“Don’t touch me!”
Flamel stepped between the man in the mechanic’s overalls and the twins. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. “I thought you were dead.”
The man smiled, revealing shockingly bad teeth. “I’m as dead as you are, Alchemyst. Though I am better known.”
“You two have obviously met before,” Josh said.
“I’ve known this”—Nicholas hesitated, lines and wrinkles creasing his face—“this person since he was a boy. In fact, I once had high hopes for him.”
“Would someone like to tell us who this is?” Josh demanded, looking from the Alchemyst to Palamedes and back again, waiting for an answer.
“He was my apprentice, until he betrayed me,” Flamel snapped, almost spitting the words. “He became John Dee’s right hand.”
The twins immediately backed away from the man, and Josh’s grip tightened on the sword.
The bald man tilted his head to one side, and the expression on his face became lost and indescribably sad. “That was a long time ago, Alchemyst. I’ve not associated with the Magician for centuries.”
Flamel stepped forward. “What changed your mind? Was he not paying you enough to betray your wife, your family, your friends?”
Pain flickered in the man’s pale blue eyes. “I made mistakes, Alchemyst, that is true. I’ve spent lifetimes attempting to atone for them. People change …. Well, most people,” he said. “Except you. You were always so sure of yourself and your role in the world. The great Nicholas Flamel was never wrong … or if he was, he never admitted it,” he added very softly.
The Alchemyst swung away from the man to look squarely at the twins. “This,” he said, arm waving toward the small man in the soiled overalls, “is Dee’s former apprentice, the immortal human William Shakespeare.”
tanding framed in the doorway of his impressive town house, Niccolò Machiavelli watched Dr. John Dee climb into the sleek black limousine. The smartly dressed driver closed the door, nodded to Machiavelli, then climbed into the driver’s seat. A moment later the car pulled away from the curb, and, as the Italian had guessed, Dee neither looked back nor waved. Machiavelli’s stone gray eyes followed the car as it merged into the evening traffic. It was just about to pull out from the Place du Canada when an anonymous-looking Renault took up a position three cars behind it. Machiavelli knew the Renault would follow Dee’s car for three blocks and then be replaced by a second and then a third car. Cameras mounted on the dashboard would relay live pictures to Machiavelli’s computer. He would have Dee followed every moment he remained in Paris. His instincts, honed by centuries of survival, were warning him that Dee was up to something. The English Magician had been far too eager to leave, refusing Machiavelli’s offer of a bed for the night, claiming he had to get to England immediately and resume the search for Flamel.
It took an effort to push closed the heavy hall door with its thick bulletproof glass, and Machiavelli suddenly realized that it was little things like this that made him miss Dagon.
Dagon had been with him for almost four hundred years, ever since Machiavelli had found him, injured and close to death, in the Grotta Azzurra on the Isle of Capri. He’d nursed Dagon back to health, and in return the creature had become his manservant and secretary, his bodyguard and, ultimately, his friend. They had traveled the world and had even ventured into some of the safer Shadowrealms together. Dagon had shown him wonders, and he in turn had introduced the creature to art and music. Despite his brutish appearance, Dagon had had a voice of extraordinary beauty and purity. It was only in the latter half of the twentieth century, when Machiavelli had first heard the haunting notes of whale songs, that he had recognized the sounds the creature was capable of making.
Machiavelli had allowed no one to get close to him for almost half a millennium. He’d been in his early thirties when he’d married Marietta Corsini in 1502, and over the next twenty-five years they’d had six children together. But when he had become immortal, he’d been forced to “die” to conceal the truth that he would never age. The Dark Elder who had made him immortal hadn’t told him at the time that such a ruse would be necessary. Leaving Marietta and the children had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done, but he’d looked out for them for the remainder of their lives. He’d also watched them age, sicken and perish: this was the dark side of the gift of immortality. When Marietta finally died, he’d attended her funeral in disguise and then visited her grave in the dead of night to pay his last respects and swear an oath that he would always honor his marriage vows and never remarry. He’d kept that promise.
Machiavelli strode down a wood-paneled corridor and pressed his palm against a bronze bust of Cesare Borgia on a small circular table. “Dell’arte della guerra,” he said aloud, voice echoing in the empty hallway. There was a click and a section of the wall slid back to reveal Niccolò’s private office. When he stepped into the room, the door hissed shut and recessed lights came to glowing life. He’d had a room like this—a private, secret place—in every home he’d ever lived in. This was his domain. During their life together, Marietta hadn’t been allowed access to his private chambers in any of their homes, and over the centuries even Dagon had never stepped into one. In years past the room would have been accessed via secret passages and protected with spiked and bladed traps, and later with many locks and intricate hand-carved keys. Now, in the twenty-first century, it was safe within a bombproof casing and secured with palm-and voice-print technology.
The room was a perfect soundproof cube. There were no windows, and two walls were covered with books he had collected down through the centuries. Leather bindings stood beside dusty buckram and yellowed vellum were shelved side by side. Rolled parchment and stitched hide rested alongside brightly colored modern paperbacks. And all the books, in one way or another, had to do with the Elders. Absently, he straightened a four-thousand-year-old Akkadian tablet, pushing it back on top of a printout from a mythology Web site. Whereas Flamel was obsessed with preventing the Dark Elders from returning to this world and Dee was equally determined that the world return to its masters, Machiavelli focused on discovering the truth behind the enigmatic rulers of the ancient earth. One of the lessons he had learned in the court of the Medici was that power came from knowledge, so he had become determined to discover the Elders’ secrets.
The wall facing the doorway was completely taken up with a series of computer screens. Machiavelli hit a button and they all lit up, each one showing a different image. There were assorted views of Paris and images from a dozen of the world’s capitals, and a quartet of screens carried live national and international news from around the world. One screen, larger than the rest, showed a moving grainy gray image. Machiavelli sat down in a high-backed leather chair and stared at the screen, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.
It was a live video feed from the car trailing Dee.
Machiavelli ignored the black limousine in the center of the picture and concentrated on the streets. Where was Dee going?
The Magician had told him that he was heading to the airport, where his private jet was being refueled. He was going to fly to England and resume the hunt for the Alchemyst. The corners of Machiavelli’s mouth curled in a smile. Dee was clearly not heading toward the airport; he was heading back into the city. The Italian’s instincts had been correct: the Magician was up to something.
Keeping one eye on the screen, Machiavelli opened his laptop, powered it on and ran his index finger through the integrated fingerprint reader. The machine completed the boot sequence. If he had used any other finger to log on, a destructive virus would have overwritten the entire hard drive.
He quickly read through the encrypted e-mails coming in from his London-based agents and spies. Another ironic smile twisted his thin lips; the news was not good. In spite of everything Dee had done, Flamel and the twins had disappeared, and the trio of Genii Cucullati the Magician had sent after them had been discovered in a side street close to
the train station. They were all in a deep coma, and the Italian suspected that it would be 366 days before they awoke. It seemed the English doctor had underestimated the Alchemyst yet again.
Machiavelli sat back in the chair and put his hands together, almost in an attitude of prayer. The tips of his index fingers pressed against his lips. He had always known that the image Flamel projected—that of a bumbling, slightly absent-minded, vaguely eccentric old fool—was a smokescreen. Nicholas and Perenelle had survived everything the Dark Elders and Dee had thrown at them over the centuries by a combination of cunning, skill, arcane knowledge and a healthy dose of luck. Machiavelli believed that Flamel was intelligent, dangerous and completely ruthless.
However, whereas Nicholas was wily, even he admitted that Perenelle was far cleverer than he was. Machiavelli’s smile faltered: this was the woman he had been sent to kill, the woman his own Dark Elder master had described as being infinitely more dangerous than the Alchemyst. He sighed. Killing someone as powerful as the Sorceress was not going to be easy. But he had absolutely no doubt that he could do it. He had failed once before, but that was because he’d made the same grave error Dee had just made: he had underestimated his enemy.
This time Machiavelli would be ready for the Sorceress. This time he would kill her.
But first he had to get to America. Machiavelli’s fingers flew across the keys as he logged on to a travel Web site. Unlike Dee, who preferred to use his private jet, Machiavelli had decided to take a commercial flight to America. He could use one of the French government jets, but that would attract attention, and Machiavelli had always preferred to work behind the scenes.
He needed a direct flight to San Francisco. His options were limited, but there was a nonstop out of Paris at 10:15 a.m. the following morning. The flight was just over eleven hours long, but the nine-hour time difference meant that he would arrive on the West Coast at around 12:30 p.m. local time.
The Air France flight had no First Class seats so he booked l’Espace Affaires—Business Class. It was certainly appropriate. This trip was, after all, business. Machiavelli clicked forward through his purchase and chose seat 4A. It was at the back of the Business Class cabin, but when the plane landed and the door opened, he would be first off. When the e-mail confirmation popped into his in-box, he forwarded a copy of his flight details to the Dark Elders’ principal agent on the West Coast of America: the immortal human Henry McCarty.
Machiavelli had researched the man thoroughly. During his brief life McCarty had been better known as William H. Bonney or Billy the Kid. Born in 1859, immortal at twenty-two years old—or dead, according to the history books. Machiavelli shook his head in wonder. It was very unusual for a human to become immortal at such an early age; most of the immortals he’d encountered through the centuries were older. Despite years of research, Machiavelli still had no idea why certain people were chosen by the Elders to receive the gift. There had to be a pattern or a reason, but he had come across kings, princes, vagabonds and thieves who had nothing in common except that they had been granted immortality—and therefore were in the employ of the Elders. Less than a handful had become immortal before they were in their forties. So, to have been granted immortality at twenty-two, Billy the Kid must be very special indeed.
A flash of movement caught his attention and Machiavelli looked up at the screen tracking Dee.
The cars had stopped, and even as Machiavelli watched, Dee climbed out of the back of the limousine without giving the driver time to scuttle around to open the door. The Magician walked away from the limousine, then paused and turned to look back at the car behind him. In the instant when Dee gazed directly into the camera, Machiavelli realized he’d known he was being followed. The Magician smiled, then disappeared out of frame, and the Italian hit a speed dial that connected him with the driver of the second car. “Status?” he snapped. There was no need to identify himself.
“We’ve stopped, sir. The subject has just exited the vehicle.”
“Where?”
“We’re on the Pont au Double. The subject is heading for Notre Dame.”
“Notre Dame!” Machiavelli said softly. Only yesterday, he had stood on the roof of the great cathedral with Dee, and together, they had brought the gargoyles and grotesques to terrifying life and watched them crawl down the wall to where Flamel, the twins, Saint-Germain and a mysterious woman had crouched on the parvis in front of the cathedral. The animated stone creatures should have crushed the humans, but the attack had not gone according to plan.
Flamel and his companions had fought back. Absently, the Italian rubbed his leg where he’d been struck by a silver arrow of pure auric energy. A star-shaped black bruise covered his thigh from knee to hip, and he knew he would be walking with a limp for weeks. It had been the twins who had saved them, the twins who had destroyed the gargoyles and grotesques of Notre Dame.
Machiavelli had stood in silence, seeing for himself the evidence that Sophie and Josh were indeed the twins of legend. It had been an amazing demonstration of power. Although the girl had learned only the very basics in two of the elemental magics—Wind and Fire—it was obvious that her natural skill was extraordinary. And when the twins had combined their auras to heighten and intensify the girl’s powers, he had realized that Sophie and Josh Newman were truly exceptional.
Machiavelli’s public relations department had released the story that the destruction of the cathedral’s stonework was caused by acid rain and global warming. And even now teams of archaeologists and students from the universities of Paris were working to clear the parvis. The square was sealed off behind strips of tape and metal barricades.
The Italian stared hard at the screen, but it revealed nothing. Why had Dee gone back to that place?
“Should we follow?” The driver’s voice crackled with static.
“Yes,” Machiavelli said quickly. “Follow, but do not approach and do not apprehend. Keep this line open.”
“Yes, sir.”
Machiavelli waited impatiently, eyes fixed on the static image of the car on the screen. The driver spoke urgently to the men in the other two cars, ordering them to take up positions by the side entrances to the great cathedral. The main doors, which opened out onto the square, were closed. The immortal watched as the driver passed in front of the dashboard camera and disappeared off to the left, phone pressed to his ear. “He’s heading for the cathedral,” the driver said breathlessly. “He’s gone inside. There’s no way out,” he added quickly.
The ambient sound changed as the man ran indoors. Footsteps echoed, doors slammed; then Machiavelli heard the tinny sounds of excited voices. He listened to the driver grow louder, more demanding, more insistent, but he could not make out the words. Moments later, the driver came back on the phone. “Sir: there are some architects and planners here to examine the damage. The subject would have had to come right past them, but they say no one has entered the cathedral in the last hour.” A note of fear crept into the man’s voice; Machiavelli’s reputation for ruthlessness was legendary, and no one wanted to report a failure. “I know it’s impossible, but I think … we—we’ve lost him.” The man’s voice faltered. “I … I have no idea how, but it looks like … he’s not in the cathedral. We’ll seal off the building and get some more men for a search ….”
“Negative. Let him go. Return to base,” Machiavelli said very softly, and hung up. He knew where Dee was. The Magician wasn’t in the cathedral. He was under it. He’d returned to the catacombs beneath the city. But the only thing in the ancient City of the Dead was the Elder Mars Ultor.
And yesterday, Dee had entombed the Elder in bone.
he stink of frying food wafted across the junkyard, completely dispelling the odors of metal and oil and the wet musky scent of the dogs.
Flamel was standing on the bottom step to the hut. Even with the extra height, he had to look up into the knight’s face. The man the Alchemyst had introduced as William Shakespeare had gone inside and slammed
the door with enough force to shake the entire building. Moments later black smoke had started to leak from the chimney. “He cooks when he’s upset,” Palamedes had explained.
Josh swallowed hard, then pinched his nose shut, forcing himself to breathe through his mouth as the smoke from the building drifted around them. Already sickened by his Awakened senses, he knew that he had to get away from the smell of smoke and grease or he was going to throw up. He saw his sister looking at him, eyes wide with concern, and he jerked his head to one side. She nodded, then coughed, eyes watering as more smoke eddied around them. Stepping carefully, avoiding the booby-trapped potholes in the muddy ground, the twins quickly moved away from the dilapidated metal building. Josh rubbed the heel of his hand across his lips. He could actually taste the cooking oil and grease on his tongue. “Whatever it is,” he muttered, “I’m not eating it.” He glanced sideways at his sister. “I guess there are a few disadvantages to having Awakened senses.”
“Just a few.” She smiled. “I thought I was getting used to it,” she added.
“Well, I’m not,” Josh sighed. “Not yet, anyway.” The Elder Mars had Awakened him only the previous day—though it felt like a lifetime ago—and he was still completely overwhelmed by the assault on his senses. Everything was brighter, louder and a lot smellier than it had ever been before. His clothing felt harsh and heavy against his skin, and even the air left a bitter taste on his lips.
“Joan told me that after a while, we’ll be able to blank out most of the sensations and only concentrate on what we need to know,” Sophie said. “Remember how sick I was when Hekate first Awakened me?”
He nodded. Sophie had been so weak that he’d had to carry her.
“It doesn’t seem to have hit you so hard,” she said. “You look pale, though.”
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