“So they’re preparing for battle,” Joan murmured, almost to herself.
“I think they’re already prepared.” Scathach’s green eyes danced. “We’ve arrived just in time for the war.”
Joan of Arc pinched her friend’s arm. “You don’t have to look quite so happy about it!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Osiris and Virginia Dare came to their feet as Sophie and Josh approached. The twins were dressed in fresh jeans and T-shirts. Josh had tied a cream-colored Giants sweatshirt around his waist, and Sophie was wearing a black cardigan over her white T-shirt.
Virginia nodded to Sophie and smiled at Josh. “You’re looking none the worse for your adventures.” She glanced sideways at Osiris. “You must be very proud of your children. They’ve been through a lot in the last few days. It would have destroyed lesser people.”
“Isis and I have always been very proud of the twins,” Osiris answered evenly.
“This has been a really long day,” Sophie said, acknowledging the adults. She felt a yawn swelling her chest and swallowed hard. “I’m exhausted.”
“I’m famished,” Josh said.
Sophie rolled her eyes at her twin. “You’re always hungry.”
He grinned. “I’m a growing boy. I’ve got a healthy appetite.”
Even as he was speaking a door slid open and a series of tiny bells pinged. Everyone turned as Isis appeared. She had changed into a simple white linen robe similar to those worn by the queens of ancient Egypt. There was a narrow gold band wrapped around her head, and matching gold bracelets encircled her upper arms and wrists. Gold rings winked on every finger. Two of the cat-faced girls followed her, the bells on their toes tinkling with every movement.
Osiris bowed. He turned his head to look at the twins. “You should bow, children.”
“To our own mother?” Josh demanded. “Why? We’ve never bowed before.”
“That was then. This is now,” Osiris said simply. “Everything has changed.”
“I’m not bowing. That’s just too weird,” Josh said firmly. Sophie nodded in agreement.
The Elder looked at Virginia Dare and opened his mouth to speak.
The immortal met his gaze and held up her hand. “Don’t even think about asking me to bow,” she said.
Isis had crossed the courtyard and stopped before them. She acknowledged Osiris’s bow with the merest nod and then looked the children up and down. The faintest moue of disappointment curled her lips. “Jeans and T-shirts? You could have chosen something more appropriate to this place and time,” she murmured. “Remember when you accompanied us on our travels on the earth we always tried to dress respectfully in local costume. There are linen shirts and robes in the wardrobe. I am sure you would be more comfortable in them.”
“I’m comfortable like this,” Josh said, his voice hard. He looked at his sister. “What about you?”
She nodded. “I’m good.”
There was an awkward moment of silence while Isis looked at Osiris as if she was expecting him to say something. “This has been a very difficult week for Sophie and Josh,” he said eventually. “No doubt they are more comfortable wearing their own clothes; it is, after all, why we filled the wardrobes for them.”
Sophie and Josh looked at one another. They both realized that in that moment something significant had altered in their relationship with their parents. Only a week ago, they would have returned to their rooms and changed with no questions.
“We will eat,” Isis said firmly.
“Then you’ll excuse me,” Virginia said. “I don’t want to intrude on this happy family moment. I’m sure you have a lot of catching up to do.”
Without turning to look at the immortal, her gaze still trained on the twins, Isis waved a hand dismissively. “The servants have prepared a room for you at the other end of the house,” she said. She sniffed quickly. “There is hot water if you wish to bathe, and I’ll see to it that fresh clothes are laid out for you.”
“We will send some food to your room,” Osiris added, in a more pleasant voice. He smiled, trying to take the sting out of his wife’s words and manner.
Virginia’s smile was icy. “There’s no need. I think I’m going to rest for a while. I’ve had quite the day too. Maybe you’ll ask your people not to disturb me. No servants in or out, no food, no clothes, thank you. I’m fine with these. I just need my beauty sleep.”
“None of the servants will intrude on your rest,” Isis said. “If you’d like we could even post a guard on the door to ensure your privacy.”
Virginia’s laugher trailed behind her as she turned and walked away. “Oh, that won’t be necessary. Why, it might even make me think I was a prisoner. And I wouldn’t like that idea.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Tsagaglalal moved easily through the stinking fog-locked streets.
Although it was still relatively early in the evening, San Francisco was almost completely deserted. The power outage had shut down the already quiet city. The initial surge of security alarms clanging dully across the city was starting to fade as batteries died. The whoop of emergency sirens sounded very small and distant, and Tsagaglalal’s enhanced senses caught the tang of burnt rubber and gas on the air. There had been an accident. A big one. Maybe more than one. The Dark Elders were closing off the city.
It was uphill all the way to Jackson Street; then the street dipped and rose again. She turned right off Scott Street onto Broadway, where all the trees dripped water.
The streetlights on each corner were out, and traffic lights on Gough blinked a muted red. The only illumination came from the few cars still attempting to move through the streets. On Van Ness, taxis and busses crawled by in shimmering globes of light and SFPD cruisers crept slowly down the streets, hazard lights flashing. The police used their loudspeakers to advise people to get off the streets and remain indoors until the fog cleared.
Tsagaglalal’s armor adapted to the surroundings, changing color, rendering her almost invisible against the night. She could smell the meaty foulness in the air and recognized both Quetzalcoatl’s and Bastet’s auras. The Feathered Serpent was dangerous enough, but the Elder goddess’s return was a real concern: it meant that events were coming to a head. And Bastet, like Dee, did not know the meaning of subtlety. She also had nothing but contempt for humankind.
Turning left onto Hyde Street, Tsagaglalal raced toward Russian Hill Park. Less than a week ago, Bastet, the Morrigan and Dee had been involved in an attack on Hekate’s new Yggdrasill in the Mill Valley Shadowrealm. In the brief and bitter battle, the ancient tree, grown from seeds salvaged during the fall of Danu Talis, was destroyed by John Dee wielding Excalibur. The Goddess with Three Faces had fallen with the tree, and her vast knowledge died with her. Dee and the Morrigan had continued to chase the twins, but Bastet had vanished. Tsagaglalal knew she had a house in Bel Air.
“When this is all over,” Tsagaglalal whispered into the damp air, “and if I survive, I will make it my duty to hunt you down.”
She was passing the tennis courts when a trio of badly dressed shaven-headed figures appeared in the gloom directly ahead of her, rubber-soled combat boots silent on the pavement as they approached. They were chittering with excitement, the sound almost too high to hear, and threads of their gray auras, shot through with bruise-colored streaks, leaked from their flesh. Two hadn’t even bothered to hide their tails. They were cucubuths on their way to feast.
“I hate cucubuths,” Tsagaglalal breathed. “Nasty, foul, smelly …”
She Who Watches unsheathed her kopesh and sliced through them without a sound, leaving their bodies to dissolve to gritty powder.
Tsagaglalal knew that the only reason the cat-headed goddess had returned to the city was because she wanted to be around for the Elders’ victory.
On more than one occasion, Tsagaglalal’s husband, Abraham, had told her that he considered Bastet to be one of the most dangerous creatures he had ever met. “Her ambition will dest
roy the world,” he warned.
At the top of the hill Tsagaglalal paused. “Right or straight on?” she wondered aloud, trying to work out the shortest route.
To the right lay Lombard Street, famous for its eight sharp curves. She could turn here, but she knew if she continued straight, she could make a right onto Jefferson, which would bring her directly to Fisherman’s Wharf.
“Straight on.” She jogged past the curvy road.
Bastet had always been both ambitious and greedy. Along with her husband, Amenhotep, she had ruled Danu Talis for centuries. When the Change began to work its way first through Amenhotep and later through Bastet, the Lord of Danu Talis had stepped aside and vested power in his son, Aten. Bastet had been furious: she’d spent decades working behind the scenes to ensure that her other son, her favorite, Anubis, would rule the island empire. She could control him; she had no control over Aten.
“Got any spare change, miss?”
Shimmering with moisture, two men, one unnaturally skinny, with a spiderweb tattooed across his ear, the other bigger, with a bodybuilder’s broad chest and narrow waist, stepped out of the night. They had obviously been lounging against a wall on the corner of Lombard and Hyde. As she jogged nearer, she noted that the big man’s face was bruised and scratched.
“Not a good night for jogging,” the skinny one said.
“This fog—not healthy,” the big one laughed.
“You could slip. You could fall. You could hurt yourself.” The skinny one emphasized the word hurt.
Tsagaglalal’s grip tightened on the kopesh, but she could smell that these were human. She kept her pace and saw something like alarm flicker in the bigger man’s dirty eyes. “Oh no, not again …,” he breathed.
Her right shoulder hit the smaller man in the center of his chest. She heard something crack as he went sailing out across the road and onto the steep incline of Lombard Street. He squealed as he started to roll down the most crooked street in the world. Her left leg struck the bigger man just as he was scrambling to get out of her way. Something popped in his hip and he hit the ground hard enough to break something else.
Tsagaglalal kept going without giving them a second thought.
Aten was not without his flaws. She’d met him when he’d come to visit Abraham. The Lord of Danu Talis was arrogant—dangerously so—and impulsive, but unlike many of the other Elders, he recognized that the world was changing and that if Danu Talis—and indeed, the Elders themselves—were to survive, it had to change also. The world belonged to the new races, especially the humans. Aten worked with Abraham, Prometheus, Huitzilopochtli and Hekate to prepare a future in which the Elders and the humans could live together. Chronos had shown them many terrible versions of the future, but he had been able to show them wonders, too.
Tsagaglalal vividly recalled one particular possibility. In that time line, an incredibly advanced civilization of humans and Elders had rediscovered and then surpassed the Earthlords’ knowledge. They had gone beyond this planet and begun to colonize the worlds around them. The empire of Danu Talis stretched over not a single planet, but entire galaxies. And at the heart of this huge galactic empire was the circular city of Danu Talis on a tiny blue-green planet at the edge of the Milky Way.
“A golden age,” Abraham had said, unconsciously tapping his skin, which was even then beginning to thread with hard gold.
“Sadly, it will never come to pass,” Chronos had gargled. “This is simply a shade of what might be.”
“And why not?” Abraham had asked.
“Because Bastet and the others like her, those who live in the dark past, will not permit it. They believe that by empowering the humans they become weaker.”
“Dark Elders,” Abraham had murmured.
It was the first time Tsagaglalal had heard the term.
A shadow moved out of the park to her left and spread across the street. It rippled and flowed, water droplets shimmering on filthy black fur and long snaking tails. Tsagaglalal’s mouth twisted in disgust. She had no feelings one way or another about rats, but these were obviously under the control of a Dark Elder. She waded into the middle of the heaving mass and they immediately swarmed her, scrambling over her feet, trying to crawl up her legs, but could find no purchase on her armor. Teeth screamed on her metal greaves like fingernails on a blackboard.
Tsagaglalal’s aura flared, a brilliant blazing white. It pulsed out around her body in a series of concentric circles and the rats turned to red and black cinders, which spiraled up in the fog. The sudden throb of power also broke the controlling spell, and the surviving vermin disappeared squealing into the gutters.
Without breaking stride, Tsagaglalal turned right and continued down the street, heading for the water.
Danu Talis could have continued on to a golden age, but Bastet’s greed overpowered all common sense. And on one terrible evening, Anubis and a troop of anpu staged a revolt and imprisoned Aten. The Lord of Danu Talis was accused of plotting to destroy the island empire.
Tsagaglalal suddenly stopped in the middle of Jefferson and threw back her head. There was a new odor on the air. Something ancient and appalling drifting over her left shoulder. She turned her head: it was coming off the Golden Gate Bridge. She smelled burnt enamel, rotting earth and blood and the unmistakable stench of a Drakon.
“Spartoi,” she said, the word foul in her mouth.
She knew instinctively that this was why Bastet had returned.
“What to do?” she asked aloud.
The Flamels needed her help to contain the monsters on the island, but the threat on the bridge was the more immediate danger. If the Spartoi got into the city, there would be chaos. She had seen their work before. Each creature would kill hundreds—thousands—and those they did not eat would lurch back to a semblance of life as zombies, with an extra twenty-four hours of shambling movement before their bodies fell apart. The poor creatures were harmless, but their appearance was shocking and utterly terrifying. All would be lost.
With a heavy heart, Tsagaglalal turned back toward the Golden Gate Bridge. She could do nothing to help the Flamels. They were on their own.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
How many more?” Dee gasped.
The immortal had started out well, but he’d managed barely fifty steps before he had to stop, lungs heaving for air, heart hammering.
Marethyu’s voice echoed off the stone walls. “In total: two hundred and forty-eight from bottom to top. You have about two hundred left.”
“Two forty-eight. One of the untouchable numbers. Why am I not surprised?”
“We need to press on, Doctor.”
“And I need to catch my breath,” Dee gasped.
“We have no time.”
“Let me rest … unless you want me to expire here, on these steps.”
“No, Doctor, we’re not going to let you die just yet.” Marethyu stretched out his hand. “Let me help you.”
“Why?” Dee leaned on the slick crystal steps and looked up into Marethyu’s blue eyes. “If you know who I am, then you know what I am, what I have done. Why are you helping me?”
“Because we all have our roles to play in saving the world.”
“Even me?”
“Especially you.”
Marethyu carried Dee up the remaining two hundred steps. The English immortal wrapped an arm over the man’s shoulder and pressed his head against the figure’s chest. He could hear no heartbeat, and as they climbed higher and higher, he became conscious that Marethyu was not breathing heavily with his exertions. He was not breathing at all.
The tall blue-eyed figure raced lightly up the steps. In places the walls were transparent, allowing Dee glimpses of a white-flecked gray ocean. Huge waves crashed against a rocky shoreline, outlining a town in foam and spray. Offshore, enormous blue-green icebergs smashed themselves against unseen rocks. As they climbed, Dee noticed that certain steps exuded odd odors or flickered with strange colors when they moved over them. Others
trembled with musical notes or the temperature rose or fell sharply.
“We’re passing through Shadowrealms?” Dee asked.
“Very astute.”
“I would love to explore this place,” Dee whispered.
“No, Doctor, you would not,” Marethyu said with conviction. “This tower is built on the cusp of a dozen ley lines, in a place where at least as many Shadowrealms intersect. A couple of these steps bring us in and out of some of the worst worlds ever created. Linger too long on a step and you never know where you’ll end up. Or what you might attract.”
“Ah, but think of the adventure.”
“There are some adventures not worth having.”
Dee looked up into Marethyu’s eyes. “And I take it you have had some of those?”
“I have.”
“Is that where you lost your hand? Let me guess: some ravening monster bit it off and then Abraham created this hook for you.”
“No, Doctor. You are so wrong.” Marethyu laughed, and in that moment sounded very young. “Besides, I think if Abraham had made me a replacement, I would have asked him for something shaped a bit more … handlike, something a bit more useful.” He ran the hook along the crystal walls and rainbow sparks cascaded over them. The semicircle of metal came to blazing light, writhing with arcane symbols. “In the beginning I hated it,” he admitted.
“And now?” Dee asked.
“Now it is part of me. And I of it. Together we have changed the world.”
Marethyu climbed up through a narrow rectangle in the floor and eased the elderly Dee into a sitting position on the flat roof of the crystal tower.
“From here I can see the world.” Abraham the Mage stepped away from a squat cylindrical telescope, angling his body so that only one side was turned to Marethyu and Dee. “Come look.”