The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel)

club struck the immortal hard in the center of the chest, and Niten knew instantly that ribs had cracked. The force of the blow sent him spinning, and he tumbled to the ground on the far side of the bridge.
    The Spartoi ignored the fallen immortal. He scooped up the blue turtle and popped it into his mouth. “Green tea,” he said in a raspy whisper. “My favorite.”
    Niten rolled to his feet, wincing at the pain in his chest. He breathed deeply, evaluating his wounds. Two ribs, maybe three, were broken, maybe the same number cracked. He dropped into a defensive pose and moved back toward the creature.
    “You insult me, immortal,” the Spartoi said. “You look at me and see a brute creature and assume that your crude trap will ensnare me.”
    Niten was suddenly conscious that there were other shapes in the gloom. The Spartoi had crept up on him and were standing, watching. He knew then that he had made a critical mistake: he had underestimated the enemy.
    The Spartoi stood on its hind legs and moved toward Niten, shield and club weaving together in a mesmerizing pattern. The rest of the creatures closed in to form a circle around them. “In this world, are you honored as a great warrior?”
    “I am Miyamoto Musashi. In these times I am called Niten and am unknown, but the man I once was is still honored.”
    “You must consider yourself a brave warrior to stand here alone against us.”
    “I consider this necessary.”
    “You will die,” the creature croaked.
    “Everyone—everything—dies,” Niten said as he edged closer to the Spartoi. “And when I am gone there will be many more to stand against you.”
    “Many will fall.”
    Niten attacked as the creature was speaking. Ignoring the pain in his chest, he cut and slashed. The first move was a feint to draw the creature’s shield up; the second was designed to take its head off.
    The Spartoi blocked the blow with its club, and upon impact, Niten’s unbreakable katana broke. Three-quarters of the blade went pinging off into the night. The edge of the Spartoi’s round shield swung around to catch the immortal on the left arm. It went completely numb from shoulder to fingertip, and his short sword clattered to the ground.
    “We are the Spartoi. Thirty-two in number. Always thirty-two. And we have fought better men than you, immortal. We are infinitely faster than you. I look at you and it is as if you are moving like a snail. I can see your muscles tense long before they move into action. You think you are silent, but your every breath is a rasping roar and you stomp around like an elephant in grass.”
    Niten’s hand moved and the ragged end of the broken katana caught the crocodile in the center of the chest. Eyes wide, mouth gaping in surprise, it staggered back into the fog. “You talk too much,” Niten whispered.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
    VIRGINIA DARE MOVED down the darkened alley away from Dee, shredding the palm-leaf wrapping as she walked. Nestling in her hands was a flat rectangle of emerald stone. She felt a raw energy trembling through the green slab and recognized the feeling instantly: her flute exuded the same shivering when she used it.
    The emerald tablet was about four inches across and eight inches long. She turned it over in her hands: both sides were covered in etchings, pictographs that vaguely resembled some of the ancient human writings from the Indus Valley. Wisps of Virginia’s pale green aura leaked from her fingers across the tablet, and the scent of sage filled the shadowed alleyway. Virginia caught her breath, watching as the writing flowed over the stone, forming and re-forming, the pictures coming briefly alive: tiny ants crawling, fish swimming, birds flapping, sun wheels spinning.
    She had not seen writing like this in a very long time.
    The pictographs shivered, then faded to nothing, leaving just a single string of arcane symbols in the center of the tablet. Then they shifted, crawled and formed a single word in English:
CROATOAN
.
    Virginia Dare collapsed against the wall as if she had been struck. Then she slowly slid to the ground.
    CROATOAN
.
    She had been a child, no more than twenty-four or thirty months old, when she had watched her father carve that word into a wooden fence post outside their home in Roanoke.
    CROATOAN
.
    Silently, her lips formed the word. Those letters, that single word, were the first she had ever seen. That word was the first she’d known. It was the secret she carried deep in her