The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel)

figures on the melting strip of ice in the middle of San Francisco Bay.

CHAPTER THIRTY
    THE NEREID WAS huge.
    Unlike her two green-haired companions, she was bald, and a long, ancient white scar and puckered indentations ran across one side of her face, leaving one eye a milky globe. Mouth open in a gargling scream, the scarred monster rose on her tail, arm raised, and jabbed a wickedly spiked stone trident directly toward Perenelle.
    The Sorceress jerked backward and her feet went out from under her. She crashed onto the ice, which immediately split in two. Salt water poured in.
    Nicholas flung a handful of green aura into the creature’s face. The seawater covering the Nereid froze in crackled sheets from her head, across her chest and stomach and down to her tail, turning her into a solid block of ice. The Alchemyst wrenched the trident out of the creature’s claws a moment before the weight of the ice flipped her, head over tail, dragging her beneath the choppy waves. He jabbed the trident at a Nereid scrabbling to climb onto the ice. It floundered back into the water, tail thrashing.
    Still lying on her back, Perenelle kicked out at the third creature, which was trying to drag her into the water. She sprayed slivers of ice into the Nereid’s eyes but it continued to crawl out of the sea, long nails digging into the ice path.
    And then Nicholas splashed it with his aura. The Nereid instantly turned to a block of ice, but the weight of the creature snapped the path in two again, leaving Perenelle on a tiny rectangular section of fast-melting ice.
    And the waters around them were coming alive with Nereids.
    Pressing his hand to the scarab around his neck, Nicholas drew upon his reserves of strength. His splayed fingers sent thick streamers of green aura across the sea. Instantly a crystalline emerald carpet coated the surface of the water, trapping the Nereids beneath. They howled and hammered on the frozen surface.
    Perenelle leapt off her tiny fragment of ice just before it melted. She landed on the green carpet and slid across the frozen sea. Nicholas stretched out the trident and she caught it, almost pulling him to the ground.
    The frozen green carpet shattered and the sea around them boiled with the savage mermaids, waves frothing and foaming with green hair and fish tails.
    The Sorceress pointed off to the left. “The island is this way.” She snatched the spear from her husband’s hand and swung it at a razor-toothed Nereid that launched itself out of the water. The creature squealed as the stone blades sheared off a hank of green hair; then it hit the ice on its back and spun back into the waves. Perenelle jabbed at another. The creature flipped head over tail in an attempt to get away from the weapon, but Perenelle caught it a glancing blow across the side of the head. The Sorceress swung the trident again. It hummed with raw power, leaving the stench of fish in the air behind it, and she suddenly remembered where she’d seen it before: in the tunnels beneath Alcatraz in the hands of the Old Man of the Sea.
    “This is Nereus’s trident,” she called to Nicholas. “I wonder how he came to lose it.”
    “Not voluntarily, I’ll wager.” Her husband grunted. With his hand pressed to the scarab on his chest, he focused on creating another length of the ice bridge, but he was weakening fast. The ice was thinner, cracking even as they ran across it. “I can’t do this much longer.”
    “We’re nearly there,” Perenelle shouted over the thrashing creatures in the sea around them. Although she was trying to save the remainder of her aura, she knew they had little choice if they were to survive. She recalled a little spell she’d learned from Saint-Germain—something effective that wouldn’t take too much power. Thick liquid leaked from her palms and soaked into the gray stone trident, turning it a deep red, then a dark, almost blackish blue. The Sorceress plunged the trident into the waves and the color leaked into the water like oil. She churned the spear, sending twists of ink out into the sea.
“Ignis,”
she whispered.
    The sea popped alight, pale blue-red flames dancing across the surface of the water, illuminating a scattering of seaweed-covered rocks. Directly above the rocks was a low rust-streaked wall topped by a metal fence. Looming over the fence, surrounded by trees and bristling cacti, was a huge flaking wooden sign:
    WARNING
    PERSONS PROCURING OR
    CONCEALING ESCAPE