The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy (82 page)

I blink back tears and get to my feet. Where is she? Lissa summoned me, but now I’m here, and I can’t find her. I know where I am. The old lighthouselike gas-stripping tower that exists in both versions of Brisbane is a familiar presence beside me. A comfort, if I wasn’t so desperate to find Lissa. I run around it.

There’s no doorway. She’s inside and I’m out here.

To open the door into the tower you need to touch its metal surface, and drive a knife through your hand. Maybe she’s inside, maybe she can’t get out.

I’ve got the two sharpest knives in the world sheathed beneath my jacket. I yank one free. Slap my palm against the tower. Then stop. The tower’s vibrating. The knife mumbles out its disappointment. I take a step back.

A line of light runs up the side of the tower, not far from where my hand rests. There’s a click and a segment of the wall bangs back against itself.

Lissa walks through the opening, she’s holding a towel in her hands.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I can’t help the cracked roar that comes from my mouth, anger and relief vying for dominance.

Lissa smiles, a haunted, weary smile. “You’re welcome,” she says,
throwing the bunched up towel at my chest. It’s stained with her blood. I can smell her death on it. HD rises in me, and I catch myself grinning at her.

But I’m not happy that she would put herself at such risk.

I know how dangerous the ceremony she performed is. I’ve done it myself. I’ve slid the blade into my arteries, and stumbled forward, screaming, as my blood spattered the walls. I’ve scrambled in the makings of my own mortality to call Death to me.

And I never wanted anyone, least of all Lissa to experience that.

And now she has.

My lip quivers. “What if—”

She puts a finger hard against my lips. “No what-ifs. I had to.”

I hold her hand to my mouth and stare into her eyes. Oh God, her eyes! I could look into those forever and see something different every time, and something wonderfully familiar.

“I’m so sorry,” I say, and I mean it. Though I don’t think she understands me.

“I died once and you brought me back,” she whispers and her voice is breaking. “You and me, we always suffer for our love.”

“You could have died.” I kiss her fingers.

“But I didn’t. I knew what I was doing.” Yes, she does, she guided me through the process.

But none of that matters in the face of the actuality of it.

You cannot know that sort of pain until you experience it. I think about the ceremony she performed. How agonizing it is. The first cut is easy, if you do it quick, the second as arterial blood is bursting from the first, much more difficult. A few millimeters out and you can die. You nearly do as it is, if you pull it off.

“You could have died,” I repeat.

“I thought you already were dead,” she says. “Steve the last time I saw you was five days ago.”

“Five days! I was gone five days?”

We don’t have much time. Five days gone and the twenty-fourth is tomorrow.

“Five of the longest days of my life. Tim was against it, from the start, I don’t want you to think he supported this. Said I was being stupid, that we had to give you time. No one calls me stupid. But, after that I held off, I’m sorry that I held off.”

“No, there were things I needed to do. You were right to hold off. Oh, my darling, the pain, you—”

She shivers. “But it didn’t last for long. And I didn’t die. And I have you back.”

“Yeah everyone’s a winner.”

She looks so frail, so worn, but not beaten. “Enough,” she says. “I got you back.”

Lissa is the strongest person I have ever met. And she loves me. I can feel that love, a rumbling in my throat. A tightness in my chest.

“Don’t you ever do that to me again,” she says. “Don’t you leave like that.”

She grabs me, almost throws me into the tower. Lissa rips at my shirt. Claws my chest. I feel the skin tear. The stinging passage of her rage and her love.

Naked, raw. I want her so badly. And she wants me.

There’s a liquid friction that burns away all resistance, and we’re one. Life and death fuck. They war inside us both. Teeth clash. She bites my lip, and I taste blood.

I come hard and fast, and she draws my hand down into her, drags a rough rhythm from my fingers that has her gasping.

“I brought you back,” she gasps. “I brought you back.” And then she is quiet.

I’ve never felt so clumsy, never felt so foolish, never felt so wonderful. She is warm where I have only known cold these last days. Her breath is hot against my neck.

I can’t help it, I cry.

“Thank you,” I say. “Thank you for bringing me back. Thank you for everything.”

“You would do the same,” she says.

Yeah, I would. I kiss her, breathe in the smell of her, and taste the salt on her skin like it’s some transformative thing. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have shouted at you.”

“I would do the same,” she says, and pulls my hand to her breast. I can feel her beating heart now, not just hear it.

Then it hits me all over again. “Five days!” What the hell was the Death of Water playing at? And what has been going on in the world above?

“I thought it might take a while to sink in,” Lissa says.

“What have I missed out on?”

“Take me to Mt Coot-tha,” Lissa says. “Let me show you why people agreed to me calling you back.”

“Hold me tight,” I say, and she does as we shift to the top of the mountain.

There’s a hush in the air. Which is odd because the lookout is crowded, even this early in the morning. Five a.m., but you’d think it was midday.

No one is looking down. I follow their gaze, skyward. At first I think there’s a second sun above me. But that’s not what it is at all.

There’s a great comet, luminous and vast, filling the sky, a tiny tail beginning to develop. I’m at once awed and angry. HD is raging too. Marvelling at this thing’s obvious capacity for destruction—forget about a scythe. That’s small fry to this.

Rage turns to fear. There’s no doubt in my mind where this is headed. I recognize it with a grim certainty. That’s the odd rhythm I feel in the world’s pulse, all those hearts beating with the knowledge
of this deathly immanence. Did the dinosaurs’ hearts beat this way at the end as they looked up and saw the Stirrer god made manifest?

“A god will light the sky,” I say.

“What?”

“It’s what the Death of the Water said: a god will light the sky. And there we have it.”

“That’s why I needed to summon you. To see if you were alive,” Lissa says without sounding at all convincing. “Tim was against the idea, until yesterday, when that showed up. You could say the End of Days is already here. Although, with that thing bright in the sky there are no
days,
just one long
day
. The whole world’s scared now, Steven. Not just those of us who know. And you’ve been away through all of it.”

“What’s Cerbo have to say about it?”

“You probably want to talk to him.”

“Anyone asked Bruce Willis what he’s going to do?” I’m still heady with lust, with the presence of her. All I can smell is Lissa, and it’s intoxicating.

“Steve, this is no joking matter. Best estimate is there’re twenty-two days until it hits.”

“Whose estimate?”

“Ours. The schedule. In less than a month all life on earth ends.”

T
he schedule said what?” I ask, even though I can feel it now, the deathly void we’re hurtling toward.

“Yesterday,” Lissa says. “Just as the comet appeared, everything changed. All the long-term projections, they shrank. At first I thought…to be honest, Steve, I thought it was you—that you had died. But then the schedule, I suppose you could say it rebooted itself. Deaths increase dramatically tomorrow, and continue to rise, but in three weeks the mortality rate of the planet is total.”

“We’re going to have to put on extra staff,” I say. “Shirley in payroll is going to hate…God, she complains enough as it is.”

“Can you please take this seriously?”

“I am, believe me I am.”

“Everything suggests, and persuasively, that it’s a planet-killer.”

“Define planet-killer.”

“Not just humans, everything but the toughest bacteria are going to have a hard time surviving when that hits. Let alone the aftermath. The air will burn, the whole world will be shrouded in dust.”

“I don’t know how I’m expected to stop it. In fact I don’t think I can.”

“Cerbo has some ideas, but I think you’re better off talking to him about them.”

“Yeah, but from what the Death of the Water has told me, we’re going to have our own problems.”

“What?”

“The comet is the least of it. We’re going to have to face another threat, this one will appear human.” I glance around: the coffee shop is doing a decent trade. The traffic down in the city is behaving like Brisbane traffic has always behaved. “Civilization doesn’t appear to have collapsed.”

“Oh, there’s been riots, not in Australia yet, but there was a huge one in Paris, and a terrible one in Seattle of all places. A couple of cults have committed mass suicides…but no, not yet. Mainly because every major astronomy body has denied it’s going to hit the earth. Regardless, the day it appeared share markets took a dive and chaos isn’t far away. Everyone is waiting for it to happen. They’re just not sure how it’s going to manifest.”

Just like our Stirrer god, I guess.

I kiss Lissa gently on the cheek, then shift with her to our unit.

“We’ve got to start mobilizing,” I say, dragging her toward the bathroom. “The war’s coming. I have to see Cerbo. But, first, I’m having a shower. You and me both.”

Cerbo gets up from behind his desk, his hands are shaking just a little, there are dark shadows beneath his eyes, but he manages a smile. “Can’t tell you how glad I am to see you,” he says, reaching out to shake my hand. To hell with it, I give him a hug.

“Nearly as glad as I am to see you,” I say. We pull apart, both of us grinning. “The problem with the Death of the Water has been resolved.”

“We were beginning to worry.”

“With reason, I don’t think it meant to let me walk out of there, but I think it was worth it, and I’ve learnt some interesting stuff.”

“You’ve seen the comet, of course.”

“Yes, and from my little chat with the Death of the Water it’s definitely the Stirrer god manifest.”

“How do we fight that?”

“Far as I can tell, we don’t. That’s the Death of the Water’s job. See, here’s the thing, the god doesn’t just manifest in the sky, it walks among us too.”

“It takes a human form?”

“It takes a mortal form,” I say. “Mortal being the key word. I’m thinking that was what the “M” was all about on Suzanne’s table.”

Cerbo flicks through his notes. “I always wondered how it would appear. That thing we’ve seen in the Deepest Dark just wasn’t going to work here—different physics apply for one, and the Underworld operates to stranger rules. To meld the worlds together you’d need something showy, and something precise. A human and a comet: there’s resonance there. And the fact that we are expecting it to start on Morrigan’s birthday. Perhaps…

“Look, Morrigan was tenacious in life, and one who liked to plan. If anyone is capable of coming back from such utter annihilation it would be him.”

“No,” I say. “Morrigan may have something to do with this. Some knowledge, but that is all. First place I’m going to check though is his old house.”

“What are you expecting to find?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think I’ll see him sitting in the parlor smoking a pipe.”

Cerbo sighs. “You’re probably right. But before you go chasing ghosts. Visit your Ankous. They’re nervous, frightened, there’s a god in the sky. See to them, before you go on your hunt. You owe them that much at least.”

So, I spend the morning visiting my Ankous assuring them that I have patched up things with the Death of the Water. I’m quick, maybe too quick, but my presence is almost enough. Ari seems
pleased with my appearance at her base in Cardiff, where she is all efficiency with a hint of disdain. She hands me two bottles of Bundy Rum. “That is what you like, isn’t it?”

I take them from her silently, and place them on her desk. “Not anymore,” I say.

I even manage not to look at them for the rest of our conversation. I don’t know whether I’ve impressed or insulted her. Probably both.

“We’re running out of time,” she says.

“We’ve always been running out of time. Which is why you need to be ready. I’ll call you when I need you.”

“I’ll be waiting,” she says.

I know she picks up one of those bottles of rum, opens it and has a long, hard drink the moment I’m gone. And I envy her.

David, in Jo’burg as usual, seems a bit put out by my manner, and my message. I think he still blames me for what happened to Neill, his old RM. Those responsible for his murder are gone, I’m the closest person he’s going get. Why does it always turn out that way?