by April White
“It looks brand new.”
“It was minted for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee which was, as the boy said, last year.”
I stared at him. Victoria had been queen for fifty years in 1887. My mom and her history conversations had drummed that into my brain. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the twenty pound note I’d stuck there. Queen Elizabeth II’s face stared back at me. Archer looked at the bill in my hand and his expression suddenly registered shock.
“Good God, is that twenty pounds?”
I nodded. “The rest of my money is still in American dollars.”
He stared at me. “You mean you have more? This is more money than most people earn in a month.”
Then it was my turn to stare. “You’re not kidding, are you?”
He shook his head, staring at the note. “And that’s the queen from your time?”
“Elizabeth the Second. She had her Golden Jubilee when I was a kid.”
He reached out to touch the paper tentatively. “Fascinating. Is that a lot of money in your time?”
I shrugged. “Not that much. It might buy dinner in a restaurant.” He looked horrified and I smirked. “But I bet the coin you showed me is worth more.”
“How is that possible?”
I rolled my eyes. “Because that’s a practically brand new coin that doesn’t look a hundred and twenty-five years old.”
“It’s not.”
It’s not, he says.
I felt like someone punched me in the gut. Breathing was suddenly hard to do and I was having trouble focusing. There was a war between reason and, well… insanity raging in my brain, and it was all I could do to rein the madness in. So I got mad instead.
“Then explain this, genius. Why do you look exactly the same now as you do in more than a hundred and twenty-five years?” I couldn’t believe I’d just said that with a straight face.
Archer paled. “We know each other in… your time?”
“Whatever the hell that means… my time. But yeah, I’ve seen you drive an Aston Martin sports car like you stole it.”
“I’m sure I didn’t—“
“Shut up! Stick to the facts, Jack. And the facts are, you drove me to London like, two hours ago, dumped me at the curb, and next time I see you you’re kneeling over some woman you claim got killed by Jack the Ripper. Tell me how that’s possible?”
Archer’s eyes went vacant in a way that made it seem like he was gone. “It’s not possible, is it?”
“That’s what I’m saying!”
“But I’ve never seen you before tonight.” His voice was uncertain.
“Yeah, you told me that. In practically the same breath as you told me about time travel. You can’t have it both ways. In fact, I’m sick of playing this… whatever game this is. Have a nice life… Wolf. Don’t call me and I won’t call you, okay?”
He looked like he was about to say something else but I didn’t give him the chance. I took off running. At a dead sprint. The speed I go so nothing can catch me.
If Archer followed me at all, it wasn’t very far. I wasn’t consciously trying to lose him, but I did make a point of darting down small alleys and staying off the main roads. I was free-running with a vengeance and the kind of single-minded determination that usually ended in a sprained wrist or a cracked rib. I didn’t do reckless because it drew attention, but in that moment I felt like I was losing it anyway, I might as well see how far I could go.
I scaled a high stone wall, and every hand and foothold was exactly right. The top was wide enough that I could crouch there for a moment to catch my breath, looking for all the world like a stone gargoyle. Except for the heavy breathing.
Behind the wall was a cemetery, with straight paths and headstones arranged in grids. The moon passed out from behind a cloud and a sudden shaft of milky light revealed two men near the opposite wall. One man seemed to be keeping watch on the main gates while the other flung dirt over his shoulder with a shovel. Grave diggers or robbers? I didn’t want to find out. Staying low, I crept along the top of the wall to the next alley and dropped down off the wall to slip into the shadow of the tenement building it served.
Moving kept my mind off everything that had happened since Millicent locked me in the room at Elian Manor. Like a shark, as long as I kept moving I could breathe. But no amount of running could keep the picture of Archer Devereaux out of my mind. First, as the Wolf, with gleaming teeth and a predatory smile, speeding away from Slick and his Bipedal goon. And then as the formal young man in a cape, looking so shocked at the thought that I could already know him. None of it added up and all of it made my head hurt.
A door suddenly swung open right in front of me and I had to jump out of the way to miss being hit by a yowling ball of fur. A sweaty drunk growled from inside the slum, “Piss off, cat!” Then he aimed a kick in its general direction and landed flat on his butt. He caught sight of me from his ignoble position on the floor. “Help me up.” He spit when he talked and his eyes were barely focused. Human compassion battled with self-preservation for a moment, and I almost took a step forward. Until he spoke again. “Help me up, damn ye, or I’ll hunt ye down and cut yer ears from yer bloody ‘ead.” So much for human compassion. I had to hurdle to the cat, sitting in the middle of the alley grooming himself, and he hissed at me anyway. Damn cat.
And who does that? Who threatens to cut someone’s ears off? All I wanted at that moment was a well-lit café, an overpriced coffee, and a bitchy waitress to ignore me. Was that so much to ask?
Apparently it was, because when I rounded the corner I ran smack into a group of young men. From the looks of them they were the same variety as the Newsboy Urchin, only older and more criminal. One of them had a long flat board and looked like he’d been about to swing at the window of a hat shop.
The first thought that went through my head was ‘How much loot could someone possibly get from a hat shop?’ The second thought made infinitely more sense than the first because it involved getting very far away from those guys, very fast.
“Oy! Mate!” I was already halfway down the block when the first thug yelled. And just rounding the corner when the call to arms came. “Get him, lads!”
Oh. Crap. I’d been running at nearly full speed since I’d bolted from Archer, and I wasn’t sure exactly how much I had left. Which meant I needed to get out of sight. Fast. I spun down another alley, trying to stay well away from the wide open main streets where I could be spotted and gained on. Another turn down an even smaller alley, and the final turn led to a dead end. Perfect.
The wall was brick, but the old kind with wide mortar lines and good footholds. It was just tall enough that I couldn’t reach the top with a jump, so I was fairly confident the thugs wouldn’t guess I’d scaled it. I dropped down the other side and winced with the hard landing. I was at the end of a wider street that looked like a completely different part of town. Weird how walls around a neighborhood could do that.
The first alley to my right led to a square that looked like some sort of market, with several roads and passages leading from it. I sprinted toward a covered one called St. James Passage and stayed close to the wall as I navigated the pitch-black passage. When the tunnel ended I was in a cobblestone square, surrounded on three sides by tall warehouses. There was a plaque mounted in the wall that announced “Mitre Square,” with a gaslight above it. The shadows moved ominously on the walls, compelled by the flickering flames, so I stayed in the deepest darkness at the far end of the square. God, I hated shadows.
I crept forward cautiously, listening for any sound beyond my steps. The wall must have stopped the thugs from following me, and the square was nearly silent. And then my foot touched something weirdly soft and hard at the same time. I gasped and recoiled backwards, stumbling over a cobblestone and breaking the eerie quiet of the deserted square. Except it wasn’t deserted. Something shifted in the shadows and I turned to run, but not before an image was burned into my brain. It was a body I’d kicked
. A woman. I wished I’d never seen it because now I could never forget.
A Long Dark Night
Adrenaline surged through my veins and I bolted for the tunnel I had entered through, running at full speed toward the yawning darkness. Except now there was something blocking it. A man. In a long coat. Drawing a knife. He stepped toward me, scraping the blade along the brick wall menacingly. Like he was sharpening it.
A clock began to strike the hour. BONG!
Without conscious thought I ran toward him, then suddenly bounded up a wall, scaled a fence above his head and picked my way across a tiled roof like a cat. If I had stopped to think about it I might have been impressed with myself, but the only thought in my head was “RUN!”
BONG!”
And then the killer started after me. I could hear him scrambling up the wall with brute force that challenged my own agility. I was acutely aware of the sound my boots made on the slate roof tiles. Free-runners avoid tile roofs like the plague because when a tile breaks it sounds like a gunshot. I didn’t have a choice. Every roof in this part of town was slate or worse, metal. I picked my way carefully across the pitched roof, listening intently for the sounds of the killer on my heels. He had reached the tiled roof but didn’t slow down.
BONG!
I had a choice to make. Keep picking my way across the tile or jump and take my chances. I looked over my shoulder just as the killer cleared a pitch behind me. I couldn’t see his face, but I could feel his eyes burning through me.
I jumped.
BONG!
There was a balcony about ten feet below me with another one about five feet lower. I barely had time to plan my landing before I was reaching for the rails of the next one.
I felt the fresh scab on my palm catch on the rail, but I ignored the sharp pain and concentrated on controlling my fall. A wide window ledge, a drainpipe, another balcony, and finally I was on the ground.
I looked up as slate tiles rained down from the roof and the cloaked figure leapt to the balcony rail I’d just left. He stopped there for a moment, and it looked like he touched the rail and rubbed my blood between his fingertips. Gross!
I took off sprinting and in a couple of minutes I was back at the fruit market square. Some merchants were setting up their stalls and I thought I probably shouldn’t race in with my strange clothes. Above me were two buildings with fairly easy access to the roofs. I scaled the wall and balcony, then found a protected alcove on the roof between the buildings where I could see much of the square below me.
I settled in to wait, watch and listen.
At first there was nothing, just the sound of my own heart hammering in my chest. Then the slap of running feet joined the beat and a man’s voice cried out.
“A body! In Mitre Square!”
Another voice, further away, called out, “Call the coppers!”
Hoping the killer wouldn’t stick around with people emerging, I carefully picked my way down a drainpipe and quietly dropped to the ground. An iron grip caught my arms and dragged me back into the shadows. I opened my mouth to scream and a hand clapped over it.
And then I smelled spice. My legs turned to Jell-O and I sagged against Archer’s chest in relief. He whispered in my ear. “We need to go.”
“He chased me up to the rooftops.”
Concern immediately flooded his eyes. “Are you hurt?” I shook my head. “We need to leave this place. Once the rabble is aroused, they’ll be out for blood. Dressed as you are, we’ll both become targets.”
“I can take care of myself.” Instantly defensive. Maybe because I’d just come really close to actually needing help, something my self-preservation instincts would barely allow.
Archer’s eyebrow raised and let go of my shoulders. I missed the reassurance of his touch, and then got mad at myself for it. “Perhaps in the time you come from, Miss Elian, but it’s clear you’re not used to this era’s criminal element.”
I glared at him. “I do just fine in any city. Why should London be any worse than Los Angeles?”
“Were you feeling ‘just fine’ when the young thugs were intent on beating you senseless with a plank just because you’d wandered into their territory?”
My eyes narrowed at him. “You saw that?”
“I caught up to the tail end of their chase, just when you’d lost them over the wall. It was all I could do to find a doorway to hide in so I didn’t become their next target. And if you knew anything at all about survival in this city, you’d know that being alone at night is ‘victim’ just waiting to happen.”
Why did this guy seem to know every button to push with me, when I’d spent my entire life avoiding showing any kind of emotion that would mark me in a crowd? “I am not a victim.” I spoke through gritted teeth.
Archer glared right back at me in a display of temper that would have impressed me if it didn’t piss me off so much. “Miss Elian, you are a victim of so much more than you can possibly know at this moment. I don’t even know where to begin with all the dangers you face just by being here. If you were locked in a cell in the Tower of London you would be safer than you are alone out here on the streets of Whitechapel.”
“And you’re what? My knight in shining armor? You can’t even keep up with me.” I was beyond mad, and worse, I knew some part of him was right. There were rules to this city I didn’t understand, and I hated being out of my element. So I was determined to show him just how capable I was. I bolted, then put on a burst of speed when he caught up to me, pulling myself over walls Archer had to climb and practically flying down staircases. The look on his face was grim determination, and I found energy reserves I didn’t know I had. Making Archer chase me suddenly became a game and I tested his abilities with tumbles, leaps, scrambles and jumps he’d probably never seen a girl do before.
When I had pushed my own endurance to its limit I finally stopped running. Archer caught up to me a moment later, gasping for breath. “You’re not human.”
I snorted, holding my sides as I took deep, gulping breaths. “You should be impressed you almost beat me.”
“Do all you Clockers move like cats?”
“We’re going there again? I don’t know. In fact, as you so helpfully pointed out, I don’t know anything.”
He sat down on a stoop to catch his breath. It was an oddly relaxed pose for him and made him look like a regular guy, not a stuffy Victorian gentleman. Then he looked at me carefully. “What was I doing when you saw me in… your time?”
“As much as it chaps me to admit it, you rescued me. But if Slick shows up here now, I’ll know for sure you’re in on whatever this is with him and his cronies.”
“I don’t have… cronies.”
I scoffed. “Friends, then.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Archer held my eyes. “Because among other outlandish things, I believe in time travel, which therefore means I believe you’re a time traveler. And unfortunately, in my social circles, it’s the kind of thing that confirms for most people that I’m quite mad.”
Cool. I was hanging out with a lunatic I’d found lurking over a dead person. I had a choice here. I could roll with this and somehow figure out how to get back to my real life, or I could freak out and lose it, probably be committed with him, and end up in a loony bin of truly epic Victorian ugliness, never to be seen again.
I blinked and took a deep breath. I was tired. Too tired to stay angry and righteous and so very sure of everything. I guessed I’d roll with it then.
“So, are you actually crazy or just weird?”
After an astonished moment, Archer laughed. I spoke under my breath. “Just weird.”
He studied me. “Doesn’t it shock you?”
“Which part? That you say I time traveled back to 1888, or you say you’re a nutjob? Or maybe it’s the fact that I’ve just spent the night running away from criminals and killers. Take your pick. That you might be a nutjob is about the only one of the three that makes any sens
e.
Archer smiled at that and settled back to look up at the stars. I was still having trouble reconciling the idea of visible stars in London so I watched his face instead. His eyes were a dark gray-blue and his hair was almost black in the pale moonlight. Broad cheekbones and a strong jaw saved him from prettiness, but his face was most interesting when he talked.
“What do you know about the Immortals?” He turned to hold my gaze and I didn’t look away. I didn’t want him to think he could unsettle me.
“Immortal means ‘lives forever,’ that’s what I know.”
Archer seemed like he was debating something. Finally he took a deep breath, stood up, and helped me to my feet. We continued walking. “Consider the possibility that things most people take for granted as just part of life are actually embodied in Immortals – five of them to be exact.”
“You lost me.”
He seemed amused by my exasperation, then composed his face. “All right, consider this. You are a child of Time. Others are children of Nature, War, Fate and even Death.”
I stared at him, barely comprehending his words. “You mean like Time and Death are people?”
“Immortals.”
I scoffed. “I know who my mother is and she’s definitely not immortal.”
“When I say child of Time I actually mean Descendent. From what I understand, the Immortals have created family lines that stretch thousands of years. Within those families exist the traits of the Immortals themselves. You can travel across time. That ability came from either your mother or your father.” Archer was watching me carefully.
I shook my head. “My parents are just regular people.”
“From whom did you get the name ‘Elian’?”
“It’s my mother’s maiden name. My dad died before I was born.”
He nodded. “Then it’s most likely your mother who travels. Elian is one of the old families of Time.”
I glared at Archer. “How do you know any of this?”
He sighed. “I don’t think I can tell you that.”