A/N—I don't own this. The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel belongs to Michael Scott. All I own is my writing style, any OCs, and my pathetic plots.

Summary: "The dark streets of London were haunted...haunted by pale, shaven-headed figures that smelled of carrion and death...haunted by unseen hands that yanked people off the streets of central London...haunted by the muffled cries of the victims that never emerged...never came back...were never found. At least not alive."

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willshakespeare-immortalbard

*Prologue*

The dark streets of London were haunted.

The rumor started in the darkest, filthiest alleys, where it sped along the dirty ground with all the speed of the plague that, so many years ago, had ravaged farm, town, and city. First spoken in hushed whispers by the grubby tramps that formed the majority of central London's alleys, it wormed its way out into the streets, where it clung to the tires of the cars, where it slunk into cracks in the windows, and was then carried into the households of rich and poor. There it was dismissed as superstition, yet somehow that didn't stop the incredulous from crossing themselves and avoiding the alleys even in broad daylight.

Because—superstition or not—the fact went unchanged. Young and old, male and female: all were disappearing. Missing persons were reported, but never found. Alleys were searched, but results never came of it. Mob after mob was arrested, yet still people vanished. It wasn't long before the only answer people could find was the one that had first appeared.

London was haunted. Haunted by pale, shaven-headed figures that smelled of carrion and death, and vanished into the night before anyone came close enough to label them human or specter; haunted by unseen hands that yanked people off the streets of central London, under the very noses of the police; haunted by the muffled cries of the victims that never emerged. The victims that never came back. The victims that were never found.

At least not alive.

On the night of June 7th, at half-past eleven, the weather was brutal. Rain lashed at windows and poured down gutters, pooling where it could not drain. The wind screamed, and the people, huddled in their houses, guessed that more than one of those screams actually issued from an alley somewhere, but no one dared to look. Trees bent beneath the wind, leaves falling in green waterfalls to the sidewalk even though it was June. They blew down the street like a charging army. Branches moaned, and the muddy puddles of water seemed to gurgle like a hungry monster.

A last light flickered off in the one shop on the block still open. Outside the car repair shop, the cars themselves were little more than shadows, and to the over imaginative, they might have been creatures, lurking, waiting.

The door to the shop slammed, pushing the slight figure down the steps. A key clattered to the ground, landing on the wet sidewalk. A curse, uttered in a sharp English accent, followed the metallic clang. The figure stooped, retrieved the key, and quickly locked the door. Hurrying down the steps, almost falling on the slippery ground, they pulled a cell phone from their pocket and put it to their ear. Shouting above the wind and rain, they spoke into the phone for about a minute. The wind washed their words away. A brief look of dismay crossed the features of the person, and they dialed again. The second time, they closed the phone, putting it back into their pocket.

The lone figure steeled itself against the weather and, casting a last frightened, skittish look down the abandoned street, walked off toward the suburbs.

"Heard about all those abductions? Frankly, I'm surprised you still have to guts to drive this thing."

The tall, dark driver only nodded in answer to his passenger's idle chatter. Apparently he was visiting, as he hadn't accompanied the conversation with the usual gesture.

"I mean—whoa!"

The wind moaned loudly, shrieking like a banshee, and the passenger gave an exclamation of surprise. No one noticed the harsh ringing of a cell phone, and the eerie glow of a lit screen went unseen in the sudden flash of lightning. By the time the wave of weather had ceased, all was dark and quiet again.

The quiet figure walked faster as they entered the more disreputable part of London. The glances that, until then, they had occasionally tossed over their shoulder became more frequent, and their air became considerably more nervous. The clock had long since struck a quarter till, and the weather, instead of abating, had grown worse.

11: 59...the second hand ticked closer and closer towards 12.

A kind of animalistic breathing sounded behind the figure. They spun, searching the night. Pale blue eyes widened as they beheld something emerge from the darkness. Cold hands grabbed at them, and with a muffled shriek of fear, pain, and surprise, the figure vanished.

Big Ben struck midnight.