“Welcome to Mount Tam,” Scatty said with a flash of white teeth, “one of my favorite spots in America.” She pointed into the blanket of thick mist. “We’re about fifteen miles north of San Francisco and Alcatraz.” The Shadow settled her knapsack more comfortably on her back. “We can jog…”

“Jog!” Joan laughed. “The last thing Francis said to me was that you would probably want to jog into the city. We’re hiring a car,” she said firmly.

“It’s really not that far…,” Scatty protested, and then stopped.

Directly below them, a huge shape moved through the fog, sending it swirling and curling. “Joan…,” she began.

More figures moved, and abruptly the mist parted like a torn curtain to reveal an enormous herd of woolly mastodons grazing at the foot of the mountain. Then the Warrior spotted two saber-toothed cats lying flat in the tall grass, watching the herd intently, black-tipped tails twitching.

Joan was still looking up the mountains. She pulled her cell from her pocket and hit a speed dial. “I’ll just let Francis know we’ve arrived…” She held the phone to her ear and then checked the screen. “Oh, no signal. Scatty, how long will it take us to get to…?” The shocked expression on her friend’s face made her turn to see what she was looking at.

It took a heartbeat for Joan’s eyes to adjust to the sheer scale of the mastodon herd that was now moving slowly through the shreds of predawn mist. A suggestion of movement caught her attention and she looked up: floating silent and high on invisible thermals, a trio of giant condors soared directly overhead.

“Scathach?” Joan breathed in a horrified whisper. “Where are we?”

“Not where, but when.” The Shadow’s face turned sharp and ugly, eyes glittering green and pitiless. “Leygates. I hate them!” One of the huge cats raised its head to look in the direction of the voice and yawned, savage seven-inch-long teeth glinting. The Warrior stared it down. “We may be on Mount Tamalpais, but this is not the twenty-first century.” She indicated the mastodons, tigers and condors with a sweep of her hand. “I know what these are: they’re megafauna. And they belong to the Pleistocene Epoch.”

“How… how do we get back… to our own time?” Joan whispered, clearly upset.

“We don’t,” Scathach said grimly. “We’re trapped.”

Joan’s first thoughts were for the Sorceress. “And what about Perenelle?” She started to cry. “She’s expecting us. She’s waiting on us.”

Scatty drew Joan into her arms and held her close. “She might have a long wait,” she said grimly. “Jeanne, we’ve gone back in time maybe a million years. The Sorceress is on her own.”

“And so are we,” Joan sobbed.

“Not really.” Scatty grinned. “We’ve got one another.”

“What are we going to do?” the immortal Frenchwoman wondered, angrily brushing her tears away.