He climbed over a fence, keeping clear of its barbed wire topping as his eyes adjusted to the darkness and took on reflectivity, like those of a cat. Moving slowly, feet crunching on the recently harrowed earth, Sam edged towards the house. When he was about fifty feet away, a light went on inside. He froze, then ran the last few metres to the window and peered in.
The hooded figure was standing at a kitchen table. Sam saw him open the envelope, saw him start at the sight of the cardboard disk. Saw him turn towards the window. Saw the patches of red scale on pale skin, the bright red hair sticking out from under the hood.
A demon. A demon from the hot part of Hell, a demon in Berlin…
The demon walked up to the window and for a moment Sam feared he’d been caught. Then he realised the demon was using a phone next to the window itself. He pressed his back against the wall and wished he could hear. After a while the demon moved away from the phone and began to pace up and down, hands clasped in front of him, looking nervous.
After half an hour, Sam saw the beam of headlights moving towards the house. They belonged to a blue Volkswagen of an unbearably boring variety, evidently registered in Berlin. Three figures got out of the car, and headed into the house. A few moments later, Sam made out more demons, two of them, in the kitchen. There was also a woman in a long fur coat who had heavy red lipstick and immaculately permed hair, dyed blond. She wore an expression that said, ‘Children, please’.
Several times the hooded demon gestured at Sam’s cardboard ‘disk’. At one point the woman made a phone call; then another. Sam was getting increasingly impatient with this. Another car pulled up, possibly in response to one of the calls. Sam watched a lone figure get out, enter the house. He peered in – and found it hard not to jump and yell.
The new arrival had short red hair, green eyes, and an attitude to rival the lady in the fur coat. She stood glaring round the room at the demons, who cowered.
Gabriel.
The archangel Gabriel, or Gail, depending on who she was with, stood in the kitchen, talking to people who, Sam assumed, were Ashen’ia to the core. Gabriel, neither dead nor imprisoned, after all. The same Gabriel who’d helped Freya in her battle against Seth, who’d fled from a small farm in Mexico as the Pandora spirits poured down around her to try and drive hate into her heart. The same Gabriel he’d raced across half the world to protect, not quite knowing what he did.
Gabriel, here, and talking to Ashen’ia…
He remembered his scry. Who 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.
And now he thought about it some more. Minds, stirrings, memories. Gabriel’s voice in his head, briefly connected through the scry…
The same story. People would help him: the Ashen’ia. People would seek him: the Ashen’ia.
Gabriel had run from Mexico straight to the Ashen’ia. How long had she been working for them? Had she known all along that the Ashen’ia wanted Sam, wanted the Bearer of Light to hold the universe hostage with his power? Had she lured him across the world because the Ashen’ia ordered it? Or because she genuinely feared Cronus?
Sam wondered what the hell he should do now. He could feel his list of allies diminishing. Was the entire world either Ashen’ia or serving Seth? For the first time in centuries, Sam was vulnerable. And the Ashen’ia had seen this and were exploiting it, determined to get at him for their own purpose.
On the other hand he didn’t think the Ashen’ia would take keenly to the idea of Cronus being unleashed on the universe. And if they wanted to threaten the Greater Powers with destruction they’d need a universe of free will in which to do so. Which again meant stopping Cronus. They’d also need Sam, alive.
So, even alone, Sam had some bargaining power. That still didn’t mean he knew what course of action to take.
After much consideration, he came up with a plan. It wasn’t brilliant, but it would have to do.
He headed for Gabriel’s car.
Tyres, he discovered, were surprismgly hard to puncture. He had to use a lot of force before his dagger would damage any of them. Finally he gashed a front tyre and, to make sure, one at the back as well. He then punctured two tyres on the Volkswagen and ran through the darkness across the field. There, he used a touch of his mind to trigger open the padlock on the gate before driving the ambulance into the field and parking it about quarter of a mile from the house, where not even an archangel’s vision would penetrate.
Back in the house they were still there, arguing – about him, he hoped. It would be satisfaction of a sort to cause that much dismay.
They argued. They kept on arguing, as if this was the only thing they did well. Sam sat underneath the window and drummed his fingers on his knees, feeling cold even through the ambulance driver’s coat. He got out his notebook, and doodled. For something to do he drew a cartoon cat with a cigar, a dog with a top hat, a horse with an idiot smile and finally a large dragon eating a cheeseburger. He began to shiver as the wind picked up.
At last a door opened. There were footsteps, and someone opened a car door. Sam heard the engine firing; then the car backed up a few metres, and stopped. He heard the door open again, heard voices raised in dismay, bit back on a laugh that welled up inside his gut and begged for freedom.
‘The tyres are bloody blown!’ said someone. There was a hurried conference. Soon they’d realise that four tyres on two separate cars just didn’t blow themselves. Before then he’d have to move.
Sam reached into his bag and pulled out a Molotov cocktail. He rose to his feet, peering through the window. It was empty, everyone outside. He slipped his dagger through the join between the windowpanes, slid it along until he encountered resistance, then pushed. The latch clicked back, and he pushed the window open. Carefully re-sheathing his blade, he touched a finger to the petrol-soaked rag, ignited it and threw the bottle as hard as he could into the kitchen.
It exploded, flames spreading across the old wooden floor as the petrol poured outwards. Within a minute the kitchen was engulfed. Sam pulled the window shut again and crept into the darkness, to lie about twenty yards from the house, watching, waiting.
They took all of three minutes to notice the fire, by which time it was eating at the floor above. ‘Holy Hells!’ someone cried. ‘Get a fire engine, call the police…’
No one really noticed the hasty arrival of Sam’s ambulance; it was just another emergency vehicle. A police car pulled up, but Sam wasn’t too concerned. The odds of being recognised from the hospital were slim, especially this far out of Berlin.
The woman in the fur coat was talking urgently to a couple of policemen. Gabriel was looking at the burning house with a huge frown as though trying to figure something out. Someone had given her a cup of coffee and sat her down by a fire engine.
When the lady in the fur coat was finished with the policemen, they went up to Gabriel and began talking to her, leaving the woman alone. Sam pulled out a first aid box and a blanket. He advanced on the woman and said in German, ‘Are you all right?’
She peered at him through the orange gloom, frowning, as though uncertain if she might have seen him before. ‘Just… a bit shocked,’ she replied.
‘That’s understandable. Do you have somewhere to go?’
She shrugged helplessly. ‘My car is broken down.’
‘I’m going back to Berlin if you want a lift?’
She glanced back at Gabriel. ‘The police…’
‘I’m sure if you give them your phone number they’ll let you go,’ he said, kindness to the core.
Sam waited while she talked to a policeman, who tur
ned and gave him a thumbs up. Then, as she headed towards Gabriel, he quickly squatted down to do up a shoelace, bending so that his hair fell forwards, hiding his face. When he glanced back up, Gabriel was turning away from the woman with a nod and giving her hand a reassuring squeeze.
Trying not to move too fast, Sam helped the woman climb into the front seat, and gave her the blanket against the chill of the night. Once he’d started the engine, however, he was relieved to get away as fast as he could.
‘This is very kind of you,’ said the woman, who introduced herself as Ursula.
‘It’s my job. What happened back there, you any idea?’
‘Probably kids.’ Sam knew she was lying. ‘Lonely house in the middle of nowhere, you know how it is.’
Sam said yes, he had a vague idea. ‘What do you do?’ he asked. ‘For a living?’
‘I’m in business.’
‘What kind of business?’
‘Oh, you know. I give advice to companies. It’s really not interesting.’
Don’t ask, in other words. ‘Married?’
‘No.’
‘A pity. An attractive lady like yourself should be married.’ He sensed her darting a look at him, running him up and down with her eyes.
‘You married?’
‘I had a girlfriend, but she buggered off. Last week, in fact… Do you have a boyfriend?’
‘Uh-uh.’
Sam smiled. ‘Is there a story here?’
She grinned in reply. ‘I’ll swap you mine for yours.’
‘Not much to tell. I was always working silly hours, she met another guy, an advertiser, who went to the gym, self-satisfied bastard if I ever saw one, and took off to live with him in Frankfurt. You?’
‘Do you miss her?’
‘Yes. But come on, I want to hear your story?’
‘Oh.’ She arranged her face into a little grimace. ‘Young, handsome, got freaked.’
‘By what?’
‘By me.’
‘Why?’ asked Sam, trying to sound surprised and indignant all at once.
‘Because I’m a witch, of course,’ she said with a laugh that sounded far too rehearsed. Sam laughed with her, forcing the sound out through vocal cords that had suddenly decided to have a sense-of-humour failure.
When the laughter had subsided, Sam tried again to steer the conversation. ‘What was that place that burnt down?’
‘Oh, my friend’s house. We were having a drink. She must be upset.’
You aren’t half bad at lying.
Heading into Berlin, Sam followed the signs to the centre of town, hoping that Ursula wouldn’t notice what a stranger he was to the area. ‘You look tired,’ she commented.
‘It’s been a bad week. Hell, the entire month hasn’t been good.’
‘Girlfriends,’ she agreed with a sigh.
‘Witches,’ he added with a laugh. She laughed too, suddenly uncomfortable at his tone of voice.
‘Do you believe in magic?’ he asked, confident that this strategy was the one. Go in hard, go in fast, don’t let her catch her breath…
‘What a strange question.’
‘Do you?’
‘Sometimes, yes,’ she admitted. ‘You?’
‘I know it sounds crazy, but – yes – I do really believe in magic. Sometimes I feel things, think things, and I can’t understand them. But they make so much sense.’
‘I know the feeling,’ said Ursula, just a bit too fast. Eager to please, her voice saying one thing, her hungry eyes saying something else.
‘Whereabouts in Berlin are you headed?’ asked Sam. Give her a taste, steer it away again, keep her on edge, let it haunt her…
‘I can take the U-bahn.’
‘No, it’s all right. I might as well take you to your door,’ he replied, eyes flicking between the road and the mirror. He felt terribly tired. When had he last slept? Proper sleep, not a regenerative trance; real, peaceful sleep…
They turned to discussing politics, movies, music, books, Sam all the time struggling to hide his ignorance of recent German culture. Finally Ursula changed the subject, to give directions. Left, right, here, there. Street lamps turned the inside of the ambulance yellow and orange for brief seconds, then black again as they drove past.
Following directions, Sam finally drove into a walled-off courtyard of balconied flats built over garages and ranged around a tall sycamore tree. It was late, and few lights were on. Ursula clambered out, thanking Sam all the way. He climbed out into the darkness with her, saying it was nothing, playing the nice guy.
Reaching a flight of stairs, Ursula turned, as he’d known she would, to look him over again. Then she said the words he’d been waiting for, the purpose of the exercise. ‘Do you want to come up for a coffee?’
He made a show of thinking about it, staring for a moment at a point past her head. ‘That’d be great.’
He followed her upstairs, thinking of the gun in his jacket pocket and the dagger up his sleeve. Coming to a front door no different from any other, she opened it and showed him inside, turning on lights as she went.
‘Sitting room is through there,’ she said, breezing through a bead curtain into what was evidently the kitchen. Sam stepped into a room full of cushions, crystals dangling from the ceiling, candles, not lit, on every surface, long silk tapestries hanging on the walls, and mirrors in every place to reflect light back at each other in a thousand directions. When Ursula entered after a few minutes, she ignored the two cups of coffee she put down on the table. Instead she sat next to him on the sofa and looked him up and down.
‘You’ve got potential,’ she said finally. Her voice was soft, and almost menacing. She smiled and held up her hand.
In it a tiny bead of fire sprang up, grew into a small ball about the size of a tennis ball, hung there. She let him stare at it for a long time, a smile tugging at her lips, before closing her fingers around it, letting it wink out.
He turned to her, careful to show amazement in his eyes. ‘How did you do that?’
‘You’d like to learn?’
He nodded dumbly, conscious that words might reveal him as the magician he was. A fireball wasn’t a particularly impressive achievement, not by his standards, but for a mortal it was probably a remarkable trick.
Ursula, still smiling, brushed one hand along his cheek, and held it at his chin, tilting his face this way and that to get a good look, as though sizing up a choice cut for the oven. ‘Yes,’ she said finally, ‘you’ll do.’
He gently caught her hand, smelling the perfume on it. ‘What must I do?’
‘You can be my apprentice.’
‘How? Tell me.’
But she seemed not to want that. What she did seem to want was to kiss him. Sam stood up and backed away. She rose too, looking disappointed. ‘I don’t bite, you know. I’ll teach you everything, honestly.’
‘What are you?’
She pouted, a coy expression too young for her. In the bright light, he could see lines beneath the thick make-up. ‘Ashen’ia.’
‘What’s Ashen’ia?’
She looked impatient, but told him anyway. ‘And soon the Powers will bow to us. They’ll bow to you too, if you join us,’ she finished.
‘Which Power do you serve?’
‘Fire.’ She caught him round the waist and pulled him towards her. He was taller than she was, and she had to bend her neck to look up at him. ‘Give your blood to Fire, and he will make you great.’
‘Do the Ashen’ia serve anyone else?’ he asked softly.
‘The master and the mistress, but they keep themselves to themselves, they won’t bother us…’
‘Who are the master and the mistress?’
She sighed. ‘Questions, questions.’
‘I’d like to know.’
‘No one knows, that’s the point. No one except Gail.’
‘Who’s Gail?’
‘A friend.’ She was tugging at his shirt. He reached round behind him and caught her hands, hol
ding them gently but firmly.
She looked up at him with a pitiful, puppy-like expression, trying to pretend at being hurt. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Where is Gail?’
‘She moves around. But what does she matter?’
‘I’d like to meet her.’
‘Why?’
He tightened his grip on her hands. ‘I want to know who it is I’m expected to serve.’
‘I’ll take you to see her tomorrow.’
Timekeepers: Number 2 in Series Page 9