… and Sophie … or a girl who looked so much like her that she might have been her identical twin …
Suddenly Sophie was five years old, standing in this very house, hand in hand with her brother, being introduced to an old woman she had never seen before.
“And this is your aunt Agnes,” her mother was saying. “She will watch over you when we’re not here.…”
Something cold slithered at the corner of Sophie’s mind, not a memory but a thought, something sour and bitter. If Aunt Agnes wasn’t her real aunt, then what about their other aunt, the mysterious Aunt Christine, who lived on Montauk Point and whom they visited every Christmas? Christine was not related to them either. Who was she? Was she like Agnes, and were the two women related? Sophie desperately wanted to talk to her mother and father; she needed to ask them how they knew Agnes and Christine and how long they had known the two women. She found herself wondering how the two old women had insinuated themselves into the Newmans’ lives. She’d heard her father talk about Aunt Agnes, and her mother had spent all her childhood summers with Aunt Christine. The implications were terrifying. How long had the Newman family been under observation? And why? Was it because she and Josh were twins? But why then would Agnes and Christine have been watching her mother and father? Unless they had known, all those years ago, that Richard and Sara would meet, fall in love, marry and give birth to a pair of gold and silver twins. Had they known it would happen naturally, or had they somehow manipulated it to make it happen? A shudder ran through Sophie: even the idea was terrifying.
She needed to talk to Josh about this; she wished he were here.
… And suddenly there was Josh.…
She felt the connection with her twin and it was as if she had been made physically whole again. For the past fifteen years, she didn’t think they’d ever been apart for more than a couple of days at a time, and even then they’d always kept in touch via phone, text and email. Earlier, when Josh had turned his back on her and left with Dee and Dare, she’d felt as if she’d been bodily wounded, as if part of her was missing. But at least she knew now that he was alive.
He was … he was …
Sophie focused, concentrating on her brother, desperately trying to remember everything she had been taught so far about using her Awakened senses. She just needed to know that he was safe and unharmed. And if she could somehow find out where he was right now, then she could go and get him. She was sure that if it had been just herself and Josh earlier—with no one else around to interfere—then she would have been able to talk sense to him.
She saw him clearly in her head. Shaggy blond hair now turning greasy and in need of a wash, deep black circles under his blue eyes, streaks of black soot across his face …
Suddenly she smelled salt and iodine, mingled with the odors of a zoo, musky and meaty, and then the images started to form. One was clearer than the others: the distinctive outline of an island topped by a blocky white building with a lighthouse at one end.
Josh was on Alcatraz.
He was walking down a prison corridor. There were cells on both sides, and each one held a different creature. He couldn’t name the creatures, but the Witch of Endor could identify all of them, and Sophie found that she knew them too—here were Celtic cluricauns and Japanese oni, English boggarts and Scandinavian trolls, Norwegian huldu alongside a Greek minotaur, and a Native American Windigo in a cell next to an Indian vetala. She could feel her brother’s breath coming in short quick gasps, and she felt his stomach lurch as he passed a cell holding a nue, a Japanese monkey-headed, snake-tailed doglike creature.
He seemed to be unharmed, and no one was paying him any particular attention. Directly in front of him, the man who had chased them in Paris—Niccolò Machiavelli—was talking to a young-looking man in scuffed jeans and beat-up cowboy boots. Josh turned his head and Sophie saw John Dee and Virginia Dare whispering urgently together. They both stopped and simultaneously looked straight at Josh, at Sophie.
Instantly she broke the connection with her brother and forced herself back into the present, concentrating on feeling the heat surge through her body. The room was freezing. She forced herself to be aware of the two women’s hands in hers and fully conscious of the flow of aura through her fingertips into Perenelle’s hand.
Nicholas Flamel twitched.
Sophie almost dropped Perenelle’s and Tsagaglalal’s hands in shock. She looked down at the Alchemyst. Strands of her silver aura and Tsagaglalal’s white aura were curling around their outstretched arms into Perenelle’s hands. Silver sparks and cloudy white filaments crackled from the Sorceress’s body and connected with the scarab beetle, which was now pulsing gently, throbbing, pale green turning dark, then pale again. Sophie was abruptly aware of the beating of her own heart … and then realized that the scarab was pulsing in time to it. The Alchemyst’s skin had taken on a pink tinge, and some of the deep lines around his eyes and forehead had faded. He looked younger.
He twitched again, fingers tightening, loosening, then tightening once more over the carved beetle.
“A little more,” Perenelle whispered, voice thick with exhaustion.
“I cannot give you much more,” Tsagaglalal mumbled. Blue-white sparks crawled through her hair.
“Then it comes down to you, Sophie,” Perenelle said urgently. “I need a little more of your aura.”
The girl shook her head. “I can’t.” She was swaying with exhaustion and she felt as if she were burning up with fever. Her head was pounding, her throat felt raw and her stomach was churning as if she’d just eaten a raw chili pepper. She remembered Scatty’s warning about the dangers of using too much of one’s aura: if a person used all their natural auric energy, the aura started to feed on that person’s flesh for fuel. There was a very real danger that they could then spontaneously burst into flames.
“You must!”
“No!”
Sophie attempted to pull her hand free, but the immortal held it in a viselike grip. “Yes!” Perenelle said savagely, and for a single heartbeat her aura shivered from white to gray, then black, before burning smoke-white again.
Sophie tugged at her fingers but couldn’t free them from the woman’s grasp. “Let me go!”
“I need a little more. Nicholas needs a little more.”
The Sorceress’s aura was darkening, thickening, and suddenly the chill air was touched with the odors of green tea and anise. Sophie recognized the scents of Niten and Prometheus a heartbeat before colored strands of their auras began to seep up through the floor, royal blue wrapped around a thick column of bright bloodred. Their auras shifted across the floor before curling up around the Sorceress, darkening her aura briefly to black again.
“Enough, Sorceress,” Tsagaglalal croaked. “Enough. You have done all you can.”
The door to the room slammed open and Prometheus and Niten burst in. The Elder’s and the Japanese immortal’s auras had flared into armor around their bodies, but Prometheus’s ornate red metal armor was paling, turning crystalline and transparent as all the color was leached from it, and Niten’s wood and lacquer samurai armor was ragged and frayed.
“Sorceress,” Prometheus roared, “what are you doing?”
“Enough,” Niten said icily. “You will destroy us all.”
“Never enough,” Perenelle snarled. Her aura swirled with tendrils and streaks from all the auras in the room. The colors ran together, becoming cloudy, turning dark, then muddy, before finally changing to a pulsing black aura. A foul musty stink gathered in the air. When the Sorceress turned her head to look at Prometheus and Niten, her green eyes were solid black marble. “I need more … Nicholas needs more.”
Sophie wrenched her hand free of the Sorceress’s grasp. The sudden release sent her spinning across the room, into Niten’s arms, where her silver aura turned his samurai armor solid and metallic.
“No!” Perenelle screamed, reaching for Sophie. “We’re not done!” A shivering thread of white ran through her bl
ack aura, turning it gray, leaching the darkness from it.
Prometheus stepped in front of Sophie and Niten. “You are done, Sorceress.” He looked at the old woman and nodded. Tsagaglalal dropped Perenelle’s hand and stepped back.
“But Nicholas …,” Perenelle whispered. Her aura flicked white again, and her eyes slowly turned green.
“You have done all that you can do for him,” the Elder said.
Abruptly Nicholas Flamel sighed, a long hissing breath that curled white smoke from his blue lips into the air. His colorless eyes flicked open and he sat bolt upright and looked around. “Have I missed anything exciting?”
ive huge anpu escorted the hook-handed man through the gold and marble halls of the Palace of the Sun. The normally bustling corridors had been emptied, and armed anpu, some of them holding smaller four-legged anpu-like dogs, guarded every door. Scented candles and aromatic reeds burned in tall holders set at regular intervals along the brightly lit hallway, but their sweet smells were completely overwhelmed by the heavy musky stink of the anpu.
Marethyu was wrapped in unbreakable stone chains, one around each wrist, another encircling his waist and two more around his ankles. The guards each held one chain, keeping him at the center of a circle. He had been stripped of his enveloping cloak, which one of the guards now carried draped over his arm, leaving him wearing a long-sleeved shirt of linked chain mail, which covered him from neck to waist, over a pair of dirty and frayed jeans. Metal caps glinted on the toes of his scuffed and battered work boots. Overlong greasy blond hair fell to his shoulders, and badly cut bangs tumbled over his startlingly blue eyes. A three-day growth of gray-white stubble covered his cheeks and chin. His head was darting to and fro as they moved deeper into the palace, lips moving as he translated glyphs on the ancient wall panels or deciphered the crude Ogham writing decorating the plinths below glass and metal statues that were set at regular intervals along the hall.
The anpu guards pulled him halfway to a tall narrow double door. They made no move to knock or enter.
The hook-handed man leaned forward against his chains to examine the door. Two huge slabs of metal, gold and silver, bracketed the opening, polished to a mirror sheen. Above, a solid gold lintel as tall as a man was carved with thousands of square glyphs, each containing either a human, animal or beast face. Several of the glyphs were empty, or half completed. But in the center of the lintel was one square, larger than the others, which showed a detailed carving of a half-moon … or a hook.
Marethyu jerked his left hand, almost pulling the anpu holding that chain off its feet as he raised his arm to compare his hook with the carving. They were almost identical. Squinting, he painstakingly translated the glyphs surrounding the image of the hook.
“Curious, is it not?” A powerful voice echoed through the hallway.
The double doors cracked open and scented white smoke curled out and writhed across the floor. The smoke was rich with the cloying scent of frankincense. The speaker remained hidden until the doors opened fully and harsh white light blazed from within. Framed in the opening stood an unnaturally tall figure, white light running off its long, hooded metal robe like liquid. “I found this doorway in the ruins of an Earthlord city in the middle of a wretched swampland far to the south of here. The swamp had claimed most of the city; the doorway was pristine and untouched. It is ten thousand—perhaps ten times ten thousand—years old.”
Marethyu jerked again, and the anpu holding the chain struggled to remain on its feet. He raised his arm and the flat half-moon of metal set into his wrist turned silver, then gold with the reflected light. “It is curious,” he agreed, “and yet it does not surprise me. Not much surprises me anymore.” He raised his chin, nodded at the line of square glyphs. “Nice to see that they remembered me in their histories.”
“The Earthlords knew about you.”
“We had a brief encounter.”
“More than brief, surely? They carved your symbol up there with their list of kings and rulers.” The tall figure in the metal robe stepped forward, pushing back his hood, revealing his elongated eyes and sharp features. “I am Aten of Danu Talis.”
“I know who you are. And I am … Marethyu.”
“I’ve been expecting you,” Aten said.
“Did Abraham tell you I was coming?”
“No,” Aten answered. “I’ve known about you for a long time … a very long time.” He looked at the anpu guards and then at the stone chains around Marethyu. “Are these bonds necessary?” he asked.
“Your brother seemed to think so,” Marethyu said with a smile that revealed small white teeth. “In fact, he was most insistent.”
Aten’s long teeth pressed against his lower lips. “I assume they are useless?”
“Completely.” The air crackled and soured and a shadow flickered around the one-handed man. The stone bonds cracked and then crumbled to dust around him. The shock sent the anpu guards staggering back, scrabbling to draw their kopesh. Marethyu rubbed his left wrist with his right hand.
Aten looked at the jackal-headed guards. “Leave us,” he commanded, and then turned and stepped back into the room.
Confused, the anpu looked at one another and then at Marethyu, who grinned and waved them away. “Off you go now, like good doggies.” He turned and followed the Elder into the room, then turned to close the doors behind them. Although they were as thick as his body, they fell into place silently and without any effort. “Your brother will not be happy,” Marethyu said.
“Anubis is rarely happy these days,” Aten said. “He tells me I should kill you.”
“Even trying would be a mistake,” Marethyu said, smiling as he turned to face the Lord of Danu Talis. “You have no idea how many have tried.” Folding his arms across his chest, he looked around. He was standing in an enormous circular room that was lit by a tiny artificial sun that floated just below the high ceiling. He nodded in approval. “I love Archon technology. How long has it burned?”
Aten waved a long-fingered hand. “This is a replacement. It has lit this room for a thousand years and more. However, it is the last of its type. When it burns out, we will have to revert to something a little more primitive.”
The round room was empty of all furniture, the solid gold walls and silver ceiling bare of decoration or writing. However, a circular mazelike pattern picked out in gold and silver tiles took up the entire floor: the map of Danu Talis. Silver tiles had been used to represent the water, and the shimmering light gave the impression that it was moving.
Aten took up a position at the center of the maze and then turned back to Marethyu. His huge yellow eyes glowed golden with reflected light. “I found this floor in an isolated Ancient ruin in the middle of the Great Desert. I believe it was once the ceiling of a cathedral.” His fingers traced the design. “I modeled this city in its image. I rather liked the idea that an Ancient pattern should become the map of a modern city.”
“I’ve seen the design before,” Marethyu said, walking around the edge of the circle. “It turns up across the humani world and into the Shadowrealms and beyond.” He unfolded his arms and clasped them behind his back, his head tilted to one side as he admired the pattern. “It is complete.”
“Every piece.”
“Our ancestors were astonishing,” he said, then looked at the Elder. “Don’t you agree?”
“You do not fear me?” Aten asked, not answering the question.
“I have no reason to fear you.” Marethyu shook his head. “But you fear me, don’t you,” he said quietly.
“I fear what you represent.”
“And what is that?”
“The death of my world.”
Marethyu shook his head. “On the contrary. I am here to ensure that your world—this extraordinary and amazing world that you created—lives on.”
Aten strode across the maze. He towered over the hook-handed man, but Marethyu remained still, regarding him impassively.
The Elder’s yellow eyes n
arrowed to horizontal slits. “Do you mock me?”
“No,” Marethyu said seriously. He held up his left arm and light dripped off the curved hook. Aten took a step back. “You have no idea what it has cost me to come here,” the one-handed man continued. “I have endured millennia of suffering and have traveled through countless strands of time to be here in this place, at this particular time. I sacrificed everything—every single thing I loved—to stand before you.”
“Why?”
“Because between us, we can decide the fate of Danu Talis and the untold generations that will come after it.” Marethyu’s dark aura flickered, briefly taking on the reflected gold in the room. He gestured, and suddenly the huge map beneath the Elder’s feet dissolved, then shattered into ragged pieces. The silver flowed out, across and then over the gold tiles. “If Danu Talis does not fall, then the world to come will never exist.…” The silver tiles tarnished to a dull brown, then cracked and split apart. Marethyu gestured again; a chill breeze blew across the floor and the pieces of the ancient map scattered, leaving nothing but bare stone beneath. “Your empire, the vast De Danann empire, will destroy not only itself, but this entire planet within a single generation.”
“I was rather fond of that floor,” Aten murmured.
“Trust me, Elder, you are doomed to witness far worse destruction than that!”
Aten pushed his hands into his sleeves and turned away. The Elder strode across the bare floor, the edges of his metal robe striking sparks off the stones. He stepped out onto a flower-and-vine-draped balcony that overlooked the city of Danu Talis. Aten breathed deeply, drawing in the sweet scents of life and growth, dispelling the bitter, slightly sour taste of Marethyu’s aura.
The light was beginning to dip in the west, the buildings burning gold, the canals winking silver. In the lower levels of some of the taller buildings, lights were burning. From far below came the sound of distant laughter and the faintest hint of music.
Marethyu appeared alongside Aten. Leaning his forearms on the balcony, he looked across the island-city.