The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy (87 page)

The wind skitters paper down the long hall. Doug jumps.

“What’s up?” I say. “This isn’t like you at all.”

“Alex’s call reminded me of something you need to know,” Doug says then slashes out at me with a knife. The knife point buries itself in my chest.

Can’t say I expected that.

But HD is always ready. I catch Doug’s wrist, pull his hand back, and with it the blade. It slides free from my lung with a wet sound. HD rises inside me. It wants to kill again. Not now. Doug struggles but I don’t let him go.

“Stop this!” I can’t feel a pulse. I look into Doug’s eyes, there’s no one home. At least no one known as Doug.

A Stirrer exists in there now. Doug’s been dead for some time: the Stirrer’s working his body too smoothly for it to be just a day or so. Bleak eyes stare out at me, even as the lips curl into a smile.

“It is coming. And your world will end, starting with her.” The Stirrer snaps its free hand up and jabs a finger at Lissa.

“Bullshit, what bullshit,” Lissa says, already sliding her knife down her palm.

Lissa strikes Doug’s head with her bloody palm, grimacing as the Stirrer’s soul slides through her and back to the Deepest Dark where it belongs.

Doug’s a dead-weight in my arms. I let him drop, poor bastard.

I check his hand, and there it is below his thumb. The mask tattooed in the finest detail. I lower his arm gently onto his chest, something feels wrong. Doug’s face is calm, but for where Lissa’s
blood has marked him. You’d think it was a peaceful death. I peer under his shirt. There’s a hole in his chest about the size of my fist.

Nothing peaceful about it.

Lissa’s already on the phone, calling through a pick-up for the corpse. An ambulance will arrive shortly. The body will be taken away and burnt. Once burial would have been enough, but now we’re not taking any chances.

“The one guy in the government sympathetic to us and he’s dead,” I say once she’s off the phone.

“When the hell did this happen?”

“A while back, obviously, the way he was walking and talking. No one pomped Doug’s soul. Or, at the very least, I didn’t sense it.”

I let that hang between us. An ambulance is drawing near. Sirens competing with the whale song.

“Disturbing,” Lissa says, she’s already looking away from the body. A body’s a body, it’s not the interesting part for Pomps, and it’s certainly the least interesting part today. Mr. D was right, the Stirrer god’s presence is causing major disruptions. Things I’m only beginning to understand.

Death not aware of a death: disturbing is an understatement.

Tim sits down and shakes his head. “I can’t believe it. Doug…poor, poor bastard.”

“I liked him,” I say.

“Any idea how long he’s been dead?”

“At least a week.”

“A week!” Tim pales, and reaches for his cigarettes. “I had drinks with him three days ago, they were starting to panic about your disappearance.”

Tim had quite a bit to drink if he hadn’t noticed. I must be giving him a bit of a look because he puffs up his chest.

“Used to be I had drinks with you, mate,” he says with a hint of bitterness. “Then you started drinking alone.”

I shake my head at that. I want to tell him I haven’t had a drop since Lissa summoned me, no matter how much I’ve needed it, but I can’t. A day’s not long enough. Trumpeting about a day without alcohol makes it sound like I have more of a problem than I’m willing to admit.

“So, we’re without allies again,” Tim says. “The government itself has been compromised. Even the bit that should have known better than to get into such trouble.”

“Well, there was always a chance it would happen,” I say. “I mean, Stirrers had already started infiltrating the suburbs, and dogs, bureaucrats had to be next.”

Tim gives me such a nasty look.

“I’ve spoken to Alex,” I say, “and we’ve shipped extra brace paint to his District, and he’s even passed some of it on to State Intelligence and Security Operations. And, no one in a ministerial position seems to be affected.”

“How do you know?”

“I can sense their heartbeats.” Tim looks impressed. “I’m not just a pretty face you know,” I say.

“Yeah, you’ve got great hearing. Talking of which,” he lifts a sheath of papers from his lap, “I’ve got a speech written up for you, for this afternoon. The Ankous are going to need something impressive.”

“You saying I can’t come up with the goods?”

“One day out from the end of world, and we’re chasing our tails. Do I need to say more?”

“I don’t like speeches,” I say, rubbing my head. It’s itching, I can’t stand this not having hair, maybe I need to rub oil in it or something.

“Exactly and not a problem,” Tim says. “I’ve Steveified it, it’s more a series of dot points.”

“I know what I’m going to say.”

“Yes, and it’s written down here—in convenient dot-point form. These are Ankous you’re talking to, you need to be pretty slick.”

I take the notes from him. Glance through them. Yeah, it’s pretty much what I was going to say, only better. Tim’s been writing speeches for nearly a decade, he’s got it down to a fine art. I get to the bottom and there’s a little squiggle and the letters SSR.

“What’s SSR?” I ask. “Oh, Something Stirring Required.”

“You know I’m going to get to that bit and laugh. I’m not Winston Churchill.”

“No, he never had to fight against a god. You’re going to need something stirring, really stirring.”

I hand it back to him. “How about you have a go, eh?”

Tim tears up a little. My offer’s really touched him. “I suppose I could.”

I lean back in my throne, lifting the front legs an inch from the ground, and reconsider Cerbo’s suggestion. The sheer audacity and bravery of it is shocking. It’s the sort of thing that the Stirrers wouldn’t expect. Our job is based on sacrifice and blood, but never to that extent. Whose is?

Maybe Cerbo’s right. But the sacrifices I’m prepared to make are personal. I demand that my staff fight, but I could never demand that they die. I can only expect that of me.

“You ever think it might just be their time?” I ask Tim.

“Their?”

“Stirrers.”

“If it is, well they’re going to have to earn it. This was once their world, but they lost it, those days passed over a billion years ago. You don’t get that back, we’re here now.”

“I like my evil black and white.”

“You’re Death, you’re already morally ambiguous.”

“Yeah, but what isn’t?”

“All I know is that if they win that’s it for all life, from bacteria up. All of it’s gone, and it might as well have never happened.”

“But everything ends, maybe our time’s up.”

Tim nods his head. “Yeah, everything ends and it’s our job to know when time’s up. It ain’t up.” He hands me back the notes. “Put that in your speech.”

Thirteen Ankous sit around my desk. Hell and earth behind us. The different light of each zone provides a peculiar and varied illumination. Some faces are partly shadowed, others clearly lit, but all possess a look of expectation, dread and utter weariness. And not a few of them keep glancing at my bald scalp.

I wait for the coffees to be brought in.

“Is there a reason for this meeting?” asks Ari Jacobstein, not even looking at her coffee. She’s been running the UK since Anna died, and I know that she has been watching everything that Cerbo has been doing closely. These Ankous know more about the business than I do. Having me as their boss may have provided them with some much needed humility, but I can’t help feeling it would be better if I could just upgrade them all to Regional Managers. The Hungry Death inside me doesn’t agree at all. It wouldn’t.

I lean forward in my throne and nod. “There’s a reason, Ms. Jacobstein,” I say. “Everything suggests that whatever is going to happen will happen tomorrow, and that it will most likely occur here. Don’t tell me you can’t feel it. You all look like you’ve aged years in the past few days. You need to be ready to mobilize.”

There’s an intake of breath.

“The rumors are true then?” David, South Africa’s Ankou, says.

“Yes. I never meant to keep this hidden, but then I never meant to be snatched away by the Death of the Water. And neither Cerbo nor Tim are big on sharing information. The Stirrer god is almost here.”

Ari’s lips tighten. “So we can’t stop it?”

“No, I wanted to take the fight to it, but Cerbo has been unable to find a way to do that which didn’t involve considerable casualties,” I grimace. “And by considerable I mean a hundred per cent. Killing every Pomp to defeat this threat is not an option.”

“You contemplated this?” asks David. He glances at Ari and rolls his eyes, she grins at him, and I don’t know whether he thinks I should or I shouldn’t have.

“I considered every suggestion brought to me,” I say. What I don’t say is how Cerbo had pushed for it. “Do you have any that you would like to offer, David?”

“I—”

“Very well, then. Now, while Cerbo’s idea is not an option, mobilizing every single Pomp we can spare and getting them here, that can be done. I know you lot haven’t been as busy as the Australian branch, and that Stirrer numbers have fallen away to almost nothing in your regions. I want you to be ready to use the various corridors of your respective Number Fours to feed Pomps into Brisbane. We’re going to have to bulk up our numbers, a lot.”

“We will consider your suggestion,” David says. I almost reach over the desk grab him by his lapels and shake. Damn it, I almost drag out my knives and cut his throat. The intention must be pretty plain because he leans back slightly.

“You’ll consider nothing,” I say. “Other than the quickest way to get your Pomps here when we call. This isn’t a suggestion.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s a fucking command. I’ve sat around, conferred, chatted, and talked things through. I’ve been everything that’s expected of me. But truth is, I’m growing impatient.”

“Are you threatening us?” Ari says, and she looks rather like she hopes I am.

“Threatening doesn’t even begin to describe what I am doing.”

I lean forward in my chair. HD pulls the broadest, scariest smile across my face.

Tim raises his hand. “What Steve is trying to say is—”

“What I’m trying to say is quite simple. The fight begins and ends here. For whatever reason, the End of Days is going to be decided in Brisbane. And this is where we will fight it. And I need your help, but if you aren’t willing to help me…I’m sure your subordinates are.”

Ari actually smiles at me genuinely. At last, something they understand.

Good lord, I’d been going about it all the wrong way. My visits, my polite requests. All I’d done was confuse them. They’d just expected me to come out and tell them what to do!

“We fight, and we fight until we win. And we do it the old-fashioned way, with knives and blood.”

I stand up and call the Knives of Negotiation from their dark sheaths. In a moment they have become the scythe. The Ankous cringe, but there’s a touch of supplication there. They may not respect me all that much, but they’re a fan of what the Death of the Water called the accoutrement. “Don’t forget we have this weapon at our disposal. Don’t forget what I contain within me.” Madness. Death. Destruction. “We are not powerless, and we will not lose. Comet or no comet.”

The scythe becomes the knives once more, hidden within my jacket. My eyes catch Lissa’s. Her lips curve a little smilewise, and I know I’ve won my audience. They may not realize, but she’s the one who really counts. Endlessly skeptical. Endlessly forgiving. I only hope I am as good. We’re saint and sinner bound up in each other, not sure when we’re which.

We’d sacrifice everything for the other. That has to count for something.

“Go home,” I say. “Put your house in order. Hold your loved ones, though you will not be able to for long. Soon we are going to fight.
And some of us will fall. But we will win, because we have to. Because it isn’t our time to lose.”

“That went well, I think,” I say once they’ve all gone.

“Really,” Tim leans against the door to my office. “What about the speech I gave you?”

Oh, I’d forgotten about Tim’s speech. “Sorry, mate. Just the adrenaline. Public speaking, you know how it is. They reckon more people dread public speaking than death. Well, with me, it’s certainly true.”

“Yeah, you did OK,” Tim concedes. “They seemed to respond well. But did you have to pull out the damn scythe?”

Lissa snorts. “It’s a bad habit he has.”

“Shock,” says Cerbo. “They were in shock. I know I am.”

What? You were the one who wanted to sacrifice them all!
“Why?” I demand.

“Because for the first time you sound like Suzanne. You sound like a leader.”

I feel my face burn. I don’t know if I’m pleased or insulted.

“I suppose I better put my house in order, too,” Cerbo says and with a nod he shifts back to the States.

I send Tim off to be with his family. A new shift of Pomps come on, they’re rowdy for ten minutes or so then quiet as they settle into work, and it’s Lissa and me, alone in my office.