The Warlock (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #5) (8 page)

“Why?” she asked again.

“To distract the humani and allow the Elders to return to this Shadowrealm. The creatures will ravage through the city, and even the most modern army, with all its weapons and firepower, will be unable to stop them. When the city is on the very edge of collapse, the Elders will appear and defeat them. The Elders will become the saviors of the humani and be worshipped again as gods.”

“But why do that?” Josh asked.

“Once they come back, they can start to repair the earth.”

“I know that. But why can’t they just return? Why do you have to destroy the city?”

“Not the entire city …,” Dee began.

“You know what I mean!”

“The Elders will destroy the beasts and repair the city. It will happen in the full glare of the media and be a spectacular demonstration of their powers. Josh, remember, the Elders’ powers are nothing short of miraculous. Well, they can tell people about those powers or they can simply show the humani just what they can do. And a picture is worth a thousand words.”

Dare nodded. “And when is all this due to happen?”

“At the Time of Litha.”

“But that’s two weeks away. What are Machiavelli and the Kid doing on the island now?”

“The plan must have changed,” Dee said shortly.

“But Machiavelli won’t release the monsters into the city, will he?” Josh asked quickly. He had no difficulty imagining Dee loosing creatures into San Francisco, but he’d thought Machiavelli had a little more humanity.

“Who knows what the Italian will do?” Dee snapped. “This is a man who made plans that took decades to mature. The last I heard from him, he said he was trapped on the island—”

“Hang on a second,” Josh said quickly. “If Enoch Enterprises owns Alcatraz …”

“… and the police are looking into Enoch Enterprises,” Virginia Dare continued, “then they will visit the island as soon as they have a warrant.”

“That will end badly for them,” Dee said.

Virginia Dare laughed. “Why, Dr. Dee, it seems there is no place for you to hide in San Francisco. And once the FBI become involved, your face and name will be known across America. Where will you go then? What will you do?”

“Survive,” the immortal answered. “As I have always done.”

Josh was driving across Green Street when he spotted a young man with a heavy-looking backpack standing under the arch of Pier 15 to his left. There was something about the way the man was holding himself—something awkward and unnatural. Josh squinted his eyes and focused—and instantly spotted the wisps of a dull green aura streaming from the figure. He watched the figure’s pale face turn to follow them, and then the man raised a phone to his mouth. “We’ve been spotted,” he said instantly.

The doctor pressed himself against the dark window and looked across the road. “Bogeyman,” he said shortly.

Virginia Dare leaned across the seat to look out. “Actually, it’s a Sack Man,” she said, “and we have definitely been spotted. The Sack Men are mostly harmless, but they act as lookouts for far more dangerous creatures.”

Josh could make out three more of the Sack Men standing beneath the archway of Pier 9. He was expecting them to look like … well, he wasn’t exactly sure what he was expecting, but they looked like normal teenagers, wearing jeans, T-shirts and scuffed sneakers and carrying bulging and battered backpacks on their shoulders.

“I see them,” Dee said miserably.

The Sack Men’s pale faces turned to follow the car as it passed. Together they raised cell phones to their mouths. One dropped a skateboard to the pavement and pushed off after the car, weaving through the crowd.

“I’ll wager they’re laying a trap,” Virginia said quietly.

The lights changed and Josh shot across Broadway. There was another huddled group of teenagers around Pier 5, and yet another farther down the road outside the Port of San Francisco at Pier 1. An identically dressed trio hopped onto modified bicycles, pedaled furiously across the road, dodging oncoming traffic, and set off after the car.

“I’ve never seen so many of them in one place. They are expensive spies; I wonder who they are reporting to.”

One of the cyclists caught up with the car and kept pace with it. He looked like any other bicycle courier—a brightly
colored T-shirt, helmet, black wraparound glasses—except for the bag on his back. Josh adjusted the side mirror to watch the man. “What’s he got in the bag?” he asked.

Dare’s laughter was bitter. “Trust me, you do not want to know.”

John Dee sat back in the car as the cyclist tried to take pictures with his cell phone.

Josh tightened his grip on the steering wheel, terrified that he was going to hit the weaving cyclist and send him spinning across the street.

“They don’t even care that you know they’ve found you,” Dare said. “They must be very confident of capturing you.” She pressed the flute to her lips and the air vibrated as a sound almost too high for human hearing trembled on the air.

The front and rear tires of the bicycle next to them exploded into black shreds and the cyclist shot over the handlebars, skidding across the road. The bicycle smashed into one of the palm trees lining the center island with enough force to reduce it to a twist of metal.

Virginia Dare sat back into the leather seat and laughed. “You have become the hunted, Doctor. Hunted, and with nowhere either in this realm or any other Shadowrealm to hide. What are you going to do now?”

Dr. John Dee remained silent for a long time and then he started to laugh, a low rasping wheeze that shook his entire body and left him breathless. “Why, become the hunter again.”

“And whom will you hunt, Dr. Dee?”

“The Elders.”

“You tried that with Coatlicue and it failed,” Dare reminded him.

The back of the car turned foul with the stink of sulfur. “Do you know which is the most dangerous animal of all?” he asked suddenly.

Taken aback by the odd question, Josh shrugged and said, “A polar bear? A wolverine?”

“Rhino?” Virginia suggested.

“It’s any trapped animal,” Dee answered simply. “It’s the one with nothing to lose.”

The woman sighed. “I have an idea I’m not going to like where this is going.”

“Oh, I think you will like it very much,” Dee said softly. “Virginia, I promised you a world … but I am about to better my offer. Stand with me, fight with me, lend me your powers, and I will offer you your pick of all the Shadowrealms in existence. I will give you any one you desire.”

“I believe that is what you already offered me.”

“Think of it, Virginia,” he said quickly, “not one world, but two or three or more. You can have your own empire. You’ve always wanted that, haven’t you?”

Dare’s eyes found Josh’s in the mirror. “The stress has driven him mad,” she said sadly.

“And you, Josh. Side with me, give me the power of your golden aura, and I will give you this earth, this Shadowrealm, to rule. And I swear to you that I will give you the powers to do whatever you wish with it. You—you, Josh Newman—can become the savior of this earth.”

The idea was so outrageous, it almost took Josh’s breath away. And yet … a week ago, he would have said it was ridiculous, but now … He could feel the pages of the Codex getting hotter and hotter against his skin, and suddenly the idea didn’t seem so improbable. To rule the world. He laughed shakily. “I think Miss Dare is right: you
have
gone crazy.”

“No, not crazy. Sane. For the first time in my long life I am beginning to see things clearly, so very clearly. I have been the servant all my life, a servant to queen and country, to Elders and Next Generation. I have done the bidding of men and immortals. Now it is time for me to become the master.”

Josh stared straight ahead and stayed quiet. He drove past the Ferry Building. The clock tower showed eleven-thirty. Finally he broke the silence. “What are you going to do?” he asked, his stomach suddenly queasy. Even as he was asking the question, the pages of the Codex pulsed warmly against his flesh again, beating like a heart.

“I’m going to use the power of the Codex to destroy the Elders.”

“Destroy them?” Josh felt his stomach lurch. “But you said we needed them.”

“We needed their powers,” Dee said quickly, “to repair and restore this world. But what if
we
had those powers? What if
we
could do everything they did? We would not need them. We would become like gods.”

“You’re talking about destroying the Elders,” Virginia said quietly, eyes fixed on Dee’s face.

“Yes.”

“All of them?” she asked incredulously.

“All of them.”

The woman laughed, delighted. “And how do you intend to do that, Doctor? They are scattered across a thousand Shadowrealms.”

Dee’s aura bloomed around him like yellow fungus. “Now they are. But there was a time when they were all in one place, and not as powerful as they are today.”

Dare shook her head, confused. “When? Where?”

Josh suddenly knew the answer.

“Ten thousand years ago,” he said very softly, “on Danu Talis.”

he one-eyed Elder walked across a metal world. He knew that there was life in this Shadowrealm, but none of it was recognizable.

Gritty black sand swirled and formed arcane patterns beneath his feet, and huge unnaturally regular boulders shook, shifted and inched toward him as he strode past. Bubbles of mercury rose to the surface of shining silver lakes, and when they burst, tiny globules bounced toward the solitary figure. There was no sky, only a distant metal roof covered in varicolored lights. There had once been an energy source in the center of the roof, but it had long since burned out.

Odin did not know who had created this metal Shadowrealm. He believed that it had once been a thriving world, and he knew it must have been important—the effort of creating it was unimaginable, beyond his limited powers. Yet now it did not even have a name.

The Elder crested a low mound of glittering black silica and turned to look back across the landscape. A series of dark undulating sand dunes punctuated by slabs of metal disappeared on the horizon. The air was still, but his long gray and black hooded cloak shifted on his back. Millennia ago, one of his human servants had slain a hideous Archon dragon beast and presented him with a cloak made from the skin of the creature. Its natural color was blue, but it changed with its surroundings, and at times of danger the scales grew rigid.

The cloak had turned hard as iron and hung heavy about his shoulders.

“Who’s there?” Odin called. The metallic landscape sent his voice echoing across the sands, bouncing it off the ceiling and the irregular wedges of metallic rock. The gnarled fingers of the Elder’s left hand tightened around the staff he carried, a remnant of the original Yggdrasill, which had grown in the heart of Danu Talis.

Odin brought the staff to his left eye. His right eye was covered by a faded leather patch; he had sacrificed it a long time ago to the Archon Mimer in return for eldritch knowledge, and he’d never regretted the bargain. A chunk of bloodred amber was embedded in the top of his staff, held in place by a tracery of delicate silver wires. Trapped within the amber were creatures that had become extinct even before the Earthlords lived, tiny delicate beings of crystal and bone, ceramic and chitin.

Odin gazed through the amber and allowed the merest hint of his aura to flow into the Yggdrasill staff. A wisp of gray
smoke curled off the wood, and the oily-smelling metallic air was suffused with the clean sharp odor of ozone.

The world shifted, colors flowed and—for a brief instant—Odin saw the Shadowrealm as it had once been: a soaring metropolis of alloy and glass, where sentient metal shaped and reshaped the landscape, creating architecture of extraordinary beauty. The Elder’s solitary eye blinked and the image faded to reveal the world as it was now … and the creature stalking him.

It crawled on its hands and feet. Short and squat, it looked like a woman. Long greasy black hair fell in two thick braids on either side of her head, and the flesh of her face and bare arms appeared diseased, speckled with black and white patches. Raising her head, she sniffed the air like a beast.