The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy (81 page)

Mr. D said to sort this out. But I thought it would be in a much different fashion, over a table, maybe with some lawyers or their paranormal equivalent (almost indistinguishable from the real thing). When I pulled those souls from the water. I really pissed it off. I get that now in a way that no waterspouts or threats could ever really convey.

We walk and we wade, we walk and we trudge. An endless slog. I hear whale songs again. I feel the curious nips and prods of fish. I do not come to harm, just an endless trudging. We do not halt.

When I need to, I piss into the sea, but I do not need to often—more’s the pity. I’ve dried out on the inside, becoming something sere and empty, only capable of movement, and then only in the direction that I am pushed.

I’m not sure how much later it is, but I almost don’t realize that my legs have stopped moving, until I do. And then I have no idea how long I’ve been standing still.

The hood is snatched off, whatever does the snatching is gone by the time my eyes adjust. I’m alone and chained to a wall.

I turn my head. I can’t see or hear anything different. My ears pop.

I can’t feel water anymore, I’m surrounded by air.

For a moment, I wonder if I am going to explode. All that pressure is gone. But I do not, HD works again at keeping me whole. Maybe because it cares, or because it so hates the Death of the Water? I don’t know.

The air is loud with my breathing and stinks of brine and my sweat. I drop to the ground. It is hard and stony. It digs into my flesh. But it doesn’t cut. I can be as unyielding as it, things weigh down my wrists, enclose me in cold.

My shoes are gone, and one of my socks. I peel the other one off, and a good bit of my skin comes with it. I throw it as far away from me as possible, which isn’t very far in my present condition. I imagine Tim mocking me for such a girly throw. I imagine Lissa, picking the thing up in disgust, and showing me how it’s done.

I realize that I am thirsty. Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink. I can’t help but smile at that, of course smiling cracks my lips, and it’s only once the blood starts flowing that my body thinks to heal itself.

I’m alone.

In a space, dark, but for a soft luminosity so slight I can barely see my hands. It’s more murk than a darkness. My clothes are wet and tight around me, the sleeves of my jacket have shrunk, half the buttons have come off my shirt. My wrists are bound in cold iron. Beneath me I can feel a tangle of chain, leading back into the wall. The smell of salt, and rot grows heavier in the air. At least there is air, I suppose. And water, fresh water, I can sense it nearby.

The smell of it, or the pulse of it.

All I want to do is drink. I’ve a thirst that could tear my throat out.

I scramble across the rocks, and, at the limits of my chains, I find the pool—if it can even be called that. It’s more a damp space in the stone from which I can work handfuls of that glorious water into my mouth. It’s salty, or maybe my lips, my flesh, are so permeated by the sea I can’t help but taste salt in everything.

Regardless, the water is the sweetest thing I have ever tasted.

Until my stomach rebels, and tries to push the water back out. I pull my knees in close, and rock backward and forward. It seems to help. If I was anyone but me, I’d be throwing up right now. HD takes over. I feel it persuade my guts to function, to draw this water inside me—not a pleasant sensation.

Time passes. Or maybe it doesn’t. I can’t tell anymore.

I try and shift, again. And fail. Again. I didn’t expect it to work. Sometimes this mode of transportation is even more piss-poor in its reliability than a cut-price airline. I’d be better off with a bloody
go
card. One of the things that neither Suzanne nor Mr. D had taught me was that shifting is so fragile, so easily disrupted. I’d learned that the hard way.

I beat my fists against the stone. Frustration a painful knot in my belly that even the torn knuckles can’t release.

I sense a shift in the World Pulse, a subtle change in its rhythm. Something has happened above, and I can’t tell what is.

My tears, when they come, are soft and silent, the most gentle of fluid, but I’m too dry to produce much.

Fuck it! Fuck it! Fuck it!

I whisper the lyrics to Queen’s “We are the Champions.” Feeling in the mood for some irony. And, you know, it helps. I’m about halfway through, my voice rising from a cracked frailty to something almost defiant, when the earth shudders.

And I stop. My singing’s not that bad surely. “To be Death, and to be brought so low. How must that feel?” A voice whispers from the water, the voice of the water itself.

“Not too bad really,” I say, as my teeth start chattering. I wipe at my eyes. “I’ve been treated worse—believe me. I’ve enemies, real enemies on the surface. Oh, and I did some time in retail you know, and the customers—”

“Shut up.”

“Just answering your question.” I gesture, chains rattling, at the cave walls. “This is not how I usually organize a meeting. Generally you work through my assistant Lundwall…well, at least the first time. There is much chagrin, a few embarrassed phone calls, until…but not this. Not the chains not the, well, coercive nature of it all.”

“You would not have come.”

“Believe me. You were next on my list. And, hey, I called you, remember.”

“You would not have come here of your own free will. You would not have seen.”

“Yeah, well, I would have preferred this nice café in Toowong. Anywhere but here, really. But you were…it’s not too late. Just check my diary—the app’s on my phone.”

“You earthly things, so complicated, and so ridiculous.” A figure slips from the water. It is dark and shimmering at once. Opaque and translucent. And, even here, even in the depths of a sea so harsh in its hatred of me, I can’t help but notice that it’s slightly balding: in fact, it’s got something of a comb-over going on.

HD responds to the Death of Water with a snarl, and it’s all I can do to stop it wrenching at the chains.

My balding erstwhile ally sighs. “I am Water. I am the grasping of the wet. The pulling down. The deathly draw, and the gyring storm. You called me, and when you call me, it will always end up here.”

“Enough of the teen poetry. Let’s just get to it.”

Water flashes me an angry grin. “Those souls were mine,” it says. “And you owe me one more.”

“I know I did wrong, but I had a sense of obligation. Those people died because of me. Haven’t you taken enough?”

“There is a purpose to what I do. Your walk should have shown you that.”

“The machines?”

“Yes, the machines. They are my weapons against the Stirrer god. They’re the engines that my dead stoke. To steal from me is to steal from this world’s defense.”

“I don’t doubt it, but those souls were mine. They should have never died.”

“
Should
is the only way of it. All things
should
die.” It looms over me. “You cannot tell me that you do not understand that.”

“But it wasn’t their time.”

“Time has no relevance. What is a year, a decade, a century? These things are meaningless to the Deepest Depths out of which we’re all sprung, and of which these depths are mere mimicry, and into which we will return. What agency we have is in the service of that journey.”

“Well, it’s a bit grim though isn’t it?”

“Your accoutrement would agree with that assessment.”

“My accoutra-what?”

Water crouches beside me. “The scythe, it’s not a happy smiley puppet is it?”

I have to grin at that, and Water grins back.

“The work is cold work, dark work, but necessary for all that. I lost my souls, a price must be paid.”

“And I will pay it. You have my word.”

Water’s smile grows wide. “You will pay it.”

“Not now. Not now with the Stirrer god so close. But I will pay it.”

Water frowns. “Yes, that is a priority. But you do not understand.”

“What?”

“That this is not the first time. Nor will it be the last that such things threaten the earth. I will always demand my toll. When this god is defeated there will come another, and more engines will need to be built. It never stops until it does, and when that day comes you and I may be the only ones to see it.”

“And how many have you defeated. How many gods?”

“One. There is only one, and its manifestation.”

“Manifestation?”

“The god will walk among you all, as one of you. The god will light the sky. It always lights the sky as prelude to its shrouding of it.”

“So there will be two battles?”

“Yes.”

“Lucky there are two of us then,” I say. “So how the hell do we deal with this?”

“We make plans. Curious and cruel, and we save this world, and when it’s done–”

“I will fulfil my promise,” I say, feeling the chill of it. The reckless horror. Don’t make a stupid deal with Death, but sometimes you have to.

I reach out a hand. We shake. Then we talk saving the world. Here, beneath the sea, with the two of us, I can almost believe that it’s possible. The one thing I don’t let myself consider for long, can’t let myself consider, even though I already know the answer, is how I am going to fulfil my end of the bargain.

What human soul could I ever knowingly send down here?

The Death of the Water turns its head, as though someone has banged on a door behind him. I hear it too: a swift knocking.

No, not a knocking, a pulse. The frantic beating of a heart. And, for all its pace, I recognize it.

No. What is she doing?

“Lissa.” The word comes from me, almost an involuntary response.

Water dips its head, cups a hand around its right ear.

“Yes, I have kept you too long. Yes, she is right to do this.” What the hell is it talking about? “You may go now. You may answer that call.”

“I can’t, you’ve shackled me.”

Water raises its hand absently. The iron drops from my wrists. I rub at the red marks there. “Thank you.” It’s hard to muster any enthusiasm, but I can’t risk offending it again. I need to get out of here, and fast. Before…

“You will not be thanking me for long.”

There’s a pressure in my skull. A distant rumbling. Something tugs at my flesh—countless somethings. It’s like shifting only more intimate, there are all sorts of sharp to it. The skin across my chest burns.

I look down. Blood stains my shirt.

Water turns its head behind me. Squints, as though the beating is coming from there now. I can’t tell. It seems to be all around me, a halo of noise.

Water’s eyes widen. “You do have friends. Such remarkable friends.”

My body shudders. Folds into itself, utterly ignoring anything that my muscles tell it to do. I try and straighten. But I can’t.

What the fuck is happening?

“This is not over,” Water says. “You have given your word.”

Her heartbeat builds to a tectonic sort of rumbling. It rushes around me like a murder of crows, sound given form slaps and scratches at my face. Lissa’s heart pounds; beats so fast that surely it will be the death of it.

Why? What is happening on the surface? What is the cause of her terror and pain?

Then I understand.

Summoning.

Lissa has performed a summoning.

I try and shift, but it’s too late, she’s already begun.

“Don’t fight it, or you will kill her,” Water says.

I can taste her blood, feel it jetting from her veins.

I know how that feels. I’ve done this before. I cut my arteries, and bled myself dry to draw Mr. D to me. I never realized that it was agony for both parties. I would take all this pain from her. Free her of suffering, but I can’t.

I give myself up to it. Water’s right, I can’t fight this. And even if I don’t struggle, there’s still a chance Lissa might die.

I let Lissa summon me.

I
’m crouched over and dropping to my knees in a point between Hell and earth. A nexus, not quite either.