"An eagle scared of heights." That was how one colleague summed up Sam Linnfer. "Probably has a mad wife in the attic, too."

Like all rumours, in time this comment circulated back to Sam, whose boyish face split in a grin of delight.

If there was one thing Sam liked about working as... whatever he was, he enjoyed the mystery accorded him by other ( Read more... )

Not so long ago he'd helped dig bodies out from the ruins of Dover or London, or kept injured people alive with a touch of his magic. Even if their sufferings weren't due to him, they were the fault of his family and therefore a responsibility passed down to him. Helping these people was what he saw as duty. Sam had been neither born nor bred to ( Read more... )

It wasn’t necessary to take off the thermal gear. Tibet and the part of Hell where Sam had arrived were one and the same when it came to winter temperatures. The only difference was that in Gehenna, at least, it was always winter. Seven eighths of Hell burned for sixteen months a year, and he, Time help him, had chosen to come to the one eighth ( Read more... )

He tried to rein back his mind, but it was hard to remember that he was Sam, not Jean-Paul nor Jeanette nor Julien, hard to remember that he was afraid of being consumed by the Light, rather than of the spiders in the garden and the rats in the sewers and the figure who was gone when you looked again, and the corners and the darkness and the minds ( Read more... )

"Well? What kind of a name is it ( Read more... )

He’d remembered Michael as an honourable soul. They’d been good friends, but Michael had always put duty before all things. If he’d been ordered by Jehovah to kill his own mother, he would have done it.

But it was also true that in some sense he owed Sam his life, a debt that had been repaid in Kaluga after almost five hundred years of neglect.

In ( Read more... )

Behind Sam's door there are, as predicted, several dozen very unpleasant people with guns. If they look like soldiers, then that's because they are - some kind of mercenary, anyway. Beyond them, they appear to be in some kind of laboratory or medical facility: everything's white and steel, with a prominent scent of disinfectant ( Read more... )

It took them a while to find Jack's room, in the end - too many distractions - but they got there eventually.

They've been there for some time now. Finally they're still, or close enough, breathing heavily and curled tight around each other in a shared warmth that's more than bodyheat.

17th October:
catslash33 (01:32:37):HA.  <3  Cal would totally want Sam along for moral support, too, though he'd never ask. herworldsonfire (01:33:14):Sam: More like amoral support... *eyedart* Anyway. catslash33 (01:34:05):Heh.  Yes, that too.  As long as Cal knew he wasn't alone.  It would help. herworldsonfire (01:35:13):Aw. *pets him*

Sam: Also ( Read more... )

Sam has a bed, and a TV. The TV has a waist-high stack of DVDs piled next to it, and another slightly smaller stack of games. The TV has a console attached; it's probably a PS2, but Sam has no idea. At any rate, it has two controllers ( Read more... )