Michael Scott - The Alchemyst

Eggs.

Foul and stinking he recognized the sulfurous odor of rotten eggs. Itblanketed the clear odor of mint and it was disgusting. He could feel thestench coating his tongue and lips, and his scalp began to itch as ifsomething were crawling through it. Josh ran his fingers through his shaggyblond hair and shuddered. The drains must be backing up.

Leaving the earbuds dangling over his shoulders, he checked the book list inhis hand, then looked at the shelves again: The Complete Works of CharlesDickens, twenty-seven volumes, red leather binding. Now where was he going tofind that?

Josh had been working in the bookshop for nearly two months and still didn thave the faintest idea where anything was. There was no filing system orrather, there was a system, but it was known only to Nick and Perry Fleming,the owners of The Small Book Shop. Nick or his wife could put their hands onany book in either the shop upstairs or the cellar in a matter of minutes.

A wave of peppermint, immediately followed by rotten eggs, filled the airagain; Josh coughed and felt his eyes water. This was impossible! Stuffingthe book list into one pocket of his jeans and the headphones into the other,he maneuvered his way through the piled books and stacks of boxes, headingfor the stairs. He couldn t spend another minute down there with the smell.He rubbed the heels of his palms against his eyes, which were now stingingfuriously. Grabbing the stair rail, he pulled himself up. He needed a breathof fresh air or he was going to throw up but, strangely, the closer he cameto the top of the stairs, the stronger the odors became.

He popped his head out of the cellar door and looked around.

And in that instant, Josh Newman realized that the world would never be thesame again.

Josh peered over the edge of the cellar, eyes watering with the stink ofsulfur and mint. His first impression was that the usually quiet shop wascrowded: four men facing Nick Fleming, the owner, three of them huge andhulking, one smaller and sinister-looking. Josh immediately guessed that theshop was being robbed.

His boss, Nick Fleming, stood in the middle of the bookshop, facing theothers. He was a rather ordinary-looking man. Average height and build, withno real distinguishing features, except for his eyes, which were so pale thatthey were almost completely colorless. His black hair was cropped close tohis skull and he always seemed to have stubble on his chin, as if he hadn tshaved for a couple of days. He was dressed as usual in simple black jeans, aloose black T-shirt advertising a concert that had taken place twenty-fiveyears earlier and a pair of battered cowboy boots. There was a cheap digitalwatch on his left wrist and a heavy silver-link bracelet on his right,alongside two tatty multicolored friendship bracelets.

Facing him was a small gray man in a smart suit.

Josh realized that they were not speaking and yet something was going onbetween them. Both men were standing still, their arms close to their bodies,elbows tucked in, open palms turned upward. Nick was in the center of theshop, while the gray man was standing close to the door, his threeblack-coated companions around him. Strangely, both men s fingers weremoving, twitching, dancing, as if they were typing furiously, thumb brushingagainst forefinger, little finger touching thumb, index and little fingerextended. Tendrils and wisps of green mist gathered in Fleming s palms, thencurled in ornate patterns and drifted onto the floor, where they writhed likeserpents. Foul, yellow-tinged smoke coiled and dripped from the gray man sgloved hands, spattering onto the wooden floor like dirty liquid.

The stench rolled off the smoke, thickening the atmosphere with the scent ofpeppermint and sulfur. Josh felt his stomach twist and lurch and he swallowedhard; the rotten-egg smell was enough to make him gag.

The air between the two men shimmered with tendrils of green and yellowsmoke, and where they touched, sparks hissed and sizzled. Fleming s fingersmoved, and a long fist-thick coil of green smoke appeared in the palm of hishand. He blew on it, a quick hissing breath, and it spun up into the air,twisting and untwisting at head height between the two men. The gray man sshort, stubby fingers tapped out their own rhythm and a yellow ball of energyspun from his hands and bobbed away. It touched the coil of green smoke,which immediately wrapped around the ball. There was a sparking snap and the invisible explosion blew both men backward across the room, sending themcrashing across the tables of books. Lightbulbs popped and fluorescentsshattered, raining powdery glass onto the floor. Two of the windows explodedoutward, while another dozen of the small square panes shattered andspiderwebbed.

Nick Fleming tumbled to the floor, close to the opening to the cellar, almostlanding on top of Josh, who was standing frozen on the steps, wide-eyed withshock and horror. As Nick clambered to his feet, he pushed Josh back down thestairs. Stay down, whatever happens, stay down, he hissed, his Englishtouched with an indefinable accent. He straightened as he turned and Josh saw him turn his right palm upward, bring it close to his face and blow into it.Then he made a throwing motion toward the center of the room, as if he werelobbing a ball.

Josh craned his neck to follow the movement. But there was nothing to see andthen it was as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. Books were suddenly ripped from the nearby shelves, drawn into an untidy heap in thecenter of the floor; framed prints were dragged from the walls; a heavywoolen rug curled upward and was sucked into the center of the room.

Then the heap exploded.

Two of the big men in black overcoats caught the full force of the explosion.Josh watched as books, some heavy and hard, others soft and sharp, flewaround them like angry birds. He winced in sympathy as one man took the fullforce of a dictionary in the face. It knocked away his hat andsunglasses revealing dead-looking, muddy, gray skin and eyes like polishedblack stones. A shelf of romance novels battered against his companion sface, snapping the cheap sunglasses in two. Josh discovered that he, too, hadeyes that looked like stones.

And he suddenly realized that they were stones.

He was turning to Nick Fleming, a question forming on his lips, when his bossglanced at him. Stay down, he commanded. He s brought Golems. Flemingducked as the gray man sent three long spearlike blades of yellow energyacross the room. They sliced through bookshelves and stabbed into the woodenfloor. Everything they touched immediately started to rot and putrefy.Leather bindings snapped and cracked, paper blackened, wooden floorboards andshelves turned dry and powdery.

Fleming tossed another invisible ball into the corner of the room. JoshNewman followed the motion of his boss s arm. As the unseen ball sailed through the air, a shaft of sunlight caught it, and for an instant, he saw itglow green and faceted, like an emerald globe. Then it moved out of thesunlight and vanished again. This time when it hit the floor, the effect waseven more dramatic. There was no sound, but the entire building shook. Tablesof cheap paperbacks dissolved into matchwood, and slivers of paper filled theair with bizarre confetti. Two of the men in black the Golems were slammed back against the shelves, bringing books tumbling down on top of them, whilea third the biggest was pushed so hard against the door that he was propelledout onto the street.

And in the silence that followed came the sound of gloved hands clapping.

You have perfected that technique, I see, Nicholas. The gray man spokeEnglish with a curious lilt.

I ve been practicing, John, Nick Fleming said, sliding toward the opencellar door, shoving Josh Newman farther down the stairs. I knew you wouldcatch up with me sooner or later.