01_-_The_Alchemyst

Sophie leaned forward and kissed the old woman on the cheek, then she
turned and hurried down the length of the shop. “We have to go,” she said
breathlessly, “we have to get away from here.” She had no idea what lay
outside, but her newfound knowledge enabled her imagination to populate the
fog with any number of monstrous creatures.
“And close the door behind you,” the Witch called out.
And at that moment all the lights flickered and died. Ojai was plunged
into darkness.
The bell jangled as the trio stepped out into the now-deserted street.
The fog had become so thick that drivers had been forced to pull off the road
and there was no longer traffic moving on the main street. An air of unnatural
silence had fallen. Flamel turned to Sophie. “Can you pinpoint Josh?”
“He said he’d wait for us in the park.” She squinted, trying to penetrate
the fog, but it was so thick that she could barely see a foot in front of her
face. With Flamel and Scatty on either side of her, she stepped off the
sidewalk and made her way to the middle of the empty road. “Josh?” The fog
swallowed her words, muffling them to little more than a whisper. “Josh,”
she called again.
There was no response.
A sudden thought struck her and she flung out her right hand, fingers
splayed. A puff of air curled from her hand, but did nothing to the fog except
make it swirl and dance. She tried again, and an icy gale whipped across the
street, cutting a neat corridor through the fog, catching the rear wing of an
abandoned car in the middle of the road, leaving a ragged indentation in the
metal. “Whoops. I guess I have to practice,” she muttered.
A shape stepped into the opening in the fog, and then a second and a
third. And none of them were alive.
Closest to Sophie, Flamel and Scatty was a complete skeleton, standing
tall and straight, wearing the ragged remains of the blue uniform coat of a
U.S. cavalry officer. It carried the rusted stump of a sword in bony fingers.
When it turned its head toward them, the bones at the base of its skull popped
and cracked.