“Josh, if you’re going to do something …,” Sophie urged.
“Sit beside me,” he said. “You too, Aunt Agnes … Tsagaglalal.”
“This is hardly the time for sitting,” Tsagaglalal protested.
“Trust me,” he said with a wicked grin.
Sophie sat on the step to Josh’s right, while Tsagaglalal settled nervously to his left. “Even the beasts look surprised,” Tsagaglalal muttered.
“Put your arms through mine and hang on.”
Josh whistled again.
Tsagaglalal grunted as the ground shifted again. The earthquakes were becoming more frequent. And then she realized that it wasn’t the stones beneath her than were shifting. She wasn’t even sitting on the stones anymore. She was rising slowly into the air.
Josh was grinning widely. “Isn’t this the coolest thing?” he asked. “Virginia showed me how to do it.” He straightened his legs and allowed them to dangle, and Sophie followed him. “Sure beats walking.” The three were spinning slowly around one another as they rose skyward.
“I’m standing on air,” Sophie said, stamping her feet.
“Solidified air—it’s the same principle as a hovercraft.” He turned to Tsagaglalal. “What do you think?”
She smiled. “You should have seen the looks on the anpu’s faces.”
They rose faster and faster, the air streaming cold around them now, the steps blurring beneath them. The city grew small; the many battles diminished to dots of flame.
As they neared the top, Sophie looked down between her feet and watched a shadow flowing up the steps and realized it was the anpu and the other hybrids. “They’re still coming. There are thousands of them.”
“They will never stop until they are called off,” Tsagaglalal said. “And neither Bastet nor Anubis will do it. They need you dead.”
Sophie looked up. “How close are we … Oh, there’s someone on the steps above,” she said in alarm. “It looks like …” She stopped, suddenly speechless.
In burnished red armor, Prometheus sat on the steps close to the top of the pyramid, arms resting on his thighs, fingers clasped together. “Ah, there you are,” he said pleasantly. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
“We?” Josh asked weakly. He was beginning to tire out.
“Why don’t you take a spin around the pyramid,” Prometheus suggested lightly.
With a tremendous effort of will, Josh brought the cushion of air clockwise around the sides of pyramid, finding Saint-Germain lying stretched out on a step, busy with his notebook. He waved up to them. “Wonderful evening, isn’t it?” he called. “Just look at that sunset—it’s positively musical.”
Palamedes and William Shakespeare were on the north side of the great pyramid. The Bard looked at the Saracen Knight and pointed as the three people floated slowly past. “Now, that is something you do not see every day.”
And finally they floated to the east side, which was already deep in shadow. Joan of Arc sat crossed-legged on a step, eyes closed, upturned palms resting in her lap. She opened her eyes, smiled brightly and inclined her head. “Very nice armor, Sophie.” As she was speaking, she spread her arms, the air suddenly filling with lavender as her own silver armor flowed over her body.
“What are they doing here?” Sophie asked.
“They are here to guard you and protect you,” Tsagaglalal explained as they floated higher, creeping closer to the top of the pyramid. “They will keep the anpu at bay for as long as possible. But don’t delay too long.”
“What are you talking about?” Josh demanded. He was starting to shiver with the strain of holding the cushion of air together. “How close are we? I can’t keep this up much longer.”
“Take us in to the steps,” Tsagaglalal commanded. “Now!”
They had barely reached the stone steps before Josh slumped. Sophie and Tsagaglalal helped him stagger the last half-dozen stairs to the top of the pyramid …
… just as Isis and Osiris’s crystal vimana dropped out of the sky and landed on the flat roof.
“So now it ends,” Tsagaglalal murmured. “Now the fate of the world—this world and all the other worlds and Shadowrealms—is yours to decide.” Reaching into her armor, she pulled out a small rectangle of emerald and pressed it into Josh’s hands. “But before you make your final decision, you should probably read this.”
“What is it?”
“It is a parting gift from Abraham the Mage. It is the last message he ever wrote,” she said. She stopped at the edge of the steps, turned back and took both twins’ hands in hers. She smiled sadly, large gray eyes shimmering in the fading light. “I would hope to see you again in ten thousand years’ time. Be nice to your old Aunt Agnes, and know that she loves you very much.” Then she kissed each one on the cheek and turned away, walking down to stand beside Prometheus, leaving the twins alone on the roof with Isis and Osiris.
Josh looked at Sophie. “Just you and me,” he said.
“As always.”
Then, together, they walked toward the vimana.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
Tsagaglalal ran onto the bridge.
Her aura blazed cold white against the fog, searing it away, creating a hole in the swirling damp around her. She raced through the opening between the two lines of cars and knew immediately what Niten and Prometheus had tried to do. She saw the broken spears on the ground and then spotted the blood: they had fought here and been injured. She caught the scent of their auras on the night air where they had healed themselves, but the auras were slightly soured and bitter—a sure sign that they were desperately weakened.
A Spartoi warrior lurched out of the fog to her left. “What’s this?” he asked with a giggle. “Fresh meat …”
Tsagaglalal’s wicked kopesh flashed and he fell without ever finishing the sentence.
Shapes moved ahead of her: two Spartoi racing down the bridge toward her, swords and spears jabbing. The Spartoi were fast, inhumanly fast, but Tsagaglalal cut them down without breaking stride. A long time ago, when the world had been a very different place, and before the Fall of Danu Talis, she had been trained by some of the finest warriors in all creation. Later, when she had been called Myrina and commanded the most fearsome warriors on any of the Shadowrealms, she had passed those skills on to two girls under her command: Scathach and Aoife.
Tsagaglalal ran past the last of the cars. There were deep grooves in the bridge where the metal wall had been pulled apart. She guessed that when Niten and Prometheus had realized the creatures were disassembling the barrier, the Elder and immortal had taken the battle to the enemy rather than standing and allowing themselves to be overrun.
There was the hint of green tea in the air, the suggestion of anise, and then, directly ahead of her, the merest touches of blue and red on the blanketing fog. Tsagaglalal raced toward it. A wounded Spartoi staggered toward her, a look of absolute surprise on his face, obviously astonished that he’d been injured. Her kopesh rose and fell and the creature died with the same shocked expression on his face.
Tsagaglalal could hear weapons clashing ahead of her, metal ringing off metal, the meaty slap of wood against flesh, the hissing of the Spartoi and the grunts of the two men. She burst out of the fog to see the Elder and the immortal standing back to back against almost ten times their number. The Elder’s armor was a blaze of red light, but it was fading fast, and the immortal shimmered with gossamer tendrils of his blue aura. Both men were badly wounded, but half a dozen of the creatures lay still at their feet.
Abruptly, at some unheard command, all the Spartoi swarmed forward, spears and swords jabbing.
Tsagaglalal saw Niten go down beneath a dozen blows. Prometheus stepped back to stand over the immortal’s body, guarding it, sword blurring, but the Spartoi were just too many, and they were too fast. Prometheus fell, stabbed in the back by those afraid to face him.
She Who Watches screamed.
The sound was ancient and primal, a raw ululation that sho
uld never have come from a human throat. But Tsagaglalal was not, and had never been, human. The sound cut into the fog and lanced through the night, stopping all movement. The Spartoi turned toward the howl and began to move in the direction of the figure in white ceramic armor.
The air abruptly filled with the rich, thick scent of jasmine.
“The Elemental Magics,” Tsagaglalal snarled, hammering a creature to the ground without even looking at it. “Equal and identical. None greater than the other. Water …”
An entire section of the bridge turned to dirty liquid. Six of the Spartoi were immediately swallowed up, falling through the aqueous bridge to tumble into the sea far below.
“Air …”
Another portion of the bridge vaporized. Three of the creatures barely had time to scream before they too disap peared to fall through the suddenly empty space into the unforgiving waters of the bay.
“Fire …”
A six-foot stretch of the metal structure turned white-hot, blazing to incandescence. Three unlucky warriors were crisped to cinders in a heartbeat.
A handful of the Spartoi remained. Hissing nervously, they backed away from the small woman in white.
“And Earth.”
The section of bridge where the Spartoi stood turned to quicksand. The warriors did not even have time to scream before it swallowed them. Then it instantly hardened and re-formed, leaving vague impressions of their bodies in the rippled surface.
Tsagaglalal dusted off her hands. She unceremoniously tossed aside the bodies of the fallen lizards to get at the two men and kneel beside them. “Do you know,” she said, “I was telling Sophie only earlier today that there is no magic greater than the other. They are all the same and equal….” She stopped. Neither man was moving. “Oh, no,” she breathed.
When she pulled away the last of the Spartoi, she discovered that both men were crisscrossed with wounds. Prometheus’s armor was a ruin, and Niten’s black suit hung in shreds about his thin body. Delicately she pressed her fingertips to Niten’s throat, but there was no pulse. There was no point in feeling for Prometheus’s pulse, because he had never had one, but she peeled back his eyelids and saw nothing but white.
“No,” she said fiercely.
The Elder and the immortal had given their lives defending the city.
“No,” Tsagaglalal said firmly. “I will not allow it.” Then she threw back her head and howled aloud her anguish.
Up on the ridge looking down over the Golden Gate Bridge, Bastet and Quetzalcoatl suddenly smelled jasmine on the air and saw the globe of white flare in the fog below.
And then the sound pierced the night, and although it had been ten thousand years since they’d last heard the noise, they recognized it immediately.
The two Elders turned to look at one another, then ran toward their cars. Seconds later, Bastet’s limousine peeled out of the parking lot, tires slipping and spinning on the wet pavement. Quetzalcoatl followed, wondering if he would make it back to the safety of his Shadowrealm in time.
Neither of them wanted to face the wrath of She Who Watches.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
“Just what do you two think you’re doing?” Osiris demanded, face flushed with anger.
“Why did you run from us?” Isis snapped. “We told you—”
Sophie clapped her metal-gloved hands together, the sound cracking off the pyramid’s top like a gunshot, silencing them. “Who are you?” she said quietly.
“What are you?” Josh asked.
Shocked, Isis and Osiris stood at the foot of their vimana, exchanged a glance and then turned to stare at the twins. “That’s no way to speak to your parents—” Isis began.
“You’re right,” Sophie interrupted. “But you’re not our parents, are you?”
Isis and Osiris remained silent, but something subtle happened to their faces. Shadows bloomed beneath their eyes; color touched their cheeks.
“You know I have within me the Witch of Endor’s memories,” Sophie said, closing her hands into fists. Smoking silver aura began to mist off them and the evening breeze whipped away the scent of vanilla. “She never liked you.”
“She was a—” Isis protested.
“She spent centuries trying to find out just who you were,” Sophie continued. “She didn’t believe you were Elders. And she knew you weren’t Great Elders or Ancients.” Even as she was speaking, images were tumbling through her mind, snatches of the Witch’s experiences. Sophie gasped as the images grew sharper, crisper. “She never quite figured it out. She came close, though. And as she began to suspect what you might be, she set out destroying millennia of ancient knowledge. Just to keep it from you.”
A deep shudder rumbled through the pyramid.
“The Witch was, is and will be a fool,” Isis said petulantly. “And you are a fool for listening to her or believing her.”
Osiris wandered over to the edge of the pyramid and peered down. The tireless anpu were closing in fast. “It is still not too late,” he said.
“Too late for what?” Josh spread his arms. “Look around. The Elders are finished. The people of Danu Talis have risen up.”
“So what? You could wipe them out with a word,” Osiris retorted.
Isis looked at Sophie. “Do you have any idea of the power you wield?”
“No,” Josh said truthfully. “Do you?”
Osiris blinked at him, and in that moment, Josh knew that he didn’t.
Another spasm shook the pyramid, and off to the right, Huracan, the volcano, began to heave black smoke. Bright red cinders spiraled upward into the darkening sky like fireworks.
“You are not our parents, are you?” Sophie demanded.
“We have raised you as our own,” Isis offered.
There was a terrifying noise from below as the anpu howled their war cry and closed on the six individuals protecting the top of the pyramid.
“That’s not the question I asked,” Sophie snapped. “Are you our parents?”
“No,” Isis said, unable to conceal the twist of disgust that curled her lips. “We did not birth you.”
The twins looked at one another. Although they had already guessed the answer, it was still a shock. “Good,” Josh said shakily. “I don’t think we want you as our parents.”
Sophie’s face was a white mask, ghastly against her silver armor. Memories of the Witch’s search for the truth began to fall together.
“And Sophie and I … are we related?” Josh asked the question he didn’t really want the answer to.
Isis and Osiris remained silent, looking at them, eyes mocking.
“Are we!” he shouted suddenly, and they both jumped.
“Not by blood, no, but you are Gold and Silver,” Osiris said. “It is an ancient bloodline. There is a kinship there.”
“Who are we?” Sophie screamed. She’d started to tremble, a combination of fear and anger and a feeling of terrible loss burning through her. She was unaware of the silver tears streaming down her face.
Isis shrugged. “Oh, who knows?” she said casually. “We’ve hunted Gold and Silver across the centuries and through the Shadowrealms. We picked up Josh in a Neanderthal encampment more than thirty thousand years before we found you. We discovered you somewhere on the steppes of what would now be Russia in the middle of the tenth century … or was it the ninth?”
“Tenth, I think,” Osiris said.
“We kept you both safe, isolated and cocooned in a Shadowrealm where time does not run, and then, when all was in readiness, brought you out together into twentieth-century Earth.”
Sophie felt as if she might faint, or collapse, at least, but Josh stepped over and caught her.
“Why?” he whispered.
“You were Gold and Silver,” Osiris said lightly. “The purest auras we had ever encountered in millennia of searching. We could not let you rot in some primitive hut.”
“You kidnapped us,” he murmured.
Isis and Osiris laughed. “Well, ki
dnapped is a bit harsh,” Osiris said. “Compared to what you would have had, we gave you a life of unimaginable luxury. In fact, we are more parents to you than your real parents would have been. Do you know the life expectancy for a newborn Neanderthal baby or a child on the frozen steppes of Russia? We may not be your birth parents, but we gave you life.”
“And for that you owe us a debt of gratitude and respect,” Isis added.
“We owe you nothing!” Sophie said.
Almost directly below they could hear the clash of weapons, the howling of anpu and the hissing of cats.
Trembling with rage and fear, sick to his stomach, with a stabbing headache almost blinding him, Josh turned his back on Isis and Osiris and walked to the edge of the roof. He couldn’t look at them anymore. His hands were opening and closing spasmodically as he tried to take in the terrible revelations.
Directly below he saw Palamedes and William Shakespeare. The Bard’s hands were moving and he was conjuring serpents and lizards out of the air, laughing as he rained them down on the beasts gathered below, driving them back.
Josh saw one anpu raise a long riflelike weapon and fire. Shakespeare fell without a sound, and the stinging lizards and coiling snakes instantly disappeared. The attackers surged forward, and a lion-headed eagle darted out of the throng to peck at the fallen immortal. Palamedes grabbed it, holding it at arm’s length; then he tossed it into the sea of beasts below. But the anpu closed in.
Josh threw back his head and screamed his fear and frustration. He pressed his thumb into the palm of his hand, igniting the Fire magic Prometheus had taught him, and sent a blade of flame roaring down onto the steps. It foamed and splashed, washing away the monsters.
He staggered to the right, where a grim-faced Saint-Germain was plucking fireballs from the air and tossing them into the midst of the savage monsters. The gold stone steps were melting.
Hands still blazing, Josh looked down on Prometheus and Tsagaglalal: the Elder was standing tall and unmoving, hands outstretched, while cold white fire flowed down the steps like water.