The Warlock (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #5) (5 page)

Sophie nodded. She would find Josh, and she would rescue him, no matter what. “Yes, yes I will. What do I have to do?” she asked, unaware that she had replied in perfect Japanese.

“Follow me,” Niten said, and eased through the rapidly dispersing crowd, hurrying down Telegraph Hill Boulevard toward Lombard Street.

Sophie ran after him, staying as close behind as she could. She didn’t want to lose him in the crowd. Niten moved effortlessly around the tourists and onlookers, not even touching them. “Where are we going?” She had to shout to be heard above the noise of the converging fire trucks and police sirens.

“To see Tsagaglalal.”

“Tsagaglalal,” the girl repeated, the name triggering the Witch of Endor’s memories. “She Who Watches.”

eserve your anger for those who deserve it,” Perenelle Flamel snapped. “This is not my husband’s fault.”

“He is the catalyst,” Prometheus said.

“That has always been his role.” Perenelle was sitting in the backseat of the car, Nicholas stretched out beside her. She was stroking her husband’s forehead. The Alchemyst was unconscious, his skin ashen, cheeks speckled with broken veins and purple threads. The bags beneath his eyes were bruised purple, and each time her hand ventured over his skull, strands of his short hair came away beneath her fingers. Nicholas was unmoving, his breathing so shallow it was barely perceptible. The only way the Sorceress could tell that he was still alive was by pressing her fingertips lightly against his throat to feel the weak pulse.

Nicholas was dying and she felt …

She
felt …

Perenelle shook her head; she wasn’t sure how she felt. She had met and fallen in love with this man in the middle of the fourteenth century, in Paris. They had married on the eighteenth of August in 1350, and she could probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of months they’d been apart over the following centuries. She was ten years older than Nicholas and he was not her first husband, though they had been married for a century before she’d told him she was a widow.

She’d loved him from the moment she’d met him and she loved him still, so surely she should feel more … surely she should be more upset … angry … saddened that he was now dying?

But she didn’t.

She felt …
relieved
.

Unconsciously, she nodded. She was relieved that it was coming to an end.

The bookseller who had become an alchemist—almost by accident—had taught her wonders and shown her marvels. They had traveled all across this world and into the adjacent Shadowrealms. Together they had fought monsters and creatures that should not have existed outside of nightmares. And although they had made many friends—humani and immortal, some Elders and even a few Next Generation—bitter experience had taught them that they could only depend on one another. They could only fully trust one another. Perenelle’s fingers gently traced the lines of her husband’s cheekbones and the shape of his jaw. If he was to die now, he would die in her arms, and it was some consolation that she would not
survive very much longer, because she did not think that after more than six hundred years living with him, she could bear to live without him. But he couldn’t die yet—she would not allow it; she would do everything she could to keep him alive.

“I apologize,” Prometheus said suddenly.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Perenelle said. “Scathach was correct: death and destruction have followed us through the centuries. People have died because of us—died saving us, protecting us, died because they knew us.” Her face suddenly creased in pain. Over the years she had created a shell around herself to keep her from feeling all the death and suffering, but there were times—like now—when the shell cracked and she felt responsible for every single loss.

“But you saved many, Perenelle, so very many.”

“I know that,” the Sorceress agreed, her eyes on Nicholas’s face. “We kept the Dark Elders at bay, we frustrated Dee and Machiavelli and the others like them for centuries.” She twisted in the seat to watch the roiling nothingness race ever closer to the car. “And we are not done yet. Prometheus, you cannot allow us to die here.”

“I’m driving as fast as I can.” A light sheen of blood-colored sweat covered the Elder’s face. “If I can only hold the world together for just a few moments longer …” Outside, the salty-smelling clouds thickened, wrapping the car in a damp cocoon, and Prometheus turned on the wipers, clearing the windshield. “We’re nearly there,” he said, and then, as they left the Shadowrealm and returned to Point Reyes, the fog lifted and the world exploded into colors so bright they were almost painful to look upon. The Elder
slammed on the brakes and the heavy Wagoneer skidded to a halt on the dirt road. He turned off the engine and climbed out of the car. Standing with one arm on the roof, he turned to look back at the fog banks, watching as they swirled and shifted, paling to gossamer threads.

He had spent an eternity creating this world, shaping it. It was part of him. But now his own Shadowrealm was collapsing into nothing, and his aura was so depleted, his memories stripped and ravaged by the crystal skull, that he knew he would never be able to re-create it. There was a moment when the fog twisted away, giving him a last image of his beautiful and serene Shadowrealm.…

It was gone.

Prometheus climbed back into the car and swiveled around to look at Perenelle and Nicholas. “So the end is upon us? Abraham spoke of this time.”

“Soon,” Perenelle said, “but not yet. There is one thing more we must do.”

“You have always known it would end this way,” Prometheus said.

“Always,” she said confidently.

The Elder sighed. “You have the Sight.”

“Yes,” Perenelle agreed, “but more than that. Some of this I was told about.” She looked at Prometheus, her green eyes glowing in the shadows. “My poor Nicholas. He never really had a chance: his destiny was shaped the moment the one-handed man sold him the Codex. The book changed the course of his life—of both our lives—and together we changed the course of human history. When I was still a child, and
before Nicholas was even born, the same man who would eventually sell him the book let me see my future and the future of the world. Not an absolute future, but a possible future, one of many possibilities. And over the years, I’ve watched many of those possibilities come true. The one-handed man told me what must happen—what I had to do, what my future husband would have to do—if the human race was to survive. He has been the puppeteer down through the millennia, nudging, shifting, moving us—all of us—toward this point. Even you, Prometheus.”

The Elder shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Even you. Who do you think encouraged your friend Saint-Germain to steal fire from you; who do you think taught him its secrets?”

The Elder opened his mouth to speak but closed it again without saying a word.

“The hook-handed man told me he was there at the beginning and said that he would be there at the end.” Perenelle leaned forward. “You were there, Prometheus; you were on Danu Talis for the Final Battle. He claimed he was there—you must have seen him.”

Prometheus slowly shook his huge head. “I cannot recall him.” He smiled ruefully. “The crystal skull fed off my oldest and earliest recollections. I am sorry, Sorceress, but I have no memory of the hook-handed man.” His smile faded, turning bitter. “But there is so much about that day that was lost or confused to me even before the skull took my memories.”

“Have you no recollection of him—bright blue eyes, a silver hook replacing his left hand?”

Prometheus shook his head again. “I’m sorry. I remember the faces of the good friends I lost, though I no longer recall their names. I remember those who stood against me, and those whom I slew.” He frowned and his voice grew soft and distant. “I remember the screams and shouts, the sounds of battle, the clash of metal, the stink of ancient magic. I remember there was fire in heaven … and then the world was split asunder and the sea roared in.”

“He was there.”

“This was the Final Battle, Sorceress.
Everyone
was there.”

Perenelle sat back into the seat. “When I first met him, I was little more than a child. I asked his name. He said he was called Marethyu,” she said softly.

“It is not a name. It is a title: it means Death. But it can also mean ‘man,’ ” the Elder said, translating the ancient word.

“I thought he was an Elder.…”

Prometheus frowned, sudden fragments of memories catching him by surprise. His fingers tightened on the back of the seat. “Marethyu,” he murmured, nodding. “Death.”

“You remember him?”

He shook his head. “Shadows of memories. Marethyu was not one of us. He was neither Elder nor Next Generation, neither Archon nor Ancient. He was—and is—something more and less than all of us. I believe he is humani.” Prometheus swiveled around and rested his huge hands on the steering wheel. “Where do you want to go, Sorceress?”

“Take me to Tsagaglalal.”

h man, it stinks down here.” Billy the Kid sneezed loudly. “I mean
really
stinks.” He pressed the heels of his hands against his watering eyes and sneezed again.

“Actually, it’s not too bad. I’ve smelled worse,” Niccolò Machiavelli said softly.

The two men were standing in a tunnel deep beneath Alcatraz prison. Water dripped from the low ceiling and small waves lapped around their ankles. The air reeked of rotting fish and fetid seaweed, mingled with the pungent tang of bird droppings and the acid odor of bat guano. The only light came from the opening high above their heads, a startling square of blue against the blackness.

The tall elegant man in the dust-stained suit breathed deeply. “Actually, it reminds me of home.”

“Home?” Billy coughed. He pulled a patterned red bandana
out of the back pocket of his jeans and tied it over his nose and mouth. “Does your home usually smell like a wild animal’s bathroom?”

Machiavelli’s teeth flashed in a quick smile. “Well, Rome and Venice—ah, sweet Venice—in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were smelly … though not as bad as Paris in the eighteenth century or London in the middle of the nineteenth. I was there in 1858; the air was so foul it was virtually unbreathable. It was called the Great Stink.”