01_-_The_Alchemyst

her instincts—or maybe the Witch’s imparted knowledge—took over. She
deliberately allowed her anger to surge into her aura. Abruptly, the air was
filled with the richness of creamy vanilla as Sophie’s aura blazed pure
silver. Bringing the palm of her right hand up to her face, she blew into her
cupped fingers, then tossed the captured breath into the middle of the dead. A
six-foot-tall whirlwind, a miniature twister, appeared, growing up out of the
ground. It sucked the dead nearest to it into its core, grinding and shattering
the bones, then spitting out the splintered remains. Sophie threw a second and
then a third ball of air. The three twisters danced and moved among the
skeletons and mummies, cutting a swath of destruction through them. She
found she could direct the twisters by simply looking in a particular
direction, and they would obediently drift that way.
Suddenly, Dee’s voice echoed out of the fog. “Do you like my army,
Nicholas?” The fog flattened the sound, making it impossible to locate. “The
last time I was in Ojai—oh, over a hundred years ago—I discovered a
marvelous little graveyard just below the Three Sisters Peaks. The town it
was built alongside is long gone, but the graves and their contents remain.”
Flamel was fighting frantically as fists punched, fingernails scratched,
feet kicked. There was no real strength to the skeletons’ blows or the
mummies’ slaps, but what they lacked in force they made up for in numbers.
There were simply too many of them. There was a bruise beginning to darken
beneath his eye and a long scratch on the back of his hand. Scatty moved
around Sophie, defending her while she controlled the whirlwinds.
“I don’t know how long that graveyard was in use. A couple of hundred
years, certainly. I’ve no idea how many corpses it holds. Hundreds, maybe
even thousands. And, Nicholas, I’ve called them all.”
“Where is he?” Flamel said through gritted teeth. “He’s got to be close
—very close—to be able to control this number of corpses. I need to know
where he is to do anything.”
Sophie felt a wave of exhaustion wash over her, and suddenly, one of
the twisters wobbled and then vanished. The two that remained were
weaving from side to side as Sophie’s physical strength ebbed. Another died,
and the one that remained was rapidly losing power. This exhaustion was the