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He heard the baby crying behind one of the thin plywood walls.
The boy wasn't his. The mathematics of conception didn't add up, meaning this was his brother's parting gift to him. The first time he held the boy in his hands, just a couple of hours ago when he still hadn't known what he was going to do with him, Seth found himself imagining squeezing the soft plates of the child's skull until the bones broke.
He couldn't do it.
Eleanor didn't need to know that, though. So he left her on the ground, bleeding a
nd believing he really was capable of crushing the life out of her baby. The last thing he did to her was promise to bury the kid beneath the dirt somewhere in the old film lot; she could play a grim game of hide-and-seek if she wanted to. His lips flickered into the approximation of a smile, but even that was fleeting. He pulled open a door into nowhere and stepped through into the backstage world of two-by-fours and unpainted Masonite boards. His nephew, barely a few hours old and with his forehead still flaked with the dried blood from his welcome to the world, lay beneath a wooden brace holding up the painted wall. His pudgy little legs kicked at the air. "Hush your noise, child. Uncle Seth's here to take care of everything," he said, taking his jacket off to swaddle the infant. Taking him out of this place was the easiest way he knew how to hurt Eleanor. Robbing her of the baby was the most obvious way to break her spirit. It went beyond anything physical he could subject her to.
Seth had never been driven by a need to procreate. Whatever biological imperative nature intended to see him share his seed was missing in him. In Seth's London, children were a weakness to be exploited by bastards like him. They were leverage.
He'd found the fissure a couple of weeks ago, but resisted the temptation to step back through into the London he'd left behind, until now. He clenched his fist, dark thoughts running away with his mind as he imagined finding his brother and throat-punching him, then standing over the little bastard as he choked to death.
But all it took was half a dozen steps on the other side of the fissure to put an end to that particular fantasy. That was all it took to see how much had changed in the time they'd been gone.
He started to understand the magician's miracle.
Everything was different out here.
A biting wind blew across the cobbled streets around him. There was ice in the air coming up from the Thames, and smoke with it. The horizon shimmered red. The city was burning. He didn't understand what he was seeing. Huge spotlights strafed the night sky, adding to the stars. The worst of it, though, was the damage close at hand. There was a deep crater where three terraced houses had been, rubble piled up around the street where rescuers had tried vainly to find some sort of life in the ruin. He knew the street from before he'd left. He was on the outskirts of the East End and his old stomping ground. The first bloke he'd truly fucked over had lived in one of those missing houses. He'd broken one of his knuckles on the kid's jaw, but it had been worth all of the pain that followed because it marked his rise from nobody to someone not to be fucked with, and on these streets, that was everything. He realized he'd made a fist. Reflex memory. He walked on, picking a path through the debris.
The first person he saw in the new world was an urchin in a threadbare blazer, and short trousers that exposed his knocked knees. He clutched a wax paper-wrapped parcel in filthy fingers. His shoes were scuffed, the sole peeling away from the toe, and his socks were down around his ankles. There was an equally scruffy dog at his side, some sort of terrier, all slack skin and protruding bone. The animal was starving. So was the kid.
"What's happening?"
The boy looked at him like he'd just crawled out from under a rock and spat a wad of dirty phlegm at his feet. "Same things as yesterday. Same things as tomorrow," the boy said dismissively. "The Jerries." He looked up at the sky. That was the only explanation Seth was going to get.
"What have you got there?" Seth looked at the grubby parcel in the boy's equally grubby hands.
"None of yours, mister."
"Less of your lip, sunshine," Seth said. "A smart mouth only encourages someone like me to give you a fat lip."
"I didn't--" The back of Seth's hand silenced the rest of the boy's objection and left him spitting blood.
"You can't say I didn't warn you. Now let me have it." He held out his free hand.
Tears in his eyes, the lad managed a surly, "Fuck yourself," which earned him a second slap and a "No, fuck you," from Seth as he took the package with his free hand. The terrier growled, but didn't attack. It knew its place.
Unwrapping the parcel while holding the baby wasn't easy. "Get yourself gone before I decide to hurt you properly, boy." The way he said it left no room for misunderstanding. The boy spat again, the phlegm thick with blood, and wiped the back of a soot-smeared hand across his lips. He backed off. It was only a couple of steps, just enough to put some distance between himself and Seth's fist.
Ignoring the kid, Seth teased apart the knot of string tying the parcel, and peeled back the layer of brown wax paper to reveal a second layer of wrapping--old newspaper--and inside that a link of a dozen pork sausages as fat--or thin as the case may be--as the dog's legs. "That's all we've got, mister. Me, my folks, my little sister. Take a couple if you have to, but give the rest back. Please."
Seth wasn't really listening to the kid's lament; he was staring at the date above the headlines that promised an incredible seventeen years had passed since the night Damiola and Glass had helped them disappear; 14th February 1941. There was no room for Saint Valentine in this world of bombs and burning streets he walked into. That didn't matter to him. The Germans could rain holy hell down from the heavens for all he cared. The only thing that did matter was that seventeen years had passed. No one was going to be looking for them now.
"Please," the boy wheedled.
"Shut up, lad. I'm trying to think."
"We'll starve if you don't give 'em back. We ain't eaten in two days."
"And I'm supposed to care?" Seth said, upending the contents of the paper onto the slush-covered cobbles. He watched the boy throw himself to his knees and scrabble about, desperately trying to gather them before his mangy mutt could scarf them down.
Seth left them to it.
1941.
Part of a sign still hung over the door of an empty ironmonger's; the only words left legible after the fire damage proclaimed: GIDEON SMITH PURV. That was it, the rest of the gold paint was charred beyond reading. Gideon was a good name. He looked down at the baby in his arms. Maybe he'd grow into a name like Gideon?
