The Alchemyst

CHAPTER TEN

S o let me get this straight, Josh Newman said, trying to keep his voice

perfectly level, you don't know how to drive? Neither of you?

Josh and Sophie were sitting in the front seats of the SUV Scatty had

borrowed from one of her martial arts students. Josh was driving, and his

sister had a map on her lap. Nicholas Flamel and Scathach were sitting in the

back.

Never learned, Nicholas Flamel'said, with an expressive shrug.

Never had the time, Scatty said shortly.

But Nicholas told us you re more than two thousand years old, Sophie said,

looking at the girl.

Two thousand five hundred and seventeen, as you humani measure time with

your current calendar, Scatty mumbled. She looked into Flamel's clear eyes.

And how old do I look?

Not a day over seventeen, he said quickly.

Couldn t you have found time to learn how to drive? Sophie persisted. She d

wanted to learn how to drive since she was ten. One of the reasons the twins

had taken summer jobs this year, rather than go on the dig with their

parents, was to get the money for a car of their own.

Scathach shrugged, an irritated twitch of her shoulders. I ve been meaning

to, but I ve been busy, she protested.

You do know, Josh said to no one in particular, that I m not supposed to

be driving without a licensed driver with me.

We re nearly fifteen and a half and we can both drive, Sophie said. Well,

sort of, she added.

Can either of you ride a horse? Flamel asked, or drive a carriage, or a

coach-and-four?

Well, no , Sophie began.

Handle a war chariot while firing a bow or launching spears? Scatty added.

Or fly a lizard-nathair while using a slingshot?

I have no idea what a lizard-nathair is and I m not sure I want to know

either.

So you see, you are experienced in certain skills, Flamel'said, whereas we

have other, somewhat older, but equally useful skills. He shot a sidelong

glance at Scathach. Though I m not so sure about the nathair flying

anymore.

Josh pulled away from a stop sign and turned right, heading for the Golden

Gate Bridge. I just don't know how you could have lived through the

twentieth century without being able to drive. I mean, how did you get from

place to place?

Public transportation, Flamel'said with a grim smile. Trains and buses,

mainly. They are a completely anonymous method of travel, unlike airplanes

and boats. There is far too much paperwork involved in owning a car,

paperwork that could be traced directly to us, no matter how many aliases we

used. He paused and added, And besides, there are other, older methods of

travel.

There were a hundred questions Josh wanted to ask, but he was concentrating

furiously on controlling the heavy car. Although he knew how to drive, the

only vehicles he d actually driven were battered Jeeps when they accompanied

their parents on a dig. He d never driven in traffic before, and he was

terrified. Sophie had suggested that he pretend it was a computer game. That

helped, but only a little. In a game, when you crashed, you simply started

again. Here, a crash was for keeps.

Traffic was slow across the famous bridge. A long gray stretch limo had

broken down in the inside lane, causing a bottleneck. As they approached,

Sophie noticed that there were two dark-suited figures crouched under the

hood on the passenger s side. She realized she was holding her breath as they

drew close, wondering if the figures were Golems. She heaved a sigh as they

pulled alongside and discovered that the men looked like harassed

accountants. Josh glanced at his sister and attempted a grin, and she knew he

had been thinking the same thing.

Sophie twisted in her seat, and turned to look back at Flamel and Scatty. In

the darkened, air-conditioned interior of the SUV, they seemed so ordinary:

Flamel looked like a fading hippy, and Scatty, despite her rather military

dress sense, wouldn't have looked out of place behind the counter at The

Coffee Cup. The red-haired girl had propped her chin on her fist and was

staring through the darkened glass across the bay toward Alcatraz.

Nicholas Flamel dipped his head to follow the direction of her gaze. Haven t

been there for a while, he murmured.

We did the tour, Sophie said.

I liked it, Josh said quickly. Sophie didn't.

It was creepy.

And so it should be, Flamel'said quietly. It is home to an extraordinary

assortment of ghosts and unquiet spirits. Last time I was there, it was to

put to rest an extremely ugly Snakeman.

I m not sure I even want to know what a Snakeman is, Sophie muttered, then

paused. You know, a couple of hours ago, I could never have imagined myself

saying something like that?

Nicholas Flamel'sat back in the comfortable seats and folded his arms across

his chest. Your lives yours and your brother s are now forever altered. You

know that, don't you?

Sophie nodded. That'sbeginning to sink in now. It s just that everything s

happening so fast that it s hard to take it all in. Mud men, magic, books of

spells, rats She looked at Scathach. Ancient warriors

Scatty dipped her head in acknowledgment.

And of course, a six-hundred-year-old alchemyst Sophie stopped, a sudden

thought crossing her mind. She looked from Flamel to Scatty and back again.

Then she took a moment to formulate her question. Staring hard at the man,

she asked, You are human, aren't you?

Nicholas Flamel grinned. Yes. Perhaps a little more than human, but yes, I

was born and will always be one of the human race.

Sophie looked at Scathach. But you re

Scathach opened her green eyes wide, and for a single instant, something

ancient was visible in the planes and angles of her face. No, she said very

quietly. I am not of the race of humani. My people were of different stock,

the Elder Race. We ruled this earth before the creatures who became humani

climbed down from the trees. Nowadays, we are remembered in the myths of just

about every race. We are the creatures of legend, the Were clans, the

Vampire, the Giants, the Dragons, the Monsters. In stories we are remembered

as the Old Ones or the Elder Race. Some stories call us gods.

Were you ever a god? Sophie whispered.

Scatty giggled. No. I was never a god. But some of my people allowed

themselves to be worshipped as gods. Others simply became gods as humani told

tales of their adventures. She shrugged. We were just another race, an

older race than man, with different gifts, different skills.

What happened? Sophie asked.

The Flood, Scatty said very softly, amongst other things.

The earth is a lot older than most people imagine, Flamel'said quietly.

Creatures and races that are now no more than myth once walked this world.

Sophie nodded slowly. Our parents are archaeologists. They ve told us about

some of the inexplicable things that archaeology sometimes reveals.

Remember that place we visited in Texas, Taylor something , Josh said,

carefully easing the heavy SUV into the middle lane. He d never driven

anything so big before, and was terrified he was going to hit something. He d

had a couple of near misses and was convinced he d actually clipped someone s

side mirror, but he d kept going, saying nothing.

The Taylor Trail, Sophie said, at the Paluxy River in Texas. There are

what look like dinosaur footprints and human prints in the same fossilized

piece of stone. And the stone is dated to one hundred million years old.

I have seen them, Flamel replied, and others like them all across the

world. I have also examined the shoe print that was found in Antelope Springs

in Utah in rock about five hundred million years old.

My dad says things like that can be easily dismissed as either fakes or

misinterpretation of the facts, Josh said quickly. He wondered what his

father would say about the things they had seen today.

Flamel'shrugged. Yes, that is true. But what science cannot understand, it

dismisses. Not everything can be so easily brushed aside. Can you dismiss

what you've seen and experienced today as some sort of misinterpretation of

the facts?

Sophie shook her head.

Beside her, Josh shrugged uncomfortably. He didn't like the direction this

conversation was taking. Dinosaurs and humans living together at the same

time was simply inconceivable. The very idea went against everything his

parents had taught them, everything they believed. But somewhere at the back

of his mind, a small voice kept reminding him that every year

archaeologists including his parents kept making extraordinary discoveries. A

couple of years earlier, it was Homo floresiensis, the tiny people in

Indonesia, nicknamed Hobbits; then there was the species of dwarf dinosaur

discovered in Germany, and the hundred-and-sixty-five-million-year-old

dinosaur tracks found in Wyoming and, only recently, the eight new

prehistoric species discovered in a cave in Israel. But what Flamel was

suggesting was staggering in its implications. You re saying that humans and

dinosaurs existed on the earth at the same time, Josh said, surprised that

he sounded so angry.

I m saying that humans have existed on the earth with creatures far

stranger, and much older than the dinosaurs, Flamel'said seriously.

How do you know? Sophie demanded. He claimed to have been born in 1330, he

couldn t have seen dinosaurs could he?

It s all written down in the Codex and, in the course of my long life, I ve

seen beasts that are considered myths, I ve fought beings from legend, I ve

faced down creatures that looked like they crawled from a nightmare.

We did Shakespeare in school last term . There s a line from Hamlet. Sophie

frowned, trying to remember. There are more things in heaven and earth

Nicholas Flamel nodded delightedly. than are dreamt of in your philosophy,

he finished the quotation. Hamlet, act one, scene five. I knew Will

Shakespeare, of course. Now, Will could have been an alchemist of

extraordinary talent but then he fell into Dee s clutches. Poor Will; do you

know that he based the character of Prospero in The Tempest on Dee?

I never liked Shakespeare, Scatty muttered. He smelled.

You knew Shakespeare? Josh was unable to keep the disbelief out of his

voice.

He was my student briefly, very briefly, Flamel'said. I ve lived a long

time; I ve had a lot of students some made famous by history, most forgotten.

I ve met a lot of people, human and unhuman, mortal and immortal. People like

Scathach, Flamel finished.

There are more like you more of the Elder Race? Sophie asked, looking at

the red-haired girl.

More than you might think, though I try not to associate with them, Scatty

said uneasily. There are those amongst the Elders who cannot accept that our

time is past, that this age belongs to the humani. They want to see a return

to the old ways, and they believe that their puppet Dee and others like him

are in a position to bring that about. They are called the Dark Elders.

I don't know if anyone has noticed, Josh interrupted suddenly, but would

you say there are a lot of birds gathering?

Sophie turned to stare through the windshield, while Flamel and Scatty peered

through the back window.

The spars and pylons, the braces, ropes and wires of the Golden Gate Bridge

were slowly filling with birds: thousands of them. Mainly blackbirds and

crows, they covered all available surfaces, with more arriving every moment.

They re coming from Alcatraz, Josh said, dipping his head to look across

the choppy waters toward the island.

A dark cloud had gathered above Alcatraz. It rose out of the abandoned prison

in a dark curl and hung in the air looking like smoke, but this smoke didn't

dissipate: it moved and circled in a solid mass.

Birds. Josh swallowed hard. There must be thousands of them.

Tens of thousands, Sophie corrected him. She turned to look at Flamel.

What are they?

The Morrigan s children, he said enigmatically.

Trouble, Scatty added. Big trouble.

Then, as if driven by a single command, the huge flock of birds moved away

from the island and headed across the bay, directly toward the bridge.

Josh hit his window button and the tinted glass hummed down. The noise of the

birds was audible now, a raucous cawing, almost like high-pitched laugher.

Traffic was slowing, some people even stopping to get out of their cars to

take photographs with digital cameras and cell phones.

Nicholas Flamel leaned forward and placed his left hand on Josh s shoulder.

You should drive, he said seriously. Do not stop whatever happens, even if

you hit something. Just drive. As fast as you can. Get us off this bridge.

There was something in Flamel's unnaturally controlled voice that frightened

Sophie even more than if he had shouted. She glanced sidelong at Scatty, but

the young woman was rummaging through her backpack. The warrior pulled out a

short bow and a handful of arrows and placed them on the seat beside her.

Roll up your window, Josh, she said calmly. We don't want anything getting

in.

We re in trouble, aren't we? Sophie whispered, looking at the Alchemyst.

Only if the crows catch us, Flamel'said with a tight smile. Could I borrow

your cell phone?

Sophie pulled her cell out of her pocket and flipped it open. aren't you

going to work some magic? she asked hopefully.

No, I m going to make a call. Let s hope we don't get an answering service.