beats per minute (9 page)

It was like walking into a circular library. At least three
quarters of the vast, curved wall space was taken up, floor to ceiling, with
shelves of leatherbound, expensive-looking books. There were no crystals. At
four points in the circle, equidistant from the centre, the bookshelves parted
to accommodate four large windows, allowing the viewer to monitor the yard from
a variety of angles.

In the centre of the plush green carpet stood Max Savage,
commander of the Unit and Magister Militus of the Sentinel.

His power was immediately obvious. He was younger than she
expected, tall, but not that tall, and solidly built; yet, when he crossed the
room to shake hands with Con, greeting him like an old friend, he seemed to
dwarf the much larger man.

When he turned to Raegan, she was surprised at how nondescript
his features were when considered individually; brown eyes, neat jaw, very
short grey hair. And yet when he looked at her his eyes were no longer plain
and brown but deep and shrewd: glinting but giving off little warmth.

‘We’re so glad to have you here, Raegan. Welcome.’ The voice
was smooth and as crisp as the collar of his white shirt and perfectly pressed
dark suit. Raegan wondered how anyone could look so presentable at one o’clock
in the morning, and fought the urge to stand to attention. ‘I understand you
didn’t get a chance to see much of the grounds, but how did you find your first
glimpse of Unit Prime?’

‘Er, well…’ Raegan glanced at her grandfather nervously, not
sure what sort of response the Praetor was after. In the end she was too tired
to come up with anything better than the truth.
‘A little
scary, actually.
Crossing the drawbridge was like walking through a
giant electric shock.’

Max smiled indulgently. ‘It is a forcefield powered by blood
recognition, so that makes sense. Blood magick,’ he added,
then
when Raegan looked none the wiser, he gestured to the armchairs in front of his
desk.

‘Please sit down. My house keeper, Mrs Crawfield, has
prepared some supper. We thought you might be hungry after your trip.’

Summoning every ounce of self-restraint she could muster,
Raegan replied ‘thank you’ before sinking into a chair and taking just one
triangle from the groaning stack of sandwiches. But that was where the
politeness ended. She could not stop herself from taking a huge bite. The creaminess
of the delicately herbed egg mayonnaise and floury brown bread was the best
thing she had ever tasted.

Max and Con exchanged a smile, and then Max looked over
Con’s shoulder at the two soldiers who stood rigidly on either side of the lift
doors. ‘At ease, gentleman.’ At once both soldiers relaxed but waited patiently
for Max’s next instruction. ‘That’ll be fine. Please leave us. Get some sleep.’

Her mouth full, Raegan watched the men obey instantly,
leaving the room without a word.

‘Water?’
Max continued, as if
nothing had happened. He walked over to the sideboard and poured without
waiting for her response. He then held up a crystal decanter glowing with an
amber liquid. ‘I’ve got a nice scotch here, Con, if you’re interested.’

‘Aye, go on then.’ Con and Raegan both took their glasses
gratefully, though Con did not gulp his drink as Raegan proceeded to.

Instead Max and Con raised their glasses in a silent toast
and sipped. Then Max turned to Raegan, a thoughtful expression his face.

‘I was sorry to hear about your friend, Raegan.’

His directness caught Raegan off guard. How did he know? She
glared at Con.

‘Oh, don’t blame your grandfather,’ Max spoke before she
could. ‘And please don’t be upset at my intrusion. This must have been a hugely
confusing evening for you, but in order for us to make sense of
things,
I think we must start with Marie.’

She rubbed her eyes. ‘I guess we do need to talk about this
evening.’ Even to Raegan, her voice sounded flat. ‘But I don’t see why we need
to talk about Marie. I really don’t want to think about it. I never want to
think about it again, to be honest.’ The image of Marie’s withered, bruised
body was like a punch in the stomach each time it crossed her mind.

‘I understand.’

‘Do you? That’s a joke. You don’t even know me.’

‘Raegan.’
There was a warning in
Con’s voice. He looked at Max. ‘I’m sorry. She’s- it’s been a long night.’

‘Don’t apologise for me,’ Raegan said rudely. ‘But yeah, it
has been a long night. And I’m fed up of talking. Why don’t you talk?
Both of you.
You can start by explaining what I’m doing
here.’

Max leaned back in his chair,
contemplating the whisky swirling around in his glass.
When he looked
up, the cheerful façade had gone. Instead there was something much
more chilly
in the endless brown eyes. ‘I can’t remember the
last time I allowed someone to talk to me like that.’ His voice was soft. ‘It’s
your first night, so I’ll give you a pass. But let’s get something straight. We
don’t
do
teenage melodramas here. Our work is more than important: it’s
crucial. I’m not finished.’ He didn’t even flinch as Raegan tried to interrupt;
he just carried on, a hint of ice beneath the transatlantic tones. ‘Your friend
died. That’s tough. But she won’t be the last. So if I ask you to talk, you
talk. Or you’ll find yourself doing laps outside from dawn until dusk.’

Raegan felt about an inch tall. She didn’t even try to
respond.

‘Do we understand each other?’

She waited until her voice was steady enough for the words
not to break in her throat. ‘We do.’

‘Thank you, Raegan.’ Max, calmer now, took another sip of
his whisky. He sat up in his chair. ‘Look, I’ll make it easy for you. She was
older, wasn’t she, when you found her? To stumble across a body in that state
can be quite frightening.’ Raegan boggled at the complete understatement.

‘The reason I wanted to talk about Marie is because it’s all
connected. This can be confusing at first. Marie, the men you met at the
nightclub, a sense of memory loss the next day. Time is what links all three
occurrences.’

Her brain wouldn’t work. She stared at him dumbly. ‘How do
you mean?’

‘You couldn’t remember anything the next day because there
was nothing to remember. Time had sped up around you so that barely any time
had passed at all, for you; though for Marie, quite a bit had taken place.’

‘What happened to her?’ It was the question Raegan had been
too afraid to ask.

‘Most likely she was drugged, as you were, with a mild
relaxant, and then persuaded to leave the bar under romantic pretences. Once
out of sight, she was murdered. That in itself is horrifying, I know, but the
method is something that you could not imagine. Her life force was not simply
put out, you see.’ Max leaned forward, low over the desk, each word slow, so
that there could be no misunderstanding. ‘It was stolen. The time was drawn
from her. That was why she was an old woman when you found her. The years were
stolen away.’

‘But… by who? I thought Regents were the ones who controlled
time.’ She was filled with horror. ‘One of – well,
us
, I guess I should
say – we hurt her? We did this?’

‘No. But we should have been there to stop it, and for that
failing, I can only apologise. Her essence was stolen by those who have none of
their own. They are the main reason that we have been given these powers –
who
we must defend time, and therefore civilians, from.’

‘So that’s why the first Regent was given his powers?
Because of them?’

‘In a sense.
It’s hard to say who
came first – the chicken and the egg, if you like – but the end result is the
same. Like night and day, both parties must exist to preserve the natural order
of things. The link is time. We protect it, they steal it: living on borrowed
time, killing others to further their own mortality. We call them the Fay, and
you have been unlucky enough to meet two already.’

‘Philip and Christian.’
Raegan said
numbly.

‘That was what they called themselves.’ Max shook his head.
‘And Christian was the one you tangled with tonight. Fortunate that this
particular Fay was arrogant and twisted enough to enjoy the chase, or your
grandfather might never have found you.’ He looked at Con sharply. ‘Though if
he had at least told you how the pendant worked, it would have been no problem
at all.’

Con grunted angrily. ‘Subtle as ever, Max.
Fine.
Raegan, the pendant glows when the Fay are near, which
you’ve already worked out, I’d wager. If you wrap your hand around it, anyone
who has a companion hourglass can find you.’ Con slid a concealed flap on the
front of his silver ring forward to reveal a tiny hourglass cut into the band,
pressing against his skin.

But Raegan was completely oblivious to this exchange,
turning Max’s earlier words over in her mind. She twisted her hands again and
again as the guilt finally burst out of her.

‘So if I’d known about this, about everything, I could have
fought Christian? Stopped him, somehow?’

Max and Con shared a tense glance. ‘It’s difficult to say,’
Max said at last. ‘Most Regents spend their entire lives fighting the Fay;
tracking them, hunting them, and killing as many as possible. But these are
dangerous creatures, Raegan. Sometimes we fail; sometimes, they kill us
instead, or they evade us and we never find them again. It is impossible to
save everyone. That is one of the hardest lessons for a Regent. And it is
terribly sad that it is a lesson that you, before you have even embarked on
your training, have already learned.’

The frantic movement of the blue-green eyes, which flickered
with the tide of her emotions, stilled. She met his gaze.

‘Training.
That’s why I’m here, I
suppose.
To learn.’

‘Yes. What you endured tonight was called a traverse – the
process by which the Regent manipulates time through his or her heartbeat. The
art of traverse is one of the most powerful weapons in a Regent’s arsenal: it
allows you to attack a Fay outside of common time, which reduces civilian
involvement, and when used properly can even be used to manipulate a Fay’s own
heartbeat. Had you commenced training as you were supposed to, you would
already know
this.
’

Raegan didn’t understand much of what Max was saying. What
was common time? If she could slow down or speed up time, did that mean she was
no longer
in it?
And did that mean the people around her – civilians, he
called them – still in common time, would be in a different time zone (if that
was the word)? So in a sense she would be moving at a different
speed
to
them. Like the time-slice effect in
The Matrix,
when Trinity did that
cool float/kick thing and the bad guys never even saw her foot coming…

A hysterical urge to laugh bubbled in her throat. Yeah,
right - Raegan O’Roarke, the girl who could barely walk down stairs without
falling over, would soon be kicking ass and cutting through reality like a
character in science-fiction
.

This was nonsense.

She tuned back in, shifting uncomfortably as she realised
the full weight of the Praetor’s stare was now on her. His mouth was set in a
hard line. ‘A true traverse can result in complete dominance over your enemy:
physical violence might not even be necessary. Your attempt at a traverse,
however, was incomplete. It was incomplete because you were out of control.
Scared.
Green.
Unaware
of your potential.
Your training will allow you to overcome this.’

Somehow Max Savage had a way of speaking that made Raegan
feel totally inadequate; lulling her into a false sense of security before
delivering his critique with curiously brutal detachment. The surgeon’s
soothing words before the cold sting of the needle - designed to imply,
seemingly, that it was all her own fault.

But it worked. Even though a minute ago she had been
dismissing his words as ludicrous, she now burned with humiliation and a
sudden, desperate urge to prove herself. He had made it impossible for her not
to want to train. She wanted to believe that she was capable of everything he
described.

‘You will learn to master the clock through dominion over
yourself. Your heart, first and foremost; it beats in tandem with the clock.
Control your bpm and you will control time. But it doesn’t end there. You will
discipline your body.
And your brain.
There are no
training methods more rigorous or successful than those we employ here.

‘The Sentinel keeps a close eye on all Regents from their
birth – oh, we have our ways,’ he added, seeing the curiosity in Raegan’s eyes,
‘that is, all the Regents we know about. Your parents went to some
extraordinary measures to keep you from us.’ His voice was light but Raegan
felt a shiver go down her spine. ‘Still, you don’t choose this life, it chooses
you; and the Sentinel was formed primarily to help develop and nurture each generation
of Regents. We get a new batch of recruits each September, all on the cusp of
turning sixteen. Sometimes parents like to send their children before, but we
don’t begin the mandatory training until then.’

‘And the training lasts a minimum of five years, after which
you can do as you please,’ Con added.

‘Well,’ Max shrugged, studying his beautifully manicured
fingernails.
‘In theory.
Once you have achieved what
is known as Level 5 status, your training is complete - but most of our Regents
either choose to remain working as part of a Unit, even remaining here on Unit
Prime, or else are assigned an area in the field to defend. When you are
stationed in an area, you are responsible for protecting it, but you can also
be involved in other activities – hobbies, relationships, even a career.’