“A strategy,” Dee said, gently emphasizing the word.
Josh nodded. “A strategy,” he began, but even as he was saying the words, he caught a flickering image that was almost a memory, but not his memory …
… of an army in the lacquered armor of Japan, trapped, surrounded and outnumbered …
… of a warrior in leather and chain mail, head encased in a metal helmet, alone on a bridge facing off against an army that had never been human …
… of a trio of lightly armed sailing ships surrounded by a huge fleet …
And in every case the underdog had triumphed because … because they had a strategy.
“The spare fuel tanks,” Josh yelled. “Is there gas in them?”
Dee lashed out with the rope whip at a Nereid with two pincers instead of hands. Her claws snapped and another chunk of rope fell away as she dropped back into the water. The Magician grabbed a plastic fuel tank and shook it. Liquid sloshed inside. “Half full. Maybe more.” He shook a second container. “This one’s full.”
“Hang on,” Josh said. “We’re turning.” Hauling the wheel to starboard, he aimed the boat away from the fast-approaching island and began to make a huge circle in the water. The confused Nereids were briefly left behind. “Empty them overboard,” Josh commanded. “But not all at once. Spill it out slowly.”
Without comment, the doctor pulled the cap off the first can and flung it away. The stink of diesel fuel was overpowering, and he coughed, eyes watering. Then he rested the can against the side of the boat and allowed the gas to spill onto the surface of the bay.
Josh was abruptly conscious that he seemed to be seeing everything in slow motion. He saw the Nereids move through the water and knew how they were going to position themselves. He watched a wave break against the bow of the boat and he was able to count the individual water droplets as they spun past his face.
A spectacularly ugly Nereid—more fish than human—reared up in front of him. He saw her ridged stomach muscles flatten and knew that beneath the water, her enormous fish tail would be twitching furiously, readying to propel her up into the air. She was going to land on the prow of the boat and then leap for his throat. Josh spun the wheel at the precise moment that the Nereid launched herself into the air. She missed the boat by inches and sank wordlessly back beneath the waves.
“Done,” Dee shouted.
“Light the end of the rope,” Josh commanded.
“With what?” Dee asked.
“You don’t have matches?”
“Never needed them.” Dee wiggled his fingers. “Always had my aura.”
Josh’s mind was spinning, instantly creating and rejecting a dozen scenarios. “Take the wheel,” he instructed. “Keep us turning.” And even before the English Magician had grabbed the wheel, Josh had ducked belowdecks to the tiny cabin. He was looking for something.… He saw it immediately.
A first-aid box was pinned to a wall, and directly beneath it, in a glass-fronted box, hung a red plastic flare gun, designed to shoot a bright flare high into the sky to attract attention if the boat was in trouble.
Josh pulled open the box and wrenched the gun off the wall. He’d seen his father use flare guns like this before, and he knew how they worked, though he’d never been allowed to fire one himself. He darted back on deck. If he’d had matches, he would have soaked the end of the rope in gas, then lit it and dropped it in the water. With the gun he would only have one chance to drop the blazing flare onto the thin film of gas on the surface.
The Nereids were closing in. They were gathered around the boat, mouths opening and closing, teeth clicking and rasping together, and the rancid odor of fish was almost overpowering.
Josh grabbed one of the fuel cans and shook it. Liquid sloshed. Catching the can by the handle, he swung it as if he were tossing a baseball and pitched it out to where he could see a thin oily rainbow film of gas on the water. The can splashed directly into the middle of the stain.
The boat dipped as a crab-clawed Nereid snipped a chunk out of the side of the hull.
Holding the red plastic flare pistol in both hands, Josh instinctively aimed a little above the floating gas can. He was acutely conscious of the direction of the wind, and he knew that the flare would arc out and then fall.
Just like an arrow.
Thumbing back the hammer, he fired. A cherry-red flare sizzled from the barrel, arced through the air, fell … and struck the gas can, which instantly erupted into streamers of yellow and orange flames. The flames danced across the surface of the water, leaping from wave to wave, curling around to encircle the boat in a ring of fire.
For a brief moment, the air hummed with the incredibly beautiful song of the Nereids, and then, without a word, they slipped beneath the waves and vanished. A heartbeat later the blue-flamed fire sizzled out.
Dr. John Dee looked around the battered and scratched boat. Then he nodded to Josh. “Very impressive, young man.”
Josh was suddenly exhausted. The world had returned to its normal speed, and with that had come a leaden fatigue. He felt as if he’d just completed two back-to-back football games.
“Where did that idea come from?” Dee asked, watching Josh closely.
Josh shook his head. “Memories,” he muttered.
… of an army in the lacquered armor of Japan, trapped, surrounded and outnumbered, creating a maze of burning reeds and grasses to divide and trap the enemy.
… of a warrior in leather and chain mail, head encased in a metal helmet, alone on a bridge, facing off against an army that had never been human, setting fire to the bridge to ensure that the monsters could only come at him single file.
… of a trio of lightly armed sailing ships surrounded by a huge fleet. One of the ships was loaded with black powder, the ship’s timbers soaked in fish oil. It was set alight and sailed into the tightly packed enemy fleet, where it exploded, causing chaos.
Josh knew they weren’t his own memories, and he didn’t think they had anything to do with Clarent. The memories he experienced while holding the Coward’s Blade always left him feeling slightly sick. These memories, these thoughts, were different. They were exciting, exhilarating, and in those few moments when everything had slowed down, when every problem had a solution and nothing was beyond him, he had felt truly alive. Once the memories that were not his memories had washed over him and the world had slowed to a crawl, there had never been a single moment when he doubted they would escape. He’d been planning two or three steps in advance. If the flare had failed to ignite the gas, he knew that another dozen scenarios would have presented themselves.
“How do you feel?” Dee asked. He’d turned the boat toward Alcatraz, but his eyes were fixed on Josh.
“Tired.” He licked salt-dried lips as he looked out across the waves. “I was hoping Virginia would have reappeared by now.…”
Dee cast a cursory glance over the surrounding water. “She’ll turn up. She always does,” he grumbled.
The Magician spun the boat in a huge circle, and Josh leaned over the side, looking for the immortal, but there was no sign of her. “Maybe the Nereids got her?”
“I doubt it. They’ll leave her alone if they know what’s good for them.”
“They’re gone too.”
“But they’ll be back,” Dee said. He stepped aside to allow Josh to take the wheel again. Alcatraz Island loomed before them. “Let us watch our Italian friend set the monsters free.”
t is time.” Perenelle took her hands away from her face. Her eyes were huge with milk-colored tears. More tears streaked her cheeks. “Prometheus,” she said quietly, “Niten. Would you give us some privacy, please?”
The Elder and the immortal looked at one another, and then both nodded and left without saying a word, leaving Perenelle, Tsagaglalal and Sophie standing around the bed.
Sophie looked at Nicholas. The Alchemyst seemed peaceful, composed, and although the last few days had etched deep lines into his face, some of those lines had sm
oothed out and she caught a glimpse of the handsome man he’d once been. She swallowed hard. She’d always liked him, and she knew that in the weeks Josh had worked with him in the bookstore, the two had become close. Perhaps because their parents were away so often, Josh had always drifted toward authority figures like teachers and coaches. Sophie knew her brother had really looked up to Nicholas Flamel.
Perenelle moved to stand at the top of the bed. The ornate blue and gold dream catcher behind her haloed her head, ringing it in silver-blue light. “Tsagaglalal, Sophie, I know I have no right to ask this of you.” The immortal’s French accent was pronounced and her green eyes were shimmering with liquid. “But I need your help.”
Tsagaglalal bowed her head. “Anything you need,” she said immediately.
Sophie took a moment before answering. She didn’t know what Perenelle wanted, but she was guessing it had something to do with a dead body. She’d never seen a dead body before, and the thought of touching it made her squirm. She looked up to find the two women staring at her.
“I can’t … I mean … what do you want me to do? I’ll help, of course. But I can’t do anything like preparing a body. I don’t think I could even touch it. Him,” she amended hastily.
“No, it is nothing like that,” Perenelle said. Her fingers moved across her husband’s short hair, gently stroking his head. Silver strands came away in her fingers. She smiled. “And, besides, Nicholas is not dead. Not yet.”
Shocked, Sophie looked at the Alchemyst again. She’d assumed he’d passed away quietly in his sleep. But now, looking closely, she could see the tiniest movement of the pulse in his throat, an irregular beat. She squeezed her eyes shut and focused her Awakened hearing. Listening intently, she could actually hear the slow—very slow—thumping of his heart. The Alchemyst was alive—but for how much longer? She opened her eyes and looked at the Sorceress. “What do you need me to do?” she asked urgently.
Perenelle nodded gratefully. Spreading her fingers wide, she placed them on both sides of her husband’s head. “When I was a little girl,” she said, her gaze distant and dreamy, “I met a blue-eyed, hooded man with a metal hook in place of his left hand.”
Tsagaglalal drew in a sharp breath. “You met Death! I did not know that.”
Perenelle’s smile was sad, wistful. “You knew him?”
The old woman nodded very slowly. “I met him on Danu Talis before it fell … and then again, at the end. Abraham knew him.”
Sophie slowly turned to look at Tsagaglalal. Had her aunt just said that she was on Danu Talis? How old was she? Fragments of images and memories winked in and out of her mind …
… of a beautiful young gray-eyed woman clutching a metal book, running up the endless steps of an impossibly tall pyramid. Figures raced past her, human and nonhuman, monsters and beasts, fleeing the ragged streaks of wild magic dancing above them. A shadowed figure appeared at the top of the pyramid, a man with a glowing hook in place of his left hand that leaked a pale blue fire.…
Perenelle’s voice cut through the memories and brought Sophie back to the present. “I was six when my grandmother brought me to see the hooded man.” Wisps of Perenelle’s ice-white aura drifted off her flesh and wreathed around her, dressing her in a white robe. “In a crystal-studded cave on the shores of the Bay of Douarnenez, he told me my future. And he told me about a world, an indescribable world, a magical world, full of dreams and wonders.”
“A Shadowrealm?” Sophie whispered.
“For a long time I believed so, but now I know he was describing this modern world.” Perenelle shook her head and her language changed, slipping first into French and then into the ancient Breton tongue of her long-lost childhood. “The hook-handed man told me that I would meet the love of my life and become immortal.”
“Nicholas Flamel,” Sophie said, looking again at the still body on the bed.
“I was very young,” Perenelle continued, as if Sophie had not spoken. “And although this was an age when we believed in magic—remember, this was early in the fourteenth century—even I knew that people did not live forever. I thought the man was mad or a simpleton … but we respected such people in those days and listened to them, paid attention to their prophecies. Centuries later, I learned the hook-handed man’s name: Marethyu.”
“Death,” Tsagaglalal said again.
“He predicted that I would marry when I was not much more than a child.…”
“Nicholas,” Sophie murmured.
“No.” Perenelle shook her head, surprising her. “Nicholas was not my first husband. There was another man, older than me, a minor lord and a landowner. He died shortly after we wed, leaving me a wealthy widow. I could have had my pick of husbands—but I went to Paris and fell in love with a penniless scrivener ten years my junior. The first time I saw Nicholas I remembered that Marethyu had said that my life would be filled with books and writing. So I knew that his prophecy was coming true.”
The temperature in the room had fallen, becoming cool and then cold. Sophie’s breath plumed before her face, and she resisted the temptation to rub her hands together to warm them. The Sorceress’s aura was streaming off her body, gathering behind her and billowing out like two huge white wings. Sophie felt her own aura crackle and crawl across her skin, and when she looked over at Tsagaglalal, she found that the old woman’s features were becoming indistinct behind the pale gauze of hers. Like the Sorceress, she was wrapped in a white robe, and when Sophie looked down, she was startled to see that she was sheathed in a long silver robe that covered her from neck to ankles. Her hands were lost in its long billowing sleeves.
“Marethyu—I had almost forgotten the man existed until he turned up in our shop one day,” Perenelle continued. She held both of her palms pressed to her husband’s head as she spoke, and gossamer threads of his green aura spun from his flesh, rising into the air to burst like bubbles. “It was a Wednesday—I can recall it as clearly as if it happened yesterday—because that was the one day of the week I was not with Nicholas in the shop. I have no doubts that Marethyu deliberately chose that day to catch my husband alone. I came home to find the shop closed even though it was early in the afternoon and there was still light left in the west. Nicholas was in the back room. The place was ablaze with light—there were candles of all sizes on every surface. He’d arranged a dozen of them on a table, surrounding a small rectangular metal object. It was the Codex, the Book of Abraham the Mage, and the first time I saw it, light was reflecting off its cover as if it were a miniature sun. Even before Nicholas opened his mouth to name it, I knew what it was. I had never seen it before, but I knew what it would look like.”
“Marethyu,” Tsagaglalal said, nodding. Tears rolled down her lined cheeks. “He had it.”
“How do you know?” Sophie whispered, though even as she was asking the question, the answer was forming.…
“Because I gave it to him,” Tsagaglalal said, and her aura flared briefly.
And the memory struck Sophie like a blow.
The skies erupting with lightning, the ground belching fire, huge slabs of the pyramid shaking themselves apart … and the gray-eyed young woman thrusting a metal-bound book at the one-handed man …
Sophie staggered away from the table and the images faded.
The room was icy cold and everything was beginning to take on the sparkling patina of frost. Some of Perenelle’s aura had now washed across the floor, billowing like mist, while the rest pulsed like enormous white wings over her shoulders. Some of the strands curled down her hands and wrapped around her fingers before crawling across Nicholas’s skull like wriggling worms.
“I was a child when Marethyu told me that my husband and I would become the guardians of a metal-bound book. We would be the last in a long line of humans to protect this precious object. He said that the book contained the entire knowledge of the world … but when I first saw it, I knew that could not be the truth. There were so few pages in it. How could the entire knowledge of the wo
rld be contained in twenty-one pages? It was much later before Nicholas and I began to discover the secrets of the Codex and its ever-changing text.”
“You couldn’t read it?” Sophie asked, and was not even shocked when she realized she’d spoken in the same language Perenelle was using.
“No. That understanding came more than two decades later.” Perenelle’s skin was glowing with an ice-white light. A tracery of pink veins was visible on the back of her hands, and the light had gathered in her green eyes, robbing them of color, making her look blind. “Eventually, everything Marethyu had told us came true.…” Her breath plumed a huge white sigh in the icy air. “Finally, only one prophecy remained.”
“Tell us, Sorceress,” Tsagaglalal said. Her own aura now sheathed her body, wrapping it in a vaguely Egyptian-looking gown, and beneath her wrinkled skin, Sophie caught a glimpse of the beautiful young woman she had once been.
“Marethyu told me that there would come a day—in a distant future, in an as-yet-unnamed land—when both my husband and I would be close to death.” Perenelle’s voice was soft, and emotionless, but there were tears on her cheeks. “Nicholas would die first, and then, two days later, I too would die.”
Sophie blinked and silver tears ran down her cheeks. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like to live with the knowledge of your own death. Would it be terrifying, or completely liberating?
“Marethyu asked me what I would do if I could keep my husband alive for one day more. And I told him.…”
“Anything. Everything,” Sophie whispered, unaware that she had spoken the words aloud.
“Anything. Everything,” Perenelle agreed. “Without the immortality potion, I have perhaps two days of life left.” Her aura grew brighter, the wings fuller, the tips brushing the ceiling. “Marethyu said that I could not save my dear Nicholas, but I could grant him one extra day of life if … I gave him one of mine.”
Sophie gasped.
“You would do the same for your twin,” Perenelle said without hesitation.
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