The Sorceress (35 page)

“You’ve held Clarent,” Dee heaved. “You’ve had a taste of its powers. You know what it can do. Think of it: kill the Archon and you will experience millennia, hundreds of millennia, of knowledge. You will know the history of the world from the very beginning. And not just this world either. A myriad of worlds.”

Suddenly, a huge explosion of vanilla-scented heat washed over them and drove them both to their knees. Dee was facing the Archon and crashed backward, hands over his face, blinded by the light. Josh rolled over, saw the Horned God engulfed in green-gold flames and then saw his sister slump unconscious to the ground. Sick with fear, he rolled over onto his hands and knees—and discovered Excalibur lying in the mud by his right hand. His fingers instantly wrapped around the hilt and a bolt of agony shot up through his left hand where he held Clarent. He attempted to drop the Coward’s Blade, but he couldn’t—it was stuck to his palm, sealed
in his clenched fist. Bright red blood seeped between his fingers. He jerked away from Excalibur, and the searing pain in his left hand faded. Scrambling to his feet, he caught the edge of Excalibur’s hilt with Clarent’s blade, flicked the sword away, then ran around the car to his sister.

Dee scrambled to his knees, blinking glowing afterimages from his eyes. He saw Josh send Excalibur spinning through the air, watched it plop onto the gooey remnants of the steaming moat. It floated on the surface of the thick black oil for a single heartbeat; then the oil bubbled furiously and the blade sank.

Josh dropped to his knees, terrified. He pulled Sophie into his arms and then lifted her onto the backseat just as the engine coughed to life. A sick-looking Nicholas Flamel fell into the car, his hands streaming threads of the green energy he had used to recharge the car.

John Dee had to fling himself out of the way as the car, all its doors still flapping open, howled down the narrow alley, crushing arrows and spears under its wheels. The Magician desperately tried to focus his thoughts and gather enough energy to stop the cab, but he was physically and mentally drained. Pushing himself to his feet, he watched as the Archon crashed to the ground and rolled over and over in the sticky mud, extinguishing the flames that danced and flickered in the furs wrapping its body. Less than a handful of the Wild Hunt had survived the attack, and two of those disappeared into dust as Cernunnos accidentally crushed them.

Metal screaming, sparks fountaining from its fenders and open doors, the black cab scraped through the torn gate and
fishtailed onto the damp street as it roared off into the night. Brake lights flared red; then the car turned a corner and vanished.

Standing concealed in the shadows, Bastet pulled a slender cell phone from her pocket and hit a speed dial. Her call was answered on the first ring. “Dee failed,” she said shortly, and ended the call.

ophie woke up as the taxi rumbled over a speed bump. She was completely disoriented, and it took a long moment for what she first thought were fragments of dreams, and then realized were memories, to fade. She could still hear Cernunnos screaming in her head and, for a moment, actually felt sorry for the creature. Rising slowly and stiffly to a sitting position, she looked around. Josh lay slumped in the seat beside her, breathing heavily, face blackened and swollen where he’d been struck with sparks. The Alchemyst sat in shadow up against the window, staring out into the night. Hearing her move, he turned his head, his weary eyes catching reflections from the city lights.

“I was hoping you would sleep a little longer,” he said quietly.

“Where are we?” she asked thickly. Her mouth and lips
were dry, and she imagined she could feel the gritty dust of the Wild Hunt on her tongue.

Flamel handed her a bottle of water. “We’re on Millbank.” He gently tapped the window with his finger and she looked out. “We’ve just driven past the Houses of Parliament.”

Through the rear window, Sophie caught a glimpse of the spectacularly lit English parliament building. The lighting gave it a warm, almost otherworldly appearance.

“How are you feeling?” Nicholas asked.

“Exhausted,” she admitted.

“I’m not surprised after what you’ve just done. You do know that what you did today is unique in human history: you defeated an Archon.”

She swallowed more water. “Did I kill it?”

“No,” Flamel said, and Sophie found she was secretly relieved. “Though I daresay you could if you were fully trained ….” The Alchemyst paused for a moment, then added, “Once you’re trained, I don’t think there is anything you—or your brother—could not do.”

“Nicholas,” Sophie said, suddenly sad, “I don’t want to be trained. I just want to go home. I’m sick of all this, the running and fighting. I’m sick of feeling ill, of the constant headaches, the pains in my eyes and ears, the knot in my stomach.” She realized she was on the verge of tears, and rubbed her face with her hands. She wasn’t going to cry now. “When can we go home?”

There was a long silence, and when Flamel finally answered,
his accent had thickened, his French ancestry clearly audible. “I am hoping I can take you back to America soon—perhaps even tomorrow. But you cannot go back home. Not just yet.”

“Then when? We can’t run and hide forever. Our parents are already asking questions. What do we tell them?” She held out her hand and watched a smooth mirrorlike silver skin form over her soft flesh. “How do we tell them about this?”

“You don’t,” Nicholas said simply. “But maybe you won’t have to. Things are moving quickly, Sophie.” His accent made her name sound exotic. “Faster than I imagined or anticipated. Everything is coming to a head. The Dark Elders seem to have abandoned all caution in their desperation to capture you and the pages from the Codex. Look at what they have done: they have loosed Nidhogg, the Wild Hunt and even the Archon Cernunnos on the world. These are creatures and beings that have not walked this earth for centuries. For ages they wanted Perenelle and me captured alive for our knowledge of the Codex and the twins; now they want us dead. They do not need us anymore, because they have most of the Book and they know you and your brother are the twins of the prophecy.” Nicholas sighed, an exhausted sound. “I once thought we had a month at the most—a month before the immortality spell failed and Perenelle and I dissolved into withered old age. I no longer think that. In little over two weeks it will be Litha: midsummer. It is an incredibly significant day; a day when the Shadowrealms draw close to this world. I believe it will all be over then, one way or the other.”

“What do you mean, all over?” Sophie asked, chilled.

“Everything will have changed.”

“Everything has already changed,” she snapped, fear making her angry. Josh stirred in his sleep but didn’t waken. “This is all normal for you. You live in a world of monsters and creatures and fairy tales. But Josh and I don’t. Or didn’t,” she amended. “Not until you and your wife chose us ….”

“Oh, Sophie,” Nicholas said very softly. “This has nothing to do with Perenelle and me.” He laughed quietly to himself. “You and your brother were chosen a long time ago.” He leaned forward, eyes bright in the darkness. “You are silver and gold, the moon and the sun. You carry within you the genes of the original twins who fought on Danu Talis ten millennia ago. Sophie, you and your brother are the descendants of gods.”

s there someone you could call upon for help?
” Juan Manuel de Ayala asked.

“I’m not sure there is.” Perenelle was leaning on a wooden rail almost directly over the official sign that welcomed visitors to the island.

Over the sign the words
Indians Welcome
had been daubed in red paint and beneath it, in larger fading red letters, were the words
Indian Land.
She knew they had been
painted there in 1969 when the American Indian Movement had occupied the island.

The Sorceress had spent the remainder of the afternoon systematically going over the island, looking for some way to escape. There were no boats, though there was plenty of wood and lumber, and she briefly considered making a raft, using towels and blankets from the cell exhibits to lash the wood together. In 1962, three prisoners had supposedly escaped by building their own raft. But Perenelle knew that nothing was going to get past Nereus and his savage daughters. From her second-floor position on the dock over the bookshop, Perenelle could see the heads of the Nereids bobbing in the water directly in front of her, long hair floating behind them like seaweed. From a distance they might have looked like seals, but these creatures were unmoving, and fixed her with cold unblinking eyes. Occasionally, she caught a glimpse of jagged teeth as they chewed still-wriggling fish. No doubt they had heard what she’d done to their father.

She had found clothes on her tour of the island and was now dressed in a set of coarse prison trousers and shirt, both of which were at least two sizes too large for her and which scratched everywhere. The clothes had been part of the display that had once greeted the many visitors to the island. But since Dee’s company had taken over, there had been no visitors to Alcatraz for months. Perenelle discovered that many of the cells were decorated with artifacts and items that would once have belonged to the prisoners. Going through the cells, she had found a heavy black coat hanging on a peg and
taken that. Although it smelled musty and felt slightly damp, it was still a lot warmer than the light silk dress she’d been wearing, and meant that she would not have to expend her energy keeping warm. She had found no food but had discovered a dusty metal cup in the kitchen, and once she’d cleaned it out, there were plenty of rainwater pools scattered around the island. The water tasted slightly of salt, but not enough to make her feel ill.

As the afternoon had worn on, she’d finally ended up on the dock, where all the visitors—prisoners and tourists—to Alcatraz would have started and finished their journeys. She’d discovered a flight of stairs to the left of the bookshop that led up to the second floor, and had climbed up. Now, leaning on the rail, she looked out over the waves. The city was tantalizingly close, just over a mile and a half away. Perenelle had grown up on the cold northwestern coast of France, in Brittany. She was a strong swimmer and loved the water, but swimming the treacherous and chilly waters of the bay was out of the question—even if Nereus and his daughters had not been waiting. She realized she really should have learned how to fly when they were in India in the days of the Mughal Empire.