Michael Scott - The Warlock (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel)

ALSO BY MICHAEL SCOTT

The Alchemyst
The Magician
The Sorceress
The Necromancer

This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the authors imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright 2011 by Michael Scott

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Childrens Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

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eISBN: 978-0-375-89954-6

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v3.1

This is for Anna,
sapientia et eloquentia.

Nicholas Flamel is dying.

This is the time I have feared for so long; this is the night when I might finally become a widow.

My poor brave Nicholas. Even though hes aged, weakened and utterly exhausted, he sat with Prometheus and me and poured the last of his strength into the crystal skull so we could track Josh into the heart of San Francisco, deep into Dr. John Dees lair.

We watched in horror as Dee turned the boy into a necromancer, a summoner of the dead, and urged him to call forth Coatlicue, the hideous Archon known as the Mother of all the Gods. We tried to warn Josh, but Dee was too strong and cut the boy off from us. And when Aoife, Niten and Sophie arrived, Josh sided with Dee and his deadly companion, Virginia Dare. I cannot help wondering if he did so voluntarily.

Watching Joshour last hope, our final chance to defeat the Dark Elders and protect the worldleave with the enemy was too much for my husband, and he collapsed into unconsciousness. He has not awakened, and I no longer have the strength to revive him. What little power remains within me I must conserve for what is to come.

One by one, we have lost those who might have fought alongside us: Aoife is gone, trapped in a Shadowrealm, forever locked in combat with the Archon Coatlicue. Scathach and Joan are in the distant past, there has been no communication from Saint-Germain, and we have now lost contact with Palamedes and Shakespeare. Even Prometheus is so weakened now after using the skull that he no longer has the strength to hold his Shadowrealm together, and it is beginning to disintegrate around him.

Only Sophie remains, and she is completely distraught by her brothers betrayal. She is somewhere in San Francisco, I dont know where, but at least she has Niten to protect her. I must find herthere is much she needs to know.

So it comes down to me, as I have always known it would.

When I was a child, more than six hundred and eighty years ago, my grandmother introduced me to a hooded man with a hook in place of his left hand. He told me my future, and the future of the world. And then he swore me to secrecy. I have been waiting for this day my entire life.

Now that the end is almost upon us, I know what I have to do.

From the Day Booke of Nicholas Flamel, Alchemyst
Writ this day, Wednesday, 6th June, by
Perenelle Flamel, Sorceress,
in the Shadowrealm of the Elder Prometheus,
adjoining San Francisco, my adopted city

WEDNESDAY ,
6th June

he anpu appeared first, tall jackal-headed warriors with solid red eyes and saber-teeth, wearing highly polished black glass armor. They poured out of a smoking cave mouth and spread around Xibalba, some taking up positions in front of each of the nine gates that opened into the enormous cave, others sweeping through the primitive Shadowrealm, ensuring that it was empty. As always, they moved in complete silence; they were mute until the final moments before they charged into battle, and then their screams were terrifying.

Only when the anpu were satisfied that Xibalba was deserted did the couple appear.

Like the anpu, they were wearing glass and ceramic armor, though theirs was ornate rather than practical, and in a style that had last been seen in the Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt.

Minutes earlier, the couple had left an almost perfect facsimile of Danu Talis to travel across a dozen linked Shadowrealms, some remarkably similar to earth, some completely alien. And although the couple were both by nature intensely curious about the myriad worlds they ruled, they did not linger. They raced through a complex network of leygates that would lead them to the place known as the Crossroads.

There was so little time left.

Nine gates opened out into Xibalba, each one little more than a roughly carved opening in the black rock wall. Avoiding the bubbling pits of lava that spat sticky strings of molten rock across their path, the couple traversed the width of the Shadowrealm from the ninth gate to the third, the Gate of Tears. Even the anpu, which were by nature fearless, refused to approach this cave. Ancient memories rooted deep in their DNA warned them that this was the place where their race had almost been exterminated after theyd fled the world of the humani.

As the couple neared the circular cave mouth, the crude and blocky glyphs carved over the opening began to glow with a faint white light. It reflected off their mirrored armor, illuminating the interior of the cave, painting the couple in stark black and white and, in that instantbrieflythey were beautiful.

Without a backward glance, the couple stepped into the dark cave mouth

and less than a heartbeat later, a couple dressed identically in white jeans and T-shirts winked into existence on the circular stone known as Point Zero before Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France. The man took the womans hand in his and together they set off at a brisk pace, picking their way through the debris of stones and broken statues that still littered the square where Sophie and Josh Newman had used Elemental Magic to defeat the cathedrals animated stone gargoyles.

And because this was Paris, no one looked twice at a couple wearing sunglasses at night.

ire raged through the building. Dozens of alarms howled and shrieked and the air was filled with choking black smoke, thick with the reek of burning rubber and melting plastic.

Out, out, now! Dr. John Dee used the short sword in his right hand to rip apart a heavy steel and wooden door, carving through it as if it were paper. Down the stairs, he ordered.