The Hourglass Read online

  Another Time…

  It seems a million years have passed since Imogene Macklin moved among society. A soldier’s widow tending the wounded at Waterloo, Genie is no longer welcome among the officers’ wives. She’s too poor to afford rent—and too numb to mourn the husband whose death has forever disgraced her. And now she carries his child…

  ANOTHER WORLD…

  “Six months. I give you six months to find… the missing piece of yourself. Find it, find your humanity. If not, you will be my minion forever.” With Satan’s words ringing in his ears, Sir Coryn of Ardsley resolves to atone for his former life as a Crusader. When he returns to the world of the living and meets forlorn Genie, he knows what he has to do…

  Another Chance…

  Were Sir Coryn and Genie to wed, it would save her reputation—even though she’d be marrying a man she barely knows, who may be mad. But with nothing to her name, Genie has nothing to lose. And with his soul on the line, Coryn has everything to gain—including love…

  THE

  HOURGLASS

  BARBARA METZGER

  Chapter 1

  He was sick to death of his job. No, he was Death, or one of them, anyway. Collecting the departed was too much work for just one man. Why, a good influenza epidemic could keep a legion of death dealers busy for months, to say nothing of wars and famines. Besides, the Grim Reaper’s minions were not exactly men anymore. Most hardly remembered their own mortality. Not so Ar Death. He recalled being Sir Coryn of Ardsley, and he recalled all of his sins in the brutal battles they called the Crusades. He ached to make amends, to atone, to end his labors among the aged and the ailing, the injured as well as the innocent.

  Unfortunately, one did not simply resign from being Death. any more than one refused to die. Who would do the wretched job if they could be lawyers or politicians instead? Only the basest, crudest, most heartless of souls would apply for the positions. Ar once had a heart as well as a soul, and he sorely missed them.

  He could not go to His Grimness and beg to be excused, not with so many stains on his earthly record. He’d only land in a worse place. Visiting Hell was one thing. Ar did not wish to live there, or be dead there, as the case may be. Visit he would, though, for in Hell lay his only chance at rebirth, redemption, and retirement. Elysium, Nirvana, Asgard, Tir-na-n’Og, all knew him. None held hope for a Final Ferryman. Ar could have stepped through the Pearly Gates, but no one gambled there. That left the Devil.

  The Great Hall of Hell was hot and smoky and echoed with eternal screams. After over half a millennium spent on the job—and centuries devising an escape—Ar was used to the sounds and smells, as well as the revolting bones Satan constantly tossed.

  “Epsilon, is it?” His Evil Eminence asked, peering through his red, reptilian eyes at the cloaked figure before him. The Letters of Extinction, whose names were taken from every alphabet ever known on earth, were hard to distinguish, especially in the Stygian gloom.

  “No, sir. I believe you mean Greek Rho, who is taking care of a shipwreck in the Aegean. I am English Ar, at your service.”

  “Mine and everyone else’s,” the Devil grumbled, jealous as always of losing a single soul. Then he grinned, showing pointed teeth, and tossed the bones from one clawed hand to the next. “But you’d play a game of chance, eh, just among friends?”

  The Devil had no friends. And he cheated. But Ar was desperate, and his plans were ready. He had studied the current times, the societies and economies, and made arrangements. Ah, the things one could accomplish by giving a clerk time to say his farewells.

  “Aye,” he said. “A quick game or two. There is a large military engagement pending. I’ll be needed.”

  “The usual stakes?”

  Old Nick liked to have his sinners sooner rather than later. He thought it a great joke that Ar Death was willing to play for gold and gems. What could a Final Debt Collector want with earthly riches, and where could he spend them?

  Ar waved his hand, or what would be his hand if he had a body. “Not this time. Today I’d wager on returning to life.”

  Another hooded figure—Aleph, Ar thought, a Hebraic Harvester—left the table, muttering about the coming confrontation. Ar did not know if he meant the war on earth or the Devil’s fury at Ar’s effrontery. Instead, the walls shook with Satan’s laughter. “Life? When you, better than anyone, know how fleeting it can be?”

  Ar nodded. “Even so. I would try to be a better man this time.”

  “You are what you are, fool, for all eternity. We all are, without change. Besides, you will never beat me.” He spilled the gruesome, gleaming bones out onto the table and grinned at the winning pattern shown. “Losing means you will have to do my bidding forever. A quick shake of the hourglass, a few souls lost in transit, so to speak.”

  Ar took a deep mental breath, having neither lungs nor airway for inhaling. If he won, he’d gain mortality. If he lost, he’d still be Death, coming just a bit sooner to the Devil’s disciples than expected. In truth, he was always earlier than anyone wanted. As for stealing innocent souls from Heaven, that was impossible. Ar was merely the enforcer, not the judge. He nodded. “I agree.”

  “A bet! A bet!” a gremlin shouted, hopping up and down. Satan swatted at the small creature, who scurried to Ar’s side, clinging to his cape.

  The game commenced. Ar lost the first round, and Satan drew smoke crosshatches in the air with a taloned finger. “So many sinners, so little time.”

  But then Ar’s luck changed. Smoke poured out of Old Nick’s ears. He shook the bones harder. Ar still won. The smoke marks faded; the Archfiend’s grin did, too. He cursed his lucky, spell-ridden saint’s bone, to no avail. Of course not. Ar had switched the relics with a monkey’s remains.

  No one cheated Death, not even the Devil.

  The very ground trembled with bloodred rage. The demons writhed; the wraiths withered. The trembling gremlin at Ar’s side dug his claws into Ar’s hooded cloak. The former warrior stood tall. “I won.”

  “You won life, for all the good it will do you.” Satan snatched the hourglass pin from the front of Ar’s cape. “Six months. I give you six months to find this symbol of your employment, now the symbol of the missing piece of yourself. Find it, find your humanity. If not, you will be my minion forever.”

  Before Ar could claim foul, Satan tossed the pin, and Ar, out of Hades.

  Smoke. Screams. Heat. Oh, hell, he was back in Hell.

  Ar got to his feet. Feet? He had feet? He did, and hands, to feel for a face, a body, blessed ballocks! He even had clothes under his own cloak, thank goodness, and thanks to the saint whose ensorcelled bone still rested in a hidden pocket there, along with Ar’s cache of documents and bank deposits.

  “I am alive,” he whispered, marveling at the very act of breathing.

  “Alive! I’m alive, too!” The gremlin was hopping up and down nearby.

  At frowned. “Not for long. You’ll be burned at the stake or shot on sight.” The shin-high creature was slimy, dark as a cinder, with a forked tail and horns. No one could mistake it for anything but a denizen of the Dark. They’d suspect Ar, too, if he was seen with the beast. “Go. Get back where you belong.”

  “But I’m alive!”

  Ar looked around. He was on a muddy field, in the obvious aftermath of a monstrous battle. Sudden bursts of spectral light told him his former comrades were at work, telltale flashes of life candles being extinguished. “Find a Dead Letter to carry you back. I thought I saw Spanish Ese.”

  “No. I breathe. I fit. See?” The gremlin twisted around.

  “I see a monkey, you flea brain. What would a monkey be doing at a war?”

  The gremlin became a goat.

  “You’ll be cooked at the first campfire.
Now begone before you ruin my chances, too.”

  A large black bird flew to his shoulder and pecked at his ear. “I help find the brooch.”

  Ar had forgotten about the hourglass pin that every Alphabet Agent wore. He slowly turned, noticing smoldering fires, piles of bodies, fallen horses, shattered cannon, and mud as far as he could see. “Damnation, how am I to locate the wretched thing here?” He well knew he had far more than a trinket to find. Where was he to start, seeking his soul?

  In the distance a few men were moving around, turning bodies over to find their friends. No, they were cutting off silver buttons, stealing what they could from the dead soldiers. Was this what he wished to be, some poor scrap of humanity, grubbing through his allotted time?

  No. He would be better. He could be better. The man he had been, that ruthless Sir Coryn, had at least been brave. Now he would temper valor with wisdom. He pledged to behave nobly, honorably, with kindness and generosity, knightly traits from a time long forgotten, long forsworn. If he could not find his own salvation or the bauble, at least he could do some good with his six months and the fortune he had amassed.

  First he had to discover who won this battle they would call Waterloo, which language to speak, what currency to use.

  The nearest soldier to him was driving a cart, trying to reload his pistol with one arm. The other was bandaged and hanging limply, in a ragged uniform that had once been scarlet. An Englishman, then.

  Ar walked closer until he could call out: “Doth the King’s Army taketh the day, friend? That is,” he hurriedly corrected, “did England win?”

  “They say we did,” the man answered. “Heavens be praised.”

  Ar touched the papers in his right pocket for reassurance, instead of his left, and said, “Amen.”

  “Although not without terrible cost, my lord.”

  “I claim not your liege—” Ar started, but then he realized what the wounded, weary soldier must see: fine boots and rich apparel, clean hands unsullied by combat. He nodded. “A sad day, victory or not.”

  “And for the poor horses.” The man wiped at the tear streaks down one filthy cheek with his good hand. “My job is putting the blighters out of their misery and collecting the saddles to send back to the families before the scavengers get everything.” He scowled at the crow on the nob’s shoulder.

  Now At realized that the screams he heard were from the wounded mounts. The injured soldiers and officers had been carted off, leaving the dead for later. He had no idea what powers remained to him, if any, but he had to start his new chivalrous life somewhere. Let him begin with the animals. “Lord Ardeth at your service.”

  The soldier gaped at the fine gentleman’s offer to help. “Gawd, now I seen everything.”

  Not by half, he hadn’t. “I always liked horses,” was all the instant earl could think to say. “And I have a way with hurt creatures. Perhaps I can calm them, or help get a few on their feet so we can lead them to a veterinary.”

  “It’s a dreadful piece of work,” Sergeant Campbell warned.

  Lord Ardeth took up the soldier’s pistol, having studied one of the weapons after the last battle he’d been assigned. Death did not bother him. It was life that was terrifying.

  —

  They managed to save a string of horses, not the stalwart destriers used for carrying armored knights into battle, but brave chargers nevertheless. Ardeth rode a handsome black stallion named Black Butch, whose owner would not be riding again, ever. He had the fallen hero’s name, to send compensation to his family.

  The sergeant and the earl led their small herd back to the cavalry encampment for water and doctoring. The master of horses almost wept in gratitude, and neither he nor his staff would soon forget the dark rider or Campbell’s awed recounting of his lordship’s uncanny skills.

  After a hasty swallow of wine and a heel of bread—Ardeth had forgotten that a body needed sustenance and was growing light-headed—he insisted on taking Campbell to the field hospital. The sounds and stench and suffering were too much like Hell for him to enter, yet had he not just vowed to serve his fellow men?

  He gladly bypassed the areas of amputation and cauterization. “Your arm needs cleansing and stitching, nothing else,” he told the sergeant. They stepped into a field of cots and pallets and threadbare blankets laid on the sodden ground, all filled with wounded, waiting soldiers.

  “Great gods.” In all his years, in famine and flood, Ardeth had never seen such devastation. Did he really want to be part of a species that could wreak so much havoc on its own kind? Then he saw the telltale flash of a life winking out. He narrowed his eyes to spot one of his former workmates leaning on a staff, watching a surgeon at work. One of the Cyrillic letters, he thought, wasting time. “Get on with it, Zheh,” he shouted in Russian. “Can you not see how many men are in agony?”

  More than half of these poor souls would die of blood loss or wounds gone putrid or fevers that would rage through the hospital, Ardeth knew. Better to end their suffering now. “Move!” he shouted, this time in English. Any man who could walk or crawl got out of the way of the tall dark figure in his flowing cape. Ardeth ignored the mortals in favor of the specter they could not see.

  Another light flashed. “Dah, fine for you to give orders,” the Slavic terminator muttered. “If some of us would do our jobs instead of dreaming what cannot be, then others of us would not have to work so hard. Nyet.”

  Humility came hard to one such as Sir Coryn of Ardsley or Ar of the Afterlife or Lord Ardeth, but the earl bowed. “My apologies. Having a short span of time shortens one’s temper, it seems.”

  A surgeon in a gore-specked apron came over to see what the stir was about. His lips curled into a sneer at the sight of a well-dressed nobleman. “My men need laudanum, my lord, not fancy words and pretty manners. We are too busy for your sort here.”

  “But I have some experience with sickness,” Ardeth said in a vast understatement. “And know ways of bringing peace without opiates.”

  “Like that Herr Mesmer, eh? I read of him.”

  “Something like that, yes. There are pressure points, sleep inducers, many other ways to relieve pain.”

  Campbell stepped forward. “I’ve seen his lordship with the horses. He worked wonders, he did.”

  “Very well, we can use whatever means the Lord, and this lord, can provide,” the surgeon said, turning to get back to his endless-seeming stitching. “But the raven has to go. We do not need any symbols of death flapping around, scaring the men worse.”

  “He is a crow,” Ardeth began, but the bird flapped up and down on his shoulder.

  “I’m alive! Alive I am!” it squawked.

  The surgeon and the nearby patients all gasped. First this stranger talked to the air in foreign tongues; then his—pet?—gave voice.

  “He means Olive,” Ardeth hurried to explain. “I almost managed to teach the featherhead his name. He sayeth—he says little else.” The threatening look the earl fixed on the gremlin ought to guarantee that. “But he can wait outside if his presence upsets the men.” To the crow Ardeth whispered, “Go look for the pin. I’ll be here a while, it seems.”

  Campbell had been relating to the soldiers and the aides what his lordship had done at the battlefield. Even the infantrymen loved horses, so they forgot what they’d seen, what they’d heard, and welcomed a well-breeched rescuer into their midst.

  Ardeth got to work.

  Hours later—he’d lost count of how many—he heard a commotion. A major was shouting at the surgeon, who was shaking his head.

  “There are officers who need doctoring, I say.”

  “And I say I cannot spare any of my staff. They are ready to collapse as is.”

  “What of that man?” the major asked, pointing toward Ardeth. “He seems to be competent. His patients are not moaning, and his hands are clean, at least.”

  “That is Ardeth. His volunteering to help was a blessing.”

  The major walked toward Ardeth,
not looking at the men he had to step between.

  “We need you in the officers’ tent.”

  “They need me here.”

  “A general is wounded, I say.”

  “Are your companions more worthy than the men who fought for them, then?”

  The major straightened, although he still did not reach Ardeth’s height. “They are officers and gentlemen.”

  Ardeth could not help noticing that the man’s uniform was nearly spotless, with lace at his collar and cuffs. He knew the kind. “Were you in the battle?”

  “Of course. I led my troops to their position before returning to headquarters for further orders.”

  “While you turned these so-called common men into cannon fodder, ordering them to keep marching to their deaths?” He rudely turned his back on the arrogant dastard.

  “Ardeth!”

  He turned back. The major had his hand on the sword at his side. Ardeth thought of melting the steel. Instead he stated, “That is Coryn, Earl of Ardeth.”

  Now the officer looked confused. “I have never heard of any such earldom, and I know my peerage.”

  Ardeth decided this was as good a time as any to begin spinning his web. “The title had been in abeyance until my grandfather was found. He was a third son, who went exploring the world, never expecting to inherit. His son, my late father, also had the wanderlust, so the College of Arms could never locate him, either. I have seen the Orient, Africa, and the New World, but never England. That is about to change. My bona fides have already been appraised and approved, so you shall, I swear, be hearing more of me, but not today, nor in the officers’ quarters, either. Good day, Major.”

  The officer stomped away, only to return shortly, chasing a large black bird that settled on Ardeth’s shoulder. The crow held a gold button in its beak.

  “Thief!” Major Willeford shouted, almost stepping on the foot of a sleeping soldier.

  “And a poor thief at that,” Ardeth murmured. “That does not even look like an hourglass.”