And they have her son. Her precious Utatenhotep. The look he gives her is a strange mix of betrayed belligerence and fear. How many times has she told him this would never happen? It must be her fault, his sullen pout proclaims. She must have lied to him or failed him; how could she, when he has been so good? Her own little shining god, and now she has let the demons get him!
The guards seem cautious, even hesitant. None wish to be the first to charge, whether for their own safety or hers and the child’s. The priests also hesitate. She sees Bennu or Sennu among them, whichever of the heron-legged brothers is not splayed in the dirt with holes piercing his lungs.
Rising flames leap and roar, racing up ladders and scaffolding. At the gate are cries of Fire!, cries for water and sand, to quench it before all their work is undone, before Sefut-Aten lies in ashes.
A shape moves in front of her, blotting hot light with his dark shadow. Beneath the flinty edges of his helm-cap, his eyes are not the monstrous slit-pupiled glowing green she has imagined. Ordinary eyes. An ordinary man, after all. Not some creature of Apophis.
“Where is Pharaoh?” this serpent — this man! — asks her.
Lily-of-the-Nile spits in his face. The movement earns her a sharp pinprick jab to the neck, but she does not care. It is worth it.
The man, leader of serpents, gestures. The two who hold Utatenhotep between them by the arms drag him forward.
“Where is Pharaoh?” he repeats, placing a scaled hand on the boy’s shoulder.
Utatenhotep begins to snivel.
“You dare not harm my son.” She lifts a defiant chin. “He is Pharaoh’s child, of the royal bloodline of the gods.”
The flint-edged head tilts one way, the man’s grim mouth tilts the other. “The gods you have forsaken?”
“Not Ut-Aten! My son is Ut-Aten’s chosen, Ut-Aten incarnate and reborn! He will rule over all of Egypt—”
“With Pharaoh’s daughter as his sister-queen,” he finishes.
“Ha!” Lily-of-the-Nile scoffs. “He’ll have no need of her!”
Even as she says this, she realizes it is somehow a mistake. The man’s eyes — which still are not slit-pupiled, still do not glow — narrow and become more dangerous than ever. He moves his scale-covered hand to encircle the boy’s throat. Strong fingers press deep indentations into soft and vulnerable flesh.
“Oh, she will be queen,” he says. “I have promised her that.”
In the cool, shaded salon, wine sat untouched. No music wafted on the garden-fragrant air; the harpist had been sent elsewhere, as had the maids. Even the tame white monkey nibbled its fruit in some other corner of the palace, though the cats, of course, sleek and pampered, with their collars of gold, continued lounging wherever they pleased.
Neferisu waited, tranquil and elegant as a statue of a goddess. Her serene, noble features displayed no outward sign of impatience.
Sia was another matter.
“You’ll wear holes in your sandals,” Neferisu said, after a while of her daughter’s pacing.
“There should be more news by now.”
“We shall hear it when there is.”
What little they so far had heard was, as such news tended to be, fragmentary, filled with rumor and exaggeration and contradiction. Sefut-Aten had been destroyed, the entire city swallowed up by the desert just as the Great Devouring Serpent swallowed the sun. Sefut-Aten had not been destroyed, far from it, but would-be murderers of Pharaoh had been captured and burned alive.
Pharaoh was murdered. Pharaoh may have been murdered, but rose again from the dead to take his revenge. Black snakes rained from the skies and killed a hundred of Ut-Aten’s priests. A thousand bronze fire warriors were marching, would be here with the dawn, and brought with them a mirror so immense it would sear people to cinders and melt the sands to glass.
That famous beauty, Pharaoh’s Lily-of-the-Nile, was a witch, a witch dripping her sweetly poisoned nectar into his kingly ear. No, Lily-of-the-Nile had been bestowed to him as a gift to guide him on the path of the new god. No, she was a test, a trick, sent by Isis to determine if he could be so easily swayed.
Her child was Pharaoh’s own son, of the royal bloodline. So Lily-of-the-Nile claimed, and no one would publicly dispute her, but hadn’t it been years since he fathered any children by any wife or concubine? Why her, why then? The will of Ut-Aten, of course! Though it was hardly as if she lacked for company.
So it went, the news, on and on as the long day passed.
“The sun is setting,” Sia said.
“You did not truly believe they would banish night forever.”
“Of course not. I believed Khemet would do what must be done.”
Neferisu smiled gently. “To save Egypt.”
“By any means necessary.”
“And if he did, if he has, could you still love him?”
“I always have.”
“I expect,” said Neferisu, her smile widening as she glanced past Sia toward the discreet doorway of the hidden passageway, “he’s glad to know it.”
Sia whirled, braids flying, crossed hands pressed upon her breast. A cry burst from her lips. She all but sprang across the salon to meet the dark and weary, wounded figure who stepped into view.
He had paused long enough to divest himself of Scales and Fangs and Coils, Neferisu saw, and to rinse away the worst of the travel-dust, blood, and smoke. Wildly improper though it was, and painful though it looked, he caught Sia in his arms. He held her to him, shaking, head down upon her shoulder.
“Well?” Neferisu prompted, after giving them a moment.
Without raising his head, Khemet replied, “It is done. The Fire of Ut-Aten is snuffed out, the priests and their followers slain, the survivors scattered.”
“The woman and the boy?”
“The serpent sinks its fangs,” he said. “The serpent steals breath.”
“And Pharaoh?” asked Neferisu. “What of my husband and king?”
At that, he did lift his head to look at her. “As you commanded. We have brought him home.”
SEAL TEAM BLUE
A New World Novella
John O’Brien
It first made its appearance in Cape Town, South Africa and quickly spread to the rest of the world with a speed seldom before witnessed. Many fell into its grasp, the phone lines into businesses filled with more people calling in sick than with customers. The aged, the young, and the ill succumbed to the virus, numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Services within cities became limited, prompting action by national governments. A coalition of pharmaceutical companies was formed to develop a vaccine, and money flowed from nations to speed up the process. Without the usual testing, the vaccine was released to military forces, followed a day later to the public.
In terror, verging on panic, most of the world’s populace was inoculated within a short period of time. Within seventy-two hours most of the world’s military lay sick in their beds, feverish and sweating. The vaccine was recalled, but it was too late. Ninety-six hours later, seventy per cent of them were dead. With the exception of a scant one per cent who proved immune or didn’t take the virus, the remaining were transformed.
Within those infected, the live virus caused genetic mutations that created elevated hearing, enhanced smell, the ability to see in the dark, and to communicate telepathically through the use of picture messages. The fast-twitch muscles were increased, allowing quicker responses, greater speed, and more agility. Higher brain function and memories were obliterated, leaving only anger and a lust for blood. Skin pigmentation was so altered that sunlight burned instantly, causing great agony and almost immediate death. Those transformed became ferocious creatures of the dark. Now pack animals, they laired during the day in shadowed places. When the sun sank below the horizon, they emerged to hunt the darkened streets, tearing apart any living thing they found. Dubbed the night runners, they ruled the night.