The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy (98 page)

I reach the rear of my little army, where tents have been set up. There are rows of tables, and kitchens preparing food. Here the mood
is more like a carnival. People are eating and chatting, taking the Deepest Dark in their stride. And I can see the police mixed with my crew.

There’s a small part of me that is offended by it all, this one place where I was granted solitude, now so crowded. But it’s only a sliver of discontent.

They part to let me through to the front, where I can sense Lissa and Tim’s heartbeats, and those of my Ankous. I get the feeling people were waiting for me to arrive. Well, it is my party I guess.

Lissa, Tim and Alex stand with the Ankous. Lissa looks up as I approach, and she grins. Every time I see that smile it hits me just how lucky I am. And how pleased I am to see her.

“Hey, it’s the old gang,” I say. “Did you get it?” Tim asks. “No, but it was worth a try.” I wave my empty hands in front of his face. “I did learn something though.”

“Something worthwhile?” Cerbo asks. “Yeah, I think so. Morrigan isn’t thinking this through. He’s letting his emotions muddy everything.”

“So he’s still a dickhead then?” Tim says, lighting a cigarette. “Yeah, he’s still a dickhead. And this isn’t the methodical work-everything-through-to-the-nth-degree Morrigan. This is the crazy-with-power, I’m-going-to-waste-time-beating-up-Mr.-D Morrigan. And that’s the sort of enemy we have a chance against.” I look at my Pomps out on the field. Food is being handed out, sentries have been set at the edges of my army, knives at ready. “How are you lot coping?”

“OK. Waiting mainly. The Stirrer that led us here is gone, just walked through the walls. We couldn’t follow, but nothing’s attacked us yet. We’d all be considerably more confident if we knew that you had the scythe.”

“Yes, things would be easier, I know. But I don’t have it. Anything else?”

“The air’s thin down here, but it’s breathable,” Alex says, then coughs. “If a little dusty.”

The air’s whistling through the gash in reality, bringing with it all sorts of rubbish, and bird life. It’s startling to see chip packets, and plastic bags dancing around the dust of the Deepest Dark.

“The longer that stays open,” I say, nodding to the portal, “the more air you’ll have to breathe.”

“Is anyone else freaking out here?” Tim says. “Yep,” murmurs Alex. “Not a big fan of the sensation.”

Lissa and Cerbo say nothing, and I’m truly grateful for that.

Tim looks at the wall. “Morrigan in there, you think?”

“Yeah, I can feel him, and I have no doubt that he can feel me.”

“So how do we get the bastard to engage with us?”

“You’ve been in siege-type situations before, right?” I ask Alex. “A guy with a gun in a two-story, brick, suburban house does not equal a fortress.” He nods over toward a bunch of very organized-looking cops. “They’re part of the CT unit,” he glances back at me, “Counter Terrorism. But I’d say this is well beyond their remit too. You’ve dragged us all down to Hell. You’re the only one who really understands the conditions here. The city has, what, maybe a few thousand Stirrers? Well we’ve got about three thousand people here, ready to fight.” I want to correct him, to tell him that no one really knows how many Stirrers there are left. “What I’d like to know is why none of you lot ever thought to bring the fight down here before?”

“Actually,” Cerbo says. “Once, long ago, we did. When the Stirrers were regarded as a spent force. A particularly industrious RM decided it was time to strike a final blow against the enemy. A thousand Pomps breached the gates of Hell, and laid siege to the city. That was before Devour grew walls. But it didn’t make any difference. None of them returned. Led to a period of…uncertainty among the RMs. Three were destroyed in Schisms. After that, you can understand why it was never attempted again.”

“We don’t need to destroy Devour, or conquer it,” I say. “We need to draw Morrigan out.” I nod toward the great shimmering streak of the portal. “Morrigan can’t be defeated here, but if we can bring him back to the living world, then we might just stand a chance.”

“Is anyone freaking out here?” Tim says again.

I look at him severely. “So what do you think we should do?”

“Oh no,” Tim says, “no, this … this is your call. I’ve never really had to lay siege to anything before.”

“And you think I have?”

“Well, you’re the one who’s seen
Lord of the Rings
a dozen times.”

“Twice all the way through, and the extended editions.” I look over at Lissa. “It’s the only way to see them. Still, that’s hardly a sieging primer, and none of theirs were successful.”

Tim waves a finger in the air. “But they were almost successful! Almost!”

“Would you two shut up,” Lissa says. “I know how to take a fortress,” Wal says.

We all turn to look at him.

He shrugs. “Hey, I’ve lived.” He flies onto my shoulder, gestures out at my Pomps. “What you’ve got here is an army—of sorts.” He gestures toward the fortress. “What you’ve got there are walls. What you need is something to break down those walls. An army attacking a walled city without a siege engine, without ladders, or cannons, is like a starving man with a tin of beans and no can opener…if the tin could drop stones on his head…might as well be staring at Warhol’s paintings of Campbell’s soup.”

“Where the hell am I going to get a siege engine?”

“Think about it. I’ve seen you, I know what you can do. You may not have a catapult, but you have control of millions of tiny ones, and that adds up to one powerful force.”

I nod my head. I can control the dust, I used it in my fight against Rillman, before I killed him. But this is on an entirely different scale.

“Do you think it will work?” I ask. “It might, but there’s only one way to know for certain.”

We call everyone back from the walls. Once they’re clear I hurl dust against them.

Not handfuls, but great waves. The earth shakes with my power and the dust crashes against the walls with such force that my ears ring with it. But the walls don’t fall.

I think about it.

I send my thoughts into the cracks in the stone, or try to. Every rock has faults, cracks, weaknesses. I find them out, I guide the dust into them. I close my eyes and let it expand.

The walls shudder, they tumble.

There’s a sound, louder than the creak of the One Tree or the howling of HD. It’s the beat of the billions of hearts that I am fighting for, it’s the beating of the single heart in my chest, it’s the beating of Lissa’s heart in the near distance.

There’s a bone-shaking rumble and the earth rolls beneath my feet. A gale slams into me, throwing me backward. There are distant echoing detonations, a great big stone—ashlar, I remember, it’s called ashlar—comes hurtling out of the dust.

Before I can get out of the way it strikes me. Hard, in the face. Well, that’s just great. The stone’s rumbled on past me. I can’t see. I take a couple of steps forward, then decide I need to sit down. Lissa’s coming towards me. I can hear her racing heartbeat drawing near. Surely I can’t look that bad.

One moment I’m sitting upright, the next I’m in the dust. Half choking.
Is this how Francis felt?
I remember my hands closing around his throat. I remember the way he shuddered as I squeezed.

HD chuckles with the blackest delight. All I can taste is my own blood.

Justice, I suppose. Justice. Then I can’t breathe at all.

T
he speed at which you heal is frightening,” Dr. Brooker says.

“What?” I’m looking up into his face. I really have to stop waking up like this. At least I’m not blind, that counts for something, surely. Wal’s sitting next to me, eyes shining (has he been crying?)

“Believe me, mate, you were a mess,” the cherub says.

I’m lying on a stretcher in a tent. Still in the Deepest Dark, I can feel it around us.

Dr. Brooker clears his throat. “I thought dealing with RMs made me a bit blasé, but then you go and top it. Steven, you came in here three hours ago, all your major organs, your eyes. All of it crushed, I’ve seen paste with greater consistency than parts of you. You looked like you’d been hit by a truck, then crushed under a steamroller. There’s no way anyone can survive that.”

“But I’m not anyone,” I sit up and wince with the effort. To say I still feel a bit sore is like saying Mars Bars are a bit sweet or a bit fattening.

“No, you are definitely not. Hell must accelerate your healing processes incredibly.”

“Of course it does, how else could you suffer endlessly?” I say.

Dr. Brooker grunts. “Don’t be so glib.”

“The siege.” I slide out of the bed. “I have to.”

“Don’t worry, you haven’t missed much.”

But, yes, I have. There are dozens of wounded. I can smell blood and death and the chemical odors of a hospital at work. Doctors from all across Mortmax are tending to them.

“I need to—”

“You need to put on some pants.”

He throws me my coat, torn in several places but still serviceable, and my underpants and trousers. I realize that I’m standing there naked. I dress quickly, and, even as I do, the pain melts from me.

“What’s happening?”

“We’re winning, I think,” Dr. Brooker says, he slips on a pair of surgical gloves. “Get out of here, I have real patients to attend to.”

I nod.

“And make sure you don’t come back.”

There’s a gap in the city’s walls of about a hundred meters. Tim’s walking out of it, with a guard of twenty Pomps. His hair is covered with dust, and for the first time I’m glad that my scalp is little more than stubble.

He looks at me wide-eyed. “Jesus, you look good for a—”

“Where’s Lissa?”

“She’s in the city. She was with you, but they needed her, your Pomps. You going to find her?”

I nod. “What have I missed?”

“I don’t get it,” Tim says. “We’ve faced almost no resistance at all. When the wall fell, Stirrers rushed out. For a moment I thought, here it is, we’ve kicked the fucking ants’ nest, but there really wasn’t that many of them.” He nods toward a pile of Stirrer corpses. “We’ll give them a proper burial when we can.”

“And Morrigan?”

Tim shakes his head. “Nowhere.”

I grimace. “But I can feel him.”

“Yeah, and where are the rest of the Stirrers?”

“Maybe we’ve always over-calculated their numbers. If you’re going to make a mistake that’s how it should go, right?”

Devour is as I remember it, buildings empty of anything, mere parodies of our own. I can’t really imagine Stirrers living here, working here. Their sole focus through the eons has been to enter our own world. They’ve a severe case of the grass-is-greener syndrome.

A small marquee has been set up by the wall, the Ankous and Lissa are arguing.

Lissa turns as Tim and I approach. She grabs me hard and squeezes. “God, it’s so good to see you back.” She glares at the Ankous. “Look, he’ll tell you,” she says heatedly.

“Tell them what?”

“That we’re wasting our time here, that we need to get deeper into the city.”

“No,” Ari says. “Not even Steven is that stupid.”

Wal chuckles from behind me. HD’s not impressed.

“Yes, I am that stupid. Morrigan
is
deeper in the city, and it’s Morrigan I need. If we don’t engage with him then everything is pointless, the world still ends and we’ve only set up camp in its ruins.”

“It’s not too late to follow my plan, you know,” Cerbo says.

I give him a withering look. “Christ! Always with the bloody death plan! We’ve managed so far with few casualties.” As long as I don’t think about those I lost this afternoon across Brisbane, or those who have died in the battle since. “We’re obviously wearing away at the Stirrers, or we wouldn’t be here. But we need to draw Morrigan out, and I think we can.”

“I am not going any further into the city,” Ari says, and the other Ankous nod. I’m not surprised, I wouldn’t want to either, and they’ve already followed me so far.

“None of you are,” I say. “Just me, I’ve a plan.”

“No,” Lissa snaps. “You’re not going anywhere without me.”

“Or me,” Tim says.

“Yeah, goes for me as well,” Alex says.

“I’d rather if you didn’t,” I say, but I can’t sound convincing, because it’s an absolute lie.

All four of us have been hurt by Morrigan, all of us have a personal stake in his defeat that goes beyond saving the world. I can’t deny any of them. Besides, the company would be good.

“I’d rather not go if you don’t mind,” Wal says, and grins grimly. He’s the only one who has no choice in the matter.

I straighten my tatty coat and clear my throat. “Then if you’re coming with me, I don’t want to waste time. We go now.”

“And if you don’t come back?” Ari demands.

“If we’re not back in twenty-four hours, go home,” I squeeze her hand, “walk through the portal, and spend time with your loved ones. You’ve all worked so hard, and if it wasn’t enough, then that is no fault of yours. I’m proud of each and every one of you. Thank you.”