The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel)

amazing vimana of theirs,” he said quietly. “I want one. It hardly seems fair that they have a ship like that and I don’t.” Taking a deep breath, he tiptoed across the floor toward his mother. He winced with every step as tiny bones crunched and cracked beneath his feet. Before the Change, his mother had only eaten peeled fruit on crystal plates. Now she ate raw—and often live—meat, and the marble and gold floor was littered with the cast-off bones of her recent meals. The room, older than most civilizations and once beautiful, now stank of waste and rotting food.
    “When you are ruler, you can have anything you want,” Bastet answered. “You should ask them for the vimana. They’ll hardly refuse.”
    “They didn’t come alone,” he added casually.
    “Oh. Who have they brought? Anyone we know?”
    Anubis crouched before his mother, and even though she was sitting, their faces were on the same level. He’d often wondered at the quirk of fate that had made her Change into a cat while he became a dog. The Change was more pronounced with her: she had a tail, razor-sharp teeth, retractable claws and a taste for live rodents and birds.
    “It’s a couple. A girl and a boy. I don’t know them. I’ve never seen them before,” he said quietly.
    “I wonder who they are.” She turned to appraise herself in a mirror only she could see. Anubis smelled powder and the slightly sour perfume his mother preferred as she sprayed it over her fur
    “They look like humani, to be honest,” he said, coming slowly to his feet and stepping back.
    “How odd,” Bastet said mildly.
    “They’re wearing gold and silver semitransparent ceramic armor. And I think they might be twins,” he finished in a rush. He ducked as Bastet screamed and flung a perfume jar at his head. Only his extraordinarily fast reflexes saved him. “I’ll wait outside,” he called as he left the room.
    Anubis stood in the corridor, arms folded across his massive chest. Through the thick gold-plated walls, he could hear his mother rage around her room. Glass shattered. Furniture crashed. The last time she’d been in one of her rages, she’d punched a hole through a six-inch-thick solid-gold door and pulled the antique chandelier out of the ceiling. He heard the tinkle of expensive crystal, and then the door vibrated as something heavy—he guessed it was the chandelier again—shattered against the other side.
    Occasionally, animal-headed servants would appear at the end of the hallway, spot him outside Bastet’s door and slowly back away. The Elder’s rages were legendary, and deadly to anyone who got in her way.
    Anubis closed his eyes and sighed. When he ruled Danu Talis, he wondered if it would be possible—or wise, even—to think about removing his mother to one of the outer Shadowrealms and then sealing off the leygates, trapping her there. She had many allies on the council, but very few friends. He might be able to find a small group willing to assist him—maybe even the mysterious Isis and Osiris.
    Isis and Osiris were unlike any of the Elders he knew. In a council chamber where most of the Elders were showing some aspect of the Change, Isis and Osiris seemed untouched. He’d heard a rumor that they were Great Elders or maybe even Ancients, but he didn’t believe that, and he knew they couldn’t be Archons. They didn’t spend a lot of time on Danu Talis, and he could probably count on the claws of one hand the number of times he’d seen them at the council meetings over the last fifteen years.
    And now they had turned up with twins in gold and silver armor.
    Anubis was not particularly bright—his brother Aten was the brains of the family—but even he knew this was not a good sign. Everyone knew the legend of the Gold and Silver twins who had first ruled the island. Danu Talis was built around the twin symbols of sun and moon, opposite and equal. The city was even laid out like a sun and crescent moon. So for Isis and Osiris to turn up on this day with a couple in gold and silver armor could not be a coincidence.
    The big Elder’s face fixed into a grim mask. He would rule Danu Talis today—one way or another. He had an army of ten thousand anpu, and the new bull-headed Asterion hybrids encamped in the squares and streets nearby. His latest experiments in boar, bear, cat and bull hybrids were waiting in the sub-basements deep below the pyramid. He had put them in place so that when he was declared the Lord of Danu