The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel)

arriving in San Francisco, where it all began.
    Josh closed the Codex and shoved it back beneath his armor. He didn’t want to read any more. Not yet. He was going to have to keep this book safe for over nine and a half thousand years, until he sold it to a penniless French bookseller.
    One to destroy the world
.
    Danu Talis had to fall for the modern world to rise.
    And Josh would destroy it.
    The four ancient swords lay on the ground before him. Abraham had told him that the swords would give him the power—all he had to do was to take them in his hand and focus the energy even now pulsing up through the pyramid.
    He just had to pick them up.
    Abraham had said he had a choice. But Josh knew he had no choice, not really. If he did not do this, then his sister—and everyone else—would die, and he would not allow that.
    He sat down and arranged the four swords in front of him.
    But which one . . . was there an order?
    And suddenly he remembered something Dee had told him. He spoke the words aloud. “ ‘When in doubt, follow your heart. Words can be false, images and sounds can be manipulated. But this’ ”—he tapped his chest, over his heart—“ ‘this is always true.’ ”
    Without hesitation, with his left hand, he immediately reached for Clarent, the Sword of Fire. He felt the shivering heat of the ancient blade as it settled into his palm, and wondered briefly at the origins of these Swords of Power. No matter, he thought; he would have plenty of time in the future to investigate.
    With his right hand, he reached for Joyeuse, the Sword of Earth, and placed it in his left hand. It settled on top of Clarent and immediately broke up into flaking dry earth and dusty soil. It sizzled as it was absorbed into the Sword of Fire.
    Clarent began to glow red-hot, and Josh smelled burning flesh. His flesh.
    His aura began to smoke off him in orange-scented steam.
    Quickly he pressed Durendal on top of Clarent. The Sword of Air instantly dissolved into a wispy white mist and evaporated onto the single blade.
    And finally, Excalibur, the Sword of Ice.
    Josh lifted it in his right hand, holding it for a second, knowing that the instant he brought them together, everything would change . . . and then he laughed. Everything had already changed. It had changed a long time ago.
    Josh stood, Clarent in his left hand, Excalibur in his right. He held both swords aloft and the entire pyramid bellowed like a huge beast. Then he brought his hands together before his face and pressed the Sword of Ice into Clarent. It melted in an explosive plume that wrapped his left hand in steam. The four Swords of Power—Fire, Earth, Air and Water—combined to create a fifth power: Aether. It burned through him, filling him with knowledge, and with the knowledge came vast unimaginable power, hundreds of millennia of history and learning surging through him.
    He knew . . . everything!
    His aura raged, a solid spear of orange light blazing high into the heavens.
    Josh looked at his hand. All four of the stone swords were gone now. They had been swallowed into one another, becoming one bar of metal, which was slowly melting into his flesh, searing into it, becoming part of it, bending, twisting, curling into a flat metal hook.
    And there was pain—the likes of which he had never experienced before. He screamed, and what started as pain ended in a cry of triumph as he held the shining silver hook to the sky. He could feel the incredible energy gathering in the pyramid, shaking it violently, just waiting to be released. He would tear this island apart and destroy the world of the Elders, and, in that moment, give birth to the world of man.
    “Goodbye, Sophie,” Josh Newman said, and then Marethyu plunged the hook into the pyramid at his feet. And he spoke aloud the last words he had seen in the Codex.
    “Today, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

 
    FRIDAY,
    8th June

CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
    ARM IN ARM , Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel walked slowly around the island. They were incredibly aged, every one of their six hundred years etched into their flesh and bones.
    The sun was rising in the east and a chill breeze was whipping in off the Pacific, clearing away the last of the foul-smelling fog, the stink of burnt meat, seared wood and melted stone. The air was beginning to smell of clean salt once again.
    They walked past the wharf and followed the Agave Trail around the island, almost to the spot where they had come