The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy (30 page)

“I never expected it to be easy.” The truth is, I hadn’t really had a clue about what to expect or, until Mr. D gave me the option, that it would be possible.

“You’re in the Underworld, Steven. You’re not on
The Price is Right,
or jumping a fence.” He scratches his head. “Well, it’s exactly like both, only the price of losing is death—the fence is fatally electric, probably has skulls painted all over it, or it’s made out of skulls.”

Wal looks up at me, and rolls his eyes. “You’ve got to hope for the best, mate,” he says. His little wings flutter in that disturbing way that scrapes the bones beneath my flesh.

“Yeah,” I say, “because everything’s been working out well so far.”

“You sent Lissa back, didn’t you? And you’re still alive—well, sort of, if we ignore technicalities.” I look down at him, unmoved. “The other option, of course, is that you stay here,” Wal huffs.

“In that regard,” Charon says, rubbing his long hands together, “we can be very accommodating. I’m much happier bringing people here than taking them back. It seems wrong. In fact, it doesn’t just seem wrong, it
is
wrong. That whole natural order of things, you know.”

He’s right. There’s no point in arguing. I nod my head. “OK. Send me back, take what you will.”

He grins. “That’s my job. Now, you know the deal.”

“The giving up something?”

“No, the other one.”

“Which is?”

“Don’t look back…and run.”

And I want to argue the logic of that. After all, we just spoke about The Orpheus and his looking back, but it’s too late. Charon claps his hands, once. There is a deep booming sound that reverberates through my body so that I feel as though I’m some sort of living bell.

Charon’s gone.

The air feels and smells different, at once fresher and fouler. The scent of newly turned dirt. A warm breeze blows against my skin. Then all that’s gone and I’m walking down a metal corridor lit with the blue lights of the Underworld, my footfalls ringing loudly. I’m not walking toward the light, but through the light.

I can smell doughnuts again, then something like burning tires.

“What do you reckon, Wal?” My voice carries uncertainly through the air.

The cherub is remarkably silent. I consider staring at my arm, but I’m not exactly sure what constitutes looking back. These rules can be extremely loose and terribly precise.

Then something chuckles, and it’s not Wal.

I remember Charon’s other advice. I run all right. The Underworld never lets you get too casual with it. I put on as much speed as I can, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

I run through hot and cold spaces, wet and dry. The air alternately clings to me or pushes. This is the edge of life and death, both forces are tugging at me, even as I go. I’m hoping for some sort of tidal shift, that life will start to grow more potent, and soon.

There are noises. Liquid, horrible noises, and scurryings, and more laughter.

The blue lights flicker.

I know not to look back, but that laughing… Something is drawing nearer, every footfall louder than the last one, every step faster than my own, and I’m no longer running, but sprinting, crashing down the hallway. Strobing blue lights line the walls. It’s as though I’m racing down a long, halogen-lit disco, only whatever is behind me is more terrible than anything a disco ever produced.

It slobbers and howls. For a moment I think of Cerberus, the Hound of Hell, but then it’s cackling, and dragging bones or bells along the ground.

I want to look back. I want to know what it is that will have me, to see if I’ve actually put any distance between us. The want is burning a hole between my shoulders, my skin is tight. The hairs on the back of my neck rise. But I keep my head down, keep sprinting until the tendons in my legs tear, until the muscles in my flesh burn.

And then I trip over, and I’m sliding on the floor.

It’s on top of me and over me, and it’s sliding into me, crashing into my mouth, my ears, my pores.

I don’t scream until I’m back in the tower, but by then it’s too late. I’m standing woozily, naked and blood-stained in the cold.

I know now why you can’t look back: you see what’s chasing you, and you may as well give up, may as well not bother running, because it is terrible and remorseless. Life, the living world, was what pursued me down that hallway. And it caught me, wrapped me in the mad vitality of its arms and flesh and showed me that it was as cruel as death ever is.

And here I am, back in the land of the living.

I
don’t even get time to laugh, because a moment later souls start rushing and scraping through me. They’re zeroing in on me. It doesn’t hurt as much as it once did, maybe because I’ve been to Hell and back.

All of a sudden I know that, other than Morrigan, I’m the last Pomp alive in Australia. Sam—well, her spirit—is here, looking extremely pissed off.

“The bastard got me too, Steve,” she says. “They’ll be coming for you now. All of them.”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“Don’t be sorry, just get moving. He was fast. I was driving through the outer suburbs around Logan, heading toward the PA hospital. He shifted right into the fucking car.”

I nod my head. “Apparently he can do that now.”

“He said to tell you he has what you want. That’s all. Then he shot me. And here I am.”

“Yeah, I’m so sorry, Sam.” I’m not sure what I’m sorry about. Everything, I suppose. But the words catch in my throat. Sam doesn’t deserve to be pomped by me, she should be the one still alive.

“So am I,” Sam says, “but it had to happen. Mom died from a stroke, a series of them. I swore that I’d never die in bed but I never expected Morrigan to fulfil my wish. He was my friend. I’ve known him for nearly thirty years.”

“He was everyone’s friend,” I say. “Don’s waiting for you.”

“He bloody better be.” Sam frowns. “There’s something different about you.” She looks around the tiny interior of the iron tower. “Where’s Lissa?”

Her words are little more than a breath, then Sam’s gone, too. I call Lissa’s name. Nothing.

There is no one in the tower except for me now. The place stinks of old blood, and there is indeed blood everywhere—my blood. Oddly enough I feel remarkably sanguine. Whatever I had lost was replaced, though that doesn’t mean I am without wounds.

Where I had cut to reach the portal arteries there are two thick nuggets of scar. They have healed, but they ache, and when my fingers find the rough cicatrices of my knife work, I have to grit my teeth with the pain. The tattoo of Wal is gone as well, and where it was there is nothing but pale skin.

I’m shivering, and naked. My backpack has come with me but it and its contents are coated with mud—a final residue of the Underworld, perhaps. I scrape off what I can and quickly get dressed. My clothes are a little stiff, and my every movement hurts. I manage it. The cold has seeped into the fabric, and now it is pressed up against me. I feel like I’ve dragged myself out of icy water onto an icy shore.

“Lissa.” I can’t feel her, and if she was anywhere nearby I would be able to.

There’s nothing.

I’ve lost her. I almost had her. We almost got a chance at a life together. I failed her and I failed my future. I sit in the tower, my knees pulled up to my chest, and sob.

Finally, I get up, wipe my hands on my jeans and step out of the tower. There’s only so much grief I can allow myself. I am alive and I am still hunted. The storm’s passed, gone on to drench someone else, or has dissolved into the ether. And it must have passed a while ago. The air is dry again.

By the tower is a bike, and on the bike, a note.

My watch says it’s ten o’clock in the morning, Sunday. I’ve been gone since Friday. It’s one of those beautiful days when the sky is so eye-searingly bright that it’s almost beyond blue, and there’s a warm breeze coming in off the river. I want to take pleasure from it, but I can’t.

Besides, there’s little pleasure to be had. I can taste Stirrers, they’re filling my city. It’s as though the air has thickened with some sort of grease. A bleak psychic cloud smudges the city as heavily as any stormfront. Tomorrow, if not tonight, things are going to tip into Regional Apocalypse. But that’s not my biggest concern.

I quickly run through my possessions.

I’ve got Death’s key to Number Four and my knife. I’ve still got an mp3 with about two hours worth of charge, as well as my phone, around $2000 in hundred-dollar notes and a couple of twenties. Oh, and a bike.

The world isn’t exactly my oyster, but I’ve looked Death in the face and that counts for something. Well, I’m going to make it count for something. This is going to hurt Morrigan.

I ride out from under the cover of the trees and over the fallen-down fence, putting the iron tower behind me, then cycle into West End. It’s an inner-city suburb, but leafy and crowded with shops and cafes. Made up of detritus and dreams, there’s a vitality to West End, a sense of community. It’s old Brisbane with tatty finery and makeup. Maybe that’s why some of the shops are still open. People cling to whatever normalcy they can when the world falls down around them.

Two Stirrers walk down Boundary Street. Both smile at me while
I slide my knife down my palm. “It’s not going to make any difference,” one says.

I stall them. It certainly clears the air here, though.

I walk into the nearest cafe and order a long black from staff who may have served more disheveled customers, but not many. The coffee is scalding and it strips away a little of the cold within me. It’s far better stuff than they have in the Underworld.

Lissa’s gone. There’s nothing I can do about that, except get angry.

Coffee done, I buy a new shirt and a pair of black jeans, then a hat and sunglasses, to avoid attention and the increasing glare of the sun. I slip my old clothes into a bin.

Then I insert a new sim card into my phone and call Tim. There’s no answer. I try his home number, it rings out. So does his work number. Morrigan has Tim without a doubt. I try Alex.

He answers the phone in a couple of rings. “Steve,” he says.

“He’s got Tim.”

“The prick,” Alex says. “The whole bloody city’s going to hell here.”

“Yeah,” I say, “Regional Apocalypse.”

Alex snorts. “Never liked that Morrigan. Always seemed too smug if you ask me.”

“Listen, I’m sorry to pull you into this.”

“Don’t give me that shit. You’re not pulling me into this. When my father died, Morrigan dragged me into it, willing or not,” Alex says. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. As far as I see it, you’re the only one who can stop this.”

“Maybe, but I’m sorry anyway.” Still, that realization makes it easier to ask him for the things I need.

Alex sounds a little surprised by the time I’m through with my list, but his voice is resolute. “I can get all of that. I’ll see you at four. The Place?”

“Yeah.”

I throw out the sim card and then ride as fast as I can to the Corolla in Toowong, hoping it’s still where I left it. To my surprise it is, obviously not an attractive enough vehicle for anyone to steal. I open the driver’s side door and sit down behind the wheel. The car feels so empty without her.

Working as a Pomp, you have a pretty good idea of the forecast, even if you don’t know the specifics. But I’d never really understood until I’d failed Lissa so badly. There’s always pain coming. There’s always loss on its way. That’s a given. Doing this job, you know it more than most. It makes you appreciate the little things all that much more. Sometimes that’s worse, because the more you hold onto something the harder it is to let it go. Life and death are all about letting go.

That’s the one lesson the universe will keep teaching you: that until you stop breathing, until you let go, life is loss, and loss is pain. Sometimes though, if you’re lucky, you can find some grace. I’d seen it enough at funerals, a kind of beaten dignity. Maybe that’s all you can hope for. Maybe that’s all I can hope for.

I’d promised my parents that I’d do my best to go on, and that drove me, hard. Jesus, I’m lucky I had a chance to say goodbye, most Pomps don’t even get that. Shit, I’d only managed because of Lissa. And now she was gone.

Alex is waiting for me. He smiles, though I know he really wants to tell me that I look like shit. It’s one of the ways he’s different from his father. Don would have told me straight up.

“You got that aspirin?” I have a headache, but that’s not what it’s for.

He nods and passes the packet to me. I take a handful of the pills and swallow them.

“You sure that’s a good thing to do?”

“It’s not a good thing at all. But aspirin’s the quickest way I know of to thin my blood,” I say. “Have you got the suit?”

He nods. “Oh, and I got something else.” He chucks a heavy black vest at me. I catch it with a grunt.

“What’s this?”