The half-moon blades close to the floor were a different matter altogether. The blades clicked out of their concealed sheaths in the walls and sliced into the ankles of the clay men. The first creature crashed to the floor, hitting it with the sound of wet mud. The second tottered on one foot before it slowly toppled forward, hit the wall and slid down, leaving a muddy smear in its wake. The semicircular blades click-clacked again, slicing the creatures completely in two, and then the Golems abruptly reverted to their muddy origin. Thick globules of mud spattered everywhere.
The third Golem, the largest of the creatures, stopped. Its black stone eyes moved dully over the remains of its two companions, and then it turned and punched a huge fist directly into the wall, first to the right, then to the left. A whole section of the wall on the left-hand side gave way, revealing the space beyond. The Golem stepped into the dojo and looked around, black eyes still and unmoving.
The rats meanwhile raced toward the open door at the end of the corridor. Most of them survived the scything blades….
In the speeding limousine, Dr. John Dee released his control of the rats, and now concentrated his attention on the surviving Golem. Controlling the artificial creature was much easier. Golems were mindless beings, created of mud mixed with stones or gravel to give their flesh consistency, and brought to life by a simple spell written on a square of parchment and pressed into their mouths. Sorcerers had been building Golems of all shapes and sizes for thousands of years: they were the source of every zombie and walking-dead story ever created. Dee himself had told the story of the greatest of all the Golems, the Red Golem of Prague, to Mary Shelley one cold winter’s evening when she, Lord Byron, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and the mysterious Dr. Polidori were visiting his castle in Switzerland in 1816. Less than six months later, Mary created the story of The Modern Prometheus, the book that became more commonly known as Frankenstein. The monster in her book was just like a Golem: created of spare parts and brought to life by magical science. Golems were impervious to most weapons, though a sudden fall or blow could shatter their mud skin, especially if it was dry and hardening. In a damp climate, their skins rarely dried out and could absorb incredible punishment, but this warm climate made them brittle—which was why they had fallen so easily to the concealed blades. Some sorcerers used glass or mirrors for their eyes, but Dee preferred highly polished black stones. They enabled him to see with almost razor-sharp clarity, albeit in monochrome.
Dee caused the Golem to tilt his head upward. Directly above him, on a narrow balcony overlooking the dojo, were the pale and terrified faces of the teens. Dee smiled and the Golem’s lips mimicked the movement. He’d deal with Flamel first; then he’d take care of the witnesses.
Suddenly, Nicholas Flamel’s head appeared, followed, a moment later, by the distinctive spiky hair of the Warrior Maid, Scathach.
Dee’s smile faded and he could feel his heart sink. Why did it have to be Scathach? He’d had no idea that the red-haired warrior was in this city, or even on this continent, for that matter. Last he’d heard of her, she was singing in an all-girl band in Berlin.
Through the Golem’s eyes, Dee watched both Flamel and Scathach leap over the railing and float down to stand directly in front of the mud man. Scathach spoke directly to Dee—but this particular Golem had no ears and couldn’t hear, so he had no idea what she had just said. A threat probably, a promise certainly.
Flamel drifted away, moving toward the door, which was now dark and heaving with rats, leaving Scatty to face him and the Golem alone.
Maybe she wasn’t as good as she’d once been, he thought desperately, maybe time had dulled her powers.
“We should help,” Josh said.
“And do what?” Sophie asked, without a trace of sarcasm. They were both standing on the balcony, looking down into the dojo. They had watched openmouthed as Flamel and Scatty leaped over the edge and drifted far too slowly to the ground. The red-haired girl faced the huge Golem, while Flamel hurried to the door where the rats were gathering. The vermin seemed reluctant to enter the room.
Without warning, the Golem swung a huge fist, then followed it up with a massive kick.
Josh opened his mouth to shout a warning, but he didn’t get a chance to say anything before Scatty moved. One moment she was standing directly in front of the creature, then she was throwing herself forward, moving under the blows, closing right in on it. Her hand moved, blurringly fast, and she delivered a flat open-handed blow to the point of the Golem’s jaw. There was a liquid squelch, and then its jaw unhinged and its mouth gaped open. In the blackness of its maw, the twins could clearly see a yellow rectangle of paper.
The creature struck out wildly and Scatty danced back out of range. It lashed out a kick, which missed and struck the polished floorboards, shattering them to splinters.
“We’ve got to help!” Sophie said.
“How?” Josh shouted, but his twin had run into the kitchen, desperately looking for a weapon. She emerged a moment later carrying a small microwave oven. “Sophie,” Josh murmured, “what are you going to do with…?”
Sophie heaved the microwave over the edge of the railing. It struck the Golem full in the chest—and stuck, globules of mud spattering everywhere. The Golem stopped, confused and disorientated. Scatty took advantage of its disorientation and moved in again, feet and hands striking blows from all angles, further confusing the creature. Another blow from the Golem came close enough to ruffle Scatty’s spiky red hair, but she caught its arm and used it as leverage to spin the creature to the floor. Floorboards cracked and snapped as it hit them. Then her hand shot out…and almost delicately plucked the paper square from the Golem’s mouth.
Instantly, the Golem returned to its muddy origins, splashing foul, stinking water and dirt across the once-pristine dojo floor. The microwave rattled to the ground.
“I guess no one’s cooking anything in that,” Josh murmured.
Scatty waved the square of paper at the twins. “Every magical creature is kept animated by a spell that is either in or on its body. All you have to do is remove it to break the spell. Remember that.”
Josh glanced quickly at his sister. He knew she was thinking the same thing he was: if they ever came up against a Golem again, there was no way they were getting close enough to stick their hands in its mouth.
Nicholas Flamel approached the rats warily. Underestimating them would be deadly indeed, but while he had no difficulty fighting and destroying magical creatures, which were never properly alive in the first place, he was reluctant to destroy living creatures. Even if they were rats. Perry would have no such compunction, he knew, but he had been an alchemyst for far too long: he was dedicated to preserving life, not destroying it. The rats were under Dee’s control. The poor creatures were probably terrified…though that would not stop them from eating him.
Flamel crouched on the floor, turned his right hand palm up and curled the fingers inward. He blew gently into his hand, and a tiny ball of green mist immediately formed. Then he suddenly turned his hand and plunged it straight into the polished floorboards, his fingers actually penetrating the wood. The tiny ball of green energy splashed across the room like a stain. Then the Alchemyst closed his eyes and his aura flared around his body. Concentrating, he directed his auric energy to flow through his fingers into the floor.
The wood started to glow.
Still watching from the landing, the twins were unsure what Flamel was doing. They could see the faint green glow around his body, rising off his flesh like mist, but they couldn’t work out why the furry mass of rats gathered in the doorway had not burst into the room.
“Maybe there’s some sort of spell keeping them from coming in,” Sophie said, knowing instinctively that her twin was thinking the same thing.
Scatty heard her. She was systematically shredding the yellow square of paper she’d taken from the Golem’s mouth to tiny pieces. “It’s just a simple warding spell,” she called up, “designed to keep bug
s and vermin off the floor. I used to come in here every morning and find bug droppings and moths all over the place; it took ages to sweep it clean. The warding spell is keeping the rats at bay…but all it takes is one to break through and the spell will be broken. Then they’ll all come.”
Nicholas Flamel was fully aware that John Dee could probably see him though the eyes of the rats. He picked out the largest, a cat-sized creature that remained unmoving while the rest of the vermin scuttled and heaved about it. With his right hand still buried in the floorboard, Flamel pointed his left hand directly at the rat. The creature twitched and, for a single instant, its eyes blazed with sickly yellow light.
“Dr. John Dee, you have made the biggest mistake of your long life. I will be coming for you,” Flamel promised aloud.
Dee glanced up from his scrying bowl to see that Perenelle Flamel was wide awake and watching him intently. “Ah, Madame, you are just in time to see my creatures overpower your husband. Plus, I’ll finally have an opportunity to deal with that pest Scathach, and I’ll have the pages of the book.” Dee didn’t notice that Perenelle’s eyes had widened at the mention of Scathach’s name. “All in all, a good day’s work, I think.” He focused his full attention on the biggest rat and issued two simple commands: “Attack. Kill.”
Dee closed his eyes as the rat uncoiled and launched itself into the room.
The green light flowed out from Flamel’s fingers and ran along the floorboards, outlining the planks in green light. Abruptly, the wooden floor sprouted twigs, branches, leaves and then a tree trunk…then another…and a third. Within a dozen heartbeats a thicket of trees sprouted out of the floor and were visibly climbing toward the ceiling. Some of the trunks were no thicker than a finger, others were wrist thick and one, close to the door, was so wide it almost filled the opening.
The rats turned and scattered, squealing as they raced down the corridor, desperately attempting to leap over the click-clacking blades.
Flamel scrambled back and climbed to his feet, brushing off his hands. “One of the oldest secrets of alchemy,” he announced to the wide-eyed twins and Scatty, “is that every living thing, from the most complex creatures right down to the simplest leaf, carries the seeds of its creation within itself.”
“DNA,” Josh murmured, staring at the forest sprouting and growing behind Flamel.
Sophie looked around the once-spotless dojo. It was now filthy, spattered and splashed with muddy water, the smoothly polished floorboards broken and cracked with the trees growing from them, more foul-smelling mud in the hallway. “Are you saying that alchemists knew about DNA?” she asked. The Alchemyst nodded delightedly. “Exactly. When Watson and Crick announced that they had discovered what they called ‘the secret of life’ in 1953, they were merely rediscovering something alchemists have always known.”
“You’re telling me that you somehow woke the DNA in those floorboards and forced trees to grow,” Josh said, choosing his words carefully. “How?”
Flamel turned to look at the forest that was now taking over the entire dojo. “It’s called magic,” he said delightedly, “and I wasn’t sure I could do it anymore…until Scatty reminded me,” he added.
CHAPTER TEN
“So let me get this straight,” Josh Newman said, trying to keep his voice perfectly level, “you don’t know how to drive? Neither of you?”
Josh and Sophie were sitting in the front seats of the SUV Scatty had borrowed from one of her martial arts students. Josh was driving, and his sister had a map on her lap. Nicholas Flamel and Scathach were sitting in the back.
“Never learned,” Nicholas Flamel said, with an expressive shrug.
“Never had the time,” Scatty said shortly.
“But Nicholas told us you’re more than two thousand years old,” Sophie said, looking at the girl.
“Two thousand five hundred and seventeen, as you humani measure time with your current calendar,” Scatty mumbled. She looked into Flamel’s clear eyes. “And how old do I look?”
“Not a day over seventeen,” he said quickly.
“Couldn’t you have found time to learn how to drive?” Sophie persisted. She’d wanted to learn how to drive since she was ten. One of the reasons the twins had taken summer jobs this year, rather than go on the dig with their parents, was to get the money for a car of their own.
Scathach shrugged, an irritated twitch of her shoulders. “I’ve been meaning to, but I’ve been busy,” she protested.
“You do know,” Josh said to no one in particular, “that I’m not supposed to be driving without a licensed driver with me.”
“We’re nearly fifteen and a half and we can both drive,” Sophie said. “Well, sort of,” she added.
“Can either of you ride a horse?” Flamel asked, “or drive a carriage, or a coach-and-four?”
“Well, no…,” Sophie began.
“Handle a war chariot while firing a bow or launching spears?” Scatty added. “Or fly a lizard-nathair while using a slingshot?”
“I have no idea what a lizard-nathair is…and I’m not sure I want to know either.”
“So you see, you are experienced in certain skills,” Flamel said, “whereas we have other, somewhat older, but equally useful skills.” He shot a sidelong glance at Scathach. “Though I’m not so sure about the nathair flying anymore.”
Josh pulled away from a stop sign and turned right, heading for the Golden Gate Bridge. “I just don’t know how you could have lived through the twentieth century without being able to drive. I mean, how did you get from place to place?”
“Public transportation,” Flamel said with a grim smile. “Trains and buses, mainly. They are a completely anonymous method of travel, unlike airplanes and boats. There is far too much paperwork involved in owning a car, paperwork that could be traced directly to us, no matter how many aliases we used.” He paused and added, “And besides, there are other, older methods of travel.”
There were a hundred questions Josh wanted to ask, but he was concentrating furiously on controlling the heavy car. Although he knew how to drive, the only vehicles he’d actually driven were battered Jeeps when they accompanied their parents on a dig. He’d never driven in traffic before, and he was terrified. Sophie had suggested that he pretend it was a computer game. That helped, but only a little. In a game, when you crashed, you simply started again. Here, a crash was for keeps.
Traffic was slow across the famous bridge. A long gray stretch limo had broken down in the inside lane, causing a bottleneck. As they approached, Sophie noticed that there were two dark-suited figures crouched under the hood on the passenger’s side. She realized she was holding her breath as they drew close, wondering if the figures were Golems. She heaved a sigh as they pulled alongside and discovered that the men looked like harassed accountants. Josh glanced at his sister and attempted a grin, and she knew he had been thinking the same thing.
Sophie twisted in her seat, and turned to look back at Flamel and Scatty. In the darkened, air-conditioned interior of the SUV, they seemed so ordinary: Flamel looked like a fading hippy, and Scatty, despite her rather military dress sense, wouldn’t have looked out of place behind the counter at The Coffee Cup. The red-haired girl had propped her chin on her fist and was staring through the darkened glass across the bay toward Alcatraz.
Nicholas Flamel dipped his head to follow the direction of her gaze. “Haven’t been there for a while,” he murmured.
“We did the tour,” Sophie said.
“I liked it,” Josh said quickly. “Sophie didn’t.”
“It was creepy.”
“And so it should be,” Flamel said quietly. “It is home to an extraordinary assortment of ghosts and unquiet spirits. Last time I was there, it was to put to rest an extremely ugly Snakeman.”
“I’m not sure I even want to know what a Snakeman is,” Sophie muttered, then paused. “You know, a couple of hours ago, I could never have imagined myself saying something like that?”
Nicholas
Flamel sat back in the comfortable seats and folded his arms across his chest. “Your lives—yours and your brother’s—are now forever altered. You know that, don’t you?”
Sophie nodded. “That’s beginning to sink in now. It’s just that everything’s happening so fast that it’s hard to take it all in. Mud men, magic, books of spells, rats…” She looked at Scathach. “Ancient warriors…”
Scatty dipped her head in acknowledgment.
“And of course, a six-hundred-year-old alchemyst…” Sophie stopped, a sudden thought crossing her mind. She looked from Flamel to Scatty and back again. Then she took a moment to formulate her question. Staring hard at the man, she asked, “You are human, aren’t you?”
Nicholas Flamel grinned. “Yes. Perhaps a little more than human, but yes, I was born and will always be one of the human race.”
Sophie looked at Scathach. “But you’re…”
Scathach opened her green eyes wide, and for a single instant, something ancient was visible in the planes and angles of her face. “No,” she said very quietly. “I am not of the race of humani. My people were of different stock, the Elder Race. We ruled this earth before the creatures who became humani climbed down from the trees. Nowadays, we are remembered in the myths of just about every race. We are the creatures of legend, the Were clans, the Vampire, the Giants, the Dragons, the Monsters. In stories we are remembered as the Old Ones or the Elder Race. Some stories call us gods.”
“Were you ever a god?” Sophie whispered.
Scatty giggled. “No. I was never a god. But some of my people allowed themselves to be worshipped as gods. Others simply became gods as humani told tales of their adventures.” She shrugged. “We were just another race, an older race than man, with different gifts, different skills.”