The Time Corps Chronicles (Complete Series)

by Heather Blackwood

  “I brought this for her,” said Elliot, pulling out the bell. “It’s a good luck charm. Been in the family for generations. It’s an antique.”

  Astrid screamed, and he found his hand shaking. The bell hurt her. She was a tiny, helpless baby, and he was going to put this bell next to her crib where it would hurt her constantly. But it was the only way for her to develop immunity to it. It had to be done, and yet he wanted to take it away, to take Astrid away where she would be safe. But things had to progress in this way. He set the bell down.

  “She’s a little young for it now, but maybe when she’s older she’ll enjoy it,” said Carrie.

  “Yeah, when she’s older,” said Elliot, hating this, hating himself.

  Astrid arched her back, wailing louder. He was hurting a baby, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  Yukiko touched his arm. Carrie was studying him. This was bad.

  “I should go,” he said. “And Carrie. I’m sorry. About everything.”

  He didn’t know what he was apologizing for, but it felt like the right thing to say. Carrie’s face relaxed into a beautiful smile. He kissed her cheek, quickly, and he and Yukiko left. His hands were still trembling as he put the key in the ignition.

  When he had first joined the Time Corps, he had thought it would be fun and adventure. It had been. But there was an ugly part. Runt had died because his mother was a Time Corps member. He didn’t know what had happened to Huginn, but his memory was complexly shot and he relied on Pangur Ban to remember even the simplest things. Felicia was trapped in a world not her own. Sister had been tortured, and if they changed the time line to save her as a baby, then Astrid would never come to the human world at all, but would be raised Unseelie, or perhaps swapped with some other baby. As it was, Astrid had to spend eighteen years with her mother. If he wanted to save both Astrid and Sister, then he had to allow them both to live through hell.

  Chapter 44

  Astrid fell. The slaugh’s arms stayed around her, and though she felt the slaugh loosen its grip, it then grabbed onto her even harder once it realized it was no longer inside the mirror house. They were in the void. The place between. It was cold and scentless, soundless and black. And yet, she was not afraid. The falling sensation was almost pleasant, like being weightless. Never had she stayed so long in the void when she made Doors, but she found she liked it.

  The slaugh made a low, throaty sound. She had to rid herself of it, or she would carry it with her into the human world. It gasped and gurgled and she understood that it was choking. There was no air here. How had she not realized it? She was not breathing, but she felt no discomfort. This must be part of being a Door, being comfortable in this void.

  Then she heard a different sound. More slaugh, they were coming, even here. The Door in the Unseelie World was still open, and they were coming through, following her. She willed the door to close, but nothing happened. She felt their approaching presence, hostile and angry.

  The Door to the human world hung just before her in space. Though she could not see it, she knew it was there in the black. But she couldn’t allow the slaugh to enter into her world. She had to protect it.

  She thought about closing the door to the human world. It shut immediately. Interesting. So a Door not in use could be closed with a thought. But the Door from Unseelie could not, presumably because it was in use.

  A pressure built within her. She wanted to allow the slaugh to come into the void and then leave them here to choke and die, but something was not allowing it. It was like a pressure inside her, growing almost painful. She had to open another door to allow the slaugh to pass through. The slaugh clinging to her was losing its grip, but before it released her, she made another Door, this time to the mirror house in Seelie. The moment her feet hit the floor of the mirror house, she ducked down, slipping out of the slaugh’s grip. It gasped, and with its next breath it roared. The sound vibrated through her, terrifying in its volume, and she had to stop herself from cringing.

  She made a Door to the human world through a mirror, and felt the roaring slaugh pressing behind her. The other slaugh raced on its heels. If she got through to the human world and closed the door quickly enough, then they would have to go back through the open door behind them, wouldn’t they?

  She raced through the void, flew through the door into the human world and the instant she was out of the black, she thought of shutting the door. But it was too late. The slaugh behind her had reached a terrible clawed hand through and dug into the metal floor of the mirror house. The door remained open, and then the slaugh passed through, followed by two more.

  “Close!” she shouted, but the Door remained open. The sky was blue outside the exit, and she scrambled out of the mirror house. “Close!” But the mirror door remained open, stretching to accommodate the slaugh and their mounts. More came, dozens of them, all looking around with delight. They scrambled through the maze and out the back exit as she fled. She staggered out onto the middle of the boardwalk and turned back. My God, what had she done?

  Humans screamed and ran, and Astrid did nothing to stop them.

  Yes. Run. For the Wild Hunt is here. They come.

  The slaugh poured out, taking to the skies or racing in all directions along the ground. She had to escape before they noticed her and caught her. She had to find a way to send them back.

  She ran, dodging in and out among the humans, but most of them were running in the same direction she was, away from the slaugh. The arcade was up ahead. The little slaugh that had come through before had not seemed to mind electricity. Aside from mildly repelling the slaugh, the arcade would afford her no protection. But something else might.

  Her pretzel stand stood just outside the arcade, and whoever had been on staff to run it was long gone. Salt. Knots. She slid behind the stand, hoping the slaugh had not seen her. She grabbed the box of salt and poured some of it over herself, letting it stick in her hair. Then she took a paper bag and filled it with pretzels and dumped the rest of the salt into the bag. There were only a dozen magnets at the prize stall in the arcade, but she dropped those in also. It would have to do.

  The humans yelled and ran, but the slaugh seemed to be leaving them alone, for now. None of them seemed to be searching for her, but instead they ripped up games in the arcade and shattered windows, bellowing to one another.

  She ran back to the mirror house. The Wild Hunt still poured through the Door and the sky darkened with slaugh as they whooped and screamed through the air. The building that housed the carousel burned, flames licking at its roof, and the swinging pirate ship crashed to the ground, cracking down the center. The few people inside scrambled out, helping the injured.

  “Hey, Wild Hunt!” she yelled. “You’re missing a Door!”

  The closest slaugh looked at her, then spoke with another slaugh and they ignored her, rushing to shatter a glass display case in the souvenir shop. Within minutes the humans were all gone, except for the few that were trapped on rides. Now and then, she saw a person running to help others. Astrid yelled and waved her arms, trying to catch the attention of the slaugh. They either ignored her, delighting in the destruction, or glanced at her and then moved on.

  She was Unseelie still, and the queen and king could summon her at any time and she would have to obey. They had no interest in catching her. She wasn’t going to work as bait. Or perhaps the thing preventing them from attacking her was her makeshift method of confusing fey. She hiked up her dress, unknotted the socks and sash and tossed them aside, keeping only the owl bell and the clamshell mirror. She threw away her sketch pad and pencil. There would be no time for drawing a Door. She dropped the bell and mirror into the pretzel bag.

  She kept moving through the park, but the slaugh still took no notice of her. When she reached the Sea Swings, she found they were slowly coming to a stop. A human man was on the groun
d, injured but moving, and the others had somehow managed to cling to their seats despite having claw marks on their flesh. She helped them down and was about to check on the injured man when she saw another person kneeling beside him. It was Elliot. He looked up at her and smiled.

  “Welcome back!” he yelled. “You have to go. We’ll keep clearing the park. You have to stop the slaugh.”

  But she had no idea how to do it. Within a quarter of an hour, the slaugh had the park in shambles. The midway was now a pile of rubble with rings, rubber ducks and darts strewn across the ground. A hunk was missing from the highest point of the logjam ride and a tiny trickle of water poured from it. Empty logs lay in a chaotic heap below. At least the humans had managed to escape. There were no bodies, no people anywhere. How could Elliot have done this on his own? But he had said “we.” He had help.

  The arcade was dark and the flames of the carousel building were growing brighter. Or perhaps, it was that the sky was growing darker. It was sunset, and once it was night, she knew that the slaugh would head east, across the continent, bringing waves of destruction with them. The night was their time.

  But in the old stories, they had not burned cities to the ground. So why now? Were they more evil than they had been then? Or was this the result of their pent-up destructive impulses all being released at once? The Unseelie had been imprisoned for at least a hundred years, she guessed, around the time of the industrial revolution. That was when superstitions and stories of bad spirits had started to wane. A hundred years, seething and waiting, and now they were free to destroy the world which they had been denied for so long.

  And why were they not killing people? Was it true that they simply loved mischief? Or were they keeping people alive for another purpose? Did they want to toy with them?

  She returned to the mirror house, which was still standing, slaugh tearing out the front and the back. The last slaugh that came through sat astride a giant warhorse that leapt down the metal steps and came to a snorting halt. Gold fringed epaulets decorated the slaugh’s uniform and he wore a sword on his hip. An enormous curving bone horn hung from his saddle. He must be a general of some kind. She felt the Door through which he had come and was able to close it now. The general surveyed the destruction and turned to another slaugh beside him and spoke. This slaugh must be his second in command.

  When the general turned toward her, she shrank back. His face was white, corpse-like, and his pale silver eyes were round and lidless, giving him a piercing, staring look. He must have had a mouth, but she couldn’t see one.

  “Excuse me,” she said, approaching him. She was terrified and her heart was pounding, but she would master herself. She was not going to be dragged back to Unseelie and she was not going to allow the Wild Hunt to stay in her world. She knew what she was and this monstrosity was not her brother.

  He turned to look at her, and his eyes, though staring and unnatural, were like the slaugh she had seen in the mirror maze. They were empty. They pulled at her inside, but she did not break eye contact. Instead, she stood straighter, moved closer and tipped her chin up. She would not be cowed. His mouth opened, a tiny lipless slit.

  “Yes?” he said, and his voice was as smooth and dark as liquid chocolate.

  “I’m the Door.”

  His head tipped an inch and his eyes rolled up and down in their sockets as he studied her from head to toe. She stepped back, ready to run, to lead them away and open another Door. If she could lead them into the void, maybe they would die there. Perhaps despite the pressure she would feel inside, she could stay there indefinitely until they were all dead, and then find a way home. It was a flimsy hope.

  “If you are the Door, then we have you to thank,” he said.

  “No, you don’t. Because I’m not going to open a Door back to the Unseelie world. You are trapped here.”

  “The king and queen will summon you and force you. You have already obeyed by opening this Door.”

  The slaugh general got an uncomfortable look, as if he smelled something unpleasant.

  The salt, the magnets, the pretzels. And the bell.

  He turned back to his second in command. Astrid pulled out the owl bell and held it aloft.

  “How about this?” She rang the bell and the two slaugh cringed. The general’s mouth opened wider as he grimaced, but the inside of his mouth was empty and toothless. “You like that?” She rang it harder.

  “Stop her,” said the general, and a nearby slaugh turned and grabbed for her. But she was ready and dodged away.

  “And you know what else? The king and queen can’t summon me. I made the choice!”

  She watched the general exchange a worried look with his second. It was true then. It was a choice to be Unseelie. Was that why Bogdana had originally been kind to her, or her version of kindness anyway? Was she trying to get Astrid to stay willingly? She tried to remember what Yukiko had said about the Unseelie code. Selfishness, using people, doing anything to achieve one’s goal.

  And she had freed Sister. She had made a choice, a very human choice. A sacrifice. She had not thought of it as any kind of great deed. It was only her attempt to repay a debt to Sister that could never truly be repaid. The girl had suffered the life that Astrid should have had. And if Bogdana would not have beaten and burned her own real daughter, then Sister had still lost a life in a loving human family. Astrid had only been trying to help Sister, but it must have been enough. She had broken the Unseelie code and had chosen humanity.

  “That’s right. I’m not Unseelie anymore. I’m human. I chose!”

  The general seemed to be thinking, but Astrid didn’t wait to see what he would do. She turned and fled, opening a Door. The horn sounded, deep and reverberating. She got a glimpse of the Wild Hunt, all turning in the sky or on the ground, flying toward her at terrible speed. She leapt through the Door and soared into the void.

  She opened another Door inside the mirror house, went through and opened another. Mirror after mirror became a Door, and the Wild Hunt followed, pouring from mirror to mirror in a stream of solid black with the sound of pounding hooves, wings, shouts, screams, and over and over, the peal of the horn. Now and then, as the closest slaugh drew too near, she dropped a salted pretzel or a magnet behind her. Then the slaugh fell back with a shout.

  When she was sure she had a good lead on them, she opened a Door through a mirror at the front of the mirror house. Then she poured out the last of the salt and pretzels just at the mirror’s base, grabbing her bell and clamshell mirror. She snapped the mirror in half. Inside, the Wild Hunt completely blackened the interior of the maze. They were not in the spaces between the mirrors where people would normally walk, but were inside each and every mirror, moving from one to another, on and on.

  She had never tried moving a door before, but now was the time. She concentrated, trying to move the last Door she had made in the mirror house to the half of the clamshell mirror. It was like moving a boulder, and while it dragged aside, she heard the shouts of the slaugh as they encountered the pretzels and sprinkled salt. She pulled the door, the pain in her head stabbing as it had when she crossed the cold iron line in Seelie, then worsening. She kept pulling. Then, it snapped into place. The slaugh were still flying into the first mirror entrance, but now the exit had moved to the little clamshell. She pressed the clamshell into the salt, facedown.

  Now she just had to wait for the last of the slaugh to go through the entrance, and then she could move the entrance to the other clamshell. Then, she would hold them together, making an endless loop in which the slaugh would be trapped. But the line of slaugh entering the mirror maze was too long. She couldn’t wait. The first of the line would break through the salt barrier before the last of the slaugh were in the maze.

  “Elliot!” she screamed. She saw a cat out of the corner of her eye, a white one, but when she tried to spot it a
gain, it was gone. A minute later, Elliot ran up.

  “What?” He crouched beside her.

  “See these mirrors? I need you to hold them together,” she said. “Then if you can get some rope or a thin chain, then tie them together. Nine knots in three groups of three.”

  “What are you planning to do?”

  “Just do it, okay?”

  “Tell me!”

  “I’m going to move some Doors and trap them between these two mirrors. The exit is already here,” she nodded toward the little mirror that she held into the salt. “But there are too many. I need to get in there and make a door into the Unseelie world so they’ll go there. Otherwise, they’re just going to break through this mirror,” she nodded toward the clamshell.

  “And then you’ll make another Door to come home?”

  “Yeah,” she said. But she had no idea how she would accomplish it. Because as soon as she entered the mirror house in the Unseelie world, she would be captured. And all of the mirrors in the human mirror house would be in use, save two, the one she had just moved to the clamshell as an exit and the one she was about to move, the entrance . But how would she find either of those two mirrors once she was in the void? Her abilities were in no way specific enough to manage it.

  It didn’t matter. People would die, and if it meant she was trapped in the void, then so be it.

  “I have to move the entrance to the other clamshell mirror,” she said. “Or you can’t hold them together.”

  She forced herself to do it, through the pain, and moved the entrance door. A flying slaugh crashed into the mirror that had been an entrance a moment before and shattered it. He backed up, dazed. Others came behind him, bumping into one another in their haste. One of them crashed into the last mirror, the one she had moved to the first clamshell mirror, shattering it as well.