The Bargain
Savannah—June 1784
Prologue
Death kept his pace on the lane to Hampstead House—gait steady, limbs just the right amount of loose.
The time was marked by the bright June sun hanging high overhead, beaming down on the tender green cotton shoots, the first true leaves bursting through. Three vultures circled lazily on the horizon, black slashes on the blue sky, as they spiraled lower toward their prey, doing their job—as was he.
He’d materialized a moment before, appearing alongside the gutted road etched with wagon wheel tracks and the hooves of many beasts, on his way to collect his next soul.
His deeply bronzed skin glistened in the light, sleek muscles stretching, as they had on the body of his last collection, taken from a fazenda outside Rio de Janeiro. That man had been beautiful before an unwieldy load of sugarcane crushed him.
Death had admired his form and taken it as his own as he arrived in the teeming, swampy marshland outside Savannah, Georgia, falling into step and his duty. Trying on bodies had become a habit, all stemming from his desire to understand.
Though he was far from human, his work consisted entirely of contact with the species. From the start, they’d perplexed him. Most were messy, chaotic, and cruel, so, he thought, if he could assume their shape, perhaps he might better grasp their perspective—find some reason for their barbarity toward themselves and most life on Earth.Irrational in the end, for the practice yielded no answers, at least none that satisfied.
But the custom turned to habit, and so he’d continued ever since.
He paused along the edge of the road, no stranger to these parts. Typhoid and yellow fever had done their rounds this summer, spreading stealthily from the swamp into fresh water, creeping into the white wooden main house, claiming first the master and his new wife before slipping into the cabins that dotted the surrounding fields, each ringed with a small garden. Death had collected souls from each structure, by ones and in twos, leaving neat rows of red-humped dirt to mark each earthly resting place.
Now someone else’s allotted hour was at hand.
It wasalwaysat hand for someone, somewhere.
That was the problem he’d been considering for some time, and he’d finally landed on a solution.
It was perfect.
He needed only to think of a suitable method of execution.
A clatter of hooves interrupted his thoughts as a wagon rattled toward him, the wheels churning through the thick mud, a pitiful brown mare staggering, straining against her load, her jutting ribs heaving as if each breath might be her last.
The driver, Murray, ignored the beast’s struggle and flicked his crop; a new lash leaked red on the mare’s hindquarters. He hunched over the reins, a brown rifle perched by his feet, glazed eyes shifting, scanning the empty road ahead. Death watched him passively, knowing of the deep and unabating infection that lurked within him.
Soon, the spasms would start, pain that would tear at his insides, making him wish for a swift end to his misery. Murray would find it at the end of the week, jerking and gasping for air in a pool of his own blood and vomit.
Murray did not know his fate as he snapped the crop again, urging the poor beast forward—his jaw clenched, his left hand twitching.
His cargo would fare no better.
A man called Scipio lay in the wagon bed, huddled in the sawdust, his broad brown hands and feet rigged in ropes, eyes closed. A gash on his head bled freely as angry welts marched up his arms, his white canvas shirt cut to ribbons, red blooming across it like a field of summer roses, guaranteeing that Death would collect him, too, before the day was through.
Death watched as the wagon rattled along its miserable way.
A feeling ticked through him—hot and rough—knowing what their imminent demise meant for him.
More work.
Always another soul to fetch and ferry.
Time and again.
For eternity.
Small plagues seemed to keep them in check, ushering the masses to the afterlife without much intervention from him, but then the humans always came back, more than ever, loud, pushy, conniving, and horrible—forever killing each other off with their unending wars, filth, and pestilence, their crimes replete with cruelty and violence.
Even now, they were inventing new ways to die.
