01_-_The_Alchemyst

away, and she knew then that they were not going to make it. There were
simply too many of them.
“Listen,” Nicholas Flamel said suddenly.
“I don’t hear anything,” Josh said grimly.
Sophie was just about to agree with him when she heard the sound. And
she suddenly felt the hairs on her arms prickle and rise. Low and lonely, the
noise hovered just at the edge of her hearing. It was like a breeze, one
moment sounding soft and gentle, the next louder, almost angry. A peculiar
odor wafted into the car.
“What is that smell?” Josh asked.
“Smells like spicy oranges,” Sophie said, breathing deeply.
“Pomegranates,” Nicholas Flamel said.
And then the wind came.
It howled across the bay, warm and exotic, smelling of cardamom and
rosewater, lime and tarragon, and then it raced along the length of the Golden
Gate Bridge, plucking the birds off the struts, lifting them off the cars, pulling
them out of the air. Finally the pomegranate-scented wind reached the SUV.
One moment the car was surrounded by birds; the next, they were gone, and
the car was filled with the scents of the desert, of dry air and warm sand.
Sophie hit a button and the scarred and pitted window jerked down. She
craned her neck out the SUV, breathing in the richly scented air. The huge
flock of birds was being pulled high into the sky, borne aloft on the breeze.
When one escaped—one of the big Dire-Crows, Sophie thought—it was
quickly caught by a tendril of the warm breeze and pushed back into the rest
of the flock. From underneath, the mass of birds looked like a dirty cloud…
and then the cloud dispersed as the birds scattered, leaving the sky blue and
clear again.
Sophie looked back along the length of the bridge. The Golden Gate
was completely impassable; cars were pointed in every direction, and there
had been dozens of minor accidents, which blocked the lanes…and of
course, effectively prevented anyone from following them, she realized.