The Warlock (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #5) (33 page)

ophie raised her gaze from the emerald tablet. Her eyes were swimming and her throat felt raw, as if she’d been screaming. She had a hundred questions, but no answers. Even the Witch of Endor’s knowledge was no help: she didn’t know how Abraham had foreseen all that he did.

Sophie looked around the group and immediately noticed that no one was speaking. Some had finished reading, while others were still concentrating on their tablets. Judging by their reactions, they had all received deeply personal messages written by a man—no, surely Abraham was more than just a man—who had lived ten thousand years ago.

Hel was crying, black tears dripping onto the emerald block, burning into the stone and sending gray smoke sizzling toward the sky. Sophie watched as she lifted the tablet and pressed her lips to it. For an instant her beastlike features
faded, revealing her as she had once been: young and very beautiful.

Perenelle put down her green slab and rested her hands on it. She looked over at Sophie and nodded. Her eyes were huge with tears that reflected the emerald of the stone, and her expression was inexpressibly sad.

Prometheus and Mars simultaneously looked up from reading their own messages. Without speaking, they reached across the table to grasp one another’s arms.

Niten’s face had settled into an unreadable mask, but Sophie noticed that his index finger kept moving in what looked like a figure eight over the stone.

Odin shoved the tablet into his pocket and then stretched out to pat his niece’s hand. He whispered something in her ear that made her smile.

Black Hawk’s face was expressionless, but his fingers tapped an irregular beat on the back of the block of emerald.

Nicholas slipped his tablet into a trouser pocket and took his wife’s hand, and when he looked at her, Sophie thought she saw something like awe in his eyes, as he if were seeing her for the first time.

“I have no idea what my husband wrote to any of you,” Tsagaglalal said suddenly, breaking the deep silence that had fallen over the group. “Each message is unique to you, keyed to your DNA and your aura.” The old woman was sitting at the head of the wooden picnic table. She was carefully slicing the skin off a vibrant green apple with a triangular sliver of black stone that resembled an arrowhead.

Sophie noticed that Tsagaglalal had arranged the green skin into shapes not dissimilar to those that had formed the words on her tablet when she’d first looked at it. She frowned: she’d seen someone else do that, though she couldn’t remember where or when … maybe it was one of the Witch’s memories rather than her own.

Tsagaglalal indicated the empty chairs. “Join me,” she said, and one by one, the group settled around the table. Nicholas and Perenelle sat side by side, facing Odin and Hel, while Mars and Prometheus sat facing one another, as did Niten and Black Hawk. Sophie sat alone at the end of the table, looking directly at Tsagaglalal.

“Some of you here knew my husband personally,” she began. “Some of you,” she added, looking at Prometheus and Mars, “he counted among his closest friends.” She looked down the table at Odin and Hel. “And while some of you would never have sided with him, I would like to think that you respected him.”

All the Elders sitting around the table nodded in agreement.

“Even before the destruction of Danu Talis, our world was beginning to fragment. The Elders were masters of the world. There were no more Earthlords, the Ancients had vanished and the Archons had been defeated. The new races, including the humani, were still looked upon as little more than slaves, and so, with no one else to defeat, the Elders started to fight among themselves.”

“It was a terrible time,” Odin rumbled.

Tsagaglalal looked up and down the table. “Some of you were with me on the island when it fell. You know what it was like then.”

The Elders nodded.

“Well, now Dr. John Dee intends to ensure that it never happened.”

Hel looked up. “Is that a bad thing?” she asked, and then the realization of what she was saying seemed to sink in. “Where does that leave us?”

Tsagaglalal nodded. “This world, and the ten thousand years of history that created it, will simply cease to exist. But, more importantly, if Danu Talis does not fall, then the warring Elders will destroy it. And not just the island—the entire planet.”

“So Dee must be stopped,” Odin said simply. He nodded to his niece. “But that is why we are here. We have come to kill Dee for his crimes.”

“It is why I am here too,” Mars said.

“And we know he is on Alcatraz,” Hel said. “Let us go there and finish this.”

“I can take you,” Black Hawk offered quickly. “I’ve got a boat.”

“And I’m going too,” Sophie added. “Josh is there.”

“No, you’re not,” Tsagaglalal said firmly. “You are staying here.”

“No.” There was no way the old woman—no matter who she was—would be able to keep Sophie off Alcatraz.

“If you ever want to see your brother again, you will stay with me.”

Prometheus leaned forward and tapped the emerald tablet he still held in his hand. “I too was told to remain here.”

“And I,” Niten added. The Swordsman looked at Tsagaglalal. “Do you know why?”

She shook her head.

“I do,” Perenelle whispered. She held up her own tablet. “There was no message to me from the past. When I looked at it, I saw Alcatraz, and I saw the ghost of Juan Manuel de Ayala, the man who named the island and who now stands guardian over it. He helped me escape when Dee held me there. De Ayala spoke to me through the tablet, and I floated high over the island and saw through his eyes.”

“And what did you see?” Nicholas asked.

“Dee and Dare, Josh, Machiavelli and Billy the Kid. And the Lotan.”

“The Lotan,” Odin rumbled uneasily. “Fully grown?”

“Fully grown. But there is dissension among the immortals,” Perenelle continued. “I could not hear what was happening, could only see the images, but it seemed to me that Machiavelli and the Kid did not want the Lotan released onto the city. There was an argument, and Dare rendered them both unconscious.”

“And the Lotan?” Odin asked. “I have seen its work before. It is a terrifying creature.”

“Dee sent it into the water. It is heading toward the city right now.” She turned to Prometheus and then to Niten across the table. “This is why both of you were asked to remain here. You must stand against the monster and protect
the city. The creature is heading toward the Embarcadero. It will come ashore within the hour.”

“Take my car,” Tsagaglalal said immediately. “It’s parked in the front.” She pushed her keys across the table, and Niten snatched them up and was already hurrying away when Nicholas stood.

“We’ll come with you,” he called after the man, and Perenelle nodded.

Suddenly everyone was moving. Prometheus scrambled to his feet, then leaned over to kiss Tsagaglalal’s cheek. “Just like old times, eh?”

She pressed her hand against his face. “Be safe,” she whispered.

Mars came around the table and embraced his former enemy. Their auras crackled and fizzed, and for a moment, the image of two warriors in matching exotic red armor appeared. “Fight and live,” Mars said. “And when all this is over, there will be time for many adventures. Just like the old days.”

“Just like the old days.” Prometheus squeezed the Elder’s shoulders. “Fight and live.”

“I’ll get my jeep,” Black Hawk said. He left, whistling tunelessly.

“Wait,” Sophie said. “Perenelle, what about Josh? What about my brother?”

Everyone turned to look at the Sorceress, and Sophie suddenly knew the meaning of the expression she’d seen earlier in her eyes. “He chose Dee and Dare again. Sophie, your brother is truly lost to us.”

he triangular vimana was so wide it almost completely filled the mouth of the volcano. It struck two of the smaller craft as it dropped down. One exploded in a ball of fire; the other spun into the side of the sheer cliff face and detonated in a splash of flame and metal that sent red-hot shrapnel in every direction.

All the prisoners ducked back into the safety of the caves as metal ricocheted off the walls. Only Scathach remained in the cave mouth, watching the approaching Rukma vimana. She moved her head to one side as a piece of burning fuselage as long as her arm screamed off the rock over her head. Another vimana was struck a glancing blow by the huge warship and the circular craft spun too close to the volcano wall. It struck an outcropping of rock, ripping open the side of the craft. As it sailed past her cell, Scathach caught a glimpse of the two anpu within desperately attempting to correct the
plummeting ship. When it hit the lava, it erupted in a massive fireball that shot a plume of magma high into the air. The molten rock stuck to the cliff face, then slowly dribbled back down.

The wide Rukma vimana dropped slowly, its pointed nose and wing tips barely clearing the walls. The Shadow nodded in approval: a master pilot was at the controls. The craft edged lower and lower, passing Shakespeare’s and Palamedes’s cells.

The remaining smaller vimana darted in and around the bigger craft, taking care not to get too close. Scathach desperately tried to remember what she knew about the machines, but that was precious little. She didn’t think the smaller ships were armed, but she guessed that at least one had headed back to the capital to bring reinforcements. The big vimana was so close now that Scathach could see that, unlike the smaller craft, which were metal, this one was made of polished crystal and gleaming ceramics. It was almost completely transparent, and she could make out a single figure moving within the craft.

The air was buzzing with the hum of the vimana’s electromagnetic engine, a high-pitched whine that set her teeth on edge and shot crackling static through her spiked red hair. The vibrations pulsed off the volcano’s black walls, and she watched as tiny cracks spiderwebbed along the surface. Suddenly a chunk of rock at her feet fell away and slid down into the lava below. Scathach danced back as the edge of the cave crumbled to dust.

One wing of the vimana swung around until it was almost directly above her, and the red light on the tip of the
wing shattered. The edge of the craft scraped along the wall, raining pebbles of black stone onto her head. Scathach knew that if it came any lower it would get stuck. Crouching, she took a deep breath of the sulfur-tainted air, coughed and then propelled herself upward, just as the vibrations dissolved the walls around her cell into chips of dusty stone. Her fingers caught the two sides of the Rukma vimana’s wing tip, but her right hand slipped off the slick glassy surface, and she desperately scrabbled to grab hold again before she lost her grip with her left hand as well. Looking down between her legs, she realized that there was nothing between her and the glutinous pool of lava. The Rukma started to rise.