Waywalkers: Number 1 in Series (18 page)

H
e’d remembered Michael as an honourable soul. They’d been good friends, but Michael had always put duty before all things. If he’d been ordered by Jehovah to kill his own mother, he would have done it.

But it was also true that in some sense he owed Sam his life, a debt that had been repaid in Kaluga after almost five hundred years of neglect.

In the year of Our Lord 1582 Sam Linnfer had been pressing his weary way through an endless, dense forest complete with wolves and bandits. Stopping in his tracks, he found himself staring at the avenging angel ahead.

Sam was wearing a black woollen cloak, and old boots that were in constant battle with his feet as to how fast blisters could be caused, and leading a horse that if anything looked worse than he did. He was fouled and covered with dirt, and his face and exposed hands were flushed bright red. And no matter how good his regenerative abilities, they hadn’t worked fast enough to banish the extensive bruising down one side of his haggard features. His clothes too were torn, as though slashed by the claws of a bear, and when he took his hands from the horse’s bridle, they trembled.

‘They tried to burn me,’ he called. It was neither an accusation, nor a plea for help. It was a statement, warning the other away from him. The implication behind it was clear. If they couldn’t burn me, don’t think you can.

‘I’ve been sent,’ Michael said. He was wearing his archangel’s white.

‘I can tell.’ He was still shaken, and Michael could see it. Even Sam struggled when fanatic mortals tried to burn him at the stake. ‘Are the others nearby? They’d have to be, if you intend to wear that daft white robe everywhere.’

Michael had begun walking closer, his sword already drawn, the edge gleaming with fire. ‘I was sent to find a witch. You’ll do.’

Sam watched him approach, his hands not once moving towards his sword. ‘They tried to burn me,’ he repeated. ‘Don’t you find that ironic? They say I live in boiling pits of fire, and yet they think they can burn me.’

Michael took up the guard position a few feet from Sam, sword ready.

Sam didn’t move. ‘Why do you have to fight me? I know Jehovah can’t bear my name, because I was right and he was wrong, and his grand Messiah plan failed. But why do you,
you
, have to fight me?’

‘I’ve been sent.’

Sam sighed, and gently slapped his horse on the rump. Obediently it trotted away. He turned his full attention to Michael. ‘Tell you what,’ he said, ‘you put the sword down and stop being an idiot, and I won’t tell your master. How does that sound?’

Michael was lost in his own world – or one of Jehovah’s making? ‘You. A Son of Time, a Prince of Heaven, a Waywalker. I worshipped Waywalkers, thought they were almost… godly. And I trusted you, called you my friend. Do you know how I argued with Jehovah when he demanded your death? How I begged him to reconsider – even though he is my master, and not you. He no longer trusts me, you know, because I argued for you. I was cast out of his favour, all because you were my friend.
He’s
the Son of Time, the Prince of Heaven.
You’re
just the exile that I thought I knew. I would have given anything to be a Waywalker. And yet you…
you
…’

His sword whirled, but Sam was already there. His hands moved in a blur, and the silver blade was up as he ducked below Michael’s blow. Expertly he swivelled, swinging his blade up and across as he exclaimed, ‘These many years on Earth and you learn how to survive, old friend.’ A thrust, a parry, an easy spin in which he stuck out an ankle to trip his opponent, who fell, then rolled clumsily out of the way of a tauntingly leisured downstroke.

‘I studied survival in China, in Africa, in France and now here and, you know, I feel really confident with myself,’ Sam went on as Michael got to his feet. ‘Did I tell you about the latest developments in Hell? I’ve actually managed to convince them of the wonders of plumbing. The fact that the temperature is always below freezing is a minor difficulty, but, as we say, Time conquers all.’

He ducked another thrust, danced nimbly away from a counter-stroke and in the riposte brought his sword swinging round and down in an elegant arc that pinned Michael’s sword to the ground and locked them each inches from the other’s face.

‘You don’t want to be a Son of Time, Michael,’ he warned softly. ‘It’s not worth it.’

Michael broke free, jabbing with his knee at Sam’s gut. But Sam was already spinning away, and used Michael’s off-balance to deliver a ringing sideways blow with the flat of his blade.

‘Archangels have it so much easier,’ explained Sam in a louder voice as they whirled and thrust across the path and between the trees. ‘Being created to serve somehow gives purpose to your life. When I was created to serve, things were so much easier. There was none of this self-doubt, none of this agonising over what it’s all about. It’s so simple to have your loyalties, faith, belief and hope grounded in one fairly safe bet. But we still gamble with our souls – every day, Michael. And for every day we lose, a little more of our soul is stolen from us. After a few thousand years of gambling, that’s a lot of debts to pay.’

Sam had only one hand on his sword now. Too late Michael tried to scramble for cover while, palm out, Sam’s free hand came across and up. As it rose, so Michael rose until he was pinned, helpless and motionless in air, his wild eyes and fast breathing the only proof that he was alive.

Below, supporting his involuntary flight, Sam wasn’t smiling at all now.

‘They tried to burn me,’ he murmured again. ‘Do not seek to be a Son of Time. Do not seek to see everything you hold dear pass away, to be replaced by new hope that, again, passes away. Do not seek to see as clearly as Time makes his Children see. If you had seen the things that I have seen, or the things that I must see before I die… well, no more of that. You see what you want to see and, while it lasts, that is a marvellous blessing. If we saw what was really there, who would be able to face Time with a steady eye?’

He released Michael from the spell, and the archangel fell to the ground with a heavy thump. Sam brought his free hand slicing through the air, and the effect was like a iron fist to Michael’s face, who slumped, hands opening around his blade and voice giving no cry.

‘They tried to burn me,’ Sam whispered.

It was the squeaking of rats that woke him, or possibly the sound of claws scrabbling on plastic bags. The sun was high in the sky, but his only way of telling this was by the stifling heat and the glimmer of light that shone through a small window at the far end of the room.

He was lying in a basement, unbound, on a pile of garbage bags heaped into a large plastic container beneath a rubbish chute. There was no bullet in his back, but there was also no sign of his sword, nor of Andrew, Peter, or Whisperer. He wondered where the bullet had gone, then as he rolled over he felt his stomach churn.
Oh, hell
…

Falling hard out of the container of rubbish, he managed to crawl several feet before he stopped and emptied the contents of his stomach. Tears sprang to his eyes, and he retched and went on retching. There was a warm wetness around his nose and when he wiped a hand across his face a clear liquid came off on it, tainted slightly with blood.

Now he knew what had happened to the bullet. His body had broken it down, dissolved it into the bloodstream. He wondered how long he’d been in the cellar. For his body to have metabolised lead, probably days.

He managed to stand upright, and watched blearily as the world rocked back and forth. The dagger against his ankle was gone, but a gleam of silver among the rubbish marked where it had broken free of its strings, rather than been taken. He raised one hand and it flew into his grasp, as fouled and smelly as he was.

Sam staggered towards the single metal door. His hand blindly found its way to the handle, but the door was locked. He started hammering, tears streaking his face and the trickle from his nose turning into proper blood. Metabolising lead was something he hadn’t done in a long time. He went on hammering, yelling futile imprecations. No one answered.

Falling back and wiping his eyes with his filthy sleeve, Sam finally gave an animal snarl of rage and levelled both hands at the door. It exploded outwards with the force of his anger and he rushed through it, howling like a wounded creature. Hearing him, a janitor appeared, gaping in surprise. Sam rushed straight up to him, a madman with a knife, and shouted into his face, ‘What’s the date? How long was I down there?’

‘March the third!’ stammered the man. ‘March the third!’

A week! Sam snarled at him, ‘Have you got a car?’

The janitor took in Sam’s wild appearance and the furious way he waved the knife, and quickly said yes.

‘Then you’re going to drive me!’

The man was utterly mad. But he was a madman with a knife. Having waved his blade at Ivan the janitor, sent on his weekly round to empty the rubbish bins, the madman had growled, ‘Get the car!’

And now he was sitting in Ivan’s front passenger seat, one hand flung across the car so that the knife could rest near the janitor’s belly, a blanket pulled up to his chin, tears mingling with blood all down his face, and muttering. And smelling. That was what Ivan noticed above all.

‘Turn left,’ the man snapped.

‘Where are we going?’

‘The Portal. I was beaten.’

‘What Portal?’

‘Just drive!’

The man fell silent again. He kept writhing about, pressing his back into the seat and then recoiling as though stung from touching his back to anything. Finally he found a position that seemed bearable and regarded Ivan with strangely sane eyes. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked finally.

‘Ivan.’

‘Married?’

‘Yes.’

‘Children?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then rest assured I’ll do my best not to cut your throat.’ The madman gave a faint sigh. ‘I thought I’d outwitted them, but I was wrong. Still, they won’t be able to destroy the sword or the crown.’

Ivan took what to his mind was a terrible risk. ‘Look,’ he said, as kindly as possible, ‘you need help, that’s fine! I’ll take you to the hospital; they’ll look after you.’

‘I don’t need help! At least, not that kind.’

‘What do you do?’ asked Ivan nervously.
Be friends with him. Maybe then he won’t kill you.

‘Me? I get caught up in other people’s stupid, stupid wars and think I can out-manoeuvre them, that’s what.’
But I did tag her.

Ivan thought better of asking anything more. He drove. The man gave strange directions. His lefts and rights and keep goings didn’t seem to have any knowledge behind them, and he gave his orders as though compensating for the shape of the land itself. A right here because we couldn’t turn where I wanted. A left here because we have no choice. It was as if he had an internal radar and was trying to reach the centre of an unseen positioning system.

Abruptly, the madman told Ivan to stop. They had long left Kaluga and were in the middle of an empty road in a rural nowhere. Ivan stopped, not bothering to pull over. Perhaps someone would notice his plight.

The man was staring fixedly at a small copse of trees in a field. He wrenched the door open and half climbed, half fell from the car. Ivan felt his stomach turn through three hundred and sixty degrees and his heart clamber into his throat. The man’s back was soaked with blood, along with a black substance he couldn’t begin to guess at. Sam heard the car roar away into the distance, and fancied he heard Ivan’s relieved and terrified exclamations fading with the engine. Warm wetness trickled down his spine, and he knew that his body was still trying to discharge the poisonous lead. He began to stagger across the field towards the Way of Hell. It would be a dangerous Waywalk, in his condition. But he was resolved. As he never had been before, he was determined now. Now things were different. Now he was alone. And alone, there was no one save him to make mistakes. Alone, he could weave his spells and be sure that nothing endangered them save his own foolery. Was he not master of magics? Time’s necessary Child?

The message that came to Beelzebub was confused, to say the least. He was in his room, stretched across the bed and staring at the ceiling with wide, sleepless eyes. Sleep was a luxury that had long ago been denied him, but demon pride dictated that he didn’t complain. So it was fortunate that he would lose none tonight, when the guards hammered on his door.

‘Sir! Lucifer!’

‘
Sir
’
and
‘
Lucifer
’
?
he thought.
What have these two to do with each other?

But he got up, pulling on a warm robe and following the incoherent guards to Lucifer’s room. He knocked warily on the door, wondering what it was that could have brought Sam back – and in a state desperate enough to have the usually level-headed guards go frantic.

‘It’s open!’

Stepping inside, he closed the door to the rest of the world and stared, dumbfounded. Sam was standing before the fire pulling on a large shirt – pale as a sheet, his hair wet from a bath, no sword or crown to be seen, and a bandage wound round him several times to catch the black discharge from an unseen wound in his back.