Josh watched in horror as his sister lashed out at the beautiful young woman with a long screaming whip. Coatlicue opened her mouth and shrieked, and the sound was heartbreaking. She turned her huge eyes on Josh and her fingers tugged him forward, toward the swords, toward her. “Why?” she moaned in pain.
Josh didn’t know the answer. He shook his head. This was wrong, so, so wrong. Sophie shouldn’t be whipping Coatlicue. He turned and watched Niten savagely attack Dee, his swords blurs of light as he slashed and cut, driving the Magician back against the wall. Only Virginia seemed to be holding her own. The red-haired warrior was lying at her feet. He grinned: maybe the great Aoife was not so great after all.
Josh turned to look at his sister. Her armor had fully formed around her, giving her an almost alien appearance, and she was lashing out mercilessly at the defenseless Archon.
“No!” he whispered, then shouted, “No!” He tried to raise his own armor, but he was drained from calling Coatlicue. “Stop,” he croaked uselessly.
Sophie ignored him.
And then Josh’s toe touched the stone blade at his feet and Clarent pulsed, throbbed, called to him. Of course! It would renew his aura, give him the strength he needed to protect Coatlicue. Kneeling, Josh closed his hand around the hilt of the warm stone sword.
From the corner of his eye, Dee saw Josh stoop and reach for the sword and his heart stopped. If the square was broken, then Coatlicue would be free … and all would be lost.
Niten, realizing that Dee was distracted, attacked again. Both swords hammered into Dee’s chest. And shattered. Niten blinked in surprise. “You forget who I am,” the Magician snarled. He wrapped a burning fist in Niten’s shirt, lifted him high and flung him across the room. The immortal hit a leather sofa and bounced off.
Sophie saw Dare raise the tomahawk over the fallen Aoife and sent a curl of leather whip at Dee’s cohort. It seared Dare’s flesh as it wrapped around the weapon, jerking it out of her hand.
Virginia snarled in rage, a cry that was cut short as Aoife’s hand shot up and clutched her throat.
And Josh lifted Clarent off the floor and broke the square.
The wash of energy picked the boy up off the ground, jerked him free of Coatlicue’s grip and flung him back against Dee, slamming them both against the wall. It ripped Virginia from Aoife’s grasp, sending the immortal tumbling over and over across the floor. It buffeted Sophie to the ground, stripping away her armor, completely draining her aura in an instant.
With a hiss of triumph, Coatlicue stepped into the world.
“Oh, but I have waited a long time for this. A new world to conquer. Fresh meat. Fresh blood.” The twin snake heads turned, fixed on Sophie. “You first. Your little toy stung me.” All the snakes in her dress raised their tiny heads, and thousands of forked tongues flickered, tasting the air. “A silver aura. It will be an appetizer before I devour the gold.” Coatlicue took a step toward Sophie.
And staggered.
And stopped.
“I don’t think so,” Aoife said very quietly. She had leapt up onto the Archon’s back and wrapped her arms around the two snake heads. Coatlicue struggled, trying to pry Aoife’s fingers free, but the warrior’s grip tightened. All the snakes in the Archon’s dress struck out at Aoife, biting her again and again and the warrior grimaced in pain. “Let’s see who dies first,” she said, mouth opening to reveal her savage teeth. “You created my race. We are from your DNA. So you know how strong the Clan Vampire are.” She jerked the Archon back, away from Sophie, jerked her again, pulling her toward the three swords and the ragged smoking curtain. Then her bright green eyes locked on Sophie’s face. “You saved my life.”
Sophie staggered to her feet. “Aoife?”
“Aoife. One of the Next Generation. It seems I will devour you first. You are weakening.” Coatlicue’s voice was triumphant. More and more of the serpents bit into the warrior, and her skin was wet with their pale venom.
Sophie realized what was happening and lifted the whip, but she didn’t dare crack it toward Coatlicue in case she hit the warrior. “Aoife, let her go, step away from her.…”
The warrior jerked the Archon again, pulling her back, and the creature’s claws left deep scratches in the floor.
Sophie saw an opening and lashed out at Coatlicue, but her arms were leaden with exhaustion and the whip only scratched the Archon’s foot.
Coatlicue lifted her foot and Aoife took the opportunity to pull her back once more. Off balance, Coatlicue staggered and fell, but the warrior never released her hold on the two snapping snake heads. The snakes went into a frenzy of biting and spitting. Aoife’s eyes locked on Sophie’s. “When you find my twin,” she whispered, “tell her … tell Scathach that I did this … for her.” And then, with a final massive effort, Aoife hauled Coatlicue back into the broken square of swords and through the torn curtain of dirty smoke.
The curtain winked out of existence in a detonation that shattered every piece of glass in the building. The hanging television sets crashed to the floor; pipes burst, spraying water into the room; and a huge crack ran up one wall, raced across the ceiling and brought part of the floor above thundering down into the room. A dozen fires started as broken wires rained sparks everywhere.
Shocked and numb, deaf and unable to move, Sophie Newman watched as Dee clambered to his feet. She saw him haul Virginia Dare from the floor, then pick up Josh.
Josh stood and stared at her … but all she could see were his bloodred eyes … and the look of absolute loathing on his pale face.
Dee darted forward to gather the three swords. He tossed Josh a second sword and picked his way across the devastated floor to lift the Codex off the table.
Sophie tried to say her brother’s name, but her mouth was full of grit and she couldn’t shape the word. And when she stretched out her hand to him, he slowly and deliberately turned his back on her and followed John Dee and Virginia Dare out of the burning building.
He did not look back.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
“It’s a henge,” William Shakespeare said, looking at two tall standing stones topped with a massive slab. “Just like Stonehenge.”
“I modeled it on Stonehenge,” Marethyu agreed. “Every Shadowrealm is connected to another by at least one gate. Some have two, and the bigger realms, the huge planet-sized worlds, have multiple gates. When I created this world, I needed just two gates. One to connect to the leygate in Paris—”
“So you knew we were going to use that gate?” Scathach interrupted.
“I knew.”
“One day you’re going to tell me how you knew that,” Scathach said seriously.
“Maybe I will. One day.”
“This is the second gate?” Joan asked, looking at the standing stones. “Where does it lead?”
“To the Crossroads of the Shadowrealms,” Marethyu said, then stepped between the two uprights … and vanished.
“I hate leygates,” Scatty muttered. “Just let me make sure there are no nasty surprises waiting for us on the other side.” Drawing her swords, she darted through. A second later, her slightly green-looking disembodied face appeared in midair. “All clear.”
Shakespeare went next, followed by Joan and Saint-Germain, hand in hand. Palamedes was the last to step from the Pleistocene Shadowrealm. He turned to look back and realized that the world was beginning to fade and die. Colors were leaching away, paling to grays, and the edge of the horizon was drifting off into a fine sparkling dust. As he watched, it swirled away into the cloudless sky and then the sky itself dissolved into utter darkness. One by one, the moons winked out. Palamedes shivered. The world and all it contained—all the extraordinary flora and diverse fauna—was dying because the hook-handed man had no further use for it. This realm had been created for one purpose, and one purpose only: to ensnare—or was it to save?—Scathach and Joan. Marethyu must have known that Saint-Germain would come after his wife. The big knight frowned: had he also known that Palam
edes and Will would come after their friend? Marethyu said he was from the past … how, then, did he know so much about the future?
Who was the hook-handed man?
The Saracen Knight leapt through the henge in the last moments before the gates themselves dissolved to dust.
The hook-handed man waited until Palamedes had appeared. “Glad you could join us,” he said. “I was hoping you would not linger too long.” Then he turned to the small group and lifted his left arm. The hook glowed with warm golden light, partially illuminating the massive cave. “Welcome to Xibalba,” Marethyu said. “Thankfully, there is no time for sightseeing. We need to get out of here right now,” he added, and set off at a run. “Our body heat and auras will attract some spectacularly foul guardians. Follow in my footsteps. And do not, whatever you do, step off the path.”
“I hate this place,” Scathach grumbled, holding her nose shut in an attempt to block out the stink of sulfur.
“You’ve been here before?” Marethyu asked, surprised.
“So you don’t know everything,” she said with a quick grin.
“Not everything,” he said. “I just know enough.”
“Where are we going?” Saint-Germain called.
“I’m going to take you through a series of gates …,” Marethyu said.
“Not more leygates,” Scathach groaned.
“I am afraid so. Though these are not your normal leygates. I did a favor for Chronos, and in return he sequenced these gates for me. But you will all have to stick close behind me. We’re going into Shadowrealms which each have thirteen gates—we must go through the correct ones in the proper order.”
“Otherwise …?” Will demanded.
Marethyu shook his head. “Trust me: you do not want to know.”
“I do, actually,” the Bard muttered.
They raced along a narrow path that snaked across an enormous pool of black-crusted lava. Bubbles gathered and burst on the surface, sometimes spitting firework-like streamers of liquid rock high into the air. Occasionally, the ribbons would fly high enough to touch the ceiling far above, and then the molten threads would stick and dangle for a moment, swaying, before crashing to the ground below like fiery hailstones.
“This way!” Marethyu shouted, pointing to the narrowest of nine openings in the huge circular cave. “These are the Nine Gates to the Shadowrealms. From here, you can travel throughout the myriad realms.” Although all the gates were decorated with archaic glyphs, Shakespeare noticed that the designs over the gate they were running toward looked older, cruder than the rest. “The zero gate,” Marethyu said before he plunged through.
They followed him …
Into a crystal world, where even the sun was glass, and the ground was made of shards of broken crystal. Thirteen translucent gates stood on a mirrored lake.
“Through the first gate,” Marethyu said, pointing to a delicate tracery of spun glass. They raced through …
Into a realm of green sand that rippled and shifted in hypnotic patterns. A giant red sun dominated the sky, close enough that they could see the flares curling off it. The solar flares matched the pattern in the sands. Here the thirteen gates were shaped from sparkling silica.
“Again, the first gate,” Marethyu said, darting between two squat pillars.
And now the world was ice and stank of sour milk, and the thirteen gates were like curdled cream.
“Through the second gate …”
Into a world of metal, where the ground was steel and the sky the color of lead, and the thirteen gates were slabs of rusty iron.
“The third gate …”
A world of noxious yellow fog filled with what sounded like the piteous crying of babies. The thirteen gates were amorphous shifting pillars of smoke, barely distinguishable from the fog.
“The fifth gate …”
Into a world of black oil and sticky tar, where metallic insects ate the oil and the thirteen gates were intricately carved from single blocks of coal.
“The eighth gate …”
A world devastated by a cataclysm, an empty shell of a city, and rain that tasted of ashes. A building that might once have been a hotel had thirteen gaping doorways.
Marethyu pointed. “The final gate, the thirteenth …”
They came out onto a gently sloping hillside covered in tiny yellow and white flowers. The sky overhead was the palest blue, streaked with white clouds, and the air was warm and tasted of salt.
They all breathed deeply, clearing their lungs of the noxious odors and tastes of the Shadowrealms. Marethyu walked up the side of the hill and stopped at the top, looking into the distance. One by one, the immortals climbed the hill to stand beside him.
They were looking down over an island paradise.
Below them, as far as the eye could see, spread a golden city. From this great height it looked like a maze, sparkling blue waterways encircling and weaving through the city. Countless multicolored flags and pennants waved over the buildings, and the sound of music and laughter drifted faintly on the perfumed air.
Dominating the center of the island was a huge stepped pyramid. The top of the pyramid was flat and filled with hundreds of flagpoles, and the tiny dots moving up and down its sides gave some indication of its incredible size.
“You are looking at the legendary Pyramid of the Sun,” Marethyu said, pointing with his hook. “Welcome to the Isle of Danu Talis.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
Prometheus folded the cell phone and looked at Nicholas and Perenelle. The Elder had visibly aged in the past hour. His red hair was streaked with white, and he looked tired and ill.
“That was Niten,” he said very quietly, and the Flamels knew it was not good news. “Josh called Coatlicue. Sophie, Niten and Aoife arrived just as she stepped out from her Shadowrealm, but she was still trapped by some spell of Dee’s. Josh accidentally released her into this world.” His voice thickened, and the tears that rolled down his face were touched with white smoke. “Aoife sacrificed herself to drag Coatlicue back to her Shadowrealm prison. The warrior is gone. Gone forever.”
“And the twins?” Perenelle breathed.
“Sophie is safe with Niten. But when the Magician and Dare fled, Josh left with them. He went by choice. We’ve lost him to the Dark Elders.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ALCATRAZ
“I named this island Isla de los Alcatraces [Island of the Pelicans] because of their being so plentiful there.”—Spanish lieutenant Juan Manuel de Ayala, 1775
The locations used in The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel are all real. In the four books published so far, it is possible to trace the twins’ journey across San Francisco to Mill Valley; through the streets of Paris; from St. Pancras Station in Euston Road, England, to Stonehenge; and from Sausalito to Point Reyes and back into the heart of the city of San Francisco. There is one place that has played an important role in all four books, one location around which the rest of the story revolves: Alcatraz.
The Rock is central to this series.
Although it was officially “discovered” and named by Juan Manuel de Ayala in 1775, the indigenous Ohlone or Costanoan Indians had been gathering eggs and fishing off the island for generations. There is no evidence that there was ever a permanent settlement there, though nearby Angel Island was inhabited.
In 1853, Alcatraz became home to the first lighthouse on the West Coast. Because fog often rendered the light ineffective, the lighthouse originally had a fog bell, which would have been rung by hand. One hundred and ten years later, in 1963, the light was automated. The Fog Bell House survives to this day; the light is still operational.
Nowadays we think of Alcatraz as a former federal prison, but there are records dating to around 1861 showing that it held Civil War prisoners. The first official jailhouse was built there in 1867. It was originally a military prison, but in the aftermath of the great earthquake in 1906, it temporarily housed inmates from the mainland. Alcatraz remained a military pri
son until 1933, when it became a federal prison. Most of the legends surrounding the Rock and its notorious inhabitants—including Al Capone, who was incarcerated there from 1932 to 1939—date from this time. Alcatraz was a federal prison for only thirty years, before it finally closed in 1963.
Six years later, a party of eighty Native Americans representing more than twenty different tribes landed on the abandoned and decaying island and attempted to reclaim it for the native peoples. In a political statement, the group, who called themselves Indians of All Tribes, offered to purchase the island from the American government for “$24 in glass beads and red cloth.” The ironic offer was meant to convey the tribes’ conviction that the island had been stolen from them. They wanted to take back what they saw as Indian land and to establish a Center for Native American Studies and a Great Indian Training School. The Native American occupation of Alcatraz lasted nineteen months, and while it ultimately failed and the occupiers were removed, it successfully drew attention to the plight of Native Americans across the United States. Graffiti evidence of this period can be found around the buildings on the island today, most noticeably on the wall behind the large sign on the dock. Around the official United States Penitentiary sign, the words Indians Welcome and Indian Land have been daubed in red paint.
In 1972, Alcatraz became part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and every year more than a million people visit the island.
When I began to develop the idea that became the series The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, I needed a location that fulfilled several requirements. It had to be close to a major city and yet relatively inaccessible. It had to be big enough to hold a vast army of creatures, and, of course, it had to be firmly rooted in history. Over a number of years, I looked at abandoned mining towns in California, particularly Bodie; ghost towns in the Old West; deserted homesteads along the Boston Post Road; and some of the forts on the Sante Fe Trail. Each one offered interesting possibilities, but none was quite right.