Michael Scott - The Sorceress

Machiavelli had allowed no one to get close to him for almost half a millennium. He'd been in his early thirties when he'd married Marietta Corsini in 1502, and over the next twenty-five years they'd had six children together. But when he had become immortal, he'd been forced to "die" to conceal the truth that he would never age. The Dark Elder who had made him immortal hadn't told him at the time that such a ruse would be necessary. Leaving Marietta and the children had been one of the hardest things he'd ever done, but he'd looked out for them for the remainder of their lives. He'd also watched them age, sicken and perish: this was the dark side of the gift of immortality. When Marietta finally died, he'd attended her funeral in disguise and then visited her grave in the dead of night to pay his last respects and swear an oath that he would always honor his marriage vows and never remarry. He'd kept that promise.

Machiavelli strode down a wood-paneled corridor and pressed his palm against a bronze bust of Cesare Borgia on a small circular table. "Dell'arte della guerra," he said aloud, voice echoing in the empty hallway. There was a click and a section of the wall slid back to reveal Niccolo's private office. When he stepped into the room, the door hissed shut and recessed lights came to glowing life. He'd had a room like this-a private, secret place-in every home he'd ever lived in. This was his domain. During their life together, Marietta hadn't been allowed access to his private chambers in any of their homes, and over the centuries even Dagon had never stepped into one. In years past the room would have been accessed via secret passages and protected with spiked and bladed traps, and later with many locks and intricate hand-carved keys. Now, in the twenty-first century, it was safe within a bombproof casing and secured with palm-and voice-print technology.

The room was a perfect soundproof cube. There were no windows, and two walls were covered with books he had collected down through the centuries. Leather bindings stood beside dusty buckram and yellowed vellum were shelved side by side. Rolled parchment and stitched hide rested alongside brightly colored modern paperbacks. And all the books, in one way or another, had to do with the Elders. Absently, he straightened a four-thousand-year-old Akkadian tablet, pushing it back on top of a printout from a mythology Web site. Whereas Flamel was obsessed with preventing the Dark Elders from returning to this world and Dee was equally determined that the world return to its masters, Machiavelli focused on discovering the truth behind the enigmatic rulers of the ancient earth. One of the lessons he had learned in the court of the Medici was that power came from knowledge, so he had become determined to discover the Elders' secrets.

The wall facing the doorway was completely taken up with a series of computer screens. Machiavelli hit a button and they all lit up, each one showing a different image. There were assorted views of Paris and images from a dozen of the world's capitals, and a quartet of screens carried live national and international news from around the world. One screen, larger than the rest, showed a moving grainy gray image. Machiavelli sat down in a high-backed leather chair and stared at the screen, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

It was a live video feed from the car trailing Dee.

Machiavelli ignored the black limousine in the center of the picture and concentrated on the streets. Where was Dee going?

The Magician had told him that he was heading to the airport, where his private jet was being refueled. He was going to fly to England and resume the hunt for the Alchemyst. The corners of Machiavelli's mouth curled in a smile. Dee was clearly not heading toward the airport; he was heading back into the city. The Italian's instincts had been correct: the Magician was up to something.

Keeping one eye on the screen, Machiavelli opened his laptop, powered it on and ran his index finger through the integrated fingerprint reader. The machine completed the boot sequence. If he had used any other finger to log on, a destructive virus would have overwritten the entire hard drive.

He quickly read through the encrypted e-mails coming in from his London-based agents and spies. Another ironic smile twisted his thin lips; the news was not good. In spite of everything Dee had done, Flamel and the twins had disappeared, and the trio of Genii Cucullati the Magician had sent after them had been discovered in a side street close to the train station. They were all in a deep coma, and the Italian suspected that it would be 366 days before they awoke. It seemed the English doctor had underestimated the Alchemyst yet again.

Machiavelli sat back in the chair and put his hands together, almost in an attitude of prayer. The tips of his index fingers pressed against his lips. He had always known that the image Flamel projected-that of a bumbling, slightly absent-minded, vaguely eccentric old fool-was a smokescreen. Nicholas and Perenelle had survived everything the Dark Elders and Dee had thrown at them over the centuries by a combination of cunning, skill, arcane knowledge and a healthy dose of luck. Machiavelli believed that Flamel was intelligent, dangerous and completely ruthless.

However, whereas Nicholas was wily, even he admitted that Perenelle was far cleverer than he was. Machiavelli's smile faltered: this was the woman he had been sent to kill, the woman his own Dark Elder master had described as being infinitely more dangerous than the Alchemyst. He sighed. Killing someone as powerful as the Sorceress was not going to be easy. But he had absolutely no doubt that he could do it. He had failed once before, but that was because he'd made the same grave error Dee had just made: he had underestimated his enemy.

This time Machiavelli would be ready for the Sorceress. This time he would kill her.

But first he had to get to America. Machiavelli's fingers flew across the keys as he logged on to a travel Web site. Unlike Dee, who preferred to use his private jet, Machiavelli had decided to take a commercial flight to America. He could use one of the French government jets, but that would attract attention, and Machiavelli had always preferred to work behind the scenes.

He needed a direct flight to San Francisco. His options were limited, but there was a nonstop out of Paris at 10:15 a.m. the following morning. The flight was just over eleven hours long, but the nine-hour time difference meant that he would arrive on the West Coast at around 12:30 p.m. local time.

The Air France flight had no First Class seats so he booked l'Espace Affaires-Business Class. It was certainly appropriate. This trip was, after all, business. Machiavelli clicked forward through his purchase and chose seat 4A. It was at the back of the Business Class cabin, but when the plane landed and the door opened, he would be first off. When the e-mail confirmation popped into his in-box, he forwarded a copy of his flight details to the Dark Elders' principal agent on the West Coast of America: the immortal human Henry McCarty.

Machiavelli had researched the man thoroughly. During his brief life McCarty had been better known as William H. Bonney or Billy the Kid. Born in 1859, immortal at twenty-two years old-or dead, according to the history books. Machiavelli shook his head in wonder. It was very unusual for a human to become immortal at such an early age; most of the immortals he'd encountered through the centuries were older. Despite years of research, Machiavelli still had no idea why certain people were chosen by the Elders to receive the gift. There had to be a pattern or a reason, but he had come across kings, princes, vagabonds and thieves who had nothing in common except that they had been granted immortality-and therefore were in the employ of the Elders. Less than a handful had become immortal before they were in their forties. So, to have been granted immortality at twenty-two, Billy the Kid must be very special indeed.