The word rippled through the spaces between the Shadowrealms.
“Coatlicue …”
The word vibrated and trembled, pulsed and throbbed.
“Coatlicue …”
A single voice, calling, calling, calling.
All she had left were dreams.
Dreams of a golden age.
Dreams of a golden time.
Of a time when she was beautiful.
Of a time when she was young.
Of a time when she ruled the world.
And now those dreams were disturbed.
“Coatlicue …”
Josh Newman took a deep breath and focused on the four swords, which Dee had arranged in a square on the floor. They were each glowing softly, steaming red and white, green and brown smoke into the air.
“Coatlicue …”
“All you have to do is to call her,” Dee had said. “There is a magic in names, a power in them. She will hear you and she will come. The unique combination of the swords and your powerful aura will draw her here.”
“And she will teach me necromancy?” Josh asked.
“Yes,” Dee had said, and for a single instant, Josh had thought he’d heard Nicholas and Perenelle screaming “No!” Then he realized that that was what they probably would say. If he could learn necromancy, he would be able to find out the truth about the Flamels and the Elders and more, much, much more. He’d be able to talk to all the great men and women of history, ask them questions, discover their secrets, find out where they had hidden their treasures. He could resurrect dinosaurs from single bones, even—and the thought was shocking—re-create primitive men so that his parents could study them firsthand. And somewhere, at the back of his mind, he wondered why, if Dee was a necromancer, he had not used the power in the same way. Just what had the Magician used necromancy for?
“Coatlicue …” Josh focused on the swords. Clarent was at the bottom of the square, the blade pointing to the left. Durendal was on the left-hand side, its blade pointing up; Excalibur was on top, its blade pointing right, toward Joyeuse, whose blade was pointing down. The stone swords were trailing fire into the air, and the colors had started to weave and entwine in the middle of the square.
She slept.
And her sleep lasted eons.
She dreamt.
And her dreams lasted centuries.
But the nightmares lasted millennia.
And in this place without light, without sound, without sensation, she did not know whether she woke or slept. She simply existed.
Red. A spot of color.
But in this foul prison, there was no light.
Another speck: white. Tiny, distant.
The Elders had bound her in utter darkness. There had never been light. Until now.
A third spot: brown.
And now a fourth light, and it was green.
She turned toward the lights.
The smoke from the blades wavered, twisted, as if blown by a breeze.
Virginia’s fingers bit deeply into Dee’s arm. “Something’s happening.”
“When she comes we’ll have to be quick,” the Magician said. “As soon as she appears in the square, we shove the boy in with her. So long as the square is not broken, she’ll be trapped within.”
“And if it is broken?” Virginia asked.
“That would not be good,” he said.
“Is she not hideous?”
“In the Nahuatl language, she is called the One with the Skirts of Serpents.”
“Nice!” Virginia said. “How’s he going to react to that?”
“When I touched him a moment ago, I implanted a simple spell. He will see only a beautiful young woman. I’m not sure how long the spell will last, but even if he hesitates, I want you to push him in with her. Once she feeds, we’ll be able to deal with her.”
“And if she refuses?” Virginia asked quietly.
“You lull her to sleep with your flute and we send her back to her prison,” he said calmly.
“You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you, Doctor?” she asked sarcastically.
“Yes.”
Vague, frightening thoughts had started to crowd at the back of Josh’s head. Images of a snake-headed monster wearing a skirt of writhing serpents, leading a monstrous army across the muddy battlefield.
And facing her: the figure of a hooded man who had a hook in place of his left hand, and alongside him, a red-haired pale-skinned female warrior.
“Coat—” he began, but his voice faltered.
Dee stepped forward out of the shadows. “Josh, is everything all right?”
“I’m … I’m not sure,” he said, pressing his hand to his forehead. “I suddenly have a splitting headache. This Coatlicue …” He licked his lips. “What is she like?”
“When she was an Archon, she was considered extraordinarily beautiful,” Dee said carefully. “Why do you ask?”
“I keep thinking about snakes, and I hate snakes, I really do.” Josh pressed both hands to his throbbing head and squeezed his eyes shut. He’d never experienced agony like it before. It felt as if his head were about to explode. Was this a migraine? Even doing something as simple as moving his eyes sent daggers of pain into his skull.
“How bad is the headache?” Dee asked, glancing at Virginia. “Have you any painkillers?”
“I am an Awakened immortal, don’t be ridiculous,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “I’ll wager that headache is not natural.”
“Migraine,” Josh whispered. “I’ll have to stop. Can you take over?” he gasped.
“Coatlicue will only deal with whoever calls her,” Dee muttered. He put his hand under Josh’s chin and tilted it up so that he could look into the boy’s eyes. “You can trust me. I am a doctor.” The boy’s eye color had started to change, the red beginning to fade, traces of white and the original blue returning. “Do you suffer from migraines normally?”
“No. Never had one before in my life. Aunt Agnes gets them all the time. But these aren’t normal times, are they?” Josh said through gritted teeth. His stomach had started to turn and he thought he might throw up.
“No, they’re certainly not,” Dee said very softly, looking deep into Josh’s eyes.…
Seventy miles away, in Point Reyes, Nicholas and Perenelle reared back as Dee looked directly at them.
Prometheus had pressed both hands onto the crystal skull, which was now pulsing like a giant beating heart. The Elder’s eyes were squeezed tightly shut; his lips moved, and they heard him whisper in a dozen languages, “I can see wonders … and horrors … wonders and horrors.”
Nicholas and Perenelle looked at Dee and watched his lips move. Half a second later, they heard him speak as if he were standing in the same room.
“Josh,” Dee said. “I think I have a cure for your headache. Say goodbye, Nicholas; goodbye, Perenelle,” he directed.
The Alchemyst and the Sorceress heard Josh numbly repeat the words. “Goodbye, Nicholas; goodbye, Perenelle.”
And abruptly the image vanished.
The skull went black and Prometheus shuddered and slid off his chair to lie in a heap on the floor. Perenelle looked at her husband. They were both haggard and exhausted. “What happened?”
“Dee knew we were watching. He must have thrown up a Warding spell. Josh is on his own now. Let’s hope he can hold out until the others get there.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
A uniformed guard came to the door and looked at the odd trio standing outside. A slender, impeccably dressed Japanese man in a black suit, a red-haired woman, also in a tailored black suit, and a wild-haired teenager. Behind them, an antique Volkswagen van was haphazardly parked at the curb.
The blond teenager had her finger on the intercom, and the incessant chiming was starting to get on the guard’s nerves. He jabbed a stubby finger at the sign pasted to the door.
NO ADMITTANCE WITHOUT APPOINTMENT.
The girl took her finger off the bell and rummaged
through her pockets. She produced a tube of lip balm and wrote in greasy letters across the glass:
YCNEGREME
The guard shook his head, turned his back and stepped over to his desk in the foyer of Enoch Enterprises. Tourists. Every day, people knocked on the door, looking for directions, wondering if they could get onto the roof to take photos. No one got in. Ever.
Before he was able to sit, however, a blast of heat seared all the small hairs on the back of his neck, and he caught the fleeting impression of the heavy door sailing across the lobby and smashing into the wall before something struck him at the base of the skull and the world turned black.
“You could have just opened the door,” Aoife suggested, looking at the smoldering ruin of metal and glass. “Or even melted the lock.”
Sophie shook her hands to cool them. “Sometimes I don’t know my own strength.”
Niten shrugged out of his black suit coat and strapped two swords, a katana and the shorter wakizashi, around his waist, so that they hung over his left hip.
Aoife settled two matched short swords over her shoulders on her back, and a pair of nunchaku dangled from each hand. She wore her broad-bladed knife strapped to her leg.
And Sophie uncoiled the silver and black leather whip Perenelle had given her before they had left Prometheus’s Shadowrealm. “This is woven from snakes pulled from the Medusa’s hair,” the Sorceress had explained. “It will slice through stone and cut metal. Be careful with it.”
Two guards raced into the foyer, drawn by the noise, and stopped abruptly at the sight of the ruined door and their colleague lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. One went for his weapon, the other for his radio … and a heartbeat later they were both unconscious on the floor as well. Aoife rubbed her hands together as she slipped her nunchaku back into her belt. “This could be fun.”
There was an explosion of sparks as Niten drove his short sword through the computer server and the cables in the small office behind the front desk. “Phones and Internet are down,” he announced.
Aoife laughed delightedly. “Good. We’ve got a few minutes before someone notices the door is missing and calls the police. Let’s find your brother.”
“If he’s still here,” Niten said quietly.
“Oh, he’s here,” Sophie said. She pressed her hand to her stomach. “I can feel him. He’s …” She jabbed her finger upward. “Upstairs.”
The smoke rising off the Swords of Power had turned foul, mixing into a dark miasma that hung in the air.
“Coatlicue is coming,” Dee said quietly, standing behind Josh. “Stay focused. Stay strong. You have been Awakened. You have learned the Magic of Water and the Magic of Fire. But these are not entirely practical magics. Soon you will know the rarest magic of all, the dark art of necromancy—and then there is nothing you cannot achieve. You will learn wonders. I did.”
The column of filthy smoke almost reached the ceiling. It was the color of mud streaked with rusty red. A rancid smell seeped into the room: the distinctive stink of serpents.
“Coatlicue …”
Josh tried to concentrate, but the serpent odor sickened him and the images of the snake-headed creature had returned. He wasn’t sure where the images were coming from—from the Flamels, maybe? Were they trying to distract him? They knew he was terrified of snakes. Dee had told him that Nicholas and Perenelle had caused his migraine and had probably been trying to control his thoughts. The doctor had protected him with what he called a Warding spell, and the moment he’d activated it, all traces of the terrible headache and the stomach-churning nausea had vanished, so he’d obviously been right about the Flamels attacking Josh. But what Josh didn’t understand was why? The only reason he could come up with was that they didn’t want him to become a necromancer, and he was beginning to suspect that it was because they were afraid of what he might discover—about them, about the Elders.
Light.
And heat.
And flesh.
The mouthwatering scent of life.
The tingle of a powerful aura.
Calling to her. Calling, calling, calling.
Running and falling, crawling and walking, on limbs that had not been used in millennia, Coatlicue moved toward the light, toward freedom.
“Coatlicue …,” Josh rasped, his voice hoarse.
The smoke from the blades on the floor before him had solidified into a thick brown sheet. He thought he saw something move behind it.
He was still trying to work out what he’d do with the Magic of Necromancy … but wait, hadn’t Dee called it an art rather than a magic? What was the difference? And were there rules to necromancy? It had to be fueled by his aura, which meant that it probably followed some of the basic rules of the magics he’d already learned. So he’d have to choose very carefully before he decided to bring someone back from the dead. And how long could he keep them alive? Was there a time limit …?
“Coatlicue …”
Josh squinted. There was a definite shape moving behind the gauzy smoke.
He’d bring back Leonardo da Vinci, who was supposed to be buried in Amboise, France. And he’d love to talk to Mark Twain and Einstein and …
The brown smoke rippled; then two hands appeared and pulled it apart like a curtain.
Coatlicue emerged.
And she was beautiful.
“Where is he?” Sophie screamed, frustration and panic churning inside her.
They had fought their way up the stairs. There were no staff in the offices, only a scattering of uniformed guards, and they fell quickly to Aoife’s nunchaku and Niten’s lightning-fast fists and feet.
“We’re on the top floor,” Niten announced as he drove a foot through the plate-glass door. The lock snapped and he stepped into what was obviously Dee’s private office. He moved swiftly around the room, checking the small side corridors. “Nothing. A bathroom, a kitchen, a small private elevator. No sign that Josh has even been here.”
Aoife spun around to look at Sophie. “You said he was here. You felt him.”
The girl nodded. Her head was starting to thump with a sick headache.
“You said he was upstairs. Think. Where is he now?”
Sophie breathed deeply and concentrated on her brother. Then she frowned in confusion. “Downstairs.”
With Niten in the lead, they raced down the stairs, leaping over the bodies of the unconscious guards. “Twelfth floor,” the Japanese immortal called. Standing in the middle of the stairwell, Aoife turned to Sophie. “Where is he now?”
Sophie visualized her brother’s face … and then blinked. She raised a tentative finger and pointed to the ceiling. “But that can’t be right. It feels like he’s upstairs now.”
Niten grinned and looked at Aoife. “Secret floor,” they said in unison.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
Josh stared at Coatlicue. She was the most elegant and beautiful creature he had ever seen in his life. She was tall—seven, maybe eight feet—and looked like she’d stepped out of a painting on the wall of an Egyptian tomb. Jet-black hair cut in a straight line across her forehead hung in a silky curtain to her shoulders, and her eyes were outlined in kohl. Her skin was copper and her eyes were a deep lustrous brown. She was wearing a simple white robe and was barefoot. When she looked down at Josh, she smiled warmly, and although her lips did not move, Josh clearly heard her voice in his head. You called me and I came. I am Coatlicue.… When she stretched out her hand, he noticed that her fingernails had been painted in a snakeskin pattern.
Without even thinking, Josh took a step toward the creature and raised his right hand.
A solid sheet of flame blossomed in front of Josh, crisping his hair, searing his eyebrows and sending him staggering back. He shouted as he slipped and fell to the floor, voice high-pitched with terror, and he heard Dee roar and Virginia scream. He rolled over, and through the dancing flames he saw his sister standing at an open door on the opposite side of the room, fire still curling off her fingers.
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“Sis?” Confused, disoriented, he climbed to his feet and then grunted as someone hit him from behind, sending him staggering forward, into the flame, toward Coatlicue. He threw up his hand to protect himself from the fire—and the flame instantly winked out, and he fell on his hands and knees at Coatlicue’s bare feet.
“Josh!” Sophie screamed.
Your name is Josh? Take my hand, Josh.
Immediately, Josh slipped his hand into Coatlicue’s.
Sophie watched in horror as Josh stepped toward the creature trapped within the square of swords. Coatlicue had a body that was vaguely female, but with the claws of a crocodile and two serpents’ heads coiling from a thick neck. A long robe composed entirely of writhing snakes covered her body. Dee’s companion, the woman who had to be Virginia Dare, stood behind Josh and shoved him forward—toward the fire and into the sword square on the floor.
Instinctively, Sophie uncurled Perenelle’s whip and lashed out with it. It keened through the air and laid open a long stripe across Coatlicue’s back. One hissing snake head darted toward Sophie and spat a shower of white liquid at her. It fell short, bubbling and burning into the floor, giving her an inkling of what it could do to her skin.
Niten drew both swords and leapt toward Dee. A blade of smoking sulfurous yellow appeared in the Magician’s hand and struck at the Japanese immortal. Niten easily countered the blows, sparks exploding where his metal swords clashed against Dee’s burning blade. The Japanese immortal closed in on Dee, swords whirling, while the Magician desperately backpedaled, flailing wildly with the blazing longsword.
Sophie’s silver armor bloomed around her body as she strode toward Coatlicue, whip cracking and whistling as she lashed the creature again and again. “Let my brother go!”
Aoife was darting toward Josh when Dare reared up in front of her, a wooden flute in one hand, a tomahawk in the other.
“You think that can hurt me?” The warrior sneered at the crude tomahawk.
“No, but this can,” Dare said, and brought the flute to her lips and blew a single note. The warrior instantly dropped to the ground, writhing in agony, hands pressed to her ears. Virginia stood over Aoife and twirled the tomahawk loosely above her. “I’ve never killed one of the Next Generation before,” she said lightly. “First time for everything, I suppose,” she added, then raised the axe.