The Warlock (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #5) Read Online Free Page A

Shadowrealm. Occasionally it leaked from one world into the other. It was another sign that he was close to the edge of his Shadowrealm.
    Vaguely human shapes suddenly appeared out of the fog, shadows in the gloom lining the last stretch of roadway. “My children,” the Elder breathed. These were the remnants of the First People. In a distant age, in the Nameless City on the edge of the world, the Elder’s blazing aura had injected a spark into inert clay and brought it to shambling life. The clay folk had become the First People: monstrous in appearance, but not monsters—unlike anything the world had ever seen. Created from mud, ill-shaped, with bald heads too large for narrow necks and blank unfinished faces with just the vaguest impressions where a mouth or eyes would normally be, they had trailed Prometheus across the Shadowrealms,inspiring myths, legends and terror in their wake. They had survived millennia. Now only a handful of the creatures remained, roaming Prometheus’s Shadowrealm in search of the life and the light of auras. The sound of the car’s engine had drawn them, and now, like flowers tracking the sun, their faces turned toward the rich stew of auras in the car—especially the familiar odor of aniseed, the source of their life eternal.
    But without the Elder’s tremendous will keeping the world and its inhabitants alive, their mud skin cracked and chunks began to break away, disintegrating to dust before hitting the ground. Watching the last of the First People dissolving into nothingness, Prometheus wept, bloodred tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. “Forgive me,” he whispered in the ancient language of Danu Talis.
    One of the mud creatures stepped onto the road directly behind the car and raised an unnaturally long arm in what might have been a salute or a farewell. The Elder tilted the rearview mirror to watch the figure. He had never given them names, but he knew this one by the scarred pattern across his chest. This was one of the first creatures his aura had brought to life in the desolate Earthlord city. Black nothingness blossomed behind the figure, and brown mud turned the color of salt as the creature spilled away into oblivion. “Forgive me,” Prometheus begged once more, but by then the last of the First Race, the race he had brought to unnatural life, were gone, all traces of their existence wiped away.
    The interior of the car blossomed with the Elder’s aura,and tiny sparking flames danced across every metal surface. His burning fingertips left deep impressions in the rearview mirror as he tilted it down to look at the two figures in the back of the car. “Scathach was right,” he snarled. “She always said that death and destruction followed Nicholas Flamel.”

alk—don’t run,” Niten commanded. Iron-hard fingers bit into Sophie’s shoulder and pulled her to a halt.
    She shook herself free. “We’ve got to—”
    “We have to avoid attracting attention,” the slender Japanese man said evenly. “Hide the whip under your coat.”
    Sophie Newman hadn’t realized she was still holding Perenelle’s silver and black leather whip in her right hand. Coiling it tightly, she shoved it under her left arm.
    “Look around you,” Niten continued. “What do you see?”
    Sophie turned. They were standing at the bottom of Telegraph Hill. An oily black plume of smoke, shot through with dancing flames, rose high into the heavens. Sirens and car horns blared while all around them people struggled to look at the fire blazing through one of the elegant buildings just below Coit Tower.
    “I see fire … smoke.…”
    There was a dull thump from inside the building and shards of glass and pieces of masonry cascaded across the red and white Volkswagen Microbus parked outside. All the windows on the right side of the van shattered to powder. A shadow of dismay flickered over Niten’s normally impassive face. “Look at the people,” he said. “A warrior needs to be aware