Sophie nodded slowly. “I still think—I know—you’re wrong about Flamel and the others.”
“Sophie, you have to trust me.”
“I trust you. But remember, the Witch knows these people, and she trusts them.”
“Sophie,” Josh said in frustration, “we don’t know anything about the Witch.”
“Oh, Josh, I know everything about the Witch,” Sophie said feelingly. She tapped her temple with her forefinger. “And I wish I didn’t. Her entire life, thousands of years, are in here.” Josh opened his mouth to reply, but Sophie held up her hand. “Here’s what I’ll do: I’ll work with Saint-Germain, learn everything he has to teach me.”
“And keep an eye on him at the same time; try and find out what he and Flamel are up to.”
Sophie ignored him. “Maybe the next time we’re attacked, we’ll be able to defend ourselves.” She looked across the rooftops of Paris. “At least we’re safe here.”
“But for how long?” her twin asked.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Dr. John Dee turned off the light and stepped out of the enormous bedroom onto the balcony, resting his forearms on the metal railing and looking out over the city of Paris. It had rained earlier and the air was damp and chill, tainted with the sour smell from the Seine and the hint of exhaust fumes.
He hated Paris.
It had not always been that way. Once, this had been his favorite city in all of Europe, filled with the most wonderful and extraordinary memories. After all, he had been made immortal in this city. In a dungeon deep below the Bastille, the prison fortress, the Crow Goddess had taken him to the Elder who had granted him eternal life in return for unquestioning loyalty.
Dr. John Dee had worked for the Elders, spied for them, undertaken many dangerous missions through countless Shadowrealms. He had fought armies of the dead and undead, pursued monsters across bitter wastelands, stolen some of the most precious and magical objects sacred to a dozen civilizations. In time he had become the champion of the Dark Elders; nothing was beyond him, no mission was too difficult…except when it came to the Flamels. The English Magician had failed, over and over, to capture Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel, several times in this very city.
It remained one of the greatest mysteries of his long existence: how had the Flamels evaded him? He commanded an army of human, inhuman and abhuman agents; he had access to the birds of the air; he could command rats, cats and dogs. He had at his disposal creatures from the darkest edges of mythology. But for more than four hundred years, the Flamels had escaped capture, first here in Paris, then across Europe and into America, always staying one step ahead of him, often leaving town only hours before he arrived. It was almost as if they were being warned. But that, of course, was impossible. The Magician shared his plans with no one.
A door opened and closed in the room behind him. Dee’s nostrils flared, smelling a hint of musty serpent. “Good evening, Niccolò,” Dee said, without turning around.
“Welcome to Paris.” Niccolò Machiavelli spoke Latin with an Italian accent. “I trust you had a good flight and that the room is to your satisfaction?” Machiavelli had arranged for Dee to be met at the airport and given a police escort to his grand town house off the Place du Canada.
“Where are they?” Dee asked rudely, ignoring his host’s questions, asserting his authority. He might have been a few years younger than the Italian, but he was in charge.
Machiavelli stepped out of the room and stood beside Dee on the balcony. Unwilling to wrinkle his suit against the metal railing, he stood with his hands clasped behind his back. The tall, elegant, clean-shaven Italian with close-cropped white hair was in great contrast with the small sharp-featured man with his pointed beard and his gray hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. “They are still in Saint-Germain’s house. And Flamel has recently joined them.”
Dr. Dee glanced sidelong at Machiavelli. “I’m surprised you were not tempted to try and capture them yourself,” he said slyly.
Machiavelli looked over the city he controlled. “Oh, I thought I would leave their final capture to you,” he said mildly.
“You mean you were instructed to leave them to me,” Dee snapped.
Machiavelli said nothing.
“Saint-Germain’s house is completely surrounded?”
“Completely.”
“And there are only five people in the house? No servants, no guards?”
“The Alchemyst and Saint-Germain, the twins and the Shadow.”
“Scathach is the problem,” Dee muttered.
“I may have a solution,” Machiavelli suggested softly. He waited until the Magician turned to look at him, his stone gray eyes blinking orange in the reflected streetlights. “I sent for the Disir, Scathach’s fiercest foes. Three of them have just arrived.”
A rare smile curled Dee’s thin lips. Then he moved back from Machiavelli and bowed slightly. “The Valkyries—a truly excellent choice.”
“We are on the same side,” Machiavelli bowed in return. “We serve the same masters.”
The Magician was about to step back into the room when he stopped and turned to look at Machiavelli. For a moment, the faintest rotten-egg hint of sulfur hung in the air. “You have no idea whom I serve,” he said.
Dagon threw open the tall double doors and stepped back. Niccolò Machiavelli and Dr. John Dee strode into the ornate book-filled library to greet their visitors.
There were three young women in the room.
At first glance they were so alike that they could have been triplets. Tall and thin, with shoulder-length blond hair, they were dressed alike in black tanks under soft leather jackets and blue jeans tucked into knee-high boots. Their faces were all angles: sharp cheekbones, deeply sunken eyes, pointed chins. Only their eyes helped distinguish them. They were different shades of blue, from the palest sapphire to deep, almost purple indigo. All three looked as if they might have been sixteen or seventeen, but in actuality, they were older than most civilizations.
They were the Disir.
Machiavelli stepped into the center of the room and turned to look at each of the girls in turn, trying to tell them apart. One was sitting at the grand piano, another was lounging on the sofa, while a third leaned against a window, staring out into the night, an unopened leather-bound book in her hands. As he got closer to them, their heads pivoted, and he noticed that their eye colors matched their nail polish. “Thank you for coming,” he said, speaking Latin, which, along with Greek, was the one language most of the Elders were familiar with.
The girls looked at him blankly.
Machiavelli glanced at Dagon, who had stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. He pulled off his glasses, revealing his bulbous eyes, and spoke quickly in a language no human throat or tongue could shape.
The women ignored him.
Dr. John Dee sighed dramatically. He dropped into a high-backed leather armchair and clapped his small hands together with a sharp crack. “Enough of this nonsense,” he said in English. “You’re here for Scathach. Now, do you want her or not?”
The girl sitting at the piano stared at the Magician. If he noticed that her head was now twisted at an impossible angle, he didn’t react. “Where is she?” Her English was perfect.
“Close by,” Machiavelli said, moving slowly around the room.
The three girls directed their attention to him, heads turning to track him, like owls following a mouse.
“What is she doing?”
“She is protecting the Alchemyst Flamel, Saint-Germain and two humani,” Machiavelli said. “We only want the humani and Flamel. Scathach is yours.” He paused and then added, “You can have Saint-Germain, too, if you want him. He’s no use to us.”
“The Shadow. We just want the Shadow,” the woman sitting at the piano said. Her indigo-tipped fingers moved across the keys, the sound delicate and beautiful.
Machiavelli crossed to a side table and poured coffee from a tall silver pot. He looked at Dee and raised his eyebro
ws and the pot at the same time. The Magician shook his head. “You should know that Scathach is still powerful,” Machiavelli continued, speaking now to the woman seated at the piano. The pupils of her indigo eyes were narrow and horizontal. “She knocked out a unit of highly trained police officers yesterday morning.”
“Humani,” the Disir almost spat. “No humani can stand against the Shadow.”
“But we are not humani,” the woman standing at the window said.
“We are the Disir,” finished the woman sitting across from Dee. “We are the Shieldmaidens, the Choosers of the Dead, the Warriors of—”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Dee said impatiently. “We know who you are: Valkyries. Probably the greatest warriors the world has ever seen—according to yourselves, anyway. We want to know if you can defeat the Shadow.”
The Disir with indigo eyes swiveled her body away from the piano and flowed smoothly to her feet. She stalked across the carpet to stand before Dee. Her two sisters were suddenly by her side, and the temperature in the room abruptly plummeted.
“It would be a mistake to mock us, Dr. Dee,” one said.
Dee sighed. “Can you defeat the Shadow?” he asked again. “Because if you cannot, then I’m sure that there are others who would be only too delighted to try.” He held up his cell phone. “I can call upon Amazons, Samurai and Bogatyrs.”
The temperature in the room continued to fall as Dee spoke, and his breath plumed white in the air, ice crystals forming on his eyebrows and beard.
“Enough of this trickery!” Dee snapped his fingers and his aura flashed briefly yellow. The room grew warm, then hot, heavy with the stink of rotten eggs.
“There is no need for these lesser warriors. The Disir will slay the Shadow,” the girl standing to Dee’s right said.
“How?” Dee snapped.
“We have what those other warriors have not.”
“You’re talking in riddles,” Dee said impatiently.
“Tell him,” Machiavelli said.
The Disir with the palest eyes turned her head in his direction and then looked back at Dee. Long fingers flickered toward his face. “You destroyed the Yggdrasill and released our pet creature, which had been long trapped in the roots of the World Tree.”
Something flickered behind Dee’s eyes and a muscle twitched at the corner of his mouth. “Nidhogg?” He looked at Machiavelli. “You knew about this?”
Machiavelli nodded. “Of course.”
The Disir with indigo eyes stepped up to Dee and looked down into his face. “Yes, you freed Nidhogg, the Devourer of Corpses.” Still leaning toward Dee, she swiveled her head to look at Machiavelli. Her sisters also turned in his direction. “Take us to where the Shadow and the others are hiding, then leave us. Once we have loosed Nidhogg, Scathach is doomed.”
“Can you control the creature?” Machiavelli asked curiously.
“Once it feeds off the Shadow, consumes first her memories and then her flesh and bones, it will need to sleep. After a feast like Scathach, it will probably sleep for a couple of centuries. We will recapture it then.”
Niccolò Machiavelli nodded. “We didn’t discuss your fee.”
The three Disir smiled, and even Machiavelli, who had seen horrors, recoiled from the expressions on their faces. “There is no fee,” the Disir with indigo eyes said. “This we will do to restore the honor of our clan and avenge our fallen family. Scathach the Shadow destroyed many of our sisters.”
Machiavelli nodded. “I understand. When will you attack?”
“At dawn.”
“Why not now?” Dee demanded.
“We are creatures of the twilight. In that no-time between night and day, we are at our strongest,” one said.
“That is when we are invincible,” her sister added.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“I guess I must still be on American time,” Josh said.
“Why?” Scathach asked. They were standing in the fully equipped gym in the basement of Saint-Germain’s house. One wall was mirrored, and it reflected the young man and the vampire, surrounded by the latest exercise equipment.
Josh glanced up at the clock on the wall. “It’s three a.m…. I should be exhausted, but I’m still totally awake. It could be because it’s only six at night back home.”
Scathach nodded. “That’s one of the reasons. Another is because you are around people like Nicholas and Saint-Germain, and especially your sister and Joan. Although your powers have not been Awakened, you are in the company of some of the most powerful auras on the planet. Your own aura is picking up a little of their power, and it is energizing you. But just because you don’t feel tired, that doesn’t mean you should not rest,” she added. “Drink plenty of water too. Your aura is burning through a lot of liquids. You need to keep hydrated.”
A door opened and Joan stepped into the gym. While Scathach was dressed in black, Joan was wearing a long-sleeved white T-shirt over loose white trousers and white sneakers. Like Scathach, however, she was carrying a sword. “I wondered if you needed an assistant,” she said, almost shyly.
“I thought you’d gone to bed,” Scathach said.
“I don’t sleep much these days. And when I do, my dreams are troubled. I dream of fire.” She smiled sadly. “Isn’t it a wonderful irony: I’m married to a Master of Fire, yet I’m terrified by dreams of fire.”
“Where is Francis?”
“In his office, working. He’ll be there for hours. I’m not sure if he ever sleeps anymore. Now,” she said, looking at Josh and changing the subject, “how are you getting on?”
“I’m still learning how to hold the sword,” Josh muttered, sounding vaguely embarrassed. He’d seen movies; he’d thought he knew how people fought with swords. He’d never imagined, though, that just holding one would be so difficult. Scathach had spent the past thirty minutes attempting to teach him how to hold and move Clarent without dropping it. She hadn’t had much success; every time he spun the weapon, the weight dragged it from his grip. The highly polished wooden floor was scratched and gouged where the stone blade had struck it. “It’s harder than I thought,” he finally admitted. “I’m not sure I’ll ever learn.”
“Scathach can teach you how to fight with a sword,” Joan said confidently. “She taught me. She took a simple farm girl and turned her into a warrior.” She twisted her wrist, and her sword, which was almost as tall as she was, moved and curled in the air with an almost human-sounding moan. Josh attempted to copy the action and Clarent went spinning from his hand. It buried itself point first in the floor, cracking the wood and swaying to and fro.
“Sorry,” Josh muttered.
“Forget everything you think you know about swordplay,” Scathach said. She glanced at Joan. “He’s watched too much TV. He thinks he can just twirl a sword around like a cheerleader’s baton.”
Joan grinned. She deftly flipped her longsword and presented it to Josh, hilt first. “Take it.”
Josh reached for the sword with his right hand.
“You might think about using both hands,” the small Frenchwoman suggested.
Josh ignored her. Wrapping his fingers around the hilt of Joan’s sword, he attempted to lift it from her grasp. And failed. It was incredibly heavy.
“You can see why we’re still on the basics,” Scatty said. She plucked the sword from Josh’s grip and tossed it to Joan, who caught it easily.
“Let’s start with how to hold a sword.” Joan took up a position on Josh’s right, while Scathach stood to his left. “Look straight ahead.”
Josh looked into the mirror. While he and Scathach were clearly visible in the glass, the faintest silver haze surrounded Joan of Arc. He blinked, squeezing his eyes shut, but when he opened them again, the haze was still there.
“It’s my aura,” Joan explained, anticipating the question he was just about to ask. “It’s usually invisible to the human eyes, but it’ll sometimes turn up on photos and in mirrors.”
“And your aura is like So
phie’s,” Josh said.
Joan of Arc shook her head. “Oh no, not like your sister’s,” she said, surprising him. “Hers is much stronger.”
Joan raised the longsword, spinning it around so that the point of the blade was positioned between her feet and both hands rested on the pommel of the hilt. “Now, just do as we do…and do it slowly.” She stretched out her right arm, holding the long blade steady. On Josh’s left, the Shadow extended both arms, holding her two short swords straight out in front of her.
Josh wrapped his fingers around the hilt of the stone sword and raised his right arm. Even before he had it fully extended, it had begun to tremble with the weight of the blade. Gritting his teeth, he attempted to keep his arm steady. “It’s too heavy,” he gasped as he lowered his arm and rotated his shoulder; his muscles were burning. It felt a bit like the first day of football practice after summer vacation.
“Try it like this. Watch me.” Joan showed him how to grip the handle with both hands.
Using both hands, he found that it was easier to hold the sword straight out. He tried it again, this time holding the sword with one hand. For about thirty seconds the weapon remained still; then the tip began to tremble. With a sigh, Josh lowered his arms. “Can’t do it with one hand,” he muttered.
“In time you will,” Scathach snapped, losing patience. “But in the meantime, I’ll teach you how to wield it using both hands, Eastern fashion.”
Josh nodded. “That might be easier.” He’d spent years studying tae kwon do, and had always wanted to study kendo, Japanese fencing, but his parents had refused, saying it was too dangerous.
“All he needs is practice,” Joan said seriously, looking at Scathach’s reflection in the mirror, her gray eyes bright and twinkling.
“How much practice?” Josh asked.
“At least three years.”
“Three years?” Taking a deep breath, he wiped first one palm and then the other on his pants and gripped the hilt again. Then he looked at himself in the mirror and stretched out both arms. “I hope Sophie is doing better than I am,” he muttered.