Waywalkers: Number 1 in Series (24 page)

‘Sebastian! Lucifer! Look at me.’ Freya could go through all emotions at once, and they would all be true to her. That too, was a gift of the Daughter of Love.

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

He shrugged.

As she approached, he stared determinedly at the black and white flickering screen, watching a man in a white spacesuit bouncing up and down on a rock a quarter of a million miles away. He wondered if it would be possible to Waywalk to the moon or farther worlds, or if Time had other children for that purpose.

He felt Freya, inches away, kneeling next to him. He felt her breath tickle his neck and closed his eyes.

‘You can’t turn a blind eye for ever, you know,’ she said softly. ‘I have to do this. You know I do. We’ve all had to do things which at the time seemed rash or hurtful or hard, but in the long term it pays off! We lead such long lives. You can’t always live for the present – sooner or later you have to think of the future, because there’s simply so much of it. And when the future has wound its way into the present again – why, then you can live and laugh and be the creature of now rather than tomorrow and have not a care in the world. But to make that future become the present, you must do as Father does. Be a child of necessity, do the hard thing. I want you to understand!’

‘Understand,’ he replied with a little laugh. ‘You’re trying to teach the necessary, bastard Son of Time to understand?’ He turned, and stared at her straight in the face. The action unnerved her, but she held her ground, staring back.

‘I love you. And though I can understand why and where you go, I don’t understand why I, who have spent a lifetime understanding all too well, cannot let you go. I have lived all my life by reason and logic, but now…’ He shrugged again and looked away. ‘Your reason and logic seem to have undermined all mine. I think there’s a limit on the amount of reason or logic in the universe. The more one has of it, the less another has. It’s a balancing act, trying to find that point where reason and logic is the same in all parties concerned so that they can finally see eye to eye.’

She smiled faintly, but there was no humour in it. Very carefully she gave him a long, tender kiss. When she pulled away she was smiling still, but all he could do was stare at her in silent wonder and wish for more.

‘I do love you, Lucifer. I want you to know that.’

‘I love you too. I know it doesn’t matter, though.’

‘If you know that then you are truly ignorant.’ She began to walk towards the door.

He turned, straining to see her retreating back, wishing for her to go as though she had never been, praying for her to stop and come back. ‘Freya!’ he called as she reached the door. He scrambled to his knees, holding his hands out like a beggar. His face was hot, his heart racing. ‘Freya!’

She didn’t turn.

Y
ou
never knew the extent of my power.
 

Even in Heaven, before his banishment, he hadn’t shown them his powers. Even when he was fighting to survive, he had never fully let himself go. But now, with things picking up at such a frantic pace?

He walked straight into the Hell Portal, unhesitating, and strode through pleading shadows without a qualm. In Hell once more, he took a deep breath and turned about, spending not more than thirty seconds in that world. As when he’d tried to find his weapons, he gave no particular direction, but a target. Lights flickered in the mists ahead, multiple Portals vying for position near where he wanted to go. Sam kept the image strong in his mind, until just one Portal shone out in the mists ahead.

He broke through it, heaving in gasps of breath as he emerged into the cold light. Looking round he could find no immediate clue as to where he was, but heard a giggle of voices nearby. He’d come out behind a small building where a typed notice declared in English that this was the ranger’s hut. Moving round from it he beheld a playground full of laughing children in hats and gloves. The sun was still high in the sky; the weather was cold but clear. A drastic time-difference then, between Russia and wherever this was. He estimated anything from seven to nine hours.

Refusing to be bothered by the uncertainty of his situation, he quested around for his target. Felt it. Began to move, slowly at first and then faster, breaking into a light jog. There were a lot of joggers, he noticed. White-teethed men and women wearing tight lycra that only the incredibly fit could get away with and listening to teach-yourself Spanish or music tapes as they loped along paths beneath trees still not in full leaf. Sam jogged with them, easily moving faster.

He saw the edge of the park, recognised the new-old stone walls and the tall street lights, saw the yellow taxis jostle against the huge gas-guzzlers of the suburbs. Saw the densely ranged, many-storeyed apartment buildings, their doors manned by gloved porters. Heard the young men by the old lamp-post rapping unselfconsciously to some unheard beat. Saw the station and the signpost. Central Park West. Eighty-fifth Street.

What, he felt like asking, was the archangel Uriel doing in New York?

If mortal commuters got jet-lag, so Sam quickly found himself getting Way-lag. His body told him it was nearly that late time of the night when the only things on television are repeats of last week’s episodes and cheap porn disguised as authentic drama or documentary. But his eyes were telling him that the busy New York subways were only just filling up with suited men and women, homeward bound but still talking urgently on mobile phones. New Yorkers, he had learnt a long time ago, never stopped working, even when on holiday. The golden word ‘opportunity’ hung before their eyes at all times and yes, they worked as Time worked – making small possibilities reality, making money, making their luxurious dreams come true.

Uriel’s signal still felt distant – but he was locked on to it. Years in Jehovah’s service had made him especially alert to the unseen auras of other archangels, and he followed his senses like a dog follows its nose. It was easy to find people in New York, if you knew what you were looking for. As the signal swung to your left or right like a compass needle, you simply kept going straight towards it, using the north-south, east-west grids of the streets for your guide. He walked, bumping into people and paying no attention to the roads around him save when he had to cross.

Going south down Central Park West, he felt the signal swing again. He crossed the road at the Natural History Museum and walked past the huge building, with the banners of dinosaurs and stars waving gently in the breeze, to Columbus Avenue. Twenty-four-hour supermarkets jostled against greasy cafés, and long single-decked buses roared north towards Harlem while limos sped south and west towards Broadway. A pair of tired Hispanic women carted their blond charges home to their playrooms, a couple flirted on a bench in a small fenced-off area where dogs were legally allowed off their leads.

Sam felt the nearing presence of Uriel swing to his east again, suddenly. Was she taking the subway? To be moving that fast, it seemed likely. He turned, padding patiently south and east as the sky turned blue-grey and the street lamps began to flicker on. He crossed Sixth Avenue where young shoppers in trendy suits forgot the hour and those who could not afford the luxuries on display pressed their noses hungrily against the windows. Here there was more traffic and, though the street was heaving with life of every kind and apartments ran into huge towers and the Empire State Building loomed over them all, there was little or no greenery. Sam found himself wondering what the anti-technocrat Whisperer would think of a scene that was such a dramatic, glamorous change from Russia, where… Hell, yes, where he’d been only three hours before.

Uriel was motionless again. Now that Sam was drawing nearer, the archangel’s presence seemed to cry out to him, beckoning him on. He crossed Fifth Avenue, hardly noticing the heavy traffic or the landmarks that seemed to thrust from every street corner. He continued east, crossing roads where the glamour seemed to have run out, leaving only huge office blocks and dull arcades full of overpriced jewellers and specialist tailors. He struck glamour again, lost it, passed a restaurant where the director of one business flattered his hated rival over a glass of fine Italian wine on a red and white checked tablecloth. The sign on the door declared authentic Italian cuisine. Everything in New York was authentic, even those things which blatantly weren’t.

It took a stranger’s eyes to see through the web of illusion the city had woven around itself. As foreign journalists reported on the rat problem, and the spirits denounced the lack of greenery in these dense streets, so Sam’s black eyes saw the lengthening shadows, the bins that hadn’t been emptied and the falseness of the smiles. It brought back the phrase that had sprung to his mind when this business had started.

‘Lord, what fools these mortals be.’

Sam had once heard Shakespeare performed in America, but had never repeated the experience. He’d seen the Bard himself appear in his works, and hearing Hamlet sigh of his misfortune with an American accent had jarred the part of him still haunted by the relief of living in the sixteenth century. As far as he was concerned, that had been the best century of the lot: after the Renaissance had begun, things could only get better. The dark and middle ages had lasted far too long for his taste.

‘What crude, primitive fools,’ he repeated under his breath.

And turned south again. The street plan was growing more complicated, roads lancing off at diagonals and even the occasional tree springing up through the tight pavement, fenced off from the public. Washington Square now, where cars and trees cast shadows in the never-dying lights around. Into the smaller, quieter residential streets with their airy penthouses, and small newsagents selling papers in half a dozen different languages, predominantly Spanish and English. A man and a woman, delighted with their perfect life in this perfect world, were walking a large grey dog that stopped at the sight of every stranger and won each heart by fondly licking the coldest hands. Uriel was nearby. Sam could sense her like a fire in the corner of his eye. Close enough so that he started shielding his own signal, as Uriel had not.

Turning on to another street, he stopped, craning his neck to stare up at a glass penthouse resting on the top of a white triangular building. A light was on, and his probe could sense only Uriel inside. Sam had walked miles, but hadn’t felt it. He was going to find answers.

Marching across the street, he peered at the single door. There was an intercom, but he wasn’t foolish enough to try and disguise his voice. He checked for wards, but there were none. Pressing his hand against the door and checking instinctively for pursuers with both eyes and mind, he triggered the locking mechanism on the other side and pushed it open.

Inside was a lift and a stairway. Sam took the stairs, watching every corner for the same attackers he’d encountered in Kaluga but knowing in his heart that they weren’t there. He paused on a shadowed corner away from both window and doors, and took out his sword, wiping the sweat off his hand before taking a firm grip on the hilt. He continued up as far as a small landing with only one door. There was a skylight above, and a spherical light shone down on a deep, very clean carpet.

Sam knocked on the door, standing aside from the spyhole and keeping up his shields, projecting with studied ease the mental illusion of just another mortal. The door opened. Uriel, her red hair wet, and wearing nothing more than a dressing gown and pair of slippers, peered at him.

‘I do apologise,’ he said, ramming the butt of his sword up and into her chin. She fell back, and he swiftly delivered two more blows that sent her crumpling to the floor.

The apartment was just three large rooms – a bedroom and a bathroom, with a sitting room, dining room and kitchen blended into one. There were large sliding doors and a balcony on which well-tended flowers grew unnaturally well for the time of year. It was a matter of moments to turn out the cupboards and find some masking tape. With another apology to the stunned and helpless Uriel, Sam tied her to a nearby radiator and blindfolded her. He didn’t want even the lesser power of an archangel employed against him. Meanwhile Uriel was recovering consciousness, turning her head this way and that and moaning.

Sam didn’t bother with hitting; he didn’t bother with yelling. He knew he couldn’t read an archangel’s mind as simply as he had Maria’s. Not without aid. He turned his back on her and raised his cupped hands to his face, squeezing his eyes shut.

His fingers began to tremble, then he began to shake all over. Tears sprang to his eyes, and his mouth opened in a silent scream as white light surrounded him, expanded, rushed towards Uriel, filling the room, and stopped inches from her quaking form. Then it collapsed and Sam staggered against the kitchen table, eyes streaming, hands trembling as he clasped them to his ears.

‘Lucifer!’ pleaded Uriel. ‘What are you doing?’ She had felt the barely controlled discharge, known it for what it was.

White-eyed, Sam turned on her and his face was twisted in pain. ‘I can hear your thoughts,’ he said softly. ‘And you are now going to tell me where Andrew is. Where I can find Gail. What’s really going on.’

He could hear her mind, feel her fantasies, all her many fantasies, about what he might do to her. Her fear was his fear, and he trembled as it rushed through him. Her hatred was his hatred and he bit his lip to try and fight it down. Her thoughts were his thoughts

‘Where’s Andrew?’

And even as she replied, ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he heard her thoughts.

‘Then where is the other accomplice? Gail.’

‘Lucifer – no, look —’

‘Make this easier for me. Where roughly is she?’

Images flooded his mind, and he focused on Gail, refused to listen to the thoughts of the many, many other people around, focused on Uriel. Images of a map, a circle drawn around a small collection of towns.

‘Traitor? What do you mean a traitor?’

Helpless, Uriel grunted her futile rage and struggled against her bonds, but she could not silence her thoughts.

‘Who are her “powerful friends”? Who are Gail’s… Gabriel’s “friends”?’

‘How many people are searching that area?’

‘Get out of my head!’ she screamed. ‘Get out!’

‘The Portals are guarded? You mean spirits watch them?’ His eyes were burning, his ears ringing. He could feel something flowing through him like fire, but it made his head swim and his heart pump and the whole world burned in the darkest colours of the soul.

‘You’re going to die, Lucifer!’ She was struggling ineffectively, trying to beat him by sheer willpower and fury alone. He ignored her, and kept on listening. He had no choice but to listen.

‘Jehovah is looking for the Pandora keys, yes? He and Odin and Seth?’

‘No.’

‘How many keys have been found?’

‘None!’