I slide on my arse away from Morrigan. The stone blade is slick with rain and blood but I hold it tightly. All I can taste and smell is the iron scent of my beating heart. Morrigan casually kicks me in the chest, and ribs break. I'm nothing but pain, and searching eyes.
"You really drew this out, de Selby," Morrigan says. "Just like your bloody father, he never knew how to get to the point. It's only fair that I draw it out now, at the end. And to think you took up the blade. You even considered that you might be able to make it as one of the Orcus."
He kicks me again. And my chest is on fire, a liquid fire that has me gasping. "Look at them, boy! Look at them! They'd eat you alive in under a minute."
Then his boot finds my mouth, once, twice. I spit out teeth.
My mouth can barely contain all the blood in it. I can't catch my breath. All I'm breathing is ruddy and choking. My vision spots as Morrigan transfers the blade from one hand to the other. My brain is empty but for the pain. I can't even move.
He drives the knife toward me. I weave-well, fall-to the right. Oh, the pure broken-ribbed agony of it. Surely there's not much life left in me, there can't be. But there's something, a wild and raging vitality, and it burns inside me. I can barely see, my eyelids are swelling with blood, everything is torn and battered from the toes up, and it doesn't matter. This is what death comes to. This is what it is all about.
Morrigan scowls. "Just die. It's over, don't you get that? It's over."
Wal's in trouble too. He's a blur in the near distance, hemmed in by all those sparrows. He's snatching them out of the sky, and hurling them down. But there's more than he can handle. Inky wounds streak his flesh. Sparrows are snapping at his wings. One breaks, and he falls. The sparrows are all over him, smothering him, pecking, devouring.
I scramble backward, trailing blood, and spit out another tooth.
Well, fuck it. It's over.
I smile. Nothing else. Just that broken grin. Morrigan charges at me, driving down toward my chest with his stony knife.
My breath roars in my head. My mind goes blank. I duck away from his blade.
Morrigan stumbles, and in that moment-in the absence of my own will-my own stone knife guides me, subsumes me, so that all I am is something cutting and deathly. There's a force, ancient and hungry, bound by its own cruel covenants, and it propels my hand. The blade glides forward, almost languidly, and it slams into Morrigan's left eye with a wet detonation.
He screams and I push the knife in further. I get to my feet-I don't know how, but I do-and he stands with me. Morrigan and I are one thing, swaying, unsteady, joined with a dreadful intimacy by the bloody length of the knife.
"Not enough," he mumbles, but there is no force in him, just the soft exclamation of a dying man. "Not enough."
I don't know if he is talking about him or me. His words mean nothing. He's carried on my blade, blood bubbling from his eye. I wrench his knife from his loosening grip and slash it across his throat. I'm screaming. All I am is death, violent, terrible death. There is no room for me, just this.
It scares me. I see the edge and somehow step back. I let go of the knives. And it's me again, and I'm horrified.
Morrigan's body spills blood as it topples to the broad limb of the tree. It shudders once, then is still. And he lies there, an old man, bent and broken and bloody, and I killed him. The Negotiation is ended. Jesus, how did it end up this way?
"Good work," Mr. D says.
"No, it wasn't." That's all I can manage. My breath is whistling through the hole in my cheek. Every heaving breath is agony, and it feels like I'm leaking fluids from every pore and orifice. As the rain lightens and the storm heads out, deeper into the Underworld or out of it altogether, I'm ready for death myself.
Mr. D pats my back, and the touch is gentle, but even that hurts enough to send a painful shudder through me. "Yes, it was. You know, you're the first person to ever win a Negotiation who hadn't engineered it in the first place. I don't know what that means, but-"
"Some fucking negotiation!" I spit blood. It splatters across the rough bark of the tree.
"It's not finished yet. You've won the right to exist, to be RM, to sit upon the throne of Death, to have the high six-figure salary."
Mr. D's fingers drive into my back. Agony runs through me. It's jagged and dirty and I scream. Then the deeper pain melts from me. Ribs shift beneath my chest. The torn cheek knits closed. I'm almost a whole man again, except I'm more than that. Something passes from Mr. D to me, a coiling and vast prescience. Mr. D is diminished and I, well, I don't know what I am anymore.
"So it's over?"
Mr. D shakes his head. "Steven, it's only beginning."
Go the cliche, but he's right. Oh, is he ever right. There's no sense of closure, merely a cruel momentum. When am I ever going to get a chance to stop, to mourn?
37
The other Regional Managers crowd around. They're quick, as management always is to recover from shock outcomes, each one slick and ready to engage in damage control. It's all I can do to stop scowling at them. Not a single one of them stepped in to help while my family and workmates were being slaughtered. But is there any point railing against death?
I'm going to find out, but not today. Healed or not, I'm exhausted.
I look up and Wal winks at me, then winks out of existence. I glance at my arm, and he's back there, a motionless 2D inky presence, smiling benignly. This job has some perks after all.
The sparrows are all gone.
No one else seems to have noticed either event. New Zealand's Regional Manager, Kiri, nods at me, then grins a huge grin. The sort that shows far too many perfect teeth, all of them sharp. At least he doesn't go for Mr. D's theatrics, his face keeps the one terrifying visage. "Good one, eh mate." He slaps my back warmly. "Never liked Morrigan. He was a prick as far as I'm concerned."
Still, you didn't help, now, did you? There might be no point in remaining bitter, but I damn well intend staying pissed off about this for some time.
The UK Death smiles, as bloodthirsty as a lion. "I was hoping for Morrigan, I'm afraid." Well, thank you. Let's let bygones be bygones, eh. "But I'm sure you'll make a wonderful Regional Death." He doesn't sound sincere, but at least he's honest, and I realize what a minefield it is I've stepped into. A ruthless minefield built on countless little dirty deaths. They're all murderers, they're all ambitious, and they all see me as a new player, a new way of getting one over the others.
Africa's Deaths look on. There are three of them, all in suits well out of my price range. The only one that is less than eons old is South Africa-Neill something or other. I can tell their ages, now, just by looking at them. Some of these Regional Managers, particularly in Europe, are "only" a few hundred years old. The next youngest to me is only a hundred. But in each and every one of them I can see, suddenly and vividly, the sharp memory of the violence that was their Schism, their rise to power, and it sickens me, because none of them would have it any other way. And I can see in each Schism each poor idiot like me who was put to the knife. Already this is mine, this knowledge, this seeing, and I hate it.
Perhaps that is what needs to be done, perhaps only people who hunger for this can handle the job. Well, we'll see. I have a problem with perceived wisdom.
"Excellent," says Suzanne Whitman, the North American RM. She smiles warmly at me, and that grin is hungry and cruel at the same time. "Morrigan was too ambitious. I trust you'll still be organizing Brisbane's Death Moot in December?"
I look over at Mr. D. Death Moot? Shit, I'd forgotten about what amounts to the APEC for the Underworld, all those RMs in one room together for two days. And we're holding it in Brisbane this year. Mr. D nods his head.
Suzanne's still waiting for some sort of response, even as the One Tree gives me an image of her stabbing her own opponent in the heart, in her Negotiation.
"I suppose so," I say. God, I'm actually RM. I'm not even sure what that entails, but I know that I'll find out.
&n
bsp; She shakes my hand and grins another deathly, horrifying grin. "Mr. de Selby, you are perhaps the luckiest person I have ever met. It's good to have you on board."
"Yeah, thank you," I say. "Every single last one of you."
"You're welcome," she says warmly and without the slightest hint of irony.
And then they're gone, and it's just me and Mr. D and Morrigan's body.
"You don't want to be offending your fellow RMs, Steven. In their defense, though none of them need defending, I wouldn't have stepped in to help any of them. In the event of a Schism you don't. It's bad form, and there are rules to be followed. That said, I wouldn't trust a single one of them, and they certainly won't trust you." Mr. D looks at me sternly. "You don't get to be RM unless you're prepared to kill everyone you love for it. Well… until now. And that's the worrying thing. Steven, you represent a change, and don't for a minute believe that any of those RMs won't try and exploit it. You've more sensitivity than all of them combined, and that means more chinks in your armor."
He leads me away from the Negotiation and all those bloody battles, enacted over and over again. "But I'll be around for a while, to ease the transition. It's traditional, and I can't tell you how glad I am it's you and not Morrigan that I will be advising. If you need me, you know where I'll be."
Mr. D motions at a treetop nearby and a small platform there which looks much more cozy than it ought to. There's a pile of books on a small table by an old wooden rocking chair. Classics, mainly. I even spy Asimov's Foundation and a few of P. K. Dick's. "I'm going to catch up on my reading, and enjoy the aspect, not to mention watching what you might do with it all."
The view's both fantastic and terrible at once. The city stretches into the distance, and then up rise the mountains of the Underworld like the shoulders of some mad beast, vaster and more enduring than the One Tree. At the mountains' base crashes the sea, its waves a raging, dizzying vastness. They slam into the stony cliffs and rise up hundreds of meters, their spume blown on the winds over the city. It's a mixture of salt and ash and fire.
Mr. D catches my gaze. "You really should go fishing there one of these days, once everything is sorted out. I'll instruct you, it's very relaxing." I wonder how a sea that huge and wild could ever be relaxing. "And the fish… Tremendous. Certainly a marvelous way to celebrate your victory."
I'm not really ready to celebrate anything. I'm not even sure if there is anything worth celebrating. I'm the new RM of Mortmax Industries, Australia, I've lost all my workmates and replaced them with the twelve most bloodthirsty people on the planet, and my only advisor is as bad as the rest of them. Don't trust anyone, Mr. D had said. Yeah, well, I'm starting with him.
I look at Morrigan's body, and I'm crying.
I'm angry and sad. And that's not exactly what I'm weeping about. It's more for the other things that I've lost, and so swiftly. The man's died twice to me. Ambition had proven as bad as a Stirrer, possessing him cruelly and completely. But he had chosen that path. I think about how long he must have been planning it all, working side by side with the people who he intended to kill.
It explains why he had been so easy on me over the years. He needed a patsy, someone he could manipulate. My, but he did a good job. I don't know how I feel about that right now, but it isn't good. I still can't believe that it came to this.
Less than a fortnight ago, Morrigan was as close to me as my parents, I was just heading back from a funeral, and I had no idea what it was to be in love. Things change so quickly. This job should have taught me that. All we have are moments and transitions. You never know what's going to come next.
Morrigan's body dissolves, and all I'm staring at is one of the creaking upper branches of the One Tree, marked with the faintest memory of Morrigan, one shadow hand, its palm outstretched.
I glance over at Mr. D. "Where did he go? I mean, am I going to have to worry about him coming back?"
"Good heavens, no." Mr. D jabs a finger at the branch and Morrigan's shadow. "Morrigan's nowhere and everywhere. He took the most deadly lottery in the world and he lost. Morrigan's soul has been as close to obliterated as anything can be in the universe." Mr. D snaps his fingers. His grin is chilling and satisfied, extremely satisfied.
I don't know what to say, or whether I'm pleased that I didn't know that I was fighting for, not just my life, but my afterlife as well. Who am I kidding? Like Mr. D told me, what feels like months but was just a couple of days ago: It's best not to think about it.
If I had known what I was probably going to lose, I'd never have been able to empty my brain. Not even that close to death. Killing is an emptying, and an absence of fear, an absence of empathy. It's also a state I never want to experience again.
"This is all going to change," I say. "It can't stay this way."
"You're the new Death, that's your prerogative," Mr. D says, with a generous shrug. "You can do what you want."
"Paradigm shift," I say, and I like the sound of that.
"The Underworld's your oyster, de Selby."
"Thanks a lot."
"You're welcome."
Then it hits me, worse than anything that Morrigan ever managed to throw at me. "Lissa's not a Pomp anymore."
"That's right."
"And she's surrounded by Stirrers."
Mr. D frowns. "Yes, you better do something about that." Like I said, Mr. D has no real sense of the pressing nature of certain events.
"How?"
"Oh, I think you'll find a way, de Selby." Mr. D waves a hand airily, then he is gone. Though I know he hasn't gone far from this empty triumph of death, I want him gone forever. But the truth is, I'm more terrified of his absence than I'm prepared to admit. Better the Death you know. Except I'm Death now, and I don't know anything.
I glance around me, at the great branching Moreton Bay fig that devours the hill below in rolling roots as wide and as tall as monstrous pyroclastic flows, and around which teems the suburbs of the Undercity of Brisbane. Cold salty air crashes against me. This place is as much mine as anyone's. It can bend to my will, but all I want is to get back to Number Four.
Easy, right?
38
What do you know, it is. Even if, as Wal once said, I have no ruby red slippers and my home is a smoldering wreck.
It's easy and painful. Shifting tears at my limbs. My flesh feels raked over. I scream. So much for an element of surprise. Every gaze is on me.
Lissa is in trouble, Stirrers surround her. Not that she's too worried. My girl appears to be pretty handy with a rifle. But, there are so many of them. And Tim's still stuck in his chair, though he's worked one hand free. He smiles at me.
"Hey," Lissa says, and she sounds so very, very happy. "You made it."
"Yeah. Where did all these guys come from?"
"Pending Regional Apocalypse," she says, matter of fact, and shoots another Stirrer in the head.
"Not anymore." I lift my hands, a motion perhaps too cinematic, too contrived, but I'm new to this shit. "Get out," I snarl at them, and my voice is louder and stronger than I remember it.
The Stirrers turn toward me, and they howl. It's a cry of distilled rage, a sound too much like the one I made in my fight against Morrigan. They are many, but I am Death here. I am the master conduit of this region, and I understand what that means at the most visceral level. I really do, and that almost shocks me to a stop. But the momentum's still building, and it's that momentum that takes me.
One of the Stirrers, Uncle Blake, still in his golf gear, raises a gun and fires. The bullet passes through me. It hurts, but then the hurt is gone.
"It's too late for that," I say. "Far too late. You didn't get what you wanted. You got me."
Oh, and they have my Pomps. I call them now and they come crashing down George Street, where another wave of Stirrers has gathered. The crows are pure death, as powerful as anything I have ever encountered. We are here. We are here, they caw. They beat at the sky with a thousand midnight-dark wings. For a moment I'm view
ing the world through thousands of eyes, hearing the whoosh-whoosh of wings finding rough purchase in the air. Amazingly, I'm dealing with the vertiginous vision easily.
The crows descend in a storm of claws and beaks, and every Stirrer they touch is stalled.
It's hard keeping them under control. These aren't human Pomps, they're easily distracted, and the way they stall these bodies is different, more violent. It is a steady tearing of flesh from bone. But there are so many that the Stirrers can't keep up, they can't fill bodies fast enough. And the crows are taking their toll.
I can taste the meat, feel it pulling away from dead bones. It should turn my stomach but it doesn't. These crows are mine. I am so intimately connected to them that this act, this devouring, seems natural. I wonder if this is what Mr. D had referred to as the Hungry Death.
But it isn't enough. Number Four is full of Stirrers, and the region itself, from the Cape to the Bight, is far worse than that. There are hundreds of them throughout the country. I look over at Lissa.
"So, are you open to becoming a Pomp again?"
"I want a raise," she says without hesitation. "A big one."
"Sounds good to me." I grab her hand, and transfer my essence into her, my fingers tingling as energy runs down my arm. For a moment I feel like I'm not just touching her flesh, but her soul again. It's frighteningly intimate. And the transfer is two-way, I feel something of her in me, something that gives me strength.
"Hey," Tim says, free now. "I want to help, too."
I raise an eyebrow. "Are you sure?" I'm not sure I really want to share that experience with anyone else, just yet.
"Just do it. Now. Do whatever the hell it is you have to do before I change my mind."
I glance at Lissa. She nods. We're going to need all the help we can get.
I reach over and hold his arm. The ability slides into him. He seems to fight it for a moment-a lifetime of Black Sheepdom I suppose-then gives in to it.
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