“I can smell Dee’s stink on everything,” Perenelle complained. She had showered and changed into fresh clothes: stonewashed blue jeans, a beautifully embroidered Egyptian cotton shirt and a pair of boots that had been handmade for her in New York in 1901. Her still-damp hair was pulled back off her face and tied into a thick ponytail. Lifting a heavy woolen sweater from a carved chest of drawers, she pressed it to her face and breathed deeply. “Ugh! Rotten eggs.”
Nicholas nodded. He too had showered and changed into one of his almost identical combinations of black jeans and T-shirts. This shirt had the iconic Dark Side of the Moon design on the front. “Everything organic is starting to rot,” he said. He held up a hideously tie-dyed T-shirt. It was dusted with mold spores, and much of the bottom half of the shirt had decayed to curling threads. Even as he held it up for inspection, one of the arms tore away. “I got that at Woodstock,” he complained.
“No, you didn’t,” Perenelle corrected him. “You bought it in a vintage store on Ventura Boulevard about ten years ago.”
“Oh.” Nicholas held the destroyed shirt up again. “Are you sure?”
“Positive. You didn’t go to Woodstock.”
“I didn’t?” Nicholas sounded surprised.
“You didn’t go when Jethro Tull decided not to attend and Joni Mitchell pulled out. You said it would be a waste of time.” Perenelle smiled. She was busy with the lock on a heavy steamer trunk at the foot of the bed. “In fact, you said that several times.”
“Something else I was wrong about, then.” He looked around the bedroom and then pressed his foot against the floorboards. “I don’t think we should hang around here. I’ve a feeling the floor could give way at any moment.”
“I just need a minute.” The fist-sized lock clicked open and the woman heaved the lid back. The faint odor of roses and exotic spices filled the air. Nicholas joined his wife and watched as she carefully brushed dried rose petals off the leather-wrapped bundle within. “Do you remember when we last packed up this box?” she asked softly, unconsciously slipping back into French.
“New Mexico, 1945,” he said immediately.
Perenelle nodded. Peeling back the leather covering, she revealed an ancient-looking carved wooden box. “You wanted to bury it at the Trinity Site so that the first atomic bomb would destroy it.”
“And you would not let me,” he said reminding her.
Perenelle looked up at her husband and a shadow moved behind her eyes. “I am the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. I know…” She paused, and a look of terrible sadness touched her face. “I know certain things.”
Nicholas rested his hand lightly on her shoulder and squeezed. “And you knew we would need these items?”
Perenelle looked back at the box without answering and then lifted the lid. Inside lay a thick coiled silver and black leather whip. She wrapped her long fingers around the dark handle and lifted it, the leather rasping and creaking softly together. “Now, here’s an old friend,” she murmured.
Nicholas shuddered. “It is detestable.”
“Ah, but it saved our lives on more than one occasion,” Pernelle said, winding it around her waist, threading it through the loops on her jeans like a belt. The handle hung down by her right leg.
“It is woven from snakes you pulled from the Medusa’s hair,” Nicholas reminded her. “Do you know how close we came to dying that day?”
“Well, technically, we would not have died,” Perenelle said. “She would have solidified our auras…”
“… turning us to stone,” Nicholas finished.
“Besides,” Perenelle added with a grin, patting the wooden box, “we got what we wanted, and it was worth it to see the expression on the Gorgon’s face when we escaped.” Reaching into the chest, she pulled out another box. “And this is yours,” she said.
Nicholas rubbed suddenly damp palms on the legs of his trousers, but made no move to take the box from his wife. “Perry,” he said quietly, “are you sure about this?”
The Sorceress’s green eyes turned hard and brittle. “Sure about what?” she snapped. She came gracefully to her feet, the wooden box cradled in her arms. “Sure about what?” she asked again, anger clearly audible in her voice. “What are we waiting for, Nicholas? We have waited so long now that we have run out of time. You have weeks to live…”
“Don’t say that,” he said quickly.
“Why not? It’s true. If I survive a week or ten days after you, then I’ll be lucky. But do you know something: we are both going to live long enough to see the end of the world as we know it. The Dark Elders have most of the Codex, and Litha is fast approaching. There are Dark Elders moving freely through the world, and you told me that there was an Archon in London.” She pointed in the direction of the bay. “And Alcatraz is full of monsters ready to be loosed on the city. There are creatures there I have not seen in centuries.”
Nicholas held up his hands in surrender, but Perenelle was not finished.
“What will happen, do you think, if San Francisco is overrun by nightmares from the dark edges of human mythology? Tell me,” she demanded. “You’ve studied history and human nature, tell me what would happen.” Anger sent static crackles running along her hair. “Tell me!”
“There would be chaos,” he admitted.
“How long before the city fell?” The elastic band holding her ponytail in place snapped and her mane of silver-streaked dark hair rose in a crackling sheet around her head. “Weeks, days or hours? And once this city is a smoking ruin, you know the creatures will spread out across America like a disease. How long do you think the humani-even with all their weapons and sophisticated technology-would be able to survive against the monsters?”
The Alchemyst shook his head and shrugged.
“They have brought down civilizations before,” Perenelle said. “The last time the Dark Elders released monsters onto this world, the Elders were forced to destroy Pompeii.”
Nicholas reached out and silently took the wooden box from his wife’s arms.
“The last thing we do, Nicholas, before old age and death claim us, is to destroy the army on Alcatraz. And for that, we need allies.” She tapped the lid of the box with the palm of her hand. “We need this.”
The Alchemyst turned and placed the box on the bed. Its sides had been etched with a triple spiral, and he allowed his fingers to trace the curls. He’d bought the box in a backstreet in Delhi in India, just over three hundred years ago, and then sketched the spiral design on it with a stick of charcoal. A local craftsman had cut the shape into the four sides of the box, and then on the lid and the base. “In my country, this is an ancient powerful symbol of protection,” the tiny wizened man had muttered in Hindi, not expecting the foreigner to understand him. He had been shocked when the Westerner had lifted the box from his hands and replied in the same language, “In mine too.”
There was neither lock nor clasp on the box, and Nicholas carefully lifted off the carved lid and placed it on the bed. A hint of jasmine and exotic spices touched the air: the unmistakable odor of India. He was reaching into the cloth-packed interior, when Perenelle suddenly grabbed his arm, her fingers biting into his flesh. He watched as she carefully lifted her hair and tilted her head to one side. She was listening.
And then Nicholas heard it: someone was moving stealthily through the shop below.