Tempus Fugitive

by Nicola Rhodes

  Strangely enough she didn’t. She liked him pretty much the way he was. A foil to her beauty, she felt, was better than a rival. Men were not meant to be pretty. Not that Denny was ugly exactly, just pale and thin and scruffy. The only thing she might possibly have changed about him was his propensity for picking out awful tunes on his battered and beloved guitar, a habit of his which nearly drove her to distraction. ‘You sound like an ape tuning up a broken fiddle with its toes,’ she told him, but to no avail. If only he would stick to singing in the shower – he was good at that. In fact, his singing voice was truly remarkable, unlike the songs he occasionally wrote, which were only remarkable for how truly awful they were.

  They had decided to get a car, for the sake of appearances. Tamar had had her heart set on a Jaguar XL, but Denny turned up one afternoon with a perfectly ordinary, although brand new and gleaming, Citroën.

  Tamar was scathing. ‘Honestly Denny, you might make an effort to have a bit of style,’ she said. ‘I mean, anybody who’s nobody drives one of those.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry, but this is who I am. I am nobody and I like it. If you don’t like it then … oh I give up.’

  Tamar had settled it by turning the Citroën into the car of her dreams, just by looking sternly at it. A method which worked on most things – even inanimate objects were intimidated by her stare – but which, unfortunately, had no effect whatsoever on Denny, unlike most men, who will at least change their socks after enough evil looks.

  In the end, most of their new home, like their old one, was the result of imagination. A fact of which Denny was actually well aware, but he did not really care.

  The house, however, unlike the flat, had been fairly magnificent to begin with. It now resembled, externally at least, due to Tamar’s extensive renovations and wild imagination, nothing so much as a small castle situated in the middle of several acres of land, surrounded by rolling countryside peppered with quaint villages. Denny hated it, a confirmed urbanite he was distinctly uncomfortable around nature, and the sound of silence was one that he found profoundly unnerving. But the house itself, he had to admit, was pretty impressive. It had two large wings, several reception rooms, a huge kitchen, with a range oven large enough to roast a whole ox and enough bedrooms to house several cricket teams – if you included the ones in the attic. It had taken Tamar and himself several months to get the place to their liking (without magic, it would have undoubtedly taken several years) or rather to her liking. Her only concession being the conversion of one of the smaller reception rooms into a game room. The main hall, they had divided into smaller areas with room dividers to make a cosy living space, as recommended in the various copies of “Home Drivel” that littered the place since Tamar had begun renovations – Denny was thinking it was about time to cut off her supply. Of all the things he had never expected from her, an over-weaning interest in curtain fabric would have been top of the list.

  Since the main room was at the back of the house, they had ripped down the heavy curtains and made French windows that opened out onto the garden. The all-important computer, which Askphrit had used to access mainframe and disappear into the past, was in this room, cleverly concealed in the panelling, and available at the touch of a lever. Behind this room was the weapons training area, which Denny had insisted on, in case he ever needed it again, if he lost his Athame which gave him extraordinary powers. In any case, he still trained for three hours every day, just in case. Tamar loved the house and all the trappings of luxury. Denny quite liked the house, although, unlike Askphrit, its previous owner, Denny had no great desire to play Lord of the manor. He did like having a proper garden, though, even if most of it was created by magic.

  The sunshine was real enough, and it felt good, after many months of darkness, to feel it on their faces, and the backs of their necks. It was early spring, but it felt hot.

  ‘Mmm,’ said Tamar, ‘it’s nice isn’t it? Warm.’

  Denny shivered.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Tamar.

  “I dunno. It felt like somebody walked over my grave, and I just had this really strong memory of my mother telling me how my granddad died in the war. He was bombed out, in his house, before he could get to the shelter. Mum said they found bits of him all over the garden – horrible. That story always made me shudder as a kid. I had nightmares about it; I suppose that’s why it seemed like I actually saw it, just now, like a dream.’

  ‘Why now, all of a sudden? Were you thinking about him?’

  ‘No, why would I? I never met him.’

  Tamar narrowed her eyes. ‘Does your mother remember him?’ She asked this as if it was of vital importance.

  ‘Denny frowned. ‘No, I just said, he died in the war, before she was born.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that,’ said Tamar, and she snapped her fingers. ‘Tempus Suspendré,’ she said. Time froze. Denny stood before her like a statue.

  Tamar breathed a sigh of relief. She touched Denny’s face. ‘Still here,’ she said.

  Despite the seriousness of the situation, she could not help but smile, a little guiltily, at the memory this action conjured up. She had never told him, but she had, on occasion frozen Denny like this, just so that she could touch him and kiss him without having him die on her. Until the power of the Athame, a ceremonial knife used by demons to steal magic powers, had come into Denny’s possession, only the briefest of contact had been possible due to Tamar’s own inner power, which was so overwhelming, that she could kill a mortal with a touch. But with Denny frozen, she could touch him for as long as she wanted to, since technically it was still only for a second of his time. This was no longer a problem since Denny now had almost as much power as her – as long as he had the Athame. It had not been nearly the same.

  She unfroze him, being careful not to unfreeze time anywhere else. That could be disastrous.

  Denny blinked. ‘W – what happened? You sort of – jumped, like a bad recording.’

  Tamar squinted at him; he was getting more observant, he had never noticed before. ‘I had to stop time,’ she told him.

  Denny looked up; there were birds frozen in the sky. ‘Why?’

  She ran her fingers through her hair. ‘Well,’ she said, uncertainly. ‘I don’t quite know how to explain it. You know that Askphrit has gone into the past somewhere?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, what I think may have happened is: he’s killed your grandfather to make sure that you never get born, but he got the timing just a little bit wrong, your mother had obviously already been conceived – lucky for us.’

  ‘No, no – I told you my granddad died in the war, my mother told me.’

  ‘He did now, but that’s only because Askphrit went back in time to make sure of it. That’s why you remember it that way.’

  ‘Oh! I see – I think. So, maybe in – what, another timeline, I did know him?’

  ‘Quite possibly.’

  ‘Bastard!’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I’ve always said,’ said Tamar calmly.

  ‘Mind you,’ Denny added, ‘if he was anything like the rest of my family, it’s probably no loss.’ He mused for a moment on this then asked, ‘So, why did you freeze time?’

  ‘Because he will realise his mistake, and that means that you could vanish from existence at any second.’

  Denny was startled. ‘Any second?’

  ‘Yes, he’s in the past, remember? It doesn’t matter how long it actually takes him, it’ll still happen instantly. It’ll be as if you’ve never existed.’

  Denny thought about this. ‘That means that you’d be trapped back in your bottle. If I never existed, then I couldn’t have set you free.’

  ‘That’s his plan no doubt.’

  ‘So, why doesn’t he just go after you? Kill you in the past?’

  ‘He can’t do that, I’m the one who set him free. No, the part of history he wants to change is when you
and I met. That’s when all his problems started. I expected something like this.’

  ‘You could have told me.’

  ‘Sorry, I was hoping I wouldn’t have to.’

  Denny suddenly panicked and patted his pockets; he drew out a weird looking dagger. This was the Athame, the magic dagger that gave him certain special powers; he had picked it up fairly recently. Askphrit had led him to it, in fact, in the hope that its evil influence would lead him to destruction and ultimately the destruction of Tamar, but she had taken it from him and had it blessed to remove the evil. Now it was just a useful tool.

  Denny breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Still got this, anyway,’ he said. ‘I thought maybe he might have gone back and stopped me from finding it; after all, he knows exactly when I got it. He gave it to me.’

  Tamar shook her head. ‘No, if he’d done that, you wouldn’t remember anything about it, as far as you’d be concerned, it never would have happened. Try to keep up.’

  ‘I wonder what else he’s changed?’ said Denny ruminatively. ‘I mean if our memories change, how would we know?’

  ‘We wouldn’t.’

  ‘Christ!’

  Denny looked up at the sky again; it was weird to see the birds static in the sky, and the trees and clouds undisturbed by the breeze.

  He shook himself. ‘So, what are we going to do? You can’t leave time frozen forever.’

  ‘No,’ she admitted, ‘we have to go after him. You’ll be safer in the past at any rate, as long as it’s before you were born anyway.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you didn’t exist then, so the “you” that’s in the past, will be the “you” from now – from this moment in time – and for now, at least, you still exist.’

  ‘How do you know all this? – You know what, never mind. It’s all academic anyway, surely? We can’t get into the past; we don’t have the codes to the archives. He didn’t leave them on his computer, after all – we looked.’

  ‘Well maybe they’re somewhere in the house, it was his house after all.’

  ‘Oh yes, Lord Askphrit, Lord of the manor – in a house full of treacherous vampires, do you really think he would have just left them lying about?’

  ‘No, of course not, but those vampires were under his control. He was their god, or at least that’s what he told them, until I made it the truth. He might have put them in a safe somewhere.’

  ‘And if he didn’t? If we can’t find them?’

  ‘We’ll just have to improvise.’

  ~ Chapter Two ~

  She was one classy dame, a real cool drink of water, but she was trouble with a Capital T. She said her name was Hecaté. Maybe it was, and maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was just “Problem”, with a capital P.

  ‘Mind if I smoke?’ she asked.

  Jack Stiles, Private Detective, leaned back in his chair and tipped his stylish trilby forward over his eyes. Behind him, the pink neon sign from across the street flickered intermittently through the half closed blinds. It had taken him months to find an office with this peculiarity. He felt it added the right ambience. In addition to this, he had a large battered looking desk with an old metal fan whirring constantly, even in the coldest weather, which riffled the edges of a stack of papers, held down by a large paperweight in the shape of a nude lady. Beside this was a large black telephone. On the edge of the desk was a whisky bottle, again for ambience, it was actually filled with cold tea. Stiles, a reformed alcoholic, did not wish to put temptation in his way. The office was dark and gloomy; the only light coming through the glass fronted door on which could be read the legend

  The piece de resistance as far as Stiles was concerned was a genuine newspaper clipping attached to a notice board, with the headline: “Detective Chief Inspector Fired from Scotland Yard!” With a grainy picture of himself underneath it, being manhandled drunkenly by two junior officers out of the prestigious offices and on to the street. Talk about ambience. It was only a shame that his name was not Sam.

  ‘Go ahead,’ he said, lighting up a cigar and handing her the lighter.

  ‘I do not need that,’ she said, as the smoke rose from her feet.

  She perched herself on the edge of his desk and leaned seductively over it toward him, and pouted when this did not elicit the response she had been hoping for, or indeed any response at all. She waved a hand in front of his face. He was frozen. She glanced at the clock – stopped. There was only one person on the whole planet that Hecaté knew of, who was capable of stopping time. ‘Tamar!’ she thought. ‘So it has begun.’

  Hecaté, being a goddess – the goddess of witches, in fact, was not affected by the spell, and she was capable of breaking it, at least on a small scale, that is she could free Stiles. She thought that she probably should, but he would, she knew, want to go and help Tamar, it was the policeman in him. Stiles had been a D.C.I in Scotland Yard until his recent adventures with Tamar when he had gone missing for four months with no word, and had come back to find that he no longer had a job. He could scarcely explain that he had been kidnapped by vampires, because he was indicated in a prophecy about the end of vampire-kind, and had ended up on a quest to kill a god.

  Hecaté was also part of the prophecy – probably, and that was how they had met. Now she just wanted him to herself, at least for a while. She did not want him going off on some mad adventure and probably getting himself killed.

  She unfroze him anyway. She tugged on his arm.

  ‘What just happened?’ he said, his confusion mirroring Denny’s and occurring at much the same moment.

  Hecaté told him what she thought must have happened, and what she thought was behind it.

  ‘Well, we should go and see if we can help,’ said Stiles, predictably.

  Hecaté sighed. ‘I thought you would say that,’ she said.

  * * *

  ‘What do you mean, improvise?’ said Denny.

  ‘Well, we already have one archive code.’

  ‘That’s only to a deleted file. It doesn’t lead anywhere. How’s that going to help?’

  ‘We can hit “escape” see where it takes us. Maybe, it’ll get us into the mainframe, and …’

  ‘Maybe?’ Denny was outraged.

  ‘And, if we get into the mainframe, we’re halfway there,’ she continued stubbornly. ‘We should be able to access the history files. It’ll be a bit hit and miss, we could end up anywhere, they’re numbered I think, not named.’

  ‘I am not liking this plan,’ said Denny, obstinately.

  ‘Well, come up with a better one,’ she challenged.

  ‘I don’t even understand this one.’

  ‘Look it’s this or nothing,’ she said. ‘In or out?’

  ‘I don’t suppose I’ve got any choice,’ he sighed. ‘Okay, I’ll get on it.’ He sat at the computer and began typing. ‘I hate doing this,’ he said, ‘it always leads to trouble.’

  ‘We’re already in trouble,’ said Tamar dryly.

  ‘That’s what I heard,’ said a voice behind her, she spun round.

  ‘Jack!’ she squealed in delight. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Hecaté,’ he indicated her. ‘Your little time freeze didn’t affect her, so she unfroze me and we thought you might need some help.’ He shrugged.

  He nodded to Denny. ‘All right mate?’

  Denny shrugged. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘considering. I guess it’s my turn to have a mad god trying to kill me.’

  ‘Uh, huh, well, anything we can do … What are you up to?’

  ‘Hacking,’ said Denny, laconically.

  Tamar explained.

  ‘Sounds – confusing,’ Stiles said, non-committally.

  ‘It sounds extremely dangerous and foolish,’ said Hecaté. ‘Jack, I do not wish for you to go.’

  ‘I don’t think you should either,’ said Tamar unexpectedly. She had a great respect for Stiles.

  ‘Why not?’ Stiles was hurt.

  ‘Because I think you might be more use here. We migh
t need somebody to sort of co-ordinate from here. If we get in, that is.’

  ‘Explain?’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes, I see,’ said Hecaté before Tamar could open her mouth. ‘That would make it safer.’

  ‘Would it now?’ said Denny. ‘And what would we have done if Jack hadn’t turned up?’

  ‘Risked it,’ said Tamar.

  ‘I still don’t know what you expect me to do,’ said Stiles.

  ‘I do,’ said Hecaté. ‘It is probably better if I do it. You go with them if you want to,’ she added unexpectedly. ‘I know that you do.’

  ‘And what are you going to do?’

  Hecaté rolled her eyes. ‘Always with the questions,’ she said. ‘I will track historical anomalies, so that I always know where you are, and I can pull you out if you get into trouble.’

  ‘Pull us out how?’

  ‘I would have to enter the file to retrieve you.’

  ‘But how would you find us?’

  ‘I will know where you are,’ she said impatiently. ‘You will be the anomaly.’

  Stiles nodded, satisfied ‘That’s if I’m going,’ he looked at Tamar and Denny questioningly.

  Tamar nodded. ‘It’s okay, with me,’ she said.

  ‘And it’s okay with him,’ said Denny.

  ‘I found it,’ said Denny. ‘One deleted file ready and waiting, what now?’

  Tamar looked at the screen. ‘I’m not sure, I think we go in, like before.’

  ‘You think! What if you’re wrong?’

  ‘Okay, hit “escape” and see what happens.’

  They lost the file.

  ‘Damn! Damn, damn, damn, damn, DAMN!’ Tamar was making the most of her favourite word.

  ‘Calm down,’ admonished Denny. ‘I’ll get it back, just as soon as the screen clears.’

  ‘What’s it doing?’ asked Stiles, interestedly. He was trying to keep the relief out of his voice.