“She walks funny…,” Vidocq breathed.
The old woman walked with a peculiar staccato motion, her head and body leaning forward.
“Like a chicken,” the young man added.
And suddenly I knew who the three-clawed prints belonged to. “Look at her feet,” I whispered in Vidocq’s ear.
He squinted, eyes watering with the candle smoke, and his breath caught. “She has chicken’s feet. But bigger, much bigger.”
The old woman stepped up to the black pot and threw back the shawl covering her head. She was incredibly ancient, her skin lined and etched with creases so deep they looked like scars. Her skin was a deep blue, the ugly shade of oil on water. And where her nose and mouth should have been, she had what looked like an owl’s beak. Although I’d not met many inhumans, there weren’t that many blue-faced chicken-toed hags.
“Black Annis,” I said.
I pushed myself away from the tunnel entrance and dragged Vidocq with me.
“She has an owl’s beak for a mouth…,” he said in horror.
“Yes, and her fingernails and toenails are iron-hard talons.”
“What is she?” he asked
“A creature older than humankind. “She’s one of those Elder gods who consider humans little better than cattle or food.”
“What are we going to do?”
“If I ask you to go back and get help, will you do it?”
“I’m not leaving you here,” Vidocq said defiantly. “I’m not leaving the children.”
“I didn’t think so.”
Below, Black Annis was crouched over the bubbling cauldron, stirring the thick orange-black syrup. Clawlike hands added leaves and what looked like flower petals to the mixture. Then, from beneath her ragged clothing, she lifted a round object and held it aloft in both hands.
“What is that?” Vidocq asked. “It looks like a…glass skull?”
“Crystal,” I whispered. “Dagon told me that one of the very oldest races, the Archons, stored all their forbidden knowledge in a vast cache of crystal skulls. I’ve never seen one myself.”
“It doesn’t look human.”
The flickering candlelight turned the crystal the color of old butter, highlighting the deep-set eye sockets and tiny blunt teeth. I noticed that there was something odd about the skull’s shape: it seemed to sweep to a point at the back. “They are so dangerous that one of the Elders who still walk this earth, an incredibly powerful witch called Zephaniah, travels the globe looking for them.”
“What does she do with them?” Vidocq asked.
“She destroys them,” I answered.
Ignoring the bubbling liquid, which must have been scalding, Black Annis dipped the skull into the thick fluid. Once. Twice. After she raised it a third time, it was thickly coated in the liquid, making it look as if its flesh was melting.
“Why is she called Black Annis if her skin is blue?” Vidocq asked.
“I think it refers to the color of her heart,” I said.
We watched the creature dip a ladle into the liquid and then come around the cauldron on her birdlike feet and pour the sticky mess into the open mouth of the closest skeleton, a warrior in the remains of a medieval suit of armor. The liquid steamed and bubbled, hissing as it frothed around the skeleton’s mouth.
“But it’s got no stomach,” Vidocq protested. “And no tongue, so it can’t taste or swallow.”
The skeleton suddenly started to tremble, bones rattling. Its entire body shivered. Then, in a screech of armor, the medieval knight sat upright.
“Never apply logic to magic,” I reminded Vidocq.
Black Annis moved to the next skeleton, the almost perfectly preserved body of a young man wearing the white coat and red stockings of a fusilier du roi, now ragged and soiled He had probably been dead for only a hundred years. She poured more of the sticky liquid between his lips. He came alive almost immediately, sitting upright and rising to stand to attention.
Black Annis returned to the cauldron and scooped up another ladle of the thick liquid. The Crusader knight shuffled over. I noticed that one of his feet was twisted at an ugly angle. He was carrying a battered metal shield, holding it upside down, so it resembled a shallow bowl.
Black Annis poured a ladle of the sticky liquid into the shield. It steamed and hissed and immediately started to harden and crack into orange chunks.
Vidocq reached into his pocket, pulled out the orange candy, and tossed it aside. “I am never eating candy again,” he muttered.
“Told you not to lick your fingers.”
We watched as the children filed up in front of the Crusader knight, who stood alongside Black Annis. With clumsy fingers, he presented each child with a piece of candy from the shield. When they took it, they stepped out of line and headed back to the tunnels. Most started sucking on the sweets immediately, but I saw Marius give his to Simplice.
“That’s what keeping them going,” I realized. “Probably the only food they get.”
“We have to do something,” Vidocq said desperately.
“I have an idea,” I told him. “But I’m not sure you’ll like it.”
13
I watched Eugène creep down into the chamber. We both agreed that my plan was terrible, but it was the only one we had.
Black Annis continued to move around the skeletons, feeding them the sticky liquid. Each ladle held enough syrup to bring two dead bodies to shuddering life. Some resurrections were more successful than others. I saw one skeleton attempt to sit up, and then watched as its arms fell off and its head rolled away from its body. So the formula was not foolproof. It animated the bones, but if the skeleton was too decomposed, all it succeeded in doing was shaking the body apart. What I wouldn’t have given for a sample of that solution—though I was sure Dr. Mirabilis, Nicholas Flamel, or John Dee would be able to replicate it.
The formula obviously had no effect on the living. I watched the children suck on the candy; the combination of sugar and honey gave them the energy to continue digging up corpses for Black Annis to reanimate.
Vidocq was deep in the chamber now. Judging his moment perfectly—when everyone was concentrating on a skeleton in full medieval armor jerking noisily back to life—he joined the end of a line of children and began the slow shuffle toward Black Annis.
Scrabbling on the ground, I found the piece of candy Vidocq had thrown away. It had picked up more fluff and lint and now resembled a hairy caterpillar. Pulling a thread from my heavy coat, I quickly wrapped it around the candy, then tore a strip from my shirt and tied it to the candy bundle with more thread.
Vidocq was close to Black Annis now, but he had to bide his time; she’d filled her ladle and gone to awaken two more skeletons.
I laid the cloth-wrapped candy on the ground before me, took out my small circular tinderbox, and unscrewed the lid. Inside were a flint, a firesteel, and hemp threads.
Black Annis had returned to the cauldron and was ladling the sticky mess into the shield again.
I draped the hemp threads over the cloth-wrapped candy, then took the flint in one hand and the firesteel in the other. I would get only one chance.
The girl in front of Vidocq stepped forward to accept her candy. Then it was his turn. Neither Black Annis nor the Crusader knight even glanced at him—yet he was clearly taller and in better physical condition than the rest of the children. The Crusader handed him a chunk of candy.
I raised the flint…
And Vidocq dropped the candy. He fell to his knees immediately, grabbing for the piece. I saw his hand rise, and I slammed the flint onto the firesteel just as his hand fell.
I’d been worrying unnecessarily: no one was going to hear the noise of flint on steel over Black Annis’s agonized high-pitched screeching.
Sparks flew onto the hemp threads. They ignited, and
then the cloth beneath popped alight. Catching hold of the length of cloth I’d wrapped around the candy, I spun it in the air, bringing it to blazing life, and then I launched it toward a pile of shattered wooden coffins. The tiny meteor fell into the wood and disappeared. Without waiting to see what happened, I grabbed my two batons and raced into the chamber, toward Black Annis, the Crusader, and Eugène.
A skeleton reared up in front of me. Dagon’s lead-filled baton made contact with its skull and turned it to fine white powder.
Another stabbed at me with a rusty sword. I easily parried with one stick, and a long swinging blow from the second shattered its spine.
What Vidocq had done was risky and dangerous, and to his credit, he hadn’t hesitated when I’d discussed it with him. We needed to take Black Annis out of the fight; she was the most dangerous one. When Vidocq had “accidentally” dropped his candy before the inhuman, he’d taken the opportunity to drive his iron-bladed knife through the creature’s foot, pinning her to the ground. The iron was poison to her; she wouldn’t be able to touch it.
What I hadn’t told him to do was to push the Crusader knight, who was already off balance, into the black cauldron, but he’d done it anyway. The heavy pot tipped and the sticky liquid splashed into the fire, bringing the coals to sparking life; then the liquid itself caught fire. The cauldron rolled across the floor, spewing a thick blazing liquid in every direction.
On the other side of the chamber, wood snapped and crackled and then popped alight. The tinder-dry coffins were starting to burn.
“Vidocq! Eugène!” I yelled. He’d picked up the Crusader knight’s battle-ax and was flailing wildly with it, hitting skeletons more by chance than skill. “The children! Get the children out of here!” He heard me and spun away, disappearing in billowing smoke.
A pair of skeletons wearing rusty chain mail loomed before me. They were both carrying long spiked halberds, and they moved as if they knew how to use them. For a moment I thought I was in trouble, but even as one was jabbing at me, the metal head of the halberd snapped off, and when I deflected the other, the pole dissolved into splinters. The weapons were rotten with age. Two blows shattered the skeletons.
And all the while, Black Annis was still screeching.
The sound set my teeth on edge and made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. This was the sound of ancient evil.
I glanced over my shoulder. The chamber was filling with fumes, but I could see Vidocq herding the children toward the tunnel. Madame Bougon’s children were leading them. Through billowing smoke, I saw Vidocq dart into all the smaller tunnels and call out. Finally, satisfied that we’d left no one behind, he ran back to the tunnel entrance and took up a position there, holding the battle-ax in both hands, protecting the fleeing children.
Suddenly, Black Annis stopped screaming. Smoke shifted, and when I turned, I realized she was looking directly at me. Her eyes were orange-and-black circles. The owl beak snapped, and when she finally found words, they were so mangled I had difficulty understanding them.
“No normal Humani, are you.”
I bowed slightly. “I am Niccolò Machiavelli,” I said, “guardian of Paris.”
I beat away a skeleton who came at me with a pair of short knives.
“An immortal. And your aura: it reeks of serpent. Who is your master?” she demanded.
“None of your business.” I had no intention of telling her who had made me immortal. There was every possibility that my master was related to this foul creature.
She stretched out her hand. The tiny crystal skull was balanced in her palm, making it seem as if its empty eye sockets glared at me from between her filthy claws. For a single heartbeat, I imagined that the eye sockets pulsed red.
And suddenly my aura came alive: a dirty gray-white mist leaking from my flesh like smoke. It curled across the floor, twisting and slithering, touching the sugar -scented air with the tang of my serpent odor. And, like a serpent, I watched it rise off the floor in a thick semitransparent band and sway before Black Annis. Then it suddenly shot into the mouth of the small crystal skull.
I staggered, abruptly pulled forward.
Black Annis cackled. “Have you ever seen a Humani drained of its aura?”
Another twist of my aura disappeared into the crystal skull, and I felt a wave of exhaustion wash over me.
All I knew about auras was that every human had one. Each was a unique combination of color and smell. An experienced magician or warlock could draw upon the power of their aura to work what could best be described as magic.
The blue-skinned hag dipped a claw into the gray-white smoke of my aura and brought it to her mouth. “I can use this skull to drain your energy, Humani. I can suck you dry and leave you a withered husk, with every one of your measly three hundred years etched into your body. You will still be alive, you will still be immortal, but you will be trapped within a rotting shell.” She held up the skull. “And every morning, I will sip a little of your aura and dine on your memories.”
My aura had now thickened to a rope of white smoke, connecting the center of my chest to the mouth of the crystal skull. I could feel my heart hammering in my chest. I was terrified, but most of all I was angry at myself: my arrogance and stupidity had put me in this position. And now Black Annis was going to drain every ounce of energy from my body and leave me nothing more than a husk.
“You’ve sided with the Humani. You’ve chosen the wrong side.”
“I have, more often than not, allied with my Master and the Elders, but tonight, I chose to stand with the Humani against a monster. It was the right decision; only a fool blindly chooses a side and stays there even when they know they are in the wrong.”
Black Annis cackled. “In a few days, these Humani children will have dug out another thousand corpses. I will bring them to life and then loose them into the city. Your precious Humani will not be able to stand against them. Within the week, I will control Paris. Within a month, all the surviving Elders and Next Generation scattered across the globe will flock here. I will establish this city as the capital of the new Dark Empire. Within six months, I will rule this world.”
“You underestimate the Humani,” I said through gritted teeth as I was jerked closer and ever closer to Black Annis and the crystal skull. I barely had enough strength to lift my feet.
“Humani are a failed experiment. Nothing more than slaves and food,” she spat.
“And yet, look at what one Humani—and a mere boy, at that—has done here tonight,” I said.
Black Annis stretched out her hand holding the crystal skull, bringing it close to my face. Now I could see that the eye sockets were glowing the same slate gray color as mine, and its crystal interior was swirling with a thick gray cloud that matched the color of my aura.
“You’ve lived a long time for a Humani,” Black Annis said. “I will ensure that your dying takes an equally long time. You should have chosen a better side.”
And then I saw her eyes flicker to one side. Reflected in the crystal skull, I saw an enormous battle-ax swoop in, and Vidocq’s determined face, distorted in the glass behind it.
The hag attempted to jerk back, but she was still impaled to the floor, and she twisted awkwardly. Desperately, she snatched her hand away. The edge of the ax screamed off her black fingernails, leaving sparks, before Vidocq’s battle-ax turned the crystal skull in her hand to powder.
The force of my returning aura hit me, driving me to my knees. I was aware that Vidocq was by my side, dragging me away. “We need to get out of here now!” he shouted. “The roof’s going to collapse!”
Black Annis started screaming again, a primal sound of rage and hatred.
I paused in the mouth of the tunnel. “We have everyone?” I gasped.
“I’m sure of it…,” Vidocq began. Suddenly, an enormous skeletal shape reared out of the smo
ke. It was the Crusader knight with a sword in one hand, a spear in the other. He came directly for the young man. With a grunting effort, Vidocq spun the battle-ax in a short arc and neatly separated the skeleton’s head from his shoulders. It hung suspended in midair for a moment, and I used the T-shaped baton like a racket to send it sailing across the chamber toward Black Annis. We heard it hit something solid and she stopped screaming.
“Did I tell you I played tennis with William Shakespeare?” I called.
“You didn’t,” Vidocq said. “And I have no idea who that is.”
14
“It’s Vidocq.” Dagon pronounced the name as a series of popping bubbles.
“Bring him in,” I instructed.
It was a week after the events in the Court of Miracles. I’d not seen Vidocq since we’d escaped the tunnels and raced out of the abandoned church moments before the floor collapsed into the crypts below.
The event went practically unnoticed. There were often fires in the Court of Miracles, and unfortunately, building collapses were not uncommon either. The fire seemed to have removed the locals’ fear of the place. Within a couple of days, the roof tiles and the remaining wooden window and door frames disappeared. The marble floor was destroyed in the fire, but even the scraps were valuable, and they vanished also. I doubted anything would remain of the building by the end of the month.
Vidocq was dressed more or less as I had last seen him, though I knew his clothes must be new—or newish—since they did not stink of smoke. I’d had to burn everything I’d worn that night. He looked around the small bare room.
“I thought it would be fancier,” he said at last.
“This is where I work, not where I live.”
“I still can’t discover exactly what sort of work you do,” he said, pulling out a seat and sitting down uninvited.
“I keep the peace,” I answered.
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