01_-_The_Alchemyst

thousand questions Dee wanted to ask the older man. Over the years he had
come to recognize that the servants of the Dark Elders—like himself—did
not like to be questioned.
They had reached the entrance to Hekate’s Shadowrealm close to two
o’clock, and were in time to see the first of the Morrigan’s creatures arriving.
The birds swooped in from the north and east in long, dark flocks, the only
sound the snapping of their wings, and settled in the trees in Mill Valley,
gathering so thickly that some of the branches cracked beneath the strain.
Over the next few hours, the cats arrived.
They poured out of the darkness in a never-ending stream of fur, and
then stopped—all facing the hidden opening to the Shadowrealm. Dee looked
out his car window: he couldn’t see the ground. It was covered, as far as he
could see in every direction, with cats.
Finally, just as the eastern horizon began to pale with salmon-colored
light, Senuhet lifted a small black statue from a bag he wore around his neck
and placed it on the dashboard. It was a beautifully carved Egyptian cat no
bigger than his little finger. “It is time,” he said softly.
The eyes of the black statue glowed red.
“She is coming,” Senuhet said.
“Why didn’t we attack earlier, when Hekate slept?” Dee asked. Despite
several hundred years of study about the Dark Elders, he realized that, in
truth, he knew very little. But that gave him some comfort, because he
realized that they knew equally little about humans.
Senuhet waved his hand, gesturing to the gathered birds and cats. “We
needed our allies,” he said shortly.
Dee nodded. He guessed that Bastet was even now moving through the
various Shadowrealms that bordered the human world. The Elder Race’s
aversion to iron meant that certain modern conveniences—like cars and
planes—were off limits to them. His thin lips curled in a humorless smile;
that was why they needed people like him and Senuhet to act as their agents.