Why not? Sophie said, wondering if there was some particular ancient
creature they should avoid.
I m a vegetarian, Scatty answered.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
knees up to her chest, then wrapped her arms around her shins. She rested her
chin on her knees. She could hear voices angry, bitter voices.
Perry concentrated on the sound. She allowed her aura to expand a little as
she murmured a small spell she had learned from an Inuit shaman. The shaman
used it to listen to the fish moving under the arctic ice sheets and the
bears crunching across the distant ice fields. The simple spell worked by
shutting down all other senses and concentrating exclusively on hearing.
Perry watched as the color faded from her surroundings and darkness closed in
until she went blind. She gradually lost her sense of smell and felt the
pins-and-needles tingle in her fingertips and toes as her sense of touch
dulled, then faded completely. She knew that if there were anything in her
mouth, she would no longer be able to taste it. Only her hearing remained,
but it was enhanced and supersensitive. She heard beetles crawling in the
walls behind her, heard the scritch-scratch as a mouse gnawed through wood
somewhere above her, knew that a colony of termites was munching their way
through distant floorboards. She also heard two voices, high and thin, as if
they were being picked up on a badly tuned radio, and coming from a great
distance. Perry tilted her head, homing in on the sound. She heard wind
whistling, the flap of clothing, the high crying of birds. She could tell
that the voices she was hearing were coming from the roof of the building.
They strengthened, warbled and bubbled, and then abruptly clarified: they
belonged to Dee and the Morrigan, and Perry could clearly hear the fear in
the gray man s voice and the rage in the Crow Goddess s shrill cries.
She must pay for this! She must!
She is an Elder. Untouchable by the likes of you and me, Dee said, trying
unsuccessfully to calm the Morrigan.
creatures had almost overwhelmed the car when her Ghost Wind swept them
away.
Flamel, the warrior Scathach and the two humani have now disappeared, Dee s
voice echoed, and Perry frowned, concentrating hard, trying to follow every
word. She was delighted to discover that Nicholas had sought the assistance
of Scathach: she was a formidable ally. It s as if they have vanished off
the face of the earth.
They
taken them into Hekate's Shadowrealm.
Unconsciously, Perry nodded. Of course! Where else would Nicholas have gone?
The entrance to Hekate's Shadowrealm in Mill Valley was closest to San
Francisco, and while the Elder was no friend to the Flamels, she was not
allied to Dee and his Dark Elders either.
We must follow them, the Morrigan stated flatly.
Impossible, Dee said reasonably. I have neither the skills nor the powers
to penetrate Hekate's realm. There was a pause, and then he added, Nor do
you. She is a First Generation Elder, you are of the Next Generation.
But she is not the only Elder on the West Coast. The Morrigan s voice was a
snap of triumph.
What are you suggesting? Fear had touched Dee s voice with a hint of his
original English accent.
I know where Bastet sleeps.
Perenelle Flamel'sat back against the cold stone and allowed her senses to
return. Feeling came first pins and needles racing through her fingers and
toes then her sense of smell, and finally sight. Blinking, waiting for the
tiny colored spots of light to fade, Perry tried to make sense of what she
had just discovered.
The implications were terrible. The Morrigan was prepared to awaken Bastet
and attack Hekate's Shadowrealm to retrieve the pages of the Codex.
Perry shuddered. She had never met Bastet she didn't know anyone who had in
the last three centuries and had lived to tell the tale but she knew her by
reputation. One of the most powerful members of the Elder Race, Bastet had
been worshipped in Egypt since the earliest ages of man. She had the body of
a beautiful young woman with the head of a cat, and Perry had absolutely no
idea of the magical forces she controlled.
Events were moving surprisingly swiftly. Something big was happening. Many
years before, when Nicholas and Perry had first discovered the secret of
immortality, they had realized that their extra-long lives allowed them to
view the world from a different perspective. They no longer planned events
days or weeks in advance; often they would make plans decades into the
future. Perry had come to understand that the Elders, whose lives were
infinitely longer, could make plans that encompassed centuries. And that
often meant that events moved with an extraordinarily deliberate slowness.
But now the Morrigan was abroad. The last time she had walked in the World of
Men, she had been spotted in the bitter, mud-filled trenches of the Somme;
before that she had prowled the bloodstained battlefields of the American
Civil War. The Crow Goddess was drawn to death; it hung around her like a
foul stench. She was also one of the Elders who believed that humans had been
placed on this earth to serve them.
Nicholas and the twins were safe in Hekate's Shadowrealm, but for how long?
Bastet was a First Generation Elder. Her powers had to be at least equal to
Hekate's and if the Cat Goddess and the Crow Goddess, combined with Dee s
alchemical magic, attacked Hekate, would her defenses hold? Perry didn't
know.
And what of Nicholas, Scathach and the twins?
Perenelle felt tears prickle the back of her eyes, but blinked them away.
Nicholas would be six hundred and seventy-seven years old on the
twenty-eighth of September, in three months time. He was well able to take
care of himself, though his mastery of practical spells was very limited, and
he could be remarkably forgetful at times. Only the summer before, he had
forgotten how to speak English and had reverted to his native archaic French.
It had taken her nearly a month to coach him back to speaking English. Before
