“Zia, get out of here!” I shouted.
“I’m not leaving you!”
“You’ve got to! I can’t—”
The hairs on my arms stood up even before I heard the humming sound. My slab of stone disintegrated in a flash of gold, and I flew backward, crashing into another sarcophagus.
My vision blurred. I heard Zia shout. When my eyes could focus again, I saw her standing in the middle of the room, wrapped in sunlight, chanting a spell I didn’t recognize. She’d gotten the bull’s attention, which had probably saved my life. But before I could cry out, the bull aimed his sun disk and shot a superheated laser beam straight at Zia.
“No!” I screamed.
The light blinded me. The heat sucked all the oxygen out of my lungs. There was no way Zia could have survived that hit.
But when the golden light faded, Zia was still there. Around her burned a massive shield shaped like…like a scarab shell. Her eyes glowed with orange fire. Flames swirled around her. She looked at the bull and spoke a deep rasping voice that definitely wasn’t hers: “I am Khepri, the rising sun. I will not be denied.”
Only later did I realize that she’d spoken in Ancient Egyptian.
She thrust out her hand. A miniature comet shot toward the Apis Bull and the monster burst into flames, turning and stomping, suddenly panicked. His legs crumbled. He collapsed and broke into a smoking pile of charred rubble.
The room was suddenly quiet. I was afraid to move. Zia was still wreathed in fire, and it seemed to be getting hotter—burning yellow, then white. She stood as if in a trance. The golden scarab around her neck was definitely smoking now.
“Zia!” My head throbbed, but I managed to rise.
She turned toward me and hefted another fireball.
“Zia, no!” I said. “It’s me. Carter.”
She hesitated. “Carter…?” Her expression turned to confusion, then fear. The orange flames faded in her eyes, and she collapsed in the pool of sunlight.
I ran
to her. I tried to gather her in my arms, but her skin was too hot to touch. The golden scarab had left a nasty burn on her throat.
“Water,” I muttered to myself. “I need water.”
I’d never been good at divine words, but I shouted: “Maw!”
The symbol blazed above us:
Several cubic gallons of water materialized in midair and crashed down on us. Zia’s face steamed. She coughed and spluttered, but she didn’t wake. Her fever still felt dangerously high.
“I’ll get you out of here,” I promised, lifting her in my arms.
I didn’t need the strength of Horus. I had so much adrenaline coursing through my body, I didn’t feel any of my own injuries. I ran right by Setne when he passed me in the hall.
“Hey, pal!” He turned and jogged along next to me, waving a thick papyrus scroll. “Good job! I got the Book of Thoth!”
“You almost killed Zia!” I snapped. “Get us out of here—NOW!”
“Okay, okay,” Setne said. “Calm down.”
“I’m taking you back to my dad’s courtroom,” I growled. “I’m going to personally stuff you down Ammit’s mouth, like a branch into a wood chipper.”
“Whoa, big man.” Setne led me up a sloping passage back to the electrical lighting of the excavated tunnels. “How about we get you out of here first, huh? Remember, you still need me to decipher this book and find the serpent’s shadow. Then we’ll see about the wood chipper, okay?”
“She can’t die,” I insisted.
“Right, I got that.” Setne led me through more tunnels, picking up speed. Zia seemed to weigh nothing. My headache had disappeared. Finally we burst into the sunlight and ran for the Egyptian Queen.