06 The Enchantress Page 17

  “There are another thousand like them in the fort. Ten thousand like them scattered around the city. Will you fight them all?”

  “If I have to,” the immortal said, turning back to the prison. The anpu had rounded up a handful of people—indiscriminately snatching men and women, young and old—from the crowd and were hauling them to the prison. She saw the boy. He was still struggling in the arms of the huge anpu. He called out, screaming a name again and again. Virginia bit her lip, watching as his mother pressed her hands to her ears and collapsed onto the stones. The anpu guard held the boy aloft in one hand, and just before the gates slammed shut, the boy stopped struggling and called out at the top of his lungs, “Aten!” The crowd roared back the name.

  “What will happen to him?” Virginia asked the mysterious man.

  “If he is lucky, he will be sentenced to the mines or to join one of the slave gangs who build the Elders’ pyramids.”

  “And if he is unlucky?” she began, and then stopped, suddenly realizing that the young man had spoken in English. She turned to face him.

  “If he is unlucky, he will be sent to one of the Shadowrealms as a slave. That’s a life sentence. Some would feel it is better than the alternative.”

  “And what is that?”

  “To be fed to the volcano.”

  “For what?” she demanded. “For throwing a piece of fruit?”

  “All the punishments are unnecessarily harsh. They are designed to keep humans under control. It is how the few control the many. With fear.”

  “Humankind should rise up,” Virginia snapped.

  “They should.”

  “I suppose Isis and Osiris sent you to find me?” she asked.

  “They did not.”

  The immortal looked at the man carefully. “You know me, don’t you?”

  The corners of the man’s eyes crinkled as he smiled. “I know you, Virginia Dare,” he agreed. “And if you look over my shoulder, you’ll see someone else who knows you.”

  Virginia shifted her gaze and looked over the figure’s right shoulder. Leaning against the wall at the mouth of an alleyway, supporting himself on a tall broken stick, was Dr. John Dee. The Magician raised his own straw hat in greeting.

  “Go to him, and wait. I will join you presently.”

  Virginia reached out to catch the man’s arm, but a curved metal hook wrapped around her wrist. “It would be better if you did not touch me,” he whispered icily. Slivers of yellow fire crawled across the hook and the immortal felt her flute grow almost painfully hot.

  The blue-eyed man nodded and walked past her. He moved through the crowd, taking care not to touch anyone, and Virginia noticed that everyone unconsciously stepped out of his way. Uncharacteristically shaken, the flute throbbing like an extra heart against her skin, she crossed the square and slipped into the darkened alleyway alongside the aged Magician. “I thought you were dead,” she greeted him.

  “That’s a charming hello. I almost was.”

  Shaking her head slightly, she looked him up and down. “I should have guessed you’d be hard to kill.”

  “I bet you didn’t think of me once,” he said with a tired smile.

  “Maybe just once or twice,” she admitted warmly. “I hoped you’d died quickly, and feared you had not.”

  “Is that something like concern I’m hearing?” he teased.

  “You’re looking old,” she said, avoiding the question.

  “Not as old as I was. And I’m still here.”

  Virginia Dare nodded. “I’m guessing Isis and Osiris weren’t the ones to renew your youth.”

  “They did not.”

  “The blue-eyed man?” she guessed.

  Dee nodded. “Marethyu, the hook-hand.”

  The name sent a shiver down Virginia’s spine. “Death,” she whispered.

  “Who gave me life,” Dee said, shaking his head. “What a world we live in. Once upon a time, you knew who your friends were.”

  “You never had any friends,” she reminded him.

  “True. Now all is topsy-turvy.”

  Virginia Dare turned to look back across the milling crowd. The blue-eyed man had vanished. She saw the woman who had lost her son. There was a young girl—no more than three or four—clinging to her skirts. “Where is Marethyu?”

  “He’s gone to visit someone in jail.”

  Dare turned back to Dee. “This jail doesn’t look the type that has regular visiting hours.”

  “I don’t think that would bother him too much.” The Magician laughed. “He’s gone to see Aten.”

  “I heard the people call his name. What is he?”

  “Aten was the Lord of Danu Talis,” John Dee explained simply. “An Elder, but sympathetic to the humani. Humans,” the doctor corrected himself. “Now he is a prisoner and awaiting execution.”

  “Doctor,” Virginia asked, “do you want to tell me what’s going on?

  “I wish I knew.” Dee attempted a smile. “All I know is that I’ve spent centuries planning and scheming. I thought I was clever, making plans that would take years or even decades to bring to fruition. Little did I know I was part of something bigger, plotted by creatures who had never been human, whose plans encompassed millennia. Today I learned that everything I did was either already set or permitted. I was only allowed to do whatever fit into their plans,” he finished, a note of outrage in his voice.

  “Shame,” Virginia murmured. “Though you’ll get no sympathy from me.”

  “Oh, but you’re not exempt either. How would you feel if I told you that you too were part of this extraordinary plan? It spans millennia.”

  Virginia looked closely at the stooped immortal, his eyes bright in the gloom. She’d never noticed it before, but she suddenly realized that his eyes were the same color as hers. She frowned, remembering. The same color as Machiavelli’s. “Part of a plan?”

  “A little while ago, I spoke to an Elder who was slowly turning into a gold statue,” Dee said. He reached under his robe and pulled out a slender rectangle wrapped in a palm leaf. “He asked me to give this to you.”

  Virginia turned it over in her hands. “What is it?” she asked.

  “He said it was a message.”

  “For me?”

  Dee nodded. “For you.”

  “That’s impossible. How did he know I was going to be here?”

  “And how did he know I was going to be here?” Dee asked. “Because he planned it. He and Marethyu planned everything.”

  “Planned what?” she demanded.

  “Why, Virginia, nothing less than the destruction of the world.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “Oh, I hate trolls,” Perenelle Flamel groaned.

  The creature that click-clacked down the narrow stone path looked like a primitive human. Short and squat, it had flat brutish features, and its entire body was covered with greasy red hair that was almost indistinguishable from the animal skins covering it. It carried a blade carved from the shinbone of an animal that had gone extinct before dinosaurs walked the earth. The creature’s eyes were the color of dirty snow, and when it smiled, its pointed teeth were appalling.

  “Did that thing just lick its lips?” the Sorceress asked, disgusted.

  “Dinner,” the troll said, in a surprisingly pure and clear voice. There was the trace of an accent.

  “They rarely travel alone …,” Nicholas began.

  There was a clicking, like claws scrabbling, and then two more—one unmistakably female, with her wild red hair tied in two pigtails—appeared out of the swirling fog. Even over the smell of the sea and the meaty odor of the fog, the stink wafting off the creatures was overwhelming.

  “Not trolls.” The female’s face twisted in disgust. “They’re filthy beasts. We’re Fir Dearg,” she said proudly.

  “Well, technically, we’re the Fir Dearg,” one of the creatures said. “We’re male. You’re Mna Dearg. Female.”

  Sighing, the Sorceress leaned on the stone tri
dent and turned the three creatures to stone with a single gesture of her hand. “At least trolls just want to eat you and not talk you to death.”

  “Could have been worse,” Nicholas said. He stepped toward the frozen creatures and tapped one—the female—as he moved past. Yellow eyes glared at him through a stone face. “They could have been leprechauns.”

  Perenelle shuddered. “You know I hate leprechauns more than almost anything.”

  Moving cautiously, the Alchemyst and the Sorceress followed the narrow pathway around the island to the quayside. They could hear the Nereids following their progress, splashing invisibly in the sea to their right.

  “Dee is not a fool,” Nicholas said. He stopped when they reached the jetty where the tourist boats once docked, and turned to look at the empty pier. “He gathered these creatures on the island….”

  A rat-faced boy appeared out of the night, running at the Alchemyst, hands hooked into claws. Perenelle spun around and stamped on his tail as he passed her, bringing him to a squealing halt. He rounded on the Sorceress and she repeated the spell she’d just used, turning him to stone. He was caught, one eye open, the other shut in a permanent wink.

  Without turning around, Nicholas continued. “There must have been a plan in place to get the creatures ashore.”

  “The only way on or off the island is by boat,” Perenelle said. “Perhaps the plan changed, or events moved too quickly for him to adjust to the new timescale. Remember, originally the Dark Elders were not due to come back to the Earth Shadowrealm until Litha. That’s still two weeks away.”

  “Dee would have had contingency plans. He must have spent months getting the creatures here. But how? There are no ley lines on the island.”

  Perenelle nodded. “And neither of us felt any tremendous use of power. It had to be by boat.”

  “Which, as you said, is the only way off the island.” Nicholas thought for a moment. “He sent the Lotan ashore to rampage through the streets. While that had everyone’s attention, I’ll wager a boatload of creatures was scheduled to come over from Alcatraz and join in the fun.”

  “And with Dee gone, that leaves the Feathered Serpent in charge?”

  “Or Bastet,” Flamel suggested. “We know Dee’s worked with both.”

  “I would imagine Dee worked with Quetzalcoatl. The Feathered Serpent lives here—well, close, at least,” Perenelle said. “And remember—when I was trapped on the island, Areop-Enap was attacked by flies. Quetzalcoatl must have sent them.”

  “So Quetzalcoatl is sending a boat,” Nicholas began, “but we haven’t see anything at sea. Nothing passed us.”

  “There is one other alternative,” Perenelle interjected

  Nicholas looked at her and then slowly nodded. “Unless it is already here,” he breathed.

  “But where could it be?” Perenelle asked, suddenly alarmed. “There cannot be that many places to land on Alcatraz.”

  Catching his wife’s hand in his, Nicholas pulled Perenelle over to a stand before the bookshop showing a map of the island. The laminated surface was speckled with dew, and he ran his hands across it. A simplified map depicted the island, with all the buildings picked out in gray, then numbered in red. Above the graphic, in alternating strips of red and black, the numbers were explained.

  “We are here at the wharf,” he said, touching the bottom right of the map. There was a number two alongside a red circle that read YOU ARE HERE.

  Perenelle traced her finger up along the shore, past the guard tower and the guardhouse and the electric shop. “What’s number six?” she asked. “It looks like a substantial building.”

  Nicholas checked the number. “Six is the North Road. It says Prison Industries.”

  “Look at the Quartermaster Warehouse,” she said. “It’s big, close to the water, alongside the Powerhouse. You could bring a boat right up to the island, and in this fog no one would be the wiser.”

  “How far away is it?”

  “Nicholas, this is Alcatraz. It’s ten minutes away.”

  “In this fog?” he asked dubiously.

  “You’re right.” She rolled her eyes. “It might take us fifteen.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Through the enveloping fog, the sound of clanging metal rang across the Golden Gate Bridge. Niten folded into a sitting position in the center of the bridge. He could feel the commotion vibrating up through the ground. He smiled at the sudden image of Prometheus tossing cars from one side of the bridge to the other to build his barrier. He heard the tiny tinkle of glass and wondered if being tossed across the Golden Gate Bridge by an Elder was covered by insurance.

  The small Japanese immortal sat cross-legged, his two swords resting flat on the ground before him. He folded his hands in his lap, closed his eyes and breathed through his nose, forcing the chill night air deep into his chest. He held it for a count of five, then shaped his lips into an O and blew it out again, puncturing a tiny hole in the swirling fog before his face.

  Even though he would never admit it to anyone, Niten loved this moment. He had no affection for what was to come, but this brief time, when all preparations for battle were made and there was nothing left to do but wait, when the entire world felt still, as if it was holding its breath, was special. This moment, when he was facing death, was when he felt completely, fully alive.

  He’d still been called Miyamoto Musashi and had been a teenager when he’d first discovered the genuine beauty of the quiet moment before a fight. Every breath suddenly tasted like the finest food, every sound was distinct and divine, and even on the foulest of battlefields, his eyes would be drawn to something simple and elegant: a flower, the shape of a branch, the curl of a cloud.

  A hundred years ago, Aoife had given him a book as a birthday present. He hadn’t had the heart to tell her that she’d missed his birthday by a month, but he had treasured the book, a first edition of The Professor by Charlotte Brontë. It included a line he had never forgotten: In the midst of life we are in death. Years later, he’d heard Gandhi take the same words and shift them around to create something that resonated deeply within him: In the midst of death life persists.

  Niten had long since fallen out of love with battle.

  There was no honor in war, less in killing and none in dying. But there was true dignity in how men comported themselves in battle. And there was always honor to be found in standing for a just cause and defending the defenseless.

  Cupping his hands in his lap, Niten called up a little of his aura. It puddled in his palms, a rich royal blue liquid trembling against his dark flesh, the skin seamed and calloused from centuries of holding a sword. He blew on it and the liquid thickened. Niten rolled it like dough between the palms of his hands, creating a tiny blue sphere, before flattening it to an irregular rectangle of what looked like stiff blue paper. With infinite care, the immortal carefully creased the edges of the paper, folding and refolding to create a delicate origami kame, a turtle.

  Placing the blue turtle on the bridge before him, Niten picked up his swords and faded into the gloom just as the first of the Spartoi appeared out of the fog.

  “Minikui,” Niten breathed. “Ugly.”

  The immortal had fought monsters before and had learned a long time ago never to judge by appearances. Concepts of beauty changed from country to country and even generation to generation, but he doubted anyone would ever find the Spartoi pretty. Not even another Spartoi.

  Short and squat, it looked like a crocodile walking on two legs. It was five feet tall and thick-bodied, its skin gnarled and scaled, with the flat wedge-shaped head of a crocodile. Enormous, slit-pupiled bronze and gold eyes set wide apart on the top of its head penetrated the gloom. When it opened its mouth, it revealed rows of ragged teeth and a thick unmoving white tongue.

  Niten had seen serpent folk before: they turned up in the legends of just about every country on earth, and many of the nearby Shadowrealms were populated by lizard creatures. Almost without exception, the lizards
despised the mammals and the mammals feared the lizards.

  Bareheaded, this creature was covered in a long knee-length poncho that looked like it was made from its own skin. It carried a small circular shield covered in the same material, and its almost humanlike hands clutched a massive studded war club.

  Niten assessed the creature with a warrior’s eye.

  The Spartoi was lightly armored; its head was vulnerable. It was armed only with the club, which was not as long as Niten’s short sword, so he would have the advantage of being able to attack without getting too close. The immortal was vaguely disappointed: he’d been expecting something a little more formidable. Maybe Quetzalcoatl thought the sight of the Spartoi would terrify the humans into submission. But then, in Niten’s experience, the Elders were often remarkably ill-informed about the race they wanted to rule and the world they needed to control.

  Niten watched the creature approach the blue origami turtle. If it was intelligent—well, if it were intelligent, it would never have come near the turtle in the first place—but if it was intelligent, it would fade back into the night and wait for reinforcements. Head swiveling from side to side, the Spartoi crept closer to the blue turtle. If it was really stupid, Niten predicted, it would probably fall on all fours to sniff at the object. The immortal’s grip tightened on his sword as he assessed the creature’s weaknesses: he would take it under the arms, perhaps, or through the mouth.

  The Spartoi dropped to all fours and moved its head over the origami.

  Stupid, then.

  Fog swirling around him like a cloak, Niten raced out of the night, katana raised, then lowering in a deadly whistle.

  And the Spartoi moved.

  Lightning fast, the lizard’s shield came up and Niten’s sword screamed off it in a blaze of sparks. The creature’s blunt club struck the immortal hard in the center of the chest, and Niten knew instantly that ribs had cracked. The force of the blow sent him spinning, and he tumbled to the ground on the far side of the bridge.

  The Spartoi ignored the fallen immortal. He scooped up the blue turtle and popped it into his mouth. “Green tea,” he said in a raspy whisper. “My favorite.”