The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel)

Niten,” she whispered, and poured the bloodred liquid aura down Prometheus’s throat.
    The effect was instantaneous.
    The Elder’s aura flared bright red around his body. He shuddered and coughed and his green eyes snapped open.
    “Hello, Father.”
    Prometheus reached up to touch Tsagaglalal’s face. “Just as I remember you,” he whispered, “just as I first saw you, young and beautiful. The Spartoi?”
    “Dead. All dead.”
    “And Niten?”
    She dipped her head. “I could only save one.”
    Prometheus struggled to sit up and she caught his arm and eased him upright. “Tsagaglalal, what have you done?”
    “Repaid the gift you gave me a long time ago. You brought me to life and now I’ve returned you to life.”
    He turned to look at her. “But at what cost to you?” Even as he was talking, her face was beginning to age, wrinkles appearing in her skin. A strand of white hair drifted to the ground between them.
    “I think this is what I was meant to do,” she said.
    “Without my aura you will not be able to renew your flesh. You will age normally now, and die soon enough.”
    “Everything has a price,” Tsagaglalal said. “And this is one I am willing to pay. It seems a small price for countless lifetimes of experiences.”
    Prometheus turned to look at Niten’s still form. “But, Tsagaglalal,” he said quietly, “you have brought the wrong one back.”
    “No!”
    “Yes,” he insisted. “My time is done. My Shadowrealm is dust, and the First People are no more. There is nothing left for me here: it is time for me to go.”
    “No . . .” She shook her head.
    “Yes,” he said firmly. “Ten thousand years ago, your husband told me this was how it would end. He said I would die on a bridge wrapped in fog, in a city beyond comprehension, in a time out of time. I knew this when I set out tonight. I knew how it would end. Now let me go,” he pleaded. “Take back my aura. Give it to Niten.”
    She shook her head, huge milk-colored tears on her face. “No, I cannot. I will not.”
    “Let me ask you as a friend. . . .”
    She shook her head again, more hair curling and falling away from her face. Her tears sizzled on the bridge.
    “I have never asked you for anything before. So let me ask you this as your father. Do this for me. Please.”
    Tsagaglalal bowed her head and wept. Then she placed her right hand on the Elder’s chest and her left on Niten’s.
    Prometheus lay back down and looked up into the night, the light fading from his eyes. “I am tired now, so very, very tired. It will be good to rest. And if you come across my sister, tell her who did this; tell her who sent the Spartoi. I have recognized Bastet’s and Quetzalcoatl’s auras on the air. And perhaps you should tell my sister where to find them.” He coughed a laugh. “They will not enjoy a visit from her.”
    Niten drew in a deep shuddering breath and the air was suffused with the delicate odor of green tea.
    “And, Tsagaglalal . . .”
    “Yes, Father?”
    Prometheus closed his eyes. “Tell Niten to find Aoife and ask her the question. Tell him . . . tell him she will say yes.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
    ISIS AND OSIRIS changed.
    The transformation was sudden, sending them from human to beast in a single heartbeat. Ceramic armor burst apart as their pale skin split to reveal something dark and foul beneath. They grew tall, and the human flesh peeled away like torn paper to expose hard scales, rigid with triangular armored plates. Their faces lengthened to long serpentine snouts, and angular mouths filled with teeth. Their eyes flattened along the sides of their faces and turned yellow, while wicked horns curled from their heads. Their fingers grew razor-tipped claws. Barbed tails uncoiled, and wings, huge black batlike wings, unfurled from their backs.
    And Sophie suddenly knew what the Witch of Endor had only suspected but could never quite believe. “Earthlords,” she whispered. She pulled out her swords. They shimmered, trembling in her hands. “That’s why the Witch destroyed so much of the ancient knowledge. She was keeping it from you.”
    Josh stood frozen. Isis and Osiris had turned into huge lizardlike creatures, and he was terrified of snakes. They were his every nightmare made flesh.
    “A hundred thousand years ago your ancestors nearly destroyed our race,” one of the creatures said, speaking with Osiris’s voice.
    “But we survived, and we swore a terrible vengeance,” the creature