Managing Death (32 page)

It’s time to find Rillman. The bastard has to pay.

I
can sense his heartbeat. It can’t hide its secrets from me. I close my eyes and shift.

The Deepest Dark. Why here? Which is precisely the question Wal asks when he crawls out from under my shirt. I can sense Rillman circling around, shifting from space to space. I catch glimpses of him. A leg. A foot. A hand tight around a knife hilt. His feet send up clouds of dust. Closer and closer. I wait.

And then, through the dark to my left, two stony blades jab out at me.

I jerk to the right, though one of the blade points cuts through my suit, bites shallowly into my stomach. It burns. I resist the urge to crouch over it, as though to stop my guts spilling. But the wound is already healed.

‘Out you come,’ I snarl.

A body takes form in the dark, arms and shoulders, then head, torso and legs knitted from all that cold shadow.

Solstice smiles. Who else would it be?

‘So what do I call you? Rillman or Solstice?’

His limbs move with a jerky energy that Solstice never had. I wonder at the strength of will it must
have taken Rillman to contain all that madness. He doesn’t need to now, and it bursts from him as wild as any storm.

‘I never really liked the name Solstice, but you take what the mask gives you. And he was such a good mask.’ Then he changes, becomes the Rillman I know. The Rillman in the tunnel. The dull, smiling bloke in Lissa’s photo album. He shrugs. ‘You know, after I failed, I killed myself. Not once, but twice. And every time I came back. She helped me come back.’

‘Aunt Neti?’

‘Yes, even when I didn’t want to. And then RMs noticed. They tried to kill me, too, and each time I died, I came back, different, stronger.

Around him swings the tiny dragon, Smauget, its red eyes aflame. It darts towards my face. There’s a blur of movement, a shrill yowl, and Wal has snatched it from the air. The dragon hisses and snaps, its tiny mouth going for Wal’s jugular, but the little fella is ready for it. He catches it by the throat, and they tumble to the ground.

‘Leave this to me,’ he says, from between clenched teeth. ‘You deal with him.’

Rillman holds the knives at a distance from his chest, as though even he’s afraid of what they are. I don’t blame him. I understand their will intimately. The knives blur the air like light sticks waving in the depths of a cave.

They whisper and snort,
Hello, hello.

‘I am better armed now. These things kill RMs like you wouldn’t believe. They’re simplicity itself. And here, you don’t have any Avian Pomps to protect you,’ Rillman says.

‘Why did you kill them?’ I ask.

‘Who? The RMs, well, you know that they deserved it.’

‘Not them. This isn’t about them.’

I lift my hand. Dust shapes itself into a plane. Dust people tumble from it.

Rillman almost drops the knives. They shudder in his hands. ‘What?’ The emotions that play across his face shock me. It’s almost as variable as Mr D’s. Joy, sadness and a mad hunger mix and meld across his features, and it would almost be comedic if he wasn’t waving knives in my face. Then I realise that Rillman isn’t well at all.

I could almost pity him.

‘Your Stirrer drones,’ I spit. ‘The ones with Lissa. I took them out, and then the Hungry Death came. I wouldn’t have been there but for you. Its presence within me wouldn’t have destroyed that plane.’

Rillman snorts. ‘You RMs, always ready to blame anyone but yourselves. Lissa was meant to die. To make you understand. To teach you the mechanics of pain. And my attacks on you? That was their purpose, too. To hurt, to blind, to scare. I take it that you managed to save her. Too bad about the others, eh? They were your doing.’

‘I understand pain.’ HD snickers. It’s intimate with pain as well.

‘Ah, you only think you do. Maddie, I killed her. But I could have brought her back. And there he was, your Mr D. Smug and useless. There he waited, in the dark that slides along the borders of the Underworld. And with a fucking grin on his face, he hurled her back. I was done, then. I was spent; no chance of another Schism. He had nothing to fear from me, but he hurled her back. And even now, dead, he is not dead. And you have made it so. The favoured one, the fucking coddled one. The man who didn’t want to be Death. How can you expect to do anything? How can you expect to hold back anything?’

‘That’s it,’ I say. ‘It starts and ends here. And the rest? The rest we will have to see.’

A little calm returns to Rillman, a crooked smile. ‘That’s what the Orcus said, and there’s very little left of any of them.’

‘I’m something altogether different now,’ I say.

The knives flash towards me, but I’m ducking and weaving. It’s motion absent of thought, fed on instinct. I’ve fought with these knives before. My movement is fast and sinuous. Something is hardening within me. A dreadful resolve, a chuckling vastness. The knives slice the air millimetres above my face, then to my left and right, never quite touching.

Rillman growls.

I gesture at the dust around my boots. It flashes up in a tight spiral between us – Suzanne would have been pleased – and into his eyes. My fist follows it. Rillman
stumbles back. Wipes at his nose with his wrist. A knot of blood and snot stretches from his nostrils to his arm, then breaks.

His heart beats loud in my ears, and it’s no longer that familiar steady rhythm. It’s pounding, racing – 160 bpms at least. His pupils are dilated. I know he’s on something and it’s raging through his body like fire. He comes back at me, fast. But something is burning through my body, too.

The knives dance figure eights before him. It would almost be beautiful, but I’ve no eye for beauty now. HD argues the point, but I ignore it.

More dust, a blinding burst. He staggers, his eyes stung. I kick him in the chest. He crashes backwards, lands hard.

‘Dust? Is that all you have?’ he pants, getting to his feet, wiping at his eyes with his wrists. He’s half blind, but it doesn’t stop him. I’d almost respect that, but I am hatred now. I am blazing anger.

‘It’s all I need.’ I launch more dust at him. Rillman slices through it with the knives, but it’s only dust, it doesn’t bleed. Not like him. He doesn’t even know that he’s beaten.

He charges at me. And this time I don’t care to obscure his run. No dust. Just him and me.

‘I want you to know that you made this,’ I say. The blades whirr around me, jabbing towards me and away, and I weave in time with them in perfect synchrony. The poor bastard doesn’t understand that they are dancing
for me. ‘Your desire for revenge. To cause me pain. To bring down the Orcus. To hurt me and mine. All of it. The whole fucking concatenation of hate and fear. You made it all, and now …’ I snatch the blades from his hands, one, two … ‘These are mine.’

I kick him to the ground, easily. Rillman lies there, bleeding. ‘What are you?’

‘You don’t get it at all, do you? I’m Steven de Selby,’ I say, picking him up with one hand, as though he weighs nothing. And he doesn’t. No one does now. ‘I am Death.’

I backhand him casually in the face. Bone cracks. He drops to the ground, and I stand over him. I grit my teeth, and feel my face shift. It’s agony and it’s glorious. For a moment all I am is pain. All I am is Death.

The knives in my hand slide towards each other, bind each other in their stony gravity, and then I am holding a scythe. It shivers with the deepest of hungers in my grip.

Mayhem. Murder. Death
, it breathes.

And God help me, I swing the scythe above my head.

Wal rushes in between us. ‘Whoa, whoa!’ He hovers there, his wings beating so fast that they lift up dust. His eyes are wide with a kind of terror that I’m unacquainted with, and they’re directed at me.

‘Go away,’ I say.

‘If you kill him, you won’t get answers.’

I jab my finger at his face. ‘But that’s just it. I am the answer, am I not?’

All I want is death. His death. The world’s death. HD cackles, like a drunk crashing towards damnation.

Then a squeak of brakes alerts me to his presence. My old boss.

‘Stop this now,’ Mr D says, sliding off his bike. His face is pale; he’s out of breath. Must have been riding since I entered the Underworld.

‘You,’ I growl. ‘This is as much your fault as his. Letting them – letting
all
of them – do this to me.’

But it is glorious!

Mr D holds my gaze. ‘Yes … They were convincing, Steven.’

‘Convincing!’ I swing the scythe above his head. It would be nothing to lop it off. Mr D doesn’t move. ‘Is that all you can say?’

‘You didn’t prepare him for any of this,’ Rillman says.

Mr D glances over at him. ‘Good evening, Francis.’

Rillman spits towards him. ‘Hell must be so hungry for you.’

‘It’s hungry for all of us,’ Mr D says. ‘It will have me in its own good time, believe me.’

‘I’d kill you if I could,’ Rillman breathes.

‘You’re not the only one.’ Mr D places a hand on my shoulder. ‘Steven, I am so sorry.’

I brush his hand away. ‘You should go now. You have no power here.’

‘None of us do, Steven. The rules that bind us do so tightly. You have choices, but what horrible, horrible choices. Leave this idiot. The other RMs are still on the
tree; they won’t be for much longer. Go to them, find out anything more you can.’

‘I don’t need them anymore. I want you gone.’ My voice is barely a whisper, but there is a dreadful force behind it. Mr D diminishes, nods.

‘As you wish.’ He throws a glance askew at Wal, as if to say sorry. Then he picks up his bike and rides away into the dark. I watch him until the gloom swallows the flickering red of his tail-light.

Rillman coughs. Wal flits in front of him again.

‘You want me to go, too? I swear I won’t go so easily,’ Wal says. None the less I tap my arm and he is nothing more than a tattoo, his face twisted with a bunched zippering of cherubic teeth.

I fashion a chair out of dust, and drop Rillman in it.

He coughs, spits blood. He’s not bound. I don’t need to do that.

‘You can run,’ I say. ‘But I will find you. Have no doubt of that.’

He eyes the knives I’ve left resting on a nearby root tip of the One Tree. They’re no longer the scythe. I raise one hand and that’s what they become. I’m intuiting a lot, but I know I can call that scythe to me in a second, just as I know its name is Mog. In a breath, a single breath of that name, it will find me.

He looks shiftily from the scythe to me, and back again. I dare him with my eyes. But Rillman has had enough.

‘Why did you do this?’ I ask. ‘Tell me and I might be gentle with you.’

‘I hate you,’ Rillman growls. ‘You got what I wanted. While Mr D was alive he locked me out. But you, you were so interesting. So naive. You were the only RM not like them. You were the one who I wanted to suffer, not just kill, because you didn’t deserve what you had been given. I’ve been a long time in planning this, and when you won your Negotiation and changed the rules … Well, you have to realise that I had to make you pay.’ He sneers at me. ‘Is it any wonder that governments agreed to my requests, when I showed them what I was capable of, with but the merest sliver of an RM’s powers? They’ve been frightened of Mortmax for a long time, the consequences of it. And they’re terrified of you.’

Yeah, they have a bloody good reason to be now. HD’s pleasure radiates through me.

‘I knew it would only be a matter of time until it fell apart, and the world’s governments would be left picking up the pieces anyway. The Thirteen have lurched along for an age. But everything ends.’ He fiddles with his tie with his restless jerky fingers.

‘Yeah, when you murder them.’

Rillman’s face darkens. ‘All of them were murderers. Every single one, and I know you’re not stupid enough to believe otherwise. You want to become a murderer, Steven?’

‘I’m Death. It’s what I do.’ Mog quivers in its resting place. And the new and ancient part of me remembers
its endless predation, its racing hunger. It would be easy to give into that. After all, it’s what nature intended. It’s so like humanity to shape things into much more convoluted patterns. I’ve a chance to break them all, starting with the death of Rillman. One enemy removed. ‘And maybe it’s your time,’ I say.

Rillman shakes his head. ‘I’ve read your files, Steven, it’s not in you.’ He’s waiting. There’s a pulsing vein in his forehead and a slight smile breaks the line of his lips. Then he scowls and maybe, for the first time, I have the real measure of the man, and what I see is shocking. There is too much of my rage in there. ‘You’re just not that kind of guy.’

I grab him by his lapels and lift. ‘I am now.’

This close, I can feel what it is that gives him power: the thing that Neti gave him that allows him to slip from the land of the living to the land of the dead, and back again. It shivers inside him like a second beating heart. This is a free pass between the gates of the two worlds, and it belongs to me! I don’t know how Aunt Neti stole it, but I want it back. I yank him to his feet, touch his face with my hands, grip his skull hard, and draw that power from him.

It hurts. Because what he has is fed by pain and anger. I drag it into me; more power, more of the essence that is now so much of what I am. I understand the truth that is the Hungry Death, its persuasive presence, and the tiny thing that is the man before me. I close
one hand around his neck, curious how that might feel, and then the other hand.

And I squeeze.

He grabs my wrists. He struggles. He kicks out at me, and thrashes. But I do not relax my grip. If anything I tighten it. HD laughs, and I laugh too, until I feel Rillman’s spirit pomp through me. It bursts free, not towards the One Tree, but straight into the Deepest Dark. I watch it there, and then, something bright and eight-armed snatches out and grinds out the light within it.

I’m left staring up into the dark.

I drop Rillman’s body.

Mog drifts towards me. I close a fist around its curving snath and back away from the corpse. Let the dust engulf the body.

I’m empty, weak. I can barely stand. My hands grip Mog so tightly that my knuckles ache. It’s the only thing that is keeping me upright.