Timecurse

by Tom Becker

  “So I saw,” Carmichael said curtly. “Where’s Lucien?”

  “I couldn’t see,” Holborn replied. “There was too much dust.” The Abettor surveyed the scene of destruction in front of them. “You don’t think . . . that they’re both gone?”

  “I hate to disappoint you,” a low voice called out from amongst the rubble, “but I’m still very much here.”

  Lucien Ripper hauled himself painfully down to the ground, his clothes in tatters and covered in dust. His cropped hair was nearly as white as Holborn’s. The Black Phoenix had retreated back within him, leaving only a lame, bleeding human in its wake – a mere afterthought compared to the vile, powerful creature. Lucien coughed violently, flecks of blood daubing his lips.

  “What on Darkside happened?” Holborn shouted.

  “The wench had explosives,” Lucien snarled, shaking off the Abettor’s attempts to support him. “She blew up the entire wall. I only just managed to pull out in time. Why didn’t your men start firing?”

  “It seemed you had the situation under control, my liege,” Holborn said smoothly. “We thought our intervention was unnecessary.”

  “Have them rake through the rubble and make sure she’s dead,” Lucien ordered.

  “Make sure?” Carmichael said incredulously, surveying the vast burial mound. “No one could have survived that.”

  “We have to be certain,” Lucien said hoarsely.

  “Actually, we have to get out of here,” the hunchback contended. “There’ll be police all over the place before you know it.”

  “I thought you had promised we wouldn’t be disturbed tonight,” Holborn said, his eyes narrowing.

  “I said we were doing a training exercise, not that we were going to demolish the bloody building!” Carmichael yelled. “Do you have any idea how difficult it’s going to be to explain this? We have to go – now!”

  Lucien looked as though he was about to argue, but he was forestalled by another wracking coughing fit.

  “You won,” Carmichael continued, in a softer voice. “You are the new Ripper. Return to Darkside and prepare for your coronation.” The detective smiled slyly. “Whilst you were fighting Marianne, our men captured an old friend of yours who will no doubt be delighted to take part in the celebrations.”

  “An old friend?” Lucien said quizzically.

  A convoy of sleek cars was bumping across the wasteland, Darksiders leaning out of the windows to whoop and fire rounds into the air. As the lead car pulled up alongside them, Carmichael went round to the boot and popped it open. There, Lucien saw, tangled up in a heavy net, the unconscious form of Elias Carnegie.

  “Well, well.” A smile dawned on the Ripper’s face. “It seems we have two reasons to celebrate.”

  Hiding behind a rock, Jonathan watched as Lucien climbed into the car and the cortege pulled away across the wasteland. He was nearly crying with frustration. Every sinew in his body yearned to run over and try to free his ally, but he knew it would be futile. As the cars slipped out through the exit and into the night, Jonathan clambered wearily to his feet. He had failed. Lucien had won the Succession, Marianne was dead, and Carnegie’s sacrifice had meant nothing. He kicked out bitterly at a stone, sending it rattling loudly across the ground.

  “Jonathan?” a voice called out. “Is that you?”

  He whirled round, startled, only to see Raquella and Harry racing towards him from out of the gloom. His heart leapt.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, amazed.

  “Looking for you,” answered the maid. “We gambled that you wouldn’t be far away from the fighting.”

  “But how did you know the Succession was taking place here?”

  “Same way I find out every secret in Darkside,” Harry said wryly. “Went to the Informer and asked Arthur Blake. It turned out that one of his contacts in Blackchapel has a big mouth on him. We got here as quickly as we could.”

  “I wish you’d got here sooner,” Jonathan replied, his happiness fading. “Lucien and Holborn won the Succession. And they got Carnegie.”

  Raquella gasped. “Is he. . .?”

  Jonathan shook his head. “They took him away in a car. I don’t know what they’re going to do to him.” He paused. “Even though we’d argued, he came after me . . . sacrificed himself so I could . . . and then Marianne. . .”

  He turned and looked at the remains of the power station.

  “Jonathan?” Raquella said quietly.

  There had to be thousands of bricks piled up there – tons of weight that had fallen directly on top of the bounty hunter. And yet Lucien had wanted to check. He had wanted to make sure Marianne was dead. It seemed a tiny chance, the slightest sliver of hope, but at that moment it was all Jonathan had.

  He broke into a sprint and raced inside the power station, with Harry and Raquella hot on his heels. They watched as he clambered on top of the pile and began hurling bricks to one side.

  “I know you want Marianne to be alive,” the maid said hesitantly, “but there’s no way. . .”

  “Either help me or shut up!” Jonathan shouted, scrabbling frantically.

  It was Harry who stepped forward, hauling heavy pieces of masonry out of the way to allow Jonathan to get to the heart of the rubble. The two boys got down and began to dig with their hands, and then Raquella was on her knees beside them, picking up bricks and throwing them to one side. They didn’t speak, focusing all their energies on getting deeper and deeper into the debris. After minutes of digging in the darkness, their fingers sore and their faces caked in dust, Jonathan heaved a large stone to one side, and saw a flash of pale skin.

  “She’s here!” he called out.

  He redoubled his efforts, the weariness evaporating from his muscles. It wasn’t long before the three of them had cleared a space around the bounty hunter, and could look down upon her.

  It was not a pretty sight. Marianne was as white as a corpse, her face streaked with dirt and blood and her left arm jutting out at an unnatural angle. She didn’t appear to be breathing. Jonathan lifted her up as though she were made of bone china and carried her away from the rubble to a flat piece of ground, where he laid her down and pressed an ear against her chest.

  And heard the faint, distant sound of a heartbeat.

  “She’s alive,” he said.

  “But that’s impossible!” Raquella gasped.

  “She’s a Ripper,” Harry replied. “It’s not impossible at all.”

  “We have to get her to a hospital,” Jonathan said.

  “Here,” Harry said, looping his arms beneath the bounty hunter’s body. “Let me. You’ve done enough tonight.”

  Jonathan reluctantly moved out of the way, allowing Harry to pick up his aunt in his strong arms. As the first police siren began wailing in the distance, a blue light breaking out of the darkness, they hurried away. They were close to the exit when Raquella stopped and grabbed Jonathan’s arm.

  “Wait,” she said. “There’s something I have to tell you. It can’t wait.” Looking at the maid now, Jonathan saw that her cheeks were streaked with tears. She pushed a crumpled sheet of parchment into his hands.

  “What’s this?” he said.

  “We found it in La Mort’s safety deposit box. I’m so sorry. . .”

  Her voice trailed off as Jonathan began reading, his eyes straining to make out the words in the gloom. The parchment seemed to be some sort of official form, written in tight, spidery handwriting:

  I, Dr Hugo La Mort, hereby attest that in my medical opinion the patient below suffers from a malady of the brain so acute that it is beyond the realm of medical treatment, and that the only remaining course of treatment is confinement to the Bedlam for a period of indeterminate incarceration.

  “I don’t understand,” Jonathan said.

  “Look at the patient’s name,” Raquella said
softly. And then he saw it, in crabbed handwriting at the bottom of the parchment: Theresa Starling.

  “What’s the Bedlam?” Jonathan asked numbly.

  “It’s a mental asylum in Darkside,” Raquella replied. “La Mort’s been sending people there for years – regardless of whether or not they were insane. I guess that Lucien must have paid him to commit your mum. I’m truly sorry.”

  “But then . . . this means he didn’t kill her!” he said, his voice rising with excitement. “She could still be alive!”

  “The Bedlam isn’t like other asylums, Jonathan,” Raquella said gently. “It is a dark, terrible place. This order was given over a decade ago. Even if she is still alive, you wouldn’t want to see her now. The Bedlam changes people. This was a death sentence in all but name.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Jonathan replied stubbornly. “If Marianne can survive the Succession, my mum can survive this place.”

  “I know you’ll want to go back,” said Harry. “But you’ve got to understand: Lucien’s ruling Darkside now. If we even set foot in there, he’ll have us killed. And we haven’t got Carnegie to help us out any more. What do you want us to do?”

  “What do I want us to do?” Jonathan echoed. “It seems pretty simple to me. We get Marianne well again, rescue Carnegie, find my mum, and then go and kill Lucien.”

  Despite the starkness of his words, Jonathan felt a strange sense of calm wash over him. Even as bleak as things looked, he knew what he had to do.

  “Are you with me?” he asked.

  Harry laughed darkly, shifting Marianne’s weight in his arms. “Single-handedly storm Darkside? I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I’m in.”

  “Raquella?”

  The maid bit her lip, then nodded quickly.

  “Good. Let’s get out of here, then. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  With the air swelling with the sound of sirens, Jonathan turned his back on the shattered remnants of the power station, and led his friends deep into the London night.

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  First published in the UK by Scholastic Ltd., 2009

  This electronic edition published by Scholastic Ltd., 2012

  Text copyright © CPI Publishing Solutions, 2009

  The right of Tom Becker to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him.

  Cover illustration @ Studio Spooky

  eISBN 978 1407 13225 9

  A CIP catalogue record for this work is available from the British Library.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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