Free CHERUB: Guardian Angel by Robert Muchamore

folded pushchair and ramming it hard into the middle bloke’s guts. Max went for the guy closest to the canal, dishing out a pivoting head kick that crumpled him backwards into a metal bollard and knocked him cold.
    The passing crowds now stopped ignoring things and seemed to think they were witnessing a piece of bizarre street theatre. As the dude on the far end tried getting his arm around Alfie’s neck, Ryan smashed him in the temple with his palm, then bashed his jaw with his knee as he went down.
    The father and toddler stumbled through the tangle of cherubs as one of the skinheads threw his glass. It sailed past Grace before shattering on the footpath.
    Chloe was the only cherub who’d not got involved in the action. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ she shouted, as Max and Alfie delivered final blows to one skinhead and Ning stomped the fingertips of the guy trying to pull himself out of the water.
    As Chloe turned back to grab everyone’s backpacks and shopping bags she saw three cops running down some canal-side steps towards them.
    ‘Oh now they turn up,’ Ryan sneered.
    Ryan felt that they’d done the right thing morally, but he wasn’t sure that the cops would see it that way and doubted that senior staff on CHERUB campus would be happy when they found out that five agents had been arrested for scrapping with a bunch of skinheads in a crowded street market.
    ‘Don’t forget my new shoes,’ Ning shouted to Chloe, as the lead cop jumped the last four stairs and the six CHERUB agents began sprinting away.

10. ACHES
    ‘How’s your arse?’ Natalka asked.
    It was the same scene as a few nights earlier: Natalka coming around the door of Ethan’s room as he lay on his bed feeling sorry for himself.
    ‘Arse isn’t bad, but everywhere else hurts now,’ Ethan moaned. ‘Five hours shovelling rotted-down horse shit into potato sacks. Then I had to load ’em all up on to a truck to be sold at the bazaar. My whole body aches and if I dare to stop work the stable workers go crazy because Leonid told ’em he’ll dock their pay if he sees me slacking.’
    ‘Will this cheer you up?’ Natalka asked, as she pulled a USB memory stick out of her pocket. ‘I got to Dordoi Bazaar this afternoon.’
    It was still in its packaging, but the blister pack had been ripped open.
    ‘Thirty-two GB, nice and small, and black so it’ll be hard to spot,’ Ethan said, straining his aching back as he sat up.
    But when he reached out to grab it, Natalka swept the key out of reach.
    ‘When you said you were using Irena’s computer I thought you meant to play games, maybe a little porno or a chat with your Facebook chums. But I did a Google on the file I downloaded from the FTP site. It’s a suite of tools designed to hijack a computer.’
    Ethan tried to sound unruffled. ‘I told you already, the less you know the better.’
    Natalka stepped closer and put on a slightly menacing expression. ‘I kinda thought about that, but you know what? That’s not gonna wash when you get caught, and you confess that I was involved.’
    ‘I’d never grass you up,’ Ethan said.
    ‘Not willingly, but how about when one of Leonid’s heavies gets the pliers out and starts yanking out fingernails?’
    Ethan had never told Natalka that he suspected Leonid had murdered his mother.
    ‘It’s better that you don’t know,’ he repeated, as he struggled to think of a stronger argument.
    Natalka pushed the memory stick back into her jeans. ‘If that’s all you’ve got, you can’t have this,’ she said firmly.
    ‘Natalka,’ Ethan said, sighing with desperation. ‘You took my money. We had a deal.’
    ‘Let me know when you change your mind,’ Natalka said, as she turned towards the door. ‘I’m not giving you this until I know that you’re not going to use it to try something that might get me into shit.’
    Ethan buried his head in his hands. ‘Fine,’ he said angrily.
    Ethan found Natalka quite mercenary – turning up when