The Warlock (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #5) (17 page)

“Done,” Dee shouted.

“Light the end of the rope,” Josh commanded.

“With what?” Dee asked.

“You don’t have matches?”

“Never needed them.” Dee wiggled his fingers. “Always had my aura.”

Josh’s mind was spinning, instantly creating and rejecting a dozen scenarios. “Take the wheel,” he instructed. “Keep us turning.” And even before the English Magician had grabbed the wheel, Josh had ducked belowdecks to the tiny cabin. He was looking for something.… He saw it immediately.

A first-aid box was pinned to a wall, and directly beneath it, in a glass-fronted box, hung a red plastic flare gun, designed to shoot a bright flare high into the sky to attract attention if the boat was in trouble.

Josh pulled open the box and wrenched the gun off the
wall. He’d seen his father use flare guns like this before, and he knew how they worked, though he’d never been allowed to fire one himself. He darted back on deck. If he’d had matches, he would have soaked the end of the rope in gas, then lit it and dropped it in the water. With the gun he would only have one chance to drop the blazing flare onto the thin film of gas on the surface.

The Nereids were closing in. They were gathered around the boat, mouths opening and closing, teeth clicking and rasping together, and the rancid odor of fish was almost overpowering.

Josh grabbed one of the fuel cans and shook it. Liquid sloshed. Catching the can by the handle, he swung it as if he were tossing a baseball and pitched it out to where he could see a thin oily rainbow film of gas on the water. The can splashed directly into the middle of the stain.

The boat dipped as a crab-clawed Nereid snipped a chunk out of the side of the hull.

Holding the red plastic flare pistol in both hands, Josh instinctively aimed a little above the floating gas can. He was acutely conscious of the direction of the wind, and he knew that the flare would arc out and then fall.

Just like an arrow
.

Thumbing back the hammer, he fired. A cherry-red flare sizzled from the barrel, arced through the air, fell … and struck the gas can, which instantly erupted into streamers of yellow and orange flames. The flames danced across the surface of the water, leaping from wave to wave, curling around to encircle the boat in a ring of fire.

For a brief moment, the air hummed with the incredibly beautiful song of the Nereids, and then, without a word, they slipped beneath the waves and vanished. A heartbeat later the blue-flamed fire sizzled out.

Dr. John Dee looked around the battered and scratched boat. Then he nodded to Josh. “Very impressive, young man.”

Josh was suddenly exhausted. The world had returned to its normal speed, and with that had come a leaden fatigue. He felt as if he’d just completed two back-to-back football games.

“Where did that idea come from?” Dee asked, watching Josh closely.

Josh shook his head. “Memories,” he muttered.

… of an army in the lacquered armor of Japan, trapped, surrounded and outnumbered, creating a maze of burning reeds and grasses to divide and trap the enemy
.

… of a warrior in leather and chain mail, head encased in a metal helmet, alone on a bridge, facing off against an army that had never been human, setting fire to the bridge to ensure that the monsters could only come at him single file
.

… of a trio of lightly armed sailing ships surrounded by a huge fleet. One of the ships was loaded with black powder, the ship’s timbers soaked in fish oil. It was set alight and sailed into the tightly packed enemy fleet, where it exploded, causing chaos
.

Josh knew they weren’t his own memories, and he didn’t think they had anything to do with Clarent. The memories he experienced while holding the Coward’s Blade always left him feeling slightly sick. These memories, these thoughts,
were different. They were exciting, exhilarating, and in those few moments when everything had slowed down, when every problem had a solution and nothing was beyond him, he had felt truly alive. Once the memories that were not his memories had washed over him and the world had slowed to a crawl, there had never been a single moment when he doubted they would escape. He’d been planning two or three steps in advance. If the flare had failed to ignite the gas, he knew that another dozen scenarios would have presented themselves.

“How do you feel?” Dee asked. He’d turned the boat toward Alcatraz, but his eyes were fixed on Josh.

“Tired.” He licked salt-dried lips as he looked out across the waves. “I was hoping Virginia would have reappeared by now.…”

Dee cast a cursory glance over the surrounding water. “She’ll turn up. She always does,” he grumbled.

The Magician spun the boat in a huge circle, and Josh leaned over the side, looking for the immortal, but there was no sign of her. “Maybe the Nereids got her?”

“I doubt it. They’ll leave her alone if they know what’s good for them.”

“They’re gone too.”

“But they’ll be back,” Dee said. He stepped aside to allow Josh to take the wheel again. Alcatraz Island loomed before them. “Let us watch our Italian friend set the monsters free.”

t is time.” Perenelle took her hands away from her face. Her eyes were huge with milk-colored tears. More tears streaked her cheeks. “Prometheus,” she said quietly, “Niten. Would you give us some privacy, please?”

The Elder and the immortal looked at one another, and then both nodded and left without saying a word, leaving Perenelle, Tsagaglalal and Sophie standing around the bed.

Sophie looked at Nicholas. The Alchemyst seemed peaceful, composed, and although the last few days had etched deep lines into his face, some of those lines had smoothed out and she caught a glimpse of the handsome man he’d once been. She swallowed hard. She’d always liked him, and she knew that in the weeks Josh had worked with him in the bookstore, the two had become close. Perhaps because their parents were away so often, Josh had always drifted toward
authority figures like teachers and coaches. Sophie knew her brother had really looked up to Nicholas Flamel.

Perenelle moved to stand at the top of the bed. The ornate blue and gold dream catcher behind her haloed her head, ringing it in silver-blue light. “Tsagaglalal, Sophie, I know I have no right to ask this of you.” The immortal’s French accent was pronounced and her green eyes were shimmering with liquid. “But I need your help.”

Tsagaglalal bowed her head. “Anything you need,” she said immediately.

Sophie took a moment before answering. She didn’t know what Perenelle wanted, but she was guessing it had something to do with a dead body. She’d never seen a dead body before, and the thought of touching it made her squirm. She looked up to find the two women staring at her.

“I can’t … I mean … what do you want me to do? I’ll help, of course. But I can’t do anything like preparing a body. I don’t think I could even touch it. Him,” she amended hastily.

“No, it is nothing like that,” Perenelle said. Her fingers moved across her husband’s short hair, gently stroking his head. Silver strands came away in her fingers. She smiled. “And, besides, Nicholas is not dead. Not yet.”

Shocked, Sophie looked at the Alchemyst again. She’d assumed he’d passed away quietly in his sleep. But now, looking closely, she could see the tiniest movement of the pulse in his throat, an irregular beat. She squeezed her eyes shut and focused her Awakened hearing. Listening intently, she could actually hear the slow—very slow—thumping of his
heart. The Alchemyst was alive—but for how much longer? She opened her eyes and looked at the Sorceress. “What do you need me to do?” she asked urgently.

Perenelle nodded gratefully. Spreading her fingers wide, she placed them on both sides of her husband’s head. “When I was a little girl,” she said, her gaze distant and dreamy, “I met a blue-eyed, hooded man with a metal hook in place of his left hand.”

Tsagaglalal drew in a sharp breath. “You met Death! I did not know that.”

Perenelle’s smile was sad, wistful. “You knew him?”

The old woman nodded very slowly. “I met him on Danu Talis before it fell … and then again, at the end. Abraham knew him.”

Sophie slowly turned to look at Tsagaglalal. Had her aunt just said that she was on Danu Talis? How old was she? Fragments of images and memories winked in and out of her mind …

… of a beautiful young gray-eyed woman clutching a metal book, running up the endless steps of an impossibly tall pyramid. Figures raced past her, human and nonhuman, monsters and beasts, fleeing the ragged streaks of wild magic dancing above them. A shadowed figure appeared at the top of the pyramid, a man with a glowing hook in place of his left hand that leaked a pale blue fire.…

Perenelle’s voice cut through the memories and brought Sophie back to the present. “I was six when my grandmother brought me to see the hooded man.” Wisps of Perenelle’s ice-white aura drifted off her flesh and wreathed around her,
dressing her in a white robe. “In a crystal-studded cave on the shores of the Bay of Douarnenez, he told me my future. And he told me about a world, an indescribable world, a magical world, full of dreams and wonders.”

“A Shadowrealm?” Sophie whispered.

“For a long time I believed so, but now I know he was describing this modern world.” Perenelle shook her head and her language changed, slipping first into French and then into the ancient Breton tongue of her long-lost childhood. “The hook-handed man told me that I would meet the love of my life and become immortal.”

“Nicholas Flamel,” Sophie said, looking again at the still body on the bed.

“I was very young,” Perenelle continued, as if Sophie had not spoken. “And although this was an age when we believed in magic—remember, this was early in the fourteenth century—even I knew that people did not live forever. I thought the man was mad or a simpleton … but we respected such people in those days and listened to them, paid attention to their prophecies. Centuries later, I learned the hook-handed man’s name: Marethyu.”

“Death,” Tsagaglalal said again.

“He predicted that I would marry when I was not much more than a child.…”

“Nicholas,” Sophie murmured.

“No.” Perenelle shook her head, surprising her. “Nicholas was not my first husband. There was another man, older than me, a minor lord and a landowner. He died shortly after we wed, leaving me a wealthy widow. I could have had my
pick of husbands—but I went to Paris and fell in love with a penniless scrivener ten years my junior. The first time I saw Nicholas I remembered that Marethyu had said that my life would be filled with books and writing. So I knew that his prophecy was coming true.”

The temperature in the room had fallen, becoming cool and then cold. Sophie’s breath plumed before her face, and she resisted the temptation to rub her hands together to warm them. The Sorceress’s aura was streaming off her body, gathering behind her and billowing out like two huge white wings. Sophie felt her own aura crackle and crawl across her skin, and when she looked over at Tsagaglalal, she found that the old woman’s features were becoming indistinct behind the pale gauze of hers. Like the Sorceress, she was wrapped in a white robe, and when Sophie looked down, she was startled to see that she was sheathed in a long silver robe that covered her from neck to ankles. Her hands were lost in its long billowing sleeves.

“Marethyu—I had almost forgotten the man existed until he turned up in our shop one day,” Perenelle continued. She held both of her palms pressed to her husband’s head as she spoke, and gossamer threads of his green aura spun from his flesh, rising into the air to burst like bubbles. “It was a Wednesday—I can recall it as clearly as if it happened yesterday—because that was the one day of the week I was not with Nicholas in the shop. I have no doubts that Marethyu deliberately chose that day to catch my husband alone. I came home to find the shop closed even though it was early in the afternoon and there was still light left in the
west. Nicholas was in the back room. The place was ablaze with light—there were candles of all sizes on every surface. He’d arranged a dozen of them on a table, surrounding a small rectangular metal object. It was the Codex, the Book of Abraham the Mage, and the first time I saw it, light was reflecting off its cover as if it were a miniature sun. Even before Nicholas opened his mouth to name it, I knew what it was. I had never seen it before, but I knew what it would look like.”