01_-_The_Alchemyst

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Stay in the car,” Nicholas Flamel directed, opening the door and
stepping outside onto the short-cropped grass.
Scatty folded her arms over her chest and glared out through the cracked
windshield. “Fine by me.”
Flamel ignored her jibe and slammed the door before she could say
anything else. Taking a deep breath, he attempted to compose himself as he
stepped toward the tall, elegant woman surrounded by the tall leafless trunks
of sequoia trees.
The undergrowth rustled and one of the enormous Torc Allta appeared
directly in front of the Alchemyst, its massive head level with his chest.
Flamel stopped and bowed to the creature, greeting it in a language that had
not been designed for human tongues. Abruptly, the boars were everywhere,
ten of them, eyes bright and intelligent, the coarse red hair on their backs and
shoulders bristling in the late-afternoon light, long strings of ropey saliva
dribbling from their ornately carved tusks.
Flamel took care to bow to each one in turn. “I did not think there were
any of the Torc Allta clan left in the Americas,” he said to no one in
particular, dropping back into English.
Hekate smiled, the merest movement of her lips. “Ah, Nicholas, you of
all people should know that when we are gone, when the Elder Race is no
more, when even the humani have gone from this earth, then the Allta clans
will reclaim it for themselves. Remember, this world belonged to the Were
clans first.” Hekate spoke in a deep, almost masculine voice, touched with an
accent that had all the hissing sibilants of Greece and the liquid consonants of
Persia.