The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy (51 page)

I walk over to the bar and pour myself a Bundy—a tall glass, neat. My pinkie finger still dangles a little. I down the rum in one gulp. No one has moved, not even Tim.

“Oh, and merry fucking Christmas,” I say, waving the glass in the air. If it weren’t for the bar I’m leaning on I’d drop to the floor in a heap. I nearly do, and whatever shock my presence created is broken. The whole room seems to move toward me.

“What the hell happened to you?” Tim asks, rushing from where the two government guys stand: both of them looking at me curiously. What are they going to write in their reports tomorrow?

I lift up the mess that is my left hand—though it’s not nearly as messy as it was—and point at the door. “Downstairs. Broom cupboard. Francis Rillman. The fucker tried—well, more than tried—to torture me.”

Tim’s out of there, running back the way I’ve come. I look around me. Where’s Lissa? Then I’m swaying. The rest of my staff aren’t sure what they should be doing. I don’t blame them. I can hear their elevated heartbeats. And then there’s one I recognize.

“Steven! Oh, Steven.”

Lissa’s there, she’s found me, she’s holding me up. I’ve never been so happy to be held up, to be bound up in her arms. There’s stuff we need to discuss. Not here, not now, but as soon as we can.

“Where were you?” I ask.

“Your office. Jesus, Steve, I’ve been trying to call you. I was getting worried, but I thought … Well, you’ve been all over the place lately.” She touches my face. “Oh, my darling.”

“Francis Rillman just tortured me.” I grin at her. “I’ve never been tortured before. I think I did all right.”

She walks me to a chair. The staff are all looking on. The poor green bastards, I really should say something, but the breath is out of me.

“Could you get the knife out of my back?” I manage at last.

She pulls, then reconsiders. “Maybe we should wait for Dr. Brooker. It seems to be lodged in your spine.”

“Might explain why it hurts so much.”

“It’s going to be OK,” she says, wiping blood from my face. And while I don’t seem to be bleeding, there’s a lot of it.

“Yeah, absolutely.”

No one else seems sure what to do. I get the feeling that I’m letting them all down. I don’t want to do that. After all, Rillman’s taken care of. My wounds will heal and no one else has been hurt.

I get out of the chair, with a little help from Lissa.

“Sorry,” I say to my crew. “You all party on. Really, it’s OK. Someone turn up the music.”

As inspirational speeches go it really doesn’t cut it.

Lissa wipes some more blood from my face. “Steven, most bosses just get drunk and flirt with their staff at Christmas parties.”

Tim belts back up the stairs, panting. Oscar’s behind him looking very pissed off. Tim passes me my phone. It’s whole again. I blink at it. I can see where the glass front is finishing healing itself: the tiniest tracework of cracks. Must be a cracker of a twenty-four month plan.

“Rillman’s gone,” Tim says. “There’s just the chair, and blood.” He looks from me to Lissa and back. His eyes are frantic. I can tell he wants to hit something. “You poor bastard.”

I don’t have time or the energy to comfort him. “The guy was out cold when I left him.”

“Well, he’s not there now.”

I look up at Oscar he’s only just getting off his mobile. “What happened? How did he—”

“Rillman, it has to be him, he killed Jacob. Stabbed, in his own house.”

“So who was it that I was talking to in my office?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“Look, someone died today,” Oscar says. “I’m going to find the bastard who did this and there will be payback. No one does this to one of my crew.”

I nod, a bit woozy with lack of blood. I know how he feels. I’m mad enough about this as it is, but if Rillman had tortured anyone else I would not be able to express my rage. At least physical damage is only going to be a memory to me.

Poor Jacob is dead and gone and, for all I know, he wasn’t even properly pomped. That’s too high a price.

“He was working for me, too,” I say. “We’ll both make the bastard pay.”

A thought strikes me. A dark one. “Do you have a photo of Jacob?”

Oscar nods, fiddles with his mobile and passes it to me. The face I’m staring at is the face of the man who hit me. This is not good.

“That’s him, the man who attacked me.”

Oscar shakes his head. “Couldn’t be. He’s been dead for twelve hours.”

Great, Rillman can change his appearance. The question is, can he change his appearance only to those who are dead? Or are all the living open to him as well?

Just where might Rillman be now?

My gaze shifts from Oscar to Tim and Lissa, then to the crowd of Pomps around me.

Paranoia plus.

D
idn’t I tell you to keep out of trouble?” Dr. Brooker grunts, looking at my hand. The finger has melded nicely. Not bad for a couple of hours. The wound in my leg is scabbed up too. He looks from me to Lissa and Tim. “I did tell him to keep out of trouble.”

I’m on a drip, blood filling my veins. I’m on my second bag, and I’m starting to feel great. Brooker had nearly fainted at the sight of me. Anyone else and I would have been dead, or at the very least in a coma, he reckons.

“This is getting irritating,” I say.

“It’d be rather more fatal than irritating if you weren’t who you are. So it’s definitely Rillman?” Tim says.

“Yeah, but I still can’t understand why he did it. I mean, I can’t have pissed him off. The bastard doesn’t know me.” Rillman may not be the first person who has wanted to torture me, but he’s certainly been the first to try.

“I think Rillman’s testing the limits of your abilities. Trying to find out what can kill you.”

“Neill said that Rillman’s been a thorn in Mortmax’s side for a while.”

“Not here,” Tim says. “There’s no record of a Rillman for years in our system.” He sighs. “Do you think that perhaps the Orcus are using you to draw Rillman out? I mean, there are links, plenty of
them. If Rillman’s seeking an end to the status quo you would be attractive to him.”

I chew on that for a while. “Yeah, I’m new to my powers. I don’t have any allies as such.”

“And you managed what he failed to do,” Lissa says. “You brought someone back from Hell.”

“You pomped him. You said he seemed calm.”

Lissa nods. “Maybe resigned is the better term. Most dead people are that. Perhaps he had decided on his plan of action. Maybe he was seeking me out. Death would be an easy way of doing that. He knows how we work, and it seems no real obstacle to him.”

“Think about that,” I say. “Think about how reckless you might be if death holds no fear, no real consequence, and you want revenge.”

“It might make you willing to experiment more. Particularly in unconventional ways of killing an RM,” Tim says.

“You’re telling me that no one has ever tried to kill an RM before?”

Tim rolled his eyes. “Well, obviously they have, but without success, unless it’s part of a Schism, killing off an RM’s Pomps, weakening them until they’re able to be killed. It’s messy, convoluted and can really only happen inhouse. Remember, as you’ve probably read in my briefing notes,” Tim says, giving me a stern look, “RMs give Pomps the ability to pomp. You turn them into the doorway that gives access to the Underworld and closes out Stirrers, but they also give you something in return. Through them you are able to shift, to heal. One of the reasons the party was so subdued had to do with the amount of energy all of us were expending to keep you alive.”

“That, and the music, I mean those Christmas carols were tragic!” I say. Lissa glares at me, reminds me to stay on track. Tim shakes his head, but continues.

“Rillman is obviously aiming at non-traditional methods.”

I remember Mr. D’s words about a paradigm shift back when Morrigan was around. “He’s trying to effect a change. A real change to the system.”

Tim nods. “You’d have to admit that killing an RM without destroying their Pomps is a much less bloody transition.” He grins. “I hate to say it, Steve, but if it’s going to come down to me getting it and you getting it, or just you getting it, I know what I’d rather—”

“Hey!”

He raises his hands in the air. “With the proviso that I can get my revenge. I’m in no hurry to lose any more of my family.”

“So why would Rillman want to get rid of me? I can’t believe it’s just because I succeeded in my Orpheus Maneuver and he didn’t.” But I can believe that, part of me at least. If I had failed, and for a while I thought I had, bitterness would poison me.

“Did Morrigan have any allies? Maybe Rillman was one of them,” Tim says

“No, I don’t think so. Morrigan ended all his allegiances brutally. By the Negotiation I think his allies and enemies were indistinguishable.”

Tim nods. “Even the Stirrers were working against him.”

“What we need to do is find Rillman before he actually succeeds in killing me. As well as organize a Death Moot, run Mortmax efficiently and—”

“Don’t forget about the Christmas party.” Tim smiles, nodding to the door outside. “Well, you’ve already ruined that.”

Dr. Brooker grunts, looks at us both quizzically. “Christmas party?”

Oh, shit.

“Didn’t you get your invitation?” Tim and I say at the same time.

“Maybe we need to cancel the Death Moot,” I continue, changing the subject.

Lissa and Tim shake their heads. “No. That’s one thing you cannot do. A Death Moot must never be canceled. It’s a sign of weakness, and you don’t want to present any weakness to the Orcus.”

“But people are trying to kill us.”

“Death may well be preferable,” Tim says.

Speak for yourself.
“How do I look?” I say, getting up, straightening my hair as best I can. My fingers catch on what I suspect are large clumps of dried blood.

Lissa smiles at me. “Like Death warmed up.”

At least someone’s kept their sense of humor.

I don’t feel safe at home.

The rest of the Christmas party was, well, in a word, awkward. Death is something of a party killer at the best of times. Particularly when I spent a good deal of it staring intently at every staff member, or asking difficult questions that in theory only my people should be able to answer. Yes, there’s going to be a staff meeting about
that
. Some of the basic pomping facts that these people didn’t know shocked me. I was almost relieved when a truck collision called a good half-dozen of them away. Call me mean-spirited, but I am Australia’s RM and death is my business.

Lissa had stayed by my side the whole evening, even submitted to my paranoid questions—with curt, often embarrassing, answers. Of course I knew it was her, I’m intimately familiar with her heartbeat. I have to believe that Rillman’s mimicry doesn’t extend that far.

Lissa’s asleep almost the moment her head hits the pillow. I text Suzanne:
Need to talk.

A few seconds later I have a response:
Yes, you do. Usual place. Let’s make it another lesson
.

Yeah, but this time I’ll be directing the questions.

I shift there. The Deepest Dark whispers around me. I wince, expecting more pain than I actually get.

Suzanne smiles at me, and she’s in my coat. I’d ask for it back but she seems wounded in some way, a little less confident. It was less than twenty-four hours since we were here last, and I had left her to witness to the fate of one of her agents.

For the first time I see something—I hesitate to call it human—inside her. A vulnerability that I had never expected to encounter in an RM. It actually stops me for a moment. Reminds me that I’m not the only one capable of feeling pain.

“Your agent?”

Suzanne shakes her head. “It wasn’t good. I don’t want to talk about it. He is no longer in any pain.”

Above us the great inky mass of the Stirrer god swallows an ever-increasing portion of the sky like some gargantuan and evil lava lamp.

“I was tortured today.”

“I am aware of that,” Suzanne says. “Don’t forget I have ten Pomps on your payroll. They’re switched on enough to pick up a phone. I knew you would be in touch soon enough. Your Lissa, she’s sleeping?”

“Yeah, what’s that got to do with anything?”

“Everything. This is your Lissa. This is all of them.” Suzanne crouches down, picks up a handful of dust and does whatever it is that she does. It dances around her hand, shining ever brighter. I can see Lissa’s face there, her eyes closed, whispering in her sleep. Then, with a single chopping gesture, the dust drops to the ground. “They all need sleep. Not that it is enough in the end. Gravity changes them all. They shift down, they grow heavy in their bones. They lose swift thought and swift action. They decay. That is all they have, a trudging forward into decrepitude and dust. And yet it is so beautiful. So
tragic. And far better than it was before. She sleeps, your girl, but it is not enough to hold back the final sleep.”