Sophie was about to reply, when she realized she’d been cleverly maneuvered into a trap.
“We need you to fight with us, Sophie,” Tsagaglalal continued. “You remember Hekate, the Goddess with Three Faces?”
“Who lived in the Yggdrasill and Awakened me. How could I forget?” she said sarcastically.
“She was immeasurably powerful: maiden in the morning, matron in the afternoon and ancient in the evening. She represented the entire scope of woman’s knowledge and power.” Tsagaglalal leaned forward, her lined face inches from Sophie’s. “You are the maiden, Perenelle is the matron and I am the ancient crone. Together we have extraordinary knowledge and remarkable power. Together the three of us can stand and defend this city.”
“Will you stand with us, Sophie Newman?” Perenelle Flamel asked.
A window above their heads suddenly opened and Niten appeared. He did not speak a word, but the look on his face was enough.
“It is time to decide,” Perenelle said. “Time to choose a side.”
Sophie stood and watched the Sorceress help Tsagaglalal out of her seat and into the house. She wanted to run through the house and out into the street … and then what? Where would she go? She wanted to find Josh. But she had no idea how she was going to do that. And what would happen when the creatures invaded the city? Her aura and the Elemental Magics she’d learned would protect her … but who would protect everyone else?
It was indeed time to choose a side.
But which side?
In the distance a ship’s horn sounded, and it made Sophie think of Alcatraz. There were beasts on the island—creatures of nightmare. And Perenelle was right: if they were released on the city, there would be death and massive destruction … and no right-thinking person wanted that. No right-thinking person would deliberately bring that sort of chaos to a city.
But that was what Machiavelli, Dee and Dare—and Josh—were about to do.
Unconsciously, Sophie nodded, and suddenly the choice became very simple. She could work with the Sorceress and Tsagaglalal to prevent that from happening. Afterward, she would go in search of her brother.
The girl followed the two older women back into the house, through the kitchen and up the stairs.
Prometheus was waiting for them at the bedroom door. He stood back and allowed them to file into the room and gather around the bed holding Nicholas Flamel. The Alchemyst looked shrunken and frail, his skin the same color as the white sheets. Only the tiniest movement in his chest indicated that he was still breathing. “His time has come,” Prometheus whispered.
And Perenelle buried her face in her hands and wept.
lying saucers?” William Shakespeare asked. He pushed his glasses up onto his nose and grinned delightedly. “Flying saucers.” He nudged Palamedes with his elbow. “I told you they were real. I told you there were more things in—”
“Vimanas,” Scathach corrected. “The legendary flying ships of Danu Talis.” Tilting her head back and shielding her eyes, she watched as another six spinning silver craft swept out of the clear blue sky to hover in the air above them. Four of the craft descended to settle just above the ground, bobbing gently, like boats on the surface of a river. There was the faintest trembling in the air, and the grass beneath the vehicles developed a thin sheen of ice.
The glass domes on top of each vimana opened and the anpu appeared. Tall and muscular, dressed in black armor etched with silver and gold threads and armed with curved metal sickle-swords—the lethal kopesh—the jackal-headed warriors took Marethyu first. The hooded man had not regained consciousness and remained on the ground, continuing to twitch and shake as blue-white sparks crackled off his hook and arced into the green grass. Three of the anpu bundled him into the largest of the ships, which instantly hummed away.
Scathach turned to track its progress across the mazelike city, the silver disc reflected in the canals while simultaneously casting shadows across the streets below. She saw it fly over the huge pyramid at the heart of the city and then dip down to settle into the courtyard of a vast glittering silver and gold palace spread out behind it.
Scathach turned back to the gathered anpu. She’d encountered the anpu in a score of Shadowrealms, and though she had never fought them, she knew their fearsome reputation. They were deadly warriors … but the Shadow was deadlier. The Warrior readied herself to fight. Rubbing the palms of her hands against her legs, she twisted her head from side to side, working the stiffness from her neck. The anpu had made a cardinal mistake: they had not disarmed their enemy yet. Scathach still had her swords, knives and nunchaku. Lifetimes of combat had honed her fighting instincts: she would take the nearest anpu first, using her weapon to sweep its legs out from under it. She’d catch it as it fell and spin its body into those of its two companions, taking them down. The distraction would be enough for Joan and Palamedes to join in, at which point she’d toss swords to Saint-Germain and Shakespeare. It would all be over in a matter of minutes. Then they’d commandeer a vimana and …
Scathach caught Palamedes looking over at her. “It would be a mistake,” the knight murmured in the ancient language of his homeland. He turned away and shielded his eyes, looking at the city as he continued to speak to her. “There is none better than you, Warrior, but the anpu will not fall so easily. There will be casualties. Saint-Germain perhaps, Joan possibly, Will certainly. These are unacceptable losses. Besides, if the anpu’s masters had wanted us dead, they could have killed us from the sky.”
Scathach’s vampire teeth bit into her lip. Palamedes was correct. If even one of them was killed or injured, then the price of escape was too high. The Warrior’s head had moved almost imperceptibly, but she knew the Saracen Knight had seen her. “There will be another time,” she said.
“Always,” he agreed.
The anpu moved among them, collecting their weapons, and then divided them into groups. The bulky Palamedes was pushed toward one craft, while the smaller Saint-Germain and Shakespeare were urged toward a second. Scathach and Joan were escorted to a silver vimana by three heavily armed anpu. Scathach climbed aboard first, the craft dipping slightly with her weight. The interior of the craft was practically bare, empty except for four long narrow seats that were designed for canine anatomy. One of the anpu, shorter and broader than the others, with the faintest tracery of white scars across its snout, wordlessly pointed at the seats, then gestured at the two women. Scathach tried sitting but almost slid off the seat before she discovered that lying down was more comfortable. Joan followed her example, and the anpu fixed three metal bands around each of them, locking them down.
“How much trouble are we in?” Joan asked lightly in French.
The scarred anpu glared at her, its long canine mouth opening to reveal a maw of teeth. It pressed a claw to its lips to signal silence. Joan ignored it.
“On a scale of one to ten,” Scathach said, “we’re heading toward twelve.”
The scarred anpu leaned over the Warrior, huge black eyes locked on hers. Ropey saliva dripped off its teeth.
“Do they not talk?” Joan asked.
“Only when they charge into battle,” Scatty said. “And then their screams are bone-chilling. It often shocks their prey motionless.”
“What are they?”
“I believe they are kin in some way to the Torc clans. Another Elder experiment gone wrong.”
Finally, after realizing that the women were not going to obey, the scarred anpu swung away in disgust.
“Are they friend or foe?” the Frenchwoman asked.
“Hard to say,” Scathach admitted. “Even I don’t know who’s who anymore.” She was looking straight up through the opening of the roof at the blue sky. The vimana dipped as the two large anpu warriors climbed inside, and then a glass dome slid over the top, sealing off all outside sound. Scathach noticed that the dome was speckled and smeared with crushed flies.
“They knew who Marethyu was, though,” Joan said.
“It seems ev
eryone but us knows who he is. And it’s clear he is the puppet master behind all this. I really hate the idea that we have all been manipulated,” Scatty said grimly. “I promise you that the hook-handed man and I will meet again. And then I’ll ask him some hard questions.”
There was a sensation deep in their bones, a quivering vibration, and then it was as if they fell upward into the white wispy clouds. The craft dipped, the clouds spun and then darted by—the only indication that they were moving.
“And what if Marethyu chooses not to answer you?” Joan asked quietly. “You will note that our doggy friends were careful to render him unconscious from a distance. Obviously they fear him and his powers.”
“He’ll answer me,” Scathach said confidently. “I can be very persuasive.”
“I know you can.” Joan of Arc closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. She laughed quietly, ignoring the anpu’s glares. “I was just thinking: we’ve not had a real adventure in such a long time.” She sighed. “It’ll be just like the old days.”
Scathach grunted a laugh. She was sure that this would be like no other adventure. She and Joan had fought—either singly or together—to save kingdoms and even empires, to restore princes and prevent wars, but now the stakes were so much higher. If they believed Marethyu, then they were fighting for the future of not only the human race, but all the races in all the various and myriad Shadowrealms.
Joan squirmed on the seat, trying to get comfortable. “When Francis and I were in India last year, we saw pictures of these flying craft in ancient manuscripts and carved into temples. Francis told me that there were many stories of flying ships in the ancient Indian epics.”
“It’s true,” Scathach said. “And they also turn up in Babylonian and Egyptian legends. The handful of vimanas that were not on Danu Talis when it sank escaped the destruction. My parents had one,” she continued, “though it was nothing like this. By the time I was old enough to fly it, our machine was incredibly old and had been repaired and patched so often it no longer resembled its original state. It could barely get off the ground.” She shook her head, smiling at the memory. “My father once told me that he had watched the skies darken with fighting vimanas when the fleet went to fight the last of the Earthlords.…”
Scathach’s voice trailed away. She rarely spoke of her parents, and never voluntarily. She considered herself a loner, and she had been an outcast for such a long time. But she had family—a sister in the Earth Shadowrealm she never saw, and her parents and brother lived in a distant Shadowrealm that was modeled after the lost world of Danu Talis. Now she had gone back ten thousand years, and it was odd to think that—at this very moment—her parents were alive and living in the city directly below her. The thought struck her an almost physical blow that took her breath away.
And she suddenly found that she would like to see them. No, more than that. She needed to know what they had been like before she and her sister had been born. Scathach and Aoife’s parents had been made bitter and angry by the destruction of their world. They had grown up in a time where they were the undisputed masters. All of that had ended when the island sank. It had been immediately apparent even in the hours just following the destruction of Danu Talis that there would no longer be masters and servants, Great Elders and Elders. There would simply be survivors.
Growing up, Scathach and her sister had quickly realized that their parents resented them, since they had been born after the sinking of the island. The twin girls were the first of what would later be called the Next Generation. Later, much, much later, Aoife and Scathach had come to believe that their parents were ashamed of them. The girls had been brought up knowing that their elder brother, with his ashen skin and bright red hair, born on Danu Talis, was their parents’ favorite. Unlike the twins, he was an Elder.
Scathach felt her stomach lurch as the craft dipped, falling toward the city.
She wanted to see them. Even if only for a moment. She wanted to stand and watch her mother, father and brother as they had been before the island sank. Because in all the millennia she had known them, she had never once seen them laugh or smile, and when they spoke of others—even Elders—it was always with bitterness. That anger had manifested itself on their bodies, turning them hunched, twisted and ugly. Just for a single instant, Scathach wanted to see them when they were young and beautiful. She needed to know if they had ever been happy.
Abruptly it grew dark. Scathach and Joan watched jagged black mountains appear overhead and stretch tall as the sky shrank to an irregular circle of blue.
“We’re falling into something …,” Scathach began, and then she caught a hint of sulfur. She breathed deeply, trying to isolate the odor from the unwashed-dog scent of the anpu and the tart metallic tang of the vimana.
“I can smell it too,” Joan said. She laughed shakily. “Sulfur—reminds me of Dee.”
The flying disc came to a rocking halt and the scarred anpu appeared over Scathach. It waved a curved metal kopesh in front of her face as it carefully undid the straps holding her down with its left hand. Scathach’s green eyes narrowed as she looked at the weapon. It brought back bitter memories: a lifetime ago she had trained the boy-king Tutankhamen how to fight with two of the lethal sickle-swords. Years later, she’d discovered that he had been buried with the matched blades she’d given him.
“Scatty …,” Joan began, the tiniest thread of panic in her voice. She twisted her head to watch the Warrior come to her feet. “Where are we?”
“Prison.” Scatty turned and smiled. “And you do know that there’s not a prison in the world that can hold me,” she said in rapid French.
The top of the vimana popped up and retracted and the stench of sulfur was so strong it took their breath away. A blast of heat seared their skin and they were enveloped in a rumbling, grinding, roaring noise.
“I’ve got a feeling this is not your average prison,” Joan called as Scatty was urged up to the edge of the craft.
The anpu prodded her in the back and the Shadow turned and snarled, her mouth suddenly full of her vampire teeth. The anpu scrambled back. Just before she stepped off the craft, Scathach looked down, and when she turned back to her friend, tiny dots of reflected fire danced in her eyes. “You could say that—we’re in the mouth of an active volcano.”
ands close to their sides, the Nereids dived in and out of the water like a school of dolphins.
“What’s the problem?” Josh demanded. “I can use my aura and just …”
“… just reveal our location to everyone,” Dee snapped.
“No, I forbid it.”
“Well, if you have a genius plan, now’s the time to reveal it,” Josh said nervously. The Nereids were closer now, long green hair streaming behind them. Some looked like astonishingly beautiful young women, but others had fins and claws and were more fish or crab than human. Their mouths were all full of ragged needle-pointed teeth. They reminded him of piranhas.
“Drive through them,” Dee snapped. “Full speed.”
“That’s the plan?” Josh asked.
“Do you have a better one?” Dee’s English accent had become pronounced, and the small man’s hands were clenching and unclenching into fists.
Josh pushed the throttle; the engine roared and the heavy powerboat surged forward, nose tilting upward. He turned the wheel and the boat plowed straight into the school of Nereids … who simply parted smoothly around it, then reached out to try and catch hold of the boat. Claws scraped along the sides, and two actually grabbed the low metal railing and attempted to pull themselves aboard.
“More power!” Dee snarled. He grabbed a length of rope and used it to whip the sea creatures off the side of the craft. They fell back into the water with high-pitched, almost delicate squeals that sounded like children’s laughter. There was a thump as one of them suddenly leapt from the water and landed in the back of the boat, savage mouth snapping closed inches from Dee’s ankle. The doctor hopped back out of range, caught the Nereid by
the tail and flung it overboard again. He rubbed his hands on the legs of his trousers, leaving a scattering of shining scales on the dark cloth. “I hate Nereids,” he muttered.
“Doctor …,” Josh shouted. “Hang on!” A Nereid had leapt onto the prow directly in front of him and was wriggling toward him, two-inch-long razor-sharp fingernails digging into the fiberglass hull. Josh jerked the wheel to one side and the speedboat tilted to almost a forty-five-degree angle. The creature shrieked and started to slide off the boat, claws leaving long ragged gouges in the hull. It clung on for a moment, then splashed into the bay.
“Faster!” Dee shouted.
“It doesn’t go any faster,” Josh said. The boat was bouncing up and down, slamming into waves with enough force to jar him out of his seat. His jaw ached and his head throbbed, salt water stung his eyes and crusted on his lips, and although he didn’t normally suffer from seasickness, he knew he was going to throw up at any moment.
Suddenly the boat gave a lurch and slowed as if it had hit a sandbank. The engine screamed and howled, but the craft barely moved. Josh risked a glance over his shoulder. Dozens of Nereids were clustered around the boat, clinging to the sides, holding on to it, dragging it down into the sea. Waves slopped over the edges and water pooled in the bottom of the craft. And looking at the hungry eyes and needle teeth of the Nereids, Josh knew that neither he nor Dee would survive for more than a minute in the water.
Dee stood behind Josh, lashing out with the coil of rope, but the Nereids were too fast for him, and not one blow landed on the creatures. He struck out at one as she leapt out of the water. She balanced on her tail and bit at the rope as it lashed past her face, neatly severing it in two.
“Use your aura or we’re dead!” Josh screamed.
“If I use my aura, then we are dead!”
“And if you don’t use your aura, we’re going to be fish food in a few minutes.” The young man gritted his teeth in frustration. “We need to do something.…”