Child of Time

  Title Page

  TIME HUNTER

  CHILD OF TIME

  by

  George Mann and David J Howe

  Publisher Information

  First published in England in 2007 by

  Telos Publishing Ltd

  17 Pendre Avenue, Prestatyn, Denbighshire, LL19 9SH, UK

  www.telos.co.uk

  Digital Edition converted and distributed in 2011 by

  Andrews UK Limited

  www.andrewsuk.com

  Telos Publishing Ltd values feedback. Please e-mail us with any comments you may have about this book to: feedback@telos.co.uk

  Child of Time © 2007 George Mann and David J Howe

  Cover artwork by Matthew Laznicka

  Time Hunter format © 2003 Telos Publishing Ltd

  Honoré Lechasseur and Emily Blandish created by Daniel O’Mahony.

  The Dæmons created by Barry Letts and Robert Sloman. Used with permission.

  Violet, Freia and Jimmie created by Philip Purser Hallard for Time Hunter: Peculiar Lives. Used with permission.

  Text extract from The Cabinet of Light © 2003 Daniel O’Mahony. Used with permission.

  The moral rights of the authors have been asserted.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Acknowledgements

  This book owes a debt of gratitude to a number of people, all of whom have contributed to its path to publication. Thanks first of all to Barry Letts and the late Robert Sloman for their permission to use the Dæmons in the Time Hunter series. A belated thanks also to Chris Boucher for his permission to use the Fendahl in Deus le Volt. Without such iconic and memorable Doctor Who creations to draw upon, the adventures of Honoré and Emily would have been rather less exciting. Thanks must go too to Daniel O’Mahony for kicking those adventures off in The Cabinet of Light and to all the authors who subsequently worked on the Time Hunter series. Some of those authors found apparently random elements inserted in their stories by the editors, and now, hopefully, the reasons for those additions will have become apparent. This book really has been planned in outline since we started the Time Hunter series back in 2004... Thanks to Debbie Bennett, editor extraordinaire, who gave the text of this book a polish with a fresh eye and worked wonders to make it all come together. Additional thanks to Alison Davies for moral support and to Steve Walker and Rosemary Howe for ongoing understanding and cups of tea.

  The Time Hunter

  Honoré Lechasseur and Emily Blandish... Honoré is a black American ex-GI, now living in London, 1951, working sometimes as a private detective, sometimes as a ‘fixer,’ or spiv. Now life has a new purpose for him as he has discovered that he is a time sensitive. In theory, this attribute, as well as affording him a low-level perception of the fabric of time itself, gives him the ability to sense the whole timeline of any person with whom he comes into contact. He just has to learn how to master it.

  Emily is a strange young woman whom Honoré has taken under his wing. She is suffering from amnesia, and so knows little of her own background. She comes from a time in Earth’s far future, one of a small minority of people known as time channellers, who have developed the ability to make jumps through time using mental powers so highly evolved that they could almost be mistaken for magic. They cannot do this alone, however. In order to achieve a time-jump, a time channeller must connect with a time sensitive.

  When Honoré and Emily connect, the adventures begin.

  The Screaming Bones

  London 1951

  1

  It was a typical East End morning; it was raining.

  The streets were slick with the downpour, the drizzly veil obscuring Harris’s vision as he dashed through the narrow lanes, dodging puddles where the water had gathered between the uneven paving stones. Paving stones that had been splintered by the crashing debris from the Luftwaffe detonations, from a time – not that long ago – when the sky had rained more than just water, sleet and snow. Harris still found himself slamming awake from the vivid night terrors that had plagued him since the end of the War, sitting bolt-upright in bed, drenched in sweat, sheets clenched in whitened fists, convinced that blood and bone and human remains were showering him from the sky again, like they did that day on Euston Road when he’d been caught out in the open during a German bombing raid.

  The Blitz seemed like a lifetime ago now, but the patter of the rain still reminded him of that day, and he quickened his pace, keen to get away from it. He darted across the marketplace, his open raincoat whipping up around him in the driving wind, leaving trails of brown cloth billowing in his wake.

  Around the marketplace they were still rebuilding. The tidy façades of houses and shop fronts hid wreckage and devastation like a shiny veneer, glossing over the bruised interiors and shattered sub-frames of the former homes, burying the dead in silent, unmoving cairns. That was the reason for his early morning rush through the rain; he’d been called to the scene of a renovation where some workers had uncovered a corpse.

  Rounding a bend, his newspaper clutched over his head to ward off the worst of the downpour, he could easily make out the source of the disturbance. A large group of onlookers had congregated in a circle opposite a battered sign that swung in the wind: SPITALFIELDS MARKET.

  They were chattering amongst themselves on the street corner where the builders had obviously lifted the body from the wreckage. Momentary eruptions of light, like the flashing of lightning in the rainstorm, suggested the press had already arrived at the scene and were busy sensationalising the find with lurid photographs of the body and other, more dramatic embellishments.

  As he approached the throng of people he flashed his badge, and the crowd parted to let him through. Before taking a look at the body itself, which a quick glance had already told him was old – practically skeletal – he sought out one of the constables and assigned him to keeping the photographers at bay. No point letting them make a mountain out of a molehill; although, he supposed, it was probably too late for that now. Cursing the rain for making him late, he glanced around, acknowledging his sergeant with a nod of his head and casting a tired eye over the faces of the three workmen, who were still standing around in the rain, anxious and uncomfortable with all the attention. Then, after motioning to the crowd to give him some more room, he crouched down beside the body to take a better look, still holding his newspaper high over his head to stave off the spray.

  His initial thought had been correct. The body was indeed almost skeletal; presumably, like so many others they’d found in recent times whilst cracking open the shells of imploded homes, it had been broken and defaced by the War. He felt his spirits crashing.

  The upper torso of the skeleton was partially covered in a black, gossamer-like material that he didn’t recognise. It was obviously some article of clothing, and looking closer he could see the stitching and cut that implied that this was the body of a woman. The body was lying on its side, having been lifted out of the building on a large white dustsheet by the three workmen.

  Harris pulled his handkerchief from his coat pocket and shook it out, then used it to gently turn the head towards him.

  ‘Oh God...’

  Startled, he almost let it go again. The skeletal face of the victim stared blankly back at him from empty sockets. He rolled more of the skeleton over onto its back, the limbs clattering as the arms came away fr
om the ribcage. The rest of the body was the same. Although the bones were pitted and dirty with age and exposure, it was obvious to Harris that they themselves had actually been defaced. Indeed, judging by the way they were marked – by what Harris presumed could only have been a knife or other cutting instrument – it seemed to him that they had been precisely and deliberately etched. And that meant it had happened before the building had collapsed in the bombing raids. His hopes of an easy day were quickly disappearing, washing away in the downpour.

  Harris studied the bizarre runes that covered every inch of the skeleton. In all his life, he’d never seen anything like them. They weren’t Egyptian and they certainly weren’t Greek; he’d studied those at university. No, these probably had some occult significance, carved by some insane bastard whose hobby of sacrificing chickens had got out of hand. He’d heard of something similar recently: a group in France who’d taken to cutting symbols into their victim’s chests, little circles with horns, representing the Devil or some other such supernatural monster. He shook his head, seeking patience or, perhaps, strength.

  He became aware of the noise all around him, the inquisitive heckling of the crowd, the constant patter of the rain. He remained still for a moment, shivering in the cold, and then he rose steadily to his feet and gestured towards one of the constables.

  ‘Clear these people away, officer. This is now the scene of a murder investigation.’

  2

  Some days it was like the fug wouldn’t lift, and all Honoré wanted to do was to curl up on the bed and sleep, to hide away from the world and all its complications, its veneer of normality and respectability; to slide comfortably back into the ignorance of his old life, before the Albino, the Fendahl, Abraxas, the cabinet of light and... Emily. Other days he would sit for hours in his small room, listening to the noises in his head and wondering about the ghosts of the past and the spectres of the future. Wondering if he’d made the right decision to give it all up.

  Today, he decided, was one of the former. He lay still for a moment on his bunk and gathered his thoughts. He knew Emily wanted to see him; Mrs Bag-O-Bones, his landlady, had slid a note under the door the previous day, written in her neat, antiquated copperplate, subtly chastising him for hiding away in his room and refusing to see his visitors. She probably thought he was sulking, and he knew her intentions were sound, but he needed time to regroup, to decide what to do next. For a while, he’d even considered leaving London, returning on the slow boat to New Orleans to start his life over again, leaving all the trouble behind. But deep down he knew that London had not given itself up to him yet; that there were still ghosts that needed exorcising.

  He decided to get up and wash, and then head out for a walk. He hoped the air would help lift his mood.

  The sky was heavy with rain and storm clouds as Honoré made his way along Whitechapel Road, looking for a newsagent’s from which to buy his morning paper. It had started raining the day before and hadn’t yet stopped, and the gutters and drains were spluttering with accumulated water and dirt. The rain reminded Honoré of home, of New Orleans in the fall, the fat raindrops stirring patterns on the bayou, the leafy smell of damp earth that somehow came to him every time he thought of his childhood. Here, though, the rain was a constant distraction, showering over the brim of his hat and soaking through the creases in his leather coat, penetrating, insidious. To Honoré, it was like a portent, a warning, a direction from above, even – telling him to move on, to get out of this place and do something new. Or, at the very least, to stop standing still and letting the world rush by. He’d had a peculiar sense, just the day before, of feeling rooted to the spot, gravity bearing down on him as reality spooled away like a spoiled reel of film. He couldn’t place the feeling, but it was as if the world had suddenly skipped a beat, dislocating him briefly from reality. Like he was being pulled towards something familiar. He shook his head. Perhaps Emily’s paranoia had rubbed off on him more than he’d thought. He pulled his collar up against the patter of the rain, the water cold against the nape of his neck, and ducked into the doorway of a small store to fetch the morning news.

  Back at his lodgings an hour later, he shook out his hat and coat and clambered noisily up the stairs, trying to keep the dripping garments from spoiling the print on his copy of The Times. Down the hall, he could hear the screeching whistle of Mrs Bag-O-Bones’ kettle and hoped that she’d invite him to join her for a cup of tea. Later he needed to head over to Hammersmith to meet with some clients – a particularly nasty case involving a missing teenage girl – but for now he wanted to put that out of mind. It was Saturday morning, after all, and with any luck the weather would break before he needed to venture across town. He clicked the latch on the door to his room, pushing the door open with the edge of his boot. Ducking inside, he dropped his paper on the small table beneath the window, then hung his damp jacket on the back of the door, shrugging his shoulders when he noticed the pool of water spreading out quickly beneath it. He flung his hat nonchalantly on the bed.

  The rain was still teeming down outside, rattling the old Georgian sash window in its frame as it pounded against the glass. He lowered himself into a chair, flipped his slightly-damp newspaper open in front of him and scanned the headlines. One column in particular caught his attention immediately.

  WOMAN’S BODY FOUND IN WRECKAGE

  The body of a woman was found yesterday in the wreckage of a building near Spitalfields Market when workmen clearing debris entered the building around 6am. The woman, thought to be between 20 and 30 years of age, is said to have been badly mutilated, with a series of ritualistic markings carved into her near-skeletal remains. Inspector John Harris of Scotland Yard attended the scene, where he declared a murder investigation to be underway. It is thought at this time, however, that the body may already be nearly two years old and that any useful evidence may have been destroyed when the derelict house collapsed in 1949 due to damage sustained years earlier during the Blitz. The body was moved to a nearby mortuary for post-mortem

  Honoré rocked back in his chair and rubbed a hand thoughtfully through his neatly trimmed beard. He scanned the story again, looking for any details he might have missed the first time. It was probably just another murder – a gruesome murder, admittedly – but something about it made him feel uneasy. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but it may have had something to do with the reference to the ‘ritualistic markings’ that the killer had left on the body, or the location near Spitalfields Market. But, more than that, something about the whole scenario made him think of Emily.

  He had not really had a conversation with her for weeks, not since their last, gut-wrenching encounter with their parallel world alter-egos and their decision, taken together, to stop meddling in other people’s affairs – or, more accurately, to stop interfering with the course of time. What contact they had endured had been polite and non-committal, so very unlike the relationship they had fostered over the course of the previous year; perhaps the most open and honest friendship Honoré had ever known. Consequently, it chewed away at him from inside, often leaving him feeling despondent and unable to relax. Not only that, but he was sure that Emily was reaching a new level of frustration with her amnesia, and he feared how it might impact on her health if she, too, didn’t make herself busy with something soon. They needed a distraction. He wondered for a moment if this murder investigation could be it. Then, just as soon as he’d had the idea, he tossed it away again. He had enough to keep him busy without worrying about police work too; especially two-year-old cases that lacked any leads.

  He flicked through the newspaper, quietly absorbing the rest of the news, but unable to concentrate properly, his mind running in circles around him. He kept coming back to the story of the woman, visualising the body, with gruesome runes etched into her bones like words on a page, telling her story. Something about the very thought of it disturbed him right to his core, and if nothing else, he’d l
earned to trust his gut.

  A few minutes later, he gathered up his still-dripping coat and hat and, leaving the newspaper to silently declare its news to the empty room, set out across town early, for once grateful for the distraction of the rain.

  3

  Emily Blandish was woken by the sound of knuckles rapping on hard wood.

  She jumped out of bed, startled, her hair a fuzz of unkempt strands, her hands moving automatically to cover her modesty. The knocking grew more insistent, and she shuffled down the hallway towards the door, still dazed with the residue of sleep. Glancing down to check she was wearing her pyjamas, she cautiously opened the door.

  ‘Hello?’

  The passage outside was silent, empty.

  ‘Hello?’

  She clicked the door shut again and paced back into her bedroom, running her fingers through her hair. She came to an abrupt halt when she heard the rapping start up once more.

  ‘Look, if this is just another prank...’ She stopped herself short and sighed, realising that the sound was just the high winds tapping a branch against her window. Relieved, she allowed herself to relax, flopping back into the comfort of her warm bed. She tried closing her eyes again, but the light was seeping in from the other room and, besides, she was awake now. She supposed she should get herself up to face another day.

  Rolling back out of bed, she allowed herself to feel a little twinge of disappointment. Secretly, she’d hoped the person at the door would be Honoré. Indeed, she was sure that one day soon he’d bang on her door, desperate for her help, and together they’d head off on another adventure, even if, this time, it only involved helping him to find a missing cat or chase down an errant husband. In truth, though, she was prepared for the disappointment. Honoré had been avoiding her for weeks, and even for a while before that, the time they had spent together had been simply perfunctory; two people who seemed to meet out of habit rather than purpose. She’d tried to talk to him – to talk to him properly – about the things they had seen, about whether or not they had truly made the right decision to stop their travelling together through time, but he’d clammed up on her. Indeed, she now thought it was probably her persistence in pursuing those conversations that had driven him away.