The Necromancer by Michael Scott Page A

you.”
    Virginia seemed surprised by the statement. She took a moment before answering. “No, you did not,” she finally admitted.
    “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 café 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.”

Secrets of the Immortal 4 - The Necromancer

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    T
    
    
he 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