Lu snarled and glanced in the side view mirror.“Brogan?”
“Give me your daggers.”I couldn’t hold the book to cast a spell.Lula couldn’t stop driving.The watch was gone.Her daggers and my knife were the last weapons we had.
“That won’t be enough—” she started to say.“Look!”
I twisted in the seat, peering behind us.
A tornado of crows, thousands, millions, surrounded the snake, the noise loud enough to drown out the thunder.
When the crows lifted, crying to the sky, the snake was gone.
“Raven,” I said.
I turned back around, just as the giant snake punched up out of the sandy soil in front of us.
“Lu!”
She cranked the wheel, and the truck skittered and fish tailed.
The huge snake sideswiped the truck?—
—just as a massive arrow pierced its eye, pinning its head to the ground.
Cupid, thirty feet tall, strode into the fray, shooting arrow after arrow into the snake’s flesh.
The snake writhed free of the arrows and struck.
Cupid winged upward, narrowly avoiding the hit.He drew a massive sword and dove down, ramming the blade into the snake’s head.
The sky bellowed in a cacophony of pain.
The gods disappeared.
Lu kept her foot on the gas.“What do you see?Are they out there?”
“Gone.”I bent to scan the sky through the windows.“I can’t see them.Storm’s coming on strong, coming our way.Sky’s on fire.”
“We can’t,” Lu said.“We can’t go to the hunters.We’d bring this right to their doorstep.”
“If Cupid and Apep are fighting, they won’t see where we go.”
“They’ll always see, Brogan,” she said.“The gods always see.”
The dials in the dash swung wildly.The truck was slowing.The engine died.
“Lu?”
“Not me.”
“Gas?”I asked, my hand on the door latch.
“No.”
“Battery?”
“I don’t—” She turned the key and nothing happened.“I don’t think so.”
“I’ll look.”I opened the door.
