The Magician

CHAPTER TWENTY

P erenelle Flamel stepped out of the prison cell.

The door had never been locked. There was no need: nothing could get past the

sphinx. But now the sphinx was gone. Perenelle breathed deeply: the sour odor

of the creature, the musty combination of snake, lion and bird, had lessened,

allowing the usual smells of Alcatraz salt and rusting metal, seaweed and

crumbling stone to take over. She turned to the left, moving swiftly down a

long cell-lined corridor. She was on the Rock, but she had no idea where she

was within the huge crumbling complex. Although she and Nicholas had lived in

San Francisco for years, she had never been tempted to visit the

ghost-haunted island. All she knew was that she was deep below the surface of

the earth. The only light came from an irregular scattering of low-wattage

bulbs set behind wire cages. Perenelle s lips twisted in a wry smile; the

light was not for her benefit. The sphinx was afraid of the dark; the

creature came from a time and place where there really were monsters in the

shadows.

The sphinx had been lured away by the ghost of Juan Manuel de Ayala. She had

gone in search of the mysterious noises, the rattling bars and slamming doors

that had suddenly filled the building. Every moment the sphinx was away from

her cell, Perenelle s aura recharged. She wasn't back up to full strength she

would need to sleep and eat first but at least she was no longer defenseless.

All she had to do was to keep out of the creature s way.

A door slammed somewhere high above her, and Perenelle froze as claws

click-clacked. Then a bell began to toll, slow and solemn, lonely and

distant. There was a sudden clatter of iron-hard nails on stone as the sphinx

raced off to investigate.

Perenelle folded her arms across her body and ran her hands up and down them,

shivering slightly. She was wearing a sleeveless summer dress, and normally

she d be able to regulate her temperature by adjusting her aura, but she had

very little power left and she was reluctant to use it in any way. One of the

sphinx s special talents was her ability to sense and then feed off magical

energy.

Perenelle s flat sandals made no sound on the damp stones as she moved down

the corridor. She was wary, but not frightened. Perenelle Flamel had lived

for more than six hundred years, and while Nicholas had been fascinated with

alchemy, she had concentrated on sorcery. Her research had taken her into

some very dark and dangerous places, not only on this earth, but also in some

of the adjoining Shadowrealms.

Somewhere in the distance, glass shattered and tinkled to the ground. She

heard the sphinx hiss and howl in frustration, but that sound too was far

away. Perenelle smiled: de Ayala was keeping the sphinx busy, and no matter

how hard she looked, she would never find him. Even a creature as powerful as

a sphinx had no power over a ghost or a poltergeist.

Perenelle knew that she needed to get to an upper level and out into the

sunshine, where her aura would recharge more quickly. Once she was in the

open air, she could use any of a dozen simple spells, cantrips and

incantations she knew that would make the sphinx s existence a misery. A

Scythian mage, who d claimed to have helped build the pyramids for the

survivors of Danu Talis who had settled in Egypt, had taught her a very

useful spell for melting stone. Perenelle would not hesitate to use it to

bring the entire building down on top of the sphinx. It would probably

survive sphinxes were practically impossible to kill but it would certainly

be slowed down.

Perenelle spotted rusting metal stairs and darted toward them. She was just

about to put her foot on the bottom step when she noticed the gray thread

spilling across the metal. Perenelle froze, foot raised in the air and then

she slowly and carefully stepped back. Crouching down, she looked at the

metal steps. From this angle, she could see the threads of spiderwebs

crisscrossing and weaving through the stairs. Anyone who stepped onto the

metal staircase would be caught. She backed away, staring hard into the

gloomy shadows. The threads were too thick to have been made by any normal

spider and were dotted with tiny globules of liquid silver. Perenelle knew a

dozen creatures that could have spun the webs, and she didn't want to meet

any of them, not here and now, while she was so drained of her power.

Turning, she darted down a long corridor lit only by a single bulb at either

end. Now that she knew what she was looking for, she could see the silver

webs everywhere, stretched across the ceiling, spreading across the walls,

and there were huge nests knotted in corners, growing in the deepest shadows.

The webs presence might explain why she had encountered no vermin in the

prison no ants, flies, mosquitoes or rats. Once the nests hatched, the

building would come alive with spiders if indeed that s what the spinners

were. Over the centuries, Perenelle had encountered Elders who were

associated with spiders, including Arachne and the mysterious and terrifying

Spider Woman, but as far as she knew, none of them was aligned with Dee and

the Dark Elders.

Perenelle was hurrying past an open door, a perfect spiderweb framed in the

opening, when she caught the hint of a sour bitter stench. She slowed, then

stopped. The smell was new; it wasn't the smell of the sphinx. Turning back

to the door, she went as close as she could to the web without touching it

and peered inside. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness and a

moment longer to make sense of what she was seeing.

Vetala.

Perenelle s heart began to beat so strongly in her chest that she could

actually feel her flesh vibrating. Hanging upside down from the ceiling were

a dozen creatures. Talons that were a cross between human feet and birds

claws bit deep into the soft stone, while leathery bats wings wrapped around

skeletal human bodies. The upside-down heads were beautiful, with the faces

of young men and women not yet in their teens.

Vetala.

Perenelle mouthed the word silently. Vampires from the Indian subcontinent.

And unlike Scathach, this clan drank blood and ate flesh. But what were they

doing here, and more importantly, how had they gotten here? Vetala were

always linked to a region or tribe: Perenelle had never known one to leave

its homeland.

The Sorceress turned slowly to look at the other open doorways lining the

gloomy corridor. What else lay hidden in the cells beneath Alcatraz?

What was Dr. John Dee planning?

SUNDAY,

3rd June