The Magician (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #2) (46 page)

“They’ve spotted us”, Machiavelli said. Huge beads of sweat rolled down his face, and his lips were blue with the effort of controlling the stone creatures.

“It is no matter”, Dee said, peering over the edge. “They are powerless.” In the square below, the five humans were standing in a circle as the crushing stone statues closed in.

“Then let us finish it”, Machiavelli said through gritted teeth. “But remember, we need the children alive.” He broke off as something slender and silver arced through the air before his face. “It’s an arrow”, he began in wonder, and then stopped and grunted as the arrow plunged deep into his thigh. His entire leg from hip to toe went dead. He staggered back and fell onto the cathedral roof, hands pressed against his leg. Surprisingly, there was no blood, but the pain was excruciating.

On the ground far below, at least half the creatures suddenly froze or toppled over. They crashed to the ground, and those behind tumbled over them. Rock shattered, weathered stone exploding to dust. But still the rest of the creatures pressed on, closing in.

Another dozen silver arrows arced up from below. They pinged and shattered harmlessly against the brickwork.

“Machiavelli!” Dee howled.

“I can’t…” The pain in his leg was indescribable, and tears rolled down his cheeks. “I can’t concentrate.”

“Then I’ll finish it myself.”

“The boy and girl”, Machiavelli said weakly. “We need them alive.”

“Not necessarily. I am a necromancer. I can reanimate their corpses.”

“No!” Machiavelli screamed.

Dee ignored him. Focusing his extraordinary will, the Magician issued the gargoyles a single command. “Kill them. Kill them all.”

The creatures surged forward.

“Again, Joan!” Flamel shouted. “Fire again!”

“I cannot.” The tiny Frenchwoman was gray with exhaustion. “The arrows are shaped from my aura. I have nothing left.”

The gargoyles pressed in, closer and closer, stone grinding and scraping as they shuffled on. Their range of movement was limited; some had claws and teeth, others horns or barbed tails, but they would simply crush the humans.

Josh picked up a small round grotesque that was so weathered it was little more than a squat lump of stone and heaved it back into the mass of creatures. It struck a gargoyle, and both shattered. He winced with the sound, but he also realized that they could be destroyed. Pressing his hands against his ears, he squinted at the broken creature, his Awakened sight taking in every detail. The stone creatures were invulnerable to steel and magic but then he noted that the stone was weathered and fragile. What destroyed stone?

There was a flash of memory except it wasn’t his memory of an ancient city, walls crumbling, pulverized to dust

“I’ve got an idea”, he shouted.

“Make it a good one”, Saint-Germain called. “Is it magic?”

“It’s basic chemistry.” Josh looked at Saint-Germain. Francis, “how hot can you make your fire?”

“Very hot.”

“Sophie, how cold a wind can you create?”

“Very cold”, she said, nodding. She suddenly knew what her brother was suggesting: she’d done the same experiment in chemistry class.

“Do it now”, Josh shouted.

A carved dragon with a chipped bat s wing lurched forward. Saint-Germain unleashed the full force of his Fire magic against the creature’s head, bathing it in flame, baking it cherry red. And then Sophie let loose a puff of arctic air.

The dragon’s head cracked and exploded into dust.

“Hot and cold”, Josh shouted, “hot and cold.”

“Expansion and contraction”, Nicholas said with a shaky laugh. He looked up to where Dee’s head was just visible over the edge of the roof. “One of the basic principles of alchemy.”

Saint-Germain bathed a boar galloping toward them in scalding heat, and Sophie washed icy air over it. Its legs snapped off.

“Hotter!” Josh shouted. “It needs to be hotter. And yours need to be colder”, he said to his sister.

“I’ll try”, she whispered. Her eyes were already leaden with exhaustion. “I don’t know how much more I can do.” She looked at her brother. “Help me”, she said. “Let me draw on your strength.”

Josh stood behind Sophie and placed both hands on her shoulders. Silver and gold auras sparked alight, mixing, entwining. Realizing what they were doing, Joan immediately gripped her husband’s shoulders and both their auras red and silver crackled around them. When Saint-Germain shot a plume of fire over the approaching gargoyles, it was white-hot, strong enough to start melting the stones even before subarctic freezing winds and icy fog rolled from Sophie’s hands. Saint-Germain turned in a slow circle, and Sophie followed him. First stone cracked, ancient brick exploded, and rock melted beneath the intense heat, but when the icy winds followed, the effect was dramatic. The hot stone statues exploded and split apart, shattering into gritty, stinging dust. The first row fell, and then the next and the next, until a wall of shattered and cracked stone built up in a circle around the trapped humans.

And when Saint-Germain and Joan slumped, Sophie and Josh continued, blasting icy air over the few remaining creatures. Because the gargoyles had spent centuries as water spouts, the stone was soft and porous. Using her brother’s energy to boost her powers, Sophie froze the moisture trapped within the stone and the creatures shattered.

“The two that are one”, Nicholas Flamel whispered, crouching exhausted on the cobblestones. He looked at Sophie and Josh, their auras blazing wildly about them, silver and gold intermixed, traces of ancient armor visible against their skin. Their power was incredible and seemingly inexhaustible. He knew that power like this could control, reshape or even destroy the world.

And as the last monstrous gargoyle exploded to dust and the twins auras faded away, the Alchemyst found himself wondering for the first time if Awakening them had been the correct decision.

On top of Notre Dame, Dee and Machiavelli watched as Flamel and the others picked their way through the smoking piles of masonry, heading in the direction of the bridge.

“We are in so much trouble”, Machiavelli said through gritted teeth. The arrow had disappeared from his thigh, but his leg was still numb.

“We?” Dee said lightly. “This, all this, is entirely your fault, Niccol. Or at least, that’s what my report will say. And you know what will happen then, don’t you?”

Machiavelli straightened and stood, leaning against the stonework, favoring his injured leg. “My report will differ.”

“No one will believe you”, Dee said confidently, turning away. “Everyone knows you are the master of lies.”

Machiavelli reached into his pocket and pulled out a small digital tape recorder. “Well then, it’s lucky I have everything you said on tape.” He tapped the recorder. “Voice activated. It recorded every word you spoke to me.”

Dee stopped. He slowly turned to face the Italian and looked at the slender tape recorder. “Every word?” he asked.

“Every word.” Machiavelli said grimly. “I think the Elders will believe my report.”

Dee stared at the Italian for a heartbeat before nodding. “What do you want?”

Machiavelli nodded at the devastation below. His smile was terrifying. “Look at what the twins can do and they’re barely Awakened, and not even fully trained.”

“What are you suggesting?” Dee asked.

“Between us, you and I have access to extraordinary resources. Working together rather than against one another we should be able to find the twins, capture them and train them.”

“Train them!”

Machiavelli’s eyes started to glitter. “They are the twins of legend. The two that are one, the one that is all. Once they’ve mastered all the elemental magics, they will be unstoppable.” His smile turned feral. “Whoever controls them controls the world.”

The Magician turned to squint across the square to where Flamel was just visible through the pall of dust and grit. “You think the Alchemyst knows this?”

Machiavelli’s laugh was bitter. “Of course he knows. Why else do you think he’s training them!”

A
t precisely 12:13, the Eurostar train pulled out of Gare du Nord station and began the two-hour-twenty-minute journey into London’s St. Pancras International Station.

Nicholas Flamel sat facing Sophie and Josh across a table in Business Premier Class. Saint-Germain had bought the tickets using an untraceable credit card and had supplied them with French passports that came complete with photographs that looked nothing like the twins, while Nicholas’s passport photograph was that of a young man with a full head of jet-black hair. “Tell them you’ve aged a lot in the past few years”, Saint-Germain said with a grin. Joan of Arc had spent the morning shopping and had presented Sophie and Josh each with a backpack filled with clothes and toiletries. When Josh had opened his, he’d discovered the small laptop Saint-Germain had given him the day before. Was it only yesterday? It seemed so long ago.

Nicholas spread out the newspapers as the train left the station and pulled on a pair of cheap reading glasses he’d bought at a drugstore. He held up
Le Monde
so that the twins could see the front page; it carried a picture of the devastation caused by Nidhogg.

“It says here”, Nicholas read slowly, “that a section of the catacombs collapsed.” He turned the page. There was a half-page picture of piles of shattered stone in the roped-off square before Notre Dame Cathedral. “Experts are claiming that the collapse and disintegration of some of Paris’s most famous gargoyles and grotesques was caused by acid rain that weakened the structures. The two events are unconnected”, he read, and closed the paper.

“So you were right”, Sophie said, exhaustion etched onto her face even though she’d slept for nearly ten hours. “Dee and Machiavelli have managed to cover it up.” She looked out the window as the train click-clacked across a maze of interconnecting lines. “A monster walked through Paris yesterday, gargoyles climbed down off a building and yet there’s nothing in the papers. It’s like it never happened.”

“But it did happen”, Flamel said seriously. “And you learned the Magic of Fire and Josh’s powers were Awakened. And yesterday you discovered just how powerful the two of you are together.”

“And Scathach died”, Josh said bitterly.

The blank look of surprise on Flamel’s face confused and annoyed Josh. He looked at his sister, then back at Nicholas.

“Scatty”, he said angrily. “Remember her? She was drowned in the Seine.”

“Drowned?” Flamel smiled, and the new lines at the corners of his eyes and across his forehead deepened. “She’s a vampire, Josh”, he said gently. “She doesn’t need to breathe air. I’ll bet she was mad, though; she hates getting wet”, he added. “Poor Dagon: he didn’t stand a chance.”

He sank back into the comfortable seat and closed his eyes.

“We’ve one brief stop to make outside London, then we’ll use the map of the ley lines to get back to San Francisco, and Perenelle.”

“Why are we going to England?” Josh asked.

“We’re going to see the oldest immortal human in the world”, the Alchemyst said. “I’m going to try and persuade him to train you both in the Magic of Water.”