The Magician

by Michael Scott

  Sophie automatically brushed Scatty’s hand away from her mouth. “Don’t bite your nails.”

  Scathach blinked at her in surprise, then self-consciously put her hand down. “An old habit,” she muttered. “A very old habit.”

  “What happens now?” Josh asked.

  “We get off the streets and rest,” Scathach said grimly. “Have we much farther to go?” she called out to Saint-Germain, who was still in the lead.

  “A few minutes,” he said, without turning around. “One of my smaller town houses is nearby.”

  Scathach nodded. “Once we get there, we’ll lie low until Nicholas returns, get some rest and a change of clothes.” She wrinkled her nose in Josh’s direction. “And a shower, too,” she added significantly.

  Color touched the young man’s cheeks. “Are you saying I smell?” he asked, both embarrassed and angry.

  Sophie laid her hand on her brother’s arm before the Warrior could answer. “Just a little,” she said. “We probably all do.”

  Josh looked away, clearly upset, then glanced back at Scathach. “I don’t suppose you smell,” he snapped.

  “No,” she said. “No sweat glands. The Vampire are a much more evolved species than the humani.”

  They continued in silence until the Rue Pierre Charron opened out onto the broad Champs-Elysées, Paris’s main thoroughfare. To their left they could see the Arc de Triomphe. Traffic on both sides of the street was stopped, with drivers standing alongside their cars chatting animatedly, gesticulating wildly. All eyes were turned to the rippling fireworks still exploding over the Eiffel Tower.

  “How do you think this will be reported on the news?” Josh said. “The Eiffel Tower suddenly erupting with fireworks.”

  Saint-Germain glanced over his shoulder. “Truth is, it’s not that out of the ordinary. The tower is often lit up with fireworks—on New Year’s Eve and Bastille Day, for example. I would imagine it will be reported that next month’s Bastille Day fireworks went off prematurely.” He stopped and looked around, hearing someone call out his name.

  “Don’t look…,” Scatty began, but it was too late: the twins and Saint-Germain had turned in the direction of the shouts.

  “Germain…”

  “Hey, Germain…”

  Two young men who were standing next to their unmoving car were pointing at Saint-Germain and shouting his name.

  Both men were dressed in jeans and T-shirts and looked alike, with slicked-backed hair and overlarge sunglasses. Abandoning their car in the middle of the road, they wove through the stalled traffic, both holding what Josh thought looked like long, narrow blades in their hands.

  “Francis,” Scatty warned urgently, her hands locking into fists. She moved forward just as the first man reached Saint-Germain, “let me….”

  “Gentlemen.” Saint-Germain turned toward the two men, smiling widely, though the twins, who were behind him, saw yellow-blue flames dance across his fingertips.

  “Great concert last night,” the first man said breathlessly, speaking English with a strong German accent. He pushed back his sunglasses and held out his right hand, and Josh realized that what he’d first imagined was a knife was nothing more than a fat pen. “Any chance I could get an autograph?”

  The flames on Saint-Germain’s fingers winked out. “Of course,” he said, smiling delightedly, reaching for the pen and pulling a spiral-bound notebook from an inner pocket. “Did you get the new CD?” he asked, flipping open the notebook.

  The second man, wearing identical glasses, plucked a black and red iPod from the back pocket of his jeans. “Got it on iTunes yesterday,” he answered in the same distinctive accent.

  “And don’t forget to check out the DVD of the show when it comes out in a month’s time. Got some great extras, a couple of remixes and a great mashup,” Saint-Germain added as he signed his name with an elaborate flourish and pulled the pages from the notebook. “I’d love to chat, guys, but I’m in a rush. Thanks for stopping, I appreciate it.”

  They shook hands quickly and the two men hurried back to their car, high-fiving one another as they compared their autographs.

  Smiling broadly, Saint-Germain took a deep breath and turned to look at the twins. “Told you I was famous.”

  “And you’ll soon be dead famous if we don’t get off this street,” Scathach reminded him. “Or maybe just dead.”

  “We’re just here,” Saint-Germain muttered. He led them across the Champs-Elysées and down a side street, then ducked into a narrow, high-walled cobbled lane that snaked around the backs of the buildings. Stopping halfway down the alley, he slid a key into an anonymous-looking door set flush with the wall. The wooden door was chipped and scarred, foul green paint peeling in long strips to reveal blistered wood beneath; the bottom was splintered and cracked from rubbing the ground.

  “May I suggest a new gate?” Scathach said.

  “This is the new gate.” Saint-Germain smiled quickly. “The wood is just a disguise. Beneath it is a slab of solid steel with a five-point dead bolt.” He stepped back and allowed the twins to precede him through the entrance. “Enter freely and of your own will,” he said formally.

  The twins stepped forward and were vaguely disappointed with what they found. Behind the gate was a small courtyard and a four-story building. To the left and right, tall spike-tipped walls separated the house from its neighbors. Sophie and Josh had been expecting something exotic or even dramatic, but all they saw was an unkempt leaf-strewn rear garden. A huge and hideous stone birdbath was set in the center of the courtyard, but instead of water, the bowl was filled with dead leaves and the remains of a bird’s nest. All the plants in the pots and baskets surrounding the fountain at its center were dead or dying.

  “The gardener’s away,” Saint-Germain said without a trace of embarrassment, “and I’m really not very good with plants.” He held up his right hand and spread his fingers. Each one popped alight with a different-colored flame. He grinned and the colored flames painted his face in flickering shadows. “Not my specialty.”

  Scathach paused by the gate, looking up and down the alleyway, head tilted to one side, listening. When she was satisfied that they were not being followed, she closed the door and turned the key in the lock. The dead bolts slid into place with a satisfying thunk.

  “How will Flamel find us?” Josh asked. Even though he was wary and fearful of the Alchemyst, he felt even more nervous around Saint-Germain.

  “I gave him a little guide,” Saint-Germain explained.

  “Will he be all right?” Sophie asked Scathach.

  “I’m sure he will be,” she said, though the tone of her voice and the look in her eyes betrayed her fears. She was turning away from the gate when she stiffened, jaw unhinging, vampire teeth suddenly—terrifyingly—visible.

  The door to the rear of the house had opened suddenly, and a figure stepped out into the courtyard. Abruptly, Sophie’s aura blazed silver-white, the shock sending her spinning back into her brother, bringing his aura to crackling life as well, outlining his body in gold and bronze. And as the twins held on to one another, blinded by the silver and gold light of their own auras, they heard Scathach scream. It was the most terrifying sound they had ever heard.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Stop!”

  Nicholas Flamel kept running, turning to the right, racing down the Quai Branly.

  “Stop or I shoot!”

  Flamel knew the police wouldn’t shoot—they couldn’t. Machiavelli would not want him harmed.

  The slap of leather on concrete and the jingle of weapons were close now, and he could hear his pursuer’s even breathing. Nicholas’s own breathing was beginning to come in great heaving gasps, and there was a stitch in his side just below his ribs. The recipe in the Codex kept him alive and healthy, but there was no way he could outrun this highly trained and obviously fit police officer.

  Nicholas Flamel stopped so suddenly that the police captain almost ran right into him. Standing still
, the Alchemyst turned his head to look back over his left shoulder. The policeman had drawn an ugly black pistol and was holding it in a steady two-handed grip.

  “Don’t move. Raise your hands.”

  Nicholas turned slowly to face the police officer. “Well, make your mind up, what’s it to be?” he asked mildly.

  Behind his protective goggles, the man blinked at him in surprise.

  “Do I not move? Or do I raise my hands?”

  The police officer gestured with the barrel of the gun and Flamel raised his hands. Five more RAID officers came running up. They trained a variety of weapons on the Alchemyst as they spread out in a line alongside their captain. With his hands still in the air, Nicholas turned his head slowly to look at each of them in turn. In their black uniforms, helmets, balaclavas and goggles, they looked like insects.

  “Get down on the ground. Do it, do it now!” the captain commanded. “Keep your hands in the air.”

  Nicholas slowly folded to his knees.

  “Now lie down! Facedown!”

  The Alchemyst lay flat on the Parisian street, his cheek against the cool, gritty pavement.

  “Stretch your arms wide.”

  Nicholas stretched out his arms. The police officers shifted position, quickly encircling him, but they still kept their distance.

  “We have him.” The police captain spoke into the microphone positioned in front of his lips. “No, sir. We’ve not touched him. Yes, sir. Immediately.”

  Nicholas wished Perenelle were with him now; she would know what to do. But if the Sorceress had been with him, then he would not be in this mess in the first place. Perenelle was a fighter. How often had she urged him to stop running, to use half a millennium of his alchemical knowledge and her sorcery and magic and take the fight to the Dark Elders? She’d wanted him to gather the immortals, the Elders and the Next Generation who supported the humani and wage a war against the Dark Elders, Dee and his kind. But he couldn’t; he’d been waiting all his life for the twins foretold in the Codex.

  “The two that are one, the one that is all.”

  There had never been any doubt in his mind that he would discover the twins. The prophecies in the Codex were never wrong, but like everything else in the book, the words of Abraham were never clear and were written in a variety of archaic or forgotten languages.

  The two that are one, the one that is all.

  There will come a time when the Book is taken

  And the Queen’s man is allied with the Crow.

  Then the Elder will step out of the Shadows

  And the immortal must train the mortal. The two

  that are one must become the one that is all.

  And Nicholas knew—beyond a shadow of a doubt—that he was the immortal mentioned in the prophecy: the hook-handed man had told him.

  Half a millennium ago, Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel had traveled throughout Europe in an attempt to understand the enigmatic metal-bound book. Finally, in Spain, they had met a mysterious one-handed man who had helped translate portions of the ever-changing text. The one-handed man had revealed that the secret of Life Eternal always appeared on page seven of the Codex at the full moon, while the recipe for transmutation, for changing the composition of any material, appeared only on page fourteen. When the one-handed man had translated the first prophecy, he had looked at Nicholas with coal black eyes and reached over to tap the Frenchman’s chest with the hook that took the place of his left hand.

  “Alchemyst, here is your destiny,” he had whispered.

  The mysterious words suggested that Flamel would one day find the twins…the prophecy hadn’t revealed that he’d end up lying spread-eagled on a dirty Parisian street surrounded by armed and very nervous police officers.

  Flamel closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Pressing his outspread fingers against the stones, he reluctantly drew upon his aura. The merest gossamer thread of green-gold energy seeped off his fingertips and soaked into the stones. Nicholas felt the tendril of his auric energy curl through the pavement, then into the earth beneath. The hair-thin thread snaked through the soil, looking…searching…and then, finally, finding what he was looking for: a seething mass of teeming life. Then it was a simple matter of using transmutation, the basic principal of alchemy, to create glucose and fructose and bind them together with a glycosidic bond to create sucrose. The life stirred, shifted, flowed toward the sweetness.

  The police captain raised his voice. “Cuff him. Search him.”

  Nicholas heard the shuffling approach of two police officers, one on either side. Directly in front of his face, he saw highly polished thick-soled black leather boots.

  And then, magnified because of its closeness to his face, Nicholas spotted the ant. It popped up out of a crack in the pavement, antennae waving. It was followed by a second, and a third.

  The Alchemyst pressed his thumbs against the third finger of each hand and snapped his fingers. Minuscule sparkles of mint-smelling green-gold spun into the air, coating the six police officers in infinitesimal particles of power.

  Then he transmuted the particles into sugar.

  Abruptly, the pavement around Flamel turned black. A mass of tiny ants erupted from below the street, surging up out of the cracks in the stone. Like a thick glutinous syrup, they spread across the pavement, flowing over boots before suddenly curling up around the legs of the police officers, coating them in a heaving swarm of insects. For a moment the men were shocked into immobility. Their suits and gloves protected them for another instant, and then one man twitched, and another and another as the ants found the tiniest of openings in the men’s suits and darted inside, legs tickling, jaws nipping. The men began jerking, twisting, turning, slapping at themselves, throwing down their weapons, pulling off their gloves, tugging at their helmets, tossing aside their goggles and balaclavas as thousands of ants crawled over their bodies.

  The police captain watched as their prisoner—who was completely untouched by the heaving blanket of ants—sat up and fastidiously dusted himself off before rising to his feet. The captain tried to point his gun at the man, but ants were clawing at his wrists, tickling the palms of his hands, nipping his flesh, and he couldn’t hold the weapon steady. He wanted to order the man to sit down, but there were ants crawling across his lips, and he knew if he opened his mouth they would dart inside. Reaching up, brushing his helmet off his head, he jerked off his balaclava and flung it to the ground, arching his back as insects crawled along his spine. He ran his hand across his head and felt it dislodge at least a dozen ants. They fell across his face and he squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again, the prisoner was strolling towards the Pont de l’Alma train station, hands in his pockets, looking as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Josh forced his eyes open. Black spots danced in front of them, and when he raised his hand to his face, he could see the ghost of his own golden aura still visible around his flesh. Reaching out, he found his sister’s hand and caught it. She squeezed gently, and he turned to find her blinking her eyes open.

  “What happened?” he mumbled, too shocked and numb to even be scared.

  Sophie shook her head. “It was like an explosion….”

  “I heard Scathach scream,” he added.

  “And I thought I saw someone coming out of the house…,” she added.

  They both turned back to the town house. Scathach was at the door, her arms wrapped around a young woman, holding her tightly, swinging her around in a circle. Both women were laughing and squealing with delight, shouting at one another in rapid-fire French. “I guess they know each other,” Josh said as he helped his sister to her feet.

  The twins turned to look at the Comte de Saint-Germain, who was standing to one side, arms folded across his chest, smiling delightedly. “They’re old friends,” he explained. “They’ve not met in a long time…a very long time.” Saint-Germain coughed. “Joan,” he said politely.

  The two women broke
apart and the woman he’d called Joan turned to look at Saint-Germain, her head tilted at a quizzical angle. It was impossible to guess her age. Dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, she was Sophie’s height, almost unnaturally slender, and her deeply tanned and flawless skin emphasized huge gray eyes. Her auburn hair was cut in a short boyish style. There were tears on her cheeks that she brushed away with a quick movement of her palm. “Francis?” she asked.

  “And these are our visitors.”

  Holding Scathach’s hand, the young woman stepped closer to Sophie. As the woman approached, Sophie felt a sudden pressure in the air between them, as if some invisible force was pushing her back, and then, abruptly, her aura flared silver around her and the air was filled with the sweet aroma of vanilla. Josh grabbed his sister’s arm and his own aura crackled alight, adding the scent of oranges to the air.

  “Sophie…Josh…,” Saint-Germain began. The rich, sweet aroma of lavender filled the courtyard as a hissing silver aura grew around the short-haired young woman. It hardened and solidified, becoming metallic and reflective, molding itself into a breastplate and greaves, gloves and boots, before finally solidifying into a complete medieval suit of armor. “I would like to introduce my wife, Joan…”

  “Your wife!” Scatty squealed, shocked.

  “…whom you—and history—know as Joan of Arc.”

  Breakfast had been laid out on a long polished wooden table in the kitchen. The air was rich with the odor of newly baked bread and brewing coffee. Plates were piled high with fresh fruit, pancakes and scones, while sausages and eggs sizzled in a pan on the old-fashioned iron range.

  Josh’s stomach started rumbling the moment he stepped into the room and saw the food. His mouth filled with saliva, reminding him just how long it had been since he’d last eaten. He’d only managed a couple of sips of the hot chocolate at the café earlier before the police arrived.