“I learned a little from Chronos,” Tammuz admitted.
“Could you send me back?” Saint-Germain asked eagerly.
The Green Man raised his head, light running off his silver mask. “I could. That is certainly within my powers.” Tilting the envelope, he poured some of the powder into his left hand. It hissed, then sizzled where it touched the silver glove, and gauzy gray smoke gathered in the Elder’s palm, slowly forming into a ball. “But if I send you to the past, it is a one-way journey: there is no return. Only Chronos, the Master of Time, could bring you back again.” The Green Man chuckled. “And he’s not going to do that; he hates you even more than I do.”
Shakespeare turned to look at Saint-Germain and winked. “Bold, bad man. Does everyone hate you?”
“Just about.” The immortal sounded almost pleased. “It’s a gift.”
The ball of smoke continued to gather in Tammuz’s silver glove. “Once you go back, you will be trapped there for all eternity.” The Elder looked closely at the Frenchman. “Why do you want to do this?” he asked curiously. “Why is this woman so important to you?”
Saint-Germain blinked in surprise. “Have you ever loved anyone?” he asked.
“Yes,” Tammuz said cautiously, “I had a consort once, Inanna…”
“But did you love her? Truly love her?”
The Green Man remained silent.
“Did she mean more to you than life itself?” Saint-Germain persisted.
“They do not love that do not show their love,” Shakespeare murmured very softly.
The French immortal stepped closer to the Elder. “I love my Jeanne,” he said simply. “I must go to her.”
“Even though it will cost you everything?” Tammuz persisted, as if the idea was incomprehensible.
“Yes. Without Joan, everything I have is worthless.”
“Even your immortality?”
“Especially my immortality.” Gone were the banter and the jokes. This was a Saint-Germain whom neither Shakespeare nor Palamedes had ever seen before. “I love her,” he said.
The Green Man stared at the sphere of smoke in the palm of his hand. The globe had turned pale, almost transparent in places. He added a little more of the gray powder from the envelope and watched as it swirled through the ball like snowflakes.
“I was never sure that the humani were the rightful inheritors of this planet,” Tammuz said suddenly. “When Danu Talis sank, some of my race choose to create Shadowrealms; others decided to live on this earth. We became kings and princes. Some were even worshipped as gods, and a few took on the role of teachers, claiming that the humani possessed attributes that would make them great. And love and loyalty were counted among the greatest of those attributes. Love and loyalty.” He shook his head slightly. “Perhaps if my race had possessed a little more of both, we would still rule this earth,” he said with a sigh. “Now, you say your wife is lost in the Pleistocene era…”
The globe cradled in his palm turned clear.
And suddenly the three immortals could see Joan of Arc and Scathach within it. The two women were standing at the bank of a river, swords drawn, facing off against an unseen opponent.
Saint-Germain gasped. “Jeanne…”
“But something is amiss…” The Green Man’s voice echoed and his eyes blazed, illuminating his silver helmet with emerald light. His voice rose as the image within the orb spun… and revealed that the women were facing a hooded man. The figure moved and the Elder and the immortals saw the semicircle of metal that took the place of his left hand. “No! Not him. That is not possible…,” Tammuz breathed in horror.
Saint-Germain was also shocked by what he was seeing. “The hook-handed man.” His voice was thick with emotion. “But that is impossible,” he said, echoing the Elder’s words.
“You both know this creature?” Palamedes demanded, looking from Saint-Germain to the Elder.
“I know him.” The Green Man’s voice was shaking. “I saw him ten thousand years ago. He was there when Danu Talis fell.” His voice cracked. “He destroyed my world. I was sure he had perished with the island. If I had known he was still alive,” he added savagely, “I would have hunted him down and slain him.”
“Saint-Germain-who is this?” Palamedes demanded, peering into the globe.
“I stole fire from Prometheus,” he whispered, “but this is the creature who taught me its secrets.”
“What is he-Elder, Next Generation, immortal or humani?” Palamedes demanded.
“I am not sure. I believe he is neither Elder nor Next Generation. Nor do I think he is fully human. I have no idea what he is. Nicholas met him also, long before I did. He taught the Alchemyst how to translate the Codex, showed him the immortality formula.”
“What is he doing in the past?” Will Shakespeare asked.
“He is not in the past,” Tammuz said, surprising them all. “You’re looking at a Shadowrealm which has been modeled after a prehistoric world.”
And then, clear and distinct on the air, they heard a thin voice. “Scathach the Shadow and Joan of Arc. Where have you been? I have been waiting for you for such a long time. Welcome to my world.”
Clustered around the globe in Tammuz’s hand, the three immortals saw the figure stand and spread his arms wide-and then, suddenly, the hooded man looked up and seemed to stare out of the ball of smoke. They saw his blue eyes blaze and shimmer with silver light. “And Saint-Germain, too. I told you this day would come. It is time to pay your debts. Why don’t you join us? Tammuz,” the figure commanded, “send him here to me now.”
Without a word, the Green Man reached out and caught the front of Saint-Germain’s coat with his left hand; then he jammed the smoking globe into the center of the immortal’s chest.
Saint-Germain instantly turned to gray vapor and vanished.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
The intercom on Dee’s desk buzzed softly. “Ms. Dare has returned, sir.”
“Send her in.” Dr. John Dee swung his leather chair away from the view of the streets of San Francisco. A slender red-haired male secretary held the door open and allowed Virginia Dare, laden down with bags, to stride into the enormous glass and chrome office, boot heels clicking on the marble floor.
“I love shopping,” she announced.
Dee looked at the secretary. “Thank you, Edward, that will be all. You can go now, and thank you for staying late.”
The man nodded. “Will you be in tomorrow? There are some papers that need signing.”
“I’m not sure at the moment. And if anyone is looking for me, I am still away.”
“Yes. I issued a press release earlier saying that you were in Hong Kong,” the man said, backing from the room and closing the door.
“You look stunning,” the doctor said, turning his attention back to Virginia. He sat forward, carefully placing his burnt hands on the desk. Although he’d coated them in aloe vera and a numbing cream, they were still stinging, and blisters were starting to form.
“Why, thank you,” Virginia said with a smile. “I want you to know that you paid for everything, and it was all very expensive.”
“You always did have expensive tastes,” Dee said.
Beneath a heavily fringed waist-length black boar-suede coat, Virginia was wearing powder blue jeans, a red Western-style shirt and a black lizard-skin belt that matched her black cowboy boots. Sinking into a chair facing the English Magician, she propped her boots up on the edge of his desk and stared at him across the slab of black marble. “I had forgotten what great boutiques there are in San Francisco.”
“When was the last time you were here?” he asked.
“Not too long ago,” she said vaguely, “but you know I do not like to spend much time in the Americas-there are too many sad memories for me here.”
Dee nodded. He avoided England for the same reason.
“How are your hands?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Sore,” Dee said, holding them up. “What’s fr
ustrating me is that if I could use my aura for just a single instant, I could heal them.”
“Yes, and alert everything in this city to your presence.”
The Magician nodded. “Exactly.”
“I presume you have a plan?” Dare asked.
Dee sat back in his chair and swiveled around to look out across the city again. “I always have a plan,” he said. “I was just thinking about it when you came in. Almost everything is in place.” He pointed into the night. “Alcatraz is out there. My company owns the island now, and access is restricted. All the cells are filled with monsters and there is a sphinx wandering free.”
Virginia Dare shuddered. “I hate those creatures.”
“They are useful. We thought it would be able to control Perenelle Flamel. We were wrong.”
“We?”
“My masters and I,” Dee clarified.
Virginia went around the desk to stand beside the English Magician. “Pretty,” Dare said.
“My favorite view,” Dee murmured. Unlike his offices in London or New York, where he was so high he could barely see the streets, here he could look across Pioneer Park and see San Francisco spread out below him, close enough to touch. Almost directly opposite was the triangular shape of the Transamerica Building picked out in lights against the night sky.
“You know your masters will never rest until they have hunted you down,” Virginia said quietly.
“Yes. I know that.”
“Every moment you remain free and unpunished offends them. Your masters will lose status with the other Elders. They must make an example of you.”
Dee nodded again. He could see himself and Virginia reflected in the dark glass. They looked as if they were floating over the city. “You killed your master… and yet no one came after you,” he said.
Virginia laughed, but the sound was brittle and false. “I did not kill my master. The fool became both arrogant and careless in his old age. He made the mistake of challenging the authority of a Deer Woman and then insulted her and her tribe of Shapeshifters.”
“What happened?”
Virginia laughed again. “What do you think happened? There were Deer Women on this land long before the Elders fled Danu Talis. They know every hidden trail, secret pathway and leygate, and how and where they all connect. One moment my Elder was in Oklahoma, threatening the woman… the next he was in Badwater, in the heart of Death Valley at the height of summer. I believe he used his aura to keep himself cool for the first few days… until he had no aura left.” She clapped her hands together suddenly and the Magician jumped. “His own aura finally consumed him in a ball of flame. There wasn’t even dust left.”
“How do you know all this?” Dee wondered.
“Because I was there,” Dare said lightly. “Who do you think led the Deer Woman to him?” She patted Dee’s shoulder. “I was tired of him: he had lied to me once too often, made me promises he had no intention of keeping.” Her voice dropped to a whisper and her fingers curled slightly. “Don’t make the same mistake.”
“I won’t,” Dee answered, watching Dare’s reflection the whole time.
“So tell me, what you are going to do, Doctor?” Virginia demanded.
Dee came stiffly to his feet. Without saying a word, he crossed the room and stepped into a small private elevator. Dare hesitated a moment, then followed him. The elevator was uncomfortably small, obviously designed for only one person. With great care, the Magician pushed his burnt thumb against a button marked Emergency Stop. The button glowed a dull blue and then the doors hissed closed.
“The latest in fingerprint recognition,” Dee explained. “If anyone else pushed the button, the lift would fill with gas.”
“Very clever,” the woman said sarcastically.
Although there had been no sense of movement, the lift door suddenly opened. Virginia stepped out, followed by Dee. “Where are we?” she asked, looking around.
They had stepped out into a vast open-plan living room. All four walls were glass and featured panoramic views of the city. Various configurations of leather couches and chairs were scattered around the room, and four enormous flat-screen television sets arranged in a square hung from the ceiling. They were all tuned to the History Channel. At the far end of the space was a kitchen, and at the other end, behind a series of ornate painted screens, was a sleeping area centered around a Japanese futon.
“We’re on the thirteenth floor.”
“Your building does not have a thirteenth floor,” Dare snapped.
“Not on the floor plans,” Dee agreed, “but there is a thirteenth floor, accessible via this lift and a narrow maintenance stairway. Welcome to my home,” he said with a broad sweep of his arms. “It is built between the twelfth and fourteenth floors and steals square footage from both. The windows are one way and the entire floor is completely soundproofed.”
Virginia looked around. “It needs a woman’s touch,” she said, unimpressed. “You do know that couches come upholstered in material other than leather, and metal and glass tables haven’t been chic since the nineteen eighties.” She turned and stopped, suddenly speechless. “Artificial flowers? John, you can’t be serious.”
“The real ones kept dying,” Dee said. “And when did you become an interior decorator? The last time I met you, you lived in a tent.”
“Still do,” she said. “You’re never homeless in a tent.”
Dee crossed the floor to the area that served as a kitchen and pulled open the fridge door.
“If you ate, I’d wager you’d have paper plates,” Virginia said, following him. “I suppose it would be pointless asking you for milk?” she asked as he reached into the fridge.
“Pointless,” he agreed. “You can have water, flat or sparkling,” Dee pulled out two bottles and then, from the back of the fridge, a short narrow object wrapped in a rag. He laid it on the table before Dare, and then reached back into the fridge to pull out two more similarly shaped objects. One was wrapped in red silk, the other in green leather.
Virginia Dare felt the tickling crawl of ancient power across her skin and stepped back, automatically brushing her tingling hands along the length of her jacket. She felt as if ants were crawling across her skin.
Dee then pulled open the oven and extracted a rectangular wooden box, which he also laid on the table.
“I’m not going to even ask you why you store things in the fridge and the oven,” Dare muttered. “Are these what I think they are?” she asked.
“What do you think they are?” he asked.
“Dangerous. Powerful. Deadly.”
“That they are.” The Magician carefully unwrapped the object in red silk, slowly peeling back the wafer-thin cloth. “I was thinking earlier that I’ve been a fool.”
Virginia Dare squeezed her lips tightly shut and resisted the temptation to comment.
“Why did I spend centuries working for the Elders, doing their errands like a servant or a trained dog?”
“Because they made you immortal?” Virginia reminded him.
“Others have become immortal without an Elder,” Dee pointed out. “The Flamels, Saint-Germain and Shakespeare, too. Maybe if I had searched for the secret of immortality, I would have found it myself.”
“Maybe you would have died before you’d found it,” Virginia suggested.
“I gave the Elders centuries of service…”
“I know, I know, I know. I’m becoming bored with this self-pitying nonsense,” Dare snapped, deliberately goading him. She knew the Magician well enough to know that he hated to be interrupted. If Dee had a failing, it was that he loved the sound of his own voice. “Tell me what you intend to do.”
“First, I am going to summon Coatlicue from her prison and set her loose into the Shadowrealms,” he said, burnt fingers fumbling with the red silk.
Dare watched him closely but made no attempt to help him.
“The Elders will be forced to draw most of their forces on earth back into the Shadowrealm
s to battle the Mother of All the Gods. They will not care what happens here. In the meantime, Machiavelli should have released the monsters on Alcatraz into the city.”
Dare blinked in surprise but knew better than to interrupt him now.
The red silk fell away, revealing a simple stone sword. The hilt was unadorned and the gray blade polished so that it looked like metal. Dee looked over at Virginia, his eyes sparkling. “Do you recognize it?” he asked.
“One of the swords of power,” she breathed. “Which one?”
“Durendal,” he whispered.
“The indestructible.” Dare stepped closer to look at the ancient weapon. “You’ve always been fascinated with these toys, haven’t you, Doctor?”
“A one-handed man once read my fortune; he told me that my destiny lay entwined with the swords.”
“I thought it would look more impressive,” Virginia said.
The Magician pulled at the thick string knotted tightly around the green-leather-wrapped object. “San Francisco will quickly fall to the beasts,” he continued, ignoring her comment. “The humani armies will not be able to stand against the monsters. The fear factor alone gives us a tremendous advantage. And there are similar caches of creatures in all the major cities around the globe. The world will dissolve into chaos in a matter of days.”
“And what about those Elders who refuse to leave the earth to fight Coatlicue in the Shadowrealms?” Virginia asked. “And the immortals who are not allied to the Dark Elders? They will fight the monsters.”
“Oh, I’m counting on it,” Dee muttered. Two of the cords fell away from the object he was fumbling with, but he could not undo the third knot. He looked at the woman. “Would you…?”
“I’m going nowhere near it,” Virginia said. She slipped a short flat-bladed knife from a hidden sheath in her sleeve and tossed it to the Magician. He deftly caught it and sliced open the last knot.
“I know the locations of most of the Elders, Next Generation and immortals here on earth. Once they come out of hiding, I can pick them off one by one. When I’m finished, you and I will be the last two immortals on this planet. My Elder masters once promised me this planet: now I’m taking it on my terms.”
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