The Magician (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #2) (5 page)

“Leave us alone”, Flamel’s voice boomed out of the fog.

“That sounds like another threat, Nicholas. Believe me when I tell you that you have no idea of the forces gathered against you now. Your parlor tricks will not save you.” Machiavelli pulled out his cell phone and hit a speed dial number. “Attack. Attack now!” He raced up the steps as he spoke, moving silently on expensive leather-soled shoes, while far below, booted feet thumped on stone as the gathered police charged up the steps.

“I’ve survived for a very long time.” Flamel’s voice didn’t come from where Machiavelli expected it to, and he stopped, turning left and right, trying to make out a shape in the fog.

“The world moved on, Nicholas”, Machiavelli said. “You did not. You might have escaped us in America, but here, in Europe, there are too many Elders, too many immortal humans who know you. You will not be able to remain hidden for long. We will find you.”

Machiavelli dashed up the final few steps that brought him directly to the entrance of the church. There was no mist here. The unnatural fog started on the top step and flowed downward, leaving the church floating like an island on a cloudy sea. Even before he ran into the church, Machiavelli knew he would not find them in there: Flamel, Scathach and the twins had escaped.

For the moment.

But Paris was no longer Nicholas Flamel’s city. The city that had once honored Flamel and his wife as patrons of the sick and poor, the city that named streets after them, was long gone. Paris now belonged to Machiavelli and the Dark Elders he served. Looking out over the ancient city, Niccol Machiavelli swore that he was going to turn Paris into a trap and maybe even a tomb for the legendary Alchemyst.

T
he ghosts of Alcatraz awoke Perenelle Flamel.

The woman lay unmoving on the narrow cot in the cramped icy cell deep beneath the abandoned prison and listened to them whisper and murmur in the shadows around her. There were a dozen languages she could understand, many more she could identify and a few that were completely incomprehensible.

Keeping her eyes closed, Perenelle concentrated on the languages, trying to make out the individual voices, wondering if there were any she recognized. And then a sudden thought struck her: how was she able to hear the ghosts?

Sitting outside the cell was a sphinx, a monster with a lion’s body, an eagle’s wings and the head of a beautiful woman. One of its special powers was the ability to absorb the magical energies of another living being. It had drained Perenelle s, rendering her helpless, trapping her in this terrible prison cell.

A tiny smile curled Perenelle’s lips as she realized something: she was the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter; she had been
born
with the ability to hear and see ghosts. She had been doing so long before she had learned how to train and concentrate her aura. Her gift had nothing to do with magic, and therefore the sphinx had no power over it. Throughout the centuries of her long life, she had used her skill with magic to protect herself from ghosts, to coat and shield her aura with colors that rendered her invisible to the apparitions. But as the sphinx had absorbed her energies, those shields had been wiped away, revealing her to the spirit realm.

And now they were coming.

Perenelle Flamel had seen her first ghost that of her beloved grandmother Mamom when she was seven years old. Perenelle knew that there was nothing to fear from ghosts; they could be annoying, certainly, were often irritating and sometimes downright rude, but they possessed no physical presence. There were even a few she had learned to call friends. Over the centuries certain spirits had returned to her again and again, drawn to her because they knew she could hear, see or help them and often, Perenelle thought, simply because they were lonely. Mamom turned up every decade or so just to check up on her.

But even though they had no presence in the real world, ghosts were not powerless.

Opening her eyes, Perenelle concentrated on the chipped stone wall directly in front of her face. The wall ran with green-tinged water that smelled of rust and salt, the two elements that had ultimately destroyed Alcatraz the prison. Dee had made a mistake, as she had known he would. If Dr. John Dee had one great failing, it was arrogance. He obviously thought that if she was imprisoned deep below Alcatraz and guarded by a sphinx, then she was powerless. He could not be more wrong.

Alcatraz
was a place of ghosts.

And Perenelle Flamel would show him just how powerful she was.

Closing her eyes, relaxing, Perenelle listened to the ghosts of Alcatraz, and then slowly, her voice barely above a breathed whisper, she began to talk to them, to call them and to gather them all to her.

“I’m
OK”, Sophie murmured sleepily, “really I am.”

“You don’t look OK”, Josh muttered through gritted teeth. For the second time in as many days, Josh was carrying his sister in his arms, one arm under her back, the other beneath her legs. He moved cautiously down the steps of Sacre -Coeur, terrified he was going to drop his twin. “Flamel told us every time you use magic it will steal a little of your energy”, he added. “You look exhausted.”

“I’m fine”, she muttered. “Let me down.” But then her eyes flickered closed once more.

The small group moved silently through the thick vanilla-scented fog, Scathach in the lead with Flamel taking up the rear. All around them they could hear the tramp of boots, the jingle of weapons, and the muted commands of the French police and special forces as they climbed the steps. Some of them came dangerously close, and twice Josh was forced to crouch low as a uniformed figure darted by.

Scathach suddenly loomed up out of the thick fog, a short, stubby finger pressed to her lips. Water droplets frosted her spiky red hair, and her white skin looked even paler than usual. She pointed to the right with her ornately carved nunchaku. The fog swirled and suddenly a gendarme was standing almost directly in front of them, close enough to touch, his dark uniform sparkling with beads of liquid. Behind him, Josh was able to make out a group of French police clustered around what looked like an old-fashioned merry-go-round. They were all staring upward, and Josh heard the word
brouillard
murmured again and again. He knew that they were talking about the strange fog that had suddenly descended over the church. The gendarme was holding his service pistol in his hand, the barrel pointed skyward, but his finger was lightly curled over the trigger and Josh was once again reminded just how much danger they were in not only from Flamel’s nonhuman and inhuman enemies, but from his all-too-human foes as well.

They walked perhaps another dozen steps and suddenly the fog stopped. One moment Josh was carrying his sister through the thick mist; then, as if he had stepped through a curtain, he was standing in front of a tiny art gallery, a cafee and a souvenir shop. He turned to look behind him and found that he was facing a solid wall of mist. The police were little more than indistinct shapes in the yellow-white fog.

Scathach and Flamel stepped out of the murk. “Allow me”, Scathach said, catching hold of Sophie and lifting her from Josh’s arms. He tried to protest Sophie was his twin, his responsibility but he was exhausted. The backs of his calves were cramping, and the muscles in his arms burned with the effort of carrying his sister down what had felt like countless steps.

Josh looked into Scathach’s bright green eyes. “She’s going to be OK?”

The ancient Celtic warrior opened her mouth to reply, but Nicholas Flamel shook his head, silencing her. He rested his left hand on Josh’s shoulder, but the boy shrugged it off. If Flamel noticed the gesture, he ignored it. “She just needs to sleep. The effort of raising the fog so soon after melting the tulpa has completely drained the last of her physical strength”, Flamel said.

“You asked her to create fog”, Josh said quickly, accusingly.

Nicholas spread his arms. “What else could I do?”

“I I don’t know”, Josh admitted. “There must have been something you could do. I’ve seen you throw spears of green energy.”

“The fog allowed us to escape without harming anyone”, Flamel said.

“Except Sophie”, Josh replied bitterly.

Flamel looked at him for a long moment and then turned away. “Let’s go.” He nodded toward a side street that sloped sharply downward, and they hurried into the night, Scathach effortlessly carrying Sophie, Josh struggling to keep up. He was not going to leave his sister’s side.

“Where to?” Scathach asked.

“We need to get off the streets”, Flamel murmured. “It looks like every gendarme in the city has descended on Sacre -Coeur. I also saw special forces and plainclothes police that I guess are secret service. Once they realize we’re not in the church, they’ll probably cordon off the area and do a street-by-street search.”

Scathach smiled quickly, her long incisors briefly visible against her lips. “And let s face it: we’re not exactly inconspicuous.”

“We need to find a place to…” Nicholas Flamel began.

The police officer who came racing around the corner looked to be no more than nineteen tall, thin and gangly with bright red cheeks and the fuzzy beginnings of a mustache on his upper lip. One hand was on his holster; the other was holding on to his hat. He skidded to a halt directly in front of them and managed a quick yelp of surprise as he fumbled for the gun in its holster. “Hey!
Arr tez
!”

Nicholas lunged forward and Josh actually saw the green mist flow from the Alchemyst’s hand before his fingers brushed against the gendarme s chest. Emerald light flared around the police officer s body, outlining it in brilliant green, and then the man simply folded to the ground.

“What did you do?” Josh asked in a horrified whisper. He looked at the young police officer lying still, and was suddenly chilled and sickened. “You didn’t you didn’t kill him?”

“No”, Flamel said tiredly. “Just overloaded his aura. Bit like an electric shock. He’ll awaken shortly with a headache.” He pressed his fingertips to his forehead, massaging just over his left eye. “I hope it’ll not be as bad as mine”, he added.

“You do know”, Scathach said grimly, “that your little display will have alerted Machiavelli to our position.” Her nostrils flared and Josh breathed deeply; the air around them stank of peppermint: the distinctive odor of Nicholas Flamel’s power.

“What else could I do?” Nicholas protested. “You had your hands full.”

Scatty curled her lips in disgust. “I could have taken him. Remember, who got you out of Lubyanka Prison with both hands manacled behind my back?”

“What are you talking about? Where’s Lubyanka?” Josh asked, confused.

“Moscow.” Nicholas glanced sidelong at Josh. “Don’t ask; it’s a long story”, he murmured.

“He was going to be shot as a spy”, Scathach said gleefully.

“A
very
long story”, Flamel repeated.

Following Scathach and Flamel through the winding streets of Montmartre, Josh thought back to how John Dee had described Nicholas Flamel to him only the day before.

He has been many things in his time: a physician and a cook, a bookseller, a soldier, a teacher of languages and chemistry, both an officer of the law and a thief. But he is now, and has always been, a liar, a charlatan and a crook.

And a spy, Josh added. He wondered if Dee knew that. He peered at the rather ordinary-looking man: with his close-cropped hair and his pale eyes, in his black jeans and T-shirt under a battered black leather jacket, he would have passed unnoticed on any street in any city in the world. And yet he was anything but ordinary: born in the year 1330, he claimed to be working for the good of humanity, by keeping the Codex away from Dee and the shadowy and terrifying creatures he served, the Dark Elders.

But whom did Flamel serve? Josh wondered. Just who was the immortal Nicholas Flamel?

K
eeping a tight rein on his temper, Niccol Machiavelli strode down the steps of Sacre -Coeur, the fog curling and swirling behind him like a cloak. Although the air was beginning to clear, it was still touched with the odor of vanilla. Machiavelli threw his head back and breathed deeply, drawing the smell into his nostrils. He would remember this scent; it was as distinctive as a fingerprint. Everyone on the planet possessed an aura the electrical field that surrounded the human body and when that electrical field was focused and directed, it interacted with the user s endorphin system and adrenal glands to produce a distinctive odor unique to that person: a signature scent. Machiavelli took a final breath. He could almost taste the vanilla on the air, crisp, clear and pure: the scent of raw untrained power.

And in that moment, Machiavelli knew beyond a doubt that Dee was correct: this was the odor of one of the legendary twins.

“I want the entire area sealed off”, Machiavelli snapped to the semicircle of high-ranking police who had gathered at the bottom of the steps in the Square Willette. “Cordon off every street, alleyway and lane from the Rue Custine to the Rue Caulaincourt, from the Boulevard de Clichy to the Boulevard de Rochechouart and the Rue de Clignancourt. I want these people found!”

“You are suggesting closing down Montmartre”, a deeply tanned police officer said in the silence that followed. He looked to his colleagues for support, but none of them would meet his eye. “It’s the height of the tourist season”, he protested, turning back to Machiavelli.