Marking Time (The Immortal Descendants) Read online

  Marking Time

  Book One

  The Immortal Descendants

  April White

  Seventeen-year-old tagger Saira Elian can handle anything…a mother who mysteriously disappears, a stranger who stalks her around London, and even the noble English Grandmother who kicked Saira and her mother out of the family. But when an old graffiti tag in a tube station transports Saira to the 19th Century and she comes face-to-face with Jack the Ripper, she realizes she needs help after all.

  Saira meets Archer, a charming student who helps her blend in as much as a tall, modern American teen can in Victorian England. He reveals the existence of the Immortals: Time, Nature, Fate, War and Death, and explains to Saira that it is possible to move between centuries – if you are a Descendant of Time.

  Saira finds unexpected friendships at a boarding school for Immortal Descendants and a complicated love with a young man from the past. But time is running out for her mother, and Saira must embrace her new identity as she hides from Archer a devastating secret about his future that may cost him his life.

  Table of Contents

  Clocker

  Manor of Secrets

  Whitechapel

  Wolf

  A Long Dark Night

  Going Back

  Secrets of Elian

  Child of Time

  Night Out

  Lock Down

  The Prophecy

  Shifter Class

  Resting Place

  The Bear

  Lineage

  Discoveries

  Doran

  London Bridge

  The Bishop

  Riverside

  Hunters

  The Gene Pool

  Self-Defense

  Attack

  Betrayed

  Escape

  Out of Time

  Fire

  Silverback

  Passages

  On the Run

  Recovery

  Seeking

  A Night Abroad

  Gathering Strength

  Betrayer

  Home

  London Calling

  Showdown

  Into the Darkness

  Fever

  Bedlam

  Blood

  Epping Place

  Home

  Clocker

  My mother had vanished again.

  She did it every two years like clockwork and her absence meant one thing: we’d be moving again… soon. So when she left, I ran. A startled cat and the knots in my guts were my only company as I sprinted along the top of a wall down a dark alley. The wall ended at a narrow gap separating a head shop and tattoo parlor and I spider-crawled between the buildings, my knuckles bitten by the edges of the bricks. Fueled by an early diet of superhero fiction and a fierce need to lose myself, I dropped the last six feet, slipped into the tattoo parlor through the broken back door, and then vaulted the stair rail to hit the basement floor. My lungs burned for breath, and I stopped to loosen my backpack before I stepped into the underworld of Venice.

  The prohibition-era rumrunner tunnel forked into a bigger branch; already colored with graffiti that felt more like one-upmanship than art. Not my thing. The smaller fork was jammed with boxes and pallets and other junk that kept the easy-access taggers out. I loved history, any kind of history, and even better if it was hidden, secret, or underground. The jammed tunnel wasn’t a deterrent; it was like an engraved invitation to me.

  I heard the hiss of spray paint just as I turned the corner. Two bangers in respirators were throwing up tags, and though their drawing skills were decent, it was all gang signs and territory markers. Bangers are sheep with fangs as far as I’m concerned. Anyone who needs to belong to something that badly doesn’t have the confidence to stand alone. And alone is all people can ever count on in life. I turned the corner and slipped through an opening at the far end before the bangers saw me.

  The long, narrow passage felt like my own private art gallery with vintage tags, more visionary than vandalism. The standout was an old tag from 1972 signed by someone named Doran; a spiral symbol that looked ancient and vaguely Celtic. A spiral I wanted to copy.

  I flipped on my Maglite and a startled rat ran off down the tunnel. I shuddered, imagining disease-filled fleas leaping off the creature as it ran. I focused my light on the mostly brick walls of the narrow space, but there was a clean plaster facing next to Doran’s spiral.

  I set the Maglite on the floor, pointing up like a candle, opened my backpack, and pulled out a World War I gas mask. Besides not wanting to give myself cancer, I wear the mask to hide my face. My black hooded-sweatshirt covered long dark-gold hair tied back in a braid and whatever minor curves I’ve managed to grow in seventeen years. The gas mask keeps me looking like any other tagger – skinny, fast, and vaguely male. Someone would have to be pretty close to see I’m a girl, and frankly, no one ever gets that close.

  I fitted a new tip to my red can and started on the center spiral. The paint laid down easy, and by the time I got to the fourth one I was feeling better about leaving. The sun-like circles were a good way to mark my time living so close to the beach in L.A., and they practically painted themselves. But then things got weird: the spirals started to… glow. Like daylight peeking through the cracks in a door. Not possible with standard Krylon paint. At night. In a dark tunnel. Not possible at all. I flipped off my Maglite to see better. Maybe the fumes really were getting to me.

  Something moved. The rat? I froze in place and saw a shadow at the far end of the tunnel shift. I have great night vision and I love the dark, but shadows creep me out. Darkness is just dark. Shadows can be anything.

  Whatever was there, it was time to go, and my brain instantly clicked into ‘flight’ mode. I could drop the backpack if I had to run, but it could be a weapon too. I slid the can back inside just as a scuffling noise came from the tunnel entrance. I was trapped. By the bangers, or someone else?

  “Dude, there’s nothing down here.” A surfer voice. Right, someone else.

  “I’m telling you man, he said it would go down tonight. We’re supposed to keep the kid from running.” The second whisper sounded nervous. These jokers were up to nothing good and I backed myself against the wall to become one with the bricks.

  “There’s no one here. Your intel is faulty.” Something in Surfer’s voice changed. Like someone else just came in. Someone Surfer was afraid of.

  “My ‘intel’ is never faulty. It’s this tunnel. Tonight. Tom saw it.” A third voice spoke quietly in a British accent. The Englishman’s voice was slick and reptilian, and my guts twisted unaccountably.

  “Dude, Tom’s so scared of you he’ll say you’re the King of England if he thinks it’s what you wanna hear. And now I’m thinkin’ fifty bucks ain’t gonna cut it.”

  “Leave now and you’ll never stop looking over your shoulder.” Slick’s quiet menace made me shiver. I believed him and instinct screamed at me to run.

  “I wanna see what’s comin’. Hit the light.” Nervous Guy’s voice shook.

  “No light!” Slick yelled too late. The beam hit me square in the chest.

  “What the hell is that?!” I was really glad I still had my respirator on. But Slick’s next words sent an earthquake down my spine.

  “Grab her.”

  I spun on the balls of my feet and sprang away down the tunnel. When I was out of range of the flashlight I reached out to both walls and did my best Spiderman impression, practically flying up the sides with all four hands and feet. My spine pressed against the curved brick ceiling of the tunnel and I closed my eyes with that ‘if I can’t see them, they can’t see me’ rationale.

 
“Where’d she go?” Nervous Guy screeched. “She was just here!”

  Slick’s voice was cold in the darkness. “Get the light. She’s still in this tunnel.”

  “No way, Dude. I’m telling you, she disappeared.” Surfer walked right under me. And like most people, he didn’t think to look up. It’s why ceilings made such great hiding places.

  I froze as Slick’s flashlight beam hit Doran’s spiral. He touched it gently, and then retrieved my respirator. I couldn’t see his face since he was turned away from me, but I thought I’d never forget the sound of his voice.

  “You can’t hide from me little Clocker.”

  I shuddered at the threat in his words. Clocker? He had the wrong girl and only sheer force of will kept me silent.

  Finally, a few curses and a dying battery later, Slick and his henchmen slithered away.

  My night vision cleared and I was alone. I spider-walked myself back down the walls and fumbled for my flashlight. I wanted to be long gone. I found my way back to the tattoo parlor through the door in the basement and was just about to sling my backpack over my shoulders when it was ripped out of my hands. I bolted for the stairs and slammed into someone beefy. “Ooof!” The guy went down hard on one knee.

  “Grab him!” A deep voice shouted.

  Not if I could help it.

  “Stop! Police!”

  This was not going to end well.

  I may live on the edge of legal sometimes but I’m not a bad person. Yet here I was being driven home by two pissed-off cops. Officer Beef, named in honor of the massive chest that was losing its war with gravity, had hurt his knee when I accidentally ran into him and was particularly annoyed to discover I was female. Apparently, I hit hard.

  “So you think you’re pretty cool, huh? Down there defacing private property.” The Beef’s partner was a short, arrogant Napoleon-type.

  “The tunnels are non-jurisdictional.” The look I got from Napoleon through the back seat grate would have been less painful with a dagger attached. The Beef swallowed a chuckle and then looked out the windshield skeptically. “Windward and Pacific you said?”

  “We’re in the loft above the Venice Beach market.”

  “We?” Napoleon had a sneer in his voice I didn’t like.

  “My mother and me.”

  “Her name?” He had his notebook poised to write.

  “Claire Elian.”

  “Father?”

  “Deceased.” I said it without an ounce of emotion in my voice.

  “Hmm. Mother’s occupation?”

  “Artist.”

  “Figures. Names her kid Saira - ‘Sigh-ra’ - instead of something normal and pronounceable.” I didn’t bother to point out he had just pronounced it.

  I directed them to the back alley and led them upstairs. I already had my key in my fist, and was startled to find I didn’t need it. The door was already wide open.

  The Beef looked sideways at me. “You leave it like this?”

  I shook my head and the Beef was in front of me in a flash, weapon out, signaling to Napoleon. The main room was in chaos, with art supplies, books and papers everywhere. I followed The Beef into my mother’s bedroom and sucked in a breath. Total disaster. I grabbed the key hidden at the bottom of Mom’s headboard and unlocked the paint cabinet. Passports and cash were still there, but the antique clock necklace my dad gave my mom a million years ago was not. Napoleon entered from the kitchen. “Clear. No sign of the mother.”

  “She’s working.” The lie sat heavily on my tongue. And worse, they knew it.

  Napoleon smiled. “There’s the phone. Call her.” Jerk.

  I didn’t move. Napoleon nodded at The Beef. “Once she’s in I don’t see much chance of her getting out, especially when they see this.”

  “Who? When who sees this?” I didn’t like the pity in The Beef’s eyes.

  “Child protective services.” Napoleon was dangerously smug. “They’re the first call for minors.”

  “I’m seventeen.”

  “Still a minor in California.”

  “I have a British passport.”

  Napoleon snatched it from my hand. “Immigration is next on my list.”

  I glared at him and the Beef must have felt bad because his tone softened. “Are you sure there isn’t someone we could contact?”

  I looked from The Beef to Napoleon, and bit my tongue, hard. “My mom will be back in a couple of days.”

  “Then she can bail you out, if she can get through the paperwork before you’re assigned.”

  The Beef looked me right in the eyes. “We need a family member, Saira. There must be someone who can prove a relationship...”

  I tasted blood. There was someone.

  That someone was waiting for me when I stepped off the British Airways flight in London: Millicent Elian. I hadn’t seen my grandmother since I was three years old and yet she still matched my vague memory of a tall, steely woman with iron eyes and a grim mouth. My mother couldn’t stand her. Not a big surprise given the way she was sizing me up, probably wondering if I was worth the effort. Granted, I wasn’t really dressed to impress in tight jeans, combat boots and a hooded sweatshirt. Perfect for the street. Not so impressive to a proper English noblewoman.

  “I see you got his height.” Millicent’s tone was not flattering.

  “Hello Millicent.” I knew I should be more polite and call her “Grandmother,” considering she just kept me out of foster care, but she hadn’t really earned the title.

  “And his manners, too, obviously.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  Millicent gave me a once-over like I was about to get wiped off her shoe. “At least you favor Claire.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve heard from my mother.”

  Millicent’s eyes narrowed. “How long has she been gone?”

  “Since Tuesday.”

  “Four days. She’ll call tomorrow or Monday at the latest.”

  I glared. “How do you know that?”

  She ignored me. “I have a car waiting.” Of course she did. Millicent’s fancy gray Rolls Royce waited at the curb outside the airport, and her fancy gray driver held the door open for us.

  “Home, Jeeves,” she said with total authority.

  “Jeeves? You’re joking.”

  “I don’t joke.” Millicent’s expression didn’t change.

  Jeeves caught my eye in the rear-view mirror and very slowly, he winked. It wasn’t much, that wink, but it was something.

  “I trust you still go to school?” Millicent’s gaze was direct.

  “Yes.” A new one every two years. Not so conducive to making friends, which was fine with me, but it made my mother nuts. She didn’t get that friends were a liability to the perpetual new kid. It was easier for me to just blend into the background, and practically a rule of thumb for a seventeen-year-old free-running graffiti artist.

  “Then you shall start at St. Brigid’s Boarding School on Monday.”

  “Boarding school? I don’t think so.”

  Millicent spoke sharply. “Our family has gone to St. Brigid’s since 1554 and it’s appalling to me that you’ve never been educated there.”

  “Considering you kicked my mother out of the family, it shouldn’t be a surprise.” I was already on thin ice, might as well see what it took to crack.

  To my complete surprise, Millicent practically snorted. “I didn’t kick her out of the family. She left us.”

  “Bullshit.” I said it under my breath but her eyes narrowed.

  “Saira Emily Elian. Like it or not, you are a lady. And you will behave like a lady in my presence. Is that clear?” I looked away. My mom was not strict with me and I was used to doing pretty much what I wanted. This thing with Millicent wasn’t about my manners. It was about control. Over me. She wanted it and I didn’t want to give it up.

  I fogged the window next to me with my breath and absently began tracing Doran’s spiral design from the Venice tunnel, but when I felt Millicent’
s gaze burning a hole in the back of my neck I wiped the window clean.

  The Rolls Royce turned down a long driveway guarded by huge trees on all sides. They made me feel like a little girl stepping into a fairy tale – the kind with evil queens and enchanted forests that swallowed wandering kids into their depths. When the trees opened up, a massive building loomed in front of us; a fortress with forbidding stone walls, and I could feel Millicent’s eyes on me.

  “Welcome to Elian Manor.”

  Manor of Secrets

  I looked around the enormous entry hall, bigger than our whole loft in Venice. Millicent’s voice shook me out of my awe. “Take Saira to the east wing.”

  A small, dark-haired, hobbit-sized woman seemed to materialize from nowhere as Millicent dismissed me. “Dinner is at seven. I assume you brought a dress?” It was a completely rhetorical question since she swept out of the room without waiting for an answer. Which was “no,” but I didn’t think she was in the mood to hear it just then.

  The Hobbit was already at the end of the hall, lugging my bag with her. I had to run to catch up. “East wing, she says. Hrmph. West wing is for family.” The Hobbit’s voice sounded like it needed oil, and the hrmph she made was something between clearing her throat and hawking a loogie. Almost made me want to practice it.

  We passed huge rooms filled with art and rugs and furniture that could be in a museum, and here and there I caught sight of uniformed maids polishing gleaming side tables inlaid with bone and ebony or cleaning fireplaces big enough for a person to stand inside. We finally stopped in front of a large wooden door on the second floor.

  The Hobbit produced an old-fashioned iron key that opened the lock. I wasn’t excited to be staying in a room with an exterior lock, but to her credit, she left the key on the dresser. She set my bag down at the foot of the bed and studied me. “Ye have the look of your mother. It’s why herself won’t care for ye overmuch.” The Hobbit raised an eyebrow. “Ye’ll be needing a skin of iron, ye will. The People hope ye have it.” And with those strange words she was gone.

  A four-poster bed with carved wood posts and a faded silk canopy dominated the room. I flopped back onto it and took a deep breath, the first one since landing in England. I’d been living on pure adrenaline since the night in the tunnels and I finally felt it start to loosen its hold on my body. Maybe too well, because three hours later I snapped awake and suddenly realized I was going to be late for dinner. I slammed the bedroom door behind me and flew down the hall, tying my hair into a knot as I ran. It wasn’t a dress, but at least I made an effort. I was probably already busted for being late, so jeans and a sweatshirt couldn’t make it worse.