The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel)

its massive claws, biting chunks out of the masonry, spraying stones everywhere. Areop-Enap plunged a razor-sharp stinger into the back of the crab and it froze, then started to spasm violently. Suddenly white threads blossomed around the claws, sealing them shut, and then the Old Spider’s huge legs moved, lifting the crab off the ground, spinning it over and over, blindingly fast, completely enfolding it in gossamer-thin gray strands that quickly thickened to become a bulbous white package. The entire process took less than a minute.
    “I’m going to save that for later,” Areop-Enap said. “I’m quite peckish.”
    Slowly, almost delicately, she crouched before Perenelle, all eight eyes regarding her impassively. “How long have I slept?”
    “A few days.”
    “Ah. But when I look at you, I see you have aged more than that.”
    “It has been a busy week,” Perenelle murmured. “You remember my husband, Nicholas.”
    “I remember him dropping a mountain on me.”
    “Your followers were about to sacrifice my wife to a volcano,” Nicholas said. “And it was only a small mountain.”
    “It was.” Areop-Enap picked her way around the room, pausing to lean close to Machiavelli, who was cradling Billy the Kid’s head in his lap. The Italian glared defiantly at the enormous spider.
    Billy’s nose twitched and then his eyes cracked open. He squinted up at the almost human head with the eight eyes. “I’m guessing this is not a nightmare,” he rasped.
    “It’s not,” Machiavelli said.
    “I was afraid of that,” Billy said, and closed his eyes. Then they snapped open. “Does this mean we’ve won?”
    “We have,” Machiavelli said quietly. “Though the cost has been heavy indeed.”
    Areop-Enap picked her way back to Nicholas and Perenelle. “So I am still on the island where Dee was storing the monsters. I can smell beasts in this filthy air.”
    “Not as many as there were,” Nicholas said. “They have been killing one another throughout the night.”
    “I should go and clean up, then,” Areop-Enap said as she turned to scuttle out of the building. “We don’t want any of those trying to swim to shore.”
    “Tell her about the unicorns,” Billy mumbled.
    The spider froze.
    “There may be a few monokerata unicorns running free,” Machiavelli said.
    “With or without horns?” Areop-Enap asked.
    “With.”
    “Extra crunchy. My favorite.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
    THE HEAVILY LADEN vimana took off from the top of the Pyramid of the Sun into the night air, carrying the survivors to safety.
    Josh Newman stood where it had perched and raised his right hand in farewell. He watched as Sophie, supported on either side by Scathach and Joan, raised a hand and pressed her fingers against the glass. She was not crying now—she had no tears left.
    One to save the world
. . .
    Josh sat cross-legged in the center of the pyramid. Reaching under his armor, he pulled out the Codex, which Tsagaglalal had given him. He turned it over and over in his hands, feeling the metal surface slick and cool against his flesh. It fell open to the end, ragged edges showing where pages had been torn out . . . where he would tear them out in ten thousand years’ time.
    Dipping his head, Josh lifted the torn pages from where he carried them in a bag around his neck. He placed them in the book, slotting them back into place. The ancient pages shifted, and threadlike strands appeared, weaving and wrapping together like worms, mending the Codex, making it whole again.
    Then, opening the book at random, Josh placed his index finger on the page and watched the words in endless languages twist beneath his fingernail. And as it scrolled before him, he read the history of the world after the Fall.
    In the days and weeks to come, Sophie and the others would rally the survivors, lead them off the sundered island and take them out into the world.
    The people of Danu Talis, Elder and human, would follow Aten and Virginia Dare, an Elder and a human, out across the globe. The couple would establish colonies in all the surrounding lands, and these would grow into the great nations that would one day rule the earth.
    Sophie and Virginia, Joan and Scathach, too, would be given other names and come to be worshipped as goddesses, teachers and saviors of humankind.
    And in time, Sophie Newman, after many adventures, would find a way to lead the other immortals through a series of sequenced leygates back home to their own time,