The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy (101 page)

Morrigan gazes curiously toward the light, anything I suppose must be more attractive than here. I can see that he is weighing up his options, making a decision.

Then he acts.

He strides toward the portal, his Stirrers providing cover. There are fewer and fewer of them now, maybe thirty, perhaps forty at most. But they are fighting furiously, fanning out around Morrigan. Not that it matters: Morrigan has the scythe. No one can stop him with that weapon in his hands, not even me. The Pomps move out of his way.

And it’s then that I realize who stands between him and the gateway.

Lissa.

Stirrers hem her in. There’s nowhere for her to go.

Mr. D pats my back. “Get her. End this. Do what needs to be done.”

I try and shift. Nothing. Morrigan waggles a finger in my direction, his face a picture of pure delight.

So, instead, I run.

Morrigan clears a path through my Pomps. He heads straight toward Lissa. My people are being killed trying to protect her. And she’s pushing past them, calling them back. Lissa refuses to let people put themselves in front of her. She’s swearing, snarling, and I’ve never seen her so mad. I’m crashing through Stirrers, trying to get to her.

My blood boils from my fingers. Stirrer after Stirrer I hurl back with my touch. My body shudders with the effort, after all this running, all this fighting. And I’m moving fast, but not fast enough. A Stirrer takes me around the legs and I’m on my belly, winded. I lash out a hand, and the Stirrer screams. I get to my feet. Unsteady, but I have to reach Lissa.

And I make it.

I stand in front of him.

“Just you and me, prick.”

Morrigan grabs me with a free hand, and throws me away easily. I land on my face, twenty, thirty meters away. I get shakily to my feet, helped by a Pomp I don’t recognize. No time for thank yous, I turn back towards Lissa.

The space between her and Morrigan opens. Morrigan says something. Lissa pulls a knife from her boot and growls at him. Her throw is accurate, takes him in the throat.

Morrigan stands there a moment, knife lodged just under his Adam’s Apple. He tugs it free, and smiles.

I try and shift. Morrigan grins at me, shakes his head. Wal shoots from my side straight at Morrigan who, without even looking, knocks him out of the air with the end of the scythe.

Almost casually, Morrigan hurls the knife back at Lissa. As though it’s the easiest thing in the world.

I’m sprinting, crashing past Stirrers, leaping over the bodies of my comrades desperate to get between her and that blade. I’m not fast enough. The knife juts from her belly.

Lissa shivers, her mouth works at words I cannot hear. She presses a hand around the wound, takes a step forward, and throws her other blade. This one Morrigan snatches out of the air, and flicks back, lightning fast. It strikes her a few inches from the other knife, hilt buried deep.

Blood’s already seeping from the wounds. She drops onto her backside as though someone’s just pulled the legs out from under her.

I reach her a moment later.

Morrigan is already turning away, walking towards the light.

It’s working. It’s working too well. “Not so bad,” Lissa says softly, her hands are sticky with blood. I can smell the death on her. She shakes. Her whole body shakes, and there’s nothing I can do to still it. “Look, the prick’s doing what you wanted him to do. Follow him, take me with you. Get me to the sun, if I’m going to die. Let me die with the sun on my face.”

“You can have the sun,” I tell her, “but you are not going to die. I won’t let you. And I have some say in the matter.”

I lift her gently, and walk with her from Hell to earth. But I am not bringing her home to die.

All around me the Stirrers run toward the portal, Mr. D’s dead soldiers are gone, pushed back by this light, this living world in which they can no longer have any part. Tim runs toward me. Dr. Brooker by his side.

We walk out into the sun.

Waves thunder. The light is briefly blinding. The smell of life so strong that I almost choke on it.

Wal pulls the hair from Lissa face, letting the light shine onto her cheeks. And for a moment there’s color there, beneath the dust and blood, enough that I could almost convince myself that she’s all right. But she’s not.

“Put her down,” Dr. Brooker says, he rests a hand gently on my shoulder. “I’m begging you, Steven. Put her down. You’re killing her.”

He throws a thick blanket on the ground, I lay her gently there. She’s shivering. The fight is on behind me. But I can’t go to it. Lissa’s wounded, I can’t leave her. She wouldn’t leave me.

“Steve,” she whispers.

I lean in close. “I love you,” she says. “I really love you, but you can’t stay with me. You have to finish this. Please …”

And I know she’s right, but still, I hesitate.

Dr. Brooker pushes me away, gently but no less forcefully. “I need space,” he says. “Let me do my job and you do yours.”

“Her bowel,” I say. “It’s—”

“Go,” Dr. Brooker snarls, and I catch a glimpse of the doctor of old, the one that wouldn’t think twice about clipping me around the ear.

“Don’t you let her die.”

“Finish this,” Dr. Brooker says. “Whatever you have planned, get it done. Or what I do here won’t matter.”

I turn, there is Morrigan, surrounded by his Stirrers. He looks over at me, eyes positively twinkling.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he yells, bowing deeply. “Welcome to the end of the world.”

T
he world isn’t over yet. I walk across the sand toward Morrigan. HD swells within me. And I let it. I’ve no resistance to it now, no desire but to see Morrigan and the Stirrer god destroyed.

Time to shine,
it whispers.

“See, see how I fill the sky!” Morrigan stands there, the comet over his shoulder, the bright blue waters of the Coral Sea gleaming. Truly a moment of triumph. He looks over at me, and winks. “Death, thou shalt die.”

“Tosser,” Wal whispers in my ear.

The few remaining Stirrers give a ragged cheer, but I’m stalling them as I come, around me my crew have gathered.

My Pomps and my Ankous are covered in dust and blood, like miners that have just dug themselves out of a cave-in with nothing but their bare hands. All of them look on the edge of despair, but they follow me. And they fight.

And the Stirrers are banished, one by one. And somewhere behind me, Lissa lies dying.

At last Morrigan stands alone, waiting. He looks bored. And we have him surrounded. He twirls the scythe in his hands like a baton, then rests it in the crook of his arm and claps.

“Great team effort on your part,” he says. “But me, I don’t need a team.”

Neither do I. Not now.

I send my crew away, back to the edge of the beach, none of them want to argue the point. Tim is the last to go. I shake my head at him. Wal hovers in the distance, midway between Lissa and me. I signal for him to stay there. He has no role in this now.

I stand before Morrigan, my hand slick with my own blood. My body filled with rage and despair. If Lissa dies…but she isn’t going to die. I won’t let her, and I know I have it in my power to stop that death.

Morrigan has the towers, the high rises and shops of the Gold Coast behind him, and that great tear in reality of the world. He’s the boss from Hell, literally. All I have is the sea, and its song to my back, the great distances to the horizon.

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.