The Magician (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #2) (27 page)

“My master is all-powerful”, Dee snapped.

“I look forward to learning the identity of this mysterious Elder.”

“When all this is over, maybe I’ll introduce you”, Dee said. He nodded down the alleyway. “And that could be very soon.”

The rune stones hissed and sizzled on the ground.

They were irregular pieces of flat black stone, each etched with a series of angular lines, squares and slashes. Now the lines were glowing red, crimson smoke coiling into the still predawn air.

One of the Disir used the tip of her sword to move three of the rune stones together. A second nudged a stone out of the way with the steel toe of her boot and then dragged another into place. The third found a single rune stone at the edge of the pile and eased it into position at the end of the string of letters with her sword.

“Nidhogg”, the Disir whispered, calling the nightmare whose name they had spelled out in the ancient stones.

“Nidhogg”, Machiavelli said very quietly. He looked over Dee’s shoulder to where Dagon sat staring straight ahead, apparently disinterested in what was happening to his left. “I know what the legends say about it, but Dagon, what exactly is it?”

“My people called it the Devourer of Corpses”, the driver said, voice sticky and bubbling. “It was already here before my race claimed the seas, and we were amongst the first to arrive on this planet.”

Dee quickly swiveled in the seat to look at the driver. “What are you?”

Dagon ignored the question. “Nidhogg was so dangerous that a council of the Elder Race created a terrible Shadowrealm, Niflheim, the World of Darkness, to contain it, and then they used the unbreakable roots of the Yggdrasill to wrap around the creature, chaining it for eternity.”

Machiavelli kept his eyes fixed on the red-black smoke coiling from the rune stones. He thought he saw the outline of a shape beginning to form. “Why didn’t the Elders kill it?”

“Nidhogg was a weapon”, Dagon said.

“What did the Elders need a weapon for?” Machiavelli wondered aloud. “Their powers were almost limitless. They had no enemies.”

Although he sat with his hands resting lightly on the steering wheel, Dagon’s shoulders shifted and his head turned almost completely around so that he was facing Dee and Machiavelli. “The Elders were not the first upon this earth”, he said simply. “There were
others.”
He pronounced the word slowly and carefully. “The Elders used Nidhogg and some of the other primordial creatures as weapons in the Great War to completely destroy them.”

A stunned Machiavelli looked at Dee, who looked equally shocked by the revelation.

Dagon’s mouth opened in what might have been a smile, revealing his tooth-filled maw. “You should probably know that the last time a group of Disir used Nidhogg, they lost control of the creature. It ate all of them. In the three days it took to recapture it and chain it in Yggdrasill s roots, it completely destroyed the Anasazi people in what is now
New Mexico
. It is said that Nidhogg feasted off ten thousand humani and still hungered for more.”

“Can these Disir control it?” Dee demanded.

Dagon shrugged. “Thirteen of the finest Disir warriors couldn’t control it in
New Mexico
.”

“Maybe we should” Dee began.

Machiavelli suddenly stiffened. “Too late”, he whispered. “It’s here.”

“I’m
going to bed.” Sophie Newman paused by the kitchen door, a glass of water in her hand, and looked back to where Josh was still sitting at the table. “Francis is going to teach me some specific fire spells in the morning. He promised to show me the fireworks trick.”

“Great, we’ll never have to buy fireworks again for the Fourth of July.”

Sophie smiled tiredly. “Don’t stay up too long, it’s nearly dawn.”

Josh shoved another piece of toast into his mouth. “I’m still on Pacific time”, he said, his voice muffled. “But I’ll be up in a few minutes. Scatty wants to continue my sword training tomorrow. I’m really looking forward to it.”

“Liar, liar.”

He grunted. “Well, you’ve got your magic to protect you all I have is a stone sword.”

The bitterness was clearly audible in his voice, and Sophie forced herself not to comment. She was getting tired of her brother’s constant whining. She had never asked to be Awakened; she hadn’t wanted to know the Witch’s magic or Saint-Germain s, either. But it had happened and she was dealing with it, and Josh would just have to get over it. “Good night”, she said. She closed the door behind her, leaving Josh alone in the kitchen.

When he finished the last of the toast, he gathered up his plate and glass and carried them both to the sink. He ran hot water over the plate, then set it to drip dry in the wire dish rack beside the deep ceramic sink. Refilling his glass from the jug of filtered water, he crossed to the kitchen door, pulled it open and stepped out into the tiny garden. Although it was almost dawn, he didn’t feel the least bit tired, but then again, he reminded himself, he had slept for most of the day. Over the high wall, he couldn’t see much of the Parisian skyline except for the warm orange glow from the streetlights. He looked up, but there were no stars visible in the heavens. Sitting on the step, he breathed deeply. The air was cool and damp, just like San Francisco’s, though it lacked the familiar salt tang that he loved; it was tainted instead with unfamiliar smells, few of which were pleasant. He felt a sneeze gathering at the back of his nose and sniffed hard, eyes watering. There was the stench of overflowing trash cans and rotting fruit, and he detected a nastier, fouler stink that was vaguely familiar. Closing his mouth, he breathed deeply through his nose, trying to identify it: what
was
it? It was something he’d smelled very recently.

Snake.

Josh leapt to his feet. There weren’t snakes in Paris, were there? Deep in his chest, Josh felt his heart begin to beat faster. He was terrified of snakes, a bone-chilling fear that he could trace back to when he’d been about ten. He’d been camping with his father in
Wupatki
National Monument
in
Arizona
when he’d slipped off a trail and slid down an incline, straight into a rattlesnake nest. When the dust had cleared, he’d realized he was lying next to a six-foot-long snake. The creature had raised its wedge-shaped head and stared at him with coal black eyes for what was probably no more than a second though it felt like a lifetime before Josh had managed to scramble out, too terrified and breathless even to scream. He’d never been able to work out why the snake hadn’t attacked him, though his father told him that rattlesnakes were actually shy and that it had probably just eaten. He’d had nightmares about the incident for weeks afterward, and after every one he would wake up with that smell of serpent musk in his nostrils.

He was smelling it now.

And it was getting stronger.

Josh started backing up the steps. There was a sudden scrabbling sound, like a squirrel running up the side of a tree. Then, directly in front of him, on the other side of the small courtyard, claws, each one the length of his hand, appeared over the top of the nine-foot-high wall. They moved around slowly, almost delicately, questing for a hold, and then abruptly gripped hard enough for the talons to bite deep into the old bricks. Josh froze, all the breath leaving his body in one shocked exhalation.

The arms that followed were covered in thick knobbled hide and then the head of a monster appeared over the wall. It was long and slab like, with two rounded nostrils on the end of a blunt snout directly over its mouth and solid black eyes sunk deep behind circular depressions on either side of its skull. Unable to move, unable to breathe, his heart hammering so hard it was physically shaking his body, Josh watched the huge head swivel lazily from side to side, an immensely long, ghastly white forked tongue flickering in the air. It froze, then slowly, very slowly, shifted its head and looked down at Josh. The merest tip of its tongue tasted the air and then it opened its mouth wide impossibly wide, enough to swallow him whole and the boy saw a mouthful of teeth: sharp, ragged curved daggers.

Josh wanted to turn and run screaming, but he couldn’t. There was something mesmerizing about the appalling creature clambering over the wall. All his life he’d been fascinated by dinosaurs: he’d collected fossils, eggs, bones and teeth even dinosaur coprolites. And now he was looking at a living dinosaur. There was even a part of his brain that identified the creature or at least, what it resembled. It was a Komodo dragon. They didn’t grow much longer than ten feet in the wild, but he could already see that this creature was at least three times that.

Stone cracked. An old brick exploded into dust, and then a second, a third.

Then there was a crunching, snapping, ripping sound, and almost in slow motion Josh watched as the wall, with the creature draped over the top, swayed, then crashed to the ground. The metal door buckled in two, popped off its hinges and shattered against the water fountain, tearing a huge chunk out of the basin. The monster smashed to the ground, unaffected by the stones raining down around it. The noise jolted Josh free and he staggered back up the steps just as the monster lumbered to its feet and shuffled forward, heading straight for the house. The boy slammed the door closed and rammed home the bolts. He was turning away when through the kitchen window he spotted the figure in white, clutching what looked like a sword, step through the gaping hole that had been the wall.

Josh grabbed the stone sword off the floor and dashed into the hall. “Wake up!” he shouted, his voice so filled with terror even he didn’t recognize it. “Sophie! Flamel! Anyone!”

The door behind him shook in its frame. He snapped a quick glance over his shoulder in time to see the monster’s white tongue peel off the wood and glass.

“Help!”

Glass shattered and the tongue shot into the kitchen, sweeping plates to the floor, scattering pots and pans, knocking over a chair. Metal hissed where the tongue brushed against it; wood turned black and burned; plastic melted. A drop of the corrosive saliva dripped to the floor and bubbled on the tiles, eating into the stone.

Instinctively, Josh lashed out at the tongue with Clarent. The sword barely touched it, but it suddenly disappeared, darting back into the creature’s mouth. There was a single still moment, and then the monster rammed its entire head at the door.

The door crumpled to matchwood; the supporting walls on either side cracked as stones were knocked out. The creature drew its head back and slammed it into the opening again, punching a large hole into the kitchen. The entire house creaked ominously.

A hand fell on Josh’s shoulder, almost stopping his heart. “Now look what you’ve done: you’ve just gone and made it mad.”

Scathach strode into the wrecked kitchen and stood in the gaping hole created by the creature’s blows. “Nidhogg”, she said, and Josh was unsure whether she was talking to him, “which means the Disir are not far behind.” She sounded almost pleased with the news.

Scathach danced backward as Nidhogg’s head slammed into the opening again. Its huge nostrils opened wide and its white tongue slapped against the spot where, an instant before, the Shadow had been standing. A glob of spittle burned on the tile, turning it to a liquid sludge. Scathach’s twin swords darted out, flickering gray and silver, and two long cuts appeared on the white flesh of the creature’s forked tongue.

Without taking her eyes off the creature, Scathach said to Josh, almost calmly, “Get the others out of the house, I’ll take care of this.”

And then an enormous claw-tipped arm smashed through the window, wrapped around the Warrior’s body in a viselike grip and slammed her back against the wall with enough force to crack the plaster. The Warrior’s arms were trapped against her body, her swords useless. Nighogg’s huge head appeared in the ruined side of the house, and then its mouth opened wide and its tongue darted out toward Scathach. Once its sticky acid-coated tongue wrapped around the defenseless Warrior, it would drag her into its cavernous maw.

S
ophie flew down the stairs, sparks and streamers of blue fire trailing from her outstretched fingers.

She’d been standing in the bathroom brushing her teeth when the entire house had shaken. She’d heard the rumbling crash of bricks, which had been followed a heartbeat later by her brother’s scream. It had ripped through the silent house and was the most terrifying sound she had ever heard.