in a trance,” the huge man said. And he still seemed huge, even after I’d just fought actual giants. “Doing something.”

That jogged my memory. I realized I must have been sitting there without talking or moving-for all I knew, maybe drooling-and Wotan had picked up on the fact that I was cheating.

But I had a hunch I’d only been out for a couple seconds. I’d already learned that time could move at different speeds for different people, and Wotan was way too impatient to wait for minutes on end while I sat like a mannequin.