Timekeepers: Number 2 in Series (8 page)

‘He’s locked up to this day, the taint of Cronus still on him. But Time won’t let Loki die. He wants him to suffer for what he did. And, rumour is, one day he might want to use him again.’

‘For what?’

Freya shrugged, not meeting his eyes. ‘Perhaps Time has another plan to destroy Cronus. Perhaps he thinks another Bearer of Light might stand more chance than Balder did, and this time Cronus
will
be destroyed.’

Sam stared at her, his mouth dry. She glanced in his direction, saw the horror in his eyes and grinned nervously. ‘Or perhaps not. Who knows?’

‘Time knows,’ said Sam.

‘Yes,’ she replied thoughtfully. ‘I suppose he does.’

L
ater that afternoon, Sam woke from his trance. He sat up in the ambulance, blinked to clear his head and tenderly felt his ankle. Not a twinge. Nonetheless he took his time in getting up.

Under one of the seats he found a jacket with luminescent stripes and the ambulance service badge of the serpent and staff. It was heavy, and a bit big for him, but he pulled it on, slipping the gun into a pocket.

Outside, the local call box was just a phone under a tiny glass shelter next to a large green recycling bin. Sam leant up against it, trying to look casual, and watched the road as if the phone box was nothing to do with him.

At exactly five thirty, the phone rang. Sam waited a few rings, then picked it up. A voice said in French, ‘I heard the first bluebird of spring.’

Damn. Bloody word games.
The idea of code words had seemed so silly, he’d not considered it. He snapped in German, ‘Hindsonn is in hospital, he was knifed.’

Silence. Then someone said, also in German, ‘Who is this?’ A woman’s voice, accented with a language Sam couldn’t recognise, and impatient, suspicious. Its snap of authority made him picture the German equivalent of the world of wellington boots, hunting and a lot of talk about cricket.

‘My name is… Marc. I work with Hindsonn. He’s in intensive care.’

‘What are you doing on this phone?’

‘Hindsonn told me to come here. He said he had a message to be delivered urgently. A matter of death, he said —’

‘Who attacked him?’

‘A large man. Red hair, looked like a ton of bricks.’
Name of Thor, surely. Let’s see if I can get my brother into trouble
…

‘What’s the message?’

‘I don’t know. He gave me a floppy disk, told me not to open it, just pick up this phone. Look, if this is something to do with Hindsonn’s attacker…’

‘Leave the disk by the phone and go.’

‘But I —’

The line went dead. Sam put down the receiver and tried to think, very fast.

The answer was in his bag. The notebook he’d bought in London was backed with cardboard, and Sam made quick work with his dagger of cutting out a more or less square shape that might pass, momentarily, for a disk. He stuffed it into the envelope Franz had made for him and shoved it into the gap behind the phone.

In the ambulance he waited.

After two hours it was getting dark, the sky grey-blue, going on black. The yellow streetlights were flickering on and off as if undecided which way to go. Sam began to doubt if anyone would come.

When the car pulled up he didn’t even notice. He only saw the man reaching behind the phone for the envelope because at almost that moment the little white light in the booth flicked on.

It illuminated a grey hood over a hidden face. The man was stockily built, and wore outsize leather gloves, as if to hide as much skin as he could. There was a glimpse of red hair under the hood before the man hastened back to the car. Sam jotted down the number plate and watched as the car pulled out. He didn’t want to crowd the man. Only when the car was about fifty yards away did he start the ambulance engine and follow.

They swung out into thick traffic, and for ten minutes or so they edged round a maze of one-way systems and traffic lights. Eventually the traffic picked up speed, but Sam was careful to keep at least two vehicles between him and the car in front. As the evening darkened, the road became a bypass, sweeping east into a hinterland of railway sidings, disused factories and lifeless housing estates.

On a minor road now, the city became just a blur of light in the driving mirror. Trees grew all around, creating a tunnel over the small spot of Sam’s headlights. He felt terribly exposed, his vehicle the only other one on the road, and all the more noticeable as an ambulance in this remote place.

Sam slammed on the brakes as the road turned a corner. There was the car, parked by a wide metal gate into a field. Of the driver there was no sign. Sam parked the ambulance on the side of the road where it would be obscured by a line of trees. He got out slowly, wary of a trap. The darkness was total: no moon, not a light, not a star to illuminate the fields around. There seemed no distinguishing feature in this empty landscape, not a building, not a —

His internal radar gave a little beep. He frowned, and concentrated. Yes. There was a building, a shape in the darkness, no lights on inside it, and just behind it… a Portal.

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 turned 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.