Waywalkers: Number 1 in Series (22 page)

Scared people often shrug off their fear as fantasy, and this was exactly what Maria now did. Returning to the kitchen of her cramped flat, she picked up the book she’d been reading and settled down by the small gas fire for a pleasant night acquainting herself with her latest hobby – mortal literature.

There was a knock on the door. She rose quickly, her spirit curiosity overcoming her nerves. At the door she peered through the spyhole. A man in a long black coat was standing with his back to her and his head turned away, as though examining the stairwell.

She opened the door – and wasn’t sure what hit her. One second the stranger was doing a good impression of a lost tourist, the next his foot was in the door and his face was contorted in a look of such ruthless determination that she nearly screamed.

In stunned silence she took in the black clothes, black eyes, black hair and black expression of the man she’d tried to lead to his death. Then she did scream, raising her hands in warding. Her element came to her aid: a sphere of water erupted from her hands and locked around Sam’s mouth and nose – but he simply shook his head and it shattered.

As Whisperer controlled fog, so she controlled water, and the ease with which he’d destroyed her only good spell made her feel nauseous with dread. Her scream rose louder as he barged in through the door, kicking it shut behind him, grabbed her arm and threw her bodily into the nearest room, which turned out to be the bathroom. She kicked and punched but he was far stronger, throwing her to the floor, locking her knees in his own and pinning her arms to her sides.

A dagger was at her throat. She knew it was
his
dagger, the kind of weapon which would end any life, spirit or otherwise.

‘Shut up!’ he yelled in her face.

‘I had to do it!’ she wailed. ‘They gave me no choice!’

He must have hit her, for she remembered feeling pain, real pain, delivered with a precision that a mere mortal fighter could never have managed. Sam knew where and how to hurt spirits.

‘Where did they take them? Where is Whisperer?’

‘I don’t know,’ she whimpered.

Pain again, this time of a mental kind as a spell flashed across her.

‘Look,’ hissed Sam. ‘I am Satan, I am the Devil. I am everything that Heaven reviles, and I have been stripped of everything but the clothes I stand up in.

‘Don’t think that, bereft as I am, I’ll let myself be bound by morality. I don’t wish to be what they say I am. But if that’s what works, then I’ll be ten times worse than any story preached from a pulpit. Do I make myself clear?’

She nodded, terrified.

‘How do you contact someone who
knows
where they are?’

‘I was given a crystal. They’ll come to me.’

‘Good.’ He reached for her face.

As she realised what he was going to do, she began to kick and struggle again, screaming at the top of her voice. But to no avail, as he laid his hands across her forehead and dived into her mind, tearing through her shielding as though it wasn’t even there.

It was the ultimate shock of violation and she turned rigid as his voice spoke to her from inside her head.

She felt her body relax beneath him, even as inside she fought and fought. But his grip was relentless. He didn’t violate her memories or listen to her thoughts; nonetheless the horror of having any presence, however restrained, inside her, controlling her, made her want to shriek at the unmerciful fates which had allowed this insult.

She felt Sam release her, stand up. But she was still unable to move, so firm were his controls. He spoke carefully, syllable for syllable, as he struggled to keep his grip absolute on Maria’s mind. He could feel her memories and thoughts calling to him, but firmly evaded them. Few people, spirits included, recovered from having their whole mind taken.

‘Get up.’

She rose, expressionless, hands hanging limp at her side.

‘Get the crystal.’ He followed her from the bathroom into her bedroom – and marvelled at it. Pictures painted by mortals, mortal books, even a television set and radio. Most spirits recoiled at the mere idea of such things.

She unlocked a box, moving like a zombie, and held out a small, palm-sized crystal.

‘Call the contact. Tell him you urgently need to meet him.’

Without a flicker, without a pause, she cupped her hands round the crystal and closed her eyes. Between her fingers he saw a brief, faint glow. Their communication lasted all of a second.

Wordlessly she returned the crystal to the box.

‘When will he get here?’

‘Half an hour.’

‘What’s his aspect?’

‘He controls the fog.’

‘What? Was he the one who summoned fog on the day I arrived in Kaluga?’

‘Yes.’

He looked thoughtful for a moment, but said only, ‘Are there securities?’

‘No.’

‘He’ll simply knock on the front door?’

‘Yes.’

He nodded faintly, and raised his hand to her forehead again. Her eyes flickered shut and with a faint sigh she slipped to the floor. Sam hastened to gag and bind her, before rolling her under the bed. He released the controls from her slumbering mind, leaving only a command to sleep for five hours.

That done, he went into the kitchen and made himself a cup of coffee, taking it through to her tiny sitting room, where he pulled one chair up to the table and placed another opposite, in the manner of an interrogator preparing for his subject.

There was a knock on the door. Going over to check the spyhole, he observed – both with his mind and his physical eyes – the heavily coated figure, pale-faced like Whisperer, whom he remembered from his last encounter with Michael. Opened the door.

‘Good evening,’ Sam said politely. The spirit turned, his mouth opened, raising his hands in defence just as Maria had done. But Sam was already there, lunging to catch the spirit in a grip of magic that lifted him off his feet and dangled him.

With a click of his fingers Sam produced a fine flame in the palm of his hand. Unnecessarily showy, perhaps, but he wanted to impress.

‘Make one sound and you become the latest case of unexplained spontaneous combustion.’

The spirit wisely stayed silent.

‘Shall we?’ The spirit was dropped to his feet again. For a second he looked like he might bolt. But Sam’s faint smile and the way he tossed a fireball from hand to hand as though it were a cricket ball and he was about to bowl a googly, made the spirit think better of it.

‘Inside.’ Sam’s voice was harsh despite his smile that never once flickered. The spirit edged through the door, jumping as it slammed shut behind him.

‘Into the sitting room. Sit down.’

Sam took the seat opposite the spirit and gently flicked the fireball on to the table between them, where it bounced then hung in the air, spinning slowly and giving off the occasional rosy spark.

‘I really am so grateful you could come,’ said Sam, reaching to take a sip from his coffee. The spirit shifted uneasily, still not saying anything. ‘Now, let’s get some rules straight, shall we? You call for help and you become a fireball. You get off that chair and you become a fireball. You use unpleasant language or attempt to lie to me and enough of you becomes a fireball so that you’ll never heal the wound but never die either. You try to attack me and you become a fireball. You try to use your aspect and’ – his smile widened – ‘you become a fireball.’

He folded his hands in front of him on the table, fingers laced together and almost touching the still-spinning fire. ‘So. Where are Whisperer, Peter and Andrew?’

To his credit, the spirit spoke defiantly. ‘What have you done to Maria?’

‘She’s sleeping. You think I’d kill her? For what? Being forced into acting like an idiot with the rest of you? No.’ He leant forward, and now there was no smile on his face. ‘Look. I’m the Devil. I’ve had centuries of people telling me what it is I’m supposed to do and centuries of telling them no. But in this case I’m willing to make a small exception. Just for once I’m ready to prove those nice little stories about me are true. This is a fate which, if I were you, I would seek to avoid.’

The spirit hung its head. ‘I can’t tell you where the mortal is. Only the archangel Michael knows. I do know that he’s very ill and might die. The Firedancer’s poison is stealing his life bit by bit. The archangel is trying to save him, because he knows where the shield came from that protected him. But thc others – yes, I can show you where they are.’

‘Before you volunteer to show me anything, tell me how it’s guarded. And remember, I don’t like lying.’

‘Three spirits and two mortal wizards. That’s all, I swear.’

‘Right!’ Sam rose to his feet. ‘And no tricks.’

‘Who can trick a Son of Time?’

‘Another Son of Time, since you ask, but yes.’ Sam gulped down the last of his coffee and indicated the door. ‘Shall we?’

T
he spirit drove. Sam watched, keeping his sword drawn across his lap. After half an hour of driving through the Moscow streets, made empty by the lateness of the hour, they pulled up in front of a night club with flashing neon signs and pounding music. A wall of muscle stood in the door, ready to repel unwelcome clubbers. Nearby a lorry was unloading crates of cat food for a supermarket. A couple of beggars slumbered on a doorstep. But it was to a flight of stairs leading to a basement that Sam’s spirit guide pointed.

Sam could sense, as promised, three spirits and two human wizards. Beyond them, inside a warded room, he caught the faint tinge of dead leaves, and the smell after rain, sneaking through their shields. The humans felt asleep, but spirits rarely slept.

‘Why did Michael keep them alive?’ he asked softly.

‘He doesn’t like killing spirits. And though they’re loyal to you, he thought you might not be alive for much longer.’ The spirit was unafraid to speak the simple truth, knowing that Sam could feel it as such.

‘Thank you,’ said Sam. ‘You fill me with confidence. Now tell me one more thing: Is the archangel collaborating with the Firedancers?’

‘No.’

Sam was surprised, but he didn’t let it show. ‘How interesting,’ he said finally. Then, ‘Thank you, I think you’ve been a help.’ He laid one hand gently on the other’s shoulder. The spirit shuddered at Sam’s touch, closing his eyes as he steeled himself for what he thought would be death.

‘I do hope you have a nice day.’ Sam triggered the spell. The spirit pitched forward, unconscious, head slamming against the horn. Hastily Sam moved him, to sprawl across the two front seats. Locking the car behind him, he walked, sword in hand for all to see, towards the club. The bouncer on the door stared at this figure in black with a mixture of disbelief and uncertainty. He looked almost relieved when Sam, with a pleasant smile, turned away from the door and jogged down a flight of slippery iron steps into the blackness of the basement area.

There was a large metal door. Sam knocked calmly, and waited, a blacker outline against the gloom. What little light caught his eyes made them glow, like a cat’s.

There were footsteps, and the door opened.

‘Good evening,’ said Sam – and lashed out with one foot at a spirit, who crumpled forwards. Sam whirled through the door, bringing his sword in one movement across the spirit’s throat. Two other spirits, who’d been playing poker with tarot cards, erupted to their feet, each reaching for a gun. A couple of human wizards had been snoring quietly on a pair of old mattresses. A pipe was dripping. Against one wall a bank of washing machines chugged round and round, opposite a row of neglected sinks.

‘I know spirits are loyal to each other,’ said Sam quietly, ‘though you do not call it loyalty, for fear it makes you sound too mortal. I know too that most spirits are essentially good. I know you won’t want to see your friend die.’

The spirits exchanged doubtful looks.

‘I too am loyal to my own,’ Sam continued. ‘And this is the arrangement. You give me my friends, and I won’t cut your friend’s throat.’

‘Two for one?’ snapped one spirit.

On the prompting of instant dislike, Sam raised his free hand in a blur. His dagger flew across the room and paused, hanging in the air, spinning gently near the spirit’s heart.

‘No. Two for two and we’ll call it quits.’

The spirits didn’t move.

Sam sighed loudly. ‘Gentlemen, I’ve had a bad week. A sister killed, mortal allies poisoned, friends kidnapped – these things do not make me happy. I’m sure that under normal circumstances we could talk this over like rational, civilised immortals. But these are not normal circumstances. Now, you give me two people, I give you two people. The balance of accounts is even.’

The humans by now were rising to their feet, all gaping mouth and confusion. Sam gave them a humourless smile.

‘Glad you’re up. Get my friends, else I’ll blast the lot of you.’

Still no one moved.

‘For Time’s sake don’t provoke the Devil himself!’ roared Sam. Anger at last broke through his self-control, and made his black eyes flash with fire. The echoes bounced around them, dwindling to fill the darkness with angry whispers.
The Devil himself? To defeat a monster you must become it first, know
thine
enemy. To beat a ruthless man the winner must be ruthless too, the Devil himself?

The third spirit moved, rushing towards the inner door and dropping the keys in his fumbling haste to open it. Sam’s outflung hand stayed motionless, keeping the dagger point spinning in mid-air, ready to strike the second spirit at a moment’s notice. The third spirit disappeared into the darkness of the room. There was the sound of voices, of movement.

A few moments later and he emerged again, covering Peter and Whisperer with a pistol. Sam’s two comrades were a mess, grimy and tired. He could see their shields in tatters from too many interrogations.

‘Lucifer,’ murmured Whisperer disbelievingly.

‘Oh, come on. You think a bullet in the back would distract me from seeking out your company again?’ asked Sam lightly.

He turned to the others. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘here’s what we do. Whisperer and Peter leave now. So do I, taking any threats with me. No one gets hurt, no one panics, no one tries any last-minute heroics. Are we agreed?’ There was a flurry of nods.

Sam indicated the door. ‘Go,’ he murmured. Whisperer and Peter ran, Sam backing out behind them with his sword still drawn. His free hand twitched, and in response the dagger returned to his fingers. He retreated further until he could feel the cold outside air on the back of his neck. Then, taking a deep breath, he let go of his dagger, which returned to hang in the air across the spirit’s throat. Withdrawing his sword, he backed out of the door, eyes slitted in concentration at keeping the dagger where it was. Inside the room no one moved, no one breathed.

Sam backed up the stairs, feeling each step beneath his feet. He kept his eyes fixed on the hovering blade, one hand flung out towards it at all times to steady it. Halfway up the stairs he clenched his fingers. Narrowly avoiding the spirit’s neck, the dagger flew into his hand. Sam turned and ran, taking the steps two at a time and willing the door behind him to slam shut.

At the top of the stairs he turned, expecting to see the door burst back open at any second, hear the crack of gunfire. But Peter was standing there, face contorted with effort as he held his hands palm out, keeping the door in place by willpower.

Sam tossed the car keys to Whisperer and pointed. ‘Throw out the sleeping guy.’

At Peter’s side Sam raised his own hands to double the magic against the door. Seeing Whisperer bodily heave the unconscious spirit out of the car, the bouncer started from his place in the night club doorway. ‘Hey!’

There was a roar from the car engine, and Sam grabbed Peter’s arm. ‘Come on!’ As the spell was dropped, the spirits and the two wizards exploded outwards from the basement. Sam and Peter thrust past the bouncer as if he wasn’t there and barrelled into the car. The doors hadn’t even closed before Whisperer was accelerating away.

In the car a breathless silence followed. ‘Well,’ Sam mumbled finally. ‘I’m glad to see you too.’

‘Uriel did most of the questioning,’ Whisperer said.

They’d pulled into a squalid service station where plastic-looking hamburgers were the only food available. Sam picked out the gherkin from his and tried not to think about how the burger itself had been made.

‘She wanted to know about you, mostly. How much you knew, how much you’d told us.’

‘Were you hurt? When you explained that I’d told you nothing?’

Peter shook his head. ‘They could sense whether we were telling the truth.’ He added, ‘They were very interested in the Light. When you released it, were you just trying to stun the target? Could you control whose thoughts you heard? Did you hear thoughts within the radius the Light had covered, or could you hear everything at once?

‘You were wise,’ he went on. ‘You kept everyone, including us, in the dark. There’s only one person who can answer all these questions, and that’s you.’

‘And Time,’ muttered Sam. ‘Why don’t they go and interrogate Time!’ he spat with sudden vehemence.

The spirits said nothing, watching him. Sam went back to munching on his hamburger, slurped up a disgusting powdery milkshake from a paper cup, and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. Finally he said, ‘I’m sorry for… what has happened. I’ll make amends, somehow.’

‘There was one more thing,’ Whisperer said. ‘Uriel asked us what we knew of the keys. To the Pandora spirits. We denied all knowledge of them. Uriel grew angry, said that three were found, and all that remained was to find the fourth key. She wanted to know if you had it.’

Sam was staring at vacancy, remembering. ‘I was once told, by a particularly clever man, albeit one who looked like a guinea pig, that the Pandora spirits were imprisoned because Time feared them above all the rest. Greed, Hate and Suspicion. Yet such spirits as Corruption, Envy and Jealousy freely walk the Ways. Time feared the Pandora spirits because he knew they could set son against father, father against son. And because Cronus wanted that to happen. Because Cronus, imprisoned by the fourth key, wanted Time’s children to turn against their maker, and fight Cronus’s battle for him. So the keys were scattered, and Time forbade anyone to free the Pandora spirits.

‘But it is the way of men to desire all they cannot have. To want to break the rules… Oh, Light!’ He put his head in his hands and sighed.

The spirits were silent, watching him. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I know where I’m going next, I know what I’m going to do. Lose yourselves in the Way of Fey. If you encounter any of the Moondance, tell them to lose themselves too. Freya discovered what was going on, and they know I’m close behind Freya’s footsteps.’
Which is why they’re trying to kill me.

Peter and Whisperer didn’t argue but drove with him straight from the service station to the nearest Fey Portal. At their departure they said not one word, but slipped into the Feywalk with all the reserve of kings, not thanking him for rescuing them, nor cursing him for endangering them. Such was the gift of spirits – they only felt what they intended, and proudly resolved otherwise to feel nothing.

Alone now, Sam drove through empty roads and emptier countryside, following his senses to a Hell Portal.
Three of them, playing with fire.
Surely they wouldn’t be so unbelievably stupid as to try and actually
free
the Pandora spirits
…

He thought about the three of them. The clever, passionate Saviour, the romantic who’d never had any real name. Yes, Jehovah would want to leave his mark. Sam could imagine him greedily claiming the spirit of Suspicion as his servant, playing it against his enemies as part of those subtle games he revelled in.

Odin had been someone he’d quite respected. Father of Valhalla, head of his house, the clever, silent one who just about kept his loutish brothers out of trouble. It had been slippery Loki, and the death of Balder, that had started the decline of Valhalla, a failure that to Odin spelled shame. But who could have thought him desperate enough to stray this far from the path of Time? On the other hand, as father of his house Odin’s dedication had always been shadowed by something darker. In a word, obsession.

And Seth. Quiet. Ambitious, without a doubt. The one whom everybody suspected of being a plotter with Loki, but who’d never been caught out. Was he trying to control Hate?

He pulled the car up on a muddy path. It led to an expanse of pasture, in which a pair of well-fed, if dirty, horses were grazing. He walked round the edge of the field, close to a tall hedge. After about fifty yards he came across a gap and pushed his way through. Inside the hedge was a small hollow. The remnants of a fire had blackened a circle of dead leaves. A child had nailed a sign in Cyrillic declaring ‘secret den’ in scrawled paint on to a wooden post. Ropes and supports had been erected around the hollow to keep it safe for the children to play in.

Sam smiled despite himself. If the parents had known what kind of secret place their children were playing in, they would never have gone to the trouble.

Stepping round the burnt-out remnants of the fire, he raised a hand and felt the Portal stir at his touch. Sam didn’t go through it, but sent his mind scouting ahead into the mists, rushing through the shadows in quest of something he knew would be there. He found what he sought, winding his will around it and bringing it towards him, though it struggled in his grasp and tried to dive back into the mist.

Reluctantly the creature was pulled out of the Portal and into the real world, where it cowered at Sam’s feet, shivering. Sam waved a hand, and the Portal collapsed again.

The creature before him was strange. Delicate wings grew from its back, but its face was twisted with hate, its clothes ragged and its eyes narrowed with passionate loathing for its captor. Its nails were shaped to a needle point, ready to gouge out its victims’ eyes, and its teeth were small and sharp for tearing through meat. It was a Wayspirit, a twisted shadow of its Feywalker cousins. Where spirits like Whisperer and Adamarus had forsaken feeling of their own free will, the creature before Sam could feel nothing but the hatred of the Way, and its voice was the loudest and sweetest one that called to unwary travellers, luring them to their doom. It despised Earth, Heaven and Hell alike, and mewed piteously to have been so forcefully dragged from its abode between worlds.