The Alchemyst

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

E ven before she opened her eyes, Perenelle Flamel knew she had been moved to

a much more secure prison. Someplace deep and dark and sinister. She could

feel the old evil in the walls, could almost taste it on the air. Lying

still, she tried to expand her senses, but the blanket of malevolence and

despair was too strong, and she found she couldn t use her magic. She

listened intently, and only when she was absolutely sure that there was no

one in the room with her did she open her eyes.

She was in a cell.

Three walls were solid concrete, the fourth was metal bars. Beyond the bars

she could see another row of cells.

She was in a prison block!

Perenelle swung her legs out of the narrow cot and came slowly to her feet.

She noticed that her clothes smelled slightly of sea salt, and she thought

she could detect the sounds of the not-too-distant ocean.

The cell was bare, little more than an empty box, about ten feet long by four

feet wide, with a narrow cot holding a thin mattress and a single lumpy

pillow. A cardboard tray lay on the floor just inside the bars. It contained

a plastic jug of water, a plastic cup and a thick chunk of dark bread on a

paper plate. Seeing the food made her realize just how hungry she was, but

she ignored it for the moment and crossed to the bars and peered out. Looking

left and right, all she could see were cells, and they were empty.

She was alone in the cell block. But where

And then a ship s horn, plaintive and lost, sounded in the distance. With a

shiver, Perenelle suddenly knew where Dee s men had taken her: she was on the

prison island of Alcatraz, The Rock.

She looked around the room, paying particular attention to the area around

the metal gate. Unlike in her previous prison, she couldn t see any magical

wards or protective sigils painted on the lintel or the floor. Perenelle

couldn t resist a tiny smile. What were Dee s people thinking? Once she had

recovered her strength, she d charge up her aura, and then bend this metal

like putty and simply walk out of here.

It took her a moment before she realized that the click-click she d first

assumed to be dripping water was actually something approaching, moving

slowly and deliberately. Pressing herself against the bars, she tried to see

down the corridor. A shadow moved. More of Dee s faceless simulacra? she

wondered. They would not be able to hold her for long.

The shadow, huge and misshapen, moved out of the darkness and stepped down

the corridor to stand before her cell. Perenelle was suddenly grateful for

the bars that separated her from the terrifying entity.

Filling the corridor was a creature that had not walked the earth since a

millennium before the first pyramid rose over the Nile. It was a sphinx, an

enormous lion with the wings of an eagle and the head of a beautiful woman.

The sphinx smiled and tilted her head to one side, and a long black forked

tongue flickered. Perenelle noticed that her pupils were flat and horizontal.

This was not one of Dee s creations. The sphinx was one of the daughters of

Echidna, one of the foulest of the Elders, shunned and feared even by her own

race, even the Dark Elders. Perenelle suddenly found herself wondering who,

exactly, Dee was serving.

The sphinx pressed her face against the bars. Her long tongue shot out,

tasting the air, almost brushing Perenelle s lips. Do I need to remind you,

Perenelle Flamel, she asked in the language of the Nile, that one of the

especial skills of my race is that we absorb auric energy? Her huge wings

flapped, almost filling the corridor. You have no magical powers around me.

An icy shiver ran down Perenelle s spine as she realized just how clever Dee

was. She was a defenseless and powerless prisoner on Alcatraz, and she knew

that no one had ever escaped The Rock alive.