Michael Scott - The Necromancer

“Are you not in the least bit curious?” he asked.

“John, you know I have been curious all my life.”

Dee smiled. “What do you want most in the world?”

A look of terrible loss flickered across Virginia Dare’s face and her eyes clouded. “Even you cannot give me what I most desire.”

The Magician bowed slightly. He had known Virginia Dare for over four hundred years. There had been a time when they had talked seriously of marriage, but even he admitted that he knew little about this mysterious immortal human.

“Can you offer me a Shadowrealm?” she asked lightly.

“I think I can do one better than that. I might be able to offer you the world.”

Virginia Dare stopped in the middle of Covent Garden. “Which world?”

“This one.”

The young-looking woman slipped her arm through Dee’s and maneuvered him toward a cafe on the opposite side of the square. “Come and buy me a cup of tea, and we can talk about this. I’ve always rather liked this world.”

But Dee froze, eyes fixed to the left.

Virginia slowly turned, nostrils flaring again. A trio of shaven-headed young men had entered the square. They were dressed in a uniform of faded, dirty T-shirts, jeans and heavy work boots. Their arms and shoulders were heavily tattooed, and one, the shortest of the three, had an intricate red and black spiral tattoo curling up around his throat and across the top of his head.

“Cucubuths,” the Magician murmured. “We just might be able to slip away without them noticing…” Dee paused as one of the three men turned to look at the couple. “Or then again, we might not,” he added with a sigh.

Virginia Dare took one step backward and then another, leaving him standing alone. “You’re on your own, Doctor.”

“I see you haven’t changed, Virginia,” he muttered.

“That’s how I’ve survived for so long. I never get involved. I never take sides.”

“Maybe you should.”

The two huge ravens, Huginn and Muninn, arrived over London. Although they looked like birds, these were creatures almost as old as the race of humani and were neither living nor dead, but something caught in between. Practically immortal, they possessed the power of human speech and had been created by the three-faced goddess, Hekate, as a gift to the one-eyed Elder, Odin.

But now Hekate was no more-for the first time in generations an Elder had been slain-and her Shadowrealm and the adjoining realms of Asgard and Niflheim destroyed.

And Dee was to blame.

Many Elders had called for the Magician’s death, but in the days immediately following the destruction of the Yggdrasill and the Shadowrealms, Dee’s powerful Elder masters had protected him. Following the carnage in Paris and the escape of the Alchemyst and the twins from England, however, that protection had been revoked. When Dee was declared utlaga, he became fair game for all.

Odin had sworn to wreak terrible vengeance on Dee, whom he blamed for the death of Hekate, the woman he had once loved. The one-eyed Elder knew that his foul rival Hel had escaped the destruction of her own Shadowrealm, Niflheim, and was also now chasing Dee, but Odin was determined to find and deal with the Magician first. So he sent his messengers into the humani Shadowrealm.

The birds scoured the city with eyes that saw beyond the physical, alert for any unusual activity. They noted and reported back to the Elder the myriad creatures that now moved through the city’s busy streets. Floating over the smoldering ruins of a used car yard in London, drifting in the oily wind, they felt the gossamer traces of extraordinary and ancient powers. Soaring across Salisbury Plain, they circled the ancient site of Stonehenge, where the air was heavy with orange and vanilla and the ground churned to mud by a host of hooves and claws.

Then they flapped back into the city and floated lazily on currents and eddies in the air, almost too high to be seen, looping in huge circles, waiting, waiting, waiting…

And because they did not know the meaning of time, they were endlessly patient.

The three shaven-headed men closed in on Dee.

“There’s a reward for you,” the figure with the tattooed skull announced, walking right up to the doctor. Although the Magician was not tall, this man was at least an inch shorter, but broad and muscular. His lips moved, trying to mimic how the humani smiled, yet his mouth merely twisted into a savage snarl that revealed short pointed yellowed teeth. “A big reward.”

“Alive,” another added. He had taken up a position to Dee’s right.

“Though not necessarily unharmed,” the third said from the left. He was the biggest of the three, and wore a dirty green camouflage T-shirt that strained across a heavily muscled chest.

“Funny how the world turns,” the leader said. His accent was a curious mixture of North London and Eastern European. “Yesterday we were working for you, hunting the Alchemyst. Today we are hunting you.” He rubbed his hands briskly together. “For double the money, too. I think you might have been underpaying us for Flamel and the children.” The short man smiled again. “You always were cheap, Dr. Dee.”

“I prefer the term frugal,” Dee said calmly.

“Frugal. That’s a good word. I bet it means ‘cheap.’” He looked at his companions, and they both nodded.

“Cheap,” one repeated.

“Miserly,” the largest added.

“Frugal does not buy loyalty. Maybe if you’d paid us a little extra, we might have been encouraged to look the other way just now.”

“If I had paid you more, would you?” Dee wondered out loud, curiously.

“Probably not,” the creature said. “We are hunters. We usually catch what we hunt.”

The Magician’s thin lips twisted in a nasty smile. “But you failed to capture Flamel and the children yesterday,” he said.

The small man shrugged uncomfortably. “Well, yes…”

“Failed,” Dee reminded him.

The tattooed man stepped closer, lowering his voice as he glanced quickly left and right. “We tracked their scent as far as St. Marylebone Church. Then the Dearg Due turned up,” he added, a touch of horror in his voice.

Dee nodded, careful to keep his face impassive. The stink coming off the creatures was appalling-a mixture of old meat, stale clothes and unwashed bodies. The cucubuths were hunters, the children of a vampire and a Torc Madra, more beast than man, and he was guessing that at least one of the figures standing around him had a tail tucked in the back of its pants. But even the savage mercenaries were terrified of the Dearg Due, the Red Blood Suckers. “How many were there?” he asked.

“Two,” the cucubuth leader whispered. “Female,” he added with a grim nod.

Dee nodded again; the females were far deadlier than the males. “But they didn’t catch Flamel or the twins either,” he said.

“No.” The creature grinned again, showing his appalling teeth. “They were too busy chasing us. We lost them in Regent’s Park. It was a little embarrassing to be chased through the park by what looked like two schoolgirls,” he admitted. “But capturing you will more than make up for it,” he said.

“You haven’t captured me yet,” Dee murmured.

The cucubuth stepped back and spread his arms wide. “What are you going to do, Doctor? You dare not use your powers. Your aura will bring everything-and I do mean everything -that is now in London down on you. And if you do use it and manage to escape, the sulfurous stink will linger about you for hours. You’ll be easily tracked to your lair.”

The cucubuth was correct, Dee knew. If he used his aura, then every Elder, Dark Elder and immortal human in London would know his whereabouts.