Guardians of Paradise Read Online Free

sighted - don’t approach her.’
     
    Jarek started, nearly losing his grip, as the female team leader concluded, ‘Let the gas do our work for us.’
     
    Gas? Oh shit! So that was what the rebreather was for.
     
    He began to climb faster, feeling for his footholds when the trunk narrowed and divided. He should be coming up to the terrace soon. He leant out slightly and looked up and across.
     
    He didn’t remember the weather-shield being that transparent; surely there should be a faint shimmering? It was almost as though it wasn’t there any more.
     
    His left foot began to slip and he tightened his grip just as part of the vine tore away from the wall. He pressed himself into the leaves, his foot flailing.
     
    Almost as though echoing his own panic, a voice he hadn’t heard before came over the com, asking, ‘Control? Do you read? Where are you?’
     
    He found a new foothold, but now the whole damn vine was beginning to pull away from the building. He had to get his weight off it, fast. He leaned across to the right, blindly reaching for the edge of the terrace.
     
    Over the com a male voice muttered, ‘Holy fuck!’
     
    His hand found a solid surface and he braced himself for the bite of the weather-shield - but there was nothing. He walked his fingers in until he found a post, part of the fence his parents had installed when they found the shield wasn’t an adequate deterrent for a small boy with an insatiable curiosity and little sense of personal danger.
     
    He gripped the post and pulled himself up until he could peer over the lip of the terrace. The ornate legs of the white wicker-work table were beaded with water from the misty rain; the shield was definitely off. He reached further up the fencepost and took a firm hold. With a degree of uncomfortable contortion, and after a couple of dodgy moments, he managed to get his right leg onto the lip and from there he hauled himself up onto the narrow ledge outside the fence.
     
    As he stood upright it occurred to him that whatever had killed the intruder could have come from up here, but other than a new lounger, the terrace was exactly as he remembered it.
     
    As he put his foot onto the lower cross-rail of the fence the com started up again. ‘Control’s down! Control’s down!’ The man on the com sounded like he was about to lose it. Good. Jarek wondered what could have taken their leader out, not to mention the one he’d got the mask from. Just what had Elarn done to the house security while he’d been away?
     
    As he braced himself on the post and swung a leg over the fence, the door from the house slid open and a figure ran out onto the sun-terrace: someone unfeasibly tall, and yet hard to focus on; he must be wearing a mirror-tech cloak. Another figure followed on his heels: smaller, female. Her cloak was thrown back, revealing indoor clothes, as well as a slender, efficient-looking black rifle slung over her shoulder. Both of them bent over and started coughing hard.
     
    As the door closed behind them and the woman caught sight of Jarek straddling the fence she tensed, then straightened and stared straight at him. Though her eyes were red and streaming, they were also, suddenly, the only thing in the universe. He knew those eyes - even as he felt her presence slip into his mind, starting to freeze him in place, he used the last of his will to rip the rebreather mask off and shout, ‘Nual! It’s me! S—Jarek!’
     
    He felt her momentary surprise and as the pressure let up his gaze was drawn to the long, silver blade that had suddenly appeared in her companion’s hand. Nual murmured something and the blade disappeared, faster than Jarek’s eyes could follow.
     
    The boy - and he was a boy, Jarek saw now, no more than late teens, and irritatingly pretty in a fey, scrawny way - gave Jarek a look of naked suspicion and said, ‘Who the fuck’re you, then?’ His voice was hoarse.
     
    So was Nual’s, presumably a side-effect of the