The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy (97 page)

But I’m anything but indecisive today, as I climb its trunk.

“I don’t like the look of this.” Wal says. “Or the smell, the smell in particular, it’s all too bloody burny for my liking.”

Smoke wafts down from above, driven by a wind from the sea. A peculiar cologne-scented smoke, and lots of it.

“Check the branches above,” I say.

Wal, looks up. “There’s not that many of them left.”

All of a sudden, I know where Morrigan is. It’s so damn obvious. After all, I gave the poor bastard Morrigan’s book.

“Get to Mr. D,” I say. “Warn him.” Wal shoots up into the air.

But I know it’s already too late.

T
he uppermost branch of the One Tree is hard beneath my feet, shuddering in time with the energies of a god. A big, angry god. One that likes throwing its fists around.

I have to stop to take in the sight before me. I don’t know whether to be reassured or sickened. If Morrigan is trying to sort out grudges, his eye can’t be as closely focused on the prize as it should be. Or maybe he just knows that he can’t lose and is having some fun with it.

Morrigan punches Mr. D in the face: over and over. My old boss shudders, his head snapping back with every wince-inducing blow. I know Mr. D’s dead, that this Underworld body is merely a psychic equivalent, but it’s all about the verisimilitude. Looking at Mr. D, it’s hard to believe that nerves aren’t firing in his body. Or that the blood running from his face isn’t blood. But maybe the difference between the two is so subtle that it really isn’t a difference at all. Just as Morrigan is a god and is still just Morrigan. Angry and wanting to take it out on whomever crossed him.

The book I gave Mr. D to guard is open and burning. Dark shapes are rising from it and colliding with Morrigan.

A flood of flitting sparrows. Each moment Morrigan seems more…whole. Not bigger, but there’s a mass to him. A definite solidity that he hadn’t had when I’d last seen him, which is disturbing: he’d so easily snatched the scythe from my grip even then.

A final sparrow melds with him. The book turns to ash.

Mr. D takes each punch with admirable silence for one who’s having the shit beaten out of them.

Morrigan’s doing something that I’ve wanted to do to Mr. D on more than one occasion. But there’s an intensity to the violence that is most unlike Morrigan. The guy was a planner, he worked hard, didn’t give in to his feelings, and yet here he is letting go.

I’m all manner of control and silence as I run behind him, clench my fist and swing at the back of his head. Only Morrigan isn’t there anymore, the bastard’s dropped to my left. I almost end up striking Mr. D instead, my fist falling short.

Not that I have much time to register because Morrigan’s punching me in the stomach. He’s quick on the tail of that with a roundhouse to my jaw that has me stumbling back, arms flailing.

“Hardly fair that,” Morrigan says.

I rub my jaw. “Use whatever advantage you have,” I say, taking a few steps backwards along the branch. “You taught me everything I know.”

“You still don’t know how to fight,” he says.

“I make do.”

At least he’s not focusing on Mr. D anymore. That’s something. I hope the guy’s trying to get as far away as possible.

Morrigan squints at me. “I see you have your old parasite back inside you.”

“No thanks to you.”

“Pathetic really, the thing you have become.” I’m not sure who he’s talking to, me or HD. But at least he’s talking and not throwing punches.

“And, this is coming from a god in a ghost.”

“Oh, I’m much more than that,” Morrigan says.

“What will you be once the world is dead, a cinder inhabited by the last of the Stirrers?”

“I don’t need much. I’ll have an eternity to keep myself occupied.” He smiles. “I really do hate you, Steven. You’ve made a habit of having people hate you. Me, the god inside me, we’ll destroy this little world just for conceiving of you.”

“What did I ever do to deserve that?”

“See, typical Steven de Selby. Always with the ‘I didn’t deserve this’, or ‘it wasn’t my fault’.”

It wasn’t.

“And yet the universe folds around you. Your capacity to stay alive and to piss me off knows no bounds.”

“Surely you were fond of me once.”
Where’s Mog? Where’s my scythe?
I can feel it, so close, HD’s hunger for it burns inside me like a star.

“I couldn’t stand you, or those overindulgent parents of yours.”

Ah, there it is!
A few meters from Morrigan.

“Say what you will about me, but don’t bring my parents into it.”

I gesture toward Mog. It lifts into the air, streaks toward me. Morrigan’s arm flashes out, in a movement too fast for my eyes to really comprehend, only now, Mog is back in his hands, and he has a good grip on it. I can see it struggling there, but it seems no effort for him to swing it about his head. Morrigan was always an awful show-off.

“No, this is mine now.” He slices the scythe up at my belly. I scurry backwards, a clumsy move, but effective. In my book, any move is effective if it doesn’t lead to loss of blood. But now I’m dangerously close to the edge of the branch.

Morrigan frowns. He stomps toward me across the branch and kicks me once in the chest, following through with a boot to the head. My teeth crack together, I blink back waves of red. HD rages inside me. Morrigan kicks me again.

I try to catch his boot, and I catch it all right, in the face.

“You’re nothing to me,” says Morrigan.

I spit out a tooth, that’s going to make my dentist happy. “Same old fucking Morrigan.”

Morrigan snorts. “I am and have always been far superior to you.”

“Rillman thought that too.”

“He was a hack. Nothing but a brilliant hack, and really not that brilliant. He could never look beyond his heart. He would have been a failure as an RM.”

“You had no heart and he had too much. Maybe I’m just right.”

“Would you just shut up and die!”

He kicks at my face again. This time I get a good grip on the boot. He yanks his leg back, but I do not let go. I’ve seen something he hasn’t.

Mr. D throws just about the most perfect punch I have ever seen. Follows it with a left hook. Morrigan stumbles backwards. “You forget that Steven has allies,” Mr. D says. “And you forget that at your peril.”

Morrigan is momentarily unbalanced, just on the edge of the One Tree. Wal shoots past me, wings a blur, and strikes Morrigan hard in the chest. It tips things in favor of gravity.

Morrigan scrambles at the air, but it’s too late. Morrigan and Mog topple off the One Tree. I try and call the scythe to me, but Morrigan has a firm grip on it.

“You took your time,” I say to Wal as Mr. D shuffles over and pulls me to my feet. Wal jumps onto my shoulder. We hurry to the edge of the tree branch and peer down.

“Nah, I was just waiting for the right moment,” Wal says too glibly for my liking—I really could kiss the bugger though.

We both watch Morrigan fall. Long before he hits bottom he shifts and is gone. Ah, if only it was that easy to kill the Stirrer god manifest.

“Do you remember the time he tried to kill us all in the Negotiation?” I say, though it turned out that he wasn’t really trying to kill us at all.

Mr. D laughs. “What, with the machine guns and the choppers? Had to give him points for trying.”

“I’m so tired of people beating the shit out of me,” I say. “Morrigan, Francis, now bloody Morrigan again.”

“You keep getting up, they’re going to keep hitting,” Wal says. “It’s a good sign.”

“He’ll be heading toward Devour,” Mr. D says, breathing heavily. His face is still, not the all-singing, all-dancing cavalcade I’m used to. Blood tracks from a nostril to his lip. I didn’t think dead people could be so badly hurt. For a moment I feel bad complaining about my own beating.

He catches me looking at him. “Like I said, rules are changing again, Steven.” He wipes his hand across his face, then considers the mess. “When the dead bleed Hell is in a lot of trouble.”

“You said he was gone for good. That he couldn’t come back.”

“I know. I know. I was wrong. Who would have thought you could make such a deal with Stirrers. Such a very, very attractive deal.”

I narrow my eyes.

“Of course, I would never consider such a thing myself. Not in a thousand years. But still…Now tell me, we didn’t talk of this when you brought the book, just how did you settle things with Water?”

I tell him just what I’ve done and his eyes widen at that. He smiles a little sadly, and shakes my hand. “My, how you’ve grown, Mr. de Selby. Let me tell you, that really impresses me. But it may not be enough.”

“What do you mean?”

“Regardless of your peacemaking, you’re still going to have to bring Morrigan out, draw him back to the real world. The Stirrer god has used him to take form, which means that it is both god and Morrigan, but here it is mainly god. It has its memories and its hatred/ disgust of you and of me—why else would it waste time coming up here to beat up on me? The Stirrer’s rage is being blown through the prism of Morrigan’s. I believe that it has made a mistake. And you will have to use that mistake to your advantage.”

“I’m not a tactician,” I say.

“The tactic is a simple one. You should be able to get the job done. You proved yourself an exemplar of the art—Tremaine and Derek certainly thought so.”

“They didn’t think I was good at anything.”

“Steve, you know how to piss people off. Morrigan got that right. Sure you have people who love you, but you can drive them mad. You’re brilliant at it. You need to get Morrigan mad, and keep him mad. And I know you can do it.” Mr. D squeezes my hand. “It has been a pleasure working with you, son. I want you to know that. You’ve delighted and surprised me.”

I don’t know what to say to that. There’s a tightness in my throat.

“Thank you,” I say at last.

I shift and something goes wrong. I’m falling, Wal by my side trying his darndest to keep me in the air, but his wings aren’t up to the task.

I try and shift again.

Nothing. The ground’s coming up fast.

I
’m falling, Wal looping around me shouting encouragements. Falling and spinning. I cut through thin clouds. Catching glimpses of the One Tree, and the city beneath. The ground rears up. Ground. Tree. City. Ground. Tree—soon it’s going to be nothing but ground.

The air of Hell whistles deafeningly in my ears. For a moment I regret that I never really got to know my kingdom that well, that other external threats stopped me from appreciating this part of my job. What wonders did I miss? Maybe I’ll get a chance to find out. Maybe not. Things just always seemed to escalate.

Above the noise of my falling, and the creaking of the One Tree, there’s another shriller creak. A hand grabs me. Flings me over the central bar of the bike, and Mr. D’s doubling me, and cheering like a fool, as we loop back up into the sky and around.

“Sorry,” Mr. D says, as we rush towards the ground again. “I thought my bike would appear a little sooner, but no. It had to wait until the last minute.”

We’re facing toward the ground. Rushing, faster and faster toward it. A dead man looks up, and for a moment his deathly disinterest passes. He points up at us. I wave.

And the bike crashes into the ground.

Q
We’re through.

Into the Deepest Dark. For once there is air here. Not the weird absent substance that RMs can breathe, but real air, and it’s lifting up the dust of the plain and sending it in great clouds away from the city.

The sky above and below us is darker than I have ever seen it, no souls glitter there. The Stirrer god is all. Mr. D brings his bike to a halt. I look from that dark sky along the dusty plain before us. There is the city of Devour, and before it is my army. Here are my Pomps.

Just to the east of the city is the portal. I can see bits of Brisbane through it, though it’s no longer the mall, it’s moving south and east, toward the sea. The Death of the Water’s engines are working, or it’s just getting bigger, either way it seems to be moving in the right direction.

“I’m going to have to leave you here,” Mr. D says. “There’s a few things I need to attend to.”

Before I have a chance to ask him what, he’s off on his bike riding frantically, and I get to feel how most people must feel when I run off on them. It’s bloody irritating.

“Curious fellow isn’t he?” Wal says.

I nod my head. A few hundred meters away from us my Pomps have gathered, and beyond them the walls of Devour.

Their numbers seem so insignificant against those walls. How did I ever think this was going to work? But as I near them, take in the row after row of men and women in suits, looking like the agents from the
Matrix,
only better dressed, I can’t help but feel a burst of pride. Here we wait to take on our ancient enemy and we couldn’t be any more fabulous.

My crew doesn’t look defeated. They look ready and hungry to fight. They look pissed off and fired up.