The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy (52 page)

I don’t want a lesson in the obvious. I want answers. “I know this. I’ve grown up around death,” I say. “I was a Pomp, just as the rest of you were Pomps.”

Suzanne gives me a patronizing pat on the shoulder. “You only think you do. You don’t know death the way we
know
death. That knowledge is coming, but you don’t have it yet. You’re never going to feel gravity again, Steven. It doesn’t apply to you, the death you will find will be fast and violent and centuries hence, if you’re on your game. You will have time to see the beauty and ugliness of life for what it is: fleeting and yet, somehow, eternal.

“And how you come to that knowledge won’t have anything to do with what I say, or Neill. I can guarantee that.” So she’s onto me, then. I try to not register any surprise. “It will come to you in its own way, as everything else has come to you, because that’s how it works.”

“I’m a bloody slow learner.”

“There’s nothing to learn. This is a bone-deep truth, whether you understand it or not. A hundred years from now you will be the same as you are now, and different in ways you can’t even begin to comprehend. You’ve no choice in the matter.”

“But there are choices to be made.”

“As much as any of us can make them. We’re all fighting the same fight. The enemy hasn’t changed. That’s a constant, too.”

But I feel it has. Morrigan, in his dealings with the Stirrers, has set something in motion. Something I can’t quite articulate. Suzanne watches me trying to get it out, and sees that it obviously isn’t going to come.

“Rillman, what about him? He wants me dead,” I say, finally.

“And yet you are most obviously not.”

“Tell me how I can find him.”

Suzanne looks away from me, toward the city of Devour. “If I knew a way, believe me, I would have pursued him a long time ago.”

An idea strikes me then, an unpleasant one. “Are you using me as bait?”

Suzanne shakes her head. “You’ve drawn Rillman out. Before, he was all secrecy—back-door plans and sneaking in and out of Hell. You would make excellent bait, but I fear that the moment we used you as such Rillman would go underground again. I want you on my side,” Suzanne says. “Neill’s bloc is growing too powerful.”

I peer over at her, surprised. “I thought he was your bloc.”

“We may help each other from time to time but we are not in agreement on much. We know how to put up a unified front when we need to. But he worries me now.”

“What difference does it make?”

“When you have centuries, it makes all the difference in the worlds. Believe me, you will learn that.”

“What are your plans for me? The All-Death—”

Suzanne grimaces. “What did that meddlesome thing say?”

“That I will be alone. That I will fall.”

Suzanne looks almost relieved, as though I’ve merely reaffirmed something. “We’re all alone,” she says. “Rillman. You. Lissa. You will learn this, Steven, if you’re half as smart as I think you are. The longer you live, the more alone you are.”

I turn from her, and consider the darkness of the Stirrer god above. I remember with utter clarity the immensity of its eye in that vision granted to me by Stirrer rage or my newborn power. I’d stared it down. Of course, I’d been too stupid to do anything different. Me there in that darkness, hurling its worshippers back away from the land of the living. I’d felt the strength of Orcus unity, a strength that had extended all the way down to my hundreds of Avian Pomps.

Absolutely meaningless. I knew that if it came down to it, I’d be fighting that dark alone and it scared the shit out of me.

“I don’t think we have centuries anymore. Maybe my presence is what the Orcus needs, someone to add a little urgency to the proceedings to draw your attention back to that approaching hunger filling the sky.”

The look that Suzanne gives me is not nearly as patronizing, though I still feel as though she considers me as little more than a dog that has just learned to fetch.

“We know it’s there. Its presence is undeniable and we are doing something about it,” Suzanne says. “You have to believe me.”

“I really wish I could.”

Suzanne nods. “This morning, I will send Faber to you. He will show you our latest work.”

“Seven am,” I say. “And make sure he isn’t late this time.”

Suzanne flashes me a vicious smile, and shifts out of there. I stand looking up at the dark. Wal drags free of my arm.

“I really hate how she does that,” he sighs. “Keeping me stuck to your arm; it’s very rude.”

“I don’t think she likes you,” I say.

“What’s not to like, eh? Eh?”

I don’t even know where to begin.

The next morning I shift to the office, leaving Lissa to sleep under the protection of my Avian Pomps. Oscar is already there waiting outside my office. He nods at me, lets me pass through the door.

Downstairs someone is dismantling the broom cupboard’s door. I can feel it coming undone even from here, and I’m pleased.

It’s one place Rillman, or anyone else who might want to lock me away, can’t use.

I feel Cerbo’s arrival a few minutes later. Oscar knocks on the door.

“Come in,” I say.

Oscar swings open the door. “He says you are expecting him.”

“Yes, I am.”

Cerbo nods at me. Today he’s wearing a green bowler that most people could only ever get away with on St. Patrick’s Day, and only a certain few of those. He carries it off with a quiet dignity.

He turns to Oscar. “It’s quite all right,” he says. “I have no intention of killing your boss. Couldn’t if I tried.”

Oscar lingers at the door a moment longer.

“This isn’t Rillman,” I say. “He’s not going to be able to pull that one on me again.”

The door shuts. Cerbo raises an eyebrow at me. “Quite the hired goon.”

I let it slide. “Suzanne said you would show me what you know about the Stirrer god?”

Cerbo smiles. “And that is why I am here, Mr. de Selby.” He gestures at me. “Now, if you would stand up, and come toward me.”

“I was kind of expecting a PowerPoint presentation.”

“What I have is much better than any computer-based simulation. Now, up, up! Get your rear out of that chair!” He seems to enjoy shouting at an RM.

I get out of my throne and walk around the desk.

“Hold my hand,” Cerbo says reaching out toward me.

I hesitate, and he grimaces. “Oh, for goodness sake. You’re not even my type!”

That’s not why I’m hesitating, but his words push me hard enough into action.

Cerbo’s hand is warm, and he grips mine hard. “This is something new. A technique Suzanne has been developing. It’s based on the subset of skills required to shift.”

I groan.

Cerbo squeezes my hand. “No, it is not shifting
per se
. For one, it is more… well… cinematic, Mr. de Selby. And two, it demands a little
more. You’ll see what I mean.” He closes his eyes. “Whatever you do, don’t let go. This is no pixie-dust journey we’re going on, and I’m not Superman.”

I’m trying to imagine Superman in a green bowler as Cerbo reaches into his jacket pocket. He pulls out his knife.

I have to fight the reflex to pull away. “What the fuck are you doing with that?”

Cerbo’s eyes flick open. He regards me disdainfully. “Don’t worry, it’s not for you. I’ve been Ankou for nearly two decades to an RM who is centuries old. You pick up a few things, but I have yet to uncover a really easy way to kill an RM without first killing their Pomps. Even Morrigan couldn’t do that. This knife is for me.” He takes a deep breath, grits his teeth, and then runs the blade over the back of the hand holding mine. Blood flows quickly. “Remember, don’t let go.”

Between heartbeats, this happens: we are in the office, and then it is just a space distant beyond my imagining below us. We’re vast and tiny at once, and shooting along a tunnel brighter than any glaring sun. I have to cover my eyes. Cerbo squeezes my hand even tighter. For a moment I am reminded of the All-Death’s implacable grip.

Then we’re in a space I’ve only seen once before. I remember it a little differently but at the time I was fighting to save Tim and Lissa’s lives. First I am surprised by my weightlessness here. The only force binding me, giving me any sense of up or down, is Cerbo’s hand. We’re quite close, our hands by our hips, gripping each other as children do. Awkwardly and tight.

“Welcome to the ether. The void beyond the Deepest Dark, where the souls find flight and through which the Stirrer god approaches.”

“Cool,” I say.

“Indeed.”

We’re not flying so much as being propelled, and the source of that force is generated by Cerbo’s bleeding fist. Around us souls drift,
but we are moving faster than them. Occasionally I have to flick my body to one side to avoid striking one.

“Careful,” Cerbo says. “You’ll lose your grip.”

I strike a soul then. Feel it shatter around my head. It burns, then chills on contact like ice. I swing my head back, and see it re-form behind us. After that, I don’t bother avoiding them. It’s like traveling on the flat bed of a ute in a snowstorm. I almost start to enjoy myself. The speed of it, the freedom. Is this how souls feel, once they are dead?

I ask Cerbo, and he shrugs.

“We cannot go far, just a few steps into the infinite. Blood is no substitute for death. But it is far enough.” A great eye gazes down at us, and we race toward it, cold air roaring in my ears.

We’re a long time getting close to that eye. But I can’t help staring at it, as I’ve stared at it before, though it was much further distant then, and I was on the ground, not in this weightless place; and granted a vision, not this whistling wind-bound actuality.

“It sees us, doesn’t it?” I ask, having to shout above the gale.

“I think so,” Cerbo says. “But we are nothing to it. I’ve done this a dozen times over the past three months, and every time I am much faster getting here.”

“Three months?”

“That’s when we first noticed it. Well, Suzanne did. A change in the ether, a sudden rise in Stirrer activity.”

“Do you think Morrigan knew about this?”

“Well, he was dealing with Stirrers. He may have known about it for some time. Or maybe it was just a coincidence that he started his Schism when he did. Do you believe in coincidence, Mr. de Selby?” Cerbo jabs his free hand toward it. “It’s impressive. Very godlike, wouldn’t you say?”

Darkness bunches around the mass, part storm cloud, part slug. To one side souls coruscate, and seek to flee its bulk, but even as we
watch, a black tentacle extrudes from it, snaps out and drags some of those souls back into its side. A thousand, two thousand, perhaps. Screams ring through my head.

“Already it is wreaking untold damage,” Cerbo says. “And the closer it gets, the harder it is for souls to escape. God knows what this is doing to the psychic balance of the universe.”

We swing past the great eye. “Remember, here it is just psychic mass. When it strikes the Underworld, and through it, earth, that mass will manifest.”

“How?”

“We don’t know but—I’m sorry, but I think we better get out of here.” Cerbo’s eyes are wide. I swing my head in the direction of his gaze; feel my heart catch.

A tentacle rushes toward us. As it draws nearer I can see fringes of what look like blades. They ripple and flex. That merest filament of that limb would cut us to pieces. The ether has suddenly lost its appeal. What the hell is wrong with PowerPoint?

“Hold on,” Cerbo says. “Hold on.”

He pulls out his knife, brings it back down against his hand and we’re suddenly reversing, flipping back, moving away, faster and faster.

And then my grip loosens. Or Cerbo releases his.

I’m left, spinning. Losing speed. Floating in that dark, Cerbo already a diminishing shape in front of me.

H
ere I am, alone in the darkness, about to be sliced into pieces or snatched into the maw of the enemy. The limb of the Stirrer god belts down toward me through the ether. It’s so big I really can’t comprehend it. I’m less than an ant to it, but the god will have me nonetheless. I feel Wal tear free of my arm. He scrambles out from my sleeve, takes one look at where we are, at what’s coming, and shoots back under my shirt.

I try and shift. Nothing. Here I don’t seem to have any purchase on reality. There’s nothing to shift from. This isn’t my normal state. It is neither the Underworld nor the land of the living. Desperate, I try again. I’ve virtually stopped moving. I’m just spinning a slow circle.
Fuck
.

Where’s Cerbo? Surely he’ll come back for me
.

But would I, if that thing was approaching?

I imagine him telling Suzanne, “He was the one who let go, the fool. He deserved it.”

Maybe this was their plan after all. If that’s the case it’s worked. I’m a dead man.

Ah, but I’ve been dead before. A calm, pricked with some sort of madness, envelops me. I grin, a wide and mocking grin.
Fuck it all
. That rage and joy which fills my dreams flares up and out. I’m not
afraid of death, I
am
Death. No matter that this space beyond space is not my realm.