05 The Warlock Page 5

  “Oliver Hardy,” Virginia Dare repeated, nodding in agreement. “I met them once, a long time ago, when I first came out to Hollywood.”

  “Were you in movies?” Josh asked, glancing at her in the mirror. She was certainly beautiful enough.

  Dare’s white teeth flashed a quick smile in the gloom. “Before there was sound,” she said, then turned to the English Magician. “Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into.”

  “Not now, Virginia,” Dee said tiredly.

  “You’ve gotten me in trouble before, John, but nothing like this. I knew I should never have joined with you.”

  “It did not take much to convince you,” Dee reminded her.

  “You promised me a world …,” she began, and then Dee’s hand shot out and touched her arm, his eyes darting toward Josh. The pause in her sentence was so brief it was barely noticeable. “… free of all pain and suffering,” she finished, unable to keep the note of sarcasm out of her voice.

  Josh turned right off Bay Street onto the Embarcadero.

  “All is not lost yet,” Dee said. “Not while we still have this.” Opening his stained and torn coat, he pulled out a small book bound in tarnished green copper. The book was about six inches across by nine inches long and was older than humanity. The doctor ran his fingers across the metal surface and yellow particles danced and crackled beneath his flesh. The air immediately turned sour as their three auras—orange, sage and sulfur—mingled. Sparks danced across every metal surface inside the car. The interior lights flashed on and off, then died, and the satellite navigation system’s LCD screen bubbled with warped rainbow-colored streamers. The radio turned itself on and ran through a dozen stations before dying in a squawk of static. Every indicator on the dashboard lit up with red warning lights. The heavy car jerked and stalled.

  “Close it,” Josh called from the front. “It’s going to destroy the electronics in the car.” Dee snapped the book shut and shoved it back under his coat and Josh turned the ignition to restart the car. The engine coughed, then caught, and Josh floored the accelerator.

  “Nicely done,” Virginia Dare said.

  “The Codex is the key,” Dee continued, as if nothing had happened. “I am sure of that. All I have to do is figure out how to use it.” He leaned forward and tapped Josh on the shoulder. “If only someone hadn’t torn out the last two pages.”

  Josh kept his mouth shut. Concentrating on the drive had, curiously, allowed him to think more clearly again. Beneath his red 49ers Faithful T-shirt he was carrying the two pages he’d torn from the Codex in a cloth bag around his neck. Although he had come to trust the English Magician—or to distrust him less than Flamel, anyway—for some reason he didn’t quite understand, Josh was still reluctant to let Dee know that he had the pages.

  “Everything is coming,” Virginia Dare said quietly. “And I mean everything. Those cucubuths we encountered in London are nothing compared to what’s heading toward this city.” She twisted in her seat to look out the rear window. A tall column of smoke was rising into the sky over San Francisco. “The humani authorities will start investigating. First your company causes chaos in Ojai and now your head office burns down.” Even as she was speaking a rumbling explosion rippled through the air, sounding like distant thunder. “And this is not just any ordinary fire. I’m sure they’ll discover that you were storing illegal substances in the building.”

  “A few chemicals I needed for my experiments,” Dee said dismissively.

  “Dangerous chemicals,” Dare continued. “Also, you attacked two police officers. The authorities are going to be looking very closely at you, Dr. Dee. How vulnerable are you to that type of investigation?”

  Dee shrugged uncomfortably. “If they dig deep enough I’m sure they will find something. Nothing can remain truly secret in this digital age.”

  Virginia blew gently across the top of her flute. The sound was harsh, discordant. “The SFPD will bring in the FBI; they will talk to Scotland Yard in London, and if they link it to the recent devastation in Paris, they will get in touch with the French Sûreté. Once the police start to look for you on their surveillance cameras, they’ll find you. Then they will start asking questions. I am sure they will want to know how you got from Ojai to Paris with no record of your travel, and then managed to get back to San Francisco without boarding a commercial or private jet.”

  “You don’t have to sound quite so pleased about it,” Dee muttered.

  “And let us not forget the Elders. I would imagine even now, Elders, Next Generation and assorted creatures are making their way here, following the stink of magic. No doubt a phenomenal reward has been offered for you dead or alive.”

  “Alive,” Dee said miserably, “they want me alive.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Machiavelli told me.”

  “Machiavelli!” Virginia and Josh said simultaneously.

  “No friend of yours, John,” Virginia said, “unless you’ve had an extraordinary change of heart in the last few hundred years.”

  “Not my friend, but not exactly my enemy, either. He too has failed his Elder master.” He jerked his thumb behind him. “Do you know, he’s only a couple of miles away? He’s on Alcatraz with Billy the Kid.”

  “Billy the Kid?” Josh said quickly. “The Billy the Kid? The outlaw?”

  “Yes, yes,” Dee snapped. “The immortal Billy the Kid.”

  “What are they doing there?” Josh asked, confused.

  “Mischief,” Dee said with a smile.

  “How can they get onto the island? I thought it was closed to the public.”

  “It is,” Dee said. “My company, Enoch Enterprises, owns it. We bought it from the state. We told them we were going to turn it into a living history museum.”

  Josh slowed as the traffic lights ahead of him turned red. “I’m guessing that was a lie,” he said.

  “Dr. John Dee is incapable of telling the truth,” Virginia Dare muttered.

  The immortal ignored her. “My masters instructed me to gather a menagerie of beasts and monsters in a secure location as close to the city as possible. The island prison was the perfect location. And it had ready-made cells to house them.”

  The woman sat forward. “What sort of monsters?” she asked. “The usual kind, or did you find something interesting?”

  “The worst kind,” Dee said. “The nightmares, the savages, the abominations.”

  “Why?”

  “When the time is right, they want to release them onto the city.”

  “Why?” she asked again.

  “To distract the humani and allow the Elders to return to this Shadowrealm. The creatures will ravage through the city, and even the most modern army, with all its weapons and firepower, will be unable to stop them. When the city is on the very edge of collapse, the Elders will appear and defeat them. The Elders will become the saviors of the humani and be worshipped again as gods.”

  “But why do that?” Josh asked.

  “Once they come back, they can start to repair the earth.”

  “I know that. But why can’t they just return? Why do you have to destroy the city?”

  “Not the entire city …,” Dee began.

  “You know what I mean!”

  “The Elders will destroy the beasts and repair the city. It will happen in the full glare of the media and be a spectacular demonstration of their powers. Josh, remember, the Elders’ powers are nothing short of miraculous. Well, they can tell people about those powers or they can simply show the humani just what they can do. And a picture is worth a thousand words.”

  Dare nodded. “And when is all this due to happen?”

  “At the Time of Litha.”

  “But that’s two weeks away. What are Machiavelli and the Kid doing on the island now?”

  “The plan must have changed,” Dee said shortly.

  “But Machiavelli won’t release the monsters into the city, will he?” Josh asked quickly. He had no difficu
lty imagining Dee loosing creatures into San Francisco, but he’d thought Machiavelli had a little more humanity.

  “Who knows what the Italian will do?” Dee snapped. “This is a man who made plans that took decades to mature. The last I heard from him, he said he was trapped on the island—”

  “Hang on a second,” Josh said quickly. “If Enoch Enterprises owns Alcatraz …”

  “… and the police are looking into Enoch Enterprises,” Virginia Dare continued, “then they will visit the island as soon as they have a warrant.”

  “That will end badly for them,” Dee said.

  Virginia Dare laughed. “Why, Dr. Dee, it seems there is no place for you to hide in San Francisco. And once the FBI become involved, your face and name will be known across America. Where will you go then? What will you do?”

  “Survive,” the immortal answered. “As I have always done.”

  Josh was driving across Green Street when he spotted a young man with a heavy-looking backpack standing under the arch of Pier 15 to his left. There was something about the way the man was holding himself—something awkward and unnatural. Josh squinted his eyes and focused—and instantly spotted the wisps of a dull green aura streaming from the figure. He watched the figure’s pale face turn to follow them, and then the man raised a phone to his mouth. “We’ve been spotted,” he said instantly.

  The doctor pressed himself against the dark window and looked across the road. “Bogeyman,” he said shortly.

  Virginia Dare leaned across the seat to look out. “Actually, it’s a Sack Man,” she said, “and we have definitely been spotted. The Sack Men are mostly harmless, but they act as lookouts for far more dangerous creatures.”

  Josh could make out three more of the Sack Men standing beneath the archway of Pier 9. He was expecting them to look like … well, he wasn’t exactly sure what he was expecting, but they looked like normal teenagers, wearing jeans, T-shirts and scuffed sneakers and carrying bulging and battered backpacks on their shoulders.

  “I see them,” Dee said miserably.

  The Sack Men’s pale faces turned to follow the car as it passed. Together they raised cell phones to their mouths. One dropped a skateboard to the pavement and pushed off after the car, weaving through the crowd.

  “I’ll wager they’re laying a trap,” Virginia said quietly.

  The lights changed and Josh shot across Broadway. There was another huddled group of teenagers around Pier 5, and yet another farther down the road outside the Port of San Francisco at Pier 1. An identically dressed trio hopped onto modified bicycles, pedaled furiously across the road, dodging oncoming traffic, and set off after the car.

  “I’ve never seen so many of them in one place. They are expensive spies; I wonder who they are reporting to.”

  One of the cyclists caught up with the car and kept pace with it. He looked like any other bicycle courier—a brightly colored T-shirt, helmet, black wraparound glasses—except for the bag on his back. Josh adjusted the side mirror to watch the man. “What’s he got in the bag?” he asked.

  Dare’s laughter was bitter. “Trust me, you do not want to know.”

  John Dee sat back in the car as the cyclist tried to take pictures with his cell phone.

  Josh tightened his grip on the steering wheel, terrified that he was going to hit the weaving cyclist and send him spinning across the street.

  “They don’t even care that you know they’ve found you,” Dare said. “They must be very confident of capturing you.” She pressed the flute to her lips and the air vibrated as a sound almost too high for human hearing trembled on the air.

  The front and rear tires of the bicycle next to them exploded into black shreds and the cyclist shot over the handlebars, skidding across the road. The bicycle smashed into one of the palm trees lining the center island with enough force to reduce it to a twist of metal.

  Virginia Dare sat back into the leather seat and laughed. “You have become the hunted, Doctor. Hunted, and with nowhere either in this realm or any other Shadowrealm to hide. What are you going to do now?”

  Dr. John Dee remained silent for a long time and then he started to laugh, a low rasping wheeze that shook his entire body and left him breathless. “Why, become the hunter again.”

  “And whom will you hunt, Dr. Dee?”

  “The Elders.”

  “You tried that with Coatlicue and it failed,” Dare reminded him.

  The back of the car turned foul with the stink of sulfur. “Do you know which is the most dangerous animal of all?” he asked suddenly.

  Taken aback by the odd question, Josh shrugged and said, “A polar bear? A wolverine?”

  “Rhino?” Virginia suggested.

  “It’s any trapped animal,” Dee answered simply. “It’s the one with nothing to lose.”

  The woman sighed. “I have an idea I’m not going to like where this is going.”

  “Oh, I think you will like it very much,” Dee said softly. “Virginia, I promised you a world … but I am about to better my offer. Stand with me, fight with me, lend me your powers, and I will offer you your pick of all the Shadowrealms in existence. I will give you any one you desire.”

  “I believe that is what you already offered me.”

  “Think of it, Virginia,” he said quickly, “not one world, but two or three or more. You can have your own empire. You’ve always wanted that, haven’t you?”

  Dare’s eyes found Josh’s in the mirror. “The stress has driven him mad,” she said sadly.

  “And you, Josh. Side with me, give me the power of your golden aura, and I will give you this earth, this Shadowrealm, to rule. And I swear to you that I will give you the powers to do whatever you wish with it. You—you, Josh Newman—can become the savior of this earth.”

  The idea was so outrageous, it almost took Josh’s breath away. And yet … a week ago, he would have said it was ridiculous, but now … He could feel the pages of the Codex getting hotter and hotter against his skin, and suddenly the idea didn’t seem so improbable. To rule the world. He laughed shakily. “I think Miss Dare is right: you have gone crazy.”

  “No, not crazy. Sane. For the first time in my long life I am beginning to see things clearly, so very clearly. I have been the servant all my life, a servant to queen and country, to Elders and Next Generation. I have done the bidding of men and immortals. Now it is time for me to become the master.”

  Josh stared straight ahead and stayed quiet. He drove past the Ferry Building. The clock tower showed eleven-thirty. Finally he broke the silence. “What are you going to do?” he asked, his stomach suddenly queasy. Even as he was asking the question, the pages of the Codex pulsed warmly against his flesh again, beating like a heart.

  “I’m going to use the power of the Codex to destroy the Elders.”

  “Destroy them?” Josh felt his stomach lurch. “But you said we needed them.”

  “We needed their powers,” Dee said quickly, “to repair and restore this world. But what if we had those powers? What if we could do everything they did? We would not need them. We would become like gods.”

  “You’re talking about destroying the Elders,” Virginia said quietly, eyes fixed on Dee’s face.

  “Yes.”

  “All of them?” she asked incredulously.

  “All of them.”

  The woman laughed, delighted. “And how do you intend to do that, Doctor? They are scattered across a thousand Shadowrealms.”

  Dee’s aura bloomed around him like yellow fungus. “Now they are. But there was a time when they were all in one place, and not as powerful as they are today.”

  Dare shook her head, confused. “When? Where?”

  Josh suddenly knew the answer.

  “Ten thousand years ago,” he said very softly, “on Danu Talis.”

  he one-eyed Elder walked across a metal world. He knew that there was life in this Shadowrealm, but none of it was recognizable.

  Gritty black sand swirled and formed arcane pat
terns beneath his feet, and huge unnaturally regular boulders shook, shifted and inched toward him as he strode past. Bubbles of mercury rose to the surface of shining silver lakes, and when they burst, tiny globules bounced toward the solitary figure. There was no sky, only a distant metal roof covered in varicolored lights. There had once been an energy source in the center of the roof, but it had long since burned out.

  Odin did not know who had created this metal Shadowrealm. He believed that it had once been a thriving world, and he knew it must have been important—the effort of creating it was unimaginable, beyond his limited powers. Yet now it did not even have a name.

  The Elder crested a low mound of glittering black silica and turned to look back across the landscape. A series of dark undulating sand dunes punctuated by slabs of metal disappeared on the horizon. The air was still, but his long gray and black hooded cloak shifted on his back. Millennia ago, one of his human servants had slain a hideous Archon dragon beast and presented him with a cloak made from the skin of the creature. Its natural color was blue, but it changed with its surroundings, and at times of danger the scales grew rigid.

  The cloak had turned hard as iron and hung heavy about his shoulders.

  “Who’s there?” Odin called. The metallic landscape sent his voice echoing across the sands, bouncing it off the ceiling and the irregular wedges of metallic rock. The gnarled fingers of the Elder’s left hand tightened around the staff he carried, a remnant of the original Yggdrasill, which had grown in the heart of Danu Talis.

  Odin brought the staff to his left eye. His right eye was covered by a faded leather patch; he had sacrificed it a long time ago to the Archon Mimer in return for eldritch knowledge, and he’d never regretted the bargain. A chunk of bloodred amber was embedded in the top of his staff, held in place by a tracery of delicate silver wires. Trapped within the amber were creatures that had become extinct even before the Earthlords lived, tiny delicate beings of crystal and bone, ceramic and chitin.

  Odin gazed through the amber and allowed the merest hint of his aura to flow into the Yggdrasill staff. A wisp of gray smoke curled off the wood, and the oily-smelling metallic air was suffused with the clean sharp odor of ozone.