01_-_The_Alchemyst

her three guises, only the eyes—butter-colored and hateful—remaining the
same as she glared at him.
“Talk to me,” Dee shouted, “I command you. Why did Flamel come
here?”
Hekate’s voice was a bubbling, watery snap. “To escape you.”
“Tell me about the human children.”
The images that appeared on the sword blade were surprisingly
detailed. They were all from Hekate’s perspective. They showed Flamel
arriving with the twins, showed the two children sitting, fearful and pale, in
the battered and scratched car.
“Flamel believes they are the twins of legend mentioned in the
Codex.”
The Morrigan and Bastet crowded closer, ignoring the rapidly
encroaching nothingness. In the west, there were no longer any stars in the
heavens, the moon was gone and huge portions of the sky had completely
vanished, leaving just blackness in its wake.
“Are they?” Dee demanded.
The next image on the sword showed the twins’ auras flaring silver and
gold.
“Moon and sun,” Dee murmured. He didn’t know whether to be
horrified or elated. His suspicions were confirmed. From the first moment
he’d seen them together, he’d started to wonder if the teens were, in fact,
twins.
“Are these the twins foretold in legend?” he demanded again.
Bastet brought her massive head down next to Dee’s. Her foot-long
whiskers tickled his face, but he didn’t risk brushing them away, not with her
teeth so close. She smelled of wet cat and frankincense; Dee felt a sneeze
building at the back of his nose. The Cat Goddess reached out for the blade,
but Dee caught her hand in his. It was like grasping a lion’s paw, and her
retracted claws suddenly appeared dangerously close to his fingers. “Please
don’t touch the blade; this is a delicate spell. There is time for perhaps one