01_-_The_Alchemyst

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The cats of San Francisco left the city in the dead of night.
Singly and in pairs, feral and scarred street cats, plump, smooth-coated
house cats, all shapes, every size, purebred and mixed, long-haired and
shorthaired, they moved through the shadows in a silent feline wave. They
surged across the bridges, boiled through alleys, raced through the tunnels
beneath the streets, leapt across roofs.
All heading north.
They darted past shocked and terrified late-night revelers, skirted rats
and mice without stopping to feed, ignored birds’ nests. And although they
moved in complete silence, their passage was marked by an extraordinary
sound.
That night the city of San Francisco echoed with the primeval howls of
a hundred thousand dogs.
Dr. John Dee was unhappy.
And just a little bit frightened. It was all very well to talk about
attacking Hekate in her own Shadowrealm, but it was another thing entirely
to sit at the entrance to her invisible kingdom and watch the cats and birds
arrive, called by their respective mistresses, Bastet and the Morrigan. What
could those small creatures do against the ancient magic of Hekate of the
Elder Race?
Dee sat in a huge black Hummer alongside Senuhet, the man who acted
as Bastet’s servant. Neither of them had spoken during the short flight in
Dee’s private jet from L.A. to San Francisco earlier, though there were a