Waywalkers: Number 1 in Series (11 page)

He rose to his feet. ‘It’s only a theory. But there are people out there who believe it – are scared of it, even. The ultimate in destructive power, that’s what they’re calling it. They’re frightened of you. I thought you ought to know.’

He turned in a flurry of well-cut silk and headed away, but Sam’s voice made him stop and turn back.

‘You haven’t mentioned the rest,’ said Sam. His voice seemed to be trying to follow his mind, so detached was he. ‘The thoughts and emotions of everything the Light could touch, channelled against a single target, would not only destroy the target, but the person who directed it. Used on a grand scale, that is. If a discharge only picked up the thoughts of ten or twenty minds, it would be no problem. The bearer could probably cope with the noise of those minds, even while provoking them to terror or hatred or love.

‘But on a grand scale, channelling a million, a billion,
ten
billion minds?’ He shook his head. ‘The bearer would be adrift in a sea of minds, lose his own identity. If the shock didn’t kill him, he’d probably go mad.
I’d
go mad, if I discharged in any other than a small, local way. A thousand minds fighting for space inside my head would be enough to destroy me. I know you know this. Don’t pretend otherwise, brother.’

Seth said nothing, but there was sympathy on his face. Whether real or no, Sam couldn’t tell. It was a long time before he spoke to his brother again.

‘I
s he coming?’

Whisperer had been waiting in a battered old Toyota, chin resting desolately in his hands. Sam pulled open the passenger door, threw his bag on to the back seat and sat down in a rush, breathless after running up the hill from the local bus. Even so close to Paris, the ride had taken forty minutes, past a seeming eternity of new apartment blocks and huge building sites, out to the surrounding countryside. Whisperer was parked on a wooded hillside with glimpses of a distant river.

‘He arrived at a Portal near here half an hour ago.’

The meeting Sam, in the guise of a Moondance traitor, had offered Thor wasn’t due for another half an hour. But already he was on edge. ‘Is everyone in place?’

‘Yes.’ Whisperer looked uncomfortable. ‘You do realise that if he attacks, we won’t be able to help?’ As a Prince of Heaven, Thor, like Sam himself, would have total power over those of the Fey.

‘Just make sure you don’t endanger yourselves. You know where to meet if something goes wrong?’ Whisperer nodded.

‘Right.’ Sam shook Whisperer’s ice-cold, insubstantial hand, keeping his grip deliberately light, and scrambled out of the car. He started walking, up a muddy path half overgrown with bracken.

In the cold dimness that follows a winter sunset, a large stone barn lurked amid growing shadows. It had been abandoned for years by everything but invading ivy, and rats. Sam had chosen it for the surrounding woods, which kept it out of the way of most mortals. He could feel the eyes of the Moondance network on his back, a prickle on his neck and the gentle hum of his senses.

Pushing open the old, cracked barn door he stepped into musty gloom, picking his way over floorboards that creaked as if about to collapse. He checked the windows. Most were broken, and brambles or elder had thrust their way in. Yes. It would do.

As he unsheathed his sword, from far off there was the sound of a car engine. He turned, sword raised, hearing the distant thunk of a heavy door, followed soon after by footsteps. Sam retreated deeper into the shadows of the barn. They were early – but wasn’t every good contact, to see that the way was clear?

A valkyrie entered first, long sword held lightly in one hand. With a start Sam recognised the same figure of dread he’d encountered on the boat. Following her, with his rune-inscribed axe already out, came a larger, darker figure. Helmet pulled down over his face, obscuring the ruddy features. Long green cloak, soft reindeer boots. Head movements like a pigeon waiting for a cat.

And, to make things worse, the wrong man.

Odin saw Sam, and smiled. ‘Hello, little boy. No spirits after all?’

‘Where’s Thor?’

‘He’s not the important one, little Lucifer. Little Light and little Fire.’

More figures entered the barn. Valkyries, swords drawn, death in their eyes. Sam began to back away. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked quietly. ‘Why are you chasing after me?’

Odin simply went on smiling. ‘You’ve made a strategic error, Lucifer. You should have thought it out more carefully.’

‘You’d kill me, rather than find the man who murdered your sister?’

‘You went to Tibet, little Lucifer. You spoke to the abbot. You’ve been asking questions.’

Sam continued to back away. There were now at least a dozen valkyries in the barn. And Odin was a Son of War.
This is so unfair.

‘How do you know I went to Tibet?’
Something scared the librarian
…
he was found out. By people watching, watching the library, watching the Historian.
‘What are you doing this for?’

Odin shook his head as if in jest. His hands hung at his sides, the huge axe clasped in one as if it were a feather. Sam felt his back touch a wall. Very quietly, in the depths of his mind, he thought,
Shit, this is really not good.

‘I am trying to help!’ he exclaimed. ‘To find out who killed your sister!’

‘But Lucifer, doesn’t it occur even to thick-headed you that we might not want you to? Freya died of an overdose of knowledge. You, I fear, will die pathetically ignorant.’

‘You don’t care,’ breathed Sam. ‘You’re working with whoever killed her! Your sister!’

To his credit, Sam had a good sense of timing. When you’re cornered, nowhere left to run, the last thing anyone expects is for you to charge as if the armies of Hell were marching at your back. So, in that moment of bitter revelation, Sam attacked. He went straight for Odin. And as he went, he changed.

He’d been told, long ago, of a race of spirits who treated shadows as real objects, and who could walk as shadows,
become
shadows. This effect he’d learned to copy, crudely, with magic – but making it a dozen times more deadly. By the time he’d taken a pace, his shadow had grown thicker, then begun to cast a shadow of its own. By the time he’d taken a second pace his shadow’s shadow had become real. A third pace and there were four Sams, all charging towards the line of valkyries, silver swords raised and murder in their eyes. By the time Sam’s sword came up and round to strike Odin, the barn was full of him.

The illusions meant nothing to Odin, who would see through them in a second. But to the valkyries, with eyes less attuned to the otherworldly, they were as real as day. So it was that the valkyries attacked every Sam except the real one. And Sam, plain, quiet little Sam, little light and little fire with his boyish smile too rarely seen in recent times, brought his sword crashing down hard on Odin’s upraised axe.

In that second of impact, when Odin’s arms seemed to move in a blur to parry Sam’s reckless swing for his head, Sam knew he didn’t stand a chance. Odin had gone from static to straining in the blink of an eye, a reaction that Sam, with all his years of hard practice and cold showers, could never replicate. Against a Son of War, and in the terms of battle, Sam could not win. Around him swords were cutting through illusion like the air and mist they were, and by a process of elimination the valkyries were turning towards their one real adversary.

Sword and axe locked, Sam found himself staring straight into Odin’s wide grin. ‘What are you doing?’ hissed Sam.

‘Pathetically ignorant,’ repeated Odin.

Sam gave an inward shrug. ‘Then I guess I’ll die ignorant. And dishonourable.’

Odin, for all his supremacy as a fighter, had not expected to be kneed in the groin with such savagery. As he staggered, Sam broke loose. He ducked a sword aimed for his head, brought his own blade down and across to draw a line of blood across a valkyrie’s thigh, drew his sword back to parry a blow – and in that instant let go with his left hand, to bring it sweeping up.

The air moved. The valkyries staggered in unison, like an unrehearsed ballet. Sam was already running for the door. He cleared the valkyries in his path with a graceful flick of the hand. In response to his gesture the straw in the barn ignited as if soaked in petrol, scattering them in panic. Sam himself wasn’t worried about the oddly coloured flames. A well-placed silver axe in the back would kill him. But not fire.

Just inside the doorway something caught his arm, spun him around. He looked into Odin’s eyes. By firelight they looked more crazed and terrifying than ever. Sam almost cried aloud as the butt end of Odin’s axe struck his wrist and the pain, then numbness, swept through his arm. He heard the clatter of his dropped sword, saw Odin’s axe sweep towards his face, staggered back and fell. The fire was all around. Its heat was incredible. The pain in his arm was extraordinary too: a dull throb that was somehow worst in his shoulder, while almost impossible to feel where the axe had struck.

Odin loomed. Better than most, Sam decided. If ever he’d been asked to award a sinister-gleam-in-the-eye prize, Odin would have been right there on his shortlist. He wondered what spells he had that Odin couldn’t shake off. He felt fire stir inside him. Cold, white, blinding fire. He saw the great axe rise. The thought came…
Ah, what the hell. It’s only torture.

He let the fire rise, and burn, and build. Closed his eyes. Opened his hands.

He’d never really understood the nature of the Light. No one had felt obliged to tell him; it was as if, by possessing the thing, he’d immediately understood what it was and how to use it. But he knew that it shaped itself to his thoughts, for as long as they stayed coherent, and that when it reached out to feed on more thoughts it seized, not the hearts of men, but their minds.

So, fallen down in a burning barn, a lone figure with black hair opened his hands, and let out the Light. It expanded around in him a blinding circle of energy, making onlookers shield their eyes in pain. It erupted through walls as if they weren’t there, passed through the mind of Whisperer and leaped onwards across the Parisian countryside in an ever widening circle of power.

And where the Light touched minds, they responded to Sam’s own fear. Thus it whispered to them of dark corners and unseen snakes and the empty street late at night and the figure half-perceived in the lamplight who was gone when you looked again. It took the fear, fed on it, became powerful on thought.

Sam couid feel his control slipping as the Light encompassed so many other minds. He tried to rein back his mind, but it was hard to remember that he was Sam, not Jean-Paul nor Jeanette nor Julien, hard to remember that he was afraid of being consumed by the Light, rather than of the spiders in the garden and the rats in the sewers and the figure who was gone when you looked again, and the corners and the darkness and the minds and the fire…

He caught hold of something inside his own mind that felt as if it were hot to the touch. Mentally he closed his fist around it and thought of the pain in his shoulder.
His
shoulder, something to centre on, his heart, his mind, his desires.

Somewhere in the distance, the running white line of light slowed, paused, and began to contract in on itself, racing back towards the centre, growing brighter as it did. It struck Sam, who lurched as if physically hit. For a second all was darkness. Odin was reeling, blinking away tears. The valkyries dared to look in Sam’s direction again… What next?

Sam’s eyes opened. The black irises were pure white, and the thoughts that before had given such life to his face were lost. There were simply too many other minds competing for room.

There was a brief silence. Then, with the distant smile of a madman, Sam raised his hands and opened them. A beam of white light shot towards Odin, struck, spun him around like a puppet. The full force of a thousand people’s fears passed through Sam and out again, filled the barn with the chitter of insects coming to kill, the howl of wolves in the forest, the buzz of the broken lamp on the darkened street that for a second showed the half-perceived figure in the gloom…

Odin had rarely been heard to scream. When he did, it wasn’t a particularly impressive sound, caught as it was between a gurgle and a gasp. Now, however, for a second he was rooted to the spot. Then he turned, stared at the fire as if he’d seen death in it, and ran. The valkyries fled too, charging into each other in their haste to escape whatever unseen demon pursued them.

Somehow, Sam moved. He got to his hands and knees, tried to rise and half fell again. His face contorted as he squeezed his eyes shut and put his hands over his ears against the roar of all those minds.

Strangely, though he could clearly perceive Odin’s mind, there were no words. Just images. On the one hand the terror of the unknown, the clattering of claws on stone stairs, the feeling of being watched but not seeing who was there… Yet, on the other, he sensed the determination that this enemy – he, Lucifer – should fall, and heard Odin’s thought that truly this was a weak Bearer of Light.

Seen the faces.

The face of the man in the picture he’d been given in Tibet. Andrew. Odin had seen Andrew. More faces. Freya, as beautiful in death as in life. Jehovah, handsome enough as seen now through Odin’s eyes, images of the two shaking hands, memories of voices.
Your house is falling, Odin
, whispered the memory of Jehovah that Sam had never had until this moment, plucked from Odin’s mind.
My house has always been isolated, alone. Together, we can be strong.
Memories that weren’t his, flashing across his mind too fast to see. Others too, familiar faces that suddenly, for the first time, Sam found he didn’t understand. Thor, Seth, Michael, Uriel.

Who, out of these last, might be just a tool? And who Odin’s accomplice?

Then there was the terror of the Light’s discharge. And Odin’s thought.
He does know how to use it! He knows how it can kill
…

The door was thrust open and Whisperer erupted in, shaken to the core. He too had felt the repercussions.

‘Light have mercy,’ Whisperer exclaimed as he helped Sam stagger to his feet. ‘You released it?’

‘Blindfold,’ whispered white-eyed Sam, pleading for an act of mercy.

Whisperer reached into a pocket and produced a spotted scarf, with which he deftly bound Sam’s eyes. Then he picked up the sword and, like a nurse leading a frail old patient from the operation room, he helped Sam stagger to the Toyota, and away.