The Necromancer (3 page)

“Your twin is powerless.” Aoife pulled off one leather glove and took the girl’s hand in her cold fingers. Filthy gray smoke coiled off the vampire’s pale skin. She rubbed her thumb across the ornate Celtic-looking band that wrapped around Sophie’s wrist, and stopped on the underside at the gold circle with a red dot in the center. “Ah, the sign of tine. The Mark of Fire,” Aoife said softly. “So you would have tried to burn me?”

“Let me go!” Sophie tried to kick out at the man holding her, but his grip on her arms tightened and she suddenly grew frightened. Even the Witch of Endor was wary of Aoife of the Shadows. The vampire turned Sophie’s wrist painfully and bent forward to examine the tattoo. “This is the work of a master. Who gave you this … gift?” Her lips curled in disgust as she said the word.

Sophie pressed her lips together. She wasn’t telling this woman anything.

Aoife’s glasses slipped down her nose, revealing eyes that were like chips of green glass. “Maui … Prometheus … Xolotl … Pele … Agni …” Aoife shook her head quickly. “No, none of those. You have just returned from Paris, so it is someone in that city.…” Her voice trailed away. She looked over Sophie’s shoulder at the black-suited driver. “Is there a Master of Fire in the French capital?”

“Your old adversary, the count, lives there,” the man said softly in English.

“Saint-Germain,” Aoife snapped. She saw Sophie’s eyes widen and she smiled savagely. “Saint-Germain the liar. Saint-Germain the thief. I should have killed him when I had the chance.” She looked at the driver. “Take her. We will continue this conversation in private.”

Sophie opened her mouth to scream, but Aoife pressed her forefinger to the bridge of the girl’s nose. The vampire’s gray aura leaked from her fingers, the smoke curling around the girl’s head, seeping into her nostrils and mouth.

Sophie tried to bring her own aura alight. It crackled faintly about her body for a single heartbeat before she slumped unconscious.

A
gnes hit a speed-dial number on the phone and handed it to Josh. “You speak to your parents, right now,” she ordered. “And where is Sophie? Who is that girl she’s talking to outside?”

“The sister of someone we know,” Josh said, pressing the phone to the side of his face. The line rang only once before it was answered.

“Agnes?”

“Dad! It’s Josh.”

“Josh!”

The boy found himself smiling—the relief in his father’s voice was clearly audible—and then a wave of embarrassment washed over him and he felt guilty for not getting in touch with his parents sooner.

“Is everything all right?” Richard Newman’s voice was almost lost in a crackle of burbling static.

Josh pressed his finger to his ear and concentrated hard on the sounds. “Everything is fine, Dad. We’re OK. We just got back to San Francisco.”

“Your mother and I were starting to get worried about you. Seriously worried.”

“We were with the Fla—Flemings,” Josh quickly corrected himself. “There was no cell-phone reception,” he added truthfully, “though we did manage to get your e-mail on Sunday night. I got the jpeg of the shark teeth. I didn’t recognize the type, but from the size, I’m guessing a freshwater shark?” he asked quickly, deliberately changing the subject.

“Well done, son. It’s a Lissodus from the Upper Cretaceous period. It’s in very nice condition too.”

“Is everything OK with you?” Josh pressed on, trying to keep his father talking. He glanced at the door, wishing his sister would come in. He could distract his father with questions, but the same trick wouldn’t work with his mother, and he guessed that she was hovering at his father’s shoulder and would pluck the phone from his fingers at any moment. “How’s the dig going?”

“It’s been great.” Wind howled at the other end of the line, and dust and grit crackled against the phone. “We discovered what we think is a new ceratopsid.”

Josh frowned. The name was familiar. When he’d been younger, he used to know the names of hundreds of dinosaurs. “Is that a horned dinosaur?” he asked.

“Yes, from the Cretaceous, about seventy-five million years old. We also found a small and possibly untouched Anasazi site in one of the canyons, and some extraordinary Fremont-culture petroglyphs outside of the Range Creek Canyon site.”

Smiling at his father’s bubbling enthusiasm, Josh walked toward the window. “Which race are called the Ancient Ones in Navajo?” he asked, although he already knew the answer. “Fremont or Anasazi?” He wanted to keep his father talking, to give Sophie more time.

“Anasazi,” Richard Newman said. “And actually, the proper translation is ‘Enemy Ancestors.’”

The two words shocked Josh to a standstill. A couple of days ago, the name would have meant nothing to him, but that was before he’d learned of the existence of the Elders, the race who had ruled the world in the distant past. He had come to realize that there was more than a grain of truth to every myth and legend. “Enemy Ancestors,” he repeated, trying to keep his voice steady. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” Richard Newman said, “but I prefer the term Ancient or Ancestral Pueblo or Hisatsinom.”

“But it’s such a strange name,” Josh persisted. “Who do you think used it? They wouldn’t have referred to themselves that way.”

“Probably another tribe. Strangers, outsiders.”

“And who came before them, Dad?” Josh said quickly. “Who came before the Anasazi and the Fremont?”

“We don’t know,” his father admitted. “That’s known as the Archaic period. Why the sudden interest in ancient America? I thought archaeology bored you.”

“I guess I’ve started to be more interested in history and the ancient world,” Josh said truthfully. He headed toward the window again … and was just in time to see Scatty’s sister press her hand to Sophie’s forehead and his twin slump into the black-suited driver’s arms. He watched in horror as the vampire’s head snapped around to look at him and she bared her fangs in what might have been a grin. Then she jerked open the rear door of the car and held it as the driver dropped Sophie onto the backseat. Standing by the open door, Aoife waved a mocking salute at Josh.

Josh felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. He could not draw breath and his heart was pounding. “Dad—I’ll be back in a sec …,” he whispered hoarsely. He dropped the phone on the floor, then raced out of the room and down the hallway. Snatching up the two pieces of the walking stick the limo driver had broken, Josh jerked open the door and almost fell down the steps. He’d half expected to see the car driving away, but Aoife was waiting patiently for him. “Give me back my sister!” he shouted.

“No,” Aoife said lightly.

Josh ran toward the car, trying to remember everything Joan of Arc had taught him about sword fighting. He wished he had Clarent with him now. Even Scatty—who was frightened of nothing—had been terrified of the stone blade. But all he had were the two halves of the walking stick.

The vampire tilted her head to one side, watching the boy run toward her, and smiled.

As Josh raced across the street, terror alighted his aura and the faintest of golden glows surrounded his body. He could see his sister lying unmoving on the backseat of the car, and his fear turned to a raging anger. Abruptly, his aura blazed, steaming gold threads smoking off his skin, his eyes turning to molten coins. His aura hardened around his hands, sheathing them in metallic gloves, and then it flowed down the wooden sticks, turning them into golden rods. He tried to speak, but his throat was tight, and the voice that came from his mouth was deep and gravelly, more beast than human. “Give … me … back … my … sister.…”

Aoife’s arrogant smile faded. She shouted a single word in Japanese, turned and flung herself into the limousine, slamming the door behind her. The engine immediately roared to life, the rear tires spinning and smoking on the street.

“No!” Josh reached the car just as it took off. Lashing out with one golden rod, he shattered the rear window nearest him, the glass exploding into white powder, the stick leaving a long gouge in the shining black metal. Another blow left a deep impression in the trunk and cracked a rear light. The car squealed down the street, and in desperation Josh flung the two golden sticks after it, but the moment he released them, they returned to plain wood and bounced harmlessly off the fender.

Josh raced after the car. He could feel his aura surging through him, lending him speed and strength as he pounded down the road. He was conscious that he was moving faster than he ever had before, but the limo kept accelerating. It shot through an intersection, then rounded a corner with a squeal of protesting tires and disappeared.

And just as quickly as it had come, Josh’s strength left him. He collapsed on his hands and knees at the bottom of Scott Street, lungs heaving, heart thundering, every muscle in his body stressed and burning. Black spots danced before his eyes and he thought he was going to throw up. He watched the golden glow fade from his hands, his aura drifting off his flesh like yellow vapor, leaving him aching and exhausted. He started to tremble and a sudden cramp caught his calf muscle behind his knees. The pain was excruciating, and he quickly rolled over and dug his heel into the ground, pushing down hard, trying to ease it. Climbing to his feet, feeling sick and miserable, he started to hobble back to his aunt’s house. Sophie was gone. Kidnapped by Aoife. He had to find his twin.

But that meant returning to Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel.

T
he Shadowrealm was called Xibalba.

Even among the countless ancient Shadowrealms, it was old, and unlike so many of the others, which were beautiful and complex, it was crudely simple.

Xibalba was a single cave, impossibly vast, unimaginably high, speckled with slowly bubbling pits of black-crusted lava. Occasionally, one of these would rupture, spitting thick globules of liquid rock high into the air, sending shadows dancing red and black on the walls. The air stank of sulfur, and the only illumination came from a gelatinous yellow-white fungus that coated the walls and the massive stalactites hanging from the distant and barely visible ceiling.

Every Shadowrealm opened onto at least one other realm. Some connected with two. Xibalba was unique: it touched nine other Shadowrealms and was sometimes referred to as the Crossroads. Arranged at regular intervals around the cave were nine separate openings in the walls. The entrances to each of the cave mouths were carved and etched with crude and blocky glyphs, and although the sticky glowing fungus covered most of the dark walls, none of it even came close to any of the symbols. They were the gates to the Shadowrealms.

Usually, nothing moved in Xibalba except the bubbling lava, but now a steady stream of messengers was flitting and scrabbling from one cave mouth to the other. Some were leathery and resembled bats, others were furred and looked like rats, but they were neither, and none were truly alive. They had been created for one purpose: to carry a message from the heart of the Dark Elders’ Shadowrealm out into every connected world. Once the messengers’ task was complete, they would melt back into mud, sticks and scraps of hair and skin.

The messengers were carrying news of Dr. John Dee’s death sentence.

And none of those who heard it—Elder, Next Generation or immortal human—were surprised. There was only one price for failure, and Dr. John Dee had failed spectacularly.

“T
here have been worse days,” Dr. John Dee said, though he couldn’t remember when.

Following the disaster at Stonehenge and the twins’ escape through the leygate, the Magician had spent the remainder of the night and the early part of the following day in the tumbled ruins of the barn where, only a few hours previously, Flamel and the twins had been hiding out. Helicopters buzzed overhead and police and ambulance sirens howled along the nearby A344. When all the police activity had finally died away in the early afternoon, Dee had left the barn and started walking toward London, keeping to the back roads. Beneath his coat, wrapped in a ragged cloth, he carried the single stone sword that had once been two, Clarent and Excalibur. It throbbed and pulsed against his skin like a beating heart.

There was little or no traffic on the narrow country lanes, and he was just beginning to think that he would have to steal a car in the next town or village he came to, when an elderly vicar in an equally ancient Morris Minor stopped and offered him a lift.

“You’re lucky I came along,” the old man said in a crackling Welsh accent. “Not many people use these side roads now, with the motorway so close.”

“My car broke down, and I need to get back into London for a meeting,” Dee said. “I got a bit lost,” he added, consciously shifting his accent to match the vicar’s.

“I can take you. I’m glad of the company,” the white-haired man admitted. “I’ve been listening to the radio—and all this talk about the security scare was making me nervous.”

“What’s happened?” Dee asked, keeping his voice light and casual. “I thought there was a lot of police activity.”

“Where have you been for the past twelve hours?” the vicar asked with a grin that shifted the false teeth in his mouth.

“Busy,” Dee said. “Met up with some old friends; we’d a lot of catching up to do.”

“Then you missed all the excitement.…”

Dee kept his face expressionless.

“A major security operation closed down the city yesterday. The BBC were reporting that the same terrorist cell that had been operating in Paris were now in London.” Gripping the big steering wheel tightly, he glanced at his passenger. “You did hear about what happened in Paris?”

“I read all about it,” the Magician murmured, unconsciously shaking his head. Machiavelli controlled Paris—how could he have let Flamel and the twins slip through the net?

“These are dangerous times.”

“They are indeed,” Dee said. “But you would not want to believe everything you read in the press,” he added.