Marking Time (The Immortal Descendants)

by April White

  “Will you tell him why I left?”

  “If he loves ye like ye love him, he’ll understand.”

  Again the tears threatened, and again I choked them back. They hardened in my throat and made my voice crack. “Thank you.” I was suddenly shy with her until she pulled me to her in a fierce hug.

  “You’re the one to end it, lass. Ye have the strength to make them understand it’s wrong what they’re doing.”

  I had no voice left, even for desperation. “I don’t understand.”

  “Ye do. Ye know from what’s right and ye stand up for what ye believe. It’s enough.”

  She hugged me again, quickly, and then pushed me out of the room. The Missus bustled us all out of the cottage with maximum efficiency and minimum discussion. The lads wrapped my mother in a rough wool blanket and carried her to a sheer face of granite not far from the cottage. Ringo was holding me up as I followed them in a daze. When we rejoined the lads at the granite wall, I gave him the extra batteries for his Maglite. “Torch food.” He grinned, and then kissed me on both cheeks. “Be safe, my friend. And you always know when to find me.”

  I smiled at him. He’d become my brother. “Explain it all to Archer, would you? About my dad? He might be able to forgive me easier if he knew.”

  “But will he forgive himself?”

  I stared at Ringo. “It’s not his fault! He has to know that!”

  “I don’t know if it’s the same in your time, but a man needs to be able to protect his woman. And he’s going to feel like he failed.”

  I was suddenly sick to my stomach. “Oh God. Please try to make him understand, Ringo. Please.”

  He hugged me to his chest and his arms felt strong wrapped around me. “I’ll stand by him, Saira. He’ll get through it.”

  The tears I’d been choking back for hours finally started. They ran down my face unchecked, complete with snotty nose and great, wracking sobs I couldn’t control. I couldn’t look at Ringo again as I looked at my mother’s helpless body lying in front of the granite wall.

  Behind her, etched deeply into the stone, was a spiral portal. Without another word, and despite the huge sobs that shook my body, I knelt down, picked up as much of my mother’s body as I could hold, and started tracing.

  Home

  I don’t think I had a conscious thought in my head as I traced the spirals, but somehow I knew where, and when to take us.

  I recognized my mother’s walled garden the minute I opened my eyes. The sun was just starting to color the morning sky and the pre-dawn cold was bone-chilling. Her body, wrapped in its rough blanket, sucked heat away from me rather than provided it and I was absurdly grateful when strong hands lifted her off me and others carried her away.

  My eyes were open but I registered nothing as I was helped out of the walled garden and into the manor house. There were voices around me but my mind refused to recognize the words they said.

  Once I thought I heard Archer’s voice, but it wasn’t my Archer so I closed my mind to it.

  It was different than when I had the fever because my body felt normal; exhausted but essentially the same. It was my brain that had taken a powder. I’d retreated from anything that resembled emotion and I was basically a walking, moving husk. I think I even looked husk-like, with pale, dry skin, lank and stringy hair, and clothes that bagged off me. Thankfully, no one had too much time to fuss. They were too busy keeping my mother alive.

  I was hiding from all of it. My mother, my father, Archer, and everything I’d experienced that night under Bedlam. They put me into my mother’s old room in the Family wing, and I must have slept for a time, because when I woke up the light was different and I had a screaming headache. I heard a deep male voice outside my door. It sounded vaguely familiar, but I ignored it, shut the heavy velvet drapes, and crawled back into bed.

  The next time I woke the headache had faded to something dull and nagging, but thirst was my primary motivation for getting up. It was full dark outside and I had to consciously use my night vision to find my way down the hall. A bedroom door near the stairs was open and a dim light was on inside.

  I peered in, almost by accident, and realized it was my mother’s room. Suddenly all the inertia that had hidden me away from everything real came crashing down around my ankles and the only thing I could think about was her.

  I stepped into the room as silently as I knew how to, but I still managed to wake Mr. Shaw, who had been napping in a chair at the foot of her bed. He smiled at me, something between warm and grim, and I took another step into the room.

  In one fluid motion he stood and pulled me into his arms in the perfect definition of a bear hug. It was the hug of someone who’d been worried and maybe angry at the risks I’d taken, but whose relief at my safety overrode everything else. It was the hug of a parent when their child returns home safely.

  When he finally released me his voice was low and near my ear. “Millicent has given her blood. She’s the only one, but she gave it willingly. Maybe even happily.” I smiled wryly at that. I couldn’t even imagine how that conversation had gone.

  “You did it?” He nodded. “Thank you.”

  “You brought her home.”

  “She was dying.”

  “Not now.”

  I looked over at my mother, lying asleep on a lace-draped four-poster bed. There was some color in her cheeks, even by the dim light of the lamp by Mr. Shaw’s chair. She looked better, almost as if she was really only asleep. I suddenly looked up at her savior.

  “What’s your proper name, Mr. Shaw?”

  He grimaced. “William Robert Shaw.”

  “Oh.” Somehow I remained standing, but it was only by force of will. Will. Dad.

  “They call me Bob though. Less… controversial.”

  “He died, you know.”

  “Will Shaw?”

  I nodded. “He was my dad.”

  The Bear looked at me for a long moment, and then nodded again. “Explains some things.” I nodded silently, fingering the ratty braid that hung over one shoulder. “We probably shouldn’t talk too much about that beyond closed doors.”

  I looked up at him. “It’s all to do with blood, isn’t it? That’s what the bishop was after. Their blood. My blood. He said it gave him their power.”

  Mr. Shaw’s expression darkened. I realized I needed to talk about it with someone who understood. And remarkably, that person was right in front of me. So I told him everything.

  The night passed quietly. The sound of our murmured voices the only thing breaking up the deep silence of the house.

  Toward dawn my mother began to stir. Mr. Shaw moved quickly to one side and I slid next to her on the other. She saw him first when she opened her eyes, and there was a flicker of surprise, but no recognition. Her voice was barely audible as she whispered a word. “Saira?”

  I took her hand and squeezed it gently. With effort she turned her head to face me and her eyes lit up with a dim light. Her lips were parched and cracked and her skin was still pasty, but she looked beautiful to me. She looked like my mother.

  “Hi, Mom.” Her eyes searched mine, like she was looking for something that I knew, or maybe didn’t know. I decided we’d talk about it later. “Have you met Bob? He saved your life last night.”

  She turned her head toward Mr. Shaw again and gave him a quiet smile. “Thank you, Bob.”

  He grinned down at her. “My pleasure, Ms. Elian.”

  “Claire. It’s Claire to one who’s saved my life.”

  He brought her a glass of water and helped her sit up to drink it. She was so weak and so fragile; it hurt me to see her. I met Mr. Shaw’s eyes over her head. I gestured toward the door with my head and raised my eyebrows. He nodded.

  “Mom, I need to take care of something. I’ll be back in a bit.”

  She reached for my hand and held it with surprising strength, considering how frail she was. “I love you, Saira. I wanted to say that to you every day I was away from you. I love you w
ith all my heart.”

  I took a deep breath. It felt like the first one in days. “Me too, Mom.”

  The sun hadn’t risen yet, but the sky was starting to purple as I slipped out of the kitchen door. I found my way to my mom’s garden and closed the door behind me.

  “Hello, Saira.” His voice was behind me. I wondered if he would be there. I turned to face him, just able to make out the plains in his face.

  “Archer.”

  He looked at me a long moment and then he spoke. “I remember it all now.” His voice was rich and deep, but it had a tone I didn’t recognize as his. I couldn’t move and could barely breathe. He only had a few more minutes before the sun came up.

  “I remember falling in love with you, first in the room at King’s College, then completely during our evenings at the flat. I felt I knew you better than I knew myself.”

  “I knew you, too.” My voice was a whisper but his acute hearing had no trouble picking it out above the sounds of insects buzzing to life.

  He smiled at me then. A smile full of understanding and the wisdom of the very old looking down on the very young. “But not anymore.”

  “It’s not that, it’s just…” I tried to protest but it sounded feeble even to my ears.

  Archer’s smile grew sad at the edges and he stepped closer to me. “Forgive me, my love.” He pulled me to him then, and kissed me in a way he’d never done before. It was a kiss full of passion and longing and the promise of more. And then it was done.

  When I opened my eyes, Archer had disappeared.

  The sunlight drew a golden breath over the horizon and suddenly the sky was more light than dark. And I knew he was waiting for me. Just as he’d spent more than a century waiting for me. But the next move was mine.

  I’ve taken over my mom’s old room now. She doesn’t want it anymore. She prefers the room she spent her time convalescing in. The light’s better, she says.

  The Manor is decorated for Christmas in a way I can tell it hasn’t been in years, maybe even decades. Some of the decorations are probably from Victorian times and I think bringing them out from the attic rooms was a way for Sanda to keep my mom and Millicent from sniping at each other.

  It was Millicent’s blood that saved her though, so their disagreements are basically just different personalities clashing. Underneath all that there seems to be something real. Maybe their shared past, or maybe it does all just come down to blood.

  And while the new blood was settling into my mom and after Mr. Shaw left each night, we talked. Really talked. For maybe the first time ever.

  She told me about her childhood. About distant, emotionless parents, about her fragile sister, Emily, and about the Missus. Emily was scared of the Missus, but my mother loved her, and her cottage in Epping Wood was a haven.

  It’s where she met my dad. And where they fell in love.

  She was glad I’d found his letters and we spent a long night reading them. She explained references, secrets, and hidden codes so I could understand what they meant to each other. It’s what love looked like, and it was the first time I’d ever seen it on her.

  They were married by a parish priest, in secret, with only the Missus and her husband there to witness. They didn’t ask permission because it wouldn’t have been given, but when my mother got pregnant with me, they hoped forgiveness might.

  They were wrong.

  At the council meeting, in front of her aunt and Will’s father, they declared their love. They didn’t expect approval, and they’d take banishment if they must. At least they’d be together.

  What happened next was a blur for her. There were Weres… and screams… and when Rothchild grabbed her arms and began to drag her away, her swollen belly hit a table and she cried out in pain. Her husband somehow heard her through the haze of battle and the next thing she knew, Rothchild was dead and Will was covered in blood.

  Then sounds of people shouting and running. Will pressed something into my mother’s hand and told her to take me someplace they could never find us. “Go forward,” he said. And though she’d never gone forward before, the clock necklace had given her the focus to travel.

  My mother wanted to go back instantly, but the travel had sent her into labor and I was born in London in 1995. But when she ran into a Rothchild one day, she knew we had to go.

  And so began our vagabond existence, first San Francisco, then Oregon, and finally Venice. And she timed her trips home to be able to testify at Will Shaw’s insanity hearings.

  The morning she saw me in Whitechapel she’d been on her way to Bethlem Hospital for Will’s hearing. And when the Ripper saw I was a Clocker, he figured my mom would be a prize for the bishop.

  He was right.

  She didn’t know why the bishop wanted her blood; she thought he was drinking it. But he always took her to Bedlam so a doctor could drain it and then patch her back up before she died. Bishop Wilder was very careful not to infect or kill her… too soon.

  The Ripper took her necklace so she was never able to escape. She was horrified to learn there was a spiral in the Bedlam cellars, so close to where she’d been kept, and stunned to realize I could draw my own spirals to travel. It was something she couldn’t do.

  My mother was glad The Ripper was dead and afraid the bishop wasn’t. And the giant pink elephant in the room, which neither of us could talk about, was the death of her husband, my father, Will Shaw.

  After those first few nights, when the stories were pouring out of us, we didn’t talk again. It was hard to find our balance with each other, so we retreated to our separate corners to figure out what our relationship would become.

  I’ll go back to St. Brigid’s after the Christmas holiday. At first Millicent put her foot down and forbade me to return to school. She said it was clearly too dangerous now that there were rumors circulating among the Mongers about me being a mixed-blood.

  But we’re going to stay in England for a while if Mom and Millicent don’t kill each other first, and I need to learn everything I can about the Families. And for the first time in my life I have friends. So Mom overruled Millicent and I get to go back to St. Brigid’s.

  Ava came to see me and told me I was going to spill it all anyway, so I might as well get it over with. So I recounted everything. Even that I’d fallen in love with Archer from the past and how hard it was now to see him without the guilt of knowing how deeply I’d betrayed him. And worse, it almost felt like I’d be cheating on my innocent Archer by taking up with the worldly Vampire he had become.

  She listened with compassion and then said something to me that began to rattle the lock on my heart.

  “The thing that has gotten Archer through all these years of having to hide from the people he used to know, and being reviled and hunted by those of us in the Families, was the knowledge that he’d see you again. You gave him that when you went back the first time, and it probably saved his life a dozen times since then. He had to stay alive, you see, so he could be there when you needed him.”

  Mr. Shaw told me Archer had been shot once in that showdown under the bridge, and cut up with some sort of switchblade, but that he was already healing by the time they’d gotten to the school. Of course Archer disappeared soon after, and I didn’t mention his hiding place in the cellar of St. Brigid’s. Mr. Shaw still mistrusted Archer on principle, but I think he has begun to accept the idea of his humanity.

  I found Doran in the library at Elian Manor the other day. He was pacing the room, looking at books on the shelves and saying nothing. I finally asked him why he was there. He sighed and looked at me as if I should have read his mind. He said a piece of me was missing and I had to find it again before I could continue the game we were playing.

  “What game?” I’d asked him, but of course he didn’t answer. He just left with the words hanging in the air behind him, “The piece is behind the locked door. Open it and we’ll be back in the prophecy business.” Typical, enigmatic, infuriating Doran.

  So here
I was, in my room at Elian Manor, tying a red and gold bow around a present I’d just wrapped. My heart was hammering in my chest and nerves were making me fumble with the knot.

  Finally I finished with something that looked passably festive, and then checked my appearance in the mirror. I’d found a long, hooded cape in one of the closed-off bedrooms. It was black wool and lined with silk velvet. I wore the velvet on the inside, with my long hair unbraided under the hood. I’d finally found my eyeliner, and with a little chapstick I felt dressed up. The bones in my face weren’t quite as severe as they’d been before, and the bruise-colored circles under my eyes had finally given way to my normal complexion. At the last minute I put on my mother’s pearls, and the perfect pale balls glowed at the open collar of my white shirt.

  I passed Mr. Shaw in the hallway downstairs. He’d come to see my mother, as he’d been doing every week since she’d been able to leave her bed. His eyes were admiring, even as his eyebrows questioned my appearance. Then he saw the wrapped gift in my hand.

  “I’m going out.” I tried to sound casual but my voice betrayed my nerves.

  “Not far I hope.” He tried for casualness too.

  “Just to my mother’s garden.”

  He nodded slowly. “Don’t stay out too late, okay?”

  He sounded like a dad. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. “Okay.” He went toward the drawing room and I slipped out the kitchen door and made my way down the path to the walled garden.

  I closed the heavy door softly behind me and sat on the bench among overgrown rosemary and twisted brambles. I didn’t even know if he was still in England, much less near Elian Manor. And it was a huge leap of faith to imagine he could come to this garden on this night, just because I was finally ready to face him.

  “Hello Archer.” I’d been sitting so still, and my eyes had grown so used to the dark, that I saw him slip in like a ghost.

  “You look lovely Saira. Those pearls suit you.”

  “Thank you. They were my mom’s.”

  “She’s well?”

  “If you call daily catfights with Millicent well, then yes, she’s spectacular.” He was close enough now that I could see the smile on his face and it made my heart jump in my chest.