Machiavelli: Guardian of Paris
Author: Michael Scott
Date: 2020-10-06 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Childrens
Description: It is 1793, and Paris is in the grip of the Terror—the terrible days of the French Revolution. Drawn by the destruction and chaos, Black Annis has come to the city with dark plans to bring even more death upon its people, and only one person stands in her way: the immortal human Machiavelli. Now, that lost story is told. . . . The Dark Elders granted Machiavelli eternal life. But the Prince lives only for himself, and he won’t allow Black Annis to destroy the city he’s come to call home. Only, is isn’t just Black Annis that Machiavelli’s up against—the Dark Elder is out to raise the catacombs
Publisher: Delacorte Press

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 author’s 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 © 2020 by Michael Scott

Cover image used under license from Shutterstock.com

Cover design by Regina Flath

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

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Ebook ISBN 9780449819241

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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

About the Author

ENCRYPTED EMAIL—512-BIT ENCRYPTION

From: Niccolò Machiavelli <theprince@██████████████.com>

To: Billy the Kid <whbonney@█████████████████.com>

Subject: More memories

Dear William,

I trust you are healing well. Remember, we are immortal, not invulnerable, and while I know you have been friends with Black Hawk for many decades, maybe you will pause and reconsider if he ever asks you again to go up against an army of Little People, especially Leprechauns. Next time you might not be so lucky. When you see Scathach, ask her what happened when she fought them. If I’ve learned anything in my long life it is that you don’t mess with the Little People!

I want to circle back to something we touched upon in your last email. I was surprised to discover that you have kept no record of your remarkable life. I would like to encourage you to begin a diary. The process of faithful documentation will certainly spark memories, and the longer you live, the more valuable you will find those memories.

It should come as no surprise to you that over the course of my long life I have kept a daily journal. Long before I became immortal in the sixteenth century, I was in the habit of recording my life in a series of day bookes which I encoded using a cypher given to me by Leonardo da Vinci. (We were never really friends; he was a genius, but he smelled!) At first, they were just a way to note everything that occurred on a daily basis. Later, when I became ageless, the diaries became more important. They allowed me to keep track of the world. When days and weeks and then months blended into one another, when I could recall the years only by the great holidays, events and seasons, my letters and diaries were essential. They gave the years and then the centuries a shape that would otherwise have been lost.

And of course, one of the great gifts of immortality is the ability to put in place plans that take decades to come to fruition. While my memory is excellent, even I was unable to track everything without committing it to paper. Now, although I have access to the most sophisticated bit-locked computers and encrypted journals, I still handwrite my diaries every night. The process helps shape my day.

But even without my diaries, there are certain events that have seared themselves into my memory.

I remember the night I accepted the gift—or was it the curse?—of immortality.

I remember the first time I met Dagon, the millennia-old creature who would become my companion and friend for centuries. (I always regret that you never got to meet: you would have liked him and he would have loathed you.)

I know to the precise hour, the moment I met that dangerous human monster, John Dee.

I can recall with absolute clarity the time Perenelle Flamel and I fought on the slopes of Mount Etna.

As I am writing this to you, what has just struck me is that these memories are of those times I came close to losing my immortal life.

Perhaps that is why I will never forget the time Black Annis came to Paris.

It was 1793: the year of the Terror.

It came to be called that because of a wretched man, whom I disliked intensely, called Bertrand Barère. Billy, you would have despised Barère on the spot. He had what you would call a very punchable face.

Barère liked to call himself a revolutionary; in truth he was nothing more than an amateur politician, who came to a decision only once he saw which way the wind was blowing. He was one of those who voted for the king’s execution, and rounded out his pretty speech by saying “the tree of liberty grows only when watered by the blood of tyrants.” And if that sounds familiar to you, it was because he’d stolen the phrase from your third American president, Thomas Jefferson, who’d used it six years previously. No doubt Barère didn’t think anyone would notice, but I did.

He was a journalist and clearly spent a long time crafting his speeches. In one infamous address, he declared, “Let us make terror the order of the day.”

And that is what they did.

Billy, I have lived through some of Europe’s worst excesses. I grew up in the time of the Borgias and the Medici; I watched the Witch Hunts sweep across nations; I was in Seville during the terrible days of the Great Plague and in France when we lost two million people to the famine. I have seen some truly awful things: the worst of what humanity had to offer. But the Reign of Terror was shocking beyond belief. France was in the midst of the Revolution. There was upheaval everywhere; law and order were breaking down; there were mobs protesting in the streets. So the government of the day decided that the only way to control the country was by terror tactics. They called it “a speedy, severe and inflexible justice.”

It was not justice. In the months following Barère’s pretty speech, thousands would die, disappear or end up imprisoned on false charges.

And sometimes, just sometimes, I wonder if the Terror was not orchestrated by the Dark Elders and their followers. Certainly, it allowed creatures like Black Annis to operate undiscovered, their crimes hidden and lost amid the chaos.

I added Barère’s name to my little black book the moment I heard his plagiarized speech. Those whose names go into my book sooner or later have unfortunate accidents.

There are some immortal humans who choose not to take an active role in politics or public life. They live quietly and try not to leave a mark on the world. I have come to the conclusion that this is a waste of their immortality. Before I became immortal I believed that my work, my writings, would make a difference. After I “died” I was determined that I would make a difference.

In Florence, where I lived for most of my life, I learned the value of working behind the scenes. Billy, there is an old saying that comes from the country of your Irish ancestors: “Happy is the man who remains unknown to the law.” In Paris, in 1793, I was the law. Never officially, of course; operating in the shadows, I effectively commanded the various police forces, and my vast fortune ensured that the newly elected politicians did what I told them. Piece by piece, I dismantled the Terror and ensured that those who orchestrated it paid for their crimes. It is true that I saved some lives; I wish I could have saved more.

I thought that humans were the worst part of the Terror.

I was wrong.

I have scanned these pages from my diaries, converted them into text and rendered them in English for you. Perhaps they will encourage you to keep your own diaries and record your adventures.

(As an aside, Billy, you must learn a few more languages. English and Spanish will take you far, but can I also suggest French? And Italian, of course. And if you have Mandarin, Arabic and Hindi, you can travel the world. Don’t tell me you don’t have the time! Time is something we immortals have aplenty.)

When you are fit enough to travel, do come and visit me in Paris. I have an apartment you can stay in on the Rue de Montmorency, almost directly opposite Flamel’s old house. Paris is a city of wonders; I could show you the catacombs beneath the city; the hidden rooms in the Louvre; Notre Dame, where Dee, with a little help from me, brought the gargoyles to life and the leygate in Sacre Coeur that carried Nicholas and the Twins to this city and my attention.

And you did say you wanted to visit Disneyland Paris.

Give my regards to Black Hawk, of course.

And, Billy, try to stay out of trouble.

Your friend

Niccolò Machiavelli

Thursday, 5th Day of September, the First Year of the Revolutionary Calendar of the French Republic (1793 of the Julian Calendar). New Moon.

1

There were mobs in the streets again today. It was not unexpected: it was sunny and warm after weeks of rain. I have noticed that no one likes rioting in wet weather.

All morning I received reports of scattered outbreaks of violence from across the city. One by one, ragged men and women, children too, would rap on the window of the little house on the Rue du Montmorency I used as my headquarters. A few came to the front door; most preferred the rear, where they could slink down the alleyway and collect their coin without being spotted. In every city I’ve lived in, I have maintained a shadow army of ordinary men, women, and children—especially children, for they are invisible. I call them my Irregular Army. My spies know I will pay well for information. They also know that my bodyguard will punish them if they lie or make up stories for me.

Dagon stood guard at the door. He was dressed head to foot in the slightly shabby blue-and-white uniform of the old royal army. His shape was further disguised by a heavy gray frock coat with the collar turned up, and a large bicorn hat on his head. Purple-lensed glasses hid his peculiar eyes, and stuffed leather gloves made it appear that he had the correct number of fingers. No amount of human clothing could disguise the rancid fishy odor that enveloped him, but even without that, my visitors instinctively knew that there was something amiss. They would stand in the door and whisper their secrets to him and he would note them down with a metal stylus on a wax tablet; I have tried to get him to modernize, but he is very firmly stuck in the past. He is fond of telling me that he recorded the original epic of Gilgamesh on wax and in clay, and if it was good enough for Gilgamesh, then it should be good enough for me. Wax, unfortunately, attracts flies.

As my spies hurried past my window, I heard them whisper about Dagon, wondering about his appearance: guessing he was a descendant of the Mongol army, an African, a Turk and a Viking—one even suggested a Golem—but they could not have been further from the truth. I wondered how they would react if they knew he had once been worshiped as a god.

Around noon, Dagon drew a black shade across the front and back windows. This was the signal that I was either not at home or not to be disturbed. Sometimes, the foolhardy ignored the sign. But they only did it once. Dagon has many fine gifts; humor is not one of them.

We sat across the scarred wooden table from one another and had lunch. While my bread was fresh, the cheese was as hard as an old boot, and my wine was probably a week away from becoming vinegar. Dagon delicately picked apart a freshly caught river trout and sucked out the innards with a long black tongue that came with a spike at its tip.

I nodded at the pile of wax tablets and brushed away a cloud of flies. “What do you make of this morning’s reports?” I spoke in Dagon’s hissing tongue, a language not used on earth for millennia. Although I was confident that we were alone, I had survived a long time by being cautious.

“The entire city is in upheaval,” he said, opening his mouth to reveal far too many needle-pointed teeth. His voice was a sticky bubble of sounds. “Food is scarce. People are upset. Some riot in search of attention and answers, others riot simply to be noticed, and others do it because they are bored.”

I divided his wax tablets into two piles. The left-hand stack was little more than gossip and could be discounted, but the four tablets on the right told a very similar story. “See here: Rue de Reuilly, a riot because the police did not investigate the disappearance of a child. And here, just off Rue du Temple, there is unrest because an entire family of children has gone missing and remains uninvestigated. Here, in Rue Reaumur, a brother went in search of a missing sister and then he too disappeared. The police show no interest. Rue Saint-Jean, twins disappeared in the middle of the day.”

Dagon shrugged, an odd movement of his broad shoulders. He had left his watery kingdom a long time ago and had lived on land for countless millennia, but he still found it impossible to mimic certain human movements. “Children go missing all the time. They either turn up, or they do not.”

“You have a heart of gold.”

“I do not,” he answered. “I have a two-chambered heart below my gills. It is muscle, not metal.”

“It is a saying,” I explained.

Dagon dissected the fish with his hooklike claws. “And is this expression a compliment?” he asked.

Deciding that explaining sarcasm to a three-thousand-year old Babylonian fish god was more trouble that it was worth, I tapped the wax tablets again. “There is something going on here. Four reports, all to do with the disappearance of children.”

Dagon stopped chewing.

“And all in the same area,” I reminded him. “The poorest slums in Paris.”

“A child hunter?” he asked.

“You are far older than I am. You must have encountered beings who collected children.”

“I know of creatures who would take a lost child, like a fox taking a chicken. Trolls, were-beasts…” He paused, his lips sticky with bubbles. “But they are individuals, taking single children. You are suggesting something else, something more organized.”

“These are not isolated cases. There are at least eight missing children that we know of. And what about the others, whose parents are dead or missing, lost to war and revolution? Who counts them? In your vast experience, who would steal children?”

Dagon suddenly stood and began to stride around the room, his mouth slowly opening and closing. “Fairy folk, perhaps. They have colonies in just about every country in the world. Many names: Sidhe, fairies, elves, xana, Tomtra, Jogah, Menehune…but they are more or less the same race. Their ancestors came from Danu Talis—the island you know as Atlantis—and were among the first to flee when it was destroyed by the Twins of Legend. They will swap their own children for humans.”

“Changelings.”

Dagon nodded. “They have a plan that one day, when they have enough Changelings in places of power, they will rise up and proclaim themselves the rulers of this world.” He made a quick dismissive motion. “It will not happen.”

“I cannot see them taking children from the slums. They would take the children of people in positions of powers. Besides, don’t the fairy folk always replace the child they take?” There are no replacement children being left now.

Dagon stopped. “You are correct, of course. So they would not be missed.”

“Do you know whatever happened to the Rattenfänger? Just over five hundred years ago, he took one hundred and thirty children from the town of Hamelin.”

“Disappeared from this realm completely. A host of immortals led by Aoife of the Shadows chased him through countless Shadowrealms. But they never caught him.”

“And the children were never recovered?”

“No.”

“Could he have returned to this world?”

He shook his head with that peculiar movement of shoulders that turned his entire body. “I heard the Witch of Endor did something to the scent of his aura, marked him so that he’d leave a trail wherever he went. As soon as he stepped out of hiding, every Awakened Humani or immortal being within fifty miles would become aware of his presence.”

“Well, something is here! It must be. Perhaps drawn by the Terror, or using the Terror to disguise its activities.”

“Perhaps it is the most cunning and dangerous of all villains,” Dagon said quietly. “A Humani”

The thought had crossed my mind. In the long years of my immortality, I had met Ancients and Elders, Next Generation and immortal humans, but in my experience the most dangerous monsters were human.

“So, the only certainty is that someone…”

“Or something…,” he reminded me.

“Or something, is kidnapping children. Human, inhuman, monster or legend; something evil has come to Paris.”

Dagon swept the fish carcass onto the floor and picked up the wax tablets.

“Rue de Reuilly…,” he muttered, slipping from his own tongue into French, butchering the sound. His mouth was not shaped for any human language. “Reaumur…du Temple…Rue Saint-Jean.” He arranged the tablets on the table, according to their locations north, south, west and east in a cross shape, with a square opening in the middle. A black claw tapped the empty space. “What is here?”

“La Cour des Miracles,” I answered.

Dagon looked at me, huge wet eyes wide and unblinking. “The Court of Miracles,” he repeated.

“Yes,” I said. “And you remember what happened the last time we sent police into the court.”

“None came out.”

2

Paris has always been one of the finest cities in Europe: rich, elegant, sophisticated, a place of culture and learning. But there is not a single city in the world that does not have a dark stain on its map.

And in Paris, that stain was the Court of Miracles.

Like every modern city, Paris has beggars aplenty. Throughout history beggars have always been with us, and there is no shame in begging. I was brought up to believe that to give charity to a beggar, to give a little to those who have less, is the right thing to do, and I am not alone in my thinking. The concept of giving is enshrined in all the great religions. Indeed, the legendary alchemyst Nicholas Flamel himself used some of his vast wealth to establish churches, hospitals, and schools in this very city.

But while there were those genuinely in need, there were others who abused the role of the beggar. Some even considered it a career. And these professional beggars quickly discovered that those with an affliction—missing a limb or their sight, or speckled with skin diseases—earned more than those who were whole in body and mind. So the streets and bridges of Paris were filled with those who appeared to be disabled or blind. One-legged soldiers hobbled alongside mothers with leprous children, while one-armed jugglers performed alongside legless fire-eaters. Kindhearted—and though it pains me to say it, gullible—Parisians gave what they could. And sometimes they were giving to those who did not deserve their charity. Also, I noted that those who had the least always gave the most.

As each Parisian day drew to a close, the streets teemed with limping, hobbling, faltering vagrants heading home to the slums. But the moment some stepped off the main thoroughfares and slipped into the warren of side streets, arms and legs appeared where there had been none before, rubbed and stretched out to relieve cramps and pins and needles from being bound up all day. The blind could see, the deaf could hear, and a jug of none-too-clean water washed away all manner of skin diseases.

No wonder the area was called the Court of Miracles.

3

“How do I look?”

Dagon inspected me up and down. Although his fishlike face was incapable of human expression, I had known him long enough to recognize the disappointment and—shall I say it—the fear in his eyes.

I was wearing overlong blue pantaloons, a striped shirt with mismatched buttons, and a short coat with one sleeve missing. A brown overcoat that reached my ankles completed my costume.

“You look like you belong in the Court of Miracles,” he said finally. “Except for one thing…” Turning to the chimney, he ran his finger across the stones and then looked back at me. “Open wide.”

Obediently, I opened my mouth.

“You do not have the mouth of a beggar.” Dagon wiped the soot across my teeth and then carefully blacked out one of my incisors. It was an actor’s trick. “Better,” he said. “I bought the clothes this morning off the washerwoman on the corner. Although they are ragged, they are clean and lice free.”

I had wondered about that. The last time I’d gone in disguise into the Court of Miracles, I’d brought home such an infestation of fleas that I’d had to burn my second-best bed, my couch, and all my pillows. I’d itched for a month.

Dagon held up a pair of wooden shoes. “You really should wear the sabots,” he said. “However, if you have to run, they will be a problem.” He lifted a battered and down-at-heel pair of army boots. “These will not seem out of place. You’ll look like an old soldier fallen on hard times.”

I pushed my feet into the boots. Naturally, they fit me perfectly. Dagon had a wonderful fish eye for detail.

Finally I settled a floppy red liberty cap—a bonnet rouge—on my head and arranged it so that the top draped over my left ear.

“Better.” Dagon nodded approvingly. “And finally,” he added, handing me a battered T-shaped wooden crutch. “Now you are an old soldier with a limp.” He turned the crutch over and showed me two wooden pins. “Pull these out and the crutch will come apart, leaving you with two batons. I drilled a hole in the section that goes under your arm and filled it with liquid lead. It should be hard by now.” He pressed one of the pins and the crutch split in half, leaving me with two sticks—one with a heavy T-shaped head, like a hammer, the other a straight length of wood.

Dagon lifted a piece of unburnt firewood and held it out at chest height in both hands. “Try it.”

I swung the lead-filled hammer at the wood. The force of the blow almost dislocated my shoulder, but the wood dissolved into black and white splinters.

“At least you will not be unarmed,” Dagon said, tossing the broken wood onto the fire.

I matched the two halves of the crutch together and slotted in the pins. “What would I do without you?” I asked.

“You would be dead already.” There was no humor in his voice.

We locked up my rooms and slipped out into the alley that ran along the back of the house. There was no moon, and the alleyway was in gloomy darkness. My enhanced senses allowed me to see more or less clearly at night, and Dagon could see lights and colors invisible to the human eyes. We had determined a long time ago, however, that he could not see the color red. It appeared as shades of gray to him.

“Let me tell you plainly,” Dagon said in the ancient language of his species. “I am unhappy with you going into the Court of Miracles on your own.”

“If we send in police or troops, or even undercover officers, word will spread through the tenements in minutes,” I answered. “We’ll probably end up with a riot on our hands, and whoever or whatever is in there will be left to fade into the night. Besides, I will not be on my own. You’ve arranged a guide, yes?”

“One of my best agents, the Wild Boar, will meet you.”

“How will I recognize him?” I asked.

“I’ve given him your description. He will find you.”

“Is he to be trusted?”

“He is, first and foremost, a thief. And like all thieves, he can be bought. But I trust him.” Dagon pressed a surprisingly heavy bag into my hand. “Give him this. He gets the other half when you return safely.”

Two shapes suddenly stepped out of a small side alley, big men with long knives in their hands and scarves wrapped around their faces. Before they could even make their demands, Dagon reached under his long coat and produced a short metal pole. He snapped it, and the pole extended with a click, doubling in size. He shook it again and it sprouted three wickedly hooked spikes at the tip. The two would-be thieves looked at the trident and then retreated without a word. We heard their wooden sabots tapping on the stones and squelching in the mud as they raced away.

Dagon folded up the trident, sliding the blades into the pole and then pushing the two lengths together until they slotted into place.

“Did you get a good look at them?” I asked.

Dagon nodded. “I saw enough to recognize them. I doubt they have a change of clothing, and their gaits are distinctive. I will find them.”

“Good. Pick them up in the morning,” I told him. “I don’t want people like that on my streets.”

“Your streets? Since when did Paris become yours?” he asked.

“The moment I moved here.”

“You have become sentimental,” he said.

“I have become careful,” I corrected him.

“You were always careful.”

We walked in silence for a while. I knew by the slow opening and closing of his fingers that he was mulling over a thought, and I knew from experience that it was better not to interrupt him.

“I read your book,” Dagon said finally.

“Which one?”

“De Principatibus. The Prince. There is no sentimentality in it.”

I shook my head, unsure what he was getting at. Sometimes I forgot that he was older than the city itself, hailing from a time completely alien to me. And he was a fish god.

“You say in your book that it is much safer to be feared than to be loved.”

“I said it was best to be both,” I replied.

“Those are not the words of a sentimental man,” he continued.

“I was not immortal when I wrote those words,” I reminded him.

“Do you still believe it?” he asked.

“Those two ruffians in the alley earlier. Why did they run?” I pressed.

“Because they were frightened of us.”

“If we had spoken soft words to them, would they have left us alone?”

“I doubt it,” he answered. “Bullies feed off weakness. Soft words would have encouraged them.”

“So they ran because they were fearful,” I said, proving my point. “They knew we are capable of protecting ourselves. Or at least you are.”

“That is true. I am not sure what that has to do with your theory.”

“From the moment I came to this city, I claimed it as my own,” I explained. “I determined to protect it, to look after it and keep it as safe as possible. In doing so, of course, I am looking after myself, keeping myself—and you—safe. I did not know that there were immortals in Rome, Florence, or Venice when I lived in those places. Here, I know every immortal in the city, and they know me. They know they can stay here so long as they do not cause trouble for our kind. Do you remember when John Dee came to Paris?”

“I was in Egypt at that time, looking for that emerald tablet you wanted. The Black Knight nearly took my head,” he reminded me unnecessarily.

“Dee was spying for the English Queen. And while he spied on us, we watched him. We were not alone: the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch, half a dozen German states, and Rome were spying on him. Although Dee was here on the Queen’s business, he was also in search of Nicholas Flamel’s Codex for himself. He was meeting many people—not all of whom were human. It was only a matter of time before someone saw something odd or unusual, and then…well, you know what happens.”

Dagon nodded. He’d spent millennia drifting from place to place, keeping to the shadows, always moving on when someone discovered that the shepherd on the mountains, or the old man who lived in the caves, or the hermit on the island, or the wild man in the depths of the woods, never aged. “Mobs and pitchforks. Always pitchforks. And flaming torches. The Humani do like their flaming torches.”

“My race likes drama,” I admitted.

“I prefer nonfiction,” Dagon noted. “Truth is strange enough.”

I had to agree with him. Humans believe that the myths and legends are fictions to entertain, that fairy tales are little more than stories used to educate and frighten children. I used to think that also. But that was before I met mythological gods and legendary goddesses and was hunted by hungry creatures from fairy tales.

“What happened to Dee?” Dagon asked.

“I had my men pick him up, and he spent three days in the Bastille. And not in the nice rooms either. Then we blindfolded him, put him on a wagon, and drove him to Calais. I accompanied him every step of the way. I’d used one of the Utukki limnûti spells you taught me to render him mute so he could not cast any spells or cantrips. I sailed with him to Dover before setting him free.”

“You should have thrown him overboard.”

“I should have. But I fear he has powerful masters, and I do not want to incur their wrath. I just wanted him out of my city before his behavior shined a…a flaming torch—”

“Always with the flaming torches,” Dagon muttered.

“—on us, the immortals and the inhumans,” I continued. “We survive because the Humani do not know of our existence.”

“And the Humani survive because they do not know about us,” Dagon added. “If it ever came to open warfare, the Humani would not fare well. We have the advantage that they are already fearful of the monsters in the dark.”

“Humans kill what they fear,” I reminded him.

We stopped in the shadow of an alleyway and looked across a muddy street toward a stinking lane that led down to the Rue du Caire. What looked like two vagabonds slumped against the greasy wall, but Dagon and I both knew they served as guards and lookouts.

“There are those amongst the inhuman races who believe that it is their right to rule the world,” Dagon whispered suddenly, his voice leaving sticky bubbles against my ear. “There was a time when the Humani were little more than slaves and food, servants and soldiers. Some wish to return to that Golden Age.”

“And what better way to start a war with the humans than to kidnap their children,” I said.

“It is certainly possible; the Elders, Ancients, and Earthlords always used Humani armies, led by inhuman officers. They started training their armies when they were still children,” he added.

Struck by the same thought, we both looked toward the alleyway again: Was someone—some ancient thing—gathering an army of human children from the slums of Paris?

Dagon’s claws bit hard enough into my shoulders to leave bruises. “Tell the Wild Boar that if you are not out by sunrise, I’ll be coming to find you,” he said.

I was unsure if it was a promise or a threat.

4

The two guards did not even glance at the old soldier limping across the road. As I slipped into the alleyway, I glanced back over my shoulder. For an instant I thought I saw Dagon’s outline in the shadows across the street, his arm raised in farewell, but that was probably my imagination. He’d never raise his arm; that would show sentimentality.

The smell hit me as soon as I stepped into the soot-covered darkness.

Paris, though beautiful, was never especially fragrant. Like most great European cities it had its own particular odor. The air in Rome was always tinged with wax and incense, the scent of Venice was the ever-present mustiness of rot from the canals, and for some reason the air of Florence always smelled of money and fear. Paris smelled of the Seine. And that stench permeated everything. After a while you got used to it, and the other countless noxious aromas that filled the air, so for a scent to be noticeable, it had to be incredibly strong. The stink in that narrow alley was an almost physical thing, made of rotten wood and crumbling stone, mold and rancid food. But there was one odor that dominated: the stench of too many unwashed humans crammed together. Swallowing hard, trying not to breathe through my nose, I pushed through the dark alley and out into the blazing heart of the Court of Miracles.

Fire and light were everywhere. Fire burned in barrels, blazed from tar-wrapped sticks; sparks spiraled upward from a dozen bonfires. I blinked away sudden tears and coughed with the bite of smoke in my throat. As my eyes cleared, I remembered how this place had once looked, a long time ago, not long after I had first come to Paris. It had been beautiful. A broad square surrounded a tall fountain. On all four sides, elegant, buildings looked over the square, and I recalled the stalls of of fresh fruit and flowers.

Now, although everything remained—the square, the fountain, the buildings—nothing was the same. The buildings were crumbling ruins, with gaping holes where there had once been windows and doors, and most of the roof tiles missing to expose the rafters beneath. If there had been a statue on the fountain, it was long gone; only a stump remained, pocked with holes suggesting it had been used for target practice. The ground was a mixture of ankle-deep, squelching mud and rancid filth, scattered with straw.

Although it was close to midnight, the square was teeming with people. Citizens from what looked like every country in Europe and most of North Africa milled about. Costumes ranged from the outrageous to the ragged. The music of as many nations competed in a not entirely unpleasant cacophony. There were food stalls everywhere; none of the fruits or vegetables looked fresh, and the meat and fish were nearly unrecognizable. Barefooted urchins moved through the crowd carrying trays of bread, scraps of meat on a stick—I suspect it was the two staple meats of the tenements, either pigeon or rat—or selling wine served in stone cups, lest the liquid burn a hole in a metal goblet.

I stayed away from the crowd as much as possible, leaning back on a gritty, crumbling wall, watching the shifting waves of people. I had been here before and was always struck by the energy in the air. This was not a happy place—I am not one of those who believe there is a joy in hardship, and terrible poverty and hunger were evident everywhere you looked. But I was also conscious that no one here had given up. They went about their lives and in many small ways—not all of them legal—tried to make them better. It was that spirit, that perseverance, that would ensure that the Humani prevailed. The Earthlords, Ancients, and Archons who had come before Dagon would never understand this. Perhaps Dagon himself did not understand it. Those ancient inhuman beings had once ruled the world, but then they had been defeated and had given up. But humans…humans were different. I had seen it many times in my travels across Europe, and I saw it here tonight, in the Court of Miracles. Humans could lose everything, they could be knocked down, but they would never give up.

I propped myself up with the crutch. I was reluctant to move too far from the entrance because I was sure Dagon’s agent, the Wild Boar, would be watching for me.

I waved away two children, one selling meat, another what looked like bread and cheese. A wild-haired woman sidled over and asked if I was interested in selling my coat. I shook my head and grunted a no, but I was aware that her eyes were watching me carefully, appraising me from head to foot.

“Will you sell me the boots?”

“Only boots I have.”

“I’ll give you a good price,” she said.

“Few francs would be nice, but I’d be barefoot.”

“Them boots—taken you far, have they?”

“Far enough.” I tried to keep my answers short. My French was excellent, though I occasionally used words that had gone out of fashion fifty years previously.

I watched her move to a stall where another woman, who looked like her mother or perhaps her older sister, was stirring a pot. They both turned to stare at me.

Had they seen through my disguise so quickly? I wondered what had given me away.

I glanced back toward the alleyway. A small crowd was coming through, mostly professional beggars, laughing and joking as they revealed strapped-up arms and legs or pulled off eye patches to expose the perfectly good eye beneath. When I looked back, the woman was standing before me again, a bowl of stew cupped in her hands.

I shook my head. “Much as I would like it…I cannot pay. And I’ll not swap my boots for it either.”

“Take it. No charge. Gift for an old soldier,” she said, pushing the bowl into my hands and turning away. “But if you do change your mind about the boots…” Her voice trailed off.

I looked into the bowl of oily gray liquid. It was filled with vaguely recognizable vegetables—onion, carrot—and an assortment of lumps that looked like nothing I’d ever seen before.

“If you have any respect for your stomach, you’ll not touch it. Might have le vautrin in it.”

Le Vautrin. Wild Boar.

Standing before me was a slender, shaggy-haired young man. It was impossible to assign an age to him: he could have been anywhere from fourteen to eighteen, with a mop of curly back hair shoved under a knitted hat that was more holes than wool. None of his clothes fit—his pantaloons were too short and had clearly been made for a man twice his girth; his shirt was too long and missing every button—but I noticed that he wore a fine pair of army boots not dissimilar to mine. His eyes were an astonishingly bright blue, and his nose crooked slightly to one side, as if it had been broken and badly set.

“You have something for me?” he said, settling back against the wall. I glanced sidelong at him; although his body was still, I noticed his eyes were constantly moving.

“I think you have me confused with someone else,” I said cautiously.

“We both know a man who stinks of fish and yet is not a fisherman. This is the same man who bought me these fine boots, probably in the same place he got yours. Told me I’d not be able to run in sabots.” There was a touch of the country in his voice.

Satisfied, I slipped him the heavy purse Dagon had given me.

“Feels light.”

“Half now, half when you get me out at sunrise,” I told him.

“And if I don’t get you out?” he asked.

“Our fishy friend said he’d come and find me…and you too.”

“He doesn’t frighten me,” he said a little too forcefully, as if trying to convince himself.

“Oh, he should,” I said.

“Where’s he from?”

“A place that no longer exists,” I said. “What do I call you? Wild Boar seems a little dramatic.”

He grinned, showing a mouthful of irregular teeth. “I was always in trouble when I was younger, getting into fights, stealing. My father said I was like a wild boar tearing through the town. The name stuck. I became le Vautrin.”

“It’s a fine name, though not entirely practical if I have to call out to you in the middle of a crowd. That’s the sort of name people remember.”

He tilted his head, considering my point, before nodding. “Never thought of that. My name is Eugène François Vidocq, but everyone calls me Vidocq.”

“Then I will call you Eugène, because I am not everyone.”

“What do I call you?”

“Call me Nick,” I told him.

5

I followed Eugène through the crowd, taking care to use my crutch, just in case someone was watching us. He seemed to know everyone there, and he provided a running commentary on the characters we met.

“…you have to be careful of Tiny Tim; carries a snake in his sleeve.

…And that’s Mary-Mary the herbalist. She can cure a headache or kill you stone dead with the same potion.

…We call him English Tony, though I don’t think he’s never been to England. Speaks eight languages

…In the corner, sitting behind the barrel, that’s One-Franc. He’ll buy anything you have to sell, but he’ll only give you one franc.

…And just around the corner is his twin sister; she sells everything on her barrel for two francs.”

“I suppose you call her Two-Francs?”

“No, most people call her Cosette.”

Eugène’s powers of observation were remarkable. I could see why Dagon had chosen him, and if he survived a few more years, I was sure I’d be able to find a role for him in my organization.

“Where are you taking me?”

We’d been moving deeper and deeper into the tenements, leaving the lighted square behind. The buildings had become even more dilapidated, and only individual candles burned behind scraps of cloth covering windows.

Even though we were alone on the narrow street, Eugène dropped his voice to a whisper. “Our fishy friend said you are looking into the missing children.”

“I am.”

“The police aren’t. So why are you?”

“I don’t like the idea of someone taking children,” I answered.

“Even from a place like this? Sure, who’d miss them?”

I heard the ice in his voice and guessed that he was testing me.

“From any place. And children should always be missed.”

“You’ve children of your own?” he asked.

“None alive,” I said, surprised by the bitterness of my tone. The true cost of immortality is to watch everyone you know and love grow old and die.

We walked on in silence for a while, and then he said, “Even before the fish-man reached out to me, I was looking into the disappearances, following leads, talking to the witnesses.”

“You sound like a policeman.”

He shook his head quickly. “I’m better.”

“What makes you better?”

“I’m one of what you’d call the criminal class. I can ask questions no outsider would ever get to ask. Do you know who’d make the best police?” he asked, a touch of excitement in his voice. Without waiting for an answer, he jerked his thumb over his shoulder, back toward the square. “That lot. Any one of them. They know every trick in the book. Set a thief to catch a thief.”

“Not that simple…,” I began.

“Why not?” he demanded. “Thieves catching thieves, forgers chasing down forgers—and no one knows how to defeat a burglar better than another burglar.”

Set a thief to catch a thief. I had to agree, it made some sense. But it would never work; who would want to employ thieves, forgers, and burglars?

6

We climbed three flights of increasingly rickety stairs. At one point every second step was missing, and I could see right through to the floor below.

“During the winter, everything that can be burnt—doors, window frames, floors, ceilings, stairs—will be put to the fire,” Vicocq explained. “It’s either that or freeze to death.”

We came out onto a narrow landing. There were six doorways, but only two still had a wooden door in the frame. The rest were covered with sheets of billowing cloth. “Stay here.” He pushed me back into the shadows.

Eugène went to the first wooden door and rapped gently. It was opened almost immediately by a tall, surprisingly well-dressed woman. Her clothes fit her perfectly, which suggested that these were not some stall-bought secondhand rags. Here was someone displaced by the Revolution, now fallen on hard times. I watched how she grabbed at his hands, and even without being told, I knew this was the mother of some of the missing children.

Eugène waved me forward. As I got close to the woman, I realized that she was blind, white cataracts stark against the shadows on her skin.

“This is Madame Bougon,” Vidocq said gently, taking the woman’s hands in his and leading her into the small bare room. “Madame, this is Monsieur Nick; he has come to help me look for your children.”

The room was a simple square, with a bed against one wall and a table and chair pushed against another. Children’s clothes were draped across the end of the bed. A second chair was set before the open window. Vicocq helped Madame Bougon into it, and she turned toward the opening. I knew she was listening for her children.

“Tell Monsieur Nick what you told me,” he urged the woman.

She turned to me. Her iron-gray hair was pulled back, emphasizing her cheekbones, giving her face a slightly skull-like appearance.

“Do you know what took my children?” she asked.

I noticed that she said “what” rather than “who.”

“I do not,” I answered. “I know that at least eight children have gone missing.”

Eugène shook his head. “Three times that number at least. Probably closer to thirty. Maybe more,” he added.

Resting my crutch against the wall, I crouched before Madame Bougon and gently took her hands in mine. Her flesh was cool and felt like paper. “Tell me about your children.”

“Marius and Simplice,” she said so quietly I had to strain to hear her. “Twins. Thirteen years old. They were never any trouble. My husband is a sailor and away for months at a time. Since I lost my sight, the children look after me, keep our room clean. We have a little money. Marius sells bread and Simplice flowers. It brings in a few francs. We are not wealthy, monsieur, but we want for nothing.”

“Tell me what happened?” I asked.

“A week ago…” She stopped and turned toward Vidocq. “Was it a week, do you think?”

“It was a week,” he agreed.

“I first smelled it on them a week ago,” she said. “When you live here, Monsieur Nick, you learn to ignore the usual odors. It is the unusual ones that stand out.” She leaned forward and sniffed the air before me. “I can tell you are not one of us,” she murmured. “Your clothes are freshly washed, and you have bathed with lavender soap within the past few days.”

“You are very perceptive, Madame Bougon,” I told her, impressed.

She tilted her head slightly. “What does he look like, Vidocq?” she asked.

“Like an old soldier.”

She caught my hand and turned it over, running her fingers over my flesh. “This is not the hand of a soldier.”

“Tell me what you smelled a week ago?” I urged her gently.

“When the children came home, I smelled something sweet and spicy in the air. They had brought me a slice of freshly baked gingerbread.”

I glanced at Vidocq and he shook his head.

“They’d met someone—Marius said she was a baker, but Simplice said she made sugar candy—and this person had given them the treats. They’d brought the gingerbread back to me but admitted that they’d eaten the candy.”

“No one in the Court of Miracles bakes gingerbread. No candy makers either,” Vidocq said.

“The following day when they came home, the smell of sugar and spices was even stronger,” Madame Bougon said. “And when Simplice kissed me goodnight, I could feel sticky honey on her lips.”

“Not a lot of honey in the Court of Miracles,” Vidocq added.

“The third day they did not return.” Madame Bougon buried her face in her hands and wept. Over the course of my long life, too often have I heard the sound of a mother weeping for her children. There is nothing more heartbreaking.

“I found Madame Bougon wandering the streets, calling out for the twins,” Eugène said. “I brought her home. I told her that if Marius and Simplice were lost—and it is easy to get lost in the maze of streets and alleyways—they would come back here once they found their bearings.”

Madame Bougon clasped my hands again. I could feel her tears against my skin. “Will you find my children, monsieur?”

“I will do my utmost,” I promised her. I looked up at Eugène and he nodded toward the door. “Let me go and look for them, madame, and I assure you that I will return before the dawn with some news.”

She squeezed my hands a final time and then released me. “Find my children, monsieur.”

I stopped at the door and looked back, seeing her outlined against the window, listening intently for her missing children.

7

“Follow me.”

Without a word, Vidocq led me up a series of increasingly narrow stairs and onto the roof. The building was a little taller than most nearby, allowing me to see across the Court of Miracles. The glow from the square was clearly visible, but as my eye moved farther away from it, lights became fewer and fewer and huge swaths of the slums were in darkness. Above the stink of rot and mold, the air was a little clearer, and I drew in a deep breath, filling my lungs.

I was standing at the edge of a low brick wall that enclosed the roof. Vidocq hopped up onto the bricks and started to balance his way along them, ignoring the six-story fall to the street. Perhaps he expected me to tell him to get down; if so, he was going to be disappointed. I have always believed that people should be free to make their own mistakes.

“You brought me to Madame Bougon for a reason,” I said, more a statement than a question.

“And what do you think the reason is?” he asked.

“Has to be the candy. I presume it links to the other missing children.”

“You’re smart. I can see why the fish-man likes you. I’ve talked to all the families who have lost children,” he said. He turned at the corner and started walking back toward me. “In four cases, there was some evidence that they had been given candy or cake.” He stopped before me. “Also, the sister of a missing girl had this in her pocket.” He produced what looked like an irregular orange stone, speckled with hair and threads. He carefully pulled the threads away before handing it to me, then automatically licked his fingers.

I recognized the half-melted lump as a piece of candy.

“These are street-smart children,” I said, bringing the candy to my nose and breathing in carefully. “They are not going to be lured by a piece of candy.” I held the nugget up to the night sky and squinted at it. “Maybe something has been added to the sugar….” I glanced at Vidocq. “Might be wise not to lick your fingers after you handle this.”

He hopped off the low wall and rubbed his hands on his dirty trousers. “A poison?”

“Unlikely, but perhaps something to draw the children back to the source.”

“Like a magical spell?”

“Perhaps.”

“And you believe in that stuff?” He was clearly trying to sound as if he didn’t, but I could hear the touch of fear and wonder in his voice.

“I believe that we don’t know everything about the world. There are wonders being discovered every day. In fact, I am of the opinion that we knew much more in the ancient past than we do now.” I brought the orange candy to my nose again and breathed deeply. The scent of citrus was strong, but there were other, less easily identifiable odors: mint certainly, licorice, and something else, something damp and earthy and vaguely foul. I’d certainly be able to recognize it again.

“There was another reason you brought me to this house,” I said. “You had several families to choose from. Why this one?”

Vidocq picked up a broken slate and pulled out a battered, blunt-tipped pocketknife. “We are here,” he said, marking an X on the slate. “Children have gone missing from here…here…here….and here.” He drew a series of dots. They were all relatively close to the X. Then he drew two circles, one within the other, linking the dots. “These children,” he said, pointing to the inner circle, “disappeared first. These”—he tapped the dots in the outer circle—“were the next to go.”

I tapped the center of the smaller circle. “What’s in here?”

The young man led me to the opposite side of the roof and pointed. Across a series of dilapidated rooftops, I could make out a steepled roof. “What is that?” I asked.

“Once, maybe fifty years ago, it was a church.”

I was now able to make sense of the white and gray slabs that completely encircled the building, jutting from the dark earth like broken teeth. They were gravestones.

“It hasn’t been used as church for as long as anyone can remember; it was deconsecrated a long time ago,” Vidocq said.

“Who lives there now?”

“Would you be surprised if I told you no one?” His arm swept wide to encompass all of the Court of Miracles. “Every building here is teeming with families. Upward of a hundred people can live in a single tenement. But no one lives there. No one, not even the bravest ruffian, will steal a length of wood from the door or a piece of lead off the roof.”

“Why is that?” I asked, although I already had a very good idea.

“Because people who go into the church do not come out again. It is said to be haunted by the ghost of Joan of Arc.”

“I doubt that very much,” I said.

“Why, do you not believe in ghosts?” Vidocq demanded.

“Of course I believe in ghosts. But I saw Joan about ten years ago, and she was very much alive. So whatever is haunting the church, it’s not the ghost of the Maid of Orléans.”

I turned back toward the stairs before he could ask the question on his lips. “Let’s have a closer look at the church everyone is afraid to go into.”

“You’re going into it, aren’t you?” he asked.

“I’m thinking I might just have to,” I answered. “You don’t have to come, of course. It will be dangerous. In fact, perhaps you should go and find the fish-man. Tell him where I am or, better still, bring him here.”

Vidocq shook his head firmly. “I’m not letting you do this on your own. You’ll go in there, rescue the children, and claim all the praise.”

“I promise you, no matter what happens tonight, no one will ever hear of it. Try to stay invisible, Monsieur Vidocq. There is an old Irish saying you might take to heart: Happy is the man who remains unknown to the law.”

8

We stood in an alleyway, looking toward the church. The small wooden building was dilapidated and run-down, but it was still in better repair than most of the houses around it. It had obviously once been a small country church and had simply been swallowed by the city, then enclosed within the Court of Miracles.

“You were joking when you said you’d seen Joan of Arc,” Vidocq said. In that moment he sounded very young indeed. “She died…” He struggled to remember the date. “Fourteen something…”

“It was 1431. Over three hundred and sixty years ago.”

“So when you said you saw her…you saw a relative, a descendant of hers?” he said hopefully. “Someone who looked like her. Perhaps you saw her in a dream.”

“No, it was Joan herself in the flesh. She was rescued from her English executioners by Scathach the Shadow—someone you definitely do not wish to meet—and made immortal. Luckily, she did not see me. Last time we met, we did not part on the best of terms.”

The young man looked at me as if I’d gone mad.

“What would you say if I told you I am just a little younger than Joan? That I was born in the year 1469, which makes me three hundred and twenty-four years old?”

Vidocq’s mouth opened and closed as he tried to find words. “And I suppose you’re going to tell me that the fish-smelling man is hundreds of years old also.”

“No. I’ll not tell you that. What I will tell you is that he is thousands of years old and is not even human. He is Dagon, and in the ancient past he was worshiped as a god.” I gripped Eugène’s shoulder and squeezed tightly, focusing his attention. “And I am telling you this so that you will know that there are creatures other than humankind in this world, and that monsters are real.”

“Monsters are real,” he repeated.

“So that when we go into the church, you will be prepared for whatever we might find there. I don’t want you freezing in terror.”

Vidocq looked from me to the church and then back to me. “What do you think is in there?” he asked in a ragged whisper.

“I don’t know.” I closed my eyes and, tilting back my head, breathed in the night air. All the smells of the Court of Miracles came rushing in. I identified them one by one and then dismissed them…which left me with the faintest hints of orange, mint, and licorice drifting from the church. Suddenly I recognized the previously unidentifiable scent: it was the smell of wet earth, an odor I always associated with an open grave.

“I think I know where the children are.” I looked at Vidocq. “Last chance: You could go and find Dagon.”

Without a word, the young man drew a long dagger from beneath his coat.

I lifted my crutch and pressed the hidden buttons, snapping it in two, leaving me with two batons.

“I knew you didn’t really need the crutch,” Vidocq said. “Sometimes you forget to limp.”

9

I pressed my hand flat against the church’s wooden door. Time had worn it smooth, and I noticed that the iron studs that usually dotted these types of doors were missing, the holes stuffed with moss and mud to prevent the wood from rotting.

Vidocq watched me pick away the moss filling one of the holes. “The studs are gone. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe someone was brave enough to steal a little scrap metal.”

I shook my head. “The studs were not stolen; they were deliberately removed. Some of the non-human races cannot stand to be around iron. It is poisonous to them.”

Vidocq swallowed. He looked at the knife in his hand. “Should have brought a bigger knife,” he muttered.

I tapped the knife with one of my batons. “An iron blade: you brought the perfect weapon.”

I pushed open the door, expecting it to squeal and groan, but it opened smoothly without a sound, and we slipped inside.

“Hinges have been oiled,” Vidocq said. “Thieves will sometimes do that when they’re going to break in so no one hears the door opening or closing. Or so I’ve been told,” he added quickly.

The interior of the building was bare. Where there should have been rows of pews facing an altar, there was nothing but dust, scraps of wood, a scattering of feathers, and a few ancient bones. The main altar and all the other signs of religion—the statues, the side altars, even the stained glass—were missing.

Vidocq lit a candle stub and held it up, throwing yellow light around the space. Then he tapped my arm and pointed down.

Barely visible beneath a thick covering of dust, the floor was a patchwork of black and white tiles. Marble, and no doubt worth a fortune; that they had not been stolen was a testament to the locals’ fear of this place. A path, worn clear by many feet, wound its way through the dust. All the footprints were child sized.

The young man traced the route with the blade of his knife. “Goes around there, back where the altar would have been,” he whispered. “The footprints are heading in one direction.”

“And none return,” I noted.

“Maybe they go out the back door,” he suggested. He caught my look and shrugged. “Just a thought.”

We set off along the track cleared by countless children’s feet.

The smell of sugar and honey grew stronger the deeper we moved into the church. I dropped to my knees, pressing my face close to the floor.

Eugene knelt beside me. “What do you smell?” he asked.

I tapped the floor.

Holding the candle away from his face, he drew in a deep breath. “Burnt sugar. It’s stronger down here.” He looked up, eyes wide. “The smell is rising. Do you think there are crypts under the church?”

“I’m sure of it. Limestone—le calcaire lutécien—has been mined from the ground beneath us since the time of the Romans. Much of the city was built with it, and there are miles of old uncharted tunnels below us.”

Behind where the altar would have once stood, the trail of footsteps disappeared.

Vidocq moved the candle around. Standing the stub upright on the stones, he took the point of his knife and slid it into the join between two marble tiles. Then he pried gently…and a section of the flooring shifted. I quickly slipped one of my batons into the opening, and then, together, we lifted the slab. It was lighter than I expected. A square of wood had been painted black and white to look like the marble tiles. The flickering candle revealed stone steps disappearing into the darkness below.

And while the stink of burnt sugar was strong, the stench of opened graves was even stronger.

“Crypts,” Vidocq whispered. “I hate crypts. Full of dead people.”

“I don’t mind them so long as the dead stay dead.” I looked at the young man. There was no doubting his courage, but it was a bravery born of ignorance. He had no idea what he was up against, and although I had told him my age, the better to prepare him for what we might encounter, I knew he didn’t believe me. “Perhaps you would like to get Dagon now,” I offered again.

For a moment, it looked as if he might agree, but then we both heard a sound echoing up from below: the thin, heartbreaking sobbing of a child.

Without a word, the young man snatched the candle and disappeared down the steps. I made a vow as I followed him: no matter what happened, if we survived this night, I would ensure that Eugène François Vidocq would want for nothing ever again. And in years to come, when the time was right, I knew an ancient Egyptian king who could make him immortal. I’d make sure Eugène knew the true cost of immortality before he made any decision.

10

I reached over, took the candle from the young man’s fingers, and blew it out.

“I can’t see,” he whispered.

“But I can: a side effect of my immortality. And this candle will blaze like a beacon, warning whatever lies at the other end of this tunnel.”

“Where are we?” he asked.

I looked around. “A crypt, as we suspected. There are coffins set into the walls. Mostly stone, but some wood. Most of the stone coffins have cracked, and the wooden ones have rotted through.”

“Can you see bodies?” he asked, horrified.

“Why would I be looking at…” I stopped. “No,” I said finally. “All the tombs and coffins are empty.”

With Vidocq tightly gripping my sleeve, I moved as quickly as possible down the narrow tunnel. My enhanced vision allowed me to see the imprint of countless children’s footprints on the ground. But there were other prints too—skeletal feet, and something like the claw of a huge bird: a trio of spikes, with the middle toe twice the length of the others. It was on top of the other prints, which suggested that the creature was following the children. I wished Dagon were with me now; my experience with inhumans was limited, whereas he had met all of them at one time or another. He’d immediately recognize the owner of the claw marks.

“We’re going deeper,” I whispered to Vidocq, aware that he could not see. “We are in the ancient mining tunnels.”

“Are there still tracks?” he asked.

“Yes. Still children’s. And—you need to know this—there are skeletal footprints as well.”

“You’re telling me we might come across skeletons?” His voice was dry and raspy with fear.

“I think we’ll be lucky if we only encounter skeletons. If you must fight one, try to twist its head around backward. That confuses them.”

“I’ll try to remember that.”

“Oh, and don’t let them bite you or stab you with their finger bones.”

“Why?” he asked. “Will that turn me into a skeleton?”

“No. It will just really hurt,” I said. Then I stopped so suddenly he ran into me.

“Is it skeletons?” he whispered.

I moved aside so he could see down the tunnel. There were lights in the distance.

“What’s that sound?” he asked.

I tilted my head and concentrated. Faintly, very faintly, I could make out a metallic plinking sound. “Metal on metal?” I suggested.

“Chains?”

I nodded. It certainly sounded like chains. I could imagine the kidnapped children chained together.

We moved deeper into the tunnels, heading toward a flickering light. The odor of burnt sugar and honey was eye watering, but it was mingled with other odors now: the cloying scent of too many unwashed humans and the heavy earthiness of freshly turned soil.

The tunnel grew even brighter; Vidocq no longer had to hold on to me. Noises were clearer now. The plinking sound was clearly metal hammering metal or stone, and was accompanied by a rasping shuffle and the click-clack of what could only be bone on stone. We dropped to the ground and crawled the last few feet to the tunnel’s entrance.

I peered over the edge of the opening, then ducked again. Even as Vidocq was raising his head to look, I clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle his horrified scream and dragged him back, out of sight.

“Now do you believe me?” I asked him.

His eyes were wide circles. Finally, he blinked, swallowed, and hiccupped. “Did I just see…?”

“Yes.”

“I think I’m going to throw up.”

11

“Stay here.” I pushed Eugène down, crawled back to the edge of the tunnel, and peered out over a scene straight from a nightmare. “There is good news and bad news,” I whispered back to him.

“I saw some of the bad news,” he muttered. He was taking great heaving breaths, clearly trying to settle a churning stomach.

“We’ve found the missing children,” I said.

The tunnel opened into a huge circular chamber. Hundreds of candles were stuck to every niche and crevice in the walls, shedding a thick wax that coated the stones like a lizard’s skin, turning the ceiling soot black. At least a dozen smaller tunnels radiated in every direction. Children were streaming in and out of the small narrow tunnels. They were all carrying small hammers, picks, and shovels and dragging cloth bags. They emptied the bags, dumping out stones and freshly turned earth at one end of the chamber, then trudged back into a tunnel. What were they mining in the tunnels? I wondered.

And there were skeletons guarding them.

Vidocq crawled up beside me and peered into the chamber. “Skeletons.”

I nodded. “That’s the bad news. All from different periods of history. Look at their clothing, armor, and weapons.” Some of the creatures still had flesh, though it was weathered to deep wrinkled leather, while others were nothing but shining bone. They all carried swords and spears.

“Skeletons,” he repeated. “Hundreds of them.”

“Dozens,” I corrected him, but still, I had never seen so many animated skeletons in one place.

“Where are they coming from?”

“There’s your answer.” I pointed to one of the side tunnels. We watched as a trio of children—they could not have been more than twelve or thirteen—dragged a rotting wooden coffin out of the narrow opening. A fourth child, a girl, used a small hand ax to chop open the coffin lid and peel back the wood with her bare hands.

“They’re digging them up…,” Vidocq breathed, horrified.

The children scattered as an enormous skeleton, all dried leather skin and poking yellow bones, dragged itself toward them. He was huge, nearly seven feet tall, still wearing the ragged chain mail and rotting white robe of a Crusader knight. Reaching into the coffin, he hauled out another skeletal figure, slung it over his shoulder, and turned back to the center of the chamber, where an enormous black pot sat on a bed of white-hot coals. It was bubbling furiously, spitting a thick orange-black liquid into the air. The pot was the source of the stinking sugar-and-honey odor. The Crusader dropped the skeleton to the ground, with its head facing the pot. Laid out around the cauldron, in an ever-growing circle, were hundreds of skeletal figures. Many of them had weapons by their sides or in their bony hands.

We watched as another group of children dragged an ancient-looking stone coffin from a narrow tunnel. Four of them tried to open the lid, but it refused to move, sealed by time and dirt. The huge Crusader stomped over, lifted a battle-ax, and brought it crashing down on the stone, which shattered into dust. The skeletal knight peered inside the coffin, then turned away without lifting out the contents.

“Why?” Vidocq wondered, and then answered his own question. “Too decomposed.”

“Exactly,” I said. “You’ll note all the corpses he’s chosen are in relatively good condition.”

“Someone is building an army,” he whispered.

“Exactly. I came here thinking the children were going to be the soldiers. But they are just laborers, chosen because they can get in and out of small tunnels.”

“And will not be missed,” Vidocq added. “But who is gathering this dead army?”

“What is the better question,” I answered.

12

A bell rang, its chime high and pure, sounding completely out of place in the underground chamber. Children began to stagger from the tunnels, obviously drawn by the sound. They were all filthy and ragged, and there were far more than I’d thought.

“There must be a hundred,” Vidocq breathed.

This time I could not correct him.

Vidocq tapped my arm and pointed to two children at the end of one line. “Simplice and Marius, Madame Bougon’s children. They look to be in slightly better condition than some of the others.”

“Because they were taken recently,” I noted.

He nodded. “How long has this been going on?”

“Too long.”

We watched as the children formed a long line in front of the bubbling pot. No one spoke, but we could see that some were crying, while others kept looking about.

“So they are alert?” I said. “I thought they might be under a spell.”

“Maybe they can’t dig if they are ensorcelled.”

“Good point. And why waste a good spell if keeping them in terror will do?” I said. “Think how you felt when you saw the skeletons. Now imagine being down there amongst them, forced to dig bodies out of the ground.”

“I’d be terrified out of my mind,” Vidocq admitted.

The bell rang again.

The skeletal guards lined up on either side of a tunnel that was taller and wider than the rest.

“Prepare yourself,” I whispered. I wasn’t sure if I was speaking to Vidocq or myself.

At first glance, the figure who stepped out of the tunnel looked like a hunchbacked old woman, wrapped in filthy rags. One by one, the skeletons knelt—or attempted to kneel—as she passed between them. None of the children even looked at her; their eyes were fixed firmly on the ground beneath their feet.

“She walks funny…,” Vidocq breathed.

The old woman walked with a peculiar staccato motion, her head and body leaning forward.

“Like a chicken,” the young man added.

And suddenly I knew who the three-clawed prints belonged to. “Look at her feet,” I whispered in Vidocq’s ear.

He squinted, eyes watering with the candle smoke, and his breath caught. “She has chicken’s feet. But bigger, much bigger.”

The old woman stepped up to the black pot and threw back the shawl covering her head. She was incredibly ancient, her skin lined and etched with creases so deep they looked like scars. Her skin was a deep blue, the ugly shade of oil on water. And where her nose and mouth should have been, she had what looked like an owl’s beak. Although I’d not met many inhumans, there weren’t that many blue-faced chicken-toed hags.

“Black Annis,” I said.

I pushed myself away from the tunnel entrance and dragged Vidocq with me.

“She has an owl’s beak for a mouth…,” he said in horror.

“Yes, and her fingernails and toenails are iron-hard talons.”

“What is she?” he asked

“A creature older than humankind. “She’s one of those Elder gods who consider humans little better than cattle or food.”

“What are we going to do?”

“If I ask you to go back and get help, will you do it?”

“I’m not leaving you here,” Vidocq said defiantly. “I’m not leaving the children.”

“I didn’t think so.”

Below, Black Annis was crouched over the bubbling cauldron, stirring the thick orange-black syrup. Clawlike hands added leaves and what looked like flower petals to the mixture. Then, from beneath her ragged clothing, she lifted a round object and held it aloft in both hands.

“What is that?” Vidocq asked. “It looks like a…glass skull?”

“Crystal,” I whispered. “Dagon told me that one of the very oldest races, the Archons, stored all their forbidden knowledge in a vast cache of crystal skulls. I’ve never seen one myself.”

“It doesn’t look human.”

The flickering candlelight turned the crystal the color of old butter, highlighting the deep-set eye sockets and tiny blunt teeth. I noticed that there was something odd about the skull’s shape: it seemed to sweep to a point at the back. “They are so dangerous that one of the Elders who still walk this earth, an incredibly powerful witch called Zephaniah, travels the globe looking for them.”

“What does she do with them?” Vidocq asked.

“She destroys them,” I answered.

Ignoring the bubbling liquid, which must have been scalding, Black Annis dipped the skull into the thick fluid. Once. Twice. After she raised it a third time, it was thickly coated in the liquid, making it look as if its flesh was melting.

“Why is she called Black Annis if her skin is blue?” Vidocq asked.

“I think it refers to the color of her heart,” I said.

We watched the creature dip a ladle into the liquid and then come around the cauldron on her birdlike feet and pour the sticky mess into the open mouth of the closest skeleton, a warrior in the remains of a medieval suit of armor. The liquid steamed and bubbled, hissing as it frothed around the skeleton’s mouth.

“But it’s got no stomach,” Vidocq protested. “And no tongue, so it can’t taste or swallow.”

The skeleton suddenly started to tremble, bones rattling. Its entire body shivered. Then, in a screech of armor, the medieval knight sat upright.

“Never apply logic to magic,” I reminded Vidocq.

Black Annis moved to the next skeleton, the almost perfectly preserved body of a young man wearing the white coat and red stockings of a fusilier du roi, now ragged and soiled He had probably been dead for only a hundred years. She poured more of the sticky liquid between his lips. He came alive almost immediately, sitting upright and rising to stand to attention.

Black Annis returned to the cauldron and scooped up another ladle of the thick liquid. The Crusader knight shuffled over. I noticed that one of his feet was twisted at an ugly angle. He was carrying a battered metal shield, holding it upside down, so it resembled a shallow bowl.

Black Annis poured a ladle of the sticky liquid into the shield. It steamed and hissed and immediately started to harden and crack into orange chunks.

Vidocq reached into his pocket, pulled out the orange candy, and tossed it aside. “I am never eating candy again,” he muttered.

“Told you not to lick your fingers.”

We watched as the children filed up in front of the Crusader knight, who stood alongside Black Annis. With clumsy fingers, he presented each child with a piece of candy from the shield. When they took it, they stepped out of line and headed back to the tunnels. Most started sucking on the sweets immediately, but I saw Marius give his to Simplice.

“That’s what keeping them going,” I realized. “Probably the only food they get.”

“We have to do something,” Vidocq said desperately.

“I have an idea,” I told him. “But I’m not sure you’ll like it.”

13

I watched Eugène creep down into the chamber. We both agreed that my plan was terrible, but it was the only one we had.

Black Annis continued to move around the skeletons, feeding them the sticky liquid. Each ladle held enough syrup to bring two dead bodies to shuddering life. Some resurrections were more successful than others. I saw one skeleton attempt to sit up, and then watched as its arms fell off and its head rolled away from its body. So the formula was not foolproof. It animated the bones, but if the skeleton was too decomposed, all it succeeded in doing was shaking the body apart. What I wouldn’t have given for a sample of that solution—though I was sure Dr. Mirabilis, Nicholas Flamel, or John Dee would be able to replicate it.

The formula obviously had no effect on the living. I watched the children suck on the candy; the combination of sugar and honey gave them the energy to continue digging up corpses for Black Annis to reanimate.

Vidocq was deep in the chamber now. Judging his moment perfectly—when everyone was concentrating on a skeleton in full medieval armor jerking noisily back to life—he joined the end of a line of children and began the slow shuffle toward Black Annis.

Scrabbling on the ground, I found the piece of candy Vidocq had thrown away. It had picked up more fluff and lint and now resembled a hairy caterpillar. Pulling a thread from my heavy coat, I quickly wrapped it around the candy, then tore a strip from my shirt and tied it to the candy bundle with more thread.

Vidocq was close to Black Annis now, but he had to bide his time; she’d filled her ladle and gone to awaken two more skeletons.

I laid the cloth-wrapped candy on the ground before me, took out my small circular tinderbox, and unscrewed the lid. Inside were a flint, a firesteel, and hemp threads.

Black Annis had returned to the cauldron and was ladling the sticky mess into the shield again.

I draped the hemp threads over the cloth-wrapped candy, then took the flint in one hand and the firesteel in the other. I would get only one chance.

The girl in front of Vidocq stepped forward to accept her candy. Then it was his turn. Neither Black Annis nor the Crusader knight even glanced at him—yet he was clearly taller and in better physical condition than the rest of the children. The Crusader handed him a chunk of candy.

I raised the flint…

And Vidocq dropped the candy. He fell to his knees immediately, grabbing for the piece. I saw his hand rise, and I slammed the flint onto the firesteel just as his hand fell.

I’d been worrying unnecessarily: no one was going to hear the noise of flint on steel over Black Annis’s agonized high-pitched screeching.

Sparks flew onto the hemp threads. They ignited, and then the cloth beneath popped alight. Catching hold of the length of cloth I’d wrapped around the candy, I spun it in the air, bringing it to blazing life, and then I launched it toward a pile of shattered wooden coffins. The tiny meteor fell into the wood and disappeared. Without waiting to see what happened, I grabbed my two batons and raced into the chamber, toward Black Annis, the Crusader, and Eugène.

A skeleton reared up in front of me. Dagon’s lead-filled baton made contact with its skull and turned it to fine white powder.

Another stabbed at me with a rusty sword. I easily parried with one stick, and a long swinging blow from the second shattered its spine.

What Vidocq had done was risky and dangerous, and to his credit, he hadn’t hesitated when I’d discussed it with him. We needed to take Black Annis out of the fight; she was the most dangerous one. When Vidocq had “accidentally” dropped his candy before the inhuman, he’d taken the opportunity to drive his iron-bladed knife through the creature’s foot, pinning her to the ground. The iron was poison to her; she wouldn’t be able to touch it.

What I hadn’t told him to do was to push the Crusader knight, who was already off balance, into the black cauldron, but he’d done it anyway. The heavy pot tipped and the sticky liquid splashed into the fire, bringing the coals to sparking life; then the liquid itself caught fire. The cauldron rolled across the floor, spewing a thick blazing liquid in every direction.

On the other side of the chamber, wood snapped and crackled and then popped alight. The tinder-dry coffins were starting to burn.

“Vidocq! Eugène!” I yelled. He’d picked up the Crusader knight’s battle-ax and was flailing wildly with it, hitting skeletons more by chance than skill. “The children! Get the children out of here!” He heard me and spun away, disappearing in billowing smoke.

A pair of skeletons wearing rusty chain mail loomed before me. They were both carrying long spiked halberds, and they moved as if they knew how to use them. For a moment I thought I was in trouble, but even as one was jabbing at me, the metal head of the halberd snapped off, and when I deflected the other, the pole dissolved into splinters. The weapons were rotten with age. Two blows shattered the skeletons.

And all the while, Black Annis was still screeching.

The sound set my teeth on edge and made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. This was the sound of ancient evil.

I glanced over my shoulder. The chamber was filling with fumes, but I could see Vidocq herding the children toward the tunnel. Madame Bougon’s children were leading them. Through billowing smoke, I saw Vidocq dart into all the smaller tunnels and call out. Finally, satisfied that we’d left no one behind, he ran back to the tunnel entrance and took up a position there, holding the battle-ax in both hands, protecting the fleeing children.

Suddenly, Black Annis stopped screaming. Smoke shifted, and when I turned, I realized she was looking directly at me. Her eyes were orange-and-black circles. The owl beak snapped, and when she finally found words, they were so mangled I had difficulty understanding them.

“No normal Humani, are you.”

I bowed slightly. “I am Niccolò Machiavelli,” I said, “guardian of Paris.”

I beat away a skeleton who came at me with a pair of short knives.

“An immortal. And your aura: it reeks of serpent. Who is your master?” she demanded.

“None of your business.” I had no intention of telling her who had made me immortal. There was every possibility that my master was related to this foul creature.

She stretched out her hand. The tiny crystal skull was balanced in her palm, making it seem as if its empty eye sockets glared at me from between her filthy claws. For a single heartbeat, I imagined that the eye sockets pulsed red.

And suddenly my aura came alive: a dirty gray-white mist leaking from my flesh like smoke. It curled across the floor, twisting and slithering, touching the sugar -scented air with the tang of my serpent odor. And, like a serpent, I watched it rise off the floor in a thick semitransparent band and sway before Black Annis. Then it suddenly shot into the mouth of the small crystal skull.

I staggered, abruptly pulled forward.

Black Annis cackled. “Have you ever seen a Humani drained of its aura?”

Another twist of my aura disappeared into the crystal skull, and I felt a wave of exhaustion wash over me.

All I knew about auras was that every human had one. Each was a unique combination of color and smell. An experienced magician or warlock could draw upon the power of their aura to work what could best be described as magic.

The blue-skinned hag dipped a claw into the gray-white smoke of my aura and brought it to her mouth. “I can use this skull to drain your energy, Humani. I can suck you dry and leave you a withered husk, with every one of your measly three hundred years etched into your body. You will still be alive, you will still be immortal, but you will be trapped within a rotting shell.” She held up the skull. “And every morning, I will sip a little of your aura and dine on your memories.”

My aura had now thickened to a rope of white smoke, connecting the center of my chest to the mouth of the crystal skull. I could feel my heart hammering in my chest. I was terrified, but most of all I was angry at myself: my arrogance and stupidity had put me in this position. And now Black Annis was going to drain every ounce of energy from my body and leave me nothing more than a husk.

“You’ve sided with the Humani. You’ve chosen the wrong side.”

“I have, more often than not, allied with my Master and the Elders, but tonight, I chose to stand with the Humani against a monster. It was the right decision; only a fool blindly chooses a side and stays there even when they know they are in the wrong.”

Black Annis cackled. “In a few days, these Humani children will have dug out another thousand corpses. I will bring them to life and then loose them into the city. Your precious Humani will not be able to stand against them. Within the week, I will control Paris. Within a month, all the surviving Elders and Next Generation scattered across the globe will flock here. I will establish this city as the capital of the new Dark Empire. Within six months, I will rule this world.”

“You underestimate the Humani,” I said through gritted teeth as I was jerked closer and ever closer to Black Annis and the crystal skull. I barely had enough strength to lift my feet.

“Humani are a failed experiment. Nothing more than slaves and food,” she spat.

“And yet, look at what one Humani—and a mere boy, at that—has done here tonight,” I said.

Black Annis stretched out her hand holding the crystal skull, bringing it close to my face. Now I could see that the eye sockets were glowing the same slate gray color as mine, and its crystal interior was swirling with a thick gray cloud that matched the color of my aura.

“You’ve lived a long time for a Humani,” Black Annis said. “I will ensure that your dying takes an equally long time. You should have chosen a better side.”

And then I saw her eyes flicker to one side. Reflected in the crystal skull, I saw an enormous battle-ax swoop in, and Vidocq’s determined face, distorted in the glass behind it.

The hag attempted to jerk back, but she was still impaled to the floor, and she twisted awkwardly. Desperately, she snatched her hand away. The edge of the ax screamed off her black fingernails, leaving sparks, before Vidocq’s battle-ax turned the crystal skull in her hand to powder.

The force of my returning aura hit me, driving me to my knees. I was aware that Vidocq was by my side, dragging me away. “We need to get out of here now!” he shouted. “The roof’s going to collapse!”

Black Annis started screaming again, a primal sound of rage and hatred.

I paused in the mouth of the tunnel. “We have everyone?” I gasped.

“I’m sure of it…,” Vidocq began. Suddenly, an enormous skeletal shape reared out of the smoke. It was the Crusader knight with a sword in one hand, a spear in the other. He came directly for the young man. With a grunting effort, Vidocq spun the battle-ax in a short arc and neatly separated the skeleton’s head from his shoulders. It hung suspended in midair for a moment, and I used the T-shaped baton like a racket to send it sailing across the chamber toward Black Annis. We heard it hit something solid and she stopped screaming.

“Did I tell you I played tennis with William Shakespeare?” I called.

“You didn’t,” Vidocq said. “And I have no idea who that is.”

14

“It’s Vidocq.” Dagon pronounced the name as a series of popping bubbles.

“Bring him in,” I instructed.

It was a week after the events in the Court of Miracles. I’d not seen Vidocq since we’d escaped the tunnels and raced out of the abandoned church moments before the floor collapsed into the crypts below.

The event went practically unnoticed. There were often fires in the Court of Miracles, and unfortunately, building collapses were not uncommon either. The fire seemed to have removed the locals’ fear of the place. Within a couple of days, the roof tiles and the remaining wooden window and door frames disappeared. The marble floor was destroyed in the fire, but even the scraps were valuable, and they vanished also. I doubted anything would remain of the building by the end of the month.

Vidocq was dressed more or less as I had last seen him, though I knew his clothes must be new—or newish—since they did not stink of smoke. I’d had to burn everything I’d worn that night. He looked around the small bare room.

“I thought it would be fancier,” he said at last.

“This is where I work, not where I live.”

“I still can’t discover exactly what sort of work you do,” he said, pulling out a seat and sitting down uninvited.

“I keep the peace,” I answered.

Without a word, Dagon dropped a heavy purse on the table. Coins clinked.

“Triple what you are owed,” I said. I reached down beside my chair and placed a leather-wrapped bundle on the table between us.

Vidocq unwrapped it. It was a long-bladed hunting knife with an ornate Damascus steel blade and polished walnut handle.

“To make up for the one you lost,” I said.

“It is magnificent.”

“You deserve it. It was a gift to me from Caesar Borgia himself. He was once my employer, and an absolute villain. I think you would have liked him. Now, tell me: How are the children?”

“Most of them seem to think they got lost in the tunnels and hallucinated because of lack of food and water.”

“Most of them?”

“Some—like Marius—are suspicious and confused. But who does he tell?” Eugene shrugged. “And what does he say? ‘I was digging corpses out of the underground crypts so that a blue-skinned chicken-legged woman could bring them back to life and attack the city’? ‘Oh, and I was guarded by skeletons’?”

“And Madame Bougon?”

“She thanks you; said she will be eternally grateful to you. Said you are a man of your word. I think that’s a compliment.”

“As time goes by, the children’s memories will fade. Eventually, they will not know if it really happened or if it was a dream.”

Vidocq poked the bag of coins with his dirty fingers. “I’m already starting to wonder myself. It really did happen, didn’t it?”

I glanced up at Dagon. If I was going to lie to the boy, this would be the time. “Yes,” I answered, “it really happened.”

“And there really was a blue-faced chicken-legged old woman…”

“Black Annis,” Dagon said, managing to pronounce the name with a layer of disgust.

Vidocq swiveled in his chair. “Were you really worshiped as a god?”

“I still am,” he said.

“Do you ever answer prayers?” he asked cheekily.

“I’m not that sort of god.”

The young man turned back to me. “What happened to Black Annis? She was still pinned to the floor when we left.”

“You can rest assured: she’s gone. Everything in that chamber was burnt to a crisp.”

He grinned, and I could see that a weight had lifted off his shoulders. “I keep thinking she’s down there, stuck to the floor, just waiting for the knife to rust through so she can come and find me.”

“You’re safe,” I said. “Safer than you have ever been, Monsieur Vidocq, because now you are under my protection. I will be watching out for you in the years to come. And when the time is right, I am thinking you might make a fine chief of police in this city.”

Vidocq started to laugh, then stopped. “Oh, you’re not joking.”

“I am making you a promise,” I told him with a smile.

***

Dagon saw Vidocq to the door and locked it behind him. When he returned, he was carrying a length of stained cloth. “What do you want me to do with this?” he asked, unrolling the cloth.

It was Black Annis’s foot, still with Vidocq’s knife embedded in it, complete with the chunk of limestone it was impaled in.

“I searched every inch of the tunnels for her,” he said. “This”—he tapped the foot—“was the only evidence that she’d ever been there.”

“She’ll grow another?” I asked.

“Those Elders are practically indestructible. She’s probably limping around on a tiny chicken’s foot right now.”

“So she’ll be back?”

“Not here. Too many bad memories. She’ll find a new nest, in a new country. And if we’re still around in a couple of hundred years, she might try again.”

“Will we still be here?” I wondered.

“Not sure about you,” Dagon answered, “but I will. I have unfinished business with Scathach the Shadow.”

What is lost will be found.

Discover another Lost Story from the world of the New York Times bestselling Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series

Coming November 2020

Perry Hagopian

An authority on mythology and folklore, MICHAEL SCOTT is one of Ireland’s most successful authors. A master of fantasy, science fiction, horror, and folklore, Michael has been hailed by the Irish Times as “the King of Fantasy in these isles.” He is the author of the New York Times bestselling Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series: The Alchemyst, The Magician, The Sorceress, The Necromancer, The Warlock, and The Enchantress.

DillonScott.com

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