A stunned Machiavelli looked at Dee, who looked equally shocked by the revelation.
Dagon’s mouth opened in what might have been a smile, revealing his tooth-filled maw. “You should probably know that the last time a group of Disir used Nidhogg, they lost control of the creature. It ate all of them. In the three days it took to recapture it and chain it in Yggdrasill’s roots, it completely destroyed the Anasazi people in what is now New Mexico. It is said that Nidhogg feasted off ten thousand humani and still hungered for more.”
“Can these Disir control it?” Dee demanded.
Dagon shrugged. “Thirteen of the finest Disir warriors couldn’t control it in New Mexico….”
“Maybe we should—” Dee began.
Machiavelli suddenly stiffened. “Too late,” he whispered. “It’s here.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“I’m going to bed.” Sophie Newman paused by the kitchen door, a glass of water in her hand, and looked back to where Josh was still sitting at the table. “Francis is going to teach me some specific fire spells in the morning. He promised to show me the fireworks trick.”
“Great, we’ll never have to buy fireworks again for the Fourth of July.”
Sophie smiled tiredly. “Don’t stay up too long, it’s nearly dawn.”
Josh shoved another piece of toast into his mouth. “I’m still on Pacific time,” he said, his voice muffled. “But I’ll be up in a few minutes. Scatty wants to continue my sword training tomorrow. I’m really looking forward to it.”
“Liar, liar.”
He grunted. “Well, you’ve got your magic to protect you…all I have is a stone sword.”
The bitterness was clearly audible in his voice, and Sophie forced herself not to comment. She was getting tired of her brother’s constant whining. She had never asked to be Awakened; she hadn’t wanted to know the Witch’s magic or Saint-Germain’s, either. But it had happened and she was dealing with it, and Josh would just have to get over it. “Good night,” she said. She closed the door behind her, leaving Josh alone in the kitchen.
When he finished the last of the toast, he gathered up his plate and glass and carried them both to the sink. He ran hot water over the plate, then set it to drip dry in the wire dish rack beside the deep ceramic sink. Refilling his glass from the jug of filtered water, he crossed to the kitchen door, pulled it open and stepped out into the tiny garden. Although it was almost dawn, he didn’t feel the least bit tired, but then again, he reminded himself, he had slept for most of the day. Over the high wall, he couldn’t see much of the Parisian skyline except for the warm orange glow from the streetlights. He looked up, but there were no stars visible in the heavens. Sitting on the step, he breathed deeply. The air was cool and damp, just like San Francisco’s, though it lacked the familiar salt tang that he loved; it was tainted instead with unfamiliar smells, few of which were pleasant. He felt a sneeze gathering at the back of his nose and sniffed hard, eyes watering. There was the stench of overflowing trash cans and rotting fruit, and he detected a nastier, fouler stink that was vaguely familiar. Closing his mouth, he breathed deeply through his nose, trying to identify it: what was it? It was something he’d smelled very recently….
Snake.
Josh leapt to his feet. There weren’t snakes in Paris, were there? Deep in his chest, Josh felt his heart begin to beat faster. He was terrified of snakes, a bone-chilling fear that he could trace back to when he’d been about ten. He’d been camping with his father in Wupatki National Monument in Arizona when he’d slipped off a trail and slid down an incline, straight into a rattlesnake nest. When the dust had cleared, he’d realized he was lying next to a six-foot-long snake. The creature had raised its wedge-shaped head and stared at him with coal black eyes for what was probably no more than a second—though it felt like a lifetime—before Josh had managed to scramble out, too terrified and breathless even to scream. He’d never been able to work out why the snake hadn’t attacked him, though his father told him that rattlesnakes were actually shy and that it had probably just eaten. He’d had nightmares about the incident for weeks afterward, and after every one he would wake up with that smell of serpent musk in his nostrils.
He was smelling it now.
And it was getting stronger.
Josh started backing up the steps. There was a sudden scrabbling sound, like a squirrel running up the side of a tree. Then, directly in front of him, on the other side of the small courtyard, claws, each one the length of his hand, appeared over the top of the nine-foot-high wall. They moved around slowly, almost delicately, questing for a hold, and then abruptly gripped hard enough for the talons to bite deep into the old bricks. Josh froze, all the breath leaving his body in one shocked exhalation.
The arms that followed were covered in thick knobbled hide…and then the head of a monster appeared over the wall. It was long and slablike, with two rounded nostrils on the end of a blunt snout directly over its mouth and solid black eyes sunk deep behind circular depressions on either side of its skull. Unable to move, unable to breathe, his heart hammering so hard it was physically shaking his body, Josh watched the huge head swivel lazily from side to side, an immensely long, ghastly white forked tongue flickering in the air. It froze, then slowly, very slowly, shifted its head and looked down at Josh. The merest tip of its tongue tasted the air and then it opened its mouth wide—impossibly wide, enough to swallow him whole—and the boy saw a mouthful of teeth: sharp, ragged curved daggers.
Josh wanted to turn and run screaming, but he couldn’t. There was something mesmerizing about the appalling creature clambering over the wall. All his life he’d been fascinated by dinosaurs: he’d collected fossils, eggs, bones and teeth—even dinosaur coprolites. And now he was looking at a living dinosaur. There was even a part of his brain that identified the creature—or at least, what it resembled. It was a Komodo dragon. They didn’t grow much longer than ten feet in the wild, but he could already see that this creature was at least three times that.
Stone cracked. An old brick exploded into dust, and then a second, a third.
Then there was a crunching, snapping, ripping sound, and—almost in slow motion—Josh watched as the wall, with the creature draped over the top, swayed, then crashed to the ground. The metal door buckled in two, popped off its hinges and shattered against the water fountain, tearing a huge chunk out of the basin. The monster smashed to the ground, unaffected by the stones raining down around it. The noise jolted Josh free and he staggered back up the steps just as the monster lumbered to its feet and shuffled forward, heading straight for the house. The boy slammed the door closed and rammed home the bolts. He was turning away when through the kitchen window he spotted the figure in white, clutching what looked like a sword, step through the gaping hole that had been the wall.
Josh grabbed the stone sword off the floor and dashed into the hall. “Wake up!” he shouted, his voice so filled with terror even he didn’t recognize it. “Sophie! Flamel! Anyone!”
The door behind him shook in its frame. He snapped a quick glance over his shoulder in time to see the monster’s white tongue peel off the wood and glass.
“Help!”
Glass shattered and the tongue shot into the kitchen, sweeping plates to the floor, scattering pots and pans, knocking over a chair. Metal hissed where the tongue brushed against it; wood turned black and burned; plastic melted. A drop of the corrosive saliva dripped to the floor and bubbled on the tiles, eating into the stone.
Instinctively, Josh lashed out at the tongue with Clarent. The sword barely touched it, but it suddenly disappeared, darting back into the creature’s mouth. There was a single still moment, and then the monster rammed its entire head at the door.
The door crumpled to matchwood; the supporting walls on either side cracked as stones were knocked out. The creature drew its head back and slammed it into the opening again, punching a large hole into the kitchen. The entire house creaked ominously.
A hand fell on Jo
sh’s shoulder, almost stopping his heart. “Now look what you’ve done: you’ve just gone and made it mad.”
Scathach strode into the wrecked kitchen and stood in the gaping hole created by the creature’s blows. “Nidhogg,” she said, and Josh was unsure whether she was talking to him, “which means the Disir are not far behind.” She sounded almost pleased with the news.
Scathach danced backward as Nidhogg’s head slammed into the opening again. Its huge nostrils opened wide and its white tongue slapped against the spot where, an instant before, the Shadow had been standing. A glob of spittle burned on the tile, turning it to a liquid sludge. Scathach’s twin swords darted out, flickering gray and silver, and two long cuts appeared on the white flesh of the creature’s forked tongue.
Without taking her eyes off the creature, Scathach said to Josh, almost calmly, “Get the others out of the house, I’ll take care of this….”
And then an enormous claw-tipped arm smashed through the window, wrapped around the Warrior’s body in a viselike grip and slammed her back against the wall with enough force to crack the plaster. The Warrior’s arms were trapped against her body, her swords useless. Nighogg’s huge head appeared in the ruined side of the house, and then its mouth opened wide and its tongue darted out toward Scathach. Once its sticky acid-coated tongue wrapped around the defenseless Warrior, it would drag her into its cavernous maw.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Sophie flew down the stairs, sparks and streamers of blue fire trailing from her outstretched fingers.
She’d been standing in the bathroom brushing her teeth when the entire house had shaken. She’d heard the rumbling crash of bricks, which had been followed a heartbeat later by her brother’s scream. It had ripped through the silent house and was the most terrifying sound she had ever heard.
She was running down the corridor past Flamel’s room when the door opened. For a single instant she almost didn’t recognize the confused-looking old man standing in the doorway. The rings under his eyes were so dark they looked like bruises, and his skin was an unhealthy yellowish hue. “What’s happening?” he mumbled, but Sophie hurried past: she had no answers for him. All she knew was that her brother was downstairs.
And then the entire house shook again.
She felt the vibration through the floors and walls. All the pictures on the wall to her left shifted and tilted off center.
Terrified, Sophie raced down the stairs to the first floor just as a bedroom door opened and Joan appeared. One moment the small woman was wearing shiny blue-green satin pajamas—and the next she was clad in full metal armor, a long broad-bladed sword in her gloved hands. “Get back,” Joan snapped, her French accent pronounced.
“No,” Sophie shouted. “It’s Josh—he’s in trouble!”
Joan fell into step beside her, armor clinking and rasping. “OK then, but stay behind me and to my right, so I always know where you are,” Joan commanded. “Did you see Nicholas?”
“He’s awake. But he looked sick.”
“Exhaustion. He daren’t try any more magic in his condition. It could kill him.”
“Where’s Francis?”
“Probably in the attic. But the room is soundproofed and he’ll have his headphones on and the bass pumped up; I doubt he’s heard anything.”
“I’m sure he felt the house shake.”
“Probably thought it was a good bass line.”
“I don’t know where Scatty is,” Sophie said. She was fighting hard to keep the bubbling panic inside from overwhelming her.
“With any luck, she’s downstairs in the kitchen with Josh. If she is, then he’s OK,” Joan added. “Now follow me.” Holding the sword upright in both hands, the woman moved cautiously down the last flight of stairs and stepped into the broad marbled hallway at the front of the house. She stopped so suddenly that Sophie almost walked into her. Joan pointed toward the front door. Sophie spotted the ghostly white shape behind the stained-glass panels, and then there was a crunching snap…and the head of an axe appeared through the door. Then, with a crack, the front door was smashed open in a shower of wood and glass fragments.
Two figures stepped into the hallway.
In the light of the ornate crystal chandelier, Sophie saw that they were young women in white chain-mail armor, their faces hidden behind helmets, one wielding a sword and an axe, the other carrying a sword and a spear. She reacted instinctively. Gripping her right wrist with her left hand, she splayed open her fingers, palm outward. Crackling blue-green flames splashed across the floor directly in front of the two girls, shooting upward in a solid sheet of wavering emerald fire.
The women stepped through the flames without even pausing but stopped when they spotted Joan in her armor. They looked at one another, obviously confused. “You’re not the silver humani. Who are you?” one demanded.
“This is my house, and I think that’s my question,” Joan said grimly. She turned sideways, left shoulder toward the women, holding her sword in both hands, the point moving in a slow figure eight between the warriors.
“Stand aside. We have no argument with you,” one said.
Joan lifted the sword, bringing the hilt close to her face, the tip of the longsword pointing straight up. “You come into my home and tell me to stand aside,” she said incredulously. “Who are you…what are you?” she demanded.
“We are the Disir,” the woman with the sword and spear said softly. “We are here for Scathach. Our argument is only with her. But do not stand in our way or it will become your argument.”
“The Shadow is my friend,” Joan said.
“Then that makes you our enemy.”
Without warning, the Valkyries attacked together, one lunging with sword and spear, the other with sword and axe. Joan’s heavy blade shifted, metal clanging, the movement almost too fast to see as she blocked sword thrusts, turned aside the axe and batted down the spear.
The Disir backed away and spread out until they were standing on either side of Joan. She had to keep turning her head to be able to watch them both.
“You fight well.”
Joan’s lips pulled away from her teeth in a savage smile. “I was taught by the best. Scathach herself trained me.”
“I thought I recognized the style,” the second Disir said.
Only Joan’s gray eyes moved as she tracked the two warriors. “I didn’t think I had a style.”
“Neither has Scathach.”
“Who are you?” the Disir on the right asked. “In my lifetime I’ve known only a handful who could stand against us. And none of them were humani.”
“I am Joan of Arc,” she replied simply.
“Never heard of you,” the Disir said, and while she was speaking, her sister, standing to Joan’s left, drew back her arm, poised to throw the spear…
The weapon burst into white-hot flames.
With a savage howl, the Disir flung the spear to one side; by the time it hit the ground, the wooden shaft was little more than ash and the wickedly pointed metal head was melting into a bubbling puddle.
Standing on the bottom step, Sophie blinked in surprise. She hadn’t known she could do that.
The Disir to Joan’s right darted forward, sword and axe weaving a deadly humming pattern in the air before her, battering at Joan’s sword, driving her back under the vicious onslaught.
The second Disir rounded on Sophie.
Setting the spear shaft alight and melting the head had exhausted her, and she slumped against the banister. But she needed to help Joan; she needed to get to Josh. Pressing hard on the underside of her wrist, Sophie attempted to call upon her Fire magic. Smoke curled from her hand, but there was no fire.
The Disir strode forward until she was standing directly in front of the girl. Sophie was standing on a step, and the girls’ faces were almost level. “So, you are the silver humani the English Magician wants so desperately.” Behind her metal mask, the Valkyrie’s violet eyes were contemptuous.
Drawing in a deep
shuddering breath, Sophie straightened. She stretched out both arms, fingers closed into tight fists. Closing her eyes, breathing deeply, trying to calm her thundering heart, she visualized gloves of flame; she saw herself bringing her hands together, shaping a ball of fire in her fists like dough and then flinging it at the figure standing before her. But when she opened her eyes, only the merest hints of gossamer blue flames danced over her flesh. She clapped her hands together and sparks danced harmlessly across the warrior’s chain mail.
The Disir tapped her sword against her gloved hand. “Your petty fire tricks do not impress me.”
A tremendous crash from the kitchen shook the house again. The ornate chandelier over the center of the hallway started to sway to and fro, tinkling musically as the shadows danced.
“Josh,” Sophie whispered. Her fear turned to anger: this creature was preventing her from getting to her brother. And the anger gave her strength. Remembering what Saint-Germain had done on the roof, the girl pointed her index finger at the warrior and unleashed her rage in a single focused beam.
A dirty yellow-black spear of solid fire leapt from Sophie’s finger and exploded against the Disir’s chain mail. Fire splashed all over the warrior, and the force of the blow drove her to her knees. She shouted an incomprehensible word that sounded like a wolf’s howl.
Across the hall, Joan took advantage of the distraction and pressed her attacker hard, pushing her back toward the gaping ruin of a door. The two women were evenly matched, and while Joan’s sword was longer and heavier than her opponent’s, the Disir had the advantage of wielding two weapons. In addition, it had been a long time since Joan had worn armor and fought with a sword. She could feel the burn in the muscles of her shoulders, and her hips and knees were aching from the weight of the metal she was carrying. She had to finish this.
The fallen Valkyrie climbed to her feet in front of Sophie. The front of her chain mail had taken the full force of the fire bolt, and the links had melted and run like softened wax. The warrior grabbed a handful of the mail and ripped it away from her body, flinging it aside. The plain white robe underneath was scorched and blackened, with sparkling chunks of metal melted into the cloth. “Little girl,” the Disir whispered, “I am going to teach you never to play with fire.”