Well, two can play at this game. I shift out of the pit and do what I should have done earlier: summon my Avian Pomps. In a few moments they line the fence like something out of Hitchcock’s The Birds. I tell them to wait there, that this may not be as bad as I think.
There’s a mask painted over the door of Morrigan’s neighbor’s house. It’s glowing softly. Do they know I’m here? Are there masks glowing inside?
I kick the door open. My skin crawls, like it’s trying to slip my bones and get the hell out of there.
The room is a basic plan, one of those cookie-cutter homes, door leading into a living room, leading into a kitchen. Bedrooms and bathroom presumably tucked away down a corridor to the right. Someone put in a real effort to make something of it though. There are paintings on the walls, two broad bookcases filled with books, or what once were books. They’re ash now, the bookcases burnt black. The paintings are smeared with excrement and old blood, but the real show is on the ceiling, bound there in wire. Half-a-dozen Stirrers. And they can no longer be mistaken for human. Eyeless, their fingers scarred and black from tip to palm. They scratch about overhead, like newly woken things. I wonder if my presence has somehow activated them.
The floor is covered in what I suspect is dried fecal matter and pus. Something drops to the ground from the ceiling. A twisted little white shape. A maggot of some sort. There’s a loud sniffing, snuffling sound coming from above my head. The creatures no longer require breath, it’s a desiccated sort of snorting.
I heft Mog in one hand and swing, cutting through wire and flesh. The first Stirrer falls, squealing like a pig. It grabs at my legs as I stall it. Its soul tears through me. There’s nothing delicate or subtle about that pain. This is a Stirrer long in its host and it doesn’t want to go. I take the next one as swiftly as I can. And the next. The air crackles, something builds. I look to the Stirrer in the far corner of the room. Its fingertips are consumed by blue flame. The flesh along its limbs darkens and bubbles.
A burst of electricity strikes me.
I’m hurled back through the doorway. My heart stops, only to start up again. No easy way to death for me. The stench of burning hair fills the room. My hair!
The Stirrer cackles a breathy whistling chortle that can’t be described as human.
Thing is, I’m not human either.
And I’m not alone.
Crows and sparrows fill the room. Beaks drive through flesh, claws scratch. Dry blood rains down. In a furious confusion of feathers and avian screams the Stirrers are stalled.
There are more in the other rooms. But we are swift in dispatching them. We’ve had plenty of practice.
When the job is done. I stagger outside, run a hand over my healing scalp. There’s no chance of hair for weeks.
Well, that just makes me angrier.
The next three houses are worse, though I negotiate their lawns carefully to avoid any traps and I use my Avians without hesitation. Fire and feathers and screams, though I think there’s no one left to hear them. They’ve used families. Kids and adults. They’ve made an aberration of suburbia, they’ve cut out the heart of the world where I grew up and reinserted howling pod people.
Each stall becomes dirtier and grimmer. But I do the work, and I do it without complaint. There’s a satisfaction to it.
When I’m almost done, one of the last Stirrers stalling beneath my bloody fingers, crows dispatching the rest, my phone rings.
It’s Tim.
“I’m back, mate.”
The silence down the other end of the line extends for painful moments. “Yeah. I had to find out from Cerbo. Cerbo, of all bloody people. Oh, then the other Ankous, talking about you, fucking tweeting about you, about how confident you seemed—statesmanlike, would you believe. Couldn’t you have at least called? Let me know that you were OK?”
“I was going to, but I had to follow a hunch first.”
“What hunch?”
The Stirrer hangs limply from its chains, my bloody palm print across its face.
“I’ll tell you about it soon, I promise. I’ll be back in the office once I’m done.”
“You can’t tell me about it now?”
“I’m in the process of working through it. Don’t need any distractions. Moment I’m done, you’ll be the first to know. The problem with the Death of the Water is sorted, though. That’s something isn’t it? You should be pleased to know about that. You and Lissa have kept everything running smoothly.”
“Yes, I s’pose she told you about the schedule.”
“She did.”
“Steve, I didn’t want her to do the summoning. I know how you feel about it. I argued against it, repeatedly, but that schedule, the bloody thing in the sky. We needed you.”
“It’s all right.”
“Lissa wouldn’t even let me stand watch. If something went wrong—”
“Believe me, Tim. If something had gone wrong there would have been nothing you could’ve done.”
“And we’d have been enemies for life.”
“No, I would have forgiven you, on your deathbed, of course. That is if the Death of the Water even let me go. Right now, life doesn’t look like it’s going to be that long.”
“Don’t talk like that. Where are you?”
“Morrigan’s place or close enough.”
“What the fuck are you doing there?”
“Killing Stirrers is what. This whole fucking street is mad with them.”
“What?”
“We’ve been duped. Not completely sure how, but we have. They used a crow skull to—look, I’ll explain later.”
“You need a hand?”
“No, you keep doing what you’re doing.” I can hear kids laughing, the sound just makes me angrier about what the Stirrers have done here. “You home?”
“Yeah.”
“Hug Sally and the kids for me will you.”
“OK. You sure, you don’t—”
“I’m sure, mate. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I switch off my phone, and walk out of that last house. A home once, where kids like Tim’s laughed.
The air is already clearing. but it can never clear enough.
I look back at Morrigan’s house, its clean lines, its welcome mat at the front door.
Whatever I need to find will be in there. Any doubts I had about that were cleared up by the fricking Stirrer colony surrounding it.
14
I’ve only been here once since he died, and that was to lay brace symbols on every surface. But I’ve also kept the building under constant surveillance, with no less than two Avian Pomps keeping watch at any time. Or so I thought. Not that I ever suspected that Morrigan could possibly be a threat, just that he might have had allies, and that those allies might show up, come poking around. No one but the occasional hawker has come and gone.
My focus was too narrow, though, if all this Stirrer activity was going on just doors away.
I could have sold the place ten times over in the last six months, and have received increasingly frustrated letters from realtors suggesting just that. But I can’t bring myself to. And, now I think of it, the requests stopped coming a couple of months ago.
The house is as Morrigan left it, nothing moved or disturbed. He wasn’t really that into possessions, perhaps he’d already slipped into the mindset of an RM. The air is stale, trapped and musty. Outside there’s a swimming pool covered over—but there’s a hint of chlorine to the fustiness of a closed house. Dust’s everywhere, a thick layer of the stuff that I trail a finger through. In the Underworld the dust does my bidding, here it’s only worthy of a vacuum.
Morrigan would have hated to see it. He was always such a fastidious bloke.
But for the dust, Morrigan could still be living here. He is everywhere. There’s Escher’s “Eye (Reflecting Skull)” on one wall, and in his bedroom there’s a full-size reproduction of Klimt’s painting “Death and Life.” He loved the iconography.
I walk through the house. Can’t sense a
nything at all. No deathly presences, no objects of power beyond that of my knives.
There’s a walk-in wardrobe filled with little more than suits, silk shirts, underwear and a few T-shirts of the sort that you pick up at conferences and moots, and wear when you’re doing yard work. Nothing hidden in the wardrobe, no shoeboxes of secrets. Just a couple of trophies, a few photos of Morrigan with Mr. D and my parents, even one of him with me, back when I was a teen, my hair almost down to my arse. Morrigan looks happy in that photo. Me, I just look spotty and a little too metal.
Frustrated, I close my eyes, and concentrate.
There’s a soft buzzing at the limits of my perception. An electrical hum. Something’s running, generating a field, stymieing my senses.
I shift to the fuse box. Flick off the circuit breakers one by one. And then I can feel it.
There’s a space behind the refrigerator and it’s there I find the box. An old metal one giving off a peculiar flavor. The lid looks like it should just lift off.
I touch it and—
What?
I blink.
The air is cold, a good five degrees chillier at least than Brisbane. I haven’t left Australia, but I am eight hundred kilometers away. Southwest of Brisbane.
I lean against a sign that says “Dubbo 20 km.” I’m on the Mitchell Highway, in an entirely different state. Morrigan has a sense of humor. I know he hated the country. Dad, who was big on camping and fishing, had never been able to convince Morrigan to come out bush with us. Said the air gave him hives. Thinking back, he was probably just too busy planning everyone’s death in a Schism.
A crow alerted by my presence lands on a tall rock nearby and looks at me curiously, and with not a little alarm. It squawks at me.
“I know,” I say. “I know.”
The crow dips into a shallow bow and there’s a touch of piss-take about it. I don’t get out to rural parts as much as I should, but Australia’s a big country.
Morrigan’s set up some sort of pushing defense—a kind of combination of a shift and a kick in the chest with a size twelve boot.
Thank goodness I hadn’t sent a Pomp to dig through the house, the poor bastard would have had trouble trying to explain this to the office in Dubbo, once he got there of course. And if he wasn’t just torn apart instead. I check my phone, no signal.
The crow’s suddenly in the air again. Circling above me, calling out in alarm. And I can see what it sees.
Not good.
Shapes move in the nearby fields either side. They’re silent and low to the ground, and they’re coming toward me fast. Damn it, more Stirrer-dogs. But I’m ready for them. Mog in hand.
The first, an Alsatian, leaps at my throat, but I catch it with the sharp point of my scythe. Its weight forces Mog to the ground, just as a staffie closes its jaws around my left calf. I slap a bloody hand against its neck and the staffie grows limp, but its jaws don’t loosen. I’ve a dead dog attached to my leg like a tick, as more of the animals close in.
I could shift out of here, but this, like the Stirrer nests, needs to be dealt with now. Wrenching the scythe out of the Alsatian is harder work than I expect, and by then I’ve two more dogs snapping at me.
The scythe’s just too clumsy for this sort of work. They may as well be spiders. I release the knives and slash out at the silent dogs, they back away, just beyond my reach. I slide the blades over my palms and draw out some fresh blood.
I stall them all with swift pats. One tries to run from me, but I shift directly in front of it. Tackle the thing around the legs with my bleeding hands. That last one’s a border collie, like my Molly Millions.
It hurts to see dogs used so, and I’m sobbing by the time I shift back to Morrigan’s. Morrigan, the prick who killed my Molly.
This time I’m ready. I concentrate, lower my hands carefully, and touch the box.
As the push happens I push back. There are two shifts at work against each other, and I’m the stronger.
There’s a sound like tearing paper, which may actually be reality ripping around the edges. Kind of like some had feared the Large Hadron Collider might cause, only worse. That sets me in a panic but by then it’s too late. My ears pop, and I find myself on my arse. The air smells charred. But the shield is destroyed. The box is just a box again.
I lift the lid.
The wonderful odor of burning increases, but that’s to be expected. The defense had pushed hard. It’s just the friction of two forces at play against each other.
Inside the box is a book.
Curiouser and bloody curiouser. There’s nothing special about it, your bog-standard Moleskine notebook. It has a dark cover, it’s a couple of hundred pages thick. I reach down to grab the book. The ceiling creaks. Holding the book in one hand, I look up.
Then the roof collapses on me. Fire and smoke a crushing cage.
I shift, arms thrown up in the air. End up out on the front yard. The house is ablaze. I’m ablaze. I yelp, start rolling on the ground. Whatever’s left of my hair goes up in flame.
HD’s having a great old time inside me.
I consider the conflagration; if I’m lucky the fire will catch the neighboring houses and remove the taint of the Stirrers. But, regardless, Morrigan’s place is gone.
People are already coming out of the house on the corner. I can’t be seen here. I need to get away. HD suggests that we kill all witnesses, just to be sure. The blades snicker inside my jacket. I need to get away.
I shift again. This time to the office.
Taking Morrigan’s book with me.
15
So have you read it yet?” Tim asks, the first intelligent thing he’s said after rubbing my bald skull. If you ever piss off your cousin, sudden baldness is a sure way of generating instant forgiveness and ridicule. End of Days drawing near and he’s still capable of paying out on me. Lissa had given me an even harder time, once she’d made sure I was OK.
“No, well, there’s nothing to read.”
We’ve spoken about the Stirrers, but it’s the book that has everyone worried. I’ve even called Cerbo in.
The book sits on the desk; normally the throne is the most eye-catching thing in the office, followed by “The Triumph of Death.” But not now, this little notebook draws the eye, draws it and holds it. Lissa, Tim, Cerbo and I crowd around the Moleskine, as though we’re looking at a bomb rather than a book.
And perhaps we are.
I feel like we should be dressed in some sort of body armor observing this thing through the eyes of a remote-controlled robot.
But it hasn’t blown up yet.
“What do we do with it?” I ask them.
Cerbo reaches a hand out to touch the cover, pulling his fingers away at the last minute. “Destroy it. I don’t think we have any other option.”
I look over at Tim. “What about you?”
“Yeah, we burn it.”
“But what if it’s useful to us in some way?” I pick the notebook up. “Maybe this was Morrigan’s plan for saving the world. He was dealing with the Stirrers: he knew what was coming. I’m sure he would have come up with a plan. And there’s definitely a vibe of power about it, you can’t deny that.”
Cerbo grimaces. “Yes, there is. Which is why it worries me, Morrigan’s more likely to have built a weapon to destroy us than something to save us.”
“Yeah, he was a vindictive prick,” Lissa says.
Holding the book now, I know that they’re right. There’s a sense of impatience about it on par with a Brisbane bus driver waiting at a pedestrian crossing. It’s burning to plow down everything in its path, flip the gears into reverse and finish off the job.
“There’s almost an erotic charge to the book or something…kind of arousing.” I drop the Moleskine on the desk.
“You share far too much, mate,” Tim says.
“I’ve got some erotic stuff at home, if you need a substitute,” Lissa says.
I wink at her. “Maybe later.”
C
erbo pointedly looks anywhere but at Lissa or me. He clears his throat, leans over the book. “Can I touch it?”
Lissa chuckles, and I give her a look. Who’s being childish now?
“Why not,” I say, “it hasn’t done anything other than seem ominous, and you could say that about my throne.”
Cerbo glances over at my throne. There’s something in his gaze that suggests he’d more than like to touch it. I find my hands reaching for the knives in my belt, a stupid and somewhat embarrassing automatic reaction. HD wants it to go further. I just straighten my jacket.
“Ahh, this is why they ban books!” Tim says.
“Books can be dangerous, but then, there’s dangerous and dangerous.” Cerbo prods it with a finger, when nothing happens he picks it up and opens it. There is no explosion, no sudden exhalation of air, or a wind blown in from nowhere. The book remains definitively a book.
“The pages, are they all covered with this ink?” Cerbo spins, looks at me closely, squinting, then pokes me. “You don’t feel possessed or anything do you?”
“What, other than having the fucking Hungry Death inside me? Mate, I think it’d be a pretty tight fit if something else decided to take up residence.”
“Just asking.” He glances at Lissa.
“No. It’s definitely him.” She smiles. “Still a royal pain in the arse.”
“Certainly less hair than I’m used to,” Tim says.
More jacket straightening. I manage a “Ha.”
Cerbo peers closely at the book. “This, whatever it is, it’s important.” He pulls out a flashlight from his pocket. Tim and I exchange looks. “What?” Cerbo says. “You’re telling me you don’t keep a flashlight on your person at all times? What if you shift somewhere and it’s dark? What if you chase a Stirrer down the sewers? What if you drop your car keys in a dimly lit car park? Amateurs.” He holds the flashlight in his mouth then takes out a small jeweler’s loupe from another pocket and brings it to his left eye.
The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy Page 62
