Aoife looked at her in surprise, but before she could reply, Niten stepped up to the edge of the houseboat and looked from the Alchemyst to the Sorceress. "Give me your word that this is not a trick."

"I give you my word," Nicholas said.

"And I," Perenelle added.

Niten's arms moved and the swords disappeared into matched sheaths he wore strapped to his hip. "Come aboard," he said. "Enter freely and of your own will."

"Hey...," Aoife began.

"This is my boat," Niten reminded her, "and the Flamels may be many things, but I believe that they have always kept their word."

"Tell that to the generations of people they betrayed and destroyed," Aoife muttered, but she stepped back and allowed Nicholas, Perenelle and Josh onto the boat.

"You need to learn how to trust a little more," the Swordsman said to Aoife.

"And you need to learn to trust the right people," she snapped. "And these are not the right people."

"Your sister likes and trusts them."

Aoife sneered. "I am not my sister."

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR.

"None of these things are of any concern to me," Aoife said finally. Nicholas and Perenelle had just spent thirty minutes explaining the events of the past few days, adding details that Sophie had forgotten or skipped over.

Niten had set up a wooden crate on the center of the deck and arranged an a.s.sortment of mismatched chairs around it. He'd placed a delicately beautiful, almost transparent white china teapot and matching cups on the crate and poured fragrant olive green tea. The Swordsman had not sat, however; he had stood behind Aoife, arms hanging loosely at his sides as Nicholas and Perenelle told their story, starting with the theft of the Codex from the bookshop the previous Thursday.

Aoife shook her head. "I just want my sister back safely."

"We all want that," Nicholas said firmly. "Scathach is precious to us, too." He reached for his wife's hand. "She is the daughter we never had." He drew in a deep shuddering breath. "But Scathach's return-Joan's, too-is not our immediate priority. The Dark Elders have gathered together an army in the cells on Alcatraz. They plan to release them on the city."

"So?" Aoife asked.

Perenelle leaned forward and a static charge rippled down the length of her silver-streaked hair, raising it off her back. When she spoke, her words were as brittle as the look in her eyes. "Are you so divorced from humanity that you would condemn them to annihilation? You know what will happen to civilization if these monsters are allowed to prowl the city."

"It has happened before," Aoife snapped. Tendrils of faint gray smoke leaked from her nostrils. "On at least four previous occasions that I know of, the humani were almost wiped out, but they rose to repopulate the earth. You are old, Sorceress, but you have experienced only a fraction of what I have endured upon this earth. I have watched civilizations rise and fall and rise again. Sometimes it is necessary to wipe the slate clean and start fresh." She spread her arms wide. "Look at what this present batch of humani have done to the earth. Look at what their greed has wrought. They have brought this planet to the very brink of destruction. The polar caps are melting, sea levels are rising, weather patterns are changing, seasons altering, farmlands turning to desert..."

"You sound like Dee," Josh said suddenly.

"Don't you dare compare me to the English Magician," Aoife spat. "He is despicable."

"He said the Dark Elders could repair all this damage. Could they?" Josh asked curiously.

"Yes," Aoife answered simply. "Yes, they could. Tell him," she said to the Alchemyst.

Josh turned to look at Nicholas. "Is it true?"

"Yes," the Alchemyst sighed. "Yes, they undoubtedly could."

Sophie leaned forward, her forehead creasing in a frown. "So that means the Elders, the ones whose side you're on, could also do the same thing?"

This time there was a longer pause, and when Nicholas finally spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper. "I'm sure they could."

"So why don't they?" Sophie demanded.

Nicholas looked at Perenelle, and it was the Sorceress who finally answered. "Because sooner or later every parent must let their children go to live their lives and make their mistakes. That is the only way they can grow. In generations past, the Elders moved among the humani, living with them, working side by side-all those legends about the ancient G.o.ds interacting with humans have some truth in them. There really were G.o.ds on the earth in those days. But humankind did not progress. It was only when most of the Elders retreated to the Shadowrealms and left the humani to their own devices that the race started to grow."

"Think of all that mankind has achieved in the last two thousand years," Nicholas continued. "Think of the inventions, the accomplishments, the discoveries-atomic power, flight, instant worldwide communications, even s.p.a.ce travel-and then remember that the civilization of Egypt lasted more than three thousand years. Babylon was established over four thousand years ago, the first cities in the Indus appeared over five thousand years ago and Sumer is six thousand years old. Why did those great civilizations not achieve what this civilization has accomplished in a much shorter time?"

Josh shook his head, but Sophie was nodding. She knew the answer.

"Because the Elders-what the humani called the G.o.ds-lived with them," Perenelle said. "They provided everything. The Elders needed to retreat so that mankind could grow."

"But some stayed," Sophie protested. "The Witch, Prometheus..."

"Mars...," Josh added.

"Gilgamesh," Sophie said. "And Scathach. She stayed."

"Yes, a few remained to guide and teach the new race, to nudge them along the road to greatness. But not to interfere, not to influence and definitely not to rule," Perenelle clarified.

Aoife grunted a bitter laugh.

"It is true that some Dark Elders tried to rule the humani, and the Elders fought with them, blocking their efforts. But everyone who remained had a reason to stay... except you," Perenelle said suddenly, looking at Aoife. "Why did you choose to remain in this humani Shadowrealm?"

There was a long pause while Aoife's eyes grew lost and distant. "Because Scathach stayed," she said eventually.

A series of terrible images swirled through Sophie's mind and a name popped into her head. "Because of Cuchulain," she said aloud.

"Cuchulain," Aoife agreed. "The boy who came between us. The boy we fought over."

A young man, mortally wounded, tying himself to a pillar so that his very presence could hold a terrifying army at bay...

Scathach and Aoife together, racing across a battlefield, trying to reach him before three enormous crowlike figures swooped down on his body...

The crows carrying the young man's limp body high into the air...

And then Scathach and Aoife fighting one another with swords and spears, their almost identical gray auras coiling around them, twisting and shifting into a score of beastlike shapes.

"We should never have fought," Aoife said. "We parted with angry bitter words. We said things that should have been left unsaid."

"You could have left for a Shadowrealm of your own creation," Perenelle said.

Aoife shook her head. "I stayed because I had been told that one day I would get a chance to redeem myself with my sister."

Even as Aoife was speaking, Sophie caught a flickering image: Scathach-or was it Aoife?-clinging to the back of a monster that stood on human legs but had two coiling snakes' heads. It wore a robe of living serpents, and these struck out, again and again, at the red-haired warrior. "Who told you that?" she asked in a hoa.r.s.e whisper.

"My grandmother: the Witch of Endor." The vampire's face was grim. "And she is rarely wrong. I cannot go with you, I cannot help you. I have to find my sister. I will go back through time if need be."

Nicholas looked over at her. "Even now Saint-Germain is going to see if he can travel back into the past to rescue Joan and Scathach."

Aoife grunted. "There are less than a handful of Elders in this realm with that power. And none of them are pleasant."

"The Saracen Knight is taking him to his master, Tammuz, the Green Man," Nicholas said shortly. "Like Chronos, he has the power to travel along the strands of time."

"And you expect him to help Saint-Germain?" Aoife's laughter, dark and ugly, rang out across the water. "Tammuz will tear him limb from limb."

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.

"We could just fly to San Francisco," Virginia Dare said quietly. "I quite like flying. Especially if it's first-cla.s.s, and particularly if you are paying."

"I hate flying," Dee muttered. "Besides, there are two problems with that: booking a ticket will leave a trail that anyone can follow, and the first flight is not until tomorrow morning. Then it's an eleven-hour flight to the West Coast. We'd lose too much time, and it would allow the Elders to organize a welcoming committee for me when I land."

"What about a private jet? You're rich enough to do that."

"Yes, I'm rich enough, but the paperwork would take hours and leave a huge trail also. No, this is a much better idea."

"When you say better, does that mean dangerous?" Virginia asked softly.

"That has never bothered you before."

"I am immortal, not invulnerable. I can be killed... and so can you," she reminded him. "As I get older, I appreciate my long life. I have no desire to end it."

The couple, looking like any other pair of tourists, were standing beneath the shade of a tree admiring the brightly lit facade of the Tower of London, the pale cream stone turned the color of b.u.t.ter in the warm lights. A recent shower had swept across the city and created puddles that reflected the lights. Even at this late hour there were still plenty of sightseers enjoying the cool air, admiring the London landmark on the Thames River. Occasionally cameras flashed.

"All my life seems to have been spent in and around the Tower," Dee said wistfully. "I visited Walter Raleigh here just before his execution," he added. "And when I was a boy my father took me to see the lions here, when it housed the Royal Menagerie."

"Very touching," Dare muttered. "Do you want to tell me now why we're here?"

Dee nodded, a tiny jerk of his head. "There is an entrance to a Shadowrealm inside."

"The Traitor's Gate Shadowrealm." Dare nodded. "I've heard of it." She shuddered, her shoulders rolling beneath her coat. "Rumor has it that it is an evil place."

Dee ignored her. "Together, I believe we're powerful enough to activate and enter it. Once we're in the Shadowrealm, we can hop from realm to realm and then drop out in America." He grinned with genuine good humor.

"Once you activate the gate, you will have betrayed our position," Virginia said.

"True. But once we're in the Shadowrealm, no one will know where we're going."

Virginia Dare shook her head, her long hair flowing down her back. "Can I point out one or two very minor flaws in this plan?"

"Such as?"

"Let us a.s.sume we can overpower the guards in the Tower..."

"Easily done. You can spell them to sleep with your music."

"And then let us a.s.sume we can leap into the Traitor's Gate Shadowrealm."

"We can do that," Dee said confidently.

"Do we know whose Shadowrealm it is?"

The doctor shook his head. "No one knows. Some minor Elder, perhaps-but you know that many of the Shadowrealms that border the earth are empty."

"I also know that the Dark Elders have been calling their brethren who live in the outer Shadowrealms to draw closer as Litha approaches. Something might have taken up residence there."

Dee opened his mouth to comment, but Virginia pressed on.

"But let us a.s.sume that we find it empty. We then have to move through it to cross into one or two or three more Shadowrealms before we end up in a realm that touches the Americas."

"Yes."

"And it could be anywhere in the Americas from Alaska to Florida?"

"Yes. At worst we'll be a couple of hours away from San Francisco."

"So tell me why we are going back to San Francisco? I thought that city was about to be overrun by your Elder's nightmare army?"

"The Book of Abraham the Mage is in San Francisco. I need it."

"You finally got it!" Virginia sounded genuinely delighted. "Took you long enough," she added sarcastically. Then she stopped as a sudden thought struck her. "The Book is still in your possession-have you not surrendered it to your Elders?"

"No. I've decided to keep it."

"Keep it!" Virginia's raised voice made some of the late-night tourists turn to look. She lowered her voice to a hoa.r.s.e whisper. "What for?"

Dee grinned. "I am going to use it to take control of this earth myself."

Virginia blinked in surprise, and then she suddenly laughed delightedly. "Doctor, you are mad... which must make me even madder, for a.s.sociating with you. Do you think your Elders will allow you to take over this, their favorite Shadowrealm?"

"I'm not going to give them any choice," Dee said simply. "I gave them a lifetime-several lifetimes-of service. And yet, because of a few petty failures, they are prepared to sentence me to an eternity of suffering. They declared me utlaga. Now my loyalty is to myself-and to you too," he added hastily, catching a glimpse of the expression on his companion's face. "I am going to wrest control of this planet from the Elders, kill all the immortal humans, Elders and Next Generation who still live here. I will then seal the entrances to the Shadowrealms and cut this world off from all the others. I will make this planet mine. Ours, if you are with me. We can rule together."

Virginia Dare took a step away from Dee and slowly and deliberately looked him up and down.

"What are you looking at?" he demanded.