“Will, take the Gabriel Hounds—”
“I’m not running,” the Bard said immediately.
“I’m not asking you to run,” Palamedes snapped. “I want you to regroup and not needlessly sacrifice our forces.”
“Our forces?” Nicholas asked. “Don’t tell me the Saracen Knight has finally chosen a side?”
“Temporarily, I assure you,” Palamedes said. He turned back to the Bard. “Will, take the Gabriel Hounds through the tunnel under the hut. Gabriel,” he called. The largest of the dogmen hurried over. The blue tattoos on his cheeks were covered in mud and speckled blood, and his dun-colored hair stuck up in all directions. “Protect your master. Get him out of London and bring him to the Great Henge. Wait for me there.”
Shakespeare opened his mouth to protest but closed it when the Saracen Knight glared at him.
Gabriel nodded. “It will be done. How long should we wait at the Henge?”
“If I am not back by sundown tomorrow, then take Will to one of the nearby Shadowrealms; Avalon or Lyonesse, perhaps. You should be safe there.”
Ignoring the Alchemyst, Gabriel turned bloodshot eyes to look at the twins. “And what of the two that are one?”
Josh and Sophie waited silently as Palamedes took a deep breath. “I’m going to bring them back into London.” He looked at the Alchemyst. “We’ll take them to the king.”
The dogman’s savage teeth flashed in a smile. “Leaving them with Cernunnos might be safer.”
Sophie and Josh sat in the back of the black London taxi and watched the Alchemyst, Shakespeare and Palamedes huddle together around a flaming barrel that was burning chunks of wood and strips of smoldering black tires. Rain steamed and hissed over the flames, and thick white smoke from the dying moat fires mingled with the greasy black fumes coming out of the barrel.
“I can see their auras,” Josh muttered wearily. The unexpected appearance of his own aura had exhausted him. A sick headache pounded just over his eyes, the muscles in his arms and legs were burning and his stomach felt queasy, almost as if he was going to throw up. His hands were numb where they’d gripped Clarent’s hilt.
Sophie turned to look out the steamed-up window. Josh was correct: the three immortals were outlined with the faintest of auras—Flamel’s emerald green and Palamedes’ deeper olive green bracketing Shakespeare’s pale lemon yellow.
“What are they doing?” Josh asked.
Sophie hit the window button, but the car was turned off and the electric windows didn’t work. She rubbed the palm of her hand across the glass to clear it, then caught her breath. The immortal’s auras brightened, and she could feel the crawling trickle of power as it started to dribble from their hands like sticky liquid into the barrel. “Nicholas and Palamedes seem to be lending their power to Shakespeare. The Bard’s lips are moving, he’s saying something ….” She cracked open the door to listen, blinking as a sprinkling of rain spattered into the darkened interior of the car.
“… imagination is the key, brother immortals,” Shakespeare said. “All I need you to do is to concentrate and I can create a charm of powerful trouble.”
“It’s a conjugation,” Sophie said in awe. She was abruptly conscious that this was a word she would never have used days earlier, one she wouldn’t have even understood.
Josh slid over beside his sister to peer out into the wet night. “What’s a conjur … conjurgate …?”
“He’s creating something out of nothing, shaping and making something simply by imagining it.” She pushed open the door a little farther, ignoring the rain on her face. She knew—because the Witch knew—that this was the most arduous and exhausting of all the magics, requiring extraordinary skill and focus.
“Do it quickly,” the Alchemyst said through gritted teeth. “The fire is nearly out and I’m not sure how much strength I have left.”
Shakespeare nodded. He pushed both hands deep into the burning barrel. “Boil and bubble, boil and bubble,” he whispered, his accent thickening, returning to the familiar Elizabethan he had grown up with. “First, let us have the serpent of the Nile ….”
Smoke twisted and curled around the barrel, which suddenly boiled with hundreds of heaving snakes. They tumbled onto the ground.
“Snakes! Why are there always snakes?” Josh groaned and looked away.
“… spotted snakes with double tongue …,” Shakespeare continued.
More snakes spilled from the barrel, writhing and slithering around the immortals’ feet. The Gabriel Hounds silently backed away, red eyes fixed on the serpents.
“And now for some thorny hedgehogs, newts and blind worms …,” Shakespeare continued, his voice rising and falling in a singsong pattern, as if he were repeating a verse. His head was thrown back and his eyes were closed. “… and toads, ugly and venomous,” he added, his voice becoming hoarse.
Creatures cascaded from the barrel, hundreds of fat hedgehogs, grotesque toads, slithering newts and curling worms.
“… and finally, screech owls …”
A dozen owls erupted from the flames in a shower of sparks.
Shakespeare suddenly slumped and would have fallen if the Saracen Knight had not caught him. “Enough,” Palamedes said.
“Enough?” The Bard opened his eyes and looked around. They were standing ankle-deep in the creatures that had burst from the burning barrel. The ground around them was thick with twisting snakes, hopping toads, curling newts and wriggling worms. “Aye, ’tis done.” Lightning flashed overhead as he reached out to squeeze the Alchemyst’s arm and quickly embraced the Saracen Knight. “Thank you, my brothers, my friends. When shall we three meet again?” he asked.
“Tomorrow night,” Palamedes said. “Now go, go now.” He carefully lifted his left leg. A black adder dripped from his ankle. “How long will these last?” he asked.
“Long enough.” Shakespeare smiled. Brushing strands of lank hair out of his eyes, he raised his hand to the twins in the car. “We only part to meet again.”
“You didn’t write that,” Palamedes said quickly.
“I know, but I wish I had.” Then, surrounded by the hounds, William Shakespeare slipped under the metal hut and disappeared. Gabriel waited until the other hounds had followed him.
“Keep him safe,” Palamedes called.
“I will protect him with my life,” Gabriel said in his soft Welsh accent. “Tell me, though.” He nodded to the mass of creatures in the mud. “These … things …?” He left the question unfinished.
Palamedes’ smile was ferocious. “A little present for the Wild Hunt.”
The Gabriel Hound nodded, then stooped and transformed into his huge dog form before squirming under the hut and vanishing.
And then, with a final sizzling hiss, the moat fires went out. “Time to go,” Flamel said, carefully picking his way through the creatures Shakespeare had conjured. “I didn’t know he could do that.”
“Created them entirely out of his imagination,” Palamedes said. He held open the cab door and ushered the Alchemyst into the back of the car. “Buckle up,” he advised, his black armor winked out of existence. “It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”
The torrential rain died as quickly as it had started, and then the wolves of the Wild Hunt leapt through the gray smoke.
A moment later, Cernunnos stepped across the moat, smoke twisting through its antlers. Throwing back its head, it bellowed a triumphant laugh. “And where do you think you are going?” it demanded, striding toward the car. “There is no escape from the Horned God.”
olding tightly to the metal rung with one hand, Perenelle tugged the spear free and stabbed it hard into one of the octopus legs holding her. The metal barely touched the slimy skin, but the leg was abruptly snatched back, leaving the woman with a series of puckered sucker marks on her flesh. Before she could stab the creature again, the other two legs disappeared back into the dark tunnel.
“Sorceress, that was positively rude. You could have injured me. A little deeper
and you would have cut my leg off.”
“That was the idea,” Perenelle muttered, shoving the spear back into the makeshift belt and pulling herself up.
“I have not lost a leg in centuries. And it takes such a long time to grow a new one,” the creature added petulantly in Greek, its accent appalling.
Ignoring him, Perenelle climbed up another rung, moving closer to the light. She wondered if Nereus would even be able to fit into the narrow shaft. The creature’s sickening stench rolled over her, making her eyes water. She swallowed hard as she felt her stomach protest. Shifting sideways in the narrow passageway, she looked down. Nereus was standing at the bottom of the shaft. She could just about make out his head and shoulders in the dim light from above; thankfully, everything below that was hidden in shadow. He raised his trident and waved. “It seems you are trapped, Sorceress. You cannot climb and stab me with your toothpick. But you are not beyond my reach ….”
Perenelle caught a glimpse of wriggling octopus legs at the bottom of the shaft. First one, then two, then four, began to snake their way toward her, curling and coiling, feeling along the dripping stones like creeping fingers. “Have you any idea just who I am?” she demanded in English. She repeated the question in ancient Greek.
Nereus shrugged, a movement that sent all his legs rippling. “I confess I do not.”
“Then why are you here?” Perenelle asked, pulling herself up another rung of the rusting ladder. She thought he sounded like a bored academic.
“I am paying off an age-old debt,” Nereus bubbled. “One of the Great Elders told me that my debt to them would be wiped clean if I returned to this world and came to this island with my daughters. I was told I could have you for myself and that while you would make only an average servant, you might, perhaps after a century or two, make a good wife. All I know is that you are called a sorceress.”
“But do you know which sorceress?” Perenelle demanded.
The creature laughed. “Oh, humani, I do not know, nor do I care. In my time, the word had meaning. A sorceress was someone with power, someone to fear, someone to respect. But here, in this time and in this world, the old words, the old titles, mean nothing. Why, a magician, I have discovered, is nothing more than a children’s entertainer, someone who pulls rabbits out of hats.”
Perenelle’s laugh shocked the Dark Elder to silence. “Then you should know this, Old Man: I am no entertainer. I’m surprised your Elder didn’t tell you who you were facing on this island. Or perhaps not so surprised. Maybe if you had known, you would not have embarked on this foolish venture.” Perenelle’s voice echoed down the shaft. “I am the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. I have lived upon this earth for nearly seven hundred years, and I carry within me the wisdom of the ages. I have trained with some of the finest sorcerers and magicians, wizards and enchanters who ever lived. Some even you will have heard of. I was apprenticed to the Witch of Endor and I am a pupil of two of the greatest sorceresses in history: Circe and Medea.”
“Circe?” Nereus rustled uncomfortably, legs quivering. “Medea?” he added, sounding miserable.
“You, above all others, should know my teachers’ reputations.”
“And were you a good pupil?” Nereus inquired cautiously.
“The best. Know this, Old Man of the Sea: I will never be your wife. I am wed to the Alchemyst, Nicholas Flamel.”
“Oh,” the Elder said very softly.
“I am the immortal human Perenelle Flamel.”
“Ah—that sorceress,” Nereus mumbled.
“Yes, that sorceress.” Perenelle wrenched a metal spike from the wall, concentrated her aura in the palm of her hand and watched the rusty metal twist and curl, then melt into dirty brown liquid. “Let me show you a trick Circe herself taught me.” Opening her hand, she allowed the metal droplets to dribble from her cupped palm. Scores of tiny golden-brown globes fell into the shadows. The molten rain hissed and sizzled as it scattered across Nereus’s flesh, and the air suddenly filled with the reek of frying fish. Octopus legs thrashed and pounded against the stones as the Old Man of the Sea howled and squealed in a score of human and inhuman languages. Perenelle flicked the last droplet off her fingertips. She followed the golden teardrop as it plunged straight down … and landed right in the center of Nereus’s forehead, just above his nose. This time he screamed so loudly Perenelle could actually hear the sudden explosion of wings as the thousands of seabirds gathered on the island above rose high into the air, crying and calling.
Nereus disappeared into the shadows, trailing the smell of burnt fish in his wake. “You have not heard the last of me, Sorceress Perenelle,” he sobbed. “You will never escape alive!”
Fighting the wave of exhaustion that washed over her, Perenelle turned back to the ladder and pulled herself upward. “That’s what everyone says,” she murmured. “But I’m still alive.”
“You could have helped.” Perenelle was sitting on one of the steps in the exercise yard. She turned her face to the afternoon sun and allowed the warmth to soak into her body and recharge her aura.
“Why?” Perched on a step below and to Perenelle’s right, the Crow Goddess had spread her black cloak out about her and had also turned her face to the sunlight, eyes lost behind mirrored black sunglasses. Her skin had returned to its former alabaster and only the faintest hint of green remained, with the puckered suggestion of pimples around her lips.
Perenelle took a moment to consider and then she nodded. She had no answer to that. Nereus was not their enemy.
“We could have flown away, too,” the Crow Goddess suggested without moving her head.
Perenelle was beginning to identify the voices; the Badb’s was slightly softer than the harsher and more masculine Machas’s.
“Why didn’t you?” Perenelle asked. When she’d finally climbed out of the shaft, filthy and almost sick with exhaustion, she’d known that she was in no condition to fight the Crow Goddess. She hadn’t expected to find the creature still on the island at all, but it had been crouched by the entrance to the shaft beneath the rusting water tower, carefully sewing long black feathers back onto its cloak. “Why did you stay?”
The Crow Goddess stirred. “We have been trapped within the Morrigan for a long time. She’s had lifetimes of fun; now it’s our turn. And we decided that there would be no place more exciting than Alcatraz in the hours to come.”
Perenelle eased herself up on her elbows to look down at the creature. “Exciting? I think we might have two different definitions of that word.”
The Crow Goddess moved her head and eased her dark glasses down her nose with a long black-nailed finger. One red and one yellow eye blinked at the woman. “Remember, humani, we are the Badb and Macha. We are Fury and Slaughter. Our sister is Death. For millennia, we have been drawn to battlefields the world over, where we feasted on the pain and memories of the dead and dying.” Black lips pulled back from long white teeth in a terrifying grin. “And right now, this island is exactly where we need to be.” She licked her lips. “I think there is going to be a banquet for us soon!”
ires spinning in the mud, the heavy taxicab lurched forward. Sophie gasped as her seat belt locked tight, pulling her back into the seat. Josh groaned as his jerked across his aching stomach.
“Sorry!” Palamedes shouted. “Hang on. Here they come ….”
Nicholas grabbed the rubber strap over the door and leaned forward. “We’re heading straight toward them!” he said, voice rising in alarm.
“I know.” Palamedes’ bright teeth flashed in the gloom. “Best form of defense is …”
“… attack,” Josh finished.
A solid line of the human-faced wolves launched themselves at the cab. Barreling through the still-steaming fire, they did not see the carpet of snakes until it was too late. The serpents rose like question marks, mouths gaping, heads jerking … and the front line of the Wild Hunt dissolved into filthy dust that exploded onto the window, completely coating it. Palamedes calmly
squirted water on the glass and hit the windshield wiper switch, but all he succeeded in doing was turning the gray dust into a thick paste.
A trio of huge wolves, bigger and broader than any of the others, leapt across the moat … and straight onto the hedgehogs. Bristling spines rose to pierce the wolves’ legs and paws. The beasts crumbled to powder with looks of absolute surprise on their faces.
Cernunnos howled and bellowed as he blundered onto the carpet of serpents and hedgehogs. The snakes struck at him, hedgehog spines stabbed, but without any obvious effect. Josh shuddered and felt sick to his stomach as he watched snakes curl and twist up the Horned God’s trunklike legs.
Palamedes revved the cab’s engine, then threw it into gear and roared across the narrow metal bridge that spanned the moat, meeting another trio of the Wild Hunt head-on. Two disappeared beneath the tires in geysers of grit, while the third leapt onto the hood and hammered on the glass with jagged claws. The windshield cracked and the Saracen Knight stood on the brakes. The car screeched to a halt, sending the wolf sliding off the hood, straight into a nest of vipers.
Josh turned in his seat to watch more of the Wild Hunt fall as they brushed past the oily skin of the poisonous toads; he saw others turn to dust as they stumbled across the newts or trod on worms. The air grew thick and gritty with explosions of opaque dirt. Owls swooped out of the night air, claws extended, scything through the beasts, leaving clouds of dust in their wake.
“Shakespeare created all these?” Sophie asked in wonder. She was staring out the back windshield and could see that the ground was carpeted with the heaving mass.
“Every single one,” Palamedes said proudly. “Each one generated within his imagination and animated by his aura. And you have to remember, he is mostly self-taught.” The knight glanced in the rearview mirror and caught the Alchemyst’s eye. “Think what he could have achieved if he’d been properly trained.”
Nicholas shrugged uncomfortably. “I could not have taught him this.”