The plane shudders. The storm outside is building. We have to find those Stirrers.
I look around. There's no one I'd consider suspicious. Then I glance at the front of the plane. The toilet light is on, and it's flickering, flaring from dim to bright. And always just before the lightning bursts outside.
'In there,' I say, slipping Lissa my knife once I've surreptitiously slit my own palm.
I walk down the aisle to the toilet door. One of the attendants shuffles towards me, gripping the seats tightly, but my glare is enough to stop them.
At the front of the plane I can hear the pilot's muted talk in the cabin. They don't sound too happy. Having a Stirrer so close wouldn't be helping either. Reflex times would be slowing. Everybody on the plane including the pilots probably has a headache. Not good when you're trying to fly through a storm. And looking through the nearest window I can tell this is a whopper.
I knock on the toilet door, and the moment I touch it, I recognise the presence of the Stirrer. Right then. I lean back, put my shoulders against the door behind me, and kick as hard as I can.
The door crumples. The Stirrer's sitting on the toilet lid. Its eyes widen, almost comically so.
'You.'
'Yeah, me.'
Someone crashes down the aisle towards me. Another Stirrer. I turn my head in time to see Lissa leap out of her chair and stall it. And then my Stirrer is swinging a fist at my skull. I duck back, and it grabs me by the lapels and swings its head against mine.
Hey, that's my move.
I almost drop to the floor with the force of it. I slam my bloody palm in its face and it staggers back, its eyes flickering. Outside, lightning crashes and crackles. The plane swings violently to the left, a drunken sort of lurch.
I slap my palm against its face again, and this time it collapses on the floor. Then both souls lance rough-edged and furious through me. I drop to my knees as shocked attendants rush in my direction.
I look over at Lissa, and she's OK.
Then it hits me, a psychic fist clenched around my heart. Hard nails of pain rip through my flesh. It's another fragment of the Hungry Death. I'm floored by it. My back bends, my limbs stiffen. It lasts only a moment, then I can move again.
I get to my feet; giddy with power.
I push the attendants out of the way, which is easy. They scramble towards their seats. The seatbelt lights are still flashing and there's a rough noise coming from one of the engines. The plane drops, people scream. All the lights above Lissa's head go off, then flare back on in a way that no lights should.
I realise I shouldn't be here. How could I have been so stupid? I'm barely containing all this death pouring into me. My flesh creaks, my eyes feel like they might burst with the strain of this. Another fragment. I grit my teeth and stagger down the aisle. I can taste blood. It's filling my lungs, lubricating or facilitating the arrival of the Hungry Death.
Maybe that will be the last one. Maybe Rillman has been stopped. I think of the battle raging on the bridge, all those RMs dying, cramming me with this manic, lustful energy.
I try and shift. I can't. It's like the Sea of Hell again. Something is holding me to this place – or someone.
'You need to be in your seat.' A flight attendant, perhaps a little braver than the rest, is at my side. Every passenger on the plane is staring at me. A couple of the bigger ones are considering doing something. What? What could they do against me?
I swear that, for a moment, the attendant recognises me on some deeper level: what it is that I am. Or maybe she just sees a crazy person. She nods her head, swallows a deep breath. 'OK, sir.'
She scrambles away, moving like a crab; I've never seen a flight attendant so spooked before. Someone else is already asking for assistance. I can tell she really wants to go to her own seat, that she's as scared as the others, but it doesn't stop her. She helps them with their seatbelt.
A dreadful hush descends upon the plane. HD is rapturous, positively bloody gleeful. I push it down.
I'm back with Lissa; stepping over the Stirrer corpse. 'I have to get out of here,' I say.
'What's wrong?'
'Rillman. He's killing RMs. I'm absorbing more of the Hungry Death. I could destroy this plane.'
'Shift then. The Stirrers are dealt with,' Lissa says.
'I'm trying.' I close my eyes, concentrate. It's no good.
Another wave of the Hungry Death strikes me. The lights around me explode. The plane can't handle what's going to happen. HD swells. I try to shift again. Still nothing. I look around wildly for an exit hatch.
There, not too far away. I take a step towards it.
Lightning strikes the plane, a dozen incendiary bursts. And some of them are coming from me. Outside, the storm is raging, with a darkness deeper than anything the Stirrers are capable of. The plane judders, swings, drops. I slam into the ceiling. The attendant has hit her head. Blood flows. A trolley hurtles past me, crashes into the attendant. Her death pulses through my flesh. People scream. HD howls out its pleasure.
I try to shift again. Still no good. I'm fixed here by the transformation occurring within me, the new and horrible thing I'm becoming.
Lissa looks at me. She has her seatbelt on tight.
Shift, damn it! Shift! They're all going to die if I don't. But I can't. It wants them to die.
And all I have is the thin fabric of you, the Hungry Death whispers with more force than I've ever experienced. I can pull myself through that whenever I want to. And I will. You were one of thirteen warriors, but twelve have deserted you.
Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.
The plane jolts like a creature kicked and whipped and gripped by a deathly god. The sky is a dark fist around it. Fuck. Oh fuck. This is all my stupid fault.
There's a moment of calm. And my phone chirps. I look at the LCD: the schedule. Oh, no. Two hundred names. Lissa's is at the top.
It's too late.
'Steven -' Lissa's hand folds over mine.
The plane bucks, up and down, faster than I can adjust to. I feel the plane flash in and out of this world and Hell. My presence is causing this. The transition alone is killing some people. I'm weightless, then heavy. I smack my head against the nearest headrest. Lissa's hand slips from mine.
Time runs down here, bleeds away. Death is coming. I'm coming. This is all my fault. The air stinks of blood and piss and smoke.
'Hold my hand,' I say to Lissa, snatching it anyway, just as the plane starts to tumble. There's a noise like the grinding of giant teeth, a dreadful rending. The plane is lit with a blue light. The pre-death light. Lissa's as bright with it as the others. I have seen her that way before, and I will not see it again.
The last fragment of the Hungry Death enters me. I feel it pushing against my flesh. The Orcus are dead, all but me. I am the last. And it terrifies me. HD loves it.
Lissa's not looking at me: her eyes are wide. The noise must be terrible but I can barely hear it. I snap my head around in time to see the back end of the plane split from the front, as though something has torn it off.
This plane falls tonight. Two hundred shattered lives. And it's but the beginning. All that ending ahead, and me/we at the fore.
I wish HD would shut the fuck up.
There are screams, guttural, terrified. Someone laughs. It's a peculiar sound; it cuts through me. And HD is joining in.
'I picked the wrong bloody flight, didn't I?' Lissa says.
'Jesus,' I breathe. Every time I blink I can see the One Tree. I can hear it creaking. I force my eyes open. 'Oh, Jesus.'
Lissa holds my gaze.
'Don't be scared,' she says, above all that noise.
Mr D's words come to me: Sometimes terror is the only response. I'm not scared. I'm terrified.
She touches my face. 'It's OK, Steven.' Her hands do not shake, there is more strength in that touch than in all of me. We have been here before. I just never expected to be here again so soon.
'I love you,' I say.
&nbs
p; I grab Lissa's hand and try and shift. It hurts. HD pushes against me. It's hard and toothed. The meat of me is screaming with it. I haven't felt this human since… since Morrigan cut me with the stony blade. The universe pushes. But I push back. I push back hard and it shrinks away. And this time I shift.
But Lissa doesn't come with me. I'm standing in my office. Alone. HD screams.
I shift back. Back to her.
This shift is not resisted. I see now that this is where I am meant to be, what I am meant to witness.
The plane crumbles and tumbles around me. People scream, and die. Their souls lash through me: bullet-quick and burning. It hurts, but I ignore it. I reach out for Lissa.
'No!' she says. I can't hear her, of course. The roar of a plane breaking, tumbling, dying, drowns her out. But I can read her lips.
I clutch at her. Wrap my arms around her, and shift again. Pain. A nest of needles jutting through every cell of me, and twisting. I'm shrieking in my office, blood running from my lips, my eyes, my ears, my arse. Every orifice bleeds.
No Lissa. She is not here.
I shift again.
The plane. The plummeting cage. Outside I see the One Tree looming and then a wing clips a branch. Metal grinds, windows crack and blow out.
'Sorry,' she says, and squeezes my hand.
She shouldn't say that. This is my fault. All of it.
She touches my face. 'It's all right.'
'I'll follow you. I'll follow you to the end of fucking time if I have to.' And then there is an explosion. The whole sky seems on fire.
I wrap my arms around her, shield her from the worst of it. I'm hit, but heal almost as fast as the wounds make their mark. There is so much strength in me. But not enough for her.
And there isn't a plane anymore. Just fragments dropping towards a black and perilous sea. The air roars and all around us, people fall. All around us is the death that I made.
She falls. And falls.
And I can't lift her up, so I hold her close. I whisper my love. I press my lips against her, and I fall with her.
We plummet towards water dark as slate in the storm. She holds my gaze with a strength that amazes me. An implacable acceptance. I can feel her heartbeat, like I can feel all their heartbeats, and it is racing. But she doesn't look away.
I am going to lose her.
Let me, the Hungry Death whispers, Let me.
And I do. I let it fill me. I make a void for it within my soul, and for the first time in my life I have an inkling of what real power is. I shift.
And this time she comes with me. We're here, in my office.
She belts her hands against my chest. 'No! You shouldn't have, you shouldn't have!'
'Stay here. I'll be back. I promise.'
'Where are you going?' Lissa asks, weeping.
'To bear witness. To pomp the souls of those lost.' There are bodies in the water, lifeless. Only their souls know motion among the flotsam, bits of plane, and pieces of people's lives. I hover cross-legged, shifting above them, and it is effortless. But the wonder has been sucked from it, by these dead: one hundred and fifty in total. Their souls thrash in the water, bound there, unable to do more than keep their essences afloat. Out here, if I don't do anything…
Long grey limbs slither from the sea. Water spills from narrow bald heads, beneath which beam mouths long and beakish. The ocean wants these souls for itself. It wants them restless and heaving in the depths. The grey shapes flash towards the souls of the dead. I glare at them. HD howls. And they hesitate.
'These are mine,' the Water whispers. 'Not yours. You have no dominion in my seas.'
'This time I do.'
'You would challenge me, Orcus?'
Orcus. I blink at the title, at the stupid formality of it. But it is true. It is what I am. I am Orcus, my region is the earth. I am the only one capable of pomping these souls to Hell away from the shore. Children! There are children here. Dozens of them. And, God help me, HD guffaws with pleasure.
'Yes,' I say, 'and you cannot stop me.'
I close my eyes, and draw the souls within me. It's hard work pulling them from the suck and cold of the sea. I'm sweating and shaking by the end, with the effort of it. The Water was right. I have no dominion here, but I do have my power. Finally they are gone, sent to the Underworld, which is their right, no matter that it has come too soon for all of them.
The grey forms drop beneath the water. 'Orcus, you do yourself no good in making an enemy of me.'
'One more enemy. What does it matter?'
Then the Water beneath me is just water again, and the dead are soulless and drifting among the wreckage. I've done what I can here.
It's time to find Rillman. The bastard has to pay.
33
I can sense his heartbeat. It can't hide its secrets from me. I close my eyes and shift.
The Deepest Dark. Why here? Which is precisely the question Wal asks when he crawls out from under my shirt. I can sense Rillman circling around, shifting from space to space. I catch glimpses of him. A leg. A foot. A hand tight around a knife hilt. His feet send up clouds of dust. Closer and closer. I wait.
And then, through the dark to my left, two stony blades jab out at me.
I jerk to the right, though one of the blade points cuts through my suit, bites shallowly into my stomach. It burns. I resist the urge to crouch over it, as though to stop my guts spilling. But the wound is already healed.
'Out you come,' I snarl.
A body takes form in the dark, arms and shoulders, then head, torso and legs knitted from all that cold shadow.
Solstice smiles. Who else would it be?
'So what do I call you? Rillman or Solstice?'
His limbs move with a jerky energy that Solstice never had. I wonder at the strength of will it must have taken Rillman to contain all that madness. He doesn't need to now, and it bursts from him as wild as any storm.
'I never really liked the name Solstice, but you take what the mask gives you. And he was such a good mask.' Then he changes, becomes the Rillman I know. The Rillman in the tunnel. The dull, smiling bloke in Lissa's photo album. He shrugs. 'You know, after I failed, I killed myself. Not once, but twice. And every time I came back. She helped me come back.'
'Aunt Neti?'
'Yes, even when I didn't want to. And then RMs noticed. They tried to kill me, too, and each time I died, I came back, different, stronger.
Around him swings the tiny dragon, Smauget, its red eyes aflame. It darts towards my face. There's a blur of movement, a shrill yowl, and Wal has snatched it from the air. The dragon hisses and snaps, its tiny mouth going for Wal's jugular, but the little fella is ready for it. He catches it by the throat, and they tumble to the ground.
'Leave this to me,' he says, from between clenched teeth. 'You deal with him.'
Rillman holds the knives at a distance from his chest, as though even he's afraid of what they are. I don't blame him. I understand their will intimately. The knives blur the air like light sticks waving in the depths of a cave.
They whisper and snort, Hello, hello.
'I am better armed now. These things kill RMs like you wouldn't believe. They're simplicity itself. And here, you don't have any Avian Pomps to protect you,' Rillman says.
'Why did you kill them?' I ask.
'Who? The RMs, well, you know that they deserved it.'
'Not them. This isn't about them.'
I lift my hand. Dust shapes itself into a plane. Dust people tumble from it.
Rillman almost drops the knives. They shudder in his hands. 'What?' The emotions that play across his face shock me. It's almost as variable as Mr D's. Joy, sadness and a mad hunger mix and meld across his features, and it would almost be comedic if he wasn't waving knives in my face. Then I realise that Rillman isn't well at all.
I could almost pity him.
'Your Stirrer drones,' I spit. 'The ones with Lissa. I took them out, and then the Hungry Death came. I wouldn't have been there but fo
r you. Its presence within me wouldn't have destroyed that plane.'
Rillman snorts. 'You RMs, always ready to blame anyone but yourselves. Lissa was meant to die. To make you understand. To teach you the mechanics of pain. And my attacks on you? That was their purpose, too. To hurt, to blind, to scare. I take it that you managed to save her. Too bad about the others, eh? They were your doing.'
'I understand pain.' HD snickers. It's intimate with pain as well.
'Ah, you only think you do. Maddie, I killed her. But I could have brought her back. And there he was, your Mr D. Smug and useless. There he waited, in the dark that slides along the borders of the Underworld. And with a fucking grin on his face, he hurled her back. I was done, then. I was spent; no chance of another Schism. He had nothing to fear from me, but he hurled her back. And even now, dead, he is not dead. And you have made it so. The favoured one, the fucking coddled one. The man who didn't want to be Death. How can you expect to do anything? How can you expect to hold back anything?'
'That's it,' I say. 'It starts and ends here. And the rest? The rest we will have to see.'
A little calm returns to Rillman, a crooked smile. 'That's what the Orcus said, and there's very little left of any of them.'
'I'm something altogether different now,' I say.
The knives flash towards me, but I'm ducking and weaving. It's motion absent of thought, fed on instinct. I've fought with these knives before. My movement is fast and sinuous. Something is hardening within me. A dreadful resolve, a chuckling vastness. The knives slice the air millimetres above my face, then to my left and right, never quite touching.
Rillman growls.
I gesture at the dust around my boots. It flashes up in a tight spiral between us – Suzanne would have been pleased – and into his eyes. My fist follows it. Rillman stumbles back. Wipes at his nose with his wrist. A knot of blood and snot stretches from his nostrils to his arm, then breaks.
His heart beats loud in my ears, and it's no longer that familiar steady rhythm. It's pounding, racing – 160 bpms at least. His pupils are dilated. I know he's on something and it's raging through his body like fire. He comes back at me, fast. But something is burning through my body, too.
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