Blind God's Bluff A Billy Fox Novel - By Richard Lee Byers Page 0,18

want to go, either. But do you really think any of us can be all right without him? And at least we’ve got this.” I hefted the M16.

At first, nobody reacted, and I wondered if Red and Shadow had really even understood me. Maybe the five-way split hadn’t left them with their fair share of brains. But then the glowing me gave a nod, and the spooky version turned up his hands in a way that somehow communicated that he still didn’t like it, but he was in.

“Give me the rifle,” said my twin. “I’m a really good shot.”

“To hell with that,” I said, “make your own. Or, if you can’t, wait until I shoot a monster with an axe, and then pick it up.”

Apparently he couldn’t whistle up an M16, because he just gave me a pissy look. Then we all sneaked toward the chanting. Sometimes it sounded like real voices reciting real words, and sometimes, like feeding time at the zoo.

Finally our objective came into view. Sort of. The lion, croc, and hippo men hadn’t been considerate enough to light torches or anything like that. But even in the center of the temple, there was a little light coming in from outside, and that, combined with the GE soft white glow of silver me, was enough to show what was happening.

A round pit opened in the floor. On the far side of it was a giant bronze balance scale. A pale, fluffy feather longer than I was tall lay in one weighing pan. A lion man and a croc man were lifting Silver into the other. He struggled, but feebly, like he needed to recover from a crack over the head.

I couldn’t see any way that Silver wasn’t going to weigh more than a giant feather, but the monsters weren’t leaving anything to chance. They pulled down on the pan in which he lay like drug dealers gypping a customer.

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