06 The Enchantress Read online

  Josh was lying on his back. He opened one eye and groaned as the sunlight hit his face, and then, when the realization of what he’d just seen sank in, he snapped awake and sat bolt upright. “That’s a …”

  “… a flying saucer,” Sophie finished.

  There was movement behind them and they both turned to see they were not alone on the grassy hillside. Dr. John Dee was on his hands and knees, staring wide-eyed into the sky, while Virginia Dare sat cross-legged beside him, jet-black hair rippling in the wind.

  “A vimana,” Dee breathed. “I never thought I’d see one in my lifetime.” He crouched on the grass, staring in awe at the fast-approaching object.

  “Is this a Shadowrealm?” Josh asked, looking from Dee to Dare.

  The woman shook her head slightly. “No, this is no Shadowrealm.”

  Josh stood and shaded his eyes, staring at the craft, mesmerized. As the vimana drew closer, he could see that it was made from what appeared to be a milky crystal encircled by a thick band of gold. The saucer dipped and dropped to the ground, filling the air with a low subsonic buzzing that fell to a deep rumbling as it hovered inches over the grass.

  Sophie climbed to her feet and stood alongside her twin. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered. “It’s like a jewel.” The opalescent crystal was flawless, and the gold rim of the vehicle was inscribed with tiny sticklike characters.

  “Where are we, Josh?” Sophie whispered.

  Josh shook his head. “Not where … when,” he murmured. “Vimanas belong to the oldest of all the myths.”

  Without a sound, the top half of the oval flipped open and the side of the craft retracted, revealing a blinding white interior.

  A man and a woman appeared in the opening.

  Tall and slender with deeply tanned skin, they both wore white ceramic armor etched with patterns, pictographs and hieroglyphs from a score of languages. The woman wore her black hair short, in a style cropped close to her head, whereas the man’s skull was smooth shaven. Their eyes were a bright, brilliant blue, and when they smiled, their teeth were small and perfectly white, except for the incisors, which looked unnaturally long and sharp. Hand in hand, they stepped off the vimana and walked across the grass. The glass and resin flowers melted to globules beneath their feet.

  Unconsciously Sophie and Josh stepped back, squinting against the low sun and the blinding reflection off the couple’s armor, trying to make out their features. There was something so terribly familiar….

  Suddenly Dee gasped, then drew in his arms and legs, trying to make himself as small as possible. “Masters,” he said. “Forgive me.”

  The couple ignored him. They continued on their path, staring at the twins pointedly, until their heads blocked the sunlight, revealing their features in a halo of light.

  “Sophie,” the man said, bright blue eyes twinkling with delight.

  “Josh,” the woman added, shaking her head slightly, lips curling into a smile. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  “Mom? Dad?” the twins said simultaneously. They took another step backward, confused and frightened now.

  The couple bowed formally. “In this place we are called Isis and Osiris. Welcome to Danu Talis, children.” They stretched out their hands. “Welcome home.”

  The twins looked at one another, eyes and mouths wide in fear and confusion. Sophie reached out and gripped her brother’s arm. Despite a week of extraordinary revelations, this was almost too much to take in. She tried to form words and ask questions, but her mouth was dry, and her tongue felt thick and swollen.

  Josh kept looking from his father to his mother and back again, trying to make some sense of what he was seeing. The couple looked like his parents, Richard and Sara Newman. They sure sounded like them too, but his parents were in Utah … he’d spoken to his father only a few days ago. They’d talked about a horned dinosaur from the Cretaceous period.

  “I know this is a lot to take in,” Richard Newman—Osiris—said with a grin.

  “But trust us,” Sara—Isis—said, “it will all make sense.” Her voice was reassuring as she smiled at the boy and girl. “All your lives have been leading up to this moment. This, children, is your destiny. This is your day. And what have we always said about the day?” she asked, smiling.

  “Carpe diem,” they both responded automatically. “Seize the day.”

  “What—” Josh began.

  Isis raised her hand. “In time. All in good time. And trust us—this is a good time. This is the best of times. You have stepped back ten thousand years into your past.”

  Sophie and Josh looked at one another. After everything they’d been through, they knew they should be delighted to be reunited with their parents, but there was something terribly wrong here. They had a hundred questions … and the two people standing in front of them hadn’t exactly answered any of them.

  Dr. John Dee scrambled to his feet and fastidiously brushed himself off before pushing past the twins and bowing deeply to the white-armored couple. “Masters. I am honored—deeply honored—to stand in your presence again.” He raised his head to look from face to face. “And I trust you will acknowledge that I was instrumental in bringing the twins of legend to you.”

  Osiris looked at Dee, flashing a ghost of the smile he’d shown the twins. “Ah, the dependable Dr. Dee, always the opportunist …” He stretched out his right hand, palm downward, and the Magician scrambled to take it in both of his and press his lips to the back of the fingers. “… and ever the fool.”

  Dee looked up quickly and attempted to pull away, but Osiris had caught his hand. “I have always—” the Magician began in alarm.

  “—been a fool,” Isis snapped.

  A shadow crossed Osiris’s face, and as his lips drew back from sharp white teeth, it transformed in an instant into a cruel mask. The shaven-headed man suddenly took hold of Dee’s head on either side, thumbs on the immortal’s cheekbones, and pulled him up until the human’s feet left the ground. “And what use have we for a fool … or worse, a flawed tool!” Osiris’s blue eyes were level with the Magician’s. “Do you remember the day I made you immortal, Dee?” he whispered.

  The doctor started to struggle, eyes suddenly wide with terror. “No,” he gasped.

  “When I told you I could make you human again?” Osiris said. “Athanasia-aisanahta,” he breathed, and then he flung the Magician away from him.

  The Magician sailed through the air, and by the time he hit the ground at Virginia Dare’s feet, he was an old man: a shriveled, wizened bundle of rags, face lost in wrinkles, gray hair scattered in clumps on the silken grass around him, eyes milky white behind cataracts, lips blue, teeth loose in his gums.

  Sophie and Josh looked in horror at the creature who only moments before had been a vibrant human. Now he was ancient beyond belief, but still alive, still aware. Sophie turned back to stare at the man who looked like her father, who sounded like him … and realized that she did not know him at all. Her father—Richard Newman—was a loving, gentle man. He would have been incapable of such casual cruelty.

  Osiris saw the look on Sophie’s face. “Judge me when you are in possession of all the facts,” he said icily.

  “Sophie, something you haven’t learned yet is that there are times when pity is a weakness,” Isis said.

  Sophie started to shake her head. She didn’t agree. And although the voice was Sara Newman’s, the sentiment was not. Sophie had always known her mother to be one of the kindest and most generous of people.

  “The doctor has never been worthy of pity. This is the man who killed thousands in his search for the Codex, the man whose ambition sacrificed nations. This is the man who would have slain you both without a second thought. You must remember, Sophie, that not all monsters wear bestial shapes. Don’t waste your pity on the likes of Dr. John Dee.”

  Even as the woman was speaking, Sophie caught flickering hints of the Witch of Endor’s memories about the couple known as Isis and Osiris. And the Witch de
spised them both.

  With a tremendous effort, Dee raised his left hand toward his masters. “I served you for centuries …,” he croaked. The effort exhausted him and he fell back on the grass. His wrinkled skin had tightened across his head, emphasizing the skull beneath.

  Isis ignored him. She looked at Virginia Dare, who had remained unmoving throughout the brief encounter. “Immortal: the world is about to change beyond all recognition. Those who are not with us are against us. And those who stand against us will die. Where do you stand, Virginia Dare?”

  The woman gracefully climbed to her feet, twirling her wooden flute lightly in her left hand, leaving a single note shimmering on the air. “The doctor promised me a world,” she said. “What do you offer?”

  Isis moved and the sunlight blazed white off her armor. “Are you attempting to bargain with us?” The Elder’s voice began to rise. “You are in no position to negotiate!”

  Dare spun the wooden flute again and the air shivered with an unearthly keening. All around them the glass flowers shattered to dust. “I am not Dee,” Virginia said icily. “I neither respect you nor like you. I am certainly not afraid of you.” She tilted her head to one side, looking from Isis to Osiris. “And you should remember what happened to the last Elder who threatened me.”

  “You can have your world,” Osiris said quickly, reaching out to rest his hand on his wife’s shoulder.

  “Which world?”

  “Any world you wish,” he said, a broken smile fixed on his face. “We will need someone to act as a replacement for Dee.”

  Virginia Dare stepped daintily over the ancient wheezing man. “I will do that. Temporarily, at least,” she added.

  “Temporarily?” Osiris smiled.

  “Until I get my world.”

  “You will have it.”

  “Then we are done and I will never see you again, nor will you ever bother me.”

  “You have our word.”

  Isis and Osiris turned to the twins and held out their hands again, yet neither Sophie nor Josh made any attempt to take them. “Come now,” Isis said, a touch of impatience in her voice, making her sound like the Sara Newman they knew. “We need to go. There is much to do.”

  Neither twin moved.

  “We need some answers,” Josh said defiantly. “You can’t just expect us to—”

  “We will answer all your questions, I promise you,” Isis interrupted. She turned away and the warmth in her voice disappeared. “We must go now.”

  Virginia Dare was about to step past the twins, when she stopped and looked at Josh. “If Isis and Osiris are your parents … what does that make you?” she asked. She glanced over her shoulder at Dee, then turned away to walk toward the crystal ship.

  Sophie looked at her brother. “Josh …,” she started.

  “I have no idea what’s going on, Sis,” he said, answering her unspoken question.

  A dry, rasping cough drew their attention back to Dee. Although the sun was blazing in the sky and the air was warm, the ancient man had curled up in a ball and was shivering violently, arms wrapped around his body for warmth. They could hear his teeth rattle in his head. Without a word, Sophie pulled off her red hooded fleece and handed it to her brother. He looked at it for a moment, then nodded and stepped forward to kneel down beside Dee. Gently he draped the fleece over the Magician, tucking it in around his shoulders. The Magician nodded his thanks, his white eyes wet with emotion, and clutched the fleece to himself tightly.

  “I’m sorry,” Josh said. He knew what Dee was, knew what he was capable of, but no one deserved to die like this. He looked over his shoulder. Isis and Osiris were climbing into the vimana. “You can’t just leave him like this,” he called.

  “Why? Would you rather I kill him, Josh?” Osiris asked with a laugh. “Is that what you want? Dee, is that what you want? I can kill you now.”

  “No,” Josh and Dee said simultaneously.

  “His four hundred and eighty years are catching up with him, that’s all. He will die of natural causes soon.”

  “It’s cruel,” Sophie said.

  “To be honest, considering the trouble he’s caused us over the past few days, I think I’m being rather merciful.”

  Josh turned back to Dee. The old man’s withered lips moved, his breath coming in great heaving gasps. “Go.” A clawlike hand wrapped around Josh’s wrist. “And when in doubt, Josh,” he whispered, “follow your heart. Words can be false, images and sounds can be manipulated. But this …” He tapped Josh’s chest. “This is always true.” He touched the boy’s chest again, and the sound of paper crackling under his red 49ers Faithful T-shirt was clearly audible. “Oh no, no, no.” The Magician’s face fell. “Tell me that’s not the missing pages from the Codex,” he whispered, voice cracking.

  Josh nodded. “It is.”

  Dee erupted in what began as a laugh, but the effort sent a wracking cough through his body and he folded in on himself, struggling to catch his breath. “You had them all along,” he murmured.

  Josh nodded again. “Right from the beginning.”

  Shaking with silent laugher, Dee closed his eyes and lay back on the silken grass. “What an apprentice you would have made,” he breathed.

  Josh watched the dying immortal until, finally, Osiris interrupted. “Josh,” he said firmly. “Leave him. We must go now—we have a world to save.”

  “Which world?” Sophie and Josh asked simultaneously,

  “All of them,” Isis and Osiris replied together.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The screams were piercing.

  A flock of parrots, green-bodied and red-faced Cherry-Headed Conures, swooped low over the Embarcadero in San Francisco. They buzzed past the three men and the woman standing at the wooden rail by the water’s edge. The shrill, high-decibel shrieking echoed through the late-afternoon air. One of the men, bigger and more muscular than the others, pressed his hands to his ears.

  “I hate parrots,” Prometheus grumbled. “Noisy, filthy—”

  “Poor things; they’re upset.” Nicholas Flamel didn’t let the Elder finish his complaint. His nostrils flared as he breathed deeply. “They sense the auras in the air.”

  Prometheus dropped a heavy hand on the Alchemyst’s shoulder. “I’ve nearly been eaten by a seven-headed sea monster. I’m a little upset myself, but you don’t hear me screaming about it.”

  The third man, slender and black-suited, with delicate Japanese features, looked up into Prometheus’s broad lined face. “No, but you will grumble about it for the rest of the day.”

  “If we survive the rest of the day,” Prometheus muttered. A parrot flew by, close enough to ruffle the Elder’s graying hair, and a spatter of sticky white appeared on the big man’s checked shirt. His face wrinkled into a grimace of disgust. “Oh, great—that’s just perfect! Could this day get any worse?”

  “Will you three be quiet!” the woman snapped. She pushed a coin into the slot beneath the blue metal viewing binoculars, then tilted them toward the island of Alcatraz, which lay directly ahead of them across the bay. She turned the wheel and the buildings swam into focus.

  “What do you see?” Nicholas asked.

  “Patience, patience.” Perenelle shook her head. Her long hair had shaken loose from its braid, and shimmered black and silver across her back. “Nothing unusual. There’s no movement on land and I can see nothing in the water. There are no birds in the air over the island.” She stepped away from the binoculars and allowed her husband to take her place. She stood thinking for a moment and frowned. “It’s too quiet.”

  “Calm before the storm,” Nicholas muttered.

  Prometheus leaned his massive forearms on the wooden rail and looked across the bay. “And yet we know those cells are full of monsters, and Machiavelli and Billy along with Dee and Dare are there. Mars, Odin and Hel must be there by now….”

  “Wait,” Nicholas said suddenly. “I see a boat….”

  “Who’s driving?” Prometheus aske
d.

  Nicholas turned the big metal binoculars and focused on a small craft that had appeared from behind the island, white waves foaming in its wake.

  Niten climbed onto the lower rail of the wooden fence and leaned forward, hands shading his brown eyes. “I can see one person in the boat. It’s Black Hawk. He’s alone….”

  “So where is everyone else?” Prometheus wondered aloud. “Is he fleeing?”

  “No, this is Black Hawk….” Niten stopped the Elder before he could finish the thought. “Do not dishonor his name.” He shook his head firmly. “Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak is one of the bravest warriors I’ve ever encountered.”

  The three immortal humans and the Elder watched the boat bounce over the waves, heading toward the shore.

  “Wait …,” the Alchemyst said suddenly.

  “Is there something in the water?” Niten asked.

  Though the binoculars, Nicholas could see a dozen seal-like heads bobbing on the surface of the waves surrounding the boat. He squinted to get a better look. Though his eyes were aging, he could clearly see that the heads belonged to green-haired young women who were beautiful until they opened their mouths to reveal piranha-like teeth.

  “Seals?” Prometheus asked.

  “There are Nereids in the water,” he announced. “And more are coming.”

  Soon the boat was close enough that the group on the pier could all see the creatures surrounding it. They watched in silence as one rose out of the sea and attempted to climb aboard. The stocky copper-skinned immortal nudged the boat to one side and the hull of the craft slammed into the fish-tailed creature, sending her crashing back into the water. Black Hawk turned the boat in a tight circle, almost tipping it over, bringing it around to head back into the group of Nereids, driving it directly toward them. Water foamed as they scattered.

  “He’s deliberately engaging the Nereids,” Niten said. “He’s keeping them away from the island.”