The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel)

than can be said for you.” Placing his hand in the small of Aten’s back, he pushed hard, sending him sailing out over the edge of the wall.
    Running as she had never run before, Scathach raced across the square toward the wall. She saw the anpu directly in front of her stiffen and reach for their weapons, obviously unsure of what they were seeing—a single girl charging them.
    The Shadow heard the bowstrings above her head twang and twang and twang again and listened to the arrows scream down, and then felt the wash of the sage- and sulfur-scented auras. The screaming suddenly stopped, as if the sound had been muted. Scathach dropped to the ground and rolled as the arrows began shrieking again. They hissed over her head in a horizontal black rain, and then she was back on her feet even as the lines of anpu and the other hybrids were falling under the deadly onslaught.
    Overhead she saw Aten fall. She knew that her father had pushed him, and she knew that everything she had heard about him was true.
    And then, as they did in every battle, her acute senses took over, and it was as if the world around her slowed but she continued moving at a normal pace.
    Aten fell . . .
    . . . and fell . . .
    . . . and fell . . .
    His eyes were closed, she noticed, and he looked serene.
    Scathach surged over fallen anpu, climbing on them, her feet barely touching the ground, and then she leapt into the air, twisting, turning in a half circle.
    And she caught him.

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
    XOLOTL PERCHED ON a low wall and watched the anpu race toward the ruined building. The jackal-headed monsters were silent until the last moment before they went into battle, and then they howled. The sound was so appalling it often shocked their enemies into immobility or made them turn and run. Xolotl doubted it would have that effect on the Flamels and their companions. His dog mouth opened in a grin: besides, they had nowhere to run.
    The anpu were followed by the monokerata unicorns.
    He’d chosen these himself. Xolotl loved unicorns, but these were not the delicate white unicorns beloved by the humani. These hailed from India, and while they
did
have white bodies, they had bloodred heads, with deadly four-foot-long tricolored horns spiraling from the center of their foreheads. Monokerata would impale their victims, then tilt their heads back and allow them to slide down the horn so that they could eat them.
    The skeletal Elder turned and squinted back down the path. He could just about make out the shape of the giant crab through the fog. It was having difficulty finding purchase on the slick stones with its spindly legs, but it managed to pull itself along with its enormous front claws, gripping walls and heaving itself forward.
    Xolotl rubbed his hands together, bones clicking and rattling—he wished he had something to eat while he watched the entertainment. He hopped off the wall and wandered around the path, hoping to find something to snack on while he waited for the main event.
    Odin took up a position beside Hel in the doorway of the Warden’s House. “I remember the last time I faced anpu,” he said.
    Hel nodded. “On Danu Talis. What a day that was.” Her black eyes sparkled at the memory. “I was almost beautiful then.”
    “You are still beautiful,” he said quietly. “Step back now, Niece.”
    “Why?” she asked.
    Odin’s hand brushed the metal patch he wore over his right eye. “The anpu will pour through these walls,” he said, slipping into a guttural language never before spoken on earth. “The immortal humans will fall before they can awaken the Old Spider and all this will have been for naught.” Wispy gray ozone-scented aura drifted off his fingertips. “But I can buy them some time.”
    The anpu were nearer now, close enough that the Elders could see the saliva glistening on their fangs and the beads of moisture from the fog gathering and running off their metal and ceramic armor.
    “They will scream in a moment,” Odin said softly. “Billy and Black Hawk and probably Machiavelli and Nicholas will be stunned by the sound and will fall.”
    “The woman will not fall, nor will Mars,” Hel said. “And we will not fall.”
    “No. We will not fall. Nor will we be able to stop them. Not with weapons . . .”
    Hel stretched out her clawlike hand. Odin looked at it, then turned to stare into her leaking black eyes. “Are you sure?” he asked.
    “My world is gone. The Yggdrasill—your