The Magician Read online

  It didn’t take a genius to realize that the Italian would go after Flamel and the children himself. But Dee had spent too long chasing the Alchemyst to lose him at the very end…especially to someone like Niccolò Machiavelli.

  He closed his eyes as the plane rose and his stomach twitched. He automatically reached for the paper bag on the seat beside him: he loved flying, but his stomach always protested. If everything went as planned, then he would soon be the ruler of the entire planet and he’d never need to fly again. Everyone would come to him.

  The jet climbed at a steep angle and he swallowed hard; he’d had a chicken wrap in the airport and was regretting it now. The fizzy drink had been a definite mistake.

  Dee was looking forward to the time when the Elders returned. Perhaps they could reestablish the network of leygates across the world and make flying unnecessary. Closing his eyes, Dee concentrated on the Elders and the many benefits they would bring to the planet. In the distant past, he knew the Elders had created a paradise on earth. All the ancient books and scrolls, the myths and legends of every race, spoke about that glorious time. His master had promised him that the Elders would use their powerful magic to return the planet to that paradise. They would reverse the effects of global warming, repair the hole in the ozone layer and bring the deserts to life. The Sahara would bloom; the polar ice caps would melt away, revealing the rich land beneath. Dee thought he would found his capital city in Antarctica on the shores of Lake Vanda. The Elders could reestablish their ancient kingdoms in Sumer, Egypt, Central America and Angkor, and with the knowledge contained in the Book of Abraham, it would be possible to raise Danu Talis again.

  Of course, Dee knew that the human population would become slaves, and some would become food for those Elders who still needed to eat, but that was a small price to pay for the many other benefits.

  The jet leveled and he felt his stomach settle. Opening his eyes, he breathed deeply and checked his watch again. He found it hard to believe that he was hours—literally hours—away from finally capturing the Alchemyst, Scathach and, now, the twins. They were an added bonus. Once he had Flamel and the pages from the Codex, the world would change.

  He would never understand why Flamel and his wife had worked so hard to prevent the Elders from bringing civilization back to earth. But he’d be sure to ask him…just before he killed him.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Nicholas Flamel paused on the Rue Beaubourg and turned slowly, pale eyes scanning the street. He didn’t think he was being followed, but he needed to be certain. He’d taken the train to the Saint-Michel Notre-Dame station and crossed the Seine on the Pont d’Arcole, heading in the direction of the glass-and-steel monstrosity that was the Pompidou Center. Taking his time, stopping often, darting from one side of the road to the other, pausing at a newsstand to buy the morning paper, stopping again for some foul coffee in a cardboard cup, he kept checking for anyone paying close attention to his movements. But as far as he could determine, there was no one following him.

  Paris had changed since he’d last been in the city, and though he now called San Francisco home, this was the city of his birth and would always be his city. Only a couple of weeks ago, Josh had loaded Google Earth onto the computer in the bookshop’s back room and shown him how to use it. Nicholas had spent hours looking down on the streets he’d once walked, finding buildings he’d known in his youth, even discovering the location of the Church of the Holy Innocents, where he’d supposedly been buried.

  He had been particularly interested in one street. He’d found it on the map program and virtually walked down it, never realizing that he would soon do so in reality.

  Nicholas Flamel turned left off the Rue Beaubourg onto the Rue de Montmorency—and stopped as suddenly as if he had walked into a wall.

  He drew a deep shuddering breath, conscious that his heart was pounding. The wash of emotions was extraordinarily powerful. The street was so narrow that the morning sunlight didn’t reach it, leaving it in shadow. It was lined on both sides with tall, mostly white-and-cream-colored buildings, many of them with hanging baskets spilling flowers and greenery across the walls. Round-topped black metal poles had been inserted into the sidewalk on both sides of the street to prevent cars from stopping.

  Nicholas walked slowly down the street, seeing it as it had once been. Remembering.

  More than six hundred years ago, he and Perenelle had lived on this street. Images of medieval Paris flickered behind his eyes, a jumbled mismatched mess of wooden and stone houses; narrow winding lanes; rotten bridges; tumbled listing buildings and streets that were little better than open sewers. The noise, the incredible, incessant noise, and the foul miasma that hung over the city—a mixture of unwashed disease-ridden humans and filthy animals—were things he would never forget.

  At the bottom of the Rue de Montmorency, he found the building he had been looking for.

  It hadn’t changed much. The stone had once been cream; now it was ancient, chipped and weathered, stained black with soot. The three wooden windows and doors were new, but the building itself was one of the oldest in Paris. Directly above the middle door was a number in blue metal—51—and above that was a tired-looking stone sign announcing that this had once been the MAISON DE NICOLAS FLAMEL ET DE PERENELLE, SA FEMME. A red sign in the shape of a shield announced that this was the AUBERGE NICOLAS FLAMEL. Now it was a restaurant.

  Once it had been his home.

  Stepping up to the window, he pretended to read the menu as he peered inside. The interior had been completely remodeled, of course, countless times probably, but the dark beams that stretched across the white ceiling appeared to be the same beams he’d so often looked up at more than six hundred years ago.

  He and Perenelle had been happy here, he realized.

  And safe.

  Their lives had been simpler then: they hadn’t known about the Elders or the Dark Elders; they’d known nothing of the Codex, or of the immortals who guarded and fought over it.

  And both he and Perenelle had still been fully human.

  The ancient stones of the house had been carved with an assortment of images, symbols and letters that he knew had puzzled and intrigued scholars down through the ages. Most were meaningless, little more than the shop signs of their day, but there were one or two that had special significance. Quickly glancing left and right and finding the narrow street empty, he reached up with his right hand and traced the outline of the letter N, which was cut into the stone to the left of the middle window. Green power curled around the letter. Then he traced the ornate F on the opposite side of the window, leaving a shimmering outline of the letter in the air. Catching hold of the window frame with his left hand, he hauled himself up onto the ledge and reached over his head with his right hand, his fingers finding the shapes of letters in the ancient stone. Allowing the tiniest trickle of his aura to flow through his fingers, he pressed a sequence of letters…and the stone beneath his flesh turned warm and soft. He pushed…and his fingers sank into the stone. They wrapped around the object he had secreted within the solid block of granite back in the fifteenth century. Pulling it free, he stepped off the window ledge and dropped lightly to the ground, quickly wrapping his copy of Le Monde around the object. Then he turned and headed down the street without so much as a backward glance.

  Before he stepped out onto the Rue Beaubourg, Nicholas turned over his left hand. Nestled in the center of his palm was the perfect impression of the black butterfly Saint-Germain had pressed into his skin. “It will lead you back to me,” he’d said.

  Nicholas Flamel brushed his right forefinger over the tattoo. “Take me back to Saint-Germain,” he murmured. “Bring me to him.”

  The tattoo shivered on his skin, black wings rippling. Then it suddenly peeled away from his flesh and hung flapping in the air before him. A moment later, it danced and wove down the street. “Clever,” Nicholas muttered, “very clever.” And he set off after it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY


  Perenelle Flamel stepped out of the prison cell.

  The door had never been locked. There was no need: nothing could get past the sphinx. But now the sphinx was gone. Perenelle breathed deeply: the sour odor of the creature, the musty combination of snake, lion and bird, had lessened, allowing the usual smells of Alcatraz—salt and rusting metal, seaweed and crumbling stone—to take over. She turned to the left, moving swiftly down a long cell-lined corridor. She was on the Rock, but she had no idea where she was within the huge crumbling complex. Although she and Nicholas had lived in San Francisco for years, she had never been tempted to visit the ghost-haunted island. All she knew was that she was deep below the surface of the earth. The only light came from an irregular scattering of low-wattage bulbs set behind wire cages. Perenelle’s lips twisted in a wry smile; the light was not for her benefit. The sphinx was afraid of the dark; the creature came from a time and place where there really were monsters in the shadows.

  The sphinx had been lured away by the ghost of Juan Manuel de Ayala. She had gone in search of the mysterious noises, the rattling bars and slamming doors that had suddenly filled the building. Every moment the sphinx was away from her cell, Perenelle’s aura recharged. She wasn’t back up to full strength—she would need to sleep and eat first—but at least she was no longer defenseless. All she had to do was to keep out of the creature’s way.

  A door slammed somewhere high above her, and Perenelle froze as claws click-clacked. Then a bell began to toll, slow and solemn, lonely and distant. There was a sudden clatter of iron-hard nails on stone as the sphinx raced off to investigate.

  Perenelle folded her arms across her body and ran her hands up and down them, shivering slightly. She was wearing a sleeveless summer dress, and normally she’d be able to regulate her temperature by adjusting her aura, but she had very little power left and she was reluctant to use it in any way. One of the sphinx’s special talents was her ability to sense and then feed off magical energy.

  Perenelle’s flat sandals made no sound on the damp stones as she moved down the corridor. She was wary, but not frightened. Perenelle Flamel had lived for more than six hundred years, and while Nicholas had been fascinated with alchemy, she had concentrated on sorcery. Her research had taken her into some very dark and dangerous places, not only on this earth, but also in some of the adjoining Shadowrealms.

  Somewhere in the distance, glass shattered and tinkled to the ground. She heard the sphinx hiss and howl in frustration, but that sound too was far away. Perenelle smiled: de Ayala was keeping the sphinx busy, and no matter how hard she looked, she would never find him. Even a creature as powerful as a sphinx had no power over a ghost or a poltergeist.

  Perenelle knew that she needed to get to an upper level and out into the sunshine, where her aura would recharge more quickly. Once she was in the open air, she could use any of a dozen simple spells, cantrips and incantations she knew that would make the sphinx’s existence a misery. A Scythian mage, who’d claimed to have helped build the pyramids for the survivors of Danu Talis who had settled in Egypt, had taught her a very useful spell for melting stone. Perenelle would not hesitate to use it to bring the entire building down on top of the sphinx. It would probably survive—sphinxes were practically impossible to kill—but it would certainly be slowed down.

  Perenelle spotted rusting metal stairs and darted toward them. She was just about to put her foot on the bottom step when she noticed the gray thread spilling across the metal. Perenelle froze, foot raised in the air…and then she slowly and carefully stepped back. Crouching down, she looked at the metal steps. From this angle, she could see the threads of spiderwebs crisscrossing and weaving through the stairs. Anyone who stepped onto the metal staircase would be caught. She backed away, staring hard into the gloomy shadows. The threads were too thick to have been made by any normal spider and were dotted with tiny globules of liquid silver. Perenelle knew a dozen creatures that could have spun the webs, and she didn’t want to meet any of them, not here and now, while she was so drained of her power.

  Turning, she darted down a long corridor lit only by a single bulb at either end. Now that she knew what she was looking for, she could see the silver webs everywhere, stretched across the ceiling, spreading across the walls, and there were huge nests knotted in corners, growing in the deepest shadows. The webs’ presence might explain why she had encountered no vermin in the prison—no ants, flies, mosquitoes or rats. Once the nests hatched, the building would come alive with spiders…if indeed that’s what the spinners were. Over the centuries, Perenelle had encountered Elders who were associated with spiders, including Arachne and the mysterious and terrifying Spider Woman, but as far as she knew, none of them was aligned with Dee and the Dark Elders.

  Perenelle was hurrying past an open door, a perfect spiderweb framed in the opening, when she caught the hint of a sour bitter stench. She slowed, then stopped. The smell was new; it wasn’t the smell of the sphinx. Turning back to the door, she went as close as she could to the web without touching it and peered inside. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness and a moment longer to make sense of what she was seeing.

  Vetala.

  Perenelle’s heart began to beat so strongly in her chest that she could actually feel her flesh vibrating. Hanging upside down from the ceiling were a dozen creatures. Talons that were a cross between human feet and birds’ claws bit deep into the soft stone, while leathery bats’ wings wrapped around skeletal human bodies. The upside-down heads were beautiful, with the faces of young men and women not yet in their teens.

  Vetala.

  Perenelle mouthed the word silently. Vampires from the Indian subcontinent. And unlike Scathach, this clan drank blood and ate flesh. But what were they doing here, and more importantly, how had they gotten here? Vetala were always linked to a region or tribe: Perenelle had never known one to leave its homeland.

  The Sorceress turned slowly to look at the other open doorways lining the gloomy corridor. What else lay hidden in the cells beneath Alcatraz?

  What was Dr. John Dee planning?

  SUNDAY,

  3rd June

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Sophie’s ragged scream pulled Josh from a deep and dreamless sleep and rolled him out of bed, leaving him swaying on his feet, trying to get his bearings in complete darkness.

  Sophie screamed again, the sound raw and terrifying.

  Josh blundered across the bedroom, banging his knees on a chair before he discovered the door, visible only because of the thin strip of light beneath it. His sister was in the room directly across the corridor.

  Earlier, Saint-Germain had escorted them upstairs and given them their choice of rooms on the top floor of the town house. Sophie had immediately picked the one overlooking the Champs-Elysées—from the bedroom window, she could actually see the Arc de Triomphe over the rooftops—while Josh had taken the room across the hall, which looked over the dried-up rear garden. The rooms were small, with low ceilings and uneven, slightly sloping walls, but each had its own bathroom with a minuscule shower cubicle that had only two settings—scalding and freezing. When Sophie had run the water in her room, Josh’s shower stopped working altogether. And although he’d promised his sister that he would come talk to her after he’d showered and changed, he’d sat on the edge of his bed and almost immediately fallen into an exhausted sleep.

  Sophie screamed for a third time, a shuddering sob that brought tears to his eyes.

  Josh jerked open his door and ran across the narrow corridor. He pushed open the door to his sister’s room…and stopped.

  Joan of Arc was sitting on the edge of his sister’s bed, holding Sophie’s hand in both of hers. There were no lights in the room, but it was not in total darkness. Joan’s hand was glowing with cool silvery light and it looked like she was wearing a soft gray glove. As he watched, his sister’s hand took on the same texture and color. The air smelled of vanilla and lavender.

  Joan turned to look at
Josh, and he was startled to discover that her eyes were glowing silver coins. He took a step toward the bed, but she raised a finger to her lips and shook her head slightly, warning him not to say anything. The glow faded from her eyes. “Your sister is dreaming,” Joan said, though he wasn’t sure whether she had spoken aloud or if he was hearing her voice in his head. “The nightmare is already passing. It will not return,” she said, making the sentence into a promise.

  Wood creaked behind Josh and he whirled to see the Comte de Saint-Germain coming down a narrow staircase at the end of the hall. Francis gestured to Josh from the bottom of the stairs, and although his lips didn’t move, the boy clearly heard his voice: “My wife will take care of your sister. Come away.”

  Josh shook his head. “I should stay.” He didn’t want to leave Sophie alone with the strange woman, but he also knew instinctively that Joan would never harm his sister.

  “There is nothing you can do for her,” Saint-Germain said aloud. “Get dressed and come up to the attic. I have my office there.” He turned away and disappeared back up the stairs.

  Josh took a last look at Sophie. She was resting quietly, her breathing had slowed and he noticed that the dark rings had disappeared from beneath her eyes.

  “Go now,” Joan said. “There are some things I have to say to your sister. Private things.”

  “She’s asleep…,” Josh began.

  “But I will still say them,” the woman murmured. “And she will still hear me.”

  In his room, Josh dressed quickly. A bundle of clothes had been laid on a chair beneath the window: underwear, jeans, T-shirts and socks. He guessed the clothes belonged to Saint-Germain: they were about the count’s size. Josh dressed quickly in a pair of black designer jeans and a black silk T-shirt before slipping into his own shoes and taking a quick look in the mirror. He was unable to resist a smile; he’d never imagined himself wearing such expensive clothes. In the bathroom, he cracked open a new toothbrush from its packaging, brushed his teeth, splashed cold water on his face and ran his fingers through his overlong blond hair, pulling it back off his forehead. Strapping on his watch, he was shocked to discover that it was a little after midnight on Sunday morning. He’d slept the entire day and most of the night.