The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy (93 page)

Lissa grabs my wrist. Pulls something from her pocket. Brace paint. She quickly traces my wrist with the triangular brace symbol. Despite staring at the Brits with their brace paint bottles it had completely gone out of my head.

“What would I do without you?” I ask, sliding what’s left of the paint into my pocket.

“I often wonder about that.” Lissa steps back to check out her work. “Should give you a little protection from Stirrers at least.”

“Thank you.”

“Steven,” she says as I push the fire-escape door open.

“What?” I say, sounding more abrupt than I mean

“I do love you, you know.”

“Yeah, I know.” I flash her a wicked smile. Lissa’s lips thin. I push through the door and let it slam behind me.

I sprint down the stairs to the ground floor, enjoying the lack of HD in my skull.

It’s magnificent and freeing all at once. I’ve never felt so clear headed. I push the front doors open and walk out onto the street. Sirens are sounding. Traffic is backed up along George Street. The air is chilled with the presence of the hole into Hell. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Or how I am going to do it.

Then I feel HD, almost as intensely as I did on the throne.

It’s time I faced my other half. Even if all it wants to do is kill me, it’s the only hope I have. The only hope any of us have.

W
alking down George Street, HD is an absence and a calling, my magnetic North. It’s everywhere, shifting around the city.

I’m given impressions of a confusion of suburbs. Toowong one moment, Eight Mile Plains the next, then New Farm, West End and Kangaroo Point. But never further than a few kilometers from the city, and always, briefly, between each shift, somewhere nearby. Its movements don’t make any sense to me. But I know I will find it, if I just keep walking. I know that it will come back to me, because it has to.

I pass Queen Street Mall. Barriers are being quickly erected, and Pomps stall whatever comes through. So far I can see no casualties. The cops stationed there are in full riot gear, brace symbols painted over their vests.

I’m not used to seeing this. They hold their weapons with a casual seriousness, I’ve no doubt they’re good at what they do. But it alarms me to see rifles in Queen Street Mall. It isn’t the eighties anymore. I feel like we’ve stepped back in time. Alex is talking to one of the men. They’re both staring at the crack between the worlds, and I’ve no time to chat so I leave them be.

Ari’s got her crew fanning through my ranks. They nod at me, as I walk by. Ari gives me an odd look, but I don’t linger. I know I should be leading this, but I can’t. Doesn’t mean I don’t feel guilty about it.

I leave her with my Pomps, and run straight into another bunch of my recruits walking with a couple of cops. Danni and Max, two of my newest Pomps. They’re usually stuck behind the desk, helping interpret the schedule. I can see why they’ve been given George Street to patrol: they’re not ready to face Stirrers one-on-one.

They’re happy, and a bit nervous to see me. I slow but I don’t stop. If I stay with them too long they’ll notice—though I’m not sure they’ll understand that they’re sensing my lack.

Danni nods over at the cops. “We’ll keep these guys safe,” she says.

“I know you will.” I pat her on the back as I pass. “Good to see you both in the field.”

She frowns.
God, can she tell what I am, or what I’m not?

I gesture down the street. “I’m chasing something. But I will be back.”

“Good luck,” Danni calls.

I wish I could get to know them all better, these people who are going to die for me and this world. Jesus, I don’t know even a tenth of their names. It fills me with a bitter fury and a sadness that could stop me from moving at all if I let it. But I don’t.

I refuse to.

These people are counting on me.

I keep heading down George Street. Pushing my way through the barricades, and more cops and Pomps. Hoping that no one will ask why I’m not just shifting. The sky above is lit with the blue light of the comet; the portal in reality is similarly colored and slowly rising in the sky, and heading south and east. But none of that concerns me now. All I can focus on is the slight fluttering sensation directing me toward my quarry.

The presence of the Stirrers beyond is a crushing one to me now I
have none of HD’s power in me. I can feel the brace symbol that Lissa painted on my wrist growing warm. It’s being pushed to its limits.

I pass a drunk sobbing in the gutter. His stench wafts over me: stale beer and fresh vomit. I can understand the inclination to drink, but the Death of the Water has drawn the desire from me like a poison, and I’m not that anxious to let it back into my life. Two cops, faces bored and concerned at once, hover—watching him, watching the traffic. The poor bastard’s producing the full-body sort of sobs that only a serious bender can coax out of most men.

I feel like he’s crying for me: crying for this world where death is king, and it’s a mad king at that. I crouch down, wincing at the smell of him. Is this what I’m like? Is this me? I pull the brace paint from my pocket, carefully mark his wrist with the triangle and the line.

“You’re right, mate,” I whisper. “You’re right.” He looks at the symbol, then up at me. “Leave that on your arm and you’ll be OK.”

I drag him to a bench and sit him down. He settles there wearily, the sobs have passed. “It’s so alone,” he whispers and falls asleep.

If the world doesn’t end tomorrow, he’s going to wish it had.

Where do you find Death?

This I can tell you. You search bus stations, train stations, taxi ranks. Places in the nowhere between somewhere, where minutes count down. Boredom and despair are closely aligned, and they live at these stations of waiting, where you think you’re only waiting to go somewhere, but you’re really waiting to die.

It’s the waiting that kills you. Here as much as any emergency ward, or hospital bed. Few people go out in a blaze of glory. Most just wait to die. Maybe that’s all we’re ever doing.

My phone rings several times, but I ignore it. I need to concentrate on HD. And that’s hard enough with the portal in the earth-Hell interface and all those Stirrers running so much interference.
But the thin thread of connection between HD and me never wavers. We’ve shared intimacies so deep that in many ways I’m still HD in part and it is still me.

I check Roma Street Station. Nothing. I search the bus stops beneath King George Square, feet aching, missing my ability to shift, but hurrying fast, despite the blisters building against the backs of my heels. Everywhere people are trying to get out of the city, catching taxis, trains, the few buses left.

And all of them wear that dazed expression that too much exposure to Stirrers engenders. If the commute home wasn’t habitual, if my Pomps weren’t helping enforce the evacuation: a lot of them would be staying put.

And there will still be those who do.

I can imagine people, unbraced, falling asleep in offices and never waking again; though their body will walk, their minds will plan, their hands will search out weapons.

Stirrers drain will as much as life. They’ve a gravity that’s hard to escape and I know that more intimately now than I ever really wanted to. The brace symbol keeps getting hotter, but it’s still bearing the bulk of the load.

Anyone I pass I brace, until I’ve no more paint.

It’s easy work, people hardly seem to notice. The last person I paint, a woman on the corner of Turbot and George whispers in my ear, “It’s so alone, that I could cry.”

Then the brace kicks in and she blinks, shakes her head and quickly walks away.

I keep down George Street, where it becomes Roma Street, the blocky building of the Transit Center not far away. I pass the spot where I last saw my parents on this earth, and where their spirits fled after telling me they loved me and that it was all going to be all right, even if they didn’t believe it.

It still hurts me a little. I’d been so alone, and I would have been
dead too, if it wasn’t for Lissa. She’d pulled me past that and kept me alive. Though, as I’d found out, all of that was part of Morrigan’s plan. It didn’t matter, without Lissa I think I would have given up. I would never have had the strength to go on.

The flashes of HD continue, moments of clarity, jumbled between headache-inducing shifts. Everywhere it goes it sets the Avians flying—spiralling above it as though it’s the choicest carrion. They sing, calling to it with throat-tearing longing. HD unleashed suits their predatory tendencies. They adore its messiness far more than mine, and I can’t say that I don’t feel a little hurt by that. But I don’t let it stop me.

I catch a glimpse of Teneriffe, the water serene, but that’s not where HD’s attention is focused. The 470 bus rumbles past on its way to the CityCat. Somewhere in the shadows, HD crouches. It’s not right. There’s a hesitation that undercuts what should be typical predatory behavior. A red SUV pulls in beside it, throbbing with music, and HD shifts as though startled by the sound. Why isn’t HD letting rip, now it has its chance? I was expecting wholesale slaughter, not this timidity.

It slides beneath the metal seats at the Springwood bus station. This is as far south as it has moved. I hope this isn’t a trend, an expansion of its territory. I’ve no chance of following it there in time.

The 555 bus disgorges its passengers. Here is the usual gaggle of tired workers and kids back from the Hyperdome. It may be the start of the end of the world, but word doesn’t spread that quickly, and even with the comet in the sky, folk get on with their lives.

I feel HD tense, then he’s gone.

The bus stop outside Royal Brisbane Hospital. People waiting, caged in grief or weariness so deep that they don’t even see the chasm in the sky.

A small stop behind the CityCat terminal at West End, here the shadows are deep, delineated by hard sulphurous lights. A drunk stumbles towards the toilets, but HD doesn’t follow.

What the fuck is going on?

I stop and think.

When it dawns on me I can’t help but smile.

“You’re mine,” I whisper. “I’m onto you.”

That gets its attention.

The Hungry Death’s shifting slows.

The point around which it is moving is coming into focus. For a moment, HD is nearby, then it’s at the Cultural Center Bus Station. Then a small park near the Kurilpa Bridge. It stops there. And I know that HD is waiting for me. I’m still on George Street. And I run. How many times have I run down this street? How many times have I fled my doom? Now I’m racing toward it. The running’s hard work, I’m not the immortal creature I was a few hours ago.

I run hard, even as a stitch tears across my stomach. Not as fit as I used to be. I reach the bridge and the edge of the river and I stop, and not just to catch my breath. I should be able to feel the water below, its connection to the Styx and the Underworld, but I can’t. It’s nothing but a bridge to me.

I glance back towards the heart of the city. Alarm bells ring out from a hundred different buildings. And for a moment, I feel that they’re ringing for me. I can’t run anymore, but I’m nearly there.

I step onto the bridge reflecting how just a few months ago my colleagues all sacrificed themselves here to give me HD undiluted. How would Suzanne feel about that? Here I am just a man again. There are a few people with me, staring back at the city. They don’t acknowledge me as I pass. That’s how unremarkable I have become. A man gasps, perhaps…no, he is pointing in the direction of Mount Coot-tha. This is not good. Old One Tree Hill is slickly luminous.

And, while I may not be able to feel it I can see it, just as any regular
punter can, though they won’t understand its significance. The branches of the One Tree are beginning to reveal themselves.

Stitch or no stitch. I run. Fast as I can.

Halfway over the bridge a force tugs at my back. I spin on my heel, lashing out with my hands. Something snags on my little finger. I yank my arm back, and my finger breaks.

There’s a deep-throated chuckle, low and menacing. And I begin to wonder just what it was I was hoping to achieve. My head is throbbing with the presence of HD.

For a moment there’s a breath against my neck.

“I don’t have time for these games,” I gasp, the breath is icy, my skin crawls.

“Games are everything,” it whispers, and I’m shocked, I’ve never heard HD outside of my skull. Just like the vision of the One Tree, it’s a moment that has me reeling. I have to concentrate not to bow down before this force. But I do not, even though I know how powerful it is.

“Look what’s happening,” I say. “I don’t need to look. It is everywhere. The earth is full of death. And more is coming.”

“But it isn’t yours.”

“What of it?”

“Aren’t you the Death of this world?”

“I have always been,” it mumbles.

“Not for much longer. What have you done in the last hour?”

“I’ve—”

I know exactly what it has done. Nothing at all. “Your chaos is the merest trifle to what the Stirrer god is capable of. Morrigan let you free, and you couldn’t be fast enough to escape me. But now, look at you, so bloody pathetic.”