The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #6) (40 page)

“I will survive,” the Elder snapped, “which is more than can be said for you.” Placing his hand in the small of Aten’s back, he pushed hard, sending him sailing out over the edge of the wall.

Running as she had never run before, Scathach raced across the square toward the wall. She saw the anpu directly
in front of her stiffen and reach for their weapons, obviously unsure of what they were seeing—a single girl charging them.

The Shadow heard the bowstrings above her head twang and twang and twang again and listened to the arrows scream down, and then felt the wash of the sage- and sulfur-scented auras. The screaming suddenly stopped, as if the sound had been muted. Scathach dropped to the ground and rolled as the arrows began shrieking again. They hissed over her head in a horizontal black rain, and then she was back on her feet even as the lines of anpu and the other hybrids were falling under the deadly onslaught.

Overhead she saw Aten fall. She knew that her father had pushed him, and she knew that everything she had heard about him was true.

And then, as they did in every battle, her acute senses took over, and it was as if the world around her slowed but she continued moving at a normal pace.

Aten fell …

… and fell …

… and fell …

His eyes were closed, she noticed, and he looked serene.

Scathach surged over fallen anpu, climbing on them, her feet barely touching the ground, and then she leapt into the air, twisting, turning in a half circle.

And she caught him.

X
olotl perched on a low wall and watched the anpu race toward the ruined building. The jackal-headed monsters were silent until the last moment before they went into battle, and then they howled. The sound was so appalling it often shocked their enemies into immobility or made them turn and run. Xolotl doubted it would have that effect on the Flamels and their companions. His dog mouth opened in a grin: besides, they had nowhere to run.

The anpu were followed by the monokerata unicorns.

He’d chosen these himself. Xolotl loved unicorns, but these were not the delicate white unicorns beloved by the humani. These hailed from India, and while they
did
have white bodies, they had bloodred heads, with deadly four-foot-long tricolored horns spiraling from the center of their foreheads. Monokerata would impale their victims, then tilt
their heads back and allow them to slide down the horn so that they could eat them.

The skeletal Elder turned and squinted back down the path. He could just about make out the shape of the giant crab through the fog. It was having difficulty finding purchase on the slick stones with its spindly legs, but it managed to pull itself along with its enormous front claws, gripping walls and heaving itself forward.

Xolotl rubbed his hands together, bones clicking and rattling—he wished he had something to eat while he watched the entertainment. He hopped off the wall and wandered around the path, hoping to find something to snack on while he waited for the main event.

Odin took up a position beside Hel in the doorway of the Warden’s House. “I remember the last time I faced anpu,” he said.

Hel nodded. “On Danu Talis. What a day that was.” Her black eyes sparkled at the memory. “I was almost beautiful then.”

“You are still beautiful,” he said quietly. “Step back now, Niece.”

“Why?” she asked.

Odin’s hand brushed the metal patch he wore over his right eye. “The anpu will pour through these walls,” he said, slipping into a guttural language never before spoken on earth. “The immortal humans will fall before they can awaken the Old Spider and all this will have been for naught.” Wispy
gray ozone-scented aura drifted off his fingertips. “But I can buy them some time.”

The anpu were nearer now, close enough that the Elders could see the saliva glistening on their fangs and the beads of moisture from the fog gathering and running off their metal and ceramic armor.

“They will scream in a moment,” Odin said softly. “Billy and Black Hawk and probably Machiavelli and Nicholas will be stunned by the sound and will fall.”

“The woman will not fall, nor will Mars,” Hel said. “And we will not fall.”

“No. We will not fall. Nor will we be able to stop them. Not with weapons …”

Hel stretched out her clawlike hand. Odin looked at it, then turned to stare into her leaking black eyes. “Are you sure?” he asked.

“My world is gone. The Yggdrasill—your Yggdrasill too—is no more. Where will I go, what would I do?” she asked.

Odin nodded in understanding. “I came to this world to avenge my dear Hekate. I swore vengeance on Dee, but perhaps we can have a greater victory.” He took Hel’s hand in his, locking their fingers together.

The clean scent of ozone was touched with the rancid odor of rotting fish. “I always meant to change that smell,” Hel murmured. “But over time, I rather grew to like it.”

Odin’s hands were smoking, and suddenly the others in the room became aware that the Elder’s aura was coming alive.

“Brother Odin,” Mars said in alarm. “No …”

“Yes,” Odin whispered.

The anpu opened their mouths to scream.

“Down,” Mars shouted. “Everyone down! Cover your eyes.”

Odin squeezed his niece’s hand. “Why don’t you tell the jackals just who I am.”

Hel nodded. Straightening, she threw back her head and began to exude her bloodred aura. The stench of rotting fish became overwhelming, and, deep and powerful, her voice echoed off the stones. “You stand in the presence of Odin, Lord of the Aesir, the Mighty and Wise, the Aged and the Merciful….”

Odin’s right hand was a solid gray glove. “We don’t have time for all two hundred names,” he muttered. He reached for the patch that covered his right eye.

“You stand before Yggr, the Terror.”

Odin peeled back the metal eye patch.

“Who is also known as Baleyg the Flaming Eye.”

A focused beam of solid yellow-white light shot from the Elder’s eye and splashed across the front line of the anpu and the monokerata. They crisped to spiraling cinders. The Anpu in the second line screamed as their armor melted in the intense heat, and more were caught, crushed or impaled on the unicorns’ horns as the beasts fled. But the beam of light was unrelenting. Stones at their feet cracked and shattered, bubbling like thick liquid.

Odin turned his head slowly, the yellow-white light washing over everything. Nothing escaped his gaze.

A few surviving monokerata scattered in terror, leaving the anpu to face the blazing lance of fire. In grim silence, the anpu pressed on, desperately trying to get close to the two Elders. They flung spears and even swords, but Odin rendered them into pools of sizzling metal as he turned his eye upon them.

The air filled with black soot and cinders. It was rank with rotting fish and ozone, but the smells quickly grew bitter and sour as Hel’s strength weakened. Odin’s gray aura began to fade, then turned pink as Hel poured the last of her strength into her uncle. Her red aura flickered and spat like a guttering candle, and another dozen anpu raced toward the house.

Odin’s gaze flared brighter than before, slicing right through them, flames reaching high onto the walls of the Administration Building, bathing it in flames, washing along the length of the lighthouse before it. Odin staggered, his head jerked back and a curl of flame shot into the sky, then arced down to splash before Xolotl, who desperately scrambled to escape. A thread of sticky fire caught his multicolored cloak, setting it alight, and he flung it away, dancing in fury as he watched more of the anpu rendered into ash.

Hel’s red aura paled even more, then faded to white. Her legs buckled under her, but she still held on to her uncle’s hand. The beam of light lancing from Odin’s right eye flickered and then winked out. He slumped in the doorway next to his niece, smoke and gossamer-thin threads of his gray aura curling off his flesh. The once tall Elder had shrunk and was now bent over and wizened.

Almost incoherent with rage, Xolotl sent the last of the
anpu, his personal bodyguard of a dozen scarred warriors, up toward the house. “Kill everything within,” he commanded. “Everything!”

The twelve creatures, bigger and broader than any of the others, spread out into a broad semicircle and approached the two small figures in the doorway. On an unseen command, they raced forward as one, mouths stretched wide to howl their victory.

Odin raised his head for a final time. “I am Odin,” he shouted, light blazing from his eye once more—only brighter, more intense than ever before. He looked at each of the anpu in turn, incinerating them. He fell to his knees, but the blazing light never wavered. He raised his niece’s arm. “And this is Hel. Today we are your doom.” The light faded from his eye. He turned to look at Hel and saw her as she had once been: tall, elegant and very, very beautiful, with eyes the color of a morning sky and hair like storm clouds. A tiny pink tongue moved against her full lips and white teeth. “How many did we get, Uncle?” she asked.

“All of them,” he whispered.

Suddenly a scorched wild-eyed anpu appeared out of the smoking night. It reared over them both, a huge kopesh raised high, jaws gaping.

“All of them!” Mars’s huge sword hammered the creature into the ground. The warrior dropped to his knees beside Odin and Hel and gently lifted Odin’s eye patch back into place. Mars took both of his hands in his; they looked childlike and were tiny against his calloused skin. Odin, who had
been as tall and as broad as Mars, was now half his size. “It has been an honor to fight alongside you today,” he said.

“It is an honor to die in your company,” Odin said, and breathed his last. His skin was the color of ancient yellowed parchment. It cracked and flaked away, then crumbled to dust that collected in the cracks in the stone beneath him and disintegrated.

A colorless liquid coated Hel, who was still beautiful, and then, suddenly, like a bursting bubble, she dissolved, soaking into the same stones that had swallowed her uncle’s dust.

S
cathach and Virginia Dare knelt on either side of John Dee. Aten crouched by his feet. They were surrounded by a protective band of humans, all carrying weapons they’d lifted off the dead warriors.

Most of the rest of crowd were rampaging through the prison, tearing it apart, freeing the prisoners. Smoke was starting to curl from the upper windows, and already people were calling for the pyramid to be torn down. Others had raced off to spread the word through the city. Any anpu or other hybrid survivors had slunk off into the night.

Dee was dying. He had used the final shreds of his aura to supplement Virginia’s as she created the massive shield of air to protect the people and then sent the arrows into the guards. He had been old earlier; now he was ancient, his features lost in a shriveled mass of wrinkles.

Virginia took his hand in hers. It nestled, tiny and delicate, in her palm, almost like a newborn child’s.

Dee’s eyes cracked open and he peered shortsightedly at Virginia and Scathach. “I never thought I’d breathe my last with you two looking down on me.” He shifted his head toward Scathach. “Though I always had the suspicion that you would be the one to kill me. You came close enough on far too many occasions.”

“I’m glad I didn’t,” Scathach said. “We would never have been able to do what we did tonight without you.”

“It is good of you to say that. But it is not true. Virginia did all the work.”

Virginia Dare shook her head. “Scathach is right. I didn’t have the strength to do it alone. And remember, it was your idea in the first place.”

“I could heal you,” Aten said quietly. “I could restore a measure of your health, your sight and hearing, too. Your body would always be as it is now, though.”

Dee shook his head slightly. “Thank you, but no. I’ve been old and healed enough times already today. And, as Mr. Shakespeare would say, my hour is almost come. Let me die in peace. It is the one great adventure left for me to experience; death holds no fears for me.”

“John,” Virginia Dare said softly, “don’t go yet. Stay awhile.”

“No, Virginia. You have much to do in the weeks and months to come. You are a symbol for the humani … for the
humans
here,” he corrected himself. “The people will make
many demands on you. You do not need to be distracted by looking out for a tired old man.” He turned to look at Scathach. “Why did you come here, Shadow?”

“Obviously to rescue Aten,” she said lightly.

“Why did you really come here?” he asked.

“To see Ard-Greimne,” she said softly.

“Your father.”

Scathach nodded. “My father.”

Aten shook his head and looked confused. “But he does not have a daughter.”

“Not yet. But he will,” Scathach said simply. “Two, in fact. Growing up, my sister and I knew little about our parents. We heard occasional snatches of stories about our father, however. They painted him as a monstrous beast.”

“Oh, he is,” Aten said. “Make no mistake about that.”

“And when my sister and I were bad, my mother—who favored our brother and never had much time for us—would tell us that we were just like our father. I grew up wondering if I was a monster like him.” She bared her vampire teeth in a brief smile. “And when these grew and I realized my true nature, I came to believe that it might be true and that I
was
a monster. The moment I ended up here, in this place, at this time, I knew I needed to see him, to look at him just once so I could know what he was like.”

“And did you find what you were looking for?” Aten asked.

Scathach nodded. “I discovered that I am not now nor have I ever been like him. Neither was my sister, Aoife. And for that, I am truly grateful.”

“Help me stand,” Dee said suddenly, and Scathach and Virginia gently lifted him to his feet. There was moisture on the Magician’s face, and when Virginia gently brushed it away, she asked, “Why do you weep? Do you regret what you have done?”

“Not really,” he said. “I more regret what I did not do.” He looked at Scathach. “What news of the Flamels?”