The Time Corps Chronicles (Complete Series)

by Heather Blackwood

  “So you plan to do me in?” asked the Professor. “Well, you’re welcome to try. You wouldn’t be the first. Now, untie my hands, and we can see who is the better man.”

  Mr. March looked the Professor up and down. March was small, and the Professor was thin, but he was also six foot three. In a fair fight, the Professor would win, even against a man his own size. He had older brothers who had taught him to fight, and Hazel knew he was able to handle himself, even unarmed. Mr. March would never be so foolish.

  Mr. March again took the pistol from Neil’s holster and pulled back the hammer.

  “No!” Hazel screamed and jumped forward. The monkeys held her lower legs, forcing her to her knees. She would have crashed face-first into the deck, since she couldn’t use her hands to break her fall, but the crew caught her, and eight tiny hands helped her to a kneeling position.

  Mr. Escobar wasn’t even looking at her, but was watching Santiago. What Hazel saw next made her doubt her own sanity.

  One moment, he was a man tied to a mast, and in an instant, his face stretched out to a pointed snout. His arms grew very thin and furry and once his hands narrowed, he slipped them free of the ropes that bound him. His back hunched and as his body folded over, his arms reaching to touch the ground. A lean, tawny, yellow-eyed canine shook himself free of Santiago’s clothing and snapped at the monkeys surrounding him, nipping one of them. They leapt away, chattering and shrieking, and Santiago, the coyote, ran and leapt at Mr. March.

  He got hold of March’s arm and shook his head side to side, growling. Mr. March yanked the gun up at him and Hazel flinched at the gunshot. The coyote yelped, crashed to the deck and scrambled feebly, dragging himself away. A long dark red streak appeared where his belly slid along the wood planks of the deck. The sight was utterly pitiable, and Santiago made little whining sounds as he went.

  “The rope,” said Mr. Escobar, very softly. “He’s giving us this chance.” But he was not speaking to her. Small hands worked at the ropes around her wrists, and then they were gone. The entire action had only taken seconds, and all eyes were on Santiago as he continued to pull himself across the deck.

  From her position, Hazel could see the stern of the ship, while Mr. March faced the prow. She had to try very hard to keep her eyes on him, as she saw a familiar figure climb up over the side of the ship, drop to the deck and slip down the hatch. It was Miss Sanchez, and she had climbed up the rope ladder. But the ladder had not been down when they had first come to the ship. The gangplank was the only way on board. The dragon could have lowered the ladder herself, and barring a contradicting order from the captain, she would take an order from the first mate, Mr. Escobar. That was what he must have told the ship to do when he climbed up onto her neck.

  The Professor didn’t see Miss Sanchez, which was a blessing. He had what was called a good poker face, but when it came to McCullen and Miss Sanchez, his emotions ran too high. He was still staring, agape, at Santiago.

  “What in the name of all that is holy …”

  “He’s a Coyote, Mr. Doyle,” said Mr. March. “The monkeys talk, the ship is alive, and there are doorways through time. Clear? And in a moment, I will have you killed and you can see what is on the other side of death.”

  “Didn’t your mother teach you manners? You and all of your siblings? There are twelve of you, correct? Where are the rest of you? And what exactly are you?”

  “Always asking questions, aren’t you? You truly are one of the more interesting people I’ve encountered. So few humans would ever be able to understand the time machines, let alone build one. Such a loss, but an unavoidable one. Neil, put down the monkey and take Mr. Doyle.”

  Neil set down Jemmo, who scurried off into the crowd of other monkeys. “Where will I take him?”

  “I’m fond of this ship. Let’s do this on the dock. Take him there. Oh, and bring Miss Dubois as well.”

  Neil grabbed the Professor with his left arm and Hazel with his right. She tried to keep her untied hands clasped behind her back and keep her back to Neil’s body so Mr. March would not see that she was unrestrained. And for the most part she managed it. The Professor, his ear dripping blood down his neck and collar, was cursing colorfully in English and in Gaelic, drawing most of Mr. March’s attention as March led the way down the gangplank.

  It was so quiet, with just the four of them, and the water lapped at the dock’s pilings with a soft hissing sound. They moved down the dock toward the shore, away from the ship, and then Mr. March made a motion with his hand. The air at the point where the dock met the land shimmered. Then a door opened.

  The Professor’s description of the void wyrm was nothing compared to the actual thing. Its head was huge, white, almost luminous, and featureless save for the gaping slash of a mouth that split open, scarlet and slick. An instant after she registered the horror of the hungry, eyeless monster, the air surrounding them pulled at them, tearing the hats from their heads and making her braid fly out toward it. If Neil hadn’t been holding them both, she thought the Professor and she would have immediately been sucked into the void wyrm’s terrible mouth. Neil appeared unaffected, as did Mr. March, who stood looking at the thing as if it were a curiosity at a traveling carnival.

  “Throw Doyle in,” he said.

  Neil’s arm around the Professor loosened. “Stop, Neil!” Hazel yelled. “You have to stop! You don’t want to do this.” She struggled and tore at his other arm, the one that restrained her, trying to get free. She managed to get herself facedown, but Neil’s arms still held her like a vice.

  “No, I don’t want to,” Neil said. “Shoot me.”

  “What? I can’t shoot you.”

  “Kill me, or he’ll make me kill you both.” He was speaking softly, and his voice would be muffled by the wind. Mr. March could not hear him.

  Neil took a step toward the void wyrm, which lifted its head slightly, as if sniffing. All the air was sucked from her lungs, and Hazel had to labor to breathe. For a second, she thought about the ship, and she was glad that Mr. March valued it and the crew. It meant that they were safe.

  “Get his gun!” said the Professor. His arms were pinned hard to his sides, and he was still tied up, whereas her hands were free.

  “I can’t kill him! I won’t!” she cried.

  But as she said it, she wriggled the arm that was trapped between Neil’s body and her own. His grip seemed to soften a bit, and he let out a little moan of pain. He was fighting against his master, or whatever Mr. March was, and it was costing him.

  She got her arm loose enough to snake it around Neil’s waist, toward his left hip, where his pistol was holstered. It was the one he had stolen when she was unconscious in the barn. Her fingers touched the butt of the pistol.

  “Stop her!” ordered Mr. March, and Neil’s grip around her body tightened. He tossed the Professor to the ground, where he landed on his backside, scrambling to get a purchase with his heels, clawing at the boards behind him with his useless restrained hands. He slid a few feet toward the void wyrm.

  “Kill her,” yelled Mr. March, and Neil let out a moan, low and dark, like something that comes from under the earth, crying in its pain. It was inhuman, lower than his normal vocal register, but she did not stop to ponder it. He was trying to resist, hurting himself to let her have a few moments. She would not waste them.

  She pulled the gun free, worked with her thumb to pull back the hammer, aimed it at Mr. March and fired. No bullet hit him, but neither did one come zinging out of the air to hit either her, Neil or the Professor. Perhaps he could only make one warren at a time.

  The gun only had six shots, and she had used up one.

  “Kill her! I order it!”

  Neil pulled her out in front of him, as easily as a boy would draw out a doll, and he moved his hands, one just under her jaw and then the other beneath i
t, to the base of her throat, suspending her over the ground. She clawed at his hands in a mad panic, trying to keep hold of the gun. She managed it, but just barely, and her eyes focused on his face now, contorted in pain, his mouth open in agony. She could not see the roof of his mouth, and she wished she had told him what she had seen there. Would he have known the meaning? Would all of these events not have come to pass?

  She had one choice and one only. She wouldn’t kill Neil, but neither would she die at his hands. He moaned again as he lowered her, slowly, until her toes touched the ground. She could support a bit of her weight, and she used the advantage to stop ripping at his hands and pull back the pistol’s hammer. She held the pistol to Neil’s wrist, pointing it away from his body, and fired. His arm jerked back, the bone shattered, and she staggered back as he released her. She hit the ground and slid a few yards, past the Professor who had managed to turn onto his stomach. He yelled something at her, but she could not make it out.

  Flipping over, she made sure to keep a grip on the gun. Neil held his wounded arm which was covered in blood. His hand hung limp and useless at the end of his wrist, and when he met her eyes, she wanted to cry. He looked grateful, infinitely pleased and grateful.

  She clawed her way away from the void wyrm, driving splinters into her hands, digging her boots into the wood and scraping herself along on her stomach.

  Mr. March moved beside Neil, and examined his wrist. He shouted at him, but Neil did not react. Hazel got a good purchase on the wood with her feet and braced the gun against the dock. She pulled back the hammer and lowered her head to use the sight, just as Neil had taught her. Mr. March was too close to Neil to risk a shot and she glanced backward at the Professor. He was precariously close to the edge of the dock. The water was still deep at that point and if he fell in, he would surely drown, sinking to the sea floor, hands bound, struggling in the black.

  There was no more time. She aimed again and waited until Mr. March threw up his hands, stepped back and pointed at the void wyrm, shouting at Neil. She fired.

  Mr. March lurched and touched his stomach. She had hit him! She aimed again and fired, landing another shot. Still the shimmering hole pulled the air around them, though it seemed to pull with less ferocity. Hazel did not turn to see how large the doorway was. Mr. March fell to his knees and Neil stood to one side, unmoving, watching his master.

  Hazel crawled forward, so slowly, wanting to make her last two shots count. And then a naked man ran down the gangplank and stood over Mr. March. It took her a moment to register that it was Santiago, as beautiful a male specimen as she thought she would ever see. He was the same color all over, not more tanned around the face and neck like most men who spent time outdoors. He was unarmed, of course, but he didn’t hesitate to yank Mr. March’s head up by the hair and punch him. Then he hit him again.

  It was enough to distract Mr. March, perhaps, because the wind pulling on her stopped completely. She didn’t look back, terrified that the Professor was already gone and knowing what she had to do. Mr. March might open another warren at any moment. Scrambling to her feet, she pounded up the dock.

  As she went, she thought about the silver and pearl bracelet that Mr. Ross had given her, sparkling and lovely. She thought of a life by the fireside, with children and tea, needlepoint and walks in the botanical gardens. There would be talks with her lady friends about what lace to use to trim a parasol or what committee to assist at church. That life was gone, as was the person she might have been. So too the scrawny girl who had lived in abandoned buildings and played violin on street corners. That frightened girl was gone as well.

  She was a new creature, but what kind? She glanced up at the ship, where Miss Sanchez ran toward the gangplank and where monkeys clung to the rigging, watching. She saw Neil, blank and almost dead-eyed, staring at his bleeding master.

  And she knew what she was. She was Captain Dubois of the dragon ship Skidbladnir. And she would not let anyone harm the people she loved.

  The inevitability of the moment hit her. Everything had to occur in just this way. Santiago, the Coyote, was beating Mr. March, but would not be the one to kill him. Because if he did, he would be the owner of the ship. She would not allow that to happen. It would be her. It had to be.

  She stopped in front of Mr. March, who clutched his bleeding stomach. She pointed the gun at his head. He simply raised his face, his lip bloody from Santiago’s beating, and looked her in the eye. Her resolve flickered, and she wondered if he would open another warren, one that would redirect the bullet into her.

  “If you do this, my blood is on your hands. Do you truly—”

  Hazel pulled the trigger.

  March’s left eye and the upper part of his face exploded. She pulled back the hammer again, for the Professor, for Neil, for all her terror and rage. The rage was the strongest. With it came a calmness, a dark serenity that gave a sense of purpose. Peace. She pulled the trigger again, barely registering the kick of the weapon. The loud crack of the gunpowder was distant. This time, she hit him in the jaw, tearing off the lower half of his face. He fell backward, almost softly, crumpling into a white and red semicircle on the dock.

  She kept pulling back the hammer with her palm and pulling the trigger, the gun making clicking sounds, but nothing more. Santiago put his hand over her wrist and pushed her arm down.

  “It is finished,” he said.

  She turned to him, this strange unclothed man, who looked into her face, completely unaware of his nudity, or more likely, not caring about it. He was a Coyote, Mr. March had said, and animals had no human sense of modesty. Even Mr. Escobar only wore vests because they had useful pockets.

  His golden eyes were beautiful, and she felt a sense of peace come over her. He took the pistol from her hands, which were shaking hard, and then he whispered something to her and took her hands. She felt like she could stay with him like this for a long time, delaying forever the need to look back at the curled body. He said other things to her, things she could not recall later. And then he leaned forward, smelling of sea wind and wild brush, and kissed her forehead.

  “That’s enough,” he said and released her hands.

  “Hazel!” cried the Professor and swept her up in an embrace that pulled her feet up off the ground. Neil stood behind him and tossed torn rope fragments into the water. One arm still hung useless and bloody at his side. Had he torn the Professor’s rope with only one hand? Over the Professor’s shoulder, she saw that the void wyrm was gone, the door closed.

  When the Professor put her down, he turned to Miss Sanchez, but the instant the woman saw Neil’s injury, she was at his side, examining him and asking questions.

  Hazel wanted to go to Neil, to embrace him or at least speak with him. But she was afraid as well. She looked at the body, at the wounds. The white skull bone was jagged and exposed, fringed with red, shredded flesh. Spattered brain material, blood and tissue were all over the dock. There was a smell too, metallic. Blood. And other odors also.

  She knelt at the edge of the dock and vomited into the water, where the contents of her stomach swirled with the tide and were carried away. She stayed looking down at the movement of the greenish black water, the darkness beneath. Everything that went into it became mixed with the whole ocean, until it disappeared. A man was dead, and she had killed him. She sat for a while, watching the water.

  Neil was the one who eventually pulled her up, gently, with his good arm. “Thank you.”

  “I need to get him home and get that bone set before the swelling gets worse,” said Miss Sanchez. If she was horrified by what she had seen, she did not indicate it. If there were injuries, she would treat them and be efficient about it. Hazel knew she would confront the horrors later. For now, there was work to be done. Miss Sanchez led Neil away, toward the town.

  “Where’s McCullen?” Hazel asked the Professor.
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  “Miss Sanchez says he took the machine but she convinced him to leave the second machine for us. For her, rather, but it’s the same thing really. She says Mr. March gave him a way to use the machine without needing a synchronicity, that he made adjustments inside it and then used the coordinates that Mr. March had given him.”

  “And she just stood there while he stole it?”

  The Professor sighed and looked at Miss Sanchez’s back as she walked beside Neil.

  “She says he wanted her to go with him, and she refused. But she tried to memorize what he did to the inside of the machine. Without her, we’d have no hope. But I have to wonder if she was tempted to go. He would have taken her home, perhaps.”

  Santiago was looking up at the sky, squinting, perhaps in concentration, as the only light was from the moon. His nostrils twitched. He was still nude, but Hazel no longer cared one way or the other. With everything that had happened, it seemed like such a minor thing.

  “Santiago?” said Hazel. “What happened? You were shot. We saw it. Was that some sort of trick?”

  “Of course it was. And a good one too, as I was able to distract March enough for you to shoot him.”

  “Why didn’t you shoot him yourself? You could have taken one of the weapons that he left on the deck. You could have done it yourself.”

  “Ho, ho, no. Not for all of Solomon’s gold would I have the blood of an otherkind, especially one of the Twelve, on my hands.”