Timekeepers: Number 2 in Series Read Free

along their red robes, turning them pure white. In ordinary people – ordinary immortals – it would have inflicted little more than stiff joints and drastic inconvenience. With Firedancers, the reaction was very different. They screamed. In the moment of deafening distraction Sam leapt forwards, spinning round to bring his dagger down hard into the shoulder of one Firedancer. He heard something uncomfortably like the crunch of someone walking on glass and yanked his blade free, trailing orange-red blood.

    Pain exploded in the small of his back and he staggered, almost falling into the bed, which was by now burning fast, filling the room with noxious black smoke. He coughed, eyes watering, and heaved himself to one side. The shattered remnants of the stool Adam was swinging slammed down on to the bed next to him. He saw the hatred twist Adam’s face. This was what happened when the Pandora spirits came; they consumed your mind, bringing in its place just a single emotion. Sam was the only one they couldn’t touch, because, with the Light filling him from inside out, they had to pass through the shards of too many other minds.

    Even his closest allies, however, could be affected. Like Adam. ‘Adam!’ he yelled, knowing all the while that it was futile to try and reason.

    One of the frost-encrusted Firedancers had crawled to the window, blood soaking through his clothes. Sam watched as the Firedancer bodily tossed himself out of the window and fell. Falls wouldn’t kill a Firedancer either. Not nearly as effectively as the kind of magic Sam could muster. Another Firedancer had made for the door and was trying to drag himself downstairs. The third…

    The third
…

    Sam pitched himself on to the floor. Which was lucky, as it meant the Firedancer’s blade sliced the air instead of his throat. A knife of dragon-bone, one of the few weapons guaranteed to kill a Waywalker like Sam. He put his back against a wall and raised his hands as Adam brought the stool swinging at his face. The air rippled, catching the stool where Adam held it, suspended motionless. With a wrench Sam pulled it from Adam’s grip and tossed it across the room.

    The third Firedancer gave a screech like nothing human, nor even immortal, and dived for Sam’s throat, hands blazing fire. Sam kicked out, striking the Firedancer in the chest. Heat crawled along his shins, and his feet slid on impact with the floor, the soles of his shoes rapidly melting. He pushed the Firedancer back, who staggered and fell on to the now roaring bed. There was a scream, barely audible over the noise of the fire and the humming of the Pandora spirit.

    Adam grinned as he advanced towards him. ‘Adam!’ Sam yelled, coughing through the smoke. ‘Don’t be stupid!’

    Adam drew his hands back, fingernails lengthening into claws. Sam acted on instinct, twisting his hands round each other in a tight, rapid circle. Adam’s feet were pulled off the floor and up, even as his body seemed to be knocked to one side by an unseen force. For a second he spun on empty air, then crashed down hard against the opposite wall, by the shattered windows.

    Sam got to his feet and held out his hands. On the blazing bed the bags he’d packed, themselves already smoking, leapt up and flew into his grasp. He trod out the few small licks of flame that threatened to consume them and tossed the bags out of the door. Then he clambered over to Adam, tears streaming down his face, holding his jacket across his nose and mouth. He felt for Adam’s pulse, sensed its weakness. By now the fire on the bed had spread to the curtains. Sam seized Adam by the ankles and dragged him out of the room and down the stairs, thankful that at least his friend had resumed a fully human form. Kicking open the front door, he pulled the little spirit out into the street.

    A small crowd of mortals had already gathered, gawping in what struck Sam as an exceptionally unhelpful manner at the fire now clawing its way