06 The Enchantress Page 13
“Give me a moment, I beg of you. Let me compose myself.” The doctor stretched out his legs and leaned back on stiffened arms. He looked up at the tall blond-haired figure wrapped in a cloak of shimmering gold foil. “In all the long years of my life, I always believed you were a legend,” he breathed. “I never imagined you were real.”
“Doctor, I am disappointed.” Abraham’s head moved in a tiny nod and he coughed a tiny laugh. “You know that at the heart of every legend is a grain of truth. You’ve dealt with monsters all your life. You consorted with creatures who were worshipped as gods, and fought alongside nightmares. And yet you consider me to be a legend!”
“Everyone likes to believe in a legend or two.” Dee reached up and Marethyu helped him to his feet.
They were standing on a flat circular platform at the top of the crystal tower. A bitter wind whipped across the platform, rich with salt and sea spray and flecked with tiny stinging chips of ice.
“It is truly an honor to meet you.” Dee stepped forward and stretched out his hand, but Marethyu gently pushed it down and shook his head slightly.
“The Mage will not shake your hand, Doctor.”
Abraham stepped away from the telescope. “Come look.”
The instrument was made of what looked like solid cream-colored crystal. The surface was faceted. Thin bands of silver encircled the tube, and when Dee peered into the eyepiece, he discovered it was shimmering and liquid, like mercury.
“Marethyu brought this back from one of his travels,” Abraham said. His voice was labored, every word an effort. “He will not tell me where he found it, but I suspect it is Archon rather than Earthlord. The Earthlord artifacts tend to be almost brutal in their design. This has a certain delicacy to it.”
“I can see nothing,” Dee said. “Does it need to be focused?”
“Think of a person,” Abraham said. “Someone you know well. I would say someone you care for, but I realize that might be difficult in your case.”
Dee looked into the glass.
… Sophie and Josh sitting at a circular table piled high with food. Isis and Osiris sat opposite them.
He jerked his head back and lowered it to the eyepiece again.
… Virginia Dare, in a loose white robe and straw hat, moving through streets teeming with small, dark-skinned people. Red-eyed, black-armored anpu watched from the shadows.
“Extraordinary,” Dee said, looking up. “It is similar to a scrying glass. Will it only see people in this Shadowrealm?”
“If the glass is fed with blood and pain, it will show other times, other places,” Abraham whispered. “I do not feed it.”
“But you have.” Dee spun around to look at Marethyu.
“Sometimes,” he admitted. Something sad and lost moved behind his gaze. “There are certain people I like to keep an eye on.”
“I would have loved something like this. I can think of a thousand uses for it.”
Marethyu shook his head. “It would have destroyed you, Doctor.”
“I doubt it.”
“Sometimes, when you look into the glass, you find something looking back at you. Something hungry.”
Dee shrugged. “As you yourself said, I’ve seen monsters before. And there’s not much they can do to you from the other side of a glass.”
“They’re not always on the other side of the glass,” Abraham said. “Sometimes they come through.” The Mage turned, allowing the immortal to see his entire body. The left side of his face from forehead to chin and from nose to ear was a solid gold mask. Only his eye remained untouched, although the white had turned a pale saffron with threads of gold twisted through the gray iris. The upper and lower teeth on the left side of his face were solid gold, and his left hand was covered in what looked like a golden glove.
“The Change,” Dee breathed.
“I am impressed. Few humans in your time even know of it.”
“I am not the average human.”
“As arrogant as ever, Doctor, I see.” Abraham turned back to the telescope and pressed his remaining eye against the eyepiece.
Dee suddenly found himself wondering who Abraham was looking at.
“The Change warps all of us sooner or later. Some—like your friend Bastet—it makes into monsters.”
“Is every Change unique?”
“Yes, individual to the character. Changes may be similar, but no two are identical.”
Dee limped over to stand beside Abraham and peered closely at his arm. “May I?” he asked.
The Mage’s head moved a fraction.
Dee pressed his index finger against Abraham’s shoulder and pushed. It was solid. Then he rapped on it with his knuckle. It rang with a dull thump.
“My aura is hardening on my skin.”
“I saw something similar in a cave beneath Paris.”
“Zephaniah took the idea for Mars’s punishment from my Change.”
“And it is not reversible?”
“No. Generations of Great Elders and Elders have attempted to reverse the process. There are occasional minor successes, but nothing permanent.” Abraham stepped away from the telescope and turned slowly to face Dee. “What am I to do with you, Doctor? I have watched the human world for generations. I have seen heroes and villains. I have studied families and individuals, followed entire lineages for endless centuries. I understand humankind, I know what drives them, what motivates them. I know how and why they love and what they fear. And then there is you…. You are a mystery.”
Dee glanced quickly at Marethyu. “Is that good or bad?”
Abraham walked to the edge of the tower and looked out at the distant city. “You have no idea how close we came to destroying you,” he continued. “Chronos offered to send Marethyu back through time to kill your most distant ancestor so that we could wipe out your entire line.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” Dee muttered, nodding at Marethyu.
“Don’t thank me. I wanted to do it.”
Footsteps shuffled on the stairs and Dee turned as a beautiful young gray-eyed woman arrived on the platform. She ignored Dee, smiled at Marethyu and then flung a heavy hooded cloak around Abraham’s shoulders. She glared at Dee. “I wanted to do it too.”
“This is Tsagaglalal, my wife.”
Dee bowed slightly. “I am honored.”
“Don’t be,” she snapped. “I would push you off this platform with the greatest of pleasure.” She eased her husband away from the edge of the platform and then moved around to stand in front of him so that he could look at her. “It is nearly time.”
“I know. Go down. Get ready. I am almost finished with the doctor.”
Tsagaglalal swept past Dee and disappeared below.
“She is going to hate you for millennia.” Abraham stretched out his hand. “Give me my book, Doctor.”
Dee hesitated.
The right side of Abraham’s face moved in a ghastly smile. “A very foolish man would think about doing something stupid right now. Or worse—attempting to negotiate.”
The doctor reached under his shirt. There was a soft leather bag on a cord around his neck. He tugged and the cord snapped free.
“Josh carries the pages he tore from the Book in a similar way,” Marethyu said.
“I know. I just discovered that. I can’t believe he had them with him all this time. They were so close; if only he’d given them to me, then everything would be so different.” Dee sighed.
“Your life has been one of disappointments,” Marethyu said.
“Are you being sarcastic?” Dee asked.
“Yes.”
“I’ve had my share of disappointments,” the Magician admitted. Reaching into the bag, he pulled out the small metal-bound book. “I spent my entire life chasing this book. Over the centuries, I came close to securing it. But from the moment I finally got it into my hands, everything changed. It should have been my greatest triumph.” He shook his head slightly. “Instead, everything started to go wrong.”
With an almost painful effort, Abraham raised his golden hand and dropped it onto Dee’s shoulder. “Doctor, did you ever pause to wonder why you never managed to catch up with the Flamels, why they always escaped just before you arrived?”
“Of course. I always thought they were lucky …,” he began. Then he shook his head. “No one is that lucky for that long, are they?”
Marethyu closed the Book with a snap. The fire died on his hook. “You were never meant to find the Flamels and the Book. Until last week, of course, when you got the call giving you the address of the bookshop in San Francisco.”
“And that was you?” Dee breathed, looking from Marethyu to Abraham. “I thought I was working for Isis and Osiris.”
Death’s blue eyes crinkled. “You are, but sometimes you—and they—are working for me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
When he’d been a very young child, Josh had suffered from a series of bizarre and terrifying nightmares.
He’d dreamt he was standing alongside his sleeping body, looking down at it. Sometimes he was sitting on the end of the bed staring at himself, but often, he was floating close to the ceiling, looking down on his body. Never once did he feel that he was in any danger, but the confusing images had still brought him awake screaming. Sleep had always been a long time coming after one of those dreams.
As Josh got older, the dreams almost completely disappeared. During periods of extreme stress—usually around finals—they returned, but time had robbed them of their power to frighten him. Now they were little more than strange images. Sometimes, when he drifted in that twilight zone between sleep and wakefulness, he caught the vaguest impression of the old dream, and would find himself for a single moment standing outside his body looking at himself, asleep. He was browsing the Internet one day when, by accident, he discovered there was a term for this—an out-of-body-experience.
And he felt like he was having one right now.
It was just like one of his dreams.
He was looking at himself sitting at a table with his parents and sister. Everything was normal: there was fruit on a plate in front of him, a glass of orange juice beside it. Large bowls filled with salad were in the center of the table, and there were two jugs of water—one with ice for his father and Sophie and a second without ice, which he and his mother preferred.
Everything was so familiar.
Except that it was wrong.
The couple sitting at the table looked like his parents, Richard and Sara Newman. They had the same eye color, identical lines on their faces, wrinkles at the corners of their mouths and eyes. This man who looked like his father even had a tiny half-moon scar on top of his shaven head, a pale semicircle standing out against his deeply tanned skin.
But these were not his parents.
The woman who looked like his mother was wearing the robes and jewelry of ancient Egypt.
There was nothing wrong with that. When they had gone to Egypt a few years before, she’d worn similar clothes on the boat they’d sailed in down the Nile.
But both the woman’s and the man’s nails were painted black.
That was odd—he’d never known his father to paint his toenails, and black wasn’t exactly a color his mother would ever have chosen.
When these people smiled, their teeth seemed too long, and although he hadn’t had a close look, so he couldn’t be certain, he thought their tongues looked dark purple instead of pink.
Nowhere had he seen that before.
And now that he looked at them, even the food and table itself didn’t feel quite right.
The table was a circle of gold and silver, wrapped together like a yin and yang symbol. He and Osiris were sitting side by side at the gold curve, while his sister and Isis sat in front of the silver sections.
Josh?
The plates before him were gold, piled high with a spectacularly vivid selection of fruits—but, upon closer inspection, he only recognized a few of them. And the glass filled with juice was solid gold.
And his sister …
Josh looked across the table at Sophie. His twin was staring down at a silver plate heaped with cherries and grapes far too large to be natural. A silver cup brimmed with water, and the blunt knife and two-tined fork were also silver. She noticed him looking at her and raised her head, and in that instant he saw the same confusion in her eyes.
Josh?
Josh felt the world slip and shift again and he realized that this was no dream. His heart started to hammer painfully, and he could feel his lungs tightening. His subconscious was telling him something important. He just wasn’t sure what that was yet.
Josh!
Isis’s voice was sharp.
He drew in a deep shuddering breath and felt the world shift and settle. Looking around, he discovered that everyone was looking at him, and he rolled his shoulders and twisted his head from side to side. Color flushed his cheeks. “Sorry, I sort of zoned out for a minute there. Might have even dozed off.” He turned to look at his father. “What did you once call them?”
Osiris stared at him blankly for a long moment.
“Oh yes, I remember now: a microsleep. I must have been having a microsleep.”
“Focus, Josh,” Isis snapped. “This is important.”
He was about to snap a response when he felt his sister’s foot tap against his. He took a deep breath. “Sure. Sorry, Isi—sorry, Mom. I guess we’re just exhausted by everything that’s happened. I know I am.”
“Me too. It’s been a lot to take in,” Sophie said. She speared one of the huge grapes with her fork and popped it in her mouth, then drained her glass. As soon as she placed it back on the table one of the cat-faced women silently appeared by her side and refilled it.
“Maybe we could get some sleep?” Josh suggested.
“I’m afraid that will have to wait. Our schedule has altered somewhat,” Osiris said. “Eat, restore your energies. You have a long night ahead of you.”
Josh looked at his sister, eyebrows moving fractionally upward in a silent question. She shook her head.
“You are aware by now that you are in the possession of extraordinary powers,” Isis said. She turned to look first at Sophie, then across the table at Josh. “You don’t need me to tell you that you are both remarkable people. In a week you’ve both been Awakened and trained in most of the Elemental Magics. In a week,” she said to her husband, shaking her head. “It’s truly astonishing.”
“Ordinarily, it is a process that takes decades,” Osiris agreed.
“Why didn’t you Awaken us?” Sophie asked, and then immediately answered her own question without having to resort to the Witch’s knowledge. “Because you can’t.”
Osiris’s smile was icy. “We have other skills, Sophie, but no, we are not able to stimulate the Awakening process.”
“So it’s not a family trait?” Josh asked, confused.
“Not immediate family, no. But it is definitely clan related,” Osiris said.
“Are we related to those Elders? The ones who Awakened us, who taught us: Hekate and Mars, Prometheus, Gilgamesh, Saint-Germain and the Witch?” Sophie asked.
“Distantly,” Osiris muttered
“But they’re not your friends, are they,” Josh stated more than asked.
Isis and Osiris shook their heads simultaneously. “No, they are not.”
Everything that had happened over the last several days suddenly started to make sense to Josh. “Since no one knew you were related to us, you somehow got your enemies to Awaken and then train us because they thought we’d be working against you,” Josh murmured, almost to himself.
“Yes, and we’re quite proud of that strategy.” Isis smiled at her husband.
“That’s just great,” Josh muttered.
“Thank you,” Osiris said. “I see all those chess lessons weren’t entirely wasted on you.”
Josh dipped his head and concentrated on pushing the fruit around on his plate. He was thinking furiously, remembering a thousand tiny details from the past. Suddenly they took on a new meaning. He finally speared a segment of orange and popped it in his mouth. “So everything that’s happened over the past week—”
“Don’t speak with your mouth full!” Isis snapped.
“Sorry, Mom. Sorry, Isis,” he deliberately amended. He swallowed hard. “So you’ve been behind everything that’s happened over the past week?”
“Not just the past week,” Osiris said. “Over the past fifteen years of your lives, and the ten thousand years leading up to that. From the first moments of your birth, we have been training both of you for this, your destiny. We taught you history and mythology so that when you did discover the truth, it would not be such a terrifying revelation, and so you would have some familiarity with the characters and creatures you’d encounter. We even insisted that you take up a martial art so that you could protect yourselves.”
The twins nodded. Neither of them had ever wanted to do Tae Kwon Do, but their parents had insisted, and no matter what city they lived in or school they attended, they had always been enrolled in a dojang to continue their training.
“We showed you the world,” Isis said. “Exposed you to other cultures so that when you came here it would not be such a shock.”
Osiris leaned forward. “And then, when all was in readiness, when you were both as prepared as you could be, I suggested you go for that job in the bookshop with the Flamels.”
Josh blinked in surprise, then frowned, remembering. His father had showed him an ad in the university newspaper: Assistant Wanted, Bookshop. We don’t want readers, we want workers.
“And I didn’t want to do it,” Josh whispered.
“And I told you I’d worked in a bookshop when I was your age. You wrote the letter and résumé, but never sent them in.”