The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy (90 page)

“Is she OK?”

“Call Dr. Brooker.”

“And what about you?”

I don’t answer, just shift from the office to the first building on my list. All the Pomps I’d sent there are dead. Souls milling on the fringes of the chaos. The house is a black flower of rubble and pipes gushing water. A secondary explosion goes off somewhere. I gather their souls into me and move on.

Each house is more of the same. And at each residence I pomp more souls, not everyone made it back to Number Four. It is the least I can do, and the most. The mortality rate is nearly total. A few
survive. A few I pull from the rubble. Emergency services are already on their way.

Michael. Charlize and Owen. So many. So many of my best are dead.

Lundwall’s spirit finds me, or I find him. He’s in his best suit, looking as stiff and awkward as ever.

He blinks at me. “I’m sorry,” he says, and it tears me up inside.

Why are the dead always so sorry? It’s not his fault. He should be angry. He should be trying to take this out on me. But instead, I think he’s about to cry. This was his first job out of the office. And he worked so hard.

I can barely meet his gaze, but I have to.

“You’ve nothing to be sorry about,” I say.

“Yes, but I do, I heard the click as I opened the door. Maybe if I’d yelled—”

He did better than me.

“No, it was too late by then.”

“I failed you.”

“No, I failed you.” I touch his soul. It slides through me like a razor, and I bear the pain silently.

Poor, poor Lundwall.

He’s not the first, and he’s not the last, but his pomp stays with me. It haunts me more than any death I’ve known since the Schism. How did I let this happen again?

I shift back to Number Four. Brooker and Tim are talking softly, my heart stops for a moment until I see Lissa walk from the sick bay, white hospital blanket around her shoulders. She looks OK, more shocked than anything.

I know I should go over to them. But I have just pomped so many of my best. People I sent to die. I can’t face them, not Dr. Brooker, Tim or Lissa. Instead I walk to the lift and take it down. Hoping that no one has seen me. Not really caring if they have.

O
n the ground floor, I hesitate at the door, maybe the first time I’ve ever hesitated going out.

I’m the only one here, there’s no one at the desk. Then I remember why. Bill Kemble who worked it was one of the Pomps that died this afternoon; no one’s thought to replace him. Maybe I should just get back up there. But the thought fills me with a grim panic. I have to get out, just for a little while.

This is all my fault, how can it be anything but? I was the one that spoke to my Ankous yesterday about being responsible. Sure it had seemed sexy and powerful then, and it had made Lissa smile. But right now just the thought of those words makes me want to vomit.

I never expected this to happen, but surely some part of me must have known. I search my soul, and I can find no presentiment of my Pomps’ deaths. If I could I’d take some comfort in the challenge this throws to the schedule, that it’s not set in stone. But I can’t see a joy in uncertainty, only more fear, and more pain.

Lissa’s going to be OK, but that doesn’t bring back the dead.

The lift doors closing behind me makes up my mind.

Wait too long and people are going to find me here whether I want them to or not. I lean against the front door, and stumble out onto George Street. I swear I can smell smoke. The air buzzes with the distant droning of sirens. News choppers are racing through the sky. Our raid has given everyone something to talk about. Every suburb is burning.

I push my way through the late afternoon press of crowds, my clothes torn and smelling of blood and fire—everyone gets out of my way. A cool wind, blown up from the river, pushes me down the street, and I let it take me.

HD’s a smiling presence mocking me endlessly, pushing me deeper into shock rather than making me more resilient.

The closer I get to Queen Street Mall, the more people I encounter. Regular oblivious folk, all of whom—if the schedule is correct, if the feeling deep within me is right—will be dead far, far sooner than they expect.

The sky is gray and cold, obscuring the pale light of the comet, though every now and then a break in the clouds lets some of the luminosity through.

Dislocated. Hungry for distraction, I stare at these poor soon-tobe-dead things.

Typically for Brisbane, the instant the temperature drops a few degrees, everyone has their jackets out, and most of them are at least a decade old. They just don’t get nearly enough wear to justify buying a new one every year (or even every decade). When winter comes, Brisbanites suddenly dress like it’s the nineties.

The eerie blue light of the comet reflects off everything. I find it grimly appropriate that this thing from the Deepest Dark should paint the city in such an unearthly luminescence.

The clouds close again, the wind strengthens and suddenly rain falls. That soaking, cool, Brisbane autumn rain that has more than a bit of winter in it. Water crashes down, not raindrops but rainstrands. There’s a thunderclap that must echo all the way out to Logan. I don’t jump, I’d seen the lightning flash, but still it startles me. Dulls my senses, like storms always do.

A hand grabs me from behind. I’m spun around and into the face of a very angry Lissa. Damn storm, it had shielded her presence from me.

“Steve, just what the fuck are you doing?”

“I can’t handle this anymore,” I say. “I tried and I failed. I just killed 110 of my best Pomps. I killed them. I was responsible for that.”

“Did you set the bombs? Did you invite the Stirrers into our world?”

“No, I—”

“No, you listen to me, Steve. I love you, but Christ you can be a whinging prick. They died because we are trying to save the world. They knew it was a risk, we all did.

“It’s a tragedy. But you, staying out here, doing nothing, running away, what does that do to their memory?”

“I let them down.”

“No,” she slaps my face, hard. “You did your best. And you’ll keep doing your best. Because you’re all we have. Because you’re my Steven de Selby, and through luck, mischance, whatever the fuck it is, right here and now the whole world needs you to keep it together. And if you don’t, I’ll kill you myself.”

She kisses me hard, in the rain and the cold, in the middle of the Queen Street Mall. It’s passionate and brief, because a familiar foulness has filled my mouth. It drives Lissa back, and has me gasping.

“Are you all right?”

I cough. Spit up something dark, it swirls away in the rain.

Ink.

“Something’s wrong,” I say, then cough up more.

A sparrow smashes to the ground at my feet. I crouch down to look at it. It isn’t one of mine. Or maybe it was but it isn’t anymore. Its beady eyes are filmed in darkness. It shakes its tiny body and ink splatters everywhere. I reach to touch it, and it skips away, beats its wings and claws its way back into the air.

It flies raggedly around my head, and then the sparrow lands jerkily at my feet again. Ink spills from its feathers like an infection. Another lands next to it. And another. I call my crows, but I can feel
their hesitation. They like this about as much as I do. They want to be anywhere but here.

I cough more ink.

“Out of here, now,” I say to Lissa. She doesn’t move, just holds my hand.

The first sparrow looks at me through its filmy eyes. It coughs once, loudly, then after hopping in the direction of my feet, it springs up into the air straight at my head. I fling up my hands. I’m barely moving before it’s pecked at the soft flesh between my forefinger and thumb.

The crows above me caw, but they don’t come any closer.

Sparrows, it’s always the fucking sparrows.

The first sparrow, the one that drew blood, flutters clumsily in the air a few feet from me. It gives out a peculiar little chirp, and the other birds lift into the air, fanning out around me.

I pull from Lissa’s grip. “Run,” I say, but she’s already pulling out her knife, shaking her head.

“Mog,” I whisper, and the blades slide like smoke from beneath my jacket, wind around each other, curl and extend until they are the scythe.

I lash out at a bird, but it’s swifter than my strike. Its dark eyes mock me, as it flutters just out of my reach. Ink spatters the ground with every beat of its wings.

I swing at the sparrows streaming around me, and the blade does nothing to stop them. They swoop around my head, then one by one jab their little beaks into my flesh. When they have supped upon my blood, they crash into the first bloodthirsty little sparrow, hovering before me. There’s a burst of wings, a muddy flash.

I throw an arm in front of my face. Reality shrieks, the air burns. A familiar smell of cologne.

I lower my arm. My knuckles bulge around the scythe.

The sparrows are gone, and he is there.

My skin grows tight around me. HD rages.
Kill him. Kill him.

But I can’t, I can hardly move. I see ghosts all the time, but not this one. Never this one. My fingers loosen their grip on the scythe. This isn’t fair! This was dealt with. I dealt with it!

Morrigan stands in front of me, dressed immaculately in the suit he wore when last I saw him. His jaw marked with just a hint of stubble, eyes as steely as Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan. All he’s missing is the .44 Magnum, though he doesn’t need it.

He straightens his tie, checks his cufflinks, as though he’s going to a funeral. The rain doesn’t touch him, even as I’m drenched to the bone, clothes hanging off me like a wet dog. And somehow, that releases me from my shock. Morrigan looking neat as a pin, looking like he experiences resurrection as a matter of course.

I tighten my grip on Mog and, again, prepare to swing. Happy fucking birthday, Morrigan.

A couple of shoppers look on as though they can’t help themselves, umbrellas open, eyes wide. HD suggests we take them out first. I lower the scythe, my heart pounds in my ears.

Morrigan stretches, cracks his neck, most ungodlike but very Morrigan. “Thank you for your blood, I needed that, a drop or two of Death for a bit of life. I have to say, Steven, that you’ve done all right for yourself. I’m very impressed, honestly. Shame it’s all got to end.”

Something’s not quite right about Morrigan. And it’s not that he shouldn’t be here at all.

It’s him, but there’s an insubstantial quality to him, for all his debonair stylings, as though he might fall apart in a moment. This I have to take as a good thing. There’s a burst of lightning directly behind us. I can almost see the bones through his suit. The shoppers hurry on. But this is Queen Street Mall. There are always more shoppers.

Lightning diminishes my senses, I don’t catch the movement but Morrigan is suddenly just out of reach of my scythe. I have to grab Lissa by the wrist to stop her stepping in front of me. She’s got two knives now. But this requires more than knife work.

“I like your stick, Steven,” Morrigan says. “Pity no one’s taught you how to use it, but who would? Mr. D is far too incompetent, and that thing inside you, it knows nothing of finesse.”

“You were dead, more than dead, nothing but a stinking memory, and if I could I would have had that removed. Your soul, if it ever existed in the first place, was destroyed.”

“Death, souls, both are so intangible.”

His voice takes on an avuncular tone, and I know I’m going to get a lecture. Now, maybe now it’s time to attack, but he’s just too far away.

“How do you catch the wind, Steven? How do you destroy someone who has made deals with things older than time?” Morrigan chuckles. “You, like all your family, have always been focused on the narrow little world that is Mortmax: the good death. The soul pomped. The Stirrer stalled. The stockholders happy. You were never about the big picture. It was always ‘this is impossible,’ or ‘I can’t do that’—never ‘how can I achieve my objectives?’ And yet, here you are, Lord Orcus.” He dips his head in Lissa’s direction. “Ms. Jones. I can honestly say what an absolute pleasure it is seeing both of you, and a couple too, I’m surprised. I can’t say that I took you as the sort to stick around, my dear. I mean, you and Eric Tremaine? What a travesty!”

“Can’t I cut him, please?” Lissa growls.

“No,” I say. “He’s too dangerous.”

Morrigan waves a finger in my direction. “Dangerous doesn’t even begin to describe what I am, Steven.”

“You might sound like Morrigan, but you’re not him.”

“Oh, I’m very much Morrigan,” he says, warmly. “When I discov
ered what was going to happen, what was going to come, that out of the Deepest Dark a god was rising and the End of Days was a
fait accomplis
, I chose my side. I had been having visions for years. Of an end that was definite. Not long after that the god started whispering, and I listened.

“Before my…epiphany, I won’t deny that I was ambitious, but Ankou was enough for me. To be RM, it was a power tempered with such awful costs—I’d not wish it on my worst enemy, which would be…you, I guess.”