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the scrying spell, which would have allowed him to hear, to taste and—this was a terrifying thought—to smell everything the rat encountered.
    It was like looking at a badly tuned black-and-white television. The image shifted, pitched and lurched with the rat’s every movement. The rat could go from running horizontally on the ground, to running vertically up a wall, then upside-down across a rope, all within a matter of seconds.
    Then the image stabilized.
    Directly in front of Dee, outlined in purple-tinged gray and glowing in grayish black, were the two humans he had seen in the bookshop. A boy and a girl—in their midteens, perhaps—and similar enough in appearance for them to be related. A sudden thought struck him hard enough to break his concentration: brother and sister, possibly…or could they be something else? Surely not!
    He looked back into the scrying dish and concentrated with his full will, forcing the rat he was controlling to stand absolutely still. Dee focused on the young man and woman, trying to decide if one was older than the other, but the rat’s vision was too clouded and distorted for him to be sure.
    But if they
were
the same age…that meant they were twins. That was curious. He looked at them again and then shook his head: they were humans. Dismissing the thought, he unleashed a single command that rippled through every rat within a half-mile radius of the twins’ position. “Destroy them. Destroy them utterly.”
    The gathering crows took to the air, cawing raucously, as if applauding.
             
    Josh watched openmouthed as the huge rat leapt from the roof opposite, effortlessly bridging the six-foot space. Its mouth was wide and its teeth were wickedly pointed. He managed a brief “Hey!” and jerked away from the window…just as the rat hit the glass with a furry, wet thump. It slid down to the alley one floor below, where it staggered around in stunned surprise.
    Josh grabbed Sophie’s hand, and dragged her out of the kitchen and onto the balcony. “We’ve got a problem,” he shouted. And stopped.
    Below them, three huge Golems, trailing flaking dried mud, were pushing their way through the wide-open alley door. And behind them, in a long sinuous line, came the rats.

CHAPTER NINE
    T he three Golems moved stiffly into the corridor, spotted the open door at the far end of the hallway and moved toward it. The finger-length metal darts hissed from the walls and stuck deeply into their hardened mud skin, but didn’t even slow the creatures down.
    The half-moon blades close to the floor were a different matter altogether. The blades clicked out of their concealed sheaths in the walls and sliced into the ankles of the clay men. The first creature crashed to the floor, hitting it with the sound of wet mud. The second tottered on one foot before it slowly toppled forward, hit the wall and slid down, leaving a muddy smear in its wake. The semicircular blades click-clacked again, slicing the creatures completely in two, and then the Golems abruptly reverted to their muddy origin. Thick globules of mud spattered everywhere.
    The third Golem, the largest of the creatures, stopped. Its black stone eyes moved dully over the remains of its two companions, and then it turned and punched a huge fist directly into the wall, first to the right, then to the left. A whole section of the wall on the left-hand side gave way, revealing the space beyond. The Golem stepped into the dojo and looked around, black eyes still and unmoving.
    The rats meanwhile raced toward the open door at the end of the corridor. Most of them survived the scything blades….
             
    In the speeding limousine, Dr. John Dee released his control of the rats, and now concentrated his attention on the surviving Golem. Controlling the artificial creature was much easier. Golems were mindless beings, created of mud mixed with stones or gravel to give their flesh consistency, and brought to life by a simple