“Nereus,” Dee called, marching down to the water’s edge. “About time. We’ve been waiting.”
The Old Man of the Sea leaned his human arms on the boulder and smiled at Dee, exposing a mouthful of tiny pointed teeth. “You forget yourself, humani. I do not answer to you.” His voice was sticky and liquid. “And I’m hungry,” he added.
“That is an idle threat and you know it,” Dee snapped.
Nereus ignored him. “So what have we here.…” The Elder looked up at Machiavelli and Billy, then Virginia and finally Josh. “Immortals and a Gold, come to end the world. As it was foretold in the Time Before Time.” He looked at Josh and the young man’s aura flared protectively into golden chain-mail armor around his body. “And you … you are as I remember you,” he said.
Josh attempted a laugh. “I’ve never met you before in my life, sir.”
“Are you sure?” Nereus demanded.
“Oh, I’m sure I’d remember,” Josh said, pleased that his voice didn’t tremble too much.
“I was told that you would do my bidding,” Dee interrupted.
Nereus ignored Dee and turned to Machiavelli. “Is it time?”
The Italian nodded. “It is time. Did you bring it?”
“I brought it.” The Old Man of the Sea looked from Machiavelli to Dee and then back to the Italian. “Who wants to control the Lotan?”
“I do,” Dee said immediately, stepping forward.
“Of course you do,” Nereus bubbled. A tentacle unpeeled from a boulder and shot out to wrap around Dee’s wrist, jerking him forward. The immortal didn’t even have time to cry out. Virginia Dare started forward, her flute in her hand, but a look from Nereus stopped her. “Don’t be stupid. If I wanted him dead, I could have plucked him off this rock and fed him to my daughters.” Behind him, a dozen green-haired Nereids broke the surface of the bay, mouths open to reveal their piranha teeth. “And you and I will have a reckoning for what you did earlier. My family is very dear to me.”
“You’re not the first Elder to threaten me.” Virginia Dare’s cruel smile turned her face ugly. “And you know what happened to him.”
The stink of rotting fish grew stronger, and both Billy and Josh gagged and inched away. Virginia threw her head back and breathed deeply. “Oh, I do so love the smell of fear.”
Nereus turned back to Dee. “A little present for you,” he said, pressing what looked like a small blue-veined egg into Dee’s hands and closing the doctor’s fingers over it. A tentacle wrapped around the English doctor’s fist, locking it closed. “Whatever you do,” Nereus said, “you must not open your hand.” Then he squeezed tightly and the distinctive sound of a shell cracking could be heard.
“Why not?” Dee asked. And then he gasped, his eyes bulging in pain.
“Ah yes,” Nereus bubbled once again, showing his teeth in a ferocious grin, “that would be the Lotan biting you.”
Dee shuddered but remained silent, gray eyes fixed on the Elder’s face.
“You’re brave, I’ll give you that,” Nereus said, his mouth widening in an even more savage smile. “It is said that the bite of the Lotan is more painful than the sting of a scorpion.”
The doctor had turned a ghastly white, and his eyes were huge in his head. Beads of yellow sweat gathered on his forehead, and the air stank of sulfur. “I thought …,” he said through gritted teeth, “I thought it would be bigger.”
Billy looked at Josh and winked. “I thought that too.”
“It will be,” Nereus laughed. “It just needs to feed off a little blood first.” Dee’s entire body was jerking violently now. He attempted to pull his left arm free, but another of Nereus’s tentacles had encircled the doctor’s forearm. “Once it tastes your blood, it will be bonded to you. Then it is yours to control. But you must act swiftly. The Lotan are like mayflies; they have a very short lifespan. You have three or four hours at most before it dies.” The Elder’s tentacles fell away from Dee’s arms and he added, “But that should be time enough to begin the destruction of the humani city.”
Josh watched as the Old Man of the Sea crawled back over the rocky edge of the island and slid into the chill green waters of the bay. Women’s heads popped up around him, green hair spreading like seaweed across the water. The Elder turned to look back and fixed his eyes on Josh. He frowned, as if trying to remember something, but then shook his head and sank beneath the surface. One by one, the Nereids disappeared as well.
Virginia Dare rushed forward and caught Dee as he swayed on his feet. The Magician’s skin was ashen; his left hand was still tightly shut, but blood was seeping from between his fingers, which had turned a bruised purple. “Help me!” Virginia shouted.
Billy clambered over the rocks and wrapped an arm around Dee’s waist, holding him upright. “I’ve got him.”
“Let’s move him up onto the rocks,” Virginia said.
“No!” Machiavelli yelled. “Wait.” He picked his way over the slippery boulders and stood in front of Dee. “Josh, help me here.”
Without thinking, Josh climbed down over the stones to stand alongside the Italian.
“Observe me,” Machiavelli said. He held up his arms and two ornate metal gloves formed over his hands. “Can you copy that?”
“Easy.” Josh stretched out his hands, and the salty air was infused with the smell of citrus as golden metal gloves appeared over his fingers.
“Hold his arm,” Machiavelli commanded, “and, whatever happens, do not let go.” He looked at Virginia and Billy, who were standing on either side of the swaying Magician. “Are you ready?”
The two immortals looked at one another and nodded.
“Josh?”
The young man nodded and took hold of Dee’s arm, stretching it out. The Magician’s sulfurous aura fizzled and crackled where the golden gloves touched his flesh, but the scent of oranges was stronger than the stink of rotten eggs. Machiavelli reached for Dee’s left hand, turning it palm upward, and then carefully opened his fingers. Nestled in the Magician’s palm were the remains of the crushed shell. And in the midst of the fragments was the Lotan.
“It’s kind of like a skink,” Josh said, leaning forward for a closer look. The creature was tiny, not much more than one inch in length, four-legged, green-skinned, with long horizontal lines running down the length of its body. “Except for the heads,” he added. Seven identical heads grew out of its body on short necks. Each head was attached to the flesh of Dee’s palm, tiny round mouths sucking noisily as they drank his blood.
“If I didn’t know any better,” Billy the Kid said quietly, “I’d reckon the Old Man of the Sea was playing some sort of joke on us.” He nodded at the tiny lizardlike creature. “Not much terrorizing to be done with that.”
“Oh, Billy,” Virginia said simply. “What do you do when you want to make something grow?”
The American looked at her blankly and shrugged.
Virginia shook her head, clearly disappointed that he didn’t know the answer. “Just add water.”
The creature raised its seven tiny heads as Machiavelli carefully plucked it off Dee’s bloody flesh. It thrashed about violently, squeaking like a newborn kitten, each of the seven heads striking out at the Italian’s hands, tiny needlelike teeth squealing and scraping on the immortal’s hardened auric gloves. “Filthy thing,” he muttered. Holding the Lotan at arm’s length, Machiavelli dropped it into a pool of water collected in the rocks by his feet.
“Now what?” Billy asked.
“Now we run,” Machiavelli said.
arethyu and Aten raced down a narrow tunnel. The walls were polished black glass, etched with the scripts of a thousand dead languages that twisted and coiled in ever-moving lines and columns. Marethyu’s glowing hook sent shadows dancing across the words.
“Tell me something,” Aten said. His voice echoed slightly, bouncing off the tunnel walls.
Marethyu held up his hook and pale golden light washed over Aten’s narrow features. “What do you want t
o know?”
“Why are you doing this?” Aten asked.
Marethyu’s bright blue eyes widened in surprise. “Do I have a choice?”
“Everyone has a choice.”
The hook-handed man shook his head. “I’m not sure I believe that. My life was shaped millennia before I was born. I sometimes think I am just an actor, playing a role.”
The tunnel ended in a vast underground cavern. Water trickled in the darkness and the air smelled fresh and clean. Aten turned to face Marethyu. “Perhaps you are an actor, but you have accepted your role. You could just as easily have said no and walked away.”
Marethyu shook his head. “If you knew the whole story, you’d see that that was impossible. If I did not fulfill my role, then the world would be a very different place.”
The Elder reached out and touched the hook that took the place of Marethyu’s left hand. It sparkled and crackled, blazing brighter. “You were not born with this.”
“I was not.”
“How did you lose your hand?”
“By choice,” Marethyu said, his voice hardening. “It was a price I had to pay, and I paid it gladly.”
Aten nodded. “Everything has a price. I understand that.”
“Do you understand the price you will have to pay for allowing me to escape?”
Aten’s lips curled in a smile. “Anubis and Bastet will use it as the excuse they need to move against me. Isis and Osiris will gather the Council of Elders to declare me unfit to rule and probably feed me to the volcano.” He clapped his hands sharply together and a ripple of light shivered through the cave. Then he clapped again and the cave slowly lit up in a warm milk-white light. “The fungus on the walls is sensitive to sound,” he explained.
There was a lake in the center of the cave, the black water speckled with white, running with long slow ripples. Sitting on the banks of the lake was a crystal vimana. It was almost completely transparent, visible only because of the coating of white reflected light.
“Take it,” Aten said. “I found it preserved in a block of ice on a plateau at the top of the world. It is probably the oldest vimana in existence, and despite its fragile appearance, it is practically indestructible.”
Shouts suddenly echoed down the tunnel behind them, and the fungus pulsed and rippled in time with the sounds.
“They’re coming. Go now, and do what you have to do.”
“You could come with me,” Marethyu said suddenly.
“The vimana will hold only one. And besides, didn’t you tell me that everything has a price?”
The tramp of footsteps was closer, the clink of metal and armor rattling off the walls.
Marethyu stretched out his right hand and Aten took it in his. “Let me tell you this,” the hook-handed man said. “We will meet again, you and I, in a different place and a different time.”
“You know this to be true?”
“I do.”
“Because you have seen the future?”
“Because I have been there.”
Anubis and the anpu burst out of the tunnel just as the crystal vimana took to the air. It hovered silently, the hook-handed man clearly visible inside the craft. He raised his hook in golden salute. Aten raised his hand in acknowledgment, and the craft plummeted beneath the surface of the lake and disappeared.
“What have you done, brother?” Anubis snarled. “You have betrayed us.”
“I did what I had to do to save the world.”
“Chain him,” Anubis commanded. He looked at his brother and his stiff face managed to twist and contort in rage. “Waerloga,” he spat.
The Elder nodded in agreement. “Aten the Warlock. It has a ring to it, don’t you think?”
ophie Newman stood in the back garden beside the barbecue and watched Prometheus grill sausages. The big Elder was grinning and whistling tunelessly.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“You should have seen the look on Mars’s face,” Prometheus said.
“You were—or you are—enemies?” she asked, and even as she was asking, images started to dance in her head.
… Mars Ultor and Prometheus standing back to back against a horde of snake-headed warriors.
… Prometheus carrying a wounded Mars on his back as he dived off a bridge into a raging torrent …
… Mars snatching a barbed arrow out of the air, a hairs-breadth from Prometheus’s throat …
“Now, perhaps. Once we were friends, closer than brothers.”
“What happened?”
“He went mad,” he said sadly. “Or rather, the sword he carried drove him mad. The same sword your brother now carries.”
Sophie looked across the garden to where the big man in the leather jacket stood drinking pink lemonade through a straw. “He doesn’t look crazy, though.”
“Not at the moment, he doesn’t.”
“Why did he attack you?”
“It’s complicated,” Prometheus said, jumping back as hot grease spat at him.
Sophie glanced at the sausages and sizzling hamburgers, then looked away quickly as her stomach turned. Ever since she’d been Awakened, she’d developed an aversion to meat. “How complicated?”
“Well, Mars married my sister, Zephaniah, which made us brothers-in-law. But when the sword drove him insane, I helped my sister capture him and trap him in a shell of his own hardened aura. She buried him deep underground, and over the centuries the city of Paris grew above his head.”
“Sophie?” Aunt Agnes had appeared from the kitchen, carrying a tray.
“Just a minute, Aunt—”
“Now, Sophie,” Tsagaglalal insisted.
“Excuse me,” Sophie said, and crossed the patio.
Tsagaglalal handed her the tray, which held slices of cut sushi. “Will you help me pass these around? Our guests must be famished.”
“Aunt Agnes … Tsagaglalal,” Sophie said. She was completely confused. “What are we doing?”
“Feeding our guests,” the old woman said with a smile.
“But they’re mortal enemies.”
“They know they must put their enmities aside in my presence,” she said. “That is the tradition.” The corners of the old woman’s gray eyes crinkled in amusement. “Everything is as it should be. Now just help me hand out the food and we’ll wait for Nicholas and Perenelle to join us.”
Sophie followed Tsagaglalal across the patio to where Mars Ultor leaned against a low stone wall. He straightened when he saw the old woman approach, and put down his lemonade.
“Mistress Tsagaglalal,” he said, bowing deeply. Suddenly his blue eyes turned huge behind tears. “I thought I would never see you again.”
The old woman reached up to place the palm of her hand flat against his cheek. “Mars, old friend. It is good to see you. And you are looking well, too. You’ve lost weight. It suits you. How is Zephaniah?”
Mars nodded. “She is well, I think,” he said cautiously. “We … we didn’t talk too much. She spoke and I listened while she told me what to do.” Mars paused and smiled to himself. “It was just like old times. Then she sent me here to find Dee, but first she told me I had to come to you. She said you had something for me.”
Tsagaglalal nodded. “I do. I’ll give it to you in a moment, but first I want you to meet—”
“We’ve already met,” Sophie interrupted coldly. She remembered the creature in the catacombs beneath Paris. “Mars Ultor, who was also Ares, Nergal and Huitzilopochtli.” She looked at Tsagaglalal. “He Awakened Josh in Paris.”
Tsagaglalal patted Sophie’s arm. “I know. Sophie, do not judge him by the Witch’s memories, or by what he was forced to do in Paris. When Danu Talis fell, Mars stayed to the very end and led thousands of humani slaves to safety. He was among the last off the island.”
Sophie looked at Mars again. “The Witch remembers you as a monster.”
“It is true. I was. But Clarent poisoned me,” Mars said. “It changed my nature. And now your twin carrie
s it. Unless you get it away from him, it will change him also.”
“I’ll take it away from him,” Sophie said simply, and then her voice shook. “I know where he is.”
“He’s on Alcatraz. He and I are linked, remember.” He threw his head back and closed his eyes, and his nostrils flared as he inhaled a deep breath. “I can smell him and the others with him: Dee and Machiavelli, an immortal who smells like sage …”
“That would be Virginia Dare,” Tsagaglalal said.
One by one Odin, Hel and Black Hawk crossed the yard and gathered around Mars as he spoke.
“… and another, a male, young, smelling of red peppers,” he continued.
“That would be my friend Billy the Kid,” Black Hawk offered.
“You are sure the Magician is on the island?” Odin asked, his voice hoarse, every word labored.
“I’m sure.” Mars breathed in again. “And there is another.” His face twisted in disgust. “Ah, the stench of Nereus.”
Prometheus came away from the barbecue carrying two plates, one piled high with hamburgers, the other filled with small cocktail sausages festooned with toothpicks.
Sophie watched Mars stiffen as Prometheus approached. Then she saw Tsagaglalal reach out to grip Mars’s arm. The old woman lowered her voice, but the girl caught her words. “You’re a guest in my house. I want you to behave yourself.”
“Of course, mistress,” Mars murmured. He nodded to Prometheus, who smiled in return. “What happened to your hair?” he asked.
“I got old,” Prometheus said. “Unlike you, I see.” He held out the two plates of food to the small group and everyone shook their heads except Mars and Hel. Mars lifted one of the small sausages, breathed in its aroma and then nibbled almost delicately at it. “The first real food I’ve had in millennia,” he admitted.
Hel leaned forward and opened her mouth. A long black tongue shot out and wrapped around a thick hamburger. She pulled it whole into her mouth, her jutting fangs ripping it apart. The juices mingled with the black fluids running down her chin as she smiled at Sophie. “I’m not a vegetarian.”