The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel)

Elders. “You’re saying they won’t touch you?”
    Odin shrugged. “None of us is safe,” he said. “While we are not human, we
are
still meat, and these poor things are hungry.”
    “You feel sympathy for them?” Machiavelli asked. The Italian immortal had been bleeding from a shallow cut on the top of his head; he looked like he was wearing a red mask.
    “They are not here by choice,” Odin answered. “They are as much prisoners as the humans who were incarcerated here in times past.”
    “They will still kill and eat us,” Mars said grimly. He spun to one side as a three-headed serpent reared out of a darkened cell, spitting streamers of thick yellow ichor at him. His sword rose and fell and two of the heads dropped to the ground. “And if they escape into the city, they will feast for weeks or even months before they are captured.”
    “None are getting off this island,” Black Hawk said grimly. He had reattached two of the leaf-shaped spearheads to wooden shafts and he tapped them, butt-first, into the ground. “We will stand and fight.”
    “Then you will die,” Hel said.
    “People have been telling me that all my life,” Black Hawk said, shaking his head. “And I am still here, while they are not.”
    An undersized minotaur appeared out of a cell and dropped heavy cloven hooves onto Billy the Kid’s shoulder, driving him to his knees. Machiavelli’s hand moved, trailing the rancid odor of snake. The minotaur suddenly howled, tossing its head from side to side as it began to scratch furiously, tearing grooves in its own flesh. Black Hawk swung the shaft of one of the spears, catching the beast’s legs, tugging them out from beneath it. It went down with a crash and rolled along the floor, shrieking and scratching furiously.
    “Earwigs and fleas,” Machiavelli said with a smile. “I have always found them to be hugely underrated insects. Especially when inserted into the ears.”
    “You put earwigs in his ears,” Billy said with a shudder. “That’s gross.”
    “You are perfectly correct. Maybe you would have preferred that I let him take a bite out of you.”
    Before Billy could answer, two satyrs stepped into an open doorway at the end of the corridor. They had the stunted torsos of men but the horns and legs of goats. Both were armed with short bone bows. They bleated with delight as they nocked black-headed arrows and pulled back their bowstrings.
    Machiavelli made a half circle in the air with his hand, fingers opening and closing in a lightning-quick pattern.
    The satyrs’ bleats turned to shrieks of alarm as their bowstrings twisted into writhing serpents and coiled up their arms. They flung the bows to the ground and raced out into the night.
    “Illusion,” Machiavelli said. “Always my specialty.”
    “You’re just full of surprises,” Billy said, impressed.
    The Italian arched an eyebrow. “You have no idea.”
    The group of Elders and immortals raced down the corridor, then through a narrow doorway. Beyond lay a series of glass-walled rooms that led outside into the stinking fog. The goat-men had vanished, but the darkness was alive with sounds, and none of them were pleasant. Hideous shapes moved in the gloom, and Mars and Odin slashed at any that came too close.
    “Wait a moment.” Machiavelli stopped in the doorway, trying to orient himself. “We need to work out where we are on the island.”
    “We’ve just come out of the Administration Building,” Black Hawk said immediately.
    “How do you know?” the Italian demanded.
    The American immortal caught Machiavelli’s arm and turned him slightly. Directly over the door they had just exited was an ornate carving of an eagle, wings spread, above an American flag in the shape of a shield. Below the carving, the flaking words ADMINISTRATION BUILDING were clearly visible.
    “The lighthouse should be almost directly ahead of us,” Black Hawk said, pointing through the fog.
    “But where is Areop-Enap?” Mars asked. “Flamel used the parrot to tell us that the Old Spider was on the island.”
    The fog coalesced and the ghost of Juan Manuel de Ayala appeared out of the damp. Everyone—even Mars—jumped with fright.
    “You nearly gave me a heart attack,” Hel muttered.
    Billy grinned. “I didn’t know you
had
a heart.”
    “To your left,”
the ghost whispered, its voice filled with the sound of popping bubbles,
“are the ruins of the Warden’s House. Areop-Enap is within.”
    “Let’s go,”