Child of Time Read online

  The High Executioner shook her head. ‘But why? Why should the Dæmons need a Child of Time?’

  ‘We are a powerful race, but we are restricted to appearing only where and when we are summoned to appear by lesser mortals, at the nexus points of history. We are bound by the laws of our own psionic science. But with a Child of Time within our grasp, we will finally be able to discover the secret of free movement through all time and space!’ Mastho stood again, towering once more over the Sodality members gathered in the Cathedral. ‘You have been manipulated into pursuing the same goal as us, unwittingly carrying out our work for us. How does that feel, little human?’

  The Dæmon started to stalk across the tiled central floor of St Paul’s. It stopped in the centre, directly under the main dome, and raised its clawed hands to the sky. ‘And now the great experiment is at an end, and has been successful. The Earth will be spared destruction, and I shall depart, taking the Child of Time with me. The Dæmons’ rule of time and space shall begin this day.’

  Up on the balcony, Emily was growing increasingly concerned. This devil creature wanted the Child of Time... But that was her, wasn’t it...? Was she to be taken by that creature? Separated from Honoré, the only friend she had ever had? She shrank away from the balustrade, hiding behind Honoré’s arm in the hope that he could protect her, as he had done so many times in the past.

  ‘It’s okay, Emily,’ he muttered absently. But she knew it wasn’t. How could it be? She was about to be taken by a demon!

  The massive beast below raised its head and looked directly at the point on the balcony where the three travellers were hiding. Its voice was raised in triumph. ‘Now! Now I shall take the Child and return to Dæmos. Show yourself!’

  Emily screamed, and Honoré bundled her backwards, away from Maria, who was phasing in and out of reality, pulsing with an electric blue light that sent the shadows scurrying. Maria raised a hand to Honoré, and Emily saw her mouth the words, ‘Help me!’ Then she vanished, only to reappear instantly down on the Cathedral floor directly before Mastho.

  Honoré grabbed Emily’s wrist. ‘Look,’ he urged. ‘Look. She is the Child of Time. Not you.’

  Emily looked, tears running down her cheeks. ‘What? Maria? No! How can she be?’ She’d been so sure it was her, so sure that this was the answer to the mystery of her life.

  As they watched, Maria started to transform still further, like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. She became bathed in ever brighter blue light, an inner radiance that illuminated her bones ice-white within electric-blue skin. The light grew and formed wing-like shapes around her, and she rose slowly up in the air before the Dæmon, her eyes closed and her face serene as the changes played out around her.

  Everyone in the chamber was gazing up at her as she was transfigured, a white and blue angel floating in their midst. Even the Dæmon seemed impressed, standing motionless as it watched the creature, the result of millennia of planning and experimentation.

  This was her purpose. This was the reward for all the pain and torture she had endured all her life. Maria felt her spirit soaring in the Cathedral, felt the souls of all the people who had ever worshipped there, ever given something of themselves to the stone and the marble. She absorbed all the memories, all the echoes of time, and became something greater than the sum of it all. She was so alive...

  But there was something else. A sound. A faint grinding sound in the air that Honoré had heard once before. He tore his gaze from the vision filling the centre of the Cathedral, and saw a pulsing blue light emanating from an alcove over to one side. As he watched, a gangly, balding man dressed in a velvet jacket stepped tentatively out from the shadows.

  Honoré recognised him instantly, although he had not set eyes on him for some two years. ‘It’s him,’ he whispered, his jaw dropping with astonishment. He felt as if he had been hit by a thunderbolt.

  At the same time, the High Executioner caught sight of the newcomer and screamed his name in frustration: ‘Dr Smith!’

  She reached up and pulled the goat-skull mask from her head, throwing it impotently at him in her fury. The action revealed her face to the watching crowd.

  Honoré stared in utter amazement. For the woman standing below them on the dais was Emily.

  Emily’s eyes opened wide. She could not take this in. She could not. She was this person. This killer. This murderess. This slaughterer of innocents. She was the High Executioner. No. No. No!

  She started to keen quietly to herself, muttering under her breath. But it all fit. She was the one who loved death and disaster. The dreams, the pleasure at the deaths. No. It couldn’t be her. But it was her. It was her. No.

  ‘No. No. No no no no no no...’

  Honoré was trying to hold on to her, but she squirmed from his grasp. ‘I... I’m sorry. Honoré... I can’t... can’t...’

  ‘It’s okay, Emily,’ said Honoré in a placatory tone, carefully. ‘Nothing will happen to you.’

  ‘But you... you don’t understand,’ she sobbed, her eyes wide and flickering from side to side. ‘I’m her. I’m a monster.’

  ‘Emily, listen to me. She is not you. You’re a different person in every way.’

  Emily looked over the balcony at the figure below, who was standing looking from Mastho to the glowing angel to Dr Smith in turn, unsure which of them posed the greatest threat to her at that moment.

  ‘I’m sorry, Honoré,’ she said, turning back to look at him with large, tear-filled eyes. ‘If that is who I am... I don’t want to be me!’

  Honoré grabbed her arm as she tried to clamber on top of the balustrade. ‘No! Emily! That’s not the answer...’ He desperately tried to find the right words, but sensed that this time he might fail. There was no denying the evidence before their eyes – Emily and the High Executioner were one and the same person.

  Emily struggled furiously, but he hung on, glancing below to the massive form of the Dæmon. The creature seemed to be looking about it with some amusement. Its voice boomed out, drowning the hubbub that had taken over the crowd. ‘Humans!’ it spat. ‘I feel that this planet may be one of the first we return to for further experimentation. But now it is time.’

  The creature moved its hand towards Maria, who was floating serenely in the air before it. ‘Come, my Child.’

  Maria’s eyes snapped open. Cold and ice blue. She regarded the Dæmon for a second, and then spoke, her voice calm and mellifluous. ‘I think not.’

  Mastho was not amused. ‘What?’ the creature growled.

  ‘You may have brought about my creation. But you do not have me. And you cannot control me.’

  ‘Oh, my Child,’ chided the Dæmon. ‘Even if you jump through time, you cannot get away. You are within my power, and I can now track and follow you wherever you go.’

  Maria smiled. Once. Sharply. ‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that, if I were you.’

  And she vanished in an immense flash of white light.

  The Dæmon roared with frustration and lashed out with its arm, catching the High Executioner a glancing blow to the head and sending her crashing to the tiled floor. Dr Smith scurried over to her prone form and gently lifted it in his arms. He looked around and his eyes caught those of Honoré, watching from the balcony above as he continued to struggle with Emily. Dr Smith nodded his head at Honoré, then carried the High Executioner’s prone figure back into the alcove from which he had emerged. Honoré knew what would be waiting for him there: the Cabinet of Light. Sure enough, the sound of meshing gears started up again, and the faint blue light pulsed out into the body of the Cathedral before fading away.

  The End – One

  London, 1949

  Fully in control of her new powers at last, Maria, the true Child of Time, sped through the time vortex. She was not following a random course, but trying to confuse the Dæmon, whose psionic hooks she could feel tugging at her, track
ing her.

  Her mind was in turmoil. She had been transformed, gone from having nothing to having the whole of time and space as her playground. But she knew that she could never play. Her life had been one of hardship, fear and pain. Captured by the Sodality in Venice, forced to undergo the ritual scarring, the etching of cabbalistic symbols and sigils into her skin so deeply that she could feel the knives scraping on her bones. And the bleeding, the pain and the itching of healing. Followed by more scarring... Time after time, month after month, her spirit broken and abused. Nothing for her. No future.

  But now, she was the future. She had the power to save the world. She smiled inwardly to herself at that. Not many people have the chance to save the world. But at what cost? She knew the Dæmon was right: it could follow her and it could use her. She could not escape. Except...

  There was an escape. The only escape possible. One she’d prayed for so many times down the years. One she’d once wished would come quickly, so that her life of pain and abuse could end. But her tormentors had been clever. She had been watched, searched, her nails kept clipped, her teeth capped. There had been nothing sharp left within her reach, nothing to use as a weapon. No way she could have escaped her life of hell.

  But then she had escaped. One night, in her bed, recovering from the latest in a long succession of tortures, she had phased out, falling unconscious with the shock of the time/space transfer. She had come to in the relative safety of St Paul’s, one thousand years in the future, where the time jumps had started to settle down into the random pattern of flipping between there and the Venice of her birth. The urge to end it all had passed; but she had still thought of it from time to time.

  And now she realised that it was the only way. She had to do it in order to save the world. The thought brought tears to her eyes and a lump to her throat. She idly wondered if she still had eyes or throat in the conventional sense, but supposed that she must.

  Suddenly she sensed a time ship in the vortex with her.

  Excellent. Maybe this would throw the Dæmon off her scent long enough. She locked onto the box-like object and followed its path through history. The years flicked by. She found she could sense them passing. All ages and all times accessible through the striating wonder that was the time vortex. She sensed that she was slowing, and then arriving. The familiar sense of self was returning. Of solid ground beneath her feet. She was at her destination.

  Maria looked around. She was in a house. It was dark. The year? 1949. Maria knew that instinctively. She looked up and found that she could see moonlight and stars through the shattered roof. The house was badly damaged, the timbers ripped and unstable. At her feet was a ragged hole in the floorboards, leading down into darkness. Something had smashed into this house and partly demolished it.

  Maria stepped around the hole and looked out of one of the windows. Across the street she could see a battered sign swinging in the light wind: SPITALFIELDS MARKET

  So she was in London. A greenish fog was starting to roll in and blot out the moonlight. All the better, she thought to herself.

  At that moment, she felt the Dæmon tugging at her. Its psionic claws deeply embedded within her, urging her back.

  She raised her hands and closed her eyes.

  It was time. This was for her friends. For Honoré and Emily. For Roberto. For all the children.

  It ended now.

  With a focused flash of electric-blue energy, she lashed out at the crumbling and unstable remains of the house around her. With a loud creak, masonry started to tumble inwards. A beam from the room fell and caught her a glancing blow on the head. She fell, and didn’t feel a secondary impact from a large chunk of brickwork that collapsed in on her.

  She was dead before her body hit the shattered rubble at the bottom of the house, her electric blue aura fading away and leaving only her frail form etched with cabbalistic runes.

  Bricks and woodwork continued to rain down on her body for a few moments, pouring dust down on her remains.

  Maria was at peace at last.

  The End – Two

  London, 2586

  As Honoré continued to struggle with Emily, who still seemed determined to throw herself from the balcony, he saw out of the corner of his eye that the Dæmon was stomping about the floor below, causing the terrified Sodality members to flee for their lives. ‘What is this?’ it roared. ‘Why can I not find her? Why can I not track her movements?’ It paced forwards, turned and took a step to the side, head cocked, for all the world as though it was trying to tune into the strongest signal on a radio. It paused for a second. ‘Ah... I have her.’ Then, suddenly, its face fill with rage. ‘No. It cannot be!’ It slammed one fist down on the dais, cracking it and raising a plume of red dust. ‘Her life force is no more! I am too late!’

  The creature raised its hands to its head and started to stagger about, roaring in pain. A low rumble filled the air, and those few acolytes who remained raced for the exit.

  Honoré suddenly heard a loud scraping sound from close by on the balcony and saw that one of the stone gargoyles had finally found them. He held onto Emily for all his worth and tried to drag her away from the approaching creature. But, as the Dæmon’s cries from below grew louder, so the red light of the gargoyle’s eyes started to dim, and eventually it slowed and stopped. It had reverted to stone.

  Honoré returned his attention to Emily, who started to scream and cry and lash out at him with renewed vigour. Eventually he could hold her no more: she broke free, dodged away and stood facing him, breathless and tear streaked. She reached out and touched the now-immobile gargoyle with a look of wonder on her face, then shook her head wildly.

  ‘I can’t do this Honoré. I can’t be me any more.’

  ‘Emily, listen.’

  ‘No, you listen. All these years, all these adventures, and all I ever wanted was to know who I was. We were a great team, Honoré. The best. But I didn’t know – how could I have known? – what I really was.’

  He watched her carefully, gauging the distance between them. Could he reach her in time? He’d never seen her so purposeful, so determined.

  Emily sniffed, wiped her nose on her sleeve and shot a quick glance across to the balustrade. Her eyes darted back to Honoré again before he could make a move towards her. ‘You don’t understand. You don’t know what it’s like to lose yourself... and then find yourself again, only to realise that you are a hateful, evil creature who should never have been born!’

  She was shouting now, tears pouring from her eyes, and Honoré winced at the pain he could see in his friend’s face. Pain so intense that it was tearing him up.

  ‘Honoré,’ said Emily, gulping back her tears. ‘Know this. I... I love you.’ And with a jump, she sailed over the balustrade and into the air high above the shattered floor of St Paul’s Cathedral.

  For Honoré it was as though time had shifted into slow motion. As Emily jumped, so he lunged forward, his clutching hand missing her leg by inches. He cried out, a long, slow, drawn out ‘Nooooooo!’, as he saw her glide out into mid-air and start to fall.

  His body crashed hard against the balustrade and he reached out his arms as though he could somehow bridge the widening gap that separated them. But she was too far away.

  She was gone.

  He felt his world crumbling, turning to ashes and dust as he watched Emily, his Emily, falling away from him.

  And time stopped.

  Honoré blinked.

  What had happened? He looked down from the balcony. Everything was still and silent, frozen in time. Emily’s outstretched form was suspended in mid air. Even Mastho the Dæmon was motionless.

  Then, one thing moved among the dust below. A small girl crawled out from behind a stone pillar.

  Violet.

  The Dæmon had been distracted, and the force bubble containing the children had dissipated, releasing the
m. Now Violet was moving purposefully across the floor, her face tight and focused. Looking up, she raised one arm and held out her hand, but it wasn’t Honoré she was directing it at – it was Emily. The girl got to her feet, and he could see the strain on her face. She looked ill and weak.

  Concentrating hard, Violet gently lowered her hand, palm downwards. As she did so, Emily’s body started to descend gently towards the ground.

  Honoré made his way around to the spiral staircase, hurried down to the ground floor and went to stand beneath Emily’s slowly falling form. He held out his arms, and she came to rest in them like an autumn leaf dropping from the tree. As Violet’s fist closed, he felt Emily’s weight settle.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Honoré. ‘Though that doesn’t seem really adequate, somehow.’

  Violet’s eyes were a glistening black, but she blinked once and they cleared back to her normal one-blue, one-violet gaze. ‘Emily is a good friend,’ said Violet. ‘She saved our lives, so now I’ve saved hers.’

  ‘What about you?’ asked Honoré. ‘Where will you go?’

  Violet looked over to where Jimmie and Freia were waiting for her. ‘We are free now,’ she said. ‘And that is thanks to you.’ She stretched up on tiptoes and kissed Honoré on the cheek. Then she stepped back and waved her arm out at the motionless tableau before her.

  Time jumped back on the rails. The Dæmon’s cries of pain and rage returned, the fleeing Sodality members continued their race for the doors, and Emily opened her eyes.