Timepiece by Heather Albano Read Free Book Online Page B

momentarily colder, and the sunlight had dimmed as though covered by a sudden cloud. William looked up in reflex, but there was not a cloud to be seen. For an instant he had not heard birds singing either, but he heard them now.
     
    Elizabeth Barton stared at him with wide eyes. “Did you feel that?” she whispered.
     
    If she had not asked the question, he would have thought it the first wave of a fever dream breaking over his head. He was not sure whether to be relieved that this was in fact not another relapse, but rather something perceptible to those outside his own mind. “Yes,” he said, voice catching slightly in his throat, “I did.”
     
    She looked back down at the watch and got slowly to her feet, thumb brushing over the top stem.
     
    “Wait,” he said, rising with her, reaching to lay a restraining hand on her wrist. “Don’t. I don’t think we should—”
     
    But she paid him no heed whatsoever. All her attention was for the watch. He had never seen anything to match the delight in her face as she fixed her eyes on the timepiece and pressed the top stem all the way in.
     
    And the bright June day turned into night.
     
     
     

Chapter 3
     
 
     
    London, August 27, 1885
     
     
     
    For a moment, Elizabeth thought she was in a thunderstorm, though no rain fell. Lightning lit up the sky in a flash of blue-white, then was gone. It was followed by a crash of thunder, deafening, just overhead. A sudden cold wind sprang up and rushed over her, tugging her breath along with it.
     
    “William—” she gasped.
     
    “Here—” The wind tore the word away from her ears, as it had torn the breath from her throat. But he was right beside her, a vague source of warmth, and then a definite one as he pulled her closer. “I’m right here.”
     
    But where was “here?” Somehow, impossibly, they were no longer in the orchard. The lightning flash had shown her not trees, but high brick walls. The wind carried with it not leaves, but sheets of paper, tumbling against her skirt and plastering themselves there.
     
    There was no second flash of lightning, but there was a second boom of thunder. It shook the ground under Elizabeth’s feet.
     
    And it shook the ground again.
     
    She couldn’t see, no matter how hard she tried, but she knew that there was something enormous coming toward her. It took another stomping, earsplitting step. For the first time in her life, Elizabeth was too frightened to move. Beside her, William drew a breath to say what she knew would be “Run!” and tensed to drag her with him—
     
    Something grabbed her arm and tore her from William’s grasp.
     
    Her shoes scrabbled for purchase, but found none on the slick surface beneath her, and she went down, hard, onto bruising cobblestone. She couldn’t catch her breath or find her footing. She couldn’t do anything except fumble in the slippery muck. There was someone above her, looming over her—someone she could sense but could not see. Farther away, William called her name in a tone of desperation, while the ground all around them shook, and shook again, as something immense passed them by. The jolts grew fainter and less frequent as the thing, whatever it was, moved away.
     
    A light flared, dazzling in the darkness.
     
    “Get away from her!” William shouted, and flung himself forward. The flame went out. “Unhand her, sir, at once—”
     
    “I don’t want to hurt you!” a second voice snapped, but William did not wait for explanations. There was a brief scuffle that Elizabeth could feel and hear but could not see. She had just time enough to think again of gathering herself and struggling upright, and then the fracas before her ended in a “oof” of pain—from William, she thought with a jolt of sickness. The flame flared alight again, a blinding glare that set Elizabeth’s eyes tearing before it settled into a larger, duller gleam. A lantern.
     
    “I’m not trying to hurt her!” the voice behind