And it better be enough.
I shrug off my duffel coat: let it drop to the sand.
“Haven’t we been here before?” Morrigan says.
“I guess that’s just how it is with us.”
Morrigan shakes his head. “No. I mean, here.” He points behind him, at a restaurant on the strip along the beach. “I’m sure we had a staff party there.”
“Maybe. I—”
“Oh, you wouldn’t remember. You got royally pissed.” He grimaces, leans on the scythe and for a moment he just looks like a tired old man and, despite himself, despite what he is certain is victory, there’s bitterness there, too. “You always drank so much. I’m sure it won’t surprise you to know that your parents were worried. I told them that it was just a stage you were going through. That you’d grow out of it. What the fuck did I care? You were all going to be dead soon anyway.”
“Don’t you ever bring up my parents again.”
“Why? They were a part of my life, too. I have just as much right—”
“You killed them, you prick.”
“Yes, yes I did. But it was all for a good cause. I mean, look at you, my boy. Wouldn’t they be just so proud? I’m proud, despite myself.”
I feel my face flush. Enough. He’s just drawing this out, surely. But I can see the surprise on his face—the genuine shock of his pride.
“Doesn’t matter. None of that matters. This is what is important. This moment. All those other more…questionable times, those defeats, none of it matters, all of it led here.” Morrigan grins. “You’ve cast the toothy fuckers out, but that means nothing. I’ll resurrect them from the Deepest Dark myself, and we’ll dance on this world’s bones.”
The comet is a second sun in the sky. There’s a hush in the air that’s electric, that whispers just beneath hearing with the weight of the end of the world.
But I’ve my own argument, and I do not doubt its persuasiveness.
Now!
My Avians attack, coming from dozens of directions at once, and he cuts them easily out of the sky. I call them to a halt. The birds circle above us, and I can feel their hatred for this man. It almost matches my own.
“So that was your plan, eh,” Morrigan says. “To peck me to death.”
“No.”
He jabs out at me with Mog’s blunt end. Straight into my face. I go down. Drop to the sand. Skull ringing, nose broken I think. He swings the scythe at my head, point first. I scramble backwards, frantically. Arms flailing. The point nicks the skin of my left hand.
“I’m going to cut you into little pieces,” Morrigan chortles. “There will be no end to the fire and death that I am bringing. I’ll resurrect and burn you to screaming ash a thousand thousand times, and that will just be the beginning.”
I stagger to my feet. The scythe misses my chest by millimeters. I step back, boots sinking in the wet sand. I’m running out of room, the water’s lapping at my heels. A decent wave and I’ll be knocked into the blade. I wipe the blood from my nose. “You’ve got a lot of fun planned then,” I say.
Morrigan nods. “And an eternity to fulfil it. That’s the thing with eternity, you really need to pace yourself.”
He connects with Mog this time, takes a flap of skin from my forearm, it hangs with the shirtsleeve, I can see bone and meat beneath. I choke down a scream. It heals quickly but it doesn’t stop the pain. Morrigan’s grin threatens to split his face.
Waves crash against my thighs now, but they don’t topple me, it’s almost as if the water holds me up. Morrigan’s followed me, the water above his ankles.
He has me beaten, and he knows it. I lift my head high.
“Might as well get the first death in, then,” I say. “You boring old prick.”
Morrigan’s eyes widen, he draws back the scythe, and I take a deep breath. Mog curves towards my head, and stops.
A hand. A hand grips it beneath the blade, halts the edge just inches from my neck. Morrigan isn’t smiling anymore.
Another hand grabs his leg. And another, and another. Water given form, to halt a god. The limbs strain against his strength, but they hold.
“Always have a backup plan,” I growl.
Morrigan struggles, wrenching his shoulders from left to right. And he almost breaks free. The ocean behind me groans. But almost isn’t enough.
I close my fingers around the scythe haft. “I believe that’s mine,” I say.
I pull Mog from his grip, yank so hard that I almost fall on my arse into the water, and I would, but the sea won’t let me fall.
Not yet. Not until this is done. We have a deal.
The scythe is mine again. Mog croons. Glad to be home. Home. Home. Perhaps embarrassed by what it was made to do. My fingers tighten around the familiar icy grips, and God help me: it’s never felt so good.
“You can’t stop this,” Morrigan growls. “This world is mine. I deserve it.”
“You certainly deserve something, mate.”
Morrigan’s face strains and the muscles beneath begin to … bubble. Something is coming through.
Here, at last, the Stirrer god is asserting itself.
He/it struggles in Water’s grip, just as Mog had once struggled in Morrigan’s. But there is no escaping the Death of the Water. Not this time. Those vast stony engines of the Water are working furiously. I can feel them: a distant throbbing, tides churning.
I tighten my grip on the scythe, and I know at last what it was made for.
Not to cut away at the threads of the universe, not to reap the souls of the living. No, those jobs sullied it. This scythe has one true function. Just as I, as Orcus, have one true role. And I understand that now.
I am Death, without me life would have nothing to quicken it, without me, there would be nothing but Morrigan’s cruel endlessness. And how fucking dull is that?
I swing Mog with everything I have.
HD rides along that swing, his glee setting my teeth to such a grinding, awful rictus that a molar cracks, shatters in my mouth. HD, Mog and me: together again at last.
Mog strikes Morrigan’s neck with absolute precision. The blade shearing through muscle and bone, and far more than that—it cuts away the god. Tears it open and devours it.
Aunt Neti once talked about cutting a vast crack in the world, and now I know what she means.
There’s a sound like reality’s lungs imploding. Morrigan manages a sneer before his head tumbles to the sand.
Sparrows burst from the wound. But the instant they hit the air they shudder and die and drop. Staining the water with ink that fades away to nothing almost at once.
A pulse of light builds out at sea, eye-searingly intense. I feel it rather than see it. Shadows thin and lengthen, impossibly long. The light passes. A great beating rumble follows it, sonic booms crashing into each other, rising and building like cosmic nails being scraped down a cosmic blackboard.
All the windows in the shops and apartment buildings facing the sea shatter.
Morrigan’s headless body quakes, expands and contracts. No more of his sparrows seek the sky. He lurches forward. The air heats up. The hands that grip him shudder, some of them are smoking, but they do not let go, and Morrigan vanishes.
All at once. There is no deathly howling, no rage, just a sudden, silent absence.
And with him goes the comet in the sky. The portal claps shut like a gunshot a moment later. The man who killed my friends and family, and the god that drove its creatures to rage against our world, are gone.
Here on the shore it ends.
Wal hovers beside me. “You did it,” he says. “You bloody did it!”
“Yeah, I…we did.”
Wal smiles. “Look at you, all gro—”
Then he’s torn from reality too, resituated back on my arm. Earth and Hell are realigned. I didn’t get a chance to thank him, or to say sorry.
32
Waves crash against my thighs, no longer concerned with holding me up or holding a god back.
&n
bsp; The sand sucks at my boots. Mog is all that’s steadying me. I lean on it heavily.
“You did good,” I tell it. “You did good.”
The scythe croons in my grip, radiates pride. I look to the shore, and Tim’s running toward me. He splashes through the water up to his thighs and nearly gets knocked over by a wave himself.
“Hey,” I say.
Tim slides an arm under mine. “Let’s get you out of here before you drown, eh.” He pulls me from the sea.
“It’s done,” I say. “Can you feel it?”
The schedule will have changed. The world’s started breathing again. Even now I can feel people dying, but no more than any other day. The heartbeat of the world is loud inside my head, and it is strong and there is no end to it in sight.
“Yes. It’s done. The Gold Coast, though,” he grins. “Why the Gold Coast of all places?”
I don’t have time for this. I have to get back to Lissa.
I’m on the verge of pushing past him when I realize the grin has died on his face. He points up at the sky. Above us seagulls hurtle from the water, thousands of them, rushing west, toward the hinterland, toward anywhere that isn’t this beach.
“What’s that all about?” Tim says.
Somewhere nearby, dogs howl.
“Things are about to get interesting,” I say. Why now? Why does this have to happen now? Lissa’s in trouble, I know she doesn’t have much time left. But there should be enough. If only—
“What have you gone and done?” Tim demands.
“Only what needed to be done, because I was the only one to do it.”
There’s a great hissing as the water slides away from the coast, revealing the sand beneath, the rock and the slimy undercarriage of the sea.
The water draws back, grows, until it has reached some sort of critical mass, then advances. And all of a sudden there is a wave crashing toward the shore with the roar of a dozen freight trains. A bloody big one, a tsunami of Roland Emmerich disaster movie proportions. It towers over all of us.
“So, how do we stop that?” Tim says.
“We don’t,” I say stepping in front of him. “I do.”
I was hoping that debts would be called in later, that I would have more time to get everyone used to the idea.
As if that was ever going to happen! When do I ever get enough time to do anything?
I walk back toward the water, lean on my scythe, stare at the coming wave and say, “Yeah, I know we have a deal.”
The wave continues its hurtling approach, there’s the vastness of the Pacific Ocean behind it and the will of a Death with whom I have made an agreement. I wave my hands frantically at it. So much for being cool. HD prickles inside me, I resist the urge to run or to shift, what would be the point anyway?
“We have a deal!”
The wave obscures the sun. Birds continue to hurtle west, away from the shore. Only my crows remain, and they’re anxious and squawking. They circle high above my head, but the wave is higher.
“WE.
“HAVE
“A
“DEAL!”
It stops, just stops, inches from my chest, water towering impossibly over us and frozen on the edge of breaking. I stab a finger into the wave. “We have a deal!”
A familiar face pushes through the water. It’s too smug by far. For a moment I think it will let me off, and that this is just one last big: BOO!
My hopes lift, no matter how I try not to let them.
“Yes, and you will keep it,” it says. No luck there then, was at best a slim chance. When I’d made the deal I really hadn’t expected to survive.
“What’s all this?” I can’t help myself; I slap my hand against the surface of the water. That it’s just water, that it’s not hard, or viscous or something magicked solid surprises me.
The Death is showing off. I may have torn asunder a city’s walls with little more than dust but that was nothing compared to this.
“This is insurance,” the Death of the Water says.
A cold rage fills me. “You don’t need it. I’m a man of my fucking word. Jesus, it’s all about theatrics with you types.”
The Death of the Water dips its head. “There’s a long history of it, yes. What else could make the eons tolerable? Little deaths, drownings, minor tragedies. But once in a while, one has to let oneself go.” A hand snatches out, grabs my arm and pulls me into the wave.
“Not yet.” I yank my arm back. “That’s not how this works.” Lissa’s dying behind me, and it expects me to just walk away. Lissa dies and the whole world drowns as far as I’m concerned.
“You said it yourself, we have a deal.”
“Not yet. They need to know. We stopped a god today, you think if you snatch me into the water that they won’t try and come after me? Do you really want to fight a war? Besides, the deal can’t be done until I’m finished here, and I’m not finished. I’m not quite the letter of our agreement.”
The hand grips me tighter. I feel the limits of Water’s restraint, and I know I’m at the edge of them. But then it’s as if the ocean itself takes a deep breath. The wall of water shivers then stills.
It lets me go. “You can have your goodbye.”
“Nothing good about it,” I murmur. Except, well, we’ve just saved the world.
A cold wind howls across the wall of the wave. Its top tips ever so slightly, water tumbling like rain. There’s a rainbow on the southern end of the beach.
I walk back towards Lissa, Tim hovering at a distance. The beach is packed with the dead, souls of those drawn to this End of Days, this meeting of the Deaths various. I can’t help it, I pomp some as I go almost without thinking. They’re quick to get out of the way. Something new, I guess, but I’ve no time to consider it.
She lies there, Dr. Brooker leaning over her. There’s a blanket beneath her, but nothing hiding her injuries, I look at them, as much as it hurts to do so. Two wounds already dark and swollen, already open to death. I remind myself why I am here. I’m responsible for those injuries, and I will be responsible for their healing.
Dr. Brooker doesn’t look like he’s seen anything of what has just gone on. And that takes real concentration. He doesn’t even see me approach.
He’s working swiftly, efficiently. He’s already got a drip in one arm, and he’s packing something into the wound.
“You’re going to have to move aside,” I say.
“Steve, are you sure that—”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“Steve,” Lissa says, her eyes are glazed over, but she manages to focus them on me. My girl is so strong. “You finished it?”
“Yeah, well, not quite. There’s something I have to do. Something so you’ll survive.”
Lissa frowns. Her eyes widen. She knows. She’s not stupid.
“Don’t you come near me,” Lissa says. “You can’t do this.”
“I don’t do this, and you’ll die. Trust me, I know. I have to.”
She lifts her legs to her chest, or tries to at any rate. Just watching her hurts, but it doesn’t stop me. She can hate me all she wants, as long as she lives.
“You were never meant to die,” I say. “Remember, I brought you back. You can’t die now. You’re the best of me. Don’t you know what sort of monster I would become without you.”
I can’t stop the tears that slide down my cheeks. They’re as deep and powerful a force as the Death of the Water. And God help me, she’s the one that tries to offer me comfort.
“You think too little of yourself,” Lissa says, touching my face. Her fingers are so warm. Here is that last burst of life before death. I don’t know if what I am giving her is much better, but it’s all I have.
I brush my thumb across her face, gently, gently. Slide a strand of hair from her brow. I kiss her softly then harder, and she’s kissing me back.
Swift, without hesitation, I pull from the kiss, and holding Lissa tight, release a thirteenth of the Hungry Death into her.
<
br /> There is fire. A blazing heat, as though I’ve closed my body around red-hot barbed wire. I bite my tongue against the agony of it.
I will not scream: not now.
The air turns electric, and she shudders with this shared pain. It passes quickly, though. That’s something, surely. I tell myself that has to be enough.
When I am finished Mog is gone, and I’m holding the Knives of the Negotiation again. The Orcus is no longer wholly inside me. Mog cannot form. The knives mumble contentedly like homicidal babies. They feel a little heavier, or it’s just that I am a little weaker.
She blinks at me. Already there is color in her cheeks and the wounds are closing. It’s always swift that first time, with the flush of power that comes with becoming an RM. “What have you done?” Lissa demands, she’s still a little a woozy, but she won’t be for long. “It’s not over yet, is it?”
I can’t face her. I have more work to do.
“I’ll be back soon,” I say, not looking her in the eyes, talking to the wounds so swiftly closing. “Rest, just a little longer. I’ll explain everything.”
Tim walks towards me. “Lissa’s OK,” I say.
“Good, thank Christ. What the hell is all that about?” Tim demands jabbing towards the wall of water. His voice is low, but no less vehement. “What sort of deal leads to a massive tidal wave?”
“One that’s not so good for me, but good for everyone else.”
“What the fuck?”
“I don’t have time to discuss it. I’ve still got things to do.”
“Yeah, like run Mortmax. Like being my cousin.”
“I’ll always be your cousin, Tim,” I say softly. “But I have to give up Mortmax.”
“What?”
“I’m getting rid of all this power.”
“You can’t be serious, and what, give it to them?” He gestures at the assembled Ankous. All of them bloody, and tired, and alive.
“Why not? They’re the most qualified. They’ve all worked so hard to stop the Stirrer god. I couldn’t have done it without them, and you, and Lissa. Look, the Orcus was always meant to be thirteen. One person shouldn’t be responsible for the world, and certainly not me. Christ, the number of times I nearly killed you, trust me, you don’t want all of this thing inside me.”
The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy Page 75
