Mordecai sighed. "Because there are no gladiator challenges to watch in this century."
Zacariah ignored the jab. "Why exactly are you here, anyway? The child was my collection." His gaze narrowed thoughtfully. "Have the Minions assigned you to check up on me?"
"No." Mordecai drifted further into the room. He reached up to lift his cowled hood off. Shaking his blond hair back from his face, he replied quietly, "The child was your collection. The child's mother was mine."
"Oh."
"Yes." He shook his head again. "With the child's death, the mother would have died almost immediately. She's already lost two other children, poor soul. The third would have killed her."
Zacariah's head snapped up and he looked into the other Collector's fathomless blue eyes. "Are you still taking her?"
"I can't" Mordecai frowned and shrugged. "By not taking the child at his appointed time, you've ruined the whole family's schedule. Now the Minions will have to determine new times of Collection for each of them. And who knows how long that will take? It will probably be years, now."
"Does it really matter?" Zacariah asked indifferently. "In the grand scheme of Collections and eternity, what do a few extra years mean? After all, they're only human."
Mordecai scowled at him. "You don't understand, Zacariah. You never have. For every collection missed, years of human life are altered. Not always for the better."
Zacariah glanced at the people in the room. They didn't seem the least bit concerned that he'd missed his collection. So why should the Minions care? It wasn't as if he always missed his appointments. Why it had only happened… as he realized the number of times he'd arrived too late over the centuries, he decided to abandon that particular train of thought.
"Still," Mordecai muttered. "They do look happy, don't they?"
Zacariah grumbled as he allowed his gaze to swing around the simple, poor cabin. Dirt floor, blanket-covered windows, one room for the family to live in. His upper lip curled and one dark eyebrow lifted into a ridiculously high arch. Oh my yes. Who wouldn't be happy in such surroundings?
Chapter One
Colorado, Two Weeks Later
"Blast and damnation!"
The new fence post toppled over and as it went, Rebecca Hale felt a sliver the size of an oak tree pierce her palm. Grabbing her left hand, she stared down at the jagged splinter of wood jutting up from her flesh.
If she'd worn gloves, this wouldn't have happened. But then, if her husband Daniel hadn't died four long years ago and left her to run the ranch practically singlehandedly, she wouldn't have been fixing the fence posts at all. Her lips quirked. And if she had wheels, she thought, she'd be a carriage.
Rebecca grinned, then glanced down at her worn split skirt and battered boots. No, not a carriage. A farm wagon, maybe.
"You cussed, Ma," a young voice interrupted her thoughts and Rebecca winced a bit at having been caught.
"So I did," she said, since it was pointless in arguing the obvious.
"What do ya think your punishment ought to be?" Danny asked, unable to hide the laughter in his voice.
She swiveled her head and looked at the boy. As always, it took only one look at Danny's impish expression to bring a smile to her own face. And like males of any age, he'd learned how to use that expression to his own advantage. Rebecca shook her head, unable to resist the sparkle in his eyes or the gap-toothed grin he flashed at her. Sometimes, her six-year-old son seemed too smart for his own good. But then, she could hardly blame him for enjoying himself at her expense. Especially since he'd spent most of the week before listening to lectures about not mimicking the cursing he heard from Buck and Scotty.
"Well I don't know, Danny," she said finally. "What do you think?"
He curled his arms tighter around the top slat in the gate, gave himself a push with the toe of his shoe and tilted his head back to stare at the sky while the gate swung lazily. "I think you better make a double batch of cookies today. The extra work'll help you think about your mistake."
"And give you-more to eat."
He flashed her another grin. "That, too."
She snorted a laugh, lifted her palm to her mouth and pulled the sliver out with her teeth. No point in trying it any other way. It had been years since she'd had fingernails long enough to get a grip on a splinter.
"Storm comin'." Rebecca looked at her son again, then turned in the direction he was pointing. Warily, her gaze swept over the sky, noting the black and gray clouds racing across the wide expanse. An unusually fast-moving storm by the look of it. From a distance, a low rumble of thunder echoed through the mountains nearly encircling her ranch.
"Should I go set out the pans?" Danny asked, already jumping down from his perch.
"Guess so," she said and sighed ruefully.
A spring storm should have meant a cozy hour or two by the fire. Reading stories to Danny while he ate his way through a double batch of cookies. Instead, it meant running around the ranch house settling pots and pans under the leaks in the roof. She sighed. At least, though, she had Danny to help.
"Know what the silver lining is?" the boy asked.
"What?" She grinned at her son as she realized that he was beginning to sound a lot like her.
"Even if the roof leaks, we got enough pans to go around!" He shoved his honey-brown hair out of his eyes and gave her a crooked smile that displayed his missing front tooth.
Rebecca laughed and lunged for him as another clap of thunder rattled down around them. He jumped back but he just wasn’t fast enough. She wrapped her arms around him, lifted him high off the ground and planted several quick, noisy kisses on his dirty neck.
"Ah, Ma …"
She set him back on his feet, ruffled his hair, then gave his backside a quick swat. "Ah Ma, yourself. Now you get on inside and set the pans out I'll be right along."
Danny stalked off toward the house, rubbing at his neck and muttering something about "dumb girls."
Bending down, she snatched up her hammer and the crumpled paper sack containing the last of her tenpenny nails. Then she stared at the cloud mass again. From what she could tell, there looked to be a lot of rain coming. Enough to make the house downright soggy.
No matter what else needs doing, she decided suddenly, the minute the storm passed, she would get Buck and Scotty to fix the roof. No doubt her foreman and the young cowboy would complain heartily about having to do work that didn't require sitting atop a horse … but there was no other way.
Frowning, she acknowledged silently that a patchwork job would work on the roof fine. For now. In the spring and summer, all they would have to worry about was rain. But come winter, they would be in real trouble. The heavy snows they usually got during winter would crash through that aged roof like an avalanche and folks would have to wait until the following spring just to dig her and Danny out of the mess.
There was no help for it. They needed a new roof. But then, they needed a lot of things. Somehow, they had to get to the bottom of the rustling going on at the ranch. They had to stop the thieves while Rebecca still had enough horses left to sell for cash money to last them through winter. Her fingers tightened around the hammer until the wood dug into her palm.
Dammit, she wasn't about to lose the ranch she'd worked so hard to hang onto.
A sharp, wild wind blew up out of nowhere, whipping her split skirt around her knees and slipping up under the hem long enough to leave a chill that crawled into her bones. Her hair was plucked from its loose, haphazard knot, and as she faced into the wind, the long strands lifted into a straight, chestnut brown curtain streaming out behind her.
She lifted her chin and closed her eyes, relishing the feel of the fierce, frigid air rushing around her. Thunder smacked against the clouds in an ear-bursting crash of sound and Rebecca’s eyes flew open.
The clouds had rolled down the mountainside to settle in closer to the ranch. As she watched, the gray, rainheavy mist touched down low to the ground like some great crouching b
east taking up residence in her south pasture. She shivered and tightened her grip on the tools still clasped in her hands.
Wisps of vapor streaked from the cloud mass as if searching for something to hold onto. The mist itself seemed to be moving as if gathering itself together. Light and dark shifted, separated, then intermingled again, blending the sun and shadow into a shimmering, dazzling shade of gray.
Rebecca stared, spellbound by the ever-changing mist. Her breath caught in her throat and her heart began to pound wildly. She'd never seen anything like it before. Unconsciously, she took a step toward the mist and narrowed her gaze, straining to see through the vaporous curtain to what lay beyond.
There was something in there.
Something alive.
She could feel it.
#
"Isn't there something you can do?" Zacariah gave a quick look at his surroundings and only barely managed to suppress a shudder.
"No. The decision has been made."
Decision. This was no decision. The very word implied thought, consideration. This was … well he wasn’t sure what this was. Humiliating came to mind. Barbaric.
"Do I at least get a horse?"
"No. " The response came quickly and echoed through his brain. "It’s not far. Just walk."
Walk? Zacariah glared at the swirling patterns of light and shadow surrounding him, then glanced at Mordecai before turning to face Gabriel, the Minions' representative.
Gabriel's gray robe caught the shifting patterns of the mist and became one with it. He frowned and his steely blue eyes fastened on the Collector who had finally made one mistake too many.
"One month," Gabriel intoned and his thoughts invaded Zacariah's mind. "Remember that. You have one month to study and learn about mortals. Then you must make your collection, and return to the Path."
"What exactly am I supposed to learn from these creatures?" His temper boiled despite the fact that he knew anger was not the way to deal with Gabriel.
"Respect would be a good start."
Zacariah bit back the oath hovering on his lips.
"You have shown repeatedly your disdain for the beings in your charge, Zacariah. Now you have been called to account." Gabriel paused. "You might also learn compassion."
"Compassion?" He threw his hands up wide and let them fall back to his sides. "This sort of compassion, you mean? Make a mistake and be banished?"
"Hardly a banishment, Zacariah. It's only one month."
"I really don't think I'll need an entire month, Gabriel."
"This isn't up to you, Zacariah. And may I remind you that it is precisely because of your own thinking that you are in this situation?"
There was no need to be nasty about this, Zacariah told himself silently. He glanced down at himself and experimentally flexed his knees. He frowned. Hard to believe that a few simple mistakes had brought him to such a pass. He would have thought that his superiors would have shown a bit more understanding. Or some of that compassion they were so interested in. After all, he'd been a Soul Collector for eons. What were a dozen or so missed appointments in that length of time?
For centuries, he'd wandered the earth, collecting souls and guiding them to the Eternal Path. And for centuries, he'd watched as the human in his charge fought and railed against his coming. Even those who should have been most eager for his arrival… the sick, the injured, struggled against his presence until the last.
Is it any wonder that he had so little affection for them? They all mouthed platitudes from their various religions. All of them professed to believe in an afterlife, be it Heaven or Nirvana or whatever… yet none of them were willing to take the one step that would usher them into eternal life and peace.
How was an intelligent being supposed to overlook such nonsense? And what was the harm of showing up a little late occasionally? True, at times being late meant that a collection wasn't made at all, and the being went on to live for many years. But most of the time, a delay was simply that. A delay. An hour. Two. All right, a day at most.
Most of his fellow Collectors followed the rules strictly. They were always precisely where they were supposed to be at precisely the given time. Their supreme devotion to duty was probably what had brought about Zacariah's punishment. After all, next to those paragons of perfection, his simple errors in judgment looked far worse than they actually were.
Of course, to give them their due, the Minions had been patient. Until the fiasco with that last infant. Apparently, that had been enough to push the Minions beyond the barriers of their supposedly limitless forbearance.
He had thought about appealing this banishment by going over the Minions' heads, so to speak. After all, though they were Zacariah's superiors, the Minions themselves were answerable to the Angel of Death and, finally, God. Minions. Their very name insisted that they, too, were servants. But their combined dignity and authority served to mask that truth.
Zacariah recalled standing before the Minions trying to explain exactly what had happened. He also clearly remembered that his superiors hadn't been interested in explanations. He closed his eyes and let the memory come.
"As you know," Ezekial had begun, "millennia ago, we, too, walked the earth with the mortals. We lived as they do, only showing ourselves as what we are to those whose time it was to join us."
Zacariah nodded and offered up hearty thanks that he had not been a Collector during those dreadful years. He shuddered at the thought of actually having to live — permanently — among mortals.
"But as time passed," Ezekial went on, "we came to see that we couldn't serve humanity by pretending to be like them. Rather, it was our duty to remain apart. To become one with the Eternal Path and to stand ready to usher our charges forward on their journeys."
Zacariah knew all that. He'd learned it all long ago. And it made perfect sense. What could a Collector possibly have in common with beings who lit candles against death?
"My brothers and I" — Ezekial’s voice had grown louder, as if he'd sensed that Zacariah's attention was wandering — "have decided that your own sad disregard for collection schedules and the humans in your charge must be addressed. To that end, you will live as a human, among them, for a period of one month. You will spend your time in a place where, at the end of that month, a collection is to be made."
Zacariah had been almost too stunned to react. Live as a human? Him?
"However," Ezekial's voice boomed ,and even Mordecai took a single step back, "when your punishment is complete, there must be no more nonsense from you, Zacariah. You will make your collection in a timely manner and you will return to the Path."
"Who is it I will be collecting?" he asked. The very least they could do for him was tell him this much.
Ezekial fixed him with a stony stare. "You will not know the identity of your collection until the time is upon you. We will brook no more mistakes from you, Zacariah. Is that understood?"
He nodded, but told himself silently that a month among mortals just might he enough to cause more mistakes than it would prevent.
Zacariah opened his eyes again, pushing his memories aside for the time being. No point in thinking about his return to the Path already. He had one long month stretching out in front of him. He would be better served to concentrate on the matters at hand.
"Are you ready?" Gabriel asked suddenly.
"No." He lifted both hands up. "What am I supposed to do for this month?"
"I suggest," Gabriel told him with a sly smile, "that you find a job."
"A job?"
"Yes. You'll need to earn money in order to feed and clothe yourself, after all."
Food? Clothes? Money? By the Path, this punishment was getting worse by the moment.
"I’ll ask you again, Zacariah." Gabriel's eyes narrowed slightly. "Are you ready?"
He nodded to his superior. It was pointless to argue further. There was no way out of this and the sooner it started, the sooner it would be over.
"Very well." Gabriel
inclined his head briefly, then stepped back into the surrounding mist, becoming a part of the light and shadow. "One month," he repeated unnecessarily. "We shall await your return. With your collection."
When the elder was gone, Zacariah looked at his friend. "I’m freezing."
Mordecai shook his head. "You'll need a coat too."
"By the Path! You'd think someone might have thought of that."
Mordecai rolled his eyes.
Suddenly, all sorts of questions were occurring to Zacariah. "How will I explain being on foot? What happens when they ask who I am? What will I say? What sort of job should I get?"
Mordecai tugged at the fall of his robe and shook his head solemnly. "You should have thought of these things before."
"I know," he said and glanced through the curtain of clouds at the Hale ranch. "I suppose I didn’t really believe that the Minions would go this far to teach me a 'lesson.'"
"I can't believe they did."
He scowled at him. "Listen to my teeth chatter, if you still need evidence." Disgusted, he snapped. "What am I supposed to tell these humans?"
"Don't even consider telling anyone the truth, Zacariah. For one thing, no one would believe you. And for another, you can't afford to anger the Minions further."
Zacariah couldn't think of another thing that the Minions might do to him that would be worse than this. But, he allowed silently, he wasn't ready to test that theory.
"Of course I won't tell them the truth, but I have to say something to explain my presence. Even a human will have some questions."
"Tell them your horse threw you and that you hit your head. You can't remember a thing. Not even how you came to be here."
"No one will believe that." Zacariah frowned and realized that he was actually feeling nervous.
"Say it with sincerity," Mordecai advised.
Clearly, Mordecai was determined to be no help whatsoever. Zacariah frowned and slapped his palm against his flat stomach. The unexpected churning inside him was unsettling.
"It's not too late to change things," he said.
This Time for Keeps Page 28
