WE ALL TURNED around with a grim sense of foreboding.

I glanced at Ric and Bez, then looked to what they were staring at. The same thing I was. Nothing. Just the same-old, same-old decorative pillars.

Quicksilver sat still, ears on alert, a frown furrowing his canine brow. Then I looked up the pillars instead of just at the stone on my eye level.

This front rank displayed more than a wallpaper of earth-tone painted hieroglyphs carved into their sandstone surfaces. My eyes followed the ground-level vertical lines of cinnamon-skinned legs and traveled up to discern the subtly incised shapes of huge heroic figures marching fifteen feet high across the several pillars behind us. From the collared necks down, they were the traditional human. From the necks up, they bore the heads of animal, reptile, and insect.

No vegetables, thank goodness.

A glint of gold to my right made me turn that way.

Oh. Ah. Anubis.

Ric grabbed my arm at the same moment. "All these impressive figures must be Egyptian gods, but who and what is the black guy wearing enough gold to be the sultan of Brunei?"

On a pillar far down from where our party had broken through the front lines, thus making a surprise appearance, stood the most spectacular pillar sculpture of all: not cinnamon-skinned, but the muscular night-black human body of jackal-headed Anubis, god almighty. This was a giant version of the gleaming statuette I'd seen at a St. Louis museum. His sandals, kilt, armbands, headdress were all bright gold against his smooth, Nubian-black stone skin. The jackal head's sharp black nose and tall, perked ears made Anubis the most impressive animal-headed god in a pantheon that included gods and goddesses with lion, cow, hawk, crocodile, and cat heads.

"Anubis," I whispered in awe.

"Wanna bet," said Ric, "Anubis drove the most awesome dune buggy on the beach in his day?"

Anubis was king of the pillar gods down here, no doubt.

"Along with Osiris, he was the head god of the dead," I explained. "He specialized in embalming and protecting the dead on their journey to the Underworld and Paradise beyond if they were found worthy by Osiris. Osiris ruled and judged, and was the one to pass muster with. Or else."

Anubis obviously meant a lot to the people penned together across the pit, but such commoners were often unable to afford mummification. While we gawked at the spectacular figure of Anubis, Bez stationed himself before another pillar down the line.

"Here he is, here he is," Bez's joyful voice broke through our joint bedazzlement.

Bez's small figure already looked distant, but he was only eight pillars away, gazing upward with a grin.

"Come here," his gruff voice ordered. "Anubis is pretty and more powerful, but here's the only one who can help us, and them!"

A stone god could help us? Ric and I exchanged dubious glances as we hurried to examine Bez's friend. We saw another fifteen-foot-tall Egyptian man, the only one not wearing an animal head. This guy stood in a shallow boat, and if he could climb off that stone carving, he could indeed help us. I stood transfixed to see the magnificent carving up so close. On this huge scale, the low-relief carving was quite deep, cut an impressive four inches or so into the stone.

I have to admit I've always prided myself on being a sensible girl. I'd never been a sucker for a boy band or rock music idol. Still, examining these half-naked ancient Egyptian wall studs was getting on my nerves. Was this a minor side effect of the Brimstone Kiss? Was I starting to become a hunk connoisseur at this late date?

Wowsa! Irma agreed. Does he play bass lute? This boy definitely needs to go electric.

I decided to act the reporter and objectively dissect the mystique. I'd never regarded these Egyptian male art figures as sex objects, but "dead" was no longer the negative it had been before the Millennium Revelation.

Whether depicted as a vibratoriffic nine-inch-high statuette or much larger than life, I had to admit they were impressive, always posed in action, one foot ahead of the other in mid-stride.

Knife-sharp pleated, white-linen kilts set off their native BC tans. They sported the deepest richest tans since George Hamilton, a terra-cotta pigment coursing with life. They always presented their powerful facial profiles, with "maned" wigs brushing broad shoulders that emphasized slim hips.

Front-facing kohl-outlined eyes seemed to look directly at the observer-you, the lone chosen girl in the mosh-pit crowd-despite their aloof, sideways posture.

They fostered the Brimstone Kiss groupie's eternal hope: If only you could get this ancient hottie to look your way, he'd be lost, or at least interested.

This particular dude stood in a boat and held a staff. His headdress featured the sinuous upright form of a cobra with neck fanned for striking. I knew this "uraeus" was a royal or godly symbol. A star incised the sky on each side of the cobra-surmounted headdress.

No question, this guy was a stone star.

Immobile stone. What was Bez thinking? How could he help us free the penned prisoners? A god this size could have ferried them away with those bulging biceps for many return trips and still have left behind teeming masses yearning to breathe free.

Too bad. He was pretty but not useful.

Another glint of gold in the low light made me contemplate the Hunk Afloat on the Boat again.

Yes, that fugitive glitter came from his form, perhaps high-karat gold touches applied to his wrist and ankle bands, and the wide collar over his shoulders. Why did he merit the only gold work on a pillar god besides mighty Osiris, this mere boatman who didn't even rate an animal head?

I traced the thin glimpses of gold into actual curved links and that woke up my Bette Davis eyes. The boatman was chained to his wall! Was he too a prisoner, like the wretched humans in the caverns?

I'd never heard of a chained figure in Egyptian mythology, granted a scant online education in the subject. I knew the Greek god Prometheus had been chained to a rock with an eagle eating his liver for eternity for the sin of bringing fire to humankind. What could this guy bring to us?

Call me an optimist. I figure if I've never heard of something, it might have possibilities. I'd never heard of Cadaver Kid Ric Montoya before coming to Vegas a few weeks ago, for instance.

And look where that had gotten me.

Maybe thinking of Ric had snared his glance. He nodded as if reading my mind.

"Time to improvise, Del," he said.

He nodded at the dimly glittering wall d��cor. "You like this guy's looks?"

"I like his size. He could pole vault that staff over the pit or stomp what's down in it."

"He's just another pillar poster boy," Ric said with competitive male disdain.

"You didn't see guys like him leaping off the walls to stop your rescue party from getting to you."

"Guys that tall?"

"No, our size, but I figure anything that's kept in chains beneath the Karnak might be willing and able to help us."

"Couldn't hurt," Ric agreed. "What do you-?"

I'd been really good at obstacle vaults in Our Lady of the Lake Convent School's despised gym classes. Hey, I'd already leaped onto a golden chariot and stone horses' backs during my first visit to the Karnak.

In a moment I was three feet off the ground swinging on Boat Boy's ankle chains, then I scaled his staff to a swagged wrist chain six feet up. The deeply incised figure provided plenty of crevices.

I heard Quicksilver's nails scrabbling to gain purchase on the carving, but it offered footholds only to me. The heroic scale of these Egyptian monuments would delight a newbie rock climber. I dangled from a wrist chain that had looked braid-fine from ground level.

In reality-such as reality was in the bowels of the Karnak-the chain was oversized enough for my fingers to close around the links.

I pumped my legs to get my momentum going. Soon I was swinging on the chain, the pendulum of my body weight exerting many times its actual force to pry a link loose.

Of course, padded gym blankets didn't lie below, but solid stone.

I felt a stomach-churning drop as a link released and I swung back and forth on one wildly whiplashing end. My scrabbling feet found no holds other than the pleats of Boat Boy's kilt under the navel and over the, uh... well, I understood why Ric was hollering my name like a panicked school principal watching a prank.

The chain link finally pulled free, and so did my grip. I plunged, braced to land hard. Instead, I was caught with a tooth-shaking impact in a pair of brawny, bare, brown masculine arms.

Ah... not Ric's arms. He was wearing chin-to-sole undercover black.

I'm a rather brawny girl myself-five-eight and fully packed-but this guy had me covered, crushed to his warm Indian clay chest, bringing a dull red flush of annoyance to Ric's hovering face.

"Thanks," I said into the man's liquid sloe eyes, living eyes. "I'm good."

I wriggled down into Ric's steadying custody.

The wall behind my recent landing pad was the same, the engraved god was on his pillar, and all was right with the world, except the broken chains were still swaying.

And Boat Boy was now standing right here with us, six-some feet of living ancient flesh.

Bez jumped up and down in manic glee.

"Shezmou, my brother, I have been alone on guard for so many millennia, helpless to succor my kind as their blood flowed thick into the vermins' throats."

Apparently, his fellow dwarves had fed the royal vamps since cobras became hair ornaments around here.

Bez remained a puppet on a yo-yo string, dancing and declaiming.

"O Shezmou, my very big brother, how good it is to see your handsome face and form standing in human shape on solid stone again.

"How good to know you will snap off the heads of the evildoers as ripe grapes at the harvest.

"How good to see that you will cast them into the eternally grinding press to again make the bloodwine of Egypt's gods run red along the Nile."

All well and good, but was Shezmou into liberation politics?

FOR THE FIRST time, I understood why the Egyptians depicted their gods as either twenty-foot giants or doll-size statuettes.

Shezmou in fleshly human form stood about six and a half feet tall. All the Karnak Egyptians I'd seen so far were on the five-foot-zero side. His self-proclaimed "brother," Bez, was a shrimp.

I wasn't sure what rules of form gods had to follow, but this fellow's well-tanned painted version still stood at eternal attention, appliqu��d to the pillar. If he had been the statue brought to life, he could have crushed us all.

So the Shezmou who'd caught me in the bride-carried-over-the-threshold grip that had Ric developing lockjaw had to be an avatar, the living human-form incarnation of a god.

For now, he seemed more interested in taking in the scenery than in me.

"Bez," he said, warmth cloaking his deep, mesmerizing voice, as he glanced down. Or frowned down. Although Egyptian wall paintings depicted musicians and dancers, the faces were all similarly stylized. No Quicksilver grins on these folk.

"You are as plump and mischievous as ever," the descended god noted of his baby bro. "Who are these strangers in our land? Who are this serpent man and woman and the pariah dog of strange coat and aspect? And what unfinished tomb is this?"

Okay, Bez's introduction had been a bit ominous with all that flowing blood stuff, but this guy was hitting political incorrectness on all cylinders.

"The dog is no feral pariah," I said, despite the tight grip of Ric's hand on my arm advising diplomatic tact. "Quicksilver is a mighty warrior who could scent a"-what did Egyptians hate? Ah, who?-"an enemy Hittite and track him to where the Blue Nile trickles into crocodile spit."

My knowledge of Egyptian landscape and history until recently had been limited to corny old films about that old Roman Empire soap opera trio, Caesar, Antony, and Cleopatra. Two guys and a gal always provided tried and true dramatic fodder. And guess what we have here, folks? Except for the dog and the class clown.

Shezmou grunted favorably at Quicksilver, whose slavering teeth were positioned over the thankfully veiled "spleen" of his linen kilt.

"A hunting hound, I see. Forgive me. I did not notice the collar in that thick hyena-like neck pelt. Our most prized hounds are lean and flat-coated, but this creature's head, ears, and jaws are more related to our noble and powerful Anubis."

We'll take it! Kinship with the jackal-headed usher of dead souls is a great recommendation for Quicksilver in this culture. Meanwhile, Shezmou was regarding me with initial disfavor as well.

"This form felt female in my grasp but twice the weight it should be. That black, utterly concealing gown feels of the slick of decay rather than the radiant white of linen woven so fine a dancing girl's tattoos may be sighted through it."

Well, pardon me for not being reed-of-the-Nile bulimic!

Somebody ought to report those wall babes in their totally ass- and thigh clinging cellophane sheaths. Pity I forgot to put Spanx thigh-smoothers under my steel-studded catsuit to conceal unsightly bulges, like muscles and a skeleton.

"If I hadn't had some heft," I pointed out, "like a well-honed weapon, Your Lordness of the Bloodwine, my weight wouldn't have broken your chain to set you free."

He looked up at the still-vibrating separated golden links.

And frowned. Again.

"True, but who is this Nubian?"

Ric was Hispanic in camo black-face but that was going a little far. How to explain a man wearing head-to-toe undercover black in a context this disoriented god five thousand years out of his time would understand?

"I'm here to protect her." Ric's vibrant basso vibrated the sandstone under our feet, and particularly under Shezmou's big bare feet.

For an instant I hallucinated a silver flash striking like a knife blade from Ric's single contact lens-shrouded eye. Eyes were very significant to Egyptians. I guess I could be forgiven for imagining things. This was a rather hallucinatory place.

Shezmou stepped back, holding up a peaceful palm with a five-pointed figure tattooed in its center.

***

"The woman's weight broke me free," the liberated god said, "and I am satisfied. I care not whether she and her companions be Nubians or Hittites or Nile asps."

This was a relief, in a way, but why did the Karnak Egyptians, from royals to god, speak English, even if it was weird formalized English? Had they been watching late-night TV movies too? Or PBS? Maybe not so far-fetched.

As one of the first cultures with written language, they had the interest, and their own language was fading. I'd read that Cleopatra was the first pharaoh to bother speaking Egyptian in three hundred years, the latest in a line of Greeks whom Alexander the Great appointed to rule Egypt. By then Egypt was a conquered territory.

Could the vampires have gone to ground beneath their own desert sand centuries ago? Possibly to escape Roman persecution back in 50 BC, as Christians had later? If so, they might speak their own language among themselves but learn the dominant language topside too. Plenty of time to do it.

I'd seen that the mystical rivers of both Egypt and Christian culture flowed beneath the Las Vegas sands. Might the vampire empire have been here, isolated and inbred, even while empty desert was becoming "Vegas!" seventy-five years ago? Imagining the Egyptian vampires as the second immigrants to our shores, only subterranean, after the Native Americans was a bit of a stretch even for my inquiring mind.

Speaking of "stretch," Shezmou took one three-foot stride away from our party, then one long stride back.

"What a pleasure to be active again. My vintages of strong and sweet red wine will once more nourish the blood of pharaohs."

Ric spotted an opening for a skilled interrogator and jumped into it.

"Obviously, you're a mighty warrior," he said, "but a wine connoisseur as well?"

"Wine." Shez turned, a slight smile on his face. "This is the jewel of the Nile. Only the most perfect soil must be found to grow the grapes that will surrender their sweet juice in the wringing grasp of the wine press.

"Many white grapes bleed a weak and pallid ichor, but the precious red grape oozes only the sweet crimson wine that soothes a proper pharaoh's throat and gives him the strength of a lion, my divine godhead.

"My vintages are much treasured. When I turn my press on the olive and other fruits of the earth, I squeeze out sweet scent and unguents for the living and dead. My concoctions soften living skin, sweeten its scents in the sun god Ra's harshest rays, drive away biting insects, and prepare the dead for their passage to the Afterlife."

This softer side of Shezmou was intriguing after Bez's intimidating introduction. Still, I didn't miss the implications some of his words branded on my brain: "the precious red grape oozes only the sweet crimson wine that soothes a proper pharaoh's throat and gives him the strength of a lion."

If this didn't refer to a pharaohnic taste for blood from the git-go, I was Cleopatra's asp!

While I was connecting the mythological dots, Shezmou's measured pacing had grown more impassioned.

"I remember now! So many ungodly scenes have passed before my motionless stone eyes all... these... years. They grow sharper in my mind and heart and belly and in my sacred eye."

His 3-D human form did come with two eyes, both dark and gorgeously outlined, Johnny Depp pirate-style. His dramatic gaze surveyed the surrounding pillars. Then they lifted to take in the yawning upper reaches of mineral salt-sparkled stalactites that had dripped down from the long-lost seas above our heads more than three million years ago.

He was beginning to understand that his confinement had lasted centuries and he lofted his fists like Bez. Shez's infuriated shadow cast a far taller and broader darkness than his dwarfed brother.

"I have been held impotent through all these dynasties, while they, the unnaturally eternal of our kind, have perverted our rites and our people? While they have become... cannibals... to dine again and again on these helpless ones and even the most precious and protected of my small brother's kind!"

His luminous, black-outlined gaze drifted to Bez, tenderly.

"Is it not written by the sage Amenemope? 'Mock not the blind nor deride the dwarf nor block the cripple's path; do not tease a man made ill by a god nor make outcry when he blunders. Man is clay and straw, the God is his builder. The Wise Man should respect people affected by reversal of fortune.'"

"Amen," Ric said.

I recalled that dwarfism was common among the ancient Egyptians, including royal families. Even King Tut's tomb included a funeral gift showing a female dwarf with bowed legs and clubfeet.

I was finally seeing the big picture, all the implications of the god-occupied front bank of pillars.

Bez had been left below as a harmless watchdog and his brother's image chained because, being Anubis's headsman-and since beheading was the only method they knew to kill vampires-Shezmou was the only god who could judge the utterly secret culture of vampire Egyptians who were suspended between life and afterlife.

When Bez goaded me to free Shezmou, he awakened to see what endless generations of a vampire ruling class had wrought.

Why had my act of breaking the chain freed Shezmou, though? Could anyone have done it? I hoped so, because I wanted as little power and its obligations as possible.

At least, thanks to us, Shez was back and poised to take action at last. I hadn't seen any mobile gods during my first two visits to the Karnak, either during my personal escape or the aggressive military mission to free Ric. The real god had been down here, large and impressive and made of stone. Upstairs on the Strip level the impressive twenty-foot-high statues of the gods were the tourist attractions, gaudy and impotent.

With Shezmou finally on the loose, Kephron and Kepherati, the Twin Pharaoh vampires who'd separately tormented Ric and me, were about to become hyena leavings.

Ric and I eyed each other. We could always use powerful allies and were sitting pretty. One of us didn't agree.

Quicksilver growled and shied away when I put a comforting hand on his head. His pale blue irises were almost all black pupils now, black moons set into his skittish eye whites, like a reverse of the night sky.

He trotted off, leaving us alone with the two living Egyptian gods, and went to scout the forest of stone pillars.

Good. He could guard the perimeter while we parlayed with our unusual new allies at the literal gates of Egyptian Hell.
    
 

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