The Memory of Death (4 page)

We’d done worse to each other.

The pair of us. We’ve slammed knives into each other’s hearts, but this breaks mine. There’s no one in the world I’ve ever been closer to than Tim. Never had a brother, just my cousins, and Tim was the one who I got along with best. He’d not followed the family trade; he’d avoided the world of pomping until I’d dragged him into it. By then both our families had been destroyed. We’d shared our losses, and our fears. We’d fought against the End of Days, saved each other’s lives, and now, he’s stabbed a knife into my hand.

Could have at least given me a little notice.

I scream. And then I stop – no point in screaming when it doesn’t hurt. The pain has already passed, as though it was more a memory than true pain. He pulls the blade out. It hurts, but not much, and the pain is gone almost at once.

The look of disappointment on Tim’s face is much more painful.

‘Just like the others,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t even have blood.’ He gives me a total
you’re dead to me
look. ‘Whatever the fuck you think you are: you are not Steve.’

Not Steve.

‘I’m Steve all right.’ I swing that bloodless, wounded hand at Tim’s face. Hit him hard. His head jerks back. ‘I’m –’

The goons are on me again. Tim’s standing, scowling.

‘Jesus,’ Tim says. ‘Get it out of here. You’re nothing. You’re a monster.’

But I am Steve.

I know I am.

I flex my hand where the knife passed through, where I just punched my cousin in the face. There’s not even a mark. Just as there wasn’t when I opened the door to Number Four. I feel my lip where Tim hit me. That’s unmarked too.

Oh, shit.

Then the goons are jerking my arms back hard enough that it hurts.

‘Take him away,’ Tim says, rubbing his eye, and there’s not even a hint of theatricality to it. The old Pomp Goons drag me back over the chair.

I don't even bother to struggle.

What the hell am I?

*

They drag L7 back in: the poor bastard. And he’s nursing his hand. I can see the fight’s gone out of him. It’s a shock at first, I know. And I can’t pretend that I don’t feel at least a little relief that he didn’t pass Tim’s test. He doesn’t even turn his head to watch the door close behind him. Well, the fight comes back. It just takes time.

‘You could have warned me,’ he says. Maybe not with this one.

‘And what would that have done?’

He nods. ‘Nothing, but, okay, nothing. I would have told you,’ he lies.

Me and Clash laugh.

‘And maybe, just maybe, you were the one. I would have liked to see you bleed.’

Clash snorts. ‘I’ve ordered pizza,’ he says.

‘I’m not hungry,’ the new one of us mumbles.

But when the pizza slides through the slot he eats as many pieces as the rest of us.

‘See,’ I say. ‘It could be much worse.’

‘Yes, it could.’ We all say together.

‘Where’s the CCTV in here?’ he asks.

‘There isn’t any,’ says Okkervil.

*

I watch them on the CCTV. Looks like the hornet’s nest is stirred up. They’re all buzzing.

If Charon’s right. If I trust him, and the guy’s saved us several times before, we need to do this now. Three of them, pushed hard enough. It should work.

But if it doesn’t.

If it doesn’t then god knows what I’m releasing on the world.

*

I’m not hungry, but when the pizza comes I eat with the rest: no point in starving myself. I mightn’t bleed but I still get hungry.

‘We need to commit to a path,’ I say, wiping my lips with a napkin.

With full bellies, it’s the best time to start planning, and what these versions of me have lacked is a plan. I don’t blame them; I’m not much of a planner. But I can feel something coming – it was in the set of Tim’s shoulders, the way he didn’t meet my gaze – and we need to be ready for it.

‘Why? We’re being fed,’ Clash says.

‘Yeah, for now. But at some stage they’re going to do something with us, and I don’t think it’s going to be packing us off to the Sunshine Coast for a holiday. We’re recognised as some sort of threat. And I know how I would deal with threats, particularly those that aren’t human.’

They both look down. We may have done what was needed to be done, but there is blood on my (our?) hands. I’ve killed men and gods and Stirrers. From the sound of things one of me tried to kill Lissa. I get the feeling that they’re only waiting to have us put down. It’s what you do to rabid animals, and I’m not even an animal – I’m not even really alive. If I didn’t look like me I know there wouldn’t even be this hesitation. Which is odd; usually just looking like me is enough to have everyone want me dead.

‘There’s a sword hanging over our heads,’ I say. ‘We just don’t know when it’s going to fall.’

The door opens.

‘I didn’t order any more pizza,’ Clash says. We all know that this isn’t pizza.

The guy who comes through is wearing a suit – nice Italian one. Looks like it might fit me.

‘I need to take you upstairs,’ he says, and I’ve known enough death to see it in his eyes.

There’s another guy standing in the doorway, but I think we might be able to take them both. They’re Pomps, not bodyguards, and I’ve learnt a thing or two over the past couple of years.

For once I don’t need to say anything. We’re on them both.

It’s over quick.

‘If you try that again, I swear you won’t get back up,’ the Pomp who just beat the shit out of us says. He looks like he wants to make it happen.

‘Feels good to commit to an action, doesn’t it?’ I growl, as we pick our pistol-whipped bodies up off the floor. This hurt where the knife didn’t. Together we seem somehow more vulnerable, but more decisive as well.

He leads us out of the room, and then the darkness descends. A flickering dimness that seems to extrude from the ceiling. It’s slow, in that descent, until all at once, it whips its night-dark tendrils around, and fills the corridor.

I can’t see what happens, but I hear it. The sickening crunch of bone, the battering of fists against flesh.

When the darkness is gone there are two Pomps out cold.

I check their breathing: both are still alive.

I look up at my companions. ‘What just happened here?’

‘Beats me,’ says Okkervil.

‘Beats them, is more fucking accurate,’ Clash says.

They might have been coming down to kill us, but we’ve no intention of killing them in return. They might think we’re monsters, but we know we aren’t. Both men have the silver knives of their office. I grab one, the edge shining with all its violent potential, and pass the other to Clash.

‘You guys can fight over that one.’

‘And the suit?’ Okkervil says. Only one of them will fit.

I start changing into it. ‘What do you think?’

Okkervil laughs. ‘Suit in the middle of summer in Brisbane? It’s all yours, L7.’

So, we’re not completely the same! I don’t know what that means. But slipping into what is a rather nice silk shirt, and an even nicer Italian jacket and pants, is utterly comforting. Even if the shoes don’t fit.

Clash belts the knife to his ankle, and Okkervil shrugs.

We stand at the door, hover there. Over the poor unconscious Pomps, one of them semi-naked. I drape the L7 T-shirt over him. Then I look to the others.

What this group needs is a leader.

‘We take the stairs,’ we all say at once. Not
that
different then!

Just because we can’t hear alarms doesn’t mean that there aren’t any. The front door is definitely not the way to go this time. We’re up the stairs almost as a single unit, two steps as once, all the way up to the first floor. None of us may bleed, but we sure can sweat. No one’s waiting for us as we turn left and into a passageway that few know about.

Last corner before the door out of here, and Lissa is leaning back against the door, almost casual. There’s a dark grin on her face. Too much of the Hungry Death in it. And something else. I would almost think we’re being played.

‘You go through this door and you will be hunted, and you will be destroyed.’

We stop as one.

‘You expect me to stay in there?’ I say. ‘You’re going to kill us.’

Lissa can’t meet my gaze, or refuses to – I hope it isn’t the latter. ‘That’s not exactly the –’

‘Not exactly?’ we all say in unison.

Lissa’s lips thin, and she gestures at the stairs. ‘I want you back down there now, de Selbys.’

‘Sorry.’ I walk to the door, slide back the bolt and push it open.

‘We’ll find you, you know.’

‘We need to sort this out,’ I say. ‘The three of us. We need to know what we are. You can’t deny us that.’

‘It’s my job to deny you that. To make sure the dead stay dead. Steve, don’t you just want to rest?’

She reaches a hand towards me. Of course I want to rest. Of course I am tired. She almost smiles at me.

‘Steve …’

She’s good. She always was. But she can already tell she’s failed. I shake my head.

Lissa
, I want to say,
we’ve saved each other so many times. Can’t we do that again?
But there’s no room for argument in her eyes, just something cold and hard that tears at me. I look away and open the door to the rear of the building. It’s hot and humid. For a moment, I actually wonder if it isn’t better back in that air-conditioned cell.

Then the others push through behind me and the door shuts with a loud click.

‘Isn’t she going to follow us?’ I feel surprisingly disappointed.

‘No,’ Clash answers. ‘She’s gone. Shifted out of there.’

‘Then we run.’

Clash and Okkervil look at each other and then me.

Clash clears his throat. ‘Sounds good in theory, but we’ve been locked up in that room for weeks. I think running might kill us.’

‘I’ve already got a stitch,’ Okkervil says. ‘Those bloody stairs were steep.’

‘Really?’

They give me such a look that I know there’s no point in arguing with me.

So we hurry from the door, down the fire escape through the Brisbane heat.

*

'They’re gone. We still have time to get them,’ Tim says, gesturing at the CCTV display.

‘
At the rate they’re moving my grandma could catch them, and she’s ninety-seven.’

Tim looks at me uncertainly; his right eye is swollen, bruised. ‘Do you really want to do this?’

Even after he’s been attacked, he’s not certain. He doesn’t have to be.

‘
Don’t make me tell you again.’

‘
Why couldn’t we have just done this in-house?’

‘
It’s complicated.’

‘
Everything’s complicated now,’ Tim says. ‘Do you think they suspect?’

‘
Of course they do. Steve’s no fool.’

There’s a small black box on his desk, a gift or a curse from Charon. It is shivering.

‘
Release the Hound,’ I say.

To Tim’s credit he doesn’t hesitate. He slides his silver knife across his palm, quick, doesn’t even wince. I need my Ankou to do this, or it won’t work. He picks up the box. Almost drops it, but doesn’t. He presses his bloody palm against one side, then the other, and the other, until all six sides are marked with his palm print. And even then he doesn’t drop it, just places it on the ground.

The box jumps. The box contorts. It bulges, and all at once I am hearing a new heartbeat, fast then slow, slow then fast, and faster. A beat unlike anything human.

The box expands, shifts and howls. And the Hound sits before me, eyes quizzical. Wide with the moment of its birthing. Then they narrow. They're remarkable, those eyes, dark and familiar.

It smacks its lips once.

Charon had told me what it could do. That it knew who to hunt, and that it wouldn’t stop. I hadn’t quite believed him, but now, staring at this mad creature, I have no doubt. What will it do once it finds them, that’s the question.

I pat it gently on the head. And its stump of a tail wags. It pushes its head against my hand hard, lifts its snout and stares at me with those eyes.

‘
Go,’ I tell it.

And it is gone, all scrambling legs, leaving a hint of wood smoke and blood.

‘
Good boy,’ I say after it.

Tim’s wiping his hand with a tissue, not very effectively. ‘I hope you know what you are doing,’ he says.

I grab him another tissue, push it into his palm. ‘I know what I’m doing. Doesn’t mean I’m happy about it. But I’ve got responsibilities now – we’ve seen the end of the world, and neither of us wants that again. Even if it’s an end of the world shaped like Steve.’

There’s something wrong about the Steves. And not just their existence; looking at them creates a sensation of unpleasantness, like looking at a cockroach sitting on a slice of birthday cake. These things shouldn’t be here, their presence is wrong. Each time I’ve seen them, I’ve felt it – except, perhaps, for that first time.

Then I’d felt something else and it had betrayed me.

Two minutes out of Number Four I’m not sure where to go. Not that we’ve gone far. Who do I have left? Someone calls out at us. Clash and Okkervil tug on my jacket sleeves, and I turn to see a drunk staggering out of the Victory. He’s still holding a pint glass, cupping it carefully in his hands even as he heads towards us.

‘You,’ the drunk bloke says. ‘You. I’m talking to all three of you.’

I turn to face him, breaking the first rule of dealing with drunks: giving them any attention at all. Doesn’t look like a Pomp; doesn’t look like he should know me. I certainly don’t recognise him, until I look at him properly – beyond the red face and the bluster, I know that face, I have been that face.

I’m still blinking away the cobwebs of our confinement. The afternoon light is as dazzling as illuminating.

‘You disgust me.’ He jabs a finger in my chest. ‘You shouldn’t be here, mate.’

I take a couple of steps back, and he matches them. ‘But I am.’

He looks to the other two with me, squints. And he drops his pint.

‘Jesus,’ he says, quiet and low. ‘None of you should be here.’

‘We’ve gotta go, buddy,’ I say.

And he punches me in the face. Once, and then again while I’m falling. It’s amazing that he doesn’t break my nose.

Okkervil and Clash rush in to push him away from me, but he’s snarling, swinging out at all of us.

‘You shouldn’t be here, none of you.’

They drag him to the footpath, and I get to my feet.

‘You!’ someone else yells.

‘Time to run,’ I say. And this time we do.

We sprint to the botanical gardens. The river draws us as it always does, you can feel it in your bones, that wide curve of brown water. Here in the shade, the city is almost bearable. And no blood seems to mean no mosquitos. Buildings rise to our right, the river to our left, and I feel we’re balanced in between. It’s a precarious thing, but balance always is – a moment before tripping, a moment before the fall. I don’t want to be here, I don’t feel comfortable in my own company. We seek out a secluded spot.

‘So, where to now?’ I ask them.

They’re struggling with the answer as much as me. Our old haunts in Toowong, leafy and near the city, and One Tree Hill. The river itself; perhaps we need to dive into its waters.

‘You,’ a voice whispers in my ear. ‘You.’ Darkness descends. ‘This is no game. And still you stand as though it is. We’re being played.’

Hands grab me around the neck. Strong, hard hands, and they start to squeeze.

My two buddies are hanging back. What the hell are they doing?

‘C’mon,’ I manage, though it comes out as little more than a whisper.

It’s enough. Clash leads, running around me, swinging a fist and connecting. Okkervil does the same. My assailant grunts, loosens his grip. I stumble forward, turn and look at … it takes me a moment, and now I understand the other Steves’s hesitation.

It’s a shadow.

A human-shaped shadow, limbs flailing around. A Steve-shaped shadow. Solid enough to be hit.

I gasp for breath, like I’m drowning again, clench my fists and join the scrum. The shadow form, well, it does what shadows do. Disappears, and I’m clanging heads with Clash. Hard. Back to the ground I go.

A few eye blinks, and some stars mixed heartily with splotches, and I’m being helped up by Okkervil.

‘You’ve gotta watch yourself, Suit,’ he says.

‘Suit?’

‘What else am I going to call you. You’re not fucking Steve, are you? And don’t pretend you’re not doing it too.’

I want to make a crack about onanism but I don’t.

‘He’s not fucking me,’ Okkervil says. And there we go.

And we’ll just see about who’s who, shall we. Doesn’t matter who we are, we’re a pretty defeated-looking bunch standing shivering in the botanical gardens. None of us has cash. Our closest allies think we’re the enemy.

I’ve never felt lonelier.

At least I’m the one wearing the suit.

I straighten myself up. There’s a handkerchief in my pocket; I wipe the blood from my nose. Pass it to Clash, he nods, wipes the blood from his nose, too. I’ll have to assume that all our blood is the same.

When I escaped from Hell, however I did that, I never expected to be thrown into Hell on Earth. Though is three Steven de Selbys really Hell on Earth?

‘What do you want me to do with this?’ Clash passes the particularly bloody handkerchief back to me. ‘Not my problem.’

I go to throw the handkerchief in a bin; it won’t come away from my hand. I have to actually tear it away. Hurts; I wince. I look at the handkerchief lying in the bin, and then we all say pretty much simultaneously: ‘We’re not meant to bleed.’

Where’s fucking Tim with his knife when you need him?

Maybe my presence has tipped the balance for good, if bleeding is a good thing. And it must be: blood is what stops Stirrers, it’s what the front door to Number Four demands. It’s important, and not only in the keeping-people-alive kind of way.

‘We bleed now,’ I say.

‘If it bleeds we can kill it.’ Okkervil thinks he’s funny. The fact that I don’t says something about me or him. I’m just not sure what.

Can’t say that I’m liking myself.

‘It’s not the end of the world. That was the year before last,’ Clash says, patting my back, as I stare across the city towards Number Four George Street.

Maybe he’s been in there long enough not to yearn for it. For me, Number Four had always been a home away from home. I’d grown up hanging around in its corners, waiting for my parents to come back from pomping jobs.

‘What do we do now?’

‘We could call Aunt Tegan.’

‘What’s she going to do?’ I say.

Aunt Tegan had never approved of the family business. She’d left the country as soon as she could. Moved to London.

She might actually be pleased with this current state of affairs.

It wasn’t the first time I’d been hunted by Pomps. In fact almost all my troubles had been with Pomps, now I thought of it. Ex-Pomps, Pomps who wanted to become Regional Manager or gods. Experience should have given me a deep and abiding fear of my own kind. But, that was it: they were my own kind.

Something howls down George.

‘That doesn’t sound good,’ says Okkervil.

‘No, a howl is never a good thing.’

I reach in my pocket for my knife.

‘Be great if we had the stone knives now,’ Clash says.

But we don’t. Tim has those knives, the Knives of Negotiation, hidden away. And, besides, I doubt they would even recognise me.

I’d killed with them. Become Death with them, and bound them together as the scythe Mog. But they were always so fickle.

A dark shape hurtles towards us, vaguely dog-like.

Clash and I pull free our knives, the silver shining in the late afternoon light. Okkervil picks up the nearest thing he can find, basically a handful of stones.

Then it’s upon us. Biting and snarling. It tears open my hand, and there is the peculiar sensation of flesh that is not flesh rebinding. It hurts for a second, but once again I’m not sure if it hurt because it hurt, or because I thought it should hurt. That kind of stuff makes my head spin.

I swing out with the knife, too late – it’s already past me, rushing at Clash and Okkervil.

That’s okay. We have the Hound surrounded. Clash drives his knife towards its skull. And the Hound closes its jaws around his fist.

I jab at its flank, and it slashes up at my gut with a hind paw. I’m bent over, gagging, when one of Okkervil’s stones hits me under the eye. I look at him and he winces.

Yeah, we have the beast surrounded all right. Clash screams; the Hound’s jaws look like they’re working their way through the bone. Okkervil manages to hit Clash in the wrist with his next throw.

I take a couple of unsteady steps towards it. Avoid another backward jerk of its legs. It’s less of a jump than a fall, but I wrap my arms around its shoulders and squeeze. Its muscles flex. And the next thing I know I’m on my back, eyes blinking, and Clash’s hand flies through the air and lands in my lap.

This time there is a definite spray of blood.

Okkervil is kicking out at the Hound. And it swings its jaws towards him, clamps down on his thigh.

My jacket's torn and spattered with blood.

Another dark shape crashes into view, leaps upon the Hound. There’s a flash of limbs and fire. A familiar face among the shadows. My face. ‘Run,’ it snarls at us. ‘Run, you fucking idiots!’

Then it’s grabbing the Hound by the jaws, pulling them open wider and wider, and it’s like he’s opening the portal to a greater dark.

‘This isn't over,’ it says, and then it and the shadow Hound are bound up and swallowed by the dark.

And run we do. I’m going to get into shape very quickly, I think, if I’m not killed first.

*

The Hound’s disappearance strikes me as a sudden absence, a sensation like jolting awake in a dream. I stretch my mind, reach out into the world, and there is no doubt it is no longer here.

‘
It’s gone,’ I say to Tim.

‘
Did it work?’

‘
I don’t know. Charon said it would leave when its work was done.’

Tim shakes his head. ‘I thought Steve would –’

‘
But they’re not Steve, Tim. They’re not Steve. They’re copies. Pawns in some new game of the Death of the Water’s.’

‘
I hope they’re just that,’ Tim says. ‘I’d hate to think of the pain that is coming their way if they’re not.’

Of course that is all they are. I’ve been down to the Death of the Water’s Kingdom. I’ve seen Steven’s shade. I called out across the dark and he didn’t hear me. He didn’t recognise me, but at those depths and in that darkness I don’t know what I was expecting. I wanted to touch him, to tell him that I loved him.

But I couldn’t – the Death of the Water wouldn’t allow it, and my power is such that I cannot challenge him, even as the slither of the Hungry Death inside me stirred to angry life.

Steve is down there. He is blind and alone.

Whatever these things are, they mock me. No matter what Charon says. They do not bleed, they do not feel, they are too damn smug.

I close my eyes. Concentrate, send my mind out into the city through my Pomps, and then I can see them. They are running, and there is a drunk on their tail. A drunk that looks as furious and foolish as any Death.

And then I feel the Hound again.