1 - The Alchemyst by Michael Scott

Author:Michael Scott
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-06-06T04:00:00+00:00

TheAlchemyst

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

T he cats of San Francisco left the city in the dead of night.

Singly and in pairs, feral and scarred street cats, plump, smooth-coated house cats, all shapes, every size, purebred and mixed, long-haired and short-haired, they moved through the shadows in a silent feline wave. They surged across the bridges, boiled through alleys, raced through the tunnels beneath the streets, leapt across roofs.

All heading north.

They darted past shocked and terrified late-night revelers, skirted rats and mice without stopping to feed, ignored birds nests. And although they moved in complete silence, their passage was marked by an extraordinary sound.

That night the city of San Francisco echoed with the primeval howls of a hundred thousand dogs.

Dr. John Dee was unhappy.

And just a little bit frightened. It was all very well to talk about attacking Hekate in her own Shadowrealm, but it was another thing entirely to sit at the entrance to her invisible kingdom and watch the cats and birds arrive, called by their respective mistresses, Bastet and the Morrigan. What could those small creatures do against the ancient magic of Hekate of the Elder Race?

Dee sat in a huge black Hummer alongside Senuhet, the man who acted as Bastet s servant. Neither of them had spoken during the short flight in Dee s private jet from L.A. to San Francisco earlier, though there were a thousand questions Dee wanted to ask the older man. Over the years he had come to recognize that the servants of the Dark Elders like himself did not like to be questioned.

They had reached the entrance to Hekate s Shadowrealm close to two o clock, and were in time to see the first of the Morrigan s creatures arriving. The birds swooped in from the north and east in long, dark flocks, the only sound the snapping of their wings, and settled in the trees in Mill Valley, gathering so thickly that some of the branches cracked beneath the strain.

Over the next few hours, the cats arrived.

They poured out of the darkness in a never-ending stream of fur, and then stopped all facing the hidden opening to the Shadowrealm. Dee looked out his car window: he couldn t see the ground. It was covered, as far as he could see in every direction, with cats.

Finally, just as the eastern horizon began to pale with salmon-colored light, Senuhet lifted a small black statue from a bag he wore around his neck and 113

TheAlchemyst

placed it on the dashboard. It was a beautifully carved Egyptian cat no bigger than his little finger. It is time, he said softly.

The eyes of the black statue glowed red.

She is coming, Senuhet said.

Why didn t we attack earlier, when Hekate slept? Dee asked. Despite several hundred years of study about the Dark Elders, he realized that, in truth, he knew very little. But that gave him some comfort, because he realized that they knew equally little about humans.

Senuhet waved his hand, gesturing to the gathered birds and cats. We needed our allies, he said shortly.

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