The Alchemyst (16 page)

Hekate glanced over her shoulder at the Alchemyst. “And there are good reasons why it should take many years,” she said dismissively. “The humani barely use their senses. Yet you are proposing to Awaken these two to their full potential. I will not do it: the sensory overload could destroy them, drive them mad.”

“But—” Flamel began.

“I will not do it.” She turned back to the twins. “What he is asking me to do could kill you—if you are lucky,” she said, and then turned and swept from the room, leaving little grassy footprints in her wake.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

T
he twins were speechless for a moment. Then Josh began, “What did she mean…?”

But Nicholas hurried past him, following Hekate out into the hallway. “She’s exaggerating,” he called back over his shoulder. “Trying to frighten you.”

“Well, it worked,” Josh muttered. He looked at Scathach, but she turned her back and walked into the garden. “Hey,” he called, hurrying after her, “come back. I’ve got questions.” He felt a quick surge of anger; he was tired of being treated like a child. He—and his sister—deserved some answers.

“Josh,” Sophie warned.

But her brother darted past her and reached for Scathach’s shoulder. His fingers never even touched her. Suddenly, he was caught, twisted, turned and then spun through the air. He hit the ground hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs, and he found himself staring down the length of Scathach’s sword, the tip of which she held rock steady between his eyes. When she spoke, her voice was little more than a whisper. “Last night you insulted a goddess of the Elder Race; today you’ve managed to irritate one of the Next Generation—and it’s not even dawn yet,” she added. The Warrior Maid sheathed her sword and looked over at a stunned Sophie. She hadn’t even seen Scathach move. “Is he always like this?” Scatty asked.

“Like what?” Sophie asked.

“Foolish, ill-advised, reckless…? Shall I go on?”

“No need. And yes, he’s usually like this. Sometimes worse.” When they were growing up, she used to tease Josh that he got all the “doing” genes, whereas she got the “thinking” genes. Her brother was both impulsive and reckless, but to be fair, she thought, he was also loyal and trustworthy.

Scathach pulled Josh to his feet. “If you continue at this rate, you’ll not last long in this world.”

“I just wanted to ask you a few questions.”

“You’re lucky. A couple of centuries ago, I probably would have killed you. I used to have a bit of a temper,” she admitted, “but I’ve been working on my self-control.”

Josh rubbed the small of his back. If Scathach had smashed him down on the stones, he could really have been hurt, but he recognized that she’d been careful to drop him onto the grass and moss. “That felt like a judo throw,” he said shakily, attempting to sound casual and change the subject.

“Something like that…”

“Where did you learn judo, anyway?”

“I didn’t learn judo. I created the distant ancestor of most of the martial arts that are studied today,” the red-haired warrior said, bright green eyes flashing wickedly. “In fact, it would do neither of you any harm if I were to show you a few simple moves.”

“I think we can do better than simple,” Josh said. “We studied tae kwon do for two years when our parents were teaching in Chicago, and we did a year of karate in New York…or was that Boston?”

“You created judo?” Sophie asked, keeping her voice carefully neutral.

“No, Kano Jigoro created modern judo, but he based his fighting system on jujitsu, which is related to aikido, which evolved around the fourteenth century. I believe I was in Japan around then. All martial arts have a common root. And that’s me,” Scatty said modestly. “Come, if you know a little tae kwon do and karate, that’s useful. Let me show you some basic moves while we’re waiting for Nicholas.”

“Where is he?” Sophie asked, looking back over her shoulder at the house. What was going on in there? “Is he asking Hekate to Awaken our magical potential?”

“He is,” Scatty affirmed.

“But Hekate said that could kill us!” Josh said in alarm. He was beginning to suspect that Flamel’s agenda was about more than just protecting him and his sister. The Alchemyst was up to something.

“She was only guessing,” Scatty said. “She’s always been a bit of a drama queen.”

“Then Nicholas is sure we’re in no danger?” Josh said.

“No, he’s not really sure.” Scatty smiled. “But believe me, you are in danger. The only difference is if Hekate Awakens you, then you’ll be in
grave
danger.”

Nicholas Flamel followed Hekate through the house. The young woman’s fingers trailed along the walls, leaving streaks of bright wood touched with leaves and flowers in her wake. “I need your help, Hekate. I cannot do this alone,” he called after her.

The goddess ignored him. She turned down a long, straight corridor and darted ahead. Her feet left little puddles of green grass that grew even as Flamel hurried after her. By the time he was halfway down the corridor it was knee high, then waist high, and suddenly, the entire corridor was covered in the tall, razor-sharp grass. Its blades whispered softly together, sounds that might almost have been words.

Nicholas Flamel allowed a little of his growing anger to seep into his aura. Closing his right hand into a fist, he suddenly splayed his fingers and the air was touched with the rich, tart odor of mint. The grass directly ahead of him flattened as if it had been hit with a strong wind, and the Alchemyst was just in time to see the young woman step into a room set slightly apart from the rest of the house. If he had delayed a moment longer, he would have walked right past the opening.

“Enough of these games,” Flamel snapped, stepping into the room.

Hekate spun to face him. She had aged in the few moments she had spent running down the corridor. She now looked about fifteen. Her face was set in an ugly mask and her yellow eyes were bitter. “How dare you speak to me that way!” She raised her hands threateningly. “You know what I can do to you.”

“You would not dare,” Flamel said with a calm that he did not feel.

“And why not?” Hekate asked, surprised. She was not used to being contradicted.

“Because I am the Guardian of the Book.”

“The book you lost…”

“I am also the Guardian who appears in the prophecies in the Book,” Flamel snapped. “The next-to-last Guardian,” he added. “The twins also appear in the book. You say you knew Abraham—you know then how accurate his prophecies and foretellings were.”

“He was often wrong,” Hekate muttered.

“As Guardian, I am asking you to do something I believe to be essential to the survival of not only the Elder Race, but humani, too: I want you to Awaken the twins’ magical potential.”

“It could kill them,” the goddess stated flatly. She didn’t really care if the humani cattle lived or died.

“That is a possibility,” Flamel admitted, feeling something icy settle in the pit of his stomach, “but if you do not help us, then their deaths are a certainty.”

Hekate turned and walked to the window. Across the sloping lawn, Scathach was demonstrating a series of punches for the twins. They were smoothly mimicking her moves. Flamel went to join Hekate by the window.

“What a world we live in,” he commented, sighing, “when everything—possibly even the continuance of the human race—lies on the shoulders of those teenagers.”

“You know why the humani triumphed and the Elder Race was ultimately banished?” Hekate asked suddenly.

“Because of iron, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, because of iron. We survived the Fall of Danu Talis, we survived the Flood, and the Age of Ice. And then, about three thousand years ago, a single metalworker, who had been crafting in bronze, began to experiment in the new metal. He was just one man—and yet he managed to wipe out an entire race of people and a way of life. Great change always comes down to the actions of a single person.” Hekate fell silent, watching the twins punch and kick next to Scathach. “Silver and gold. The rarest of all auras,” she muttered, and for a single heartbeat, the auras bloomed around the twins. “If I do this and it kills them, will you be able to live with it on your conscience?”

“I am old now, so old,” Nicholas said very softly. “Do you know how many friends I’ve buried over the centuries?”

“And did you feel their loss?” There was a note of genuine curiosity in Hekate’s voice.

“Every one.”

“Do you still?”

“Yes. Every day.”

The goddess reached out and placed her hand on his shoulder. “Then you are still human, Nicholas Flamel. The day you stop caring is the day you become like Dee and his kind.” She turned back to the garden and looked at the twins. They were both trying, and failing, to land blows on Scathach, who was ducking and weaving, though not moving from the one spot. From the distance they looked like three ordinary teenagers practicing a new dance, but Hekate knew that there was nothing ordinary about any of them.

“I’ll do it,” she said eventually, “I’ll Awaken their powers. The rest is up to you. You will have to train them.”

Flamel bowed his head so she would not see the tears in his eyes. If the twins survived the Awakening, then there was a chance, albeit a slim one, that he would get to see Perenelle again. “Tell me,” he began, then coughed to clear his throat. “The man who discovered how to process iron—that blacksmith three thousand years ago. What happened to him?”

“I killed him,” Hekate said, her yellow eyes wide and innocent. “His actions destroyed us. What else could I do? But it was too late. The secret of iron had been introduced into the world.”

Flamel looked at the twins, watched Josh haul his sister to her feet, watched her hook a leg behind his and drop him to the ground. Their laughter hung bright and clear in the predawn air. He prayed that they were not too late this time.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

T
he cats of San Francisco left the city in the dead of night.

Singly and in pairs, feral and scarred street cats, plump, smooth-coated house cats, all shapes, every size, purebred and mixed, long-haired and short-haired, they moved through the shadows in a silent feline wave. They surged across the bridges, boiled through alleys, raced through the tunnels beneath the streets, leapt across roofs.

All heading north.

They darted past shocked and terrified late-night revelers, skirted rats and mice without stopping to feed, ignored birds’ nests. And although they moved in complete silence, their passage was marked by an extraordinary sound.

That night the city of San Francisco echoed with the primeval howls of a hundred thousand dogs.

Dr. John Dee was unhappy.

And just a little bit frightened. It was all very well to talk about attacking Hekate in her own Shadowrealm, but it was another thing entirely to sit at the entrance to her invisible kingdom and watch the cats and birds arrive, called by their respective mistresses, Bastet and the Morrigan. What could those small creatures do against the ancient magic of Hekate of the Elder Race?

Dee sat in a huge black Hummer alongside Senuhet, the man who acted as Bastet’s servant. Neither of them had spoken during the short flight in Dee’s private jet from L.A. to San Francisco earlier, though there were a thousand questions Dee wanted to ask the older man. Over the years he had come to recognize that the servants of the Dark Elders—like himself—did not like to be questioned.

They had reached the entrance to Hekate’s Shadowrealm close to two o’clock, and were in time to see the first of the Morrigan’s creatures arriving. The birds swooped in from the north and east in long, dark flocks, the only sound the snapping of their wings, and settled in the trees in Mill Valley, gathering so thickly that some of the branches cracked beneath the strain.

Over the next few hours, the cats arrived.

They poured out of the darkness in a never-ending stream of fur, and then stopped—all facing the hidden opening to the Shadowrealm. Dee looked out his car window: he couldn’t see the ground. It was covered, as far as he could see in every direction, with cats.

Finally, just as the eastern horizon began to pale with salmon-colored light, Senuhet lifted a small black statue from a bag he wore around his neck and placed it on the dashboard. It was a beautifully carved Egyptian cat no bigger than his little finger. “It is time,” he said softly.

The eyes of the black statue glowed red.

“She is coming,” Senuhet said.

“Why didn’t we attack earlier, when Hekate slept?” Dee asked. Despite several hundred years of study about the Dark Elders, he realized that, in truth, he knew very little. But that gave him some comfort, because he realized that they knew equally little about humans.

Senuhet waved his hand, gesturing to the gathered birds and cats. “We needed our allies,” he said shortly.

Dee nodded. He guessed that Bastet was even now moving through the various Shadowrealms that bordered the human world. The Elder Race’s aversion to iron meant that certain modern conveniences—like cars and planes—were off limits to them. His thin lips curled in a humorless smile; that was why they needed people like him and Senuhet to act as their agents.

He felt, rather than saw, the birds move in the trees: half a million—maybe more—heads turned to the west. He followed their gaze, looking toward the darkest spot in the sky. At first, he could see nothing, but then a shape appeared high in the heavens, noticeable only because it blotted out the stars. The Morrigan was coming.

Dee knew that at the heart of every legend there is a grain of truth. Looking up into the night sky, watching the pale-faced creature appear out of the west, her feathered cloak spread behind her like enormous wings, Dee believed he knew where the legends of the Nosferatu vampires originated. Over the course of his long life, he had met vampires—real ones—and none of them were as terrifying as the Crow Goddess.

The Morrigan settled to the ground directly in front of the Hummer, cats scattering at the last moment as she folded her cloak and landed. In the gloom, only the white oval of her face was visible; her eyes were as black as night, looking like holes burned in paper.

Then the cats growled, a low rumbling that trembled through the very air, and Bastet stepped out of the shadows. The Cat Goddess was wearing the white cotton robes of an Egyptian princess and holding a spear that was as tall as she was. She strode through the sea of cats, which parted before her and closed in behind. Towering over the Morrigan, she bowed deeply to the Crow Goddess. “Niece, is it time?” she purred.

“It is,” the Morrigan replied, returning the bow. Shrugging back her cloak, she revealed a longbow strapped across her shoulders. She unslung the bow and notched an arrow from the quiver at her hip.

Then, turning as one, the two Dark Elders raced toward the seemingly impenetrable hedge and leapt through.

The cats and birds flowed after them.

“Now it begins,” Senuhet said gleefully, gathering his weapons—two curved Egyptian bronze swords—and climbing out of the car.

Or ends, Dee thought, but he kept his fears to himself.