The Time Corps Chronicles (Complete Series)

by Heather Blackwood

Inside his mind, Elliot felt more sane. His interior landscape was still a swirling mass, but his voice, his presence, felt as stable as ever.

  There are important people in this story. The General, the Messenger, the Healer.

  He must mean Neil, the strategic fighter, Yukiko, the one who could speak all languages, and Felicia, the doctor.

  There are also a Liar and his helpers.

  That must be March and the golems.

  And the tortured innocent, the catalyst, father and son.

  Sister, innocent, tortured and tongueless, Seamus who had started the rips, and his son, Luke, who had set off the final events.

  But if that was what Elliot wanted to show her, why didn’t he just show her their friends? Why give them these titles?

  See, heaven’s war is fought on earth.

  But what about us? she asked.

  He was silent for a bit.

  I don’t know.

  But she thought she might. The Twelve wouldn’t help them. Neither would the Seven or the Five or the Three or the One.

  There was only her. Her and Elliot. Him, his mind like a moving map. And her, its navigator.

  She moved through his landscape, and things became clearer.

  We thought we lived in the hub world, she told Elliot. But the true hub was the afterlife. There was only one afterlife for all worlds, both the seven human worlds and the other inhuman worlds. Once holes were ripped to the afterlife, everything came rushing together.

  What good does knowing that do us? he asked.

  I don’t know. The Doors, the rips, they destroyed everything. I don’t know what to do.

  She felt him move close to her.

  But you’re a Door.

  He receded, and she was left with one thought. It was mad and impossible and she understood.

  She felt through his mind, feeling the world, all the people crammed together. So many. There were seven billion of them, when before there had only been one billion. Those were only the ones alive now. There were one hundred billion, including the dead, and that was only the humans. She felt all of them.

  Within his mind, she expanded. He stood beside her as the entire place expanded, her mind and his, like the sky, spinning and enlarging, until she saw all of it.

  I won’t leave you, he said, and she was glad because she was afraid. This was the edge of madness, or maybe the heart of it.

  She thought of the golem bleeding on the ground. She had made a Door between herself and the golem. That was the key.

  It was time.

  She did the same now, using Elliot’s mind as the map, finding the spot at Luna Park where the Seelie world touched hers. She slid a Door between the worlds, wrapping a Door around the Seelie world, sealing it. Then she found one of the holes to the Unseelie world and did the same. The small holes to the void that the void wyrms made were easy to find and she sealed them. The huge rip in the sky took a long time, but she worked at it, separating out the components and placing them where they belonged. It took so long, but years and moments were the same within this place. Then, she moved through the world, finding the places where the remaining holes were. There were so many rips, so many, but she slipped Doors here and there, taking her time.

  Time.

  Space and time are not strictly separate. Not really, Elliot whispered to her.

  Yes, and her Doors were holes in space. She could not travel through time.

  Seamus’s time rips were like her own Doors, but his were through time.

  Time. Space. Two parts of the same whole.

  Matter, time, energy, all were one. She felt Elliot beside her, laughing, while she marveled in understanding. The information flew through her mind leaving only an impression as it passed, but she understood enough.

  And with this understanding of time, she saw new possibilities. The rips in Fintona, Ireland, in New Orleans, in Los Angeles, they shone like lights in the darkness. Most of the Time Corps were born close to these places, born and raised on these rips. And there were times that were more susceptible too. The early to mid-1800s, the mid- to late-1900s, and others earlier on. Their birth times.

  They had been born for their own purposes, but she saw the unifying threads of their lives. She would save her friends. She would save them and all the people.

  She moved through the space in Elliot’s mind. It was more sieve than map now, a thing of infinite holes, infinite doorways to infinite places. But she did not have any fear now.

  She saw the tortured spirits, the suffering dead, and made new Doors around them, around the demonic creatures, the ones who wandered and the one who had killed Jeff. Some of them were recent arrivals, coming through many Doors all over the world. And some had been on earth a long, long time. She found each one and sealed them into their place.

  She felt time passing, but she was part of it, touching so many places. And she was outside of it too, for a Door was a thing that was neither one place nor the other, neither beginning nor end. She was the void, the place from which new things were created with only a word. And in that void, she would protect the world, this fragile little blue egg, filled with life.

  She felt the precious, tender, fragile world and wrapped herself around it, a Door that had never existed before, encompassing everything, keeping it safe, keeping it sealed from the other inhuman worlds.

  The drake and the fair folk, the sea-woman who swam offshore, the old gods and their servants, most of those beings would only be stories to the seven billion humans living in this world. Only myths, tales told long ago, things that could never exist in the modern world. Only stories.

  She saved some of them, Pangur Ban and Huginn, Yukiko and Santiago, Skidbladnir, the monkey crew and their people. There were others who could live here peacefully, like Sevilen. Those ones she left in this world, the one they preferred.

  She thought of Seamus and his machine, using an invention to tear holes between the worlds while she, like the drakes, did it by natural means. Seamus had led Hazel, Luke and Felicia out of the realm of the dead and into life, while she only sent souls from life to death. Technology and nature, life and death, two poles of a magnet.

  And if Seamus had fathered this broken, self-destroying world with his machine, then she would be its mother. He had started the destruction, but she would end it. She reached farther, finding each hidden rip, the ones buried lower, and lovingly closing them, wrapping her Doors around each and every lost being and placing them where they belonged.

  I can see now why the Twelve and the Five and all of them won’t help, said Elliot. It’s because you are here.

  No, both of us are here, she said.

  She felt him smile.

  Chapter 46

  Elliot felt Astrid brushing through parts of his mind, her movement as soft as the tip of a feather. He watched as she repaired things, moved things, flitting here and there, doing her work.

  It was so quiet in his mind now.

  This had to be what the void was like. Astrid had described it to him as a place of silence and peace.

  And in this void the two of them now existed. He was both moving and still, and so was Astrid. She repaired things while he observed, his mind the map, the way she located all things.

  He felt her move farther away, stretching thin, expanding until she was all around. She was everywhere.

  For a moment, he feared he was going deeper into insanity, that his mind was completely unraveling and he was traveling to a place where he would never be able to speak to the people outside his mind again. He thought he was being absorbed into Astrid, but the moment passed. She pulled far away then, almost vanishing, until she felt like a tiny pinprick of light in the dark, a single note in the silence.

  What are you doing now? he asked her.

  He felt
her come closer. I think I have to do something. I have to save them.

  What can you do?

  I have to make a Door. The biggest Door. An inside-out Door that keeps all the other places away from the human world.

  He saw the image in his mind, of a Door around the world, the permeable part facing outward so whatever worlds tried to burrow into earth would be sent elsewhere. It was like a mirror, only Astrid would absorb the things and redirect them back out. Then he saw it expand, covering everything, all planets and galaxies and the dark, strange regions of space yet to be discovered. The Door surrounded the entire human universe.

  The rest of the multiple universes, for there were far more than the few that he and the Time Corps had discovered, would remain in all their wild and terrible glory, but the earth and its home universe, the one ruled by science and reason, would be safe.

  I didn’t know you could make a Door that big, he said.

  A small part of her was still close. I can’t make one. But I can become a Door that big.

  It took him a moment to understand.

  No. Oh, no. You can’t.

  I can. I can exist outside of space, in the void. I’ll be just outside the universe, wrapped around it.

  You’ll be lost in the void forever, he said.

  He felt her smile. I can’t be lost there.

  She was beside him now, and he felt the enormous Door around the universe quiver like a soap bubble.

  Then he felt her in his own mind, not out in the wide universe. She set the things inside his head in order, placing thoughts and ideas side by side, removing the cobwebs and confusion, making proper barriers where they ought to be, and openings between the barriers that would let thoughts through at the proper time. She set his thoughts back on logical tracks, organized the sounds and movement that had tormented him, locked away some things, and brought others forward. Though he felt smaller now, the sensation was familiar. He had spent most of his life in this state.

  He was, once again, Elliot.

  I have to go, she said.

  For how long?

  She moved out of his mind and was beside him now.

  I can never come back.

  But you won’t live forever, he said. This solution is only temporary.

  I won’t age in the void. And the children are there. The drake children. I will not be alone.

  I don’t want you to go, he said.

  He felt her wrap around him, embracing him. Then she pressed a kiss onto his forehead where it burned warm, then melted into his skin, into his skull and brain, and pulsed through his blood.

  The skittish, abused kid from the trashy section of town, the strange, watchful girl who had taken the unwanted mantle of psychopomp, his younger cousin who had cried when he pulled the head off her Barbie, this was now the woman who had saved the world, and no one would know.

  It won’t be the same without you, he said.

  No, I don’t think it will be.

  Chapter 47

  Felicia stood beside Seamus’s hospital bed, unable to stop looking at the sheet and the way it lay flat on the bed where his lower leg should have been.

  He would live. That was the important thing. She had to focus on that. He had invented a rudimentary prosthetic mechanical leg for Civil War veterans years ago, and he would make one for himself. She knew that too.

  Luke was safe. He stood by the window, looking out over the parking lot, watching the cars. She noticed that he kept glancing at the sky, but she had already explained that the world was safe now. He was safe, but she was still uneasy.

  Her nephew was in this world. He would receive medical treatment and he would live. Her family was here, the Time Corps, everyone but Astrid.

  The moment Janeiro appeared in the hospital room, Luke leapt forward to embrace him. Janeiro scooped him up. Felicia took Luke’s arm and gave Janeiro a warning look. He put the boy down.

  “Don’t touch him again,” she said. “Do you understand?”

  Luke looked from her to Janeiro but did not move from his spot between them.

  Red Fawn followed Janeiro through his Door and immediately went to Seamus. He looked at her and gave a weak smile.

  “Hey there, pretty lady.”

  She looked old enough to be his mother, but Red Fawn had a feminine magnetism about her.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” Felicia said to Janeiro.

  “My sister wanted to see Seamus. She was worried about him.”

  “A fat lot of good that did when he was almost eaten by a void wyrm. You, all of you, you sat there and did nothing. Astrid is gone and Seamus is maimed and Jeff the psychopomp is dead and you did nothing.”

  Janeiro sighed and sank into the chair beside the bed. Felicia wanted to pull him out of it and throw him across the room. She felt Luke slip his hand into hers.

  “Everything worked itself out in the end,” said Janeiro.

  “Yeah, why don’t you explain that? Astrid is gone. She’s in the void. How is that working itself out?”

  “She performed her function. We all did. Even you.”

  “Right, our functions. And yours was to kidnap my son and then stand idly by while the worlds collapsed.”

  Janeiro rubbed his temples. If she didn’t know better, she’d say he looked older.

  “The four of us, Red Fawn, September, Julius and myself, we can’t do things that the others can. We are restricted in what we’re allowed to do. We’re watchers. It’s our primary function.”

  “But you intervened when you stole Luke.”

  “Out of necessity to preserve the stability of the worlds. The worlds your husband and your friend Astrid helped to destroy.”

  “I think March may have been right after all. Neil explained March’s philosophy to me. While you all sat there, while Luke was a piece on a chessboard that had to be removed and while we all performed our functions, while you allowed families and friends to be separated, and worlds to be split, at least March had a vision for the world and acted on it.”

  “A vision that included destruction. His final vision of the world is no paradise, though he would claim it was. Also, he wanted to kill the void wyrms and drakes, all of them.”

  “So did the Seelie. Now, why was that?”

  “The drakes were never popular. Humankind didn’t get along with them at all, but that was in a version of the world that no longer exists. But it did happen, you understand. The drakes have always been problematic. The Seelie have far-seers, and March knows all sorts of possible futures. The Seelie wanted the human world to stay open to them, so they didn’t want Yelbeghen sealing them off. That’s why they wanted him dead, to keep their Doors open. They didn’t want any drakes interfering with their Doors. They always wanted free access to the human world, and Yelbeghen interfered with that.

  “March, on the other hand, wanted Yelbeghen and all the drakes and void wyrms dead because they could open doors to the void. The Doors made by drakes could be used by others, and the wyrm holes were used by you and your friends to travel through time. March wanted to be the only one with such power. He couldn’t stop Janeiro and November, but he could act against any others. As odd as it sounds, he wanted the worlds separate and stable. When he had multiple worlds to play in and corrupt, he was happy. Now, he can only act in this one world. It must gall him horribly to be so restricted.”

  “At least he tried to help humanity by saving us from the void wyrms. He acted from his convictions.”

  Janeiro looked up at her for so long that she felt uncomfortable.

  “Do you really believe that? Do you believe his lies about freedom and self-determination?”

  “I believe that none of you know what you’re doing.”

  He laughed then, long and loud, and for a moment, only
a moment, she nearly forgave him for what he had done. Then, her maternal anger returned, solid and strong.

  “November wasn’t idle,” said Janeiro. “He took two of the psychopomps, the black dogs, Graciela and Robin, and had them assisting in other worlds where there were fewer of their kind. He tried to repair the rips before they got too bad. The rest of the Twelve were watching and acting in their own small ways to help. I was keeping you safe, Augustus was trying to keep the Seelie from coming through to Luna Park, June Yee was monitoring San Francisco, September was watching New Orleans in the 1800s. We weren’t idle, though you’re right that we were flying blind, just like you.”

  “Do you know more now?”

  “A little.”

  “Then tell me this. From what I understand, purgatory and hell opened.”

  “One level of hell. Not one of the worst ones.”

  “Still, it was hell. So why not heaven?”

  Red Fawn looked up from her quiet chat with Seamus. “Why would it? Nobody there wants to leave.”

  Seamus muttered something, but his eyes were drooping closed and Red Fawn stepped away from him to let him rest.

  “I see that you didn’t bring September,” said Felicia. “Seamus told me that he thinks she informed the New Orleans police about McCullen and him being felons. Now, why was it?”

  “To prevent them from making the machine. Even with the worlds split apart, March was still active. He might have given the pair of them the blue fluid and the whole mess would have begun again. She didn’t know that they’d escape, that McCullen would die or that Hazel would bring Seamus’s equipment to Ireland. She also didn’t know that he’d be able to make a rip, even without the blue fluid. As the spot was a naturally occurring tear, he simply had to poke it a bit. None of us knew that would happen.”