The Warlock (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #5) (2 page)

And because this was Paris, no one looked twice at a couple wearing sunglasses at night.

ire raged through the building. Dozens of alarms howled and shrieked and the air was filled with choking black smoke, thick with the reek of burning rubber and melting plastic.

“Out, out, now!” Dr. John Dee used the short sword in his right hand to rip apart a heavy steel and wooden door, carving through it as if it were paper. “Down the stairs,” he ordered.

Virginia Dare leapt into the opening without hesitation, sparks hissing in her long dark hair.

“Follow me,” Dee commanded Josh, and ducked through the shredded door. Tendrils of the doctor’s yellow aura visibly streamed from his flesh, its rotten-egg stench hitting Josh Newman in the face as he hurried close behind.

Josh was feeling sick to his stomach, and not just from the foul sulfurous cloud leaking from Dee. His head was pounding
and tiny dots of color pulsed before his eyes. He was dazed, still shaking after his encounter with the beautiful Archon Coatlicue. And try as he might, he still couldn’t make any sense of the events of the past few minutes. He only had the vaguest idea how he’d ended up in this place. He remembered driving down country roads … on the freeway … and into the city. But he’d had no idea where he was going. All he’d known was that he was supposed to be somewhere.

Josh tried to focus on the sequence of events that had brought him to the burning building, but the more he concentrated, the hazier those events became.

And then Sophie had appeared. Foremost in Josh’s mind was the terrible change that had overtaken his twin. When Sophie had stepped into the doctor’s apartment moments earlier, Josh had been thrilled … but confused. Why was she there? How had she found him? The Flamels must have sent her, he realized. But it didn’t matter; she was with him and she could help him bring Coatlicue into this world. That was the most important thing.

His happiness had been short-lived, though. It had quickly turned to fear, disgust and even anger at his sister’s actions. Sophie hadn’t come to help him, she’d … well, Josh didn’t know
what
she wanted. He’d watched, stunned, as her aura hardened to a sinister-looking silver armor around her body, and then she’d callously used a whip on the beautiful and defenseless Archon. Coatlicue’s agonized cries had been heartbreaking, and when she’d turned to Josh and stretched out her hand, the look of pain and betrayal in her huge eyes
had been too much to bear. He was the one who’d called her from her Shadowrealm; he was responsible for her pain. And he was unable to help her.

Aoife had leapt onto Coatlicue’s back and held her while Sophie beat her again and again with the terrible whip. And then Aoife dragged the wounded Archon back into her Shadowrealm. When Coatlicue disappeared, Josh had felt a moment of horrible loss. He had been close, so close to doing something remarkable. If Coatlicue had been allowed to return to this world, she would have … Josh swallowed a great mouthful of rubbery-tasting smoke and coughed, eyes watering. He wasn’t sure what she would have done.

Two steps below, Dee turned to look back up at him, gray eyes wide and wild in the gloom. “Stay close,” he snarled. He raised his chin back toward the burning room. “You see? They did what they always do! Death and destruction follow the Flamels and their minions.”

Josh coughed again, struggling to get fresh air into his lungs. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard the accusation. “Scathach said that.”

“The Shadow’s mistake was choosing the wrong side.” Dee’s smile was ugly. “A mistake you too almost made.”

“What happened up there?” Josh asked. “It was all so fast, and Sophie—”

“This is hardly the time for explanations.”

“Tell me,” Josh demanded angrily, and the foul air was now touched with the odor of oranges.

Dee stopped. His aura was so bright his eyes and teeth appeared yellow. “Josh, you were moments away from changing
the world forever. We were about to begin a process that would have turned this earth into a paradise. And you would have been the instrument of that change.” The doctor’s face transformed into a hard mask of anger. “Today the Flamels thwarted me. And do you know why? Because they—and the others like them—do not want the world to be a better place. The Flamels thrive in the shadows, they exist on the outskirts of society, living secret lives, living lies. They grow strong on the pain, the needs of others. They know that in my new world, there would be no shadows for them to hide in, no suffering for them to exploit. They do not want me—and the others like me—to succeed. You helped us to get perhaps closer than we have ever been.”

Josh frowned, trying to make sense of what the doctor was saying. Was Dee lying? He had to be … though Josh couldn’t push away the feeling that there was an element of truth in what the immortal was saying. What did that make the Flamels?

“Tell me this,” Dee said. “You saw Coatlicue?”

Josh nodded. “I saw her.”

“And was she beautiful?”

“Yes.” He blinked, remembering. She was so beautiful, like no one he’d ever seen before.

“I too have seen her true form,” Dee said softly. “She was one of the most powerful of the Archons, an ancient race, perhaps even an alien race, who ruled this world in the Time Before Time. She was a scientist using technology so advanced it was indistinguishable from magic. She could manipulate pure matter.” Dee eyed Josh carefully and
continued slowly. “Coatlicue could have remade this world today, repaired it, restored it. But you saw what Aoife did to her?”

Josh swallowed hard. He’d watched Aoife leap onto the Archon and drag her back toward the gaping entrance to her Shadowrealm. He nodded once more.

“And you saw what your sister did to her?”

“Yes.”

“Sophie whipped her—and that was no ordinary whip, either. I’ll wager it was Perenelle’s tool, woven from snakes pulled from the hair of Medusa. The merest touch of it is agony.” Dee reached out and placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder and Josh felt heat flow down his arm. “Josh, Sophie is lost to you now. She is deep under the Flamels’ spell. She is their puppet, their slave. They will use her up, as they have used so many in the past.”

Josh nodded for the third time. He knew there had been other twins before them, and knew also that they had not survived.

“Do you trust me, Josh Newman?” Dee suddenly demanded.

Josh looked at the Magician, opened his mouth to respond, but said nothing.

“Ah.” Dee smiled. “A good answer.”

“I didn’t answer.”

“Sometimes no answer is an answer,” the immortal said. “Let me rephrase the question: do you trust me more than you trust the Flamels?”

“Yes,” Josh said instantly. Of that he had no doubt.

“And what do you want?”

“To save my sister.”

Dee nodded. “Of course you do,” he said, unable to keep a touch of scorn from his voice. “You are humani.”

“She’s under a spell, isn’t she? How do I break that spell?” Josh demanded.

Dee’s gray eyes turned to yellow stone. “There is only one way: you have to kill whoever controls her—either Nicholas or Perenelle Flamel. Or both.”

“I don’t know how.…”

“I can teach you,” Dee promised. “All you have to do is trust me.”

Glass exploded deep in the building, tiny, tinkling, almost musical sounds, and then the door above them burst open with the heat and a blast of air flowed down the stairwell. A series of rattling explosions shook the building, and cracks spiderwebbed the plasterwork. The metal handrail was suddenly too hot to touch.

“What are you storing up there?” Virginia Dare yelled from the stairwell below. The immortal was outlined with a translucent green aura that lifted her fine black hair off her back and shoulders like a cloak.

“Just a few small alchemical experiments …,” Dee began.

A thunderous explosion dropped the trio to their knees. Bits of plaster rained down from the ceiling and a heavy smell of sewage filled the stairwell.

“And one or two big ones,” he added.

“We need to get out of here. The entire building is going to collapse,” Dare said. She turned and continued down the stairs, Dee and Josh close on her heels.

Josh breathed deeply. “Am I smelling burning bread?” he asked, surprised.

Dare glanced back up at Dee. “I don’t even want to know what that smell is coming from.”

“No, you don’t,” the doctor agreed.

When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Virginia flung herself against the double doors but bounced off them. They were padlocked, a thick chain woven through their handles.

“I’m sure that breaches a fire code,” Dee murmured.

Virginia Dare spoke in a language that had not been used on the American continent for centuries, then quickly shifted back to English. “Could this day get any worse?” she muttered.

There was a click and then a hiss, and the sprinklers built into the ceiling spun to life, spraying water on the trio, laying an acrid-scented blanket over everything.

“I guess it could,” she said. She poked her index finger into Dee’s chest. “You are more like the Flamels than you care to admit, Doctor: death and destruction follow you, too.”

“I’m nothing like them.” Dee wrapped his hand around the padlock and squeezed. His aura flared yellow around his fingers, dripping to the floor in long sticky streamers.

“I thought you didn’t want to use your aura,” Dare said quickly.

“I guess it doesn’t really matter who knows where I am
at this point,” the doctor said, ripping the padlock down the center as if it were made of cardboard and tossing it aside.

“Now everyone knows where you are,” Josh said.

“They’ll come for me,” Dee agreed. He pushed open the doors and stood back to allow his fellow immortal and Josh to precede him outside. Then, with a glance at the flames burning despite the sprinklers, he darted through the doors … straight into Josh and Dare, who had stopped just over the threshold.

“I think they might already be here,” Josh muttered.

ars Ultor.”

He had been imprisoned for so long now that he had lost the ability to tell whether he was dreaming or remembering. Were these images and thoughts swirling around inside his head really his, or had they been implanted by Clarent? When he recalled the past, was he remembering his own history, that of the sword, or the histories of those who had carried the sword before him? Or was it a confused mixture of all three? What was the truth?