Waiting, Sam let his mind drift. He heard his father’s voice. You cannot defy me, Lucifer… But it faded and passed, without him responding.
He had no desire to call on Time.
He heard Freya’s voice, but it was nothing more than a memory as his mind tried to focus. Sebastian, I’m so sorry. They’d loved each other only briefly, before she’d been called away by duty to defend her failing House of Valhalla. Even to the last she’d called him Sebastian, the name he’d worn when they’d first met. It was as if it embarrassed her to admit a love for the exiled, traitor Prince of Heaven. Though all he’d done was stop the Eden Initiative, a project that to his mind had been evil.
Sehastian, what do you do now?
Sorry, Freya. You’re dead, you see; I can’t stop to chat. You died trying to prevent Seth freeing Cronus. I’d love to speak to you, but I need to find answers.
He was ready. But what should he focus on? It would be pointless to try and find Seth; as the guiding force behind the scheme to free Cronus, Seth would almost certainly be defended against every kind of scry. And trying to find Jehovah would run him up against a prodigiously tough mind. Odin he also ruled out, for though the Lord of Valhalla was to Sam’s mind a less powerful figure, who’d only allied himself with Seth and Jehovah out of desperation, he was nonetheless a Son of Time.
There were others he could look for, though. He sent his mind out, carrying the thought of Buddha, who with the archangel Gabriel had been one of Freya’s secret allies against Seth. What had become of them both, after an attack by the Pandora spirits that only Sam had been able to resist?
For a brief moment his brother’s face appeared on the mirror – then the image flickered and died. Sam searched again, felt Buddha’s mind.
Cold, dark, pain. Voices, in the shadows of the prison that has been a home for days on end. Whispering in Buddha’s ear. You tried to do the right thing, but you did it for all the wrong reasons, brother mine. You came close to spoiling everything, you don’t understand what is happening. Cronus will be freed. The Bearer of Light will fight his destiny, but it is all for nothing, he will die…
Buddha’s mind stirring at the sensation of Sam.
Interception. Another mind ramming between them. Dizziness, falling, a second presence shutting Buddha out, a voice roaring in Sam’s mind.
Minds tearing at him, trying to attack him through his own spell.
Sam pulled away, spinning wildly out of control. He felt them reach after him, try to drag him back, but he was already gone, dancing far away, leaping out of their reach. When the world steadied, his own face was drifting in the mirror, a thousand images of himself mournfully looking back at him.
Steady. Focus. Breathe. Reach again, a different direction now. Buddha is a prisoner, beyond you. Reach. Try Freya’s other ally: Gabriel – Gail.
Cold outside, warm within. Bright light. A full stomach. Heavy hands, a steady gaze. Voices, always voices. Whom do you serve? I serve you. I have always served you, master. Will the Bearer of Light come? Yes, he will come. He cannot help it, he seeks you even now.
Mind, stirring.
Intercession, a mind breaking through, always a mind breaking through, interrupting the scry. It won’t stop hunting, not now that it knows he is scrying.
Sam recognises it. Jehovah, Son of Time and Belief, has a very distinct mind, precise, ticking over like clockwork. Sam has always suspected that Jehovah’s blood-line has done more for him than others appreciate, because Jehovah believes in himself almost as much as he demands everyone else believe.
Jehovah has sensed his scry and even now seeks him.
Drifting. Steadying. Waiting. Breathing. No sense of being followed. Voices. Another mind slipping towards his own, also drawn to the sense of his scry. But this isn’t Jehovah, nor is it Seth or Odin. Sam doesn’t recognise it, nor for a long while does it speak. But he can feel it play across his mind, tapping against his shields. Not forcefully, but with a child’s curiosity.
He sits on a park bench in Rome, in high summer, eating ice cream. Freya is staring at him, a faint strawberry moustache round her lips. She is frowning, trying to remember something she wants to say. He waits, only half aware that this isn’t real, that it’s just another vision turned up by the spell as the foreign mind works to communicate with him through all these thick, thick wardings.
‘Hello, Sebastian,’ says Freya finally. She is as beautiful as he remembers, the light catching her hair and making it glow, her delicate hands holding the ice cream as if it were made of glass, her eyes frowning expressively.
Unsettled already, Sam wishes the vision weren’t this good. ‘And whom do I have the honour of addressing, that intrudes on me in Freya’s shape?’ He takes another lick of ice cream. It tastes real, which is good.
‘Why do you fight?’
‘Because the alternative is the end of the universe.’
‘You’re a selfless man deep down, Sebastian. I know that you would gladly die for certain things. For me, you would die.’
‘For Freya, perhaps, but she reached the end of life before I did,’ Sam replies.
‘You would die to save the lives of mortals, if they were threatened. So why do you fight, instead?’
‘Are you asking,’ says Sam, ‘why don’t I just let Cronus be freed, and sacrifice myself heroically to save the universe from his horrific powers?’
Freya, or whatever it is that occupies Freya’s face, seems to consider this. ‘Yes,’ she/it says finally.
‘It isn’t necessary. There is no reason why Cronus should ever be freed. Time simply wants me to destroy him in the event that he does get out.’
‘You’re wrong. Cronus will always be freed, he’ll always escape. There is no future where he doesn’t. So if your death is inevitable, why not accept that fact now?’
‘Would you?’ asks Sam. ‘Hell, why do I ask such a daft question? I don’t even know who you are.’
‘You searched for me, didn’t you?’
‘No.’
‘But you did, Sebastian. Somewhere, you haven’t given up hope yet. That’s what makes you defiant. And you thought you could defy death, and find Freya. So you did. And I answered.’
‘Freya is dead.’
‘Yet still you searched. Thank you.’
‘For what?’
‘Trying. But it is for nothing, I’m afraid.’
‘This conversation is pointless.’
‘You don’t listen.’
‘I listen, I just don’t believe it.’
Freya faded, taking the taste of ice cream with her. She went a bit at a time, first the bench, then the ice cream, then the legs, then Rome, and finally the rest of her vanished with a shrug, leaving just the voice hanging on the air. A whisper in the darkness of Sam’s mind. I’m so sorry, Sebastian…
He steadied himself. The visions faded, leaving only the mirror. Once more he searched. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking for now, but he let the spell drift, whispering his name, calling. It was less of a scry and more of a divining, a complicated, dangerous spell that had a mind of its own.
But a divining was no less loud than a scry. Sam is searching today, who wants to answer?
And there it was. A voice. Confident, strong.
‘And if he gets in the way?’
‘Stop him. But don’t let him die. He mustn’t die, that’s essential. Nor must he be allowed to interfere.’
‘I serve.’
Brief flashes of vision. A room, a table, a chair, a figure in the darkness, a window, a dome, a river, a bridge, a boat, a golden cross, a red bus.
Recognition. Voices, more urgent. ‘I feel… something…’
‘He scrys, the fool scrys!’
Repulsion, minds slamming in front of him, shoving him away from his quarry. Spinning again, struggling to centre himself as visions flash across his eyes, glimpses of a dome, a golden cross on top of it, a red bus passing the nave, a pigeon sitting on a cherubim over the transept, a long, white footbridge like a suspension bridge, only the joins have been knocked out to each side as if something heavy had fallen on them, rather than standing proud, the River Thames…
The sudden sense of danger, and voices filling his head. Sam, why do you run? Sebastian, Sebastian, what are you trying to do? Luke, is it really worth it? Little light, little fire, little Lucifer, little Satan, danger comes…
His eyes opened with a start and stared at the darkness of Soho Square. The mirror in his hands was hot to the touch, but he didn’t move. Someone had trodden on a dollop of red toothpaste and thought it was bird poo. He extended his senses. Behind him and slightly to the right; they’d probably come through the Hell Portal. Maybe six of them, he wasn’t sure. He kept utterly still, the pressure of the dagger against his forearm suddenly noticeable.
Voices, whispering. Someone stepped forward, trod on more toothpaste and fired alarms inside Sam’s mind, then swore very quietly. Sam, keeping his movements shielded with his back to them, lowered the mirror and reached very slowly for his sword.
Someone touched the string. Jerked it. The end of string tied with the ignition ward moved very slightly, pulled from its place on the bottle. The ignition ward, its delicate matrix disturbed, fired. Sam pitched forward and rolled, coming up with his sword raised as the whisky bottle exploded, showering glass everywhere. In the sudden light he saw four Firedancers and two valkyries, Odin’s personal guards. No angels, he noticed with interest; Jehovah clearly hadn’t been able to send anyone to join the hunting party.
As the flames subsided, he called the talcum powder to him, then threw it towards the valkyries, triggering the ignition ward in mid-air. The box exploded in a blizzard of metal and plastic shards, throwing white powder and red-hot Coke into the valkyries’ eyes. They fell back, yelling. Then the Firedancers, having recovered from the initial shock of the attack, lunged towards Sam. They reached his toothpaste circle, and sparks flashed as the wards fired, repulsing them.
Sam grinned and picked up a Molotov cocktail in his free hand, holding it near the top of the bottle where the J-cloth stuck out, soaked in petrol. Firedancers, for all they were well-trained assassins in Heaven, simply didn’t have experience of Earth methods of fighting. Sam watched unmoving as a Firedancer stepped forwards and drove his dragon-bone knife into the ward. It flickered and began to die. Sam waited until the ward failed and flicked a spark from his fingertips to the top of the J-cloth. It lit, the flame rushing down the blue cloth towards the petrol within. The Firedancers were staring at the bottle as if Sam were mad, wondering what it was. The valkyries, having a better sense of survival, began to back away. Sam shrugged and threw the bottle overarm at the nearest Firedancer. It struck him and exploded. The darkness was lit up as the Firedancer’s red clothes erupted into flame and he screamed.
Firedancers aren’t sympathetic creatures. As one of their comrades staggered around howling and burning before collapsing in a smouldering heap on the ground, the others stood staring at Sam, as if nothing had happened. The valkyries, eyes red and streaming, edged towards the circle. Sam backed away, calling a Coke can to his hands. As one, the valkyries and Firedancers attacked.
Nothing, in Sam’s opinion, was quite as scary as being attacked by ten pairs of hands and ten pairs of legs, when you only had a healthy two of each. He threw the Coke can, turned and ran, blowing the ignition ward as he sprinted away across Soho Square as fast as he could. Behind him he heard a satisfying bang and a yell. Someone had clearly been on the wrong end of several jagged shards of metal.
Sam kept on running, sword in hand. He reached the far end of the square and turned, already in the full throes of casting a spell. Around him, the air ignited in blue fire, ice formed on the grass below his feet, his breath emerged in clouds of steam. The Firedancers faltered and stopped. Keeping the coldfire burning, Sam drew his silver dagger and threw it. It wasn’t designed for throwing, but there was enough of his magic in it to ensure that it travelled as level as the course of a bullet. It struck a Firedancer square through the heart, and the assassin crumpled.
A valkyrie was drawing something out from behind her back. Sam saw a small, light crossbow, the shot tipped with enchanted silver. He swore and swept his hand up and across. The valkyrie was lifted off her feet and went flying back, but the disruption in his concentration was enough to make the coldfire curtain flicker. A Firedancer made it through and Sam was forced to parry clumsily, staggering as he went off-balance. The Firedancer took advantage of this and caught Sam’s wrist in his own red-gloved hand, fire flaring round the fingers. Sam’s sleeve began to burn, and he hastily stamped down on the flames with his mind.
But that second of lost concentration had almost cost him his right arm; he had to bring his sword across and round, leaving his left side exposed. The coldfire winked out as he tried to sustain too much magic.
The Firedancers leapt forward for the kill. Sam retreated until his back was pressed against the railings of the square, and summoned a shield of thick blue magic around him. Two dragon-bone blades and two of enchanted bronze struck into the magic, then continued moving towards him with agonising slowness, the shield screaming as the weapons sought to tear through its magic lattice.
Sam heard a faint ‘thunk’. He saw a valkyrie collapse, a crossbow bolt in her back. Her partner turned to discover who’d fired. In the darkness Sam made out a hooded figure, calmly reloading as if he hadn’t a care in the world. The valkyrie gave a snarl of rage and ran towards the man. She’d got within two paces when he fired again and she pitched back, the quarrel straight through her heart.
The Firedancers, aware that something had gone wrong, disengaged, suddenly uncertain. Sam let his shield go, blinking sweat from his eyes and trying to ignore the wobble in his legs. The hooded man continued to reload, casual to the extreme. With the Firedancers’ attention distracted, Sam lunged, his sword going under the nearest assassin’s guard and scoring a long slash across his side. The assailants faltered, realising that they were two fighting two instead of six against one. But with Sam as their target they were determined to finish the job.
Sam caught one blade on the hilt of his sword and grabbed the other Firedancer’s wrist, twisting both to one side. He summoned his dagger back to him and caught it in his left hand, releasing the Firedancers with a spin that sent them staggering. Now he had two weapons to his name and only four arms to deal with. He grinned as the Firedancers staggered upright and attacked them, making long thrusts with his sword and swift movements with the dagger, keeping it close to his body against the danger of overreaching with the sword.
He heard another thunk, and a Firedancer fell. Sam stepped past the body and went into a full-out attack, his confidence almost restored. The hooded man made no attempt to reload the crossbow, but stood in the shadows as if at some spec
tator sport. Almost, thought Sam, as though letting him fight on to see if there were any weaknesses in his technique.
A thrust with the sword, barely parried by the dragon-bone. Twist the sword to the right to take the knife with it, leaving the Firedancer’s left side exposed. Lunge with the dagger. Wrist caught, no problem, pull down, dragging the Firedancer down too, and as he descends bring a knee up to meet him. The grasp on Sam’s wrist weakened. Sam turned to one side, snapping his elbow up to catch the Firedancer full on the nose. The Firedancer fell back and Sam’s wrist was free. He stepped forward neatly, a relaxed movement, and rammed the dagger straight into the Firedancer’s heart.
The Firedancer fell.
Sam, a weary figure coated in sweat, head reeling from the shock of too many spells too fast, turned to his unexpected rescuer and stared at him. The hooded man stared back.
Timekeepers: Number 2 in Series Page 3