The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel)

always thought it was odd myself. But that’s not the point.”
    “What is the point?”
    “They’re usually accompanied by a guy in a red shirt. Always a crewman you’ve never seen before. And as soon as you see the red shirt, you know he’s going to die.”
    “Where is this going?” Machiavelli asked.
    Billy leaned forward. “Don’t you see . . .” The bobbing light threw his glittering eyes into shadows. “We’re the red shirts.” He jerked his thumb over his head. “The Elders up there will survive; they always have. Probably most of the monsters will survive too. Dee and Dare have hightailed it. We’re the ones who are going to end up getting eaten.”
    The Italian sighed. “During the reign of Napoleon—whom I liked, by the way—the term
cannon fodder
was coined,” he said. “I fear you may be right.”
    “I think I preferred the term
red shirt
,” Billy muttered.
    “Boo!” A wicked curve of metal snaked around the American immortal’s throat and a copper-skinned, sharp-nosed face loomed out of the darkness, teeth white against thin lips. “William Bonney, do you know how many times I could have killed you? You’re getting sloppy.”
    “Black Hawk,” Billy breathed. “You scared the life out of me!”
    “A herd of stampeding buffalo makes less noise that you. And more sense.”
    Billy spun around and pushed Black Hawk’s tomahawk to one side. “Oh, it sure is good to see you, old friend.”
    “And you.” Black Hawk nodded at Machiavelli. “You too, Italian.”
    “We are relieved to find you alive,” Machiavelli said. “We feared the worst.”
    “It was a close-run thing. The mermaids—”
    “Nereids,” Billy interrupted.
    Black Hawk glared. “Excuse me, the
Nereids
swamped my boat, and I barely scrambled ashore and into a cave before this huge thing with a man’s body and octopus legs attacked me.”
    “Nereus,” Machiavelli said. “The Old Man of the Sea. I am surprised you got away.”
    Black Hawk looked at him blankly, light glinting copper off his skin.
    “Alive, I mean,” Machiavelli clarified. “Nereus is one of the deadliest of the Elders.”
    “Well, now he’s just plain dead.” The immortal warrior tapped his tomahawk against the palm of his hand and winked at Billy. “Sometimes the red shirts survive to fight another day.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
    WITH A LONG razor-nailed claw, Bastet pushed what looked like small square white teeth into the soft verge where the road coming off the Golden Gate Bridge curved around to the right and into Vista Point. “Feed them,” she commanded.
    Quetzalcoatl looked at her blankly. “What with?”
    Bastet caught the Feathered Serpent’s right hand, pulled off his glove and drove her nail into the tip of his forefinger. Thick red-black blood welled in the wound. Bastet squeezed.
    “Ouch. Hurts!”
    “Don’t be such a baby. It’s just a drop. You’ve seen enough blood in your time, I’ll wager.”
    “Yes, but little of it was mine.”
    The blood fell hissing through the swirling fog and spattered into the hole, washing over the white tooth, which immediately started to sizzle and sputter like a firework.
    “Feed them. One drop should be sufficient.”
    “Why do you get to plant them and I have to feed them?”
    “Because they’re my Drakon’s teeth,” Bastet snapped. She strode along the soft damp verge, creating more holes with her spiked high heels, then dropped a tooth in each.
    “How many have you got?”
    “Thirty-two. So I’m going to need thirty-two drops of blood.”
    “That’s very nearly an armful!”
    When she had planted all the teeth, Bastet returned to her car and watched Quetzalcoatl move reluctantly from tooth to tooth, feeding each one a single drop of blood from his index finger. Halfway down the line, he stopped and changed hands, puncturing a hole in his left index finger with his teeth. When he was finished, thirty-two sizzling, sparking fireworks buzzed in an almost straight line along the side of the road. He stood for a moment, sucking his index fingers, then shoved both hands in his pockets and hurried over to the gleaming black car.
    “Now what?” he asked.
    “Give it a few minutes. Let nature take its course.” She smiled. “These are Drakon’s teeth. They grow the Spartoi, the Drakon Warriors. They are earth warriors, and like many newborns, they are programmed to obey the first person they see when they emerge from the ground.” Bastet smiled, teeth white in