The Sorceress (9 page)

“How many do you own?” Josh asked, impressed.

“All of them for about a mile in every direction. A couple hundred houses.”

“A couple hundred! But that must have cost you a fortune.”

“I’ve lived on this earth since before the time of Arthur. I’ve made and lost several fortunes. My wealth is incalculable … the hardest part is hiding it from the taxman!”

Josh blinked in surprise; he never imagined an immortal having problems with the government. Then he realized that in these times of computers and other surveillance technology, it must be increasingly difficult to remain in hiding from the authorities. “Do people live here?” he asked. “I don’t see anyone ….”

“You won’t. The
people
”—he used the word carefully—“who live in my houses only come out at night.”

“Vampires,” Josh murmured.

“Not vampires,” Palamedes said quickly. “I have no time for the blood drinkers.”

“What then?”

“Larvae and lemurs … the undead and the not-dead.”

“And what are they?” Josh asked. He was guessing that larvae did not mean insect young and that lemurs were not the long-tailed primates he’d seen in zoos.

“They are …” Palamedes hesitated, then smiled. “Nocturnal spirits.”

“Are they friendly?”

“They are loyal.”

“So why are we waiting?” Josh asked. It was clear that Palamedes wasn’t going to tell him anything else. “What are you looking for?”

“Something out of the ordinary.”

“So what do we do?”

“We wait. We watch. Have a little patience.” He glanced back at Josh. “By now much of the immortal world knows that the Alchemyst has discovered the legendary twins.”

Josh was surprised by how direct the knight was being with him. “You didn’t seem too sure about that earlier. Do you think we are?” he asked quickly. He needed to find out what Palamedes knew about the twins and, more importantly, about the Alchemyst.

But Palamedes ignored the question. “It doesn’t matter if you are the legendary twins or not. What matters is that Flamel believes it. More importantly, Dee believes it also. Because of that, an extraordinary series of events has been put in motion: Bastet is abroad again, the Morrigan is back on this earth, the Disir brought the Nidhogg to Paris. Three Shadowrealms have been destroyed. That hasn’t happened in millennia.”

“Three? I thought it was just Hekate’s realm that was destroyed.” Scathach had spoken of other Shadowrealms, but Josh had no idea just how many existed.

Palamedes sighed, clearly tired of explanations. “Most of the Shadowrealms are linked or intersect with one another through a single gate. If anything happens to the Shadowrealm, the gate collapses. But the Yggdrasill, the World Tree, stretched up from Hekate’s realm into Asgard and down deep into Niflheim, the World of Darkness. All three winked out of existence when Dee destroyed the tree, and I know that the gates to another half dozen have collapsed, effectively sealing off that world and its inhabitants. Dee added a
few enemies to the long list of people—both human and inhuman—who hate and fear him already.”

“What will happen to him?” Josh asked. Despite all he’d been told about the Magician, he found he still had a niggling admiration for him … which was more than he had for the French Alchemyst at the moment.

“Nothing. Dee is protected by powerful masters. He is completely focused on bringing the Elders back to this earth by any means possible.”

Josh still didn’t get that. “But why?” he asked.

“Because he is that most dangerous of foes: he is absolutely confident that what he is doing is right.”

There was a flash of movement out of the corner of Josh’s eye and he turned to see a huge dun-colored dog loping down the center of the street, running on the white line. It looked like a cross between an Irish wolfhound and a Borzoi, a Russian wolfhound. It raced past the taxi, right up to the gates of the car yard, then padded back and forth, sniffing the ground.

“Flamel’s arrival has stirred up many ancient things,” Palamedes continued, watching the dog intently. “I saw creatures today I thought had left this earth entirely, monsters that gave birth to humani’s darkest legends. You should also know that Dee has posted a huge bounty on your heads. My spies tell me he wants you and your sister taken alive. Interestingly, he no longer wants Flamel alive; he will accept proof of his death. That is a major change. Elders, Next Generation, immortals and their humani servants are all converging on London. Just keeping the rabble from each other’s throats
is going to be a huge job; I’ve no idea how Dee is going to do it.” Palamedes suddenly turned the engine back on, inching the car forward. “We’re clear,” he announced.

“How do you know?”

Palamedes pointed to where the dog sat before the gates, facing them. He hit a button on the dashboard and the gates started to slide open.

“The dog,” Josh answered his own question. “Except it’s not really a dog, is it?”

Palamedes grinned. “That’s no dog.”

ll the hair on Areop-Enap’s enormous body suddenly stood on end, individual strands quivering. “Madame Perenelle,” it said. “I am going to suggest something that may seem shocking.”

Perenelle turned toward the Elder. Behind it, incalculable numbers of spiders scattered across the enormous wall of web the ancient creature had created. “It’s hard to shock me.”

“Do you trust me?” Areop-Enap asked.

“I do,” Perenelle said without hesitation. Once, she would have considered the Old Spider an outright enemy, but now she knew where its allegiances lay—with the humans. And it had proven itself in the battle with the Morrigan and her flocks. “What do you want to do?”

“Be still and do not panic,” Areop-Enap said with a toothy smile. “This is for your own good.” Abruptly, a thick blanket of web fell across the Sorceress, enveloping her from
head to foot. A wave of spiders flowed up off the ground over the woman, quickly sheathing her in silk, cinching the cloak tight to her body with sticky threads. “Trust me,” Areop-Enap said again.

Perenelle remained perfectly still, although her every instinct was to fight against the web, to tear it apart, to allow her aura to bloom and crisp it to blackened dust. She kept her mouth clamped tightly shut. She had fought monsters and seen creatures from the darkest edges of mankind’s legends, but she still found the thought of a spider crawling into her mouth absolutely repulsive.

The Old Spider’s head swiveled, and a long leg rose, hair gently blowing as it tested the air. “Prepare yourself,” Areop-Enap said. “They’re coming. So long as the web remains unbroken, you are protected.”

Perenelle was now completely sheathed in a thick cocoon of white silken spiderweb. She had worn the finest silk before, but this was different. It was like being tightly wrapped in a soft blanket, incredibly comfortable but slightly constricting. The web was thinner around her mouth and eyes, so that she could breathe and see, but it was like looking through a gauze curtain. She felt a jolt, and suddenly she was hoisted up into the air and tucked into a corner. A wave of black spiders immediately swept over her, securing the cocoon tightly to the walls and the metal girders that buttressed the house. From her new vantage point, she could look down over the room to where Areop-Enap squatted in the middle of the floor. Perenelle realized that the dark carpet beneath the Elder was a mass of thousands—maybe even millions—of
spiders. The floor rippled and pulsed under Areop-Enap, which was facing north, toward Angel Island, now lost in early-morning mist. Shifting in the cocoon, Perenelle strained to look in the same direction. From her perch she could see out over the water. There were storm clouds massing on the horizon, thick and blue-black; she expected to see them spike and flash with lightning. But through the silk covering her face, she saw that this cloud was twisting, turning in on itself … and it was racing closer. In less than a dozen heartbeats, it had flowed over the north end of Alcatraz.

And then it started to rain.

There was no roof on the ruined Warden’s House. Thick black drops fell out of the cloud and spattered against Perenelle’s web cocoon … and stuck.

And the Sorceress abruptly realized that these were not raindrops—they were flies.

Huge bluebottles and houseflies, squat fruit flies, narrow horseflies, soldier flies and robber flies rained down over the island, hitting and sticking to her web cocoon.

Before Perenelle even had a chance to call out in disgust, individual spiders were darting across the web and had commenced wrapping the struggling flies in silk.

Perenelle looked up. The huge cloud was almost upon them. But now she could see that it was not a cloud at all. The initial shower of insects was only a taste of what was to come. The roiling mass was flies, millions of them, crane flies and black flies, mosquitoes and tiny midges, squat botflies and red-eyed pomace flies.

The insects exploded against Alcatraz in a dark buzzing
sheet. The first wave were caught by the white silken cobwebs, which quickly turned dark and heavy with the weight of the struggling insects. Perenelle watched the webs around her quickly rip and tear as more and more flies crashed against them. Hordes of spiders rolled over the trapped flies and were quickly locked in an ancient battle. The silk-sheathed walls heaved with wriggling spiders and desperately struggling flies, until it looked as if the sides of the building were alive, pulsing and throbbing.

The flies whirled around Areop-Enap, and the few that found Perenelle were trapped by the protective web around her. Faintly, she could hear their buzzing as they attempted to escape.

More and more waves of flies washed in over the island, and the spiders—Perenelle hadn’t realized there were so many—swarmed over them. An incalculable number of flies had attached themselves to Areop-Enap, completely coating the Old Spider, until it resembled a huge buzzing ball. The Elder’s massive leg lashed out of the heaving mass, scattering a wave of dead husks, but countless more took their places. The Elder leapt up and then crashed to the ground, crushing thousands more beneath its huge body.

And still more came in an endless dark surge.

Then, suddenly, Perenelle noticed that the walls and floor had stopped moving and rippling. Focusing hard through the gauzy curtain in front of her eyes, she saw something that shocked her: the spiders were dying. She watched a black-and-white zebra spider sink two iridescent blue fangs into an enormous crane fly that was stuck to its sticky web. The fly
thrashed about, desperate to escape, but then, abruptly, the spider shuddered and stiffened. Both creatures died at the same time. And it was happening again and again: the moment the spiders bit into the flies, they died. It took a lot to frighten the Sorceress, but suddenly, she began to feel the first twinges of disquiet.

Whoever or
whatever
had sent the flies had poisoned them.

And if a single fly could kill a spider, then what could the huge mass do to Areop-Enap?

Perenelle had to do something. All around her, millions of spiders were dying, poisoned by the flies. Areop-Enap had disappeared beneath the dark mass. It was still heaving with the Old Spider’s struggling and thrashing about, but as the Sorceress watched, she realized that the struggles were becoming weaker. Areop-Enap was ancient and primal but not completely invulnerable. Nothing—Elder, Next Generation, immortal or human—was completely indestructible. Not even Areop-Enap. Perenelle herself had once brought an ancient temple down on the spider’s head and it had shrugged off the attack—yet could it survive billions of poisonous flies?

But Perenelle was caught. Areop-Enap had tucked her high on the wall, out of harm’s way. If she were to cut through the web cocoon, she would fall at least twenty feet to the floor below. The impact probably wouldn’t kill her, but it might snap an ankle or break a leg.

And how was she going to defeat a plague of flies?

Looking out over the island, she saw yet another curling
thread of insects coming in on the breeze. Once they reached Alcatraz, it would all be over. The wind carried the faintest hum, like the sound of a distant chain saw.