The Time Shifter Read Online Free

enough to recognise, perched calmly on the edge of the open bay window, at least eight metres above the ground. In one hand, she held a small black canister. On the opposite wrist, her spectacular bracelet caught the light and sparkled so brightly that for a moment Amelia was blinded.
    She blinked, then saw the woman step from the windowsill into thin air – falling two storeys and landing on the lawn as lightly as though she’d skipped down a single step. Amelia was so astonished that she stared, open-mouthed, as the woman ran down the hill in the direction of Tom’s cottage.
    ‘Quickly!’ said Charlie, and Amelia snapped out of it, running with him after the thief.
    But they had only run as far as the rose garden before she stopped dead again – not only astonished this time, but horrified too. Grawk had burst out from the long grass and was charging at the escaping woman. His ears were flat against his head, his wide yellow eyes narrowed to slits, and his many sharp white teeth were bared in a vicious snarl. He was so swift and sudden that the woman didn’t know he was there until she was already falling with Grawk’s teeth in the back of her ankle.
    The blood drained from Amelia’s face. She’d never seen Grawk like this. He’d always been her funny, brilliant little not-quite-a-dog. Now, though, so fast that the wretched woman barely had time to react, Grawk let go of her ankle, sprang up the length of her body and began biting furiously at her neck .
    Amelia moaned, aghast.
    ‘He’s going to kill her!’ Charlie yelped, as he leapt forward to help. He was only a metre away from them when Grawk wrenched his head back, his teeth clamped together. Amelia expected such a violent action to be followed by a spray of blood, but what flew through the air instead was a tiny clockwork cylinder.
    He isn’t trying to kill her , Amelia sighed. He is tearing off her holo-emitter!
    Grawk pounced again, this time at the woman’s hand, and then bolted off toward the bush, the stolen black canister in his mouth.
    Closest to the fallen woman, Charlie was the only one who could see the shape she’d reverted to when the holo-emitter was torn out. He gave a strangled cry and stumbled backwards through the long grass as fast as he could.
    ‘Amelia! Charlie!’
    Behind her, Amelia could hear the frightened, cross voices of all three parents, coming closer. She didn’t turn her head for even a second. Though she was glad to have the adults coming to the rescue, she knew they were still too far off to be of any real help. Charlie gasped again in fear as the alien calmly rose to its feet.
    It was like oil climbing into the sky – impossible, beautiful and wrong. Sunlight scattered into tiny rainbows as it bounced off the matte, black skin, and the alien arched its long, elegant neck and rolled its shoulders as thought it had been cramped inside its holo-disguise. A long, sinuous tail flicked in the grass.
    Krskn! Amelia knew they were all as good as dead. Or rather, they’d be better off dead than let Krskn get his revenge on them for last time.
    Amelia heard a little whimper and realised it was coming from her. The alien turned to them, and Amelia saw its huge jewel-coloured eyes were blue, not red, and that its skin wasn’t uniformly black. Dappled along its – her? – throat and belly were leopard spots of electric blue.
    Not Krskn , Amelia realised. But one of his kind.

    Now that she looked more closely, differences were obvious. Not just the blue spots – where Krskn had been as wiry and lithe as a trapeze artist, this creature was thin . And where Krskn’s red eyes had been hypnotically focused and intense, these blue eyes were slightly glazed, as though the mind behind them were somewhere else.
    Still behind Amelia and Charlie, but closer now, Mum cried out fiercely, ‘Don’t you touch those kids!’
    The alien sighed and clicked her tongue in frustration as she glanced in the direction Grawk had taken the