She laughed. It began as the cracked cough of an elderly woman and ended with the high pure sound of a much younger person.
Powered by her aura, the transformation continued. Flesh tightened, bones straightened, teeth whitened, hearing and sight grew sharp once more. A thin fuzz of jet-black hair pushed through her scalp, then thickened and streamed past her shoulders. She opened and closed her hands, wriggled her fingers and rotated her wrists. Placing her hands on her hips, she twisted her body from side to side, then bent at the waist and touched the floor with the palms of her hands.
Standing before the mirror, Tsagaglalal watched age fall away from her body, saw herself grow young and beautiful again. She had forgotten what it was like to be young, and it had been a long time since she’d been beautiful. The last time she looked like this was the day when Danu Talis had fallen ten thousand years ago.
And if the world was going to end today, she was determined not to spend her last few hours on earth as an old woman.
Tsagaglalal made her way down the hall to the tiny spare bedroom at the back of the house on Scott Street. She strode swiftly and easily, delighting in her new freedom of movement. She twirled in the center of the landing purely for the joy of being able to spin.
Almost from the moment she’d bought the house, the spare bedroom had been used for storage. It was stuffed with a hundred years of clutter: suitcases, books, magazines, bits of furniture, a cracked leather chair, an ornamental writing desk and a dozen black plastic sacks stuffed with old clothes that she’d once thought about dumping until she’d realized they’d become fashionable again. There was an antique American flag with a circle of stars on it alongside a framed original King Kong movie poster signed by Edgar Wallace. At the back of the room, tucked away in a corner, half buried behind a stack of yellow-spined National Geographic magazines, was a hideous eighteenth-century Louis XV cherrywood armoire.
Tsagaglalal pushed her way through the room and heaved stacks of magazines aside to get to the wardrobe. The armoire’s door was locked and there was no key in the scrolled metal keyhole. Standing on her toes, Tsagaglalal reached over the door behind an ornamental curl of wood and her questing fingers found the large brass key hung on a bent nail. Lifting the key off the nail, she experienced a sudden wash of memories: the last time she’d opened this armoire was when she’d returned from Berlin at the end of the Second World War. There was a sudden prickle of tears at the backs of her eyes, a burning in her throat. On the way back to New York, she had stopped in London and met with her brother, Gilgamesh. He’d had no idea who she was, didn’t even remember that he had a sister, though he had recognized that he should know her. She had sat with him in the ruins of a bombed-out house in the East End of London and gone through the tens of thousands of papers he was storing there. They had spent the afternoon working backward, going from paper to parchment, then vellum, and finally on to bark and wafer-thin sheets of almost transparent gold, until she was able to point out her name written in a script and language still undiscovered by the humans. They had wept together as she reminded him of all they had once been. “I will never forget you,” he said as she’d stood to leave. She watched him scribble her name on his scraps of paper but knew that he would not be able to recall her face or name within the hour. Tsagaglalal was cursed with a memory that forgot nothing; Gilgamesh was doomed never to remember.
Fitting the key in the lock, she opened the armoire door.
There was a wash of musty stale air, a hint of old leather, bitter spices, the whiff of long-withered mothballs and the merest suggestion of jasmine.
A nurse’s uniform was on a hanger facing Tsagaglalal and she reached out to touch it, running her fingers across the thin cloth. The memories it evoked left her shaking. She’d been a nurse in both of the great wars, and in just about every war for the previous hundred years. She was one of the thirty-eight volunteers who had nursed with Florence Nightingale in the Scutari barracks in the Crimea. Tsagaglalal had seen—and caused—so much death over the centuries; serving as a nurse had been her small way of trying to repair all the hurt she had done.
Behind the uniform were the clothes of half a dozen centuries: costumes in leather and linen, silk and synthetics, fur and wool. Here were the shoes given to her by Marie Antoinette, the pearl-strewn dress she’d sewn for Catherine the Great of Russia, the bodice Anne Boleyn had worn the day she’d married Henry. Lifetimes of memories. Tsagaglalal smiled, showing perfect teeth. Museums and collectors would pay a fortune for these clothes.
At the back of the wardrobe was a thick burlap bag.
Effortlessly Tsagaglalal hauled out the sack and dragged it from the spare room into her own bedroom. She heaved it up onto the bed and tugged at the leather drawstring. It resisted for a moment; then the ancient leather snapped and crumbled to dust and the bag fell open.
Reaching in, Tsagaglalal lifted out a suit of white ceramic armor and laid it on the bed. Elegant yet unadorned, it had been designed to fit her body like a second skin. She ran her fingers across the smooth breastplate. The armor was pristine, gleaming as if it were new. The last time she’d worn it, it had been slashed and scored by metal and claws, but the armor could heal and repair itself. “Magic?” she’d asked her husband, Abraham.
“Earthlord technology,” he’d explained. “We will not see its like again for millennia, or hopefully, never.”
At the bottom of the bag, she found two ornate wood and leather scabbards. They each held a metal kopesh, the curved sickle-like sword favored by the Egyptians, though its origins were much older. She pulled one of the kopesh from its sheath. The blade was so sharp it whistled as she moved it through the air.
Tsagaglalal ran smooth white-nailed fingers across the featureless armor. Ten thousand years ago, her husband, Abraham the Mage, had presented her with the weapons and armor. “To keep you safe,” he said, his speech a slurred mumble. “Now and always. When you wear it, think of me.”
“I’ll think of you even when I’m not wearing it,” she promised, and never a day went by when she did not think of the man who had worked so hard and sacrificed so much to make and save the world.
The memory of him was vivid.
Abraham stood tall and slender in a darkened room at the top of the crystal tower, the Tor Ri. He was wrapped in shadow, turned away from her so she wouldn’t see the Change that had almost completely claimed his flesh, transforming it to solid gold. She remembered turning him to the light so she could look at him for what she knew might be the very last time. Then she had held him, pressing his flesh and metal against her skin, and wept against his shoulder. And when she looked into his face, a single tear, a solid bead of gold, rolled down his cheek. Rising up on her toes, she had kissed the tear off his face, swallowing it. Tsagaglalal pressed her hands to her stomach. It nestled within her still.
She Who Watches had worn the white armor on the last day of Danu Talis. It was time to wear it again.
CHAPTER TEN
Evening fell and fog crept into San Francisco.
A few coiling wisps drifted in off the bay. They rolled along the surface of the water like threads of steam, then vanished. A few minutes later the fog reappeared, denser now, semitransparent gray-white bands rippling across the water.
The fog thickened.
A foghorn bellowed.
An opaque cloud bank gathered out over the Pacific, dark—almost black—at the bottom, then visibly raced toward land in a solid wall of mist. The thick advection fog boiled over the land, flowed under the Golden Gate Bridge, then blossomed to swallow it, rising higher and higher, until the amber lights along the towers faded to tiny spots of color. The flashing red beacons atop the towers, almost seven hundred and fifty feet above the water, briefly lit up the fog with bloodred splashes, but they too faded to dull smudges. And as the fog coalesced, the lights completely disappeared.
Street and house lights came on. For a short while, the red and white lights of cars illuminated the fog and the build
ings seemed to pulse and glow. The fog continued to grow and darken, dulling the lights, blanketing them, robbing them of all luster. It took less than thirty minutes—from the time the first wisps swirled across the bay to the arrival of the impenetrable fog bank—for visibility to drop from tens of yards to little more than a few feet.
Sounds grew muffled, and slowly, the entire city fell silent. Only the moan of the foghorn remained, and it was a forlorn, lonely voice.
The fog did not smell of sea and salt—it stank with the odor of something long dead and rotting.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Sophie screamed.
A stocky, dark-skinned man in a filthy white robe darted out of an alleyway and grabbed a handful of hair, jerking her backward, almost pulling her off her feet. Sophie’s Tae Kwan Do training took over. She grabbed the hand, gripping it tighter, locking it in place, then shifted her weight, spun her body ninety degrees and snapped out her right leg in a yeop chagi—a thrusting side kick. The heel of her heavy hiking boot caught her assailant on the kneecap with devastating force.
The attacker’s eyes bulged; his wide mouth opened and closed, revealing rotten teeth, but before he could draw breath to scream, Josh darted in, punching hard with a four-knuckle strike. He caught the man in the center of the chest and, as the man folded forward, brought a hammer fist down on the back of his head, driving him to the ground.
“Okay, that’s impressive,” Virginia Dare murmured. “I’m not sure you two need my protection.”
Josh looked at Sophie. “Are you okay?”
Gingerly, she ran a shaking hand across the top of her head where she’d been grabbed. Strands of blond hair came away on her fingers. “Looks like all those years of martial arts training weren’t entirely wasted.” She smiled shyly. “Thank you for … well, you know, rescuing me.”
Josh waved a hand. “You didn’t need it. The kick was enough, but I wasn’t going to let anyone lay a finger on my sister.”
“Thank you,” she said again.
“Always said I’d protect you,” he said, a touch of color on his cheeks.
“Yes, you did. But the last time I saw you …”
His color darkened and he shrugged uncomfortably. “I know.” The last time he’d seen his sister, he’d watched her savagely attack the beautiful Coatlicue. He’d turned and run from her in horror. He shook his head. “I still don’t know what to think….”
Sophie let out a deep breath. “I know. Neither do I.”
“But here—in this place—it’s just you and me, Sis.”
“It’s always been just you and me,” she reminded him. “Even growing up on Earth … back home … wherever that is, it was always you and me against the world.”
“I know.” Then Josh suddenly grinned and Sophie was reminded of the brother she’d always known. “And now it’s literally you and me against the world.”
She nodded. “It’s good to see you again, Josh.”
“You too,” he said.
“I’ve been so worried about you.”
“Things have been …” He paused, hunting for the right word.
“Crazy?” Sophie suggested.
He nodded. “There has to be a better word, though. Crazy doesn’t even come close.”
“This is all very heartwarming,” Virginia said. “But can I suggest we have this conversation later?” She nudged the fallen man with the toe of her boot. He groaned. “It’s clear these people are no fans of your parents. And this sorry fellow is sure to have friends.”
Sophie looked at her brother. “Are they our parents?” she asked.
“I know. They look like Mom and Dad … but …”
She nodded. “But they’re not Mom and Dad.”
“Then who are they?” her brother asked.
Sophie shook her head. “I think the more important question is: who are we?”
“And as Osiris said: that remains to be seen,” Josh said.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Virginia Dare and the twins hurried through the streets of Danu Talis. White robes taken from washing lines covered their clothes, and their heads were concealed beneath conical straw hats they’d snatched from a stall in the market. They kept to the back alleys and side streets, moving slowly toward the spire with the flapping pennant.
“You know,” Josh said, “for what’s supposed to be the most powerful and beautiful city in the world, it looks a bit shabby.”
Sophie nodded. “When we were flying over it, it looked amazing, though.”
“Distance makes everything beautiful,” Virginia murmured. She stopped at the mouth of a narrow alley and stared at the rooftops, trying to orient herself, straining to find the flag over the tops of buildings.
Sophie turned and looked back down the alleyway to see if they were being followed. The only movement was a rail-thin dog rooting in a pile of refuse. It pulled out what might have been a hunk of meat and looked up at her, eyes winking red in the gloom, then turned and slunk away.
Since leaving the market square, they had run through a dozen alleys identical to the one where they stood. Flanked on either side by tall featureless walls, it was narrow and dark, strewn with rotting fruit and buzzing with flies. Sophie spotted a long-tailed rat scurrying in the gutter and watched it disappear into a hole in the wall. There would always be rats and flies, she guessed. She and Josh had traveled the world with their parents, visiting wherever Richard and Sarah Newman were working. She had seen alleys like this in South America and the Middle East, in southern Europe and across Asia—though unlike those, this alley had no paper or plastic rubbish, no scraps of wood or discarded aluminum cans.
Sophie turned and looked over her brother’s shoulder. The contrast was startling. Behind her was dirt and poverty; before her lay wealth and the magical Danu Talis of legend. The alleyway opened onto a broad tree-lined boulevard. On the other side of the street was one of the canals she’d spotted from the air. Across the canal were more tree- and flower-lined streets, inset with fountains, dotted with statues of men and beasts and creatures that were neither one nor the other. Ornate buildings painted gold and silver sat behind spike-tipped walls and carved stone gates. Each building was a different architectural style, and she caught glimpses of flat-topped pyramids and windowless squares, delicate twisting spirals and crystal-wrapped circles.
“Recognize them?” Josh asked.
And she did. She suddenly realized that the buildings resembled ruins she’d visited with her parents: here were echoes of Egypt, Chaco Canyon, Angkor Wat and Scotland.
He saw recognition in her eyes. “I’m guessing these are the originals. Humans copied the designs.”
“Why the different shapes?” Sophie asked.
“Different clans?” Josh suggested.
“When Elders age, they Change,” Virginia said. “Sometimes in odd and unusual ways. They need odd and unusual buildings to live in.”
Some of the buildings bore carvings or murals; others were daubed with paint or hung with pennants and flags. A few—mainly the flat-topped pyramid shapes—were unadorned.
“I think we’re looking at the better part of town,” Virginia said with a grim smile. “And like rich communities everywhere, it’s full of gates and guards. Some things never change.”
“Guards? Where?” Sophie asked.
Josh pointed. “Just inside the gates …”
She nodded, suddenly spotting them. There were little guard posts inside the gates of the mansions and palaces. Within the guardhouses figures moved in the shadows, keeping out of the blistering sun. “I think there are more guardhouses on the other side of the bridge,” she said.
“I believe they are,” Virginia said. “And I have a theory.” She stepped out of the alleyway and strode across the empty boulevard toward the nearest bridge. “Let us test it.”
The twins looked at one another and hurried after her.
“A theory?” Josh asked.
“It is clear that this Danu Talis is just like every
other civilization I’ve encountered.” The immortal’s thin lips twisted when she said civilization, as if she found the word distasteful.
There was a sudden flurry of movement in the narrow huts on either side of the bridge, and shapes appeared. Sunlight winked off metal.
“I was right,” Sophie said. “Guardhouses.”
“With guards,” Josh added nervously.
“I was born in a simpler time,” Virginia continued. “I ran free in the forest, living off nature, killing only what I needed, sharing what I left with the other forest dwellers. I had no money, and my only possessions were the clothes I wore on my back. I lived in treetops and caves. And I was happy, truly happy. I wanted for nothing. And then I came to civilization.”
The immortal walked along the edge of the curved canal toward the bridge. The guards kept pace with her across the glassy water; others gathered at the bridge, and it was clear now that they were not human. They had the heads of jackals and were clad in semitransparent black armor. When they looked across the canal, their eyes were a solid bloodred.
“Anpu,” Sophie breathed.
Virginia stopped at the edge of the bridge. “And what lessons had civilization for me?” she continued. “I learned that it ruled by creating classes and dividing people, by making some better than others.”
“Hasn’t it always been that way?” Josh asked. “Every civilization is divided….”
“Not every civilization,” Virginia snapped. “Only the so-called advanced ones.” She stepped onto the bridge and the anpu took up position at the far end.
One was bigger than the rest. He wore black armor polished to mirror brightness. He stepped forward and held out his right hand. It took the three humans a moment to realize that the creature wasn’t actually wearing a metal glove. His hand had been replaced by a construction of metal and gears. A kopesh dangled loosely in his left hand.
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