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.
28
Crack!
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.
The desk is submerged in paper-scrunched up balls of it, rough teetering piles of it, and all of it covered in Mr. D's dense scrawl. Post-it notes fringe one side of the desk.
Mr. D catches me glancing at the papery chaos. "I never bothered with a computer for the real work." He lifts a hand and Post-its flutter like jaundiced butterflies from the table toward his wrist. "Who needs one, eh? Though I do like my Twitter." He reads the notes that he'd called to him, and frowns. "There are too many names I know on these things."
I'm quick to forget about that, though. Something else has grabbed my attention. Mr. D really does have the original "Triumph of Death" on his wall. There are all those skeletons getting jiggy with the damned. Mr. D has always seemed a little too smug about this picture for my liking, but here it is, in all its splendor.
I walk up to it and shudder. Looking closely, I don't see the Orcus in those skeletons, or Pomps, I see Stirrers. And I'm thinking about that impending Regional Apocalypse.
"Quite a piece of work, isn't it?" Mr. D says. "I, um… procured that for myself a long time ago. One of the benefits of this job. Well, it was."
"What the fuck is going on?" I ask, turning away from the picture. It's bigger than I expected, and I can feel all those mad eyes staring at the back of my neck.
Mr. D sends the Post-it notes fluttering back to the desk. "Death and death and death, I'm afraid."
There's an almighty crack and the door behind him shudders. We both jump.
"Well, that was a big one." Mr. D passes me my cup and saucer. His mind is already wandering to a new topic. It's not just his face that jumps around.
"There are other spaces, other places, and they proceed endlessly, universes and universes. One day, death may not be needed. But we're a long way from that." Death sips his tea casually, even as the door and bookcases shake. "I keep up with my reading. I like physics, I like the possibility that one day death will be irrelevant. After all, death is merely a transitional state. The body is devoured, and made alive again in all the creatures that devour it. And the souls of those gone are absorbed into the One Tree, sinking through it to eventually track across the skies of the Deepest Dark.
"Death's job, Steven, is to shape the Underworld, to bring to it a neatness, a less savage afterlife. And that's all I've ever done, managed my little alternate universe. Other RMs do it differently, but we're all here to provide a peaceful transition, to make sure the dying continues as it should, and to stop the Stirrers. That's the position Morrigan hungers for."
I'm still a couple of steps behind. I think I always will be. "He killed you. How are we even here?"
"Think about it." Mr. D taps his skull.
"I'm a Pomp-"
Death nods, and takes a loud slurp of his tea. Lissa would hate him. He also takes sugar. Mom would have hated him too. "Exactly. You pomped me here and I took you with me. Things are different for RMs-the manner of our deaths-particularly in such situations as this. We're given some leeway. You being a Pomp meant I could use you as a portal to get us here. When that door they're so desperately trying to break down does, things will become a little more… final. The rules are changing, Steven. I'm not the first RM of Australia, nor will I be the last unless, of course, we have come to that time when death is made redundant." The door jolts, metal shrieks. Mr. D considers the door. "I'm quite certain that we haven't reached that point yet, not even close. For one, you're still breathing." He finishes his tea and gestures toward mine, frowning. "You haven't touched yours."
Crack!
Mr. D turns toward the sound. "Don't worry, we've time enough, believe me."
The dark carried me here half an hour ago and Death made tea with all the speed of a man who has no idea of the concept of the word "hurry" or "apocalypse."
I wish I could say that I share his lack of urgency, but I want out of here. And I want answers. "So what is Morrigan planning? To become the new RM?"
"Morrigan has always been extremely diligent in the application of his duties. It was only a matter of time before he wanted my job." Mr. D shakes his head ruefully. "Something much easier to recognize with hindsight, of course."
"So what can I do?" I look down at my cup.
"The first thing would be to get young Lissa Jones down from the tree."
"But the rules…" I have no idea how I can even reach the One Tree, let alone rescue Lissa.
But if there's a way… Mr. D better not be messing with me. I want Lissa back. I need her.
"Everything comes to a close, even the efficacy of paradigms, Steven. And besides, you must realize the rules are remarkably flexible. After all, you're here having tea with me, aren't you? Well, you would be if you actually had a sip."
I can't drink the tea. I'm too keyed up. "This hasn't happened before, how can Morrigan-"
Mr. D laughs and regards me with his affably vicious eyes. "Of course it's happened before. When these… Schisms occur there are no survivors, not if the new RM is doing his job. And let me tell you, I did my job most thoroughly."
"Oh."
Mr. D isn't quite the friendly fellow he was a moment before, and I wonder who or what I am really locked in this office with. If you scratch the surface of any business you start to find dirt, I guess. But it's disappointing. "So you…"
Mr. D nods his head. "Don't feel sorry for me, de Selby. But I am pissed off. I didn't see this coming. I knew it was inevitable, of course, but that hardly means I was expecting it, and certainly not from Morrigan. He was just too good. A stickler for the rules. A fellow always creating new efficiencies. I was lulled, Steven. I thought he had my back, not a knife pointed at it. I'd forgotten how it goes, you see." He grins at me. "I was a very nasty man, Steven."
Mr. D moves close and pats my back. "I still am, though I'd like to say I was an idealist, and I can assure you that I never dealt with the Stirrers. Morrigan is opening doors that should never be opened.
"Pomps are the front line in a war that has been going on since the Big Bang, between life and the absence of life. Ultimately it's a war that we probably have no chance of winning. Our enemy is powerful. You don't give Stirrers an edge, you never give them an edge. And certainly not now.
"Morrigan is very likely to discover that he won't be RM for very long. Once enough Stirrers are through there won't be anything living to bring over. Morrigan's made death too efficient for his own good."
I'm still a couple of steps behind, but I have to bring something to the conversation. "If you hadn't sent those crows I wouldn't have survived, and I would have lost Lissa sooner than I did."
Mr. D turns his changeable face toward me. "Crows? I didn't send any crows. I've had no control over my avian Pomps since Morrigan pushed me in the broom closet."
"Well, if you didn't, who did?"
"Crows like to see things out to their own conclusion. Perhaps they wanted to even things up a little. After all, my Schism may have been brutal-and it was, believe me, it was-but Morrigan has taken it to a whole new level. You shouldn't deal with Stirrers. I don't know if I can stress that enough. Absolutely no good can come of it."
"So what do I do?"
"Well, first things first, be careful: you can die here. Morriga
n is going to want to stop you, and his influence in the Underworld is strong. You need to find Lissa. Love's far more powerful than you can believe, and you are going to need allies."
He's suggesting an Orpheus Maneuver. I thought they were impossible. They've certainly never worked before, as far as I know. Otherwise they'd have been named after something other than their most spectacular failure.
You can't just go to Hell and back whenever you choose. It exacts a price. It demands pain and suffering. Bringing someone else back is even harder. Orpheus failed and he was the best of us. I can't see how a Brisbane boy is ever going to better that.
My face burns. "What about my parents, would they make powerful allies?"
His eyes flare, and he jabs a bony finger at me. "Are you trying to bargain with an RM? Believe me, it doesn't work."
"Paradigm shift," I remind him, and I feel pretty cool, eye to eye, with Death. Is he really Death anymore?
Mr. D chuckles. "Now that's the spirit, but it would take a greater paradigm shift than anything we're capable of to bring them back. Bigger than that of the Hungry Death of old." My jaw drops at that. I'd always thought the Hungry Death was a myth, a scary story. "I'm sorry Steven, but they're too far gone."
"Thought it was worth a try."
"Everything is. The Boatman Charon, now he's the one you want to make a bargain with. Indeed, you'll have to. Or Neti, Aunt Neti, but no, she's probably best avoided for now."
The door cracks, louder than ever before. We both swing our heads toward it. Fragments of the frame tumble to the floor. There's not much left in it.
"One more thing. You're going to need this." Mr. D hands me a key. The metal is warm and oily, in fact it feels disturbingly livid. "It's my key to Number Four. The iron was shaped around the finger bone of the first death-the Hungry Death-so they say. I can't be sure of that, but it's old and powerful. Keep it on your person and Stirrers won't feel you. Morrigan won't change the locks. He can't, not until every Pomp is gone. Make sure he's never able to, Steven."
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