Horus
"You're forgetting something." I tell Carter as the boat is flying through the sky.
A little busy here!
Oh, come on! It's not that hard to steer a magical boat through the sky. Yes, we can't see where we're going and we keep tilting back and forth while Sadie is trying to keep an unconscious Zia from falling over the side. But my birthday's always been important.
When I was little, when all I had was mom, she would always make sure my birthday was special. My day is almost over and no one's even mentioned it yet (at least not in a positive way) and my mom is out of reach.
So it hurts me a little when I say:
"It's my birthday. Wish me happy birthday!"
And in response Carter yells out loud:
"Happy birthday! Now shut up!"
I feel like he wasn't 100% sincere.
"Carter, what are you on about?" Sadie screams, grabbing the railing with one hand and Zia with the other as the boat tips sideways. "Have you lost your mind?"
Carter glances behind us. Sekhmet's silhouette lights up the night.
"Did you get me anything?" I urge Carter.
Will you please do something helpful? Rude. I'm trying to have a conversation and that's how he acts? That thing following us – is that what I think it is?
"Oh." Of course he cares about my wife's psycho alternate form than about me. "That's Sekhmet." I explain. "The Eye of Ra, destroyer of the wicked, the great huntress, lady of flame, et cetera."
Great. And she's following us because…?
This conversation is so boring. Can't we go back to the fact that it's my birthday?
"Because the Chief Lector has the power to summon her once during his lifetime. It's an old, old gift – goes back to the days when Ra first blessed man with magic."
Once during his lifetime? Carter asks. And Desjardins chooses now?
"He never was very good at being patient."
I though that the magicians don't like gods!
"They don't. Just shows you what a hypocrite he is. But I suppose killing you was more important than standing on principle. I can appreciate that."
Carter looks anxiously over his shoulder. Sekhmet is getting closer. I'm always stunned by how similar yet how different her and Hathor are. Sekhmet's skin looks like liquid gold, while Hathor's is as silver as my eye with dark brown spots all over her arms, waist and neck. They both love wearing red. Hathor's dresses, however, are way more delicate than Sekhmet's glowing red armor. Her chest armor and skirt seem to woven of tiles made from molten lava. Her hair is like a thick lion's mane and her feline eyes are those of a skilled hunter. You have to look closely to notice even the slightest trace of the goddess with the black hair, falling like waves down her back and with eyes big and round, filled with power and love. Hathor is as beautiful as beauty itself. Sekhmet is beautiful the way an atomic explosion is beautiful.
How do we beat her? Carter asks.
"You pretty much don't." I say. "She is the incarnation of the sun's wrath. Back in the days when Ra was active, she would've been much more impressive, but still… She's unstoppable. A born killer. A slaying machine-"
"Okay, I get it!" Carter yells.
"What?" Sadie demands, so loud that Zia stirs.
"Wha—what?" Her eyes flutter open.
"Nothing," Carter shouts. "We're being followed by a slaying machine. Go back to sleep."
Zia sits up woozily. "A slaying machine? You don't mean-"
"Carter, veer right!" Sadie yells.
He does, and a flaming arrow the size of a predator drone grazes our port side. It explodes above us. The roof of our boathouse catches on fire.
Carter steers the boat into a dive. Sekhmet shoots past, but then pirouettes in the air with incredible agility and dives after us. My beloved's dancing abilities have rubbed off on her through the centuries, huh?
"We're burning," Sadie points out.
"Noticed!" Carter yells back.
He scans the landscape below us, but there is nowhere safe to land – just subdivisions and office parks.
"Die, enemies of Ra!" Sekhmet yells. "Perish in agony!"
She's almost as annoying as you. Carter tells me.
"Impossible. No one bests Horus."
Carter takes another evasive turn, and Zia yells, "There!"
She points toward a well-lit factory complex with trucks, warehouses, and silos. A giant chili pepper is painted on the side of the biggest warehouse. A floodlit sign reads: magic salsa, inc.
"Oh, please," Sadie rolls her eyes. "It's not really magic! That's just a name."
"No," Zia insists. "I've got an idea."
"Those Seven Ribbons?" Carter guesses. "The ones you used on Serqet?"
Zia shakes her head. "They can only be summoned once a year. But my plan—"
Another arrow blazes past us, only inches from our starboard side.
"Hang on!" Carter yanks at the tiller and spins the boat upside down just before the arrow explodes. The hull shields us from the brunt of the blast, but the entire bottom of the ship is now on fire, and we are going down.
The boat is gaining speed, flying toward the roof of the warehouse. We crash through, slamming into a huge mound of...something crunchy.
After a moment of disorientation, Carter claws his way clear of the boat and sits up. Fortunately, the stuff we've crashed into is soft. Unfortunately, it's a twenty-foot pile of dried chili peppers. And they're on fire. Carter's eyes begin to sting. Thankfully, he knows better than to rub them, because his hands are now covered in chili oil.
"Sadie?" Carter calls. "Zia?"
"Help!" Sadie yells.
She is on the other side of the boat, dragging Zia out from under the flaming hull. Together with Carter, they manage to pull her free and slide down the pile onto the floor.
The warehouse seems to be a massive facility for drying peppers, with thirty or forty mountains of chilis and rows of wooden drying racks. The wreckage of our boat fills the air with spicy smoke. Through the hole we've made in the roof, we can see the blazing figure of Sekhmet descending.
We break into a run, plowing through another pile of peppers. We hide behind a drying rack, where shelves of peppers make the air burn like hydrochloric acid.
Sekhmet lands, making the warehouse floor shudder.
"I smell blood!" she roars. "I will feast on enemies of Ra until my belly is full!"
"Charming," Sadie whispers. "So Zia...this plan?"
Zia doesn't look well. She is shivering and pale, and seems to have trouble focusing her vision. "When Ra...when he first called Sekhmet to punish humans because they were rebelling against him...she got out of hand."
"Hard to imagine," Carter whispers, as Sekhmet is ripping through the burning wreckage of our boat.
"She started killing everyone," Zia says, "not just the wicked. None of the other gods could stop her. She would just kill all day until she was gorged on blood. Then she'd leave until the next day. So the people begged the magicians to come up with a plan, and—"
"You dare hide?" Flames roar as Sekhmet's arrows destroy pile after pile of dried peppers. "I will roast you alive!"
"Run now," Carter decides. "Talk later."
Sadie and Carter drag Zia between them. We manage to get out of the warehouse just before the whole place implodes from the heat, billowing a spicy-hot mushroom cloud into the sky. We run through a parking lot filled with semitrailers and hide behind a sixteen-wheeler.
Carter peeks out carefully, expecting to see Sekhmet walk through the flames of the warehouse. Instead, she leaps out in the form of a giant lion. Her eyes blaze, and floating over her head is a disk of fire like a miniature sun. I have only two words for this: not good.
"The symbol of Ra," Zia whispers.
She's right. It's been a while since I've seen it, nevertheless over Sekhmet.
Speaking of Sekhmet, she roars: "Where are you, my tasty morsels?"
She opens her maw and breaths out a blast of hot air across the parking lot. All her breath touches turns to sand, cars melting down to create a barren desert.
"How did she do that?" Sadie hisses.
"Her breath creates the deserts," Zia says. "That is the legend."
"Better and better." Carter's fear is finally getting to me, too. But even though we're both afraid, we also both know there is no point in hiding. Carter summons his sword and, surprisingly enough, I'm not about to stop him. I'm done running from battle just because my host could've been better. "I'll distract her. You two run—"
"No," Zia insists. "There is another way." She points at a row of silos on the other side of the lot. Each one is three stories tall and maybe twenty feet in diameter, with a giant chili pepper painted on the side.
"Petrol tanks?" Sadie asks.
"No," Carter says. "Must be salsa, right?"
Sekhmet breaths in our direction, and the three trailers next to us melt into sand. We scuttle sideways and jump behind a cinder block wall.
"Listen," Zia gasps, her face beading with sweat. "When the people needed to stop Sekhmet, they got huge vats of beer and colored them bright red with pomegranate juice."
"Yeah, I remember now," Carter interrupts. "They told Sekhmet it was blood, and she drank until she passed out. Then Ra was able to recall her into the heavens. They transformed her into something gentler. A cow goddess or something."
A cow goddess or something? Excuse me? She is the most amazing, most beautiful, sweatest, most incredible, most well known-
"Hathor," Zia says, interrupting my train of thought. "That is Sekhmet's other form. The flip side of her personality."
Sadie shakes her head in disbelief. "So you're saying we offer to buy Sekhmet a few pints, and she'll turn into a cow."
"Not exactly," Zia says. "But salsa is red, is it not?"