01_-_The_Alchemyst

price of performing magic, she realized. But she needed to keep going for
just a little longer; she had to find her brother.
“We’ve got to get out of here.” Scathach caught Sophie and held her
upright. The skeletal dead surged forward, and Scatty beat them back with
neat, precise movements of her sword.
“Josh,” Sophie whispered tiredly. “Where’s Josh? We’ve got to find
Josh.”
The fog robbed Dee’s voice of much of its emotion, but the glee in his
tone was evident when he said, “And do you know what else I discovered?
These mountains have been luring creatures other than humans for the past
millennia. The land here is littered with bones. Hundreds of bones. And
remember, Nicholas, I am, first and foremost, a necromancer.”
The bear that loomed up out of the gray fogbank was at least eight feet
tall. And even though patches of fur remained on its skeleton, it was clear
that it had died a long time before. The snow-white bones only emphasized
its huge daggerlike claws.
Behind the bear, the skeleton of a saber-toothed tiger appeared. And
then a cougar, and another bear—smaller this time, and not quite as
decomposed.
“A word from me stops them,” Dee’s voice boomed. “I want the pages
of the Codex.”
“No,” Flamel said grimly. “Where is he? Where is he hiding?”
“Where’s my brother?” Sophie called desperately, and then screamed as
a dead hand wrapped itself in her hair. Scathach chopped it off at the wrist,
but it still hung tangled in her hair like a bizarre hair clip. “What have you
done with my brother?”
“You brother is considering his options. Yours is not the only side in
this battle. And now, since I have the boy, all I need are the pages.”
“Never.”
The bear and the tiger charged through the crowd of bodies, brushing
them aside, trampling them in their eagerness to get to the trio. The saber-