The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy (25 page)

“Jesus,” I say, and I can feel the pupils of my eyes expanding so fast they hurt.

“Here,” she says, “in this place, we can touch. Here, we’re the same.” She holds my hand against her face. That contact of warm skin against warm skin is electric, and her beautiful eyes are wide. “But I don’t know for how long. Steve, I can feel the One Tree calling me. I’ve denied it for so long.”

I pull her to me, hardly hearing her.

“I—”

Then we’re kissing. And I’m on fire. There is part of me railing against this madness. We’re in the land of the dead. There is no time for this. But, really, my sense of time is gone. It has been since I drove the knife into that first artery. In a heartbeat such reservations burn away, and all I want is her.

Lissa pulls at my shirt, and I’m tugging at her blouse, and trying to get my jeans off at the same time.

I stumble out of them, awkward as all hell, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing does except her. Her skin is soft against my chest. My lips find the hollow of her neck, my arms find an aching rest against her back, and there’s a synergy, a perfect motion between us. I kiss her gently, then slide down, my lips grazing her skin, feeling her shudder through my lips.

I’m on my knees tugging at her clothes, then burying my face in her, rough and soft and wet. I’m tasting her, devouring her with a hunger that I never knew I had, that I never believed I could deserve.

“Steven,” she breathes.

I am so hard. How can I have an erection here? How can I feel this way? The questions fall from me. They have to, because I want this so much.

I slide up against her. My body feels like it’s fused with hers, that we’ve somehow melded together. I can feel her heart beating beneath her breast. It’s crashing and pounding like mine, and here, in this gateway to the Underworld, it dazes me. Then I remember that we’re not yet one, and then we are. And that should be enough to bring me to orgasm, the long lack of such sensations, the liquid heat of it. But I don’t and I don’t and when we do it’s an epiphany of fire.

“Oh, my,” she says.

“Oh, my,” I say right back. My body is sore, but it’s a good sore.

I kiss her so hard my lips hurt. I run a thumb along her cheek, then hold her head gently, staring into her eyes, trying to peer into the green-gated glory of her soul.

She smiles at me, and it’s a different sort of smile. Not sardonic in the least. I feel for the first time that I’ve gotten past the armor, that I’m really seeing her.

Still there’s part of me that’s thinking,
Well, only one place to go from here, can’t beat that,
and another part is yelling,
Shut up, shut up, shut up!
and there’s another part that’s just beaming, grinning like crazy. My head’s become an awfully crowded, complicated space.

Sex with a dead girl. That sets a new low for Pomps. Except we’re both sort of dead now.

And, here’s the thing: I don’t care.

I open the door.

There’s a cold wind blowing, strong and smelling of rain, a memory of the world I had just left. I shiver and pull my duffel coat about me.

The ritual was a success. We’re somewhere, and I have the means to bring Mr. D to me and, perhaps, find a way to end Morrigan’s Schism. And, hell, I’m in love. Totally in love. I almost spin. Buried in all this dreadfulness, I’ve found a perfect moment. I’m happy for the first time in longer than I care to admit.

I glance around.

We’re in Death’s neighborhood, but not George Street. We’re in the park in the Underworld equivalent of West End—the tower is behind me. The river’s flowing in front of me, but has a dark luster more like licorice than water. It’s Brisbane but not Brisbane. There are gaps, places where the wind whistles through from… There’s one near the tower, between it and the river, and I peer into its depths. Someone stares up at me and there is a jolt of recognition. I’m looking at my face. It winks at me, and then is gone, and I’m staring into a dark space as deep as the one I fell into to get here. Why the hell am I down there?

I look up, my eyes taking a while to adjust to the light. Across the river are the Underworld versions of the suburbs of Toowong and Auchenflower. In the living world the Corolla is in Toowong, in Auchen-flower my house is nothing more than a pile of smoldering wood. Traffic is congested along Coronation Drive, and behind it all Mount Coot-tha rises, and it’s there that the dead gather. Here the mountain is topped by a tree, a Moreton Bay fig, that reaches into the sky, its lower branches extending over the inner suburbs, its roots sliding all over the mountain, and descending into the city in great blades of wood.

The One Tree is a blazing cynosure above the city: the death tree where everybody in Australia goes when they die. The Hill squats beneath it, its stony surface blazing with a red fire. I’ve never seen it burn like that. Usually it’s a dim blue light like something you’d expect in a public toilet to dissuade junkies from shooting up. I wonder if Lissa has any idea what it means.

“Lissa, you might want to see this.” I walk back to the tower and poke my head in the door. “Lissa?”

She’s gone. There’s just the empty tower.

I feel her absence like a punch to the stomach. Now I understand what Lissa meant when she said we didn’t have much time. She’d held on to me longer than she should have as it was, binding or not. Coming this close to the Underworld was going to draw her away
from me faster than anything else. I should have realized that, but then I’ve been distracted of late. It’s not much of an excuse. And it is no salve to my pain.

I take a deep breath, pull the blood-soaked shirt from my back pocket and drop it on the ground. Nothing happens. There is no sense of change or a magical burst of power. There is no sudden rising darkness that takes the form of Mr. D. It’s just me looking at my blood on my shirt.

“What the hell are you doing, idiot?” Morrigan is standing on the edge of the road. He looks pale, almost ill. “I can’t believe that—”

“Well, you wanted me dead.”

“Do you not know how difficult that ceremony is?” And it’s almost the Morrigan of old, the mentor, the one I’ve known since I’ve had memory.

“I know it intimately,” I say.

“Bullshit,” he snarls. “That ceremony has worked just once in three generations, and the man who did it then was raving mad. It’s not supposed to work. You’re mad, crazy.” He’s sounding crazy himself. Spit flecks his lips.

I shrug. “Maybe, but it worked.”

“You’re the luckiest man I have ever met.” Then he wrinkles his nose. “I can smell the sex on you. Where’s your sense of propriety? You did all this to get into Lissa’s pants? I’m quite disappointed.” And he sounds disappointed, genuinely dismayed.

“Lissa—”

“She’s gone.” He nods to the tree behind and above us. “You know how these things go. You’re quite welcome to join her. Yes, there’s an open invitation for you, care to take it up?” He looks hopeful, and I’m thinking maybe that’s the way to go. With all this running around, I was heading in that direction anyway. But there’s also a part of me that wants to wipe that smug grin off his face.

“Nah. Not just yet.”

Morrigan rushes toward me, his hands clenched. Something cracks in the air, a thin sound, like a tire iron scraping over concrete. Morrigan backs away.

A shadow forms, coalesces, out of the air.

Morrigan pales. “You.”

“Yes, me. Richard, you should go.” The voice is dry and quiet, little more than a whisper. “This is still my kingdom, and you do not have a clue what you have set in motion … Not really.”

The man standing between us doesn’t look like he should be particularly imposing. His suit is conservative, even a little threadbare, and his hair is parted neatly to one side. But he’s imposing all right. And his anger fills the air with a dull and steady buzz. It makes my stomach roil, and he isn’t even looking at me.

There is a soft exhalation, and Morrigan is gone. It’s just me and the RM. Mr. D looks at me with such a wild expression that, for a moment, I wish I was with Morrigan. Then he grins warmly, though that’s not all I see. There are too many faces for that.

“I’ve wanted to do that for days, but Morrigan is canny. It took your summoning to free me from the place he’d thrown me into. A broom closet, would you believe? Of all the bloody places, and not even a magazine to read. Steven, you’ve gone to rather a lot of trouble to see me. Shall we walk?”

It is a peculiar sensation talking to Mr. D. The man is slight and rather handsome, but also vast and power-hungry and grinning. He moves slowly, carefully, and sometimes he doesn’t move at all, and yet he’s shambling, racing, rushing around you, and checking and peering, like a doctor on speed doing an examination or a spider binding its prey in its web.

“How bad is it, Steven?” Mr. D asks.

“Well, I’m here aren’t I?”

“You have a point. I would have expected Tremaine, your father, or even Sam.”

“I can’t tell you about Sam. But Dad’s gone. Tremaine, too.”

“So everyone senior?”

“They’re dead,” I say, and Death nods.

“I felt them, but I couldn’t be sure. Everyone dies eventually. Call me biased, but that’s what life’s about. Even I can die, and without my Pomps, my position here is … tenuous. Morrigan knows that. He knows that my power is at an end—the prick.”

I clench my jaw. “It isn’t fair.”

Mr. D laughs. “Nothing’s fair, Steven. Not in the games we play.”

I catch a movement out of the corner of my eye. An engine roars. And then an SUV strikes Mr. D from behind.

It nearly takes me too, but I’m just that little bit closer to the gutter, and Mr. D’s hand pushes out precisely at the moment of impact, throwing me to one side. Death slides under the wheels. Bones crack like thunder. The SUV pulls away and shoots down the street.

I run to Mr. D’s side, I try and help him. I didn’t know Death could bleed, but he’s bleeding all right. His clothes are sticky with it. There’s blood leaking from his ears, and his lips and teeth are rubicund. I start dragging him off the road.

“Get away, Steven,” he says, and pushes my hands from him. He’s still strong—I’m flung from the road, the breath knocked out of me.

Mr. D stands, his legs shaking, his face messed up. One of his eyes has closed over. “Perhaps you should run,” he says to me.

But I’m stuck to the spot. The SUV has come back and it hurtles into him. This time it turns in a tight circle and hits him again, then again. Morrigan’s behind the wheel, smug as all hell, and by the time he’s done, Mr. D is a lump of blood and rags on the ground. Finally I regain the will to move.

“Don’t even think about it.” Dad steps from the passenger-side door and points a rifle at my head.

“Dad, I—”

“How thick are you, Steven? I’m not your father,” he says in my
father’s usual irritated tone. How can I think of him as anything but my dad? But the moment my eyes meet his, there can be no doubt. There’s a wild, tripping madness there, and a vast alien hatred. His skin glows with a lurid, sickly light. Stirrers shouldn’t inhabit the Underworld this way. Its true form is slowly burning through his flesh.

A week ago this was my father, though that animated spark has gone and has been replaced by the enemy. Still, if you’re going to die, die pissing something off. “Dad—”

He swings the rifle at my head.

“None of that,” Morrigan says, sliding out of the SUV.

The rifle butt stops just centimeters from my skull.

Morrigan rolls Mr. D’s body over with his foot, and smiles. “So it’s done. Death be not proud and all that,” he says, rubbing his hands gleefully. This is Morrigan as I have never seen him. So damn happy. He terrifies me, more than Mr. D ever did. “Death is dead.”

“Why?” I demand, and Morrigan wags a finger in my face. “Need to know basis only, I’m afraid. And you know too much as it is. But don’t be too sorry for him. The bastard deserves every last instant of pain.” Morrigan glances over at Dad. “End it.”

Dad fires.

At the same time cold fingers run over my flesh. Everywhere. They’re brushing everything. I’m smothered in a rushing, tapping, piercing density of ice.

A voice whispers in my ears. “The rules are changing, Steven.”

Then I’m in that dark space again, and the last thing I hear is Morrigan’s weary voice.

“Oh, fuck,” he says.

C
rack!

That’s how I wake, with a jolt and a deep gasping breath, as though I’ve been drowning.

Crack! The door nearby shudders.

Crack!

Dust, centuries old, spills from the top of the bookcases that line one wall.

Crack!

Mr. D sneezes. “Don’t worry, I made this office with my own two hands. The doors are reinforced with my own blood, and the blood of my enemies. There’s a bit of strength in them yet. Do you take milk?”

I nod my head as Mr. D pours my tea into a fine china cup. I’ve been here once before, so long ago that I’d almost forgotten about it. It’s the inner sanctum, the throne room. Mr. D’s big chair is up at the other end of a long wooden desk, and it’s covered with carvings of figures running, fighting, dying, all of them gripping daggers, and is utterly incongruous with the metal, plastic and leather business chairs that face the desk. Morrigan covets that deathly throne. It shivers and sighs and seems to stare back at me. I feel the intensity of its regard. How can an inanimate object have such a tangled scowling presence? I can’t imagine anyone ever wanting to sit in such a thing.