Waywalkers: Number 1 in Series Read Online Free PDF

creaked in loud distress, Sam staggered to his feet, shaking himself like a dog to be rid of the fire. He emerged unscorched as it flew from him in drops. Both Firedancers struck at once, each lunging forward with a knife of white bone. But Sam was ready for them. Seeing dragon-bone death stab towards his throat, he raised his arms. Both knives exploded in their owners’ hands, turning in an instant to dust.

    The Firedancers were unmoved. From a standing jump one leapt three feet into the air and grasped a beam above, swinging his legs to catch Sam’s exposed face. Just in time Sam ducked and twisted. With his back to the second Firedancer he knocked into the creature, ramming him towards the edge of the gantry. Again the metal platform creaked. Then trembled. But by now both Firedancers knew their game. As one struggled with Sam, trying to lock his arms and feet in place, the other delivered a ringing blow across his face, then another to the side of the head that sent Sam staggering.

    Sparks seemed to fly across Sam’s eyes. Then he felt mortar dust crumbling on his fingers, and out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed metal bolts loose in their socket, which in turn strained against brickwork held together by little more than inertia. Willing himself to ignore his attackers he struck instead at the brickwork behind him. Part of the wall exploded outwards, clattered down a rooftop and bounced with a far-off sound into the street below.

    It was enough. The socket popped loose, and the platform lurched violently to one side. For a sickening couple of seconds it paused, then slid a little way, and finally turned over and crashed on to the ticket hall below. It was a fall no Firedancer could survive. No man, neither.

    At least, no human.
     
    Sam had come to himself in an alien bed. He felt bruised all over and his right arm and leg tingled from newly regenerating. Pain coursed through most of his body. He tried to sit up, and instantly regretted it.

    The next thing that struck him was the heat. And the flies – something else he didn’t associate with Berlin in the autumn.

    ‘Welcome back,’ said a cheerful voice. ‘That was a nasty selection of breaks you had to mend there.’

    ‘I’m out of practice with Firedancers,’ he said, feeling twice his lengthy age.

    Freya hadn’t got off lightly either. There were lines down her bare arms where the Firedancers had managed to scorch her, and one side of her face was bright pink.

    ‘Where are we?’

    ‘Spain. I Waywalked us here.’

    He nearly fell out of bed with surprise. ‘Through the Way of Heaven?’

    ‘Don’t worry, no one spotted you.’

    ‘That was extraordinarily stupid!’

    ‘I owed you. You killed their leader.’ Freya never seemed to take offence. Everything in her eyes was either light or dark. To her, a Daughter of Time and Love, even the blackest of blacks should be offered a second chance.
     
    That was when the war in Heaven was at its worst. Eventually the Queens had intervened. The official Wives of Time – Love, War, Wisdom, Night, Day, Chaos, Order, Belief – had taken their warring children in hand and drawn up treaties to guard the new borders. For a brief while there was peace in Heaven.

    Peace which has been broken by the death of Freya
. Only now did Sam feel the full impact of this. There would be feuds in Heaven, some of which would carry through to Earth, as these things always did. But what were the dangers these days, in this time of nuclear and bacterial warfare?

    The more he thought, the more desperate he became to know what Freya had wanted to tell him.
     
    It was late when Sam arrived in Holcombe. The village wore isolation like a protective cloak against a hostile world. The hedges in front of the whitewashed cottages were obsessively trimmed, and several homes had contrived to keep a thatched roof. On the one main street the few shops were in immaculate repair lest people gave up and went instead to