The air was starting to buzz with arrows, and a few of the anpu had tonbogiri rifles and were firing at the attackers.
The ground continued to tremble with minor earthquakes, and cracks were starting to appear in the stones.
The Elders began to stream out of the pyramid. They looked around in shock, stunned at the sight of the vimana and gliders in the air. Arrows and spears began to rain down. An Elder, his face caught somewhere between man and monkey, staggered and fell, and that was all it took to galvanize the Elders. One creature, a figure wrapped in stinking wet cloths, raised his arm to expose a three-fingered hand, and immediately a vimana overhead burst into flames and spiraled down to explode across the square.
The Elders howled, screamed, squawked and cackled in delight.
“Kill them all!” Bastet shouted again. “Death to all the humani!”
The cry was taken up by the majority of the Elders. “Death to the humani!”
“No survivors!” Bastet howled.
“No survivors!” the Elders chanted. Their mixed auras flared into a rainbow of colors as they began to pull down the vimanas with their powers. A handful of the bigger craft burst into flames and streaked across the city like burning comets.
“No!” Inanna the Elder strode out of the pyramid, claws scratching on the ground. “No!”
“Yes!” a rat-faced Elder shouted. “After this night, the humani will be no more. It is time to end this mistake.”
Inanna leapt, her claws and wings carrying her twenty feet into the air. When she landed on the rat-faced Elder, his brittle bones snapped and he was dead before he hit the ground.
“I said no,” Inanna repeated. “We cannot exterminate an entire race.”
“Oh yes we can,” Bastet screamed. “We should have done it a long time ago.”
Hands and talons dragged Inanna to her feet, but she turned on them, scratching and clawing, and suddenly one of the Elders to her right erupted into a ball of fire, and one on the left crumbled into a pillar of salt.
The courtyard in front of the pyramid dissolved into chaos as Elder fought Elder and the hybrid guards fought the humans. But those Elders who supported the human cause were vastly outnumbered by those who called for their annihilation. And thousands more of the hybrids were streaming from the pyramid.
And in the midst of all the confusion, Tsagaglalal led Sophie and Josh out the entrance and started the long climb up the steps of the pyramid. Their gold and silver armor took the evening sunlight and they blazed brightly, reflecting streaks of light across the golden stones.
Bastet grabbed Anubis’s arm, squeezing hard enough to leave a bruise. “Kill them!” she screamed. With surprising strength, she spun her son around her. “Kill them, and Danu Talis is ours. Yours.” She lowered her voice and put her head close to his. “Let the humani kill as many Elders as possible and you will be able to rule as an absolute emperor, with no one to oppose you. Think of that a moment.”
Anubis shook off his mother’s arm and fought and kicked his way through the milling humani to grab the nearest anpu commander. He pointed to the three armored shapes—white, gold and silver—scrambling up the side of the pyramid. “Leave the humani to the Elders. Take everyone, take every single beast, monster and hybrid under your command, and chase down those three. Kill them and bring me their heads and their armor as proof.”
The anpu looked around and pointed left and right, a question clear on his jackal face. A small group of humani archers were picking off the anpu guarding one of the bridges over a canal. Another group had crashed a vimana into a troop of Asterion, decimating them. With the bridge breached, humani were starting to pour into the square.
Anubis shook his head. “Those are all minor irritations. Kill the children.”
The anpu grunted, raised a hunting horn to his lips and blew hard, three short blasts. Suddenly all the anpu, followed by the rest of the hybrids, retreated toward the pyramid, leaving the cheering humani to have the bridges and the square.
Another short blast sent every creature racing up the pyramid after Tsagaglalal, Sophie and Josh.
And on the opposite side of the square, moving low and fast, avoiding the conflict, Isis and Osiris ran toward their vimana.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
“People of Danu Talis,” Aten called.
Everyone screamed aloud his name, but he held up his manacled hands for silence and a hush fell over the crowd.
“Humans of Danu Talis. Ard-Greimne wants me to tell you what to do.”
The crowd moaned.
“He wants me to tell you to go home …”
The crowd groaned even louder.
“… and leave this place.”
“No!” someone shouted.
“But I am not going to tell you to do that,” Aten said loudly. The flickering torchlight painted his features in flame and shadow, making him seem even taller than he was. “If I had remained in power, you would have become the equals of the Elders. But now the Elders are determined that you will never be more than you are. And if some have their way, you will cease to exist altogether.”
“Get ready,” Scathach said suddenly. She’d been watching Ard-Greimne, noting the way his muscles were bunching, seeing the line twitching in his jaw.
She’d never known the person her father had been before the Fall. The family never spoke about it. He’d always had a temper, and there were hints here and there that he had been a monster—worse, that he had killed hundreds, maybe even thousands of humans—but she’d never believed it.
And yet, here he was, prepared to order archers to fire into an unarmed crowd before loosing troops on them.
“Ard-Greimne wants me to tell you what to do,” Aten continued. “I want you to look toward the Pyramid of the Sun and tell me what you see.”
As one, the crowd turned. Outlined in the setting sun against the clear evening sky, they could see streaks of light as vimanas fell to the earth. The sky was filled with fliers.
The shiver of excitement that ran through the crowd was a physical thing. They started to shout and scream.
“The People of the Tree have risen up,” Aten said. “Human people. They are led by Hekate and commanded by Huitzilopochtli. Prometheus protects and guides them. Abraham the Mage watches over them. Elder and human together. Equal, as one.”
The crowd roared.
Scathach watched Ard-Greimne step up to Aten. Immediately she started to run, flying across the ground directly toward the massed anpu ranks.
Dee shot out his hand and gripped Virginia’s arm. He too had seen Ard-Greimne move and knew what he was going to do. “Take my aura, Virginia, and do what you have to do.”
Virginia Dare carefully lifted his hand off her arm and then wrapped her fingers around his. “Thank you, John.”
“John,” he breathed.
She looked at him quizzically.
“In all the years we have known one another, you have never called me by my name,” he said.
“Of course I have. Many times.”
“But never with affection …”
“That’s because for all the years I’ve known you, you have been an arrogant immortal called Dee.”
Ard-Greimne stepped up to Aten and sighed loudly. The two Elders looked down over the cheering, screaming crowd. And then Ard-Greimne looked to the Pyramid of the Sun. “I am guessing they will not be needing you tonight?”
“I guess not,” Aten answered.
Ard-Greimne put his hand on Aten’s shoulder. “But you should see this first,” he said, then shouted, “Fire at will!” to the line of archers.
Two hundred bowstrings sang and the arrows loosed, again and again and again. The arrows each had a tiny hole cut into the head so that they screamed as they flew through the air. They arched high into the night and fell in a shrieking, deadly rain into the crowd.
And then the salty evening air of Danu Talis suddenly smelled of sage and sulfur.
A pale green fire outlined Virgin
ia Dare, while the faintest nimbus of yellow steamed off the English Magician.
“Give it everything you have,” Dee had advised her when he’d outlined the plan earlier. “You will only get this one chance.”
“I’ve never done anything like this before,” she had answered.
“This is as good a time as any to start.”
Virginia Dare was a mistress of Air magic. She had learned her skills in the woods on the East Coast of North America and perfected them in the wild forests of the Pacific Northwest. She knew how to make and shape clouds, how to use air as a tool … and a weapon.
The immortal called upon every iota of her aura and gathered it for one massive outpouring. She could feel the Magician’s heat flooding into her hand, seeping through her flesh, strengthening her. His was a dark, bitter power, but it complemented hers.
The arrows rose.
Virginia Dare closed her eyes
The arrows screamed down.
The American immortal’s aura burned brighter and brighter, until she was a blazing green beacon. Dee’s aura burned a bright sickly yellow, sending grotesque shadows dancing across the ground. Virginia’s eyes snapped open and she felt John squeeze her hand.
“Now,” he whispered.
Virginia exhaled in a great bellowing breath.
And the arrows stopped, hanging suspended over the stricken crowd, caught by an invisible wall of air.
Everyone in the crowd and along the walls fell utterly silent.
Then the wind shifted, and the hundreds of arrows turned in the air to face the opposite direction. With another burst of wind, they screamed into the massed ranks of armored warriors standing before the prison walls, mowing them down in a clatter of metal and armor.
On top of the walls, watching the guards fall beneath him, Aten nodded. “I am glad you made me wait to see that. What will you do now, Ard-Greimne?” he asked. “It looks like about three-quarters of your troops are dead, and I’m not sure how keen the rest will be to fight. And do you know, I believe it was a human who did that to you.” He nodded toward the Pyramid of the Sun, which was now speckled with fires. “Where will you go?”
“I will survive,” the Elder snapped, “which is more than can be said for you.” Placing his hand in the small of Aten’s back, he pushed hard, sending him sailing out over the edge of the wall.
Running as she had never run before, Scathach raced across the square toward the wall. She saw the anpu directly in front of her stiffen and reach for their weapons, obviously unsure of what they were seeing—a single girl charging them.
The Shadow heard the bowstrings above her head twang and twang and twang again and listened to the arrows scream down, and then felt the wash of the sage- and sulfur-scented auras. The screaming suddenly stopped, as if the sound had been muted. Scathach dropped to the ground and rolled as the arrows began shrieking again. They hissed over her head in a horizontal black rain, and then she was back on her feet even as the lines of anpu and the other hybrids were falling under the deadly onslaught.
Overhead she saw Aten fall. She knew that her father had pushed him, and she knew that everything she had heard about him was true.
And then, as they did in every battle, her acute senses took over, and it was as if the world around her slowed but she continued moving at a normal pace.
Aten fell …
… and fell …
… and fell …
His eyes were closed, she noticed, and he looked serene.
Scathach surged over fallen anpu, climbing on them, her feet barely touching the ground, and then she leapt into the air, twisting, turning in a half circle.
And she caught him.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
Xolotl perched on a low wall and watched the anpu race toward the ruined building. The jackal-headed monsters were silent until the last moment before they went into battle, and then they howled. The sound was so appalling it often shocked their enemies into immobility or made them turn and run. Xolotl doubted it would have that effect on the Flamels and their companions. His dog mouth opened in a grin: besides, they had nowhere to run.
The anpu were followed by the monokerata unicorns.
He’d chosen these himself. Xolotl loved unicorns, but these were not the delicate white unicorns beloved by the humani. These hailed from India, and while they did have white bodies, they had bloodred heads, with deadly four-foot-long tricolored horns spiraling from the center of their foreheads. Monokerata would impale their victims, then tilt their heads back and allow them to slide down the horn so that they could eat them.
The skeletal Elder turned and squinted back down the path. He could just about make out the shape of the giant crab through the fog. It was having difficulty finding purchase on the slick stones with its spindly legs, but it managed to pull itself along with its enormous front claws, gripping walls and heaving itself forward.
Xolotl rubbed his hands together, bones clicking and rattling—he wished he had something to eat while he watched the entertainment. He hopped off the wall and wandered around the path, hoping to find something to snack on while he waited for the main event.
Odin took up a position beside Hel in the doorway of the Warden’s House. “I remember the last time I faced anpu,” he said.
Hel nodded. “On Danu Talis. What a day that was.” Her black eyes sparkled at the memory. “I was almost beautiful then.”
“You are still beautiful,” he said quietly. “Step back now, Niece.”
“Why?” she asked.
Odin’s hand brushed the metal patch he wore over his right eye. “The anpu will pour through these walls,” he said, slipping into a guttural language never before spoken on earth. “The immortal humans will fall before they can awaken the Old Spider and all this will have been for naught.” Wispy gray ozone-scented aura drifted off his fingertips. “But I can buy them some time.”
The anpu were nearer now, close enough that the Elders could see the saliva glistening on their fangs and the beads of moisture from the fog gathering and running off their metal and ceramic armor.
“They will scream in a moment,” Odin said softly. “Billy and Black Hawk and probably Machiavelli and Nicholas will be stunned by the sound and will fall.”
“The woman will not fall, nor will Mars,” Hel said. “And we will not fall.”
“No. We will not fall. Nor will we be able to stop them. Not with weapons …”
Hel stretched out her clawlike hand. Odin looked at it, then turned to stare into her leaking black eyes. “Are you sure?” he asked.
“My world is gone. The Yggdrasill—your Yggdrasill too—is no more. Where will I go, what would I do?” she asked.
Odin nodded in understanding. “I came to this world to avenge my dear Hekate. I swore vengeance on Dee, but perhaps we can have a greater victory.” He took Hel’s hand in his, locking their fingers together.
The clean scent of ozone was touched with the rancid odor of rotting fish. “I always meant to change that smell,” Hel murmured. “But over time, I rather grew to like it.”
Odin’s hands were smoking, and suddenly the others in the room became aware that the Elder’s aura was coming alive.
“Brother Odin,” Mars said in alarm. “No …”
“Yes,” Odin whispered.
The anpu opened their mouths to scream.
“Down,” Mars shouted. “Everyone down! Cover your eyes.”
Odin squeezed his niece’s hand. “Why don’t you tell the jackals just who I am.”
Hel nodded. Straightening, she threw back her head and began to exude her bloodred aura. The stench of rotting fish became overwhelming, and, deep and powerful, her voice echoed off the stones. “You stand in the presence of Odin, Lord of the Aesir, the Mighty and Wise, the Aged and the Merciful….”
Odin’s right hand was a solid gray glove. “We don’t have time for all two hundred names,” he muttered. He reached for the patch that covered his right eye.
“You
stand before Yggr, the Terror.”
Odin peeled back the metal eye patch.
“Who is also known as Baleyg the Flaming Eye.”
A focused beam of solid yellow-white light shot from the Elder’s eye and splashed across the front line of the anpu and the monokerata. They crisped to spiraling cinders. The Anpu in the second line screamed as their armor melted in the intense heat, and more were caught, crushed or impaled on the unicorns’ horns as the beasts fled. But the beam of light was unrelenting. Stones at their feet cracked and shattered, bubbling like thick liquid.
Odin turned his head slowly, the yellow-white light washing over everything. Nothing escaped his gaze.
A few surviving monokerata scattered in terror, leaving the anpu to face the blazing lance of fire. In grim silence, the anpu pressed on, desperately trying to get close to the two Elders. They flung spears and even swords, but Odin rendered them into pools of sizzling metal as he turned his eye upon them.
The air filled with black soot and cinders. It was rank with rotting fish and ozone, but the smells quickly grew bitter and sour as Hel’s strength weakened. Odin’s gray aura began to fade, then turned pink as Hel poured the last of her strength into her uncle. Her red aura flickered and spat like a guttering candle, and another dozen anpu raced toward the house.
Odin’s gaze flared brighter than before, slicing right through them, flames reaching high onto the walls of the Administration Building, bathing it in flames, washing along the length of the lighthouse before it. Odin staggered, his head jerked back and a curl of flame shot into the sky, then arced down to splash before Xolotl, who desperately scrambled to escape. A thread of sticky fire caught his multicolored cloak, setting it alight, and he flung it away, dancing in fury as he watched more of the anpu rendered into ash.
Hel’s red aura paled even more, then faded to white. Her legs buckled under her, but she still held on to her uncle’s hand. The beam of light lancing from Odin’s right eye flickered and then winked out. He slumped in the doorway next to his niece, smoke and gossamer-thin threads of his gray aura curling off his flesh. The once tall Elder had shrunk and was now bent over and wizened.