Nicholas Flamel is dying.
This is the time I have feared for so long; this is
the night when I might finally become a widow.
My poor brave Nicholas. Even though he’s aged,
weakened and utterly exhausted, he sat with
Prometheus and me and poured the last of his
strength into the crystal skull so we could track Josh
into the heart of San Francisco, deep into Dr. John
Dee’s lair.
We watched in horror as Dee turned the boy into
a necromancer, a summoner of the dead, and urged
him to call forth Coatlicue, the hideous Archon
known as the Mother of all the Gods. We tried to
warn Josh, but Dee was too strong and cut the boy
off from us. And when Aoife, Niten and Sophie
arrived, Josh sided with Dee and his deadly
companion, Virginia Dare. I cannot help wondering if
he did so voluntarily.
Watching Josh—our last hope, our final chance
to defeat the Dark Elders and protect the world—
leave with the enemy was too much for my husband,
and he collapsed into unconsciousness. He has not
awakened, and I no longer have the strength to
revive him. What little power remains within me I
must conserve for what is to come.
One by one, we have lost those who might have
fought alongside us: Aoife is gone, trapped in a
Shadowrealm, forever locked in combat with the
Archon Coatlicue. Scathach and Joan are in the
distant past, there has been no communication from
Saint-Germain, and we have now lost contact with
Palamedes and Shakespeare. Even Prometheus is
so weakened now after using the skull that he no
longer has the strength to hold his Shadowrealm
together, and it is beginning to disintegrate around
him.
Only Sophie remains, and she is completely
distraught by her brother’s betrayal. She is
somewhere in San Francisco, I don’t know where,
but at least she has Niten to protect her. I must find
her—there is much she needs to know.
So it comes down to me, as I have always known
it would.
When I was a child, more than six hundred and
eighty years ago, my grandmother introduced me to
a hooded man with a hook in place of his left hand.
He told me my future, and the future of the world.
And then he swore me to secrecy. I have been
