War Within (Death's Contract Book 2)

by KJ Harlow

  “Of course,” I said, not looking at Death. “Tor.” I looked up at him and motioned with my head to rotate the chair towards us. Tor looked at Death, who stared at me stonily, before going back to his work and waving his hand at us dismissively. Sid strode confidently to the chair and made himself comfortable. He crossed his legs, crossed his hands on his knees and leaned forward.

  “I was born in 1948, to a drunkard of a father and a harlot of a mother. Growing up, money was scarce and food was scarcer. I was sent out into the streets of London at the ripe old age of 4 to scrounge for scraps while my father beat my mother. I would come home, he would beat me, take what little I had stolen and send me out the next day.

  “This went on and on for months. One day, I come home and my mother pulls me aside. She tells me that she is with child but she does not want to let my father know about it. For the first time in my life, I was thankful for my father’s perpetual state of inebriation; it allowed my mother to hide her growing belly for the better part of seven months.

  “One day in the eighth month, I opened the door and find that neither my father nor mother are home. However, I did see a lot of blood on the floor. I ran out into the street, knocking on doors and asking strangers passing by if they had seen my parents. Everyone turns their nose up at me.

  “Luckily, there was a kindly homeless fellow who frequented my street. He told me that there was horrific screaming like a pig was being slaughtered, coming from my pathetic excuse of a house. The police came, they took away my father and my mother was rushed to the local hospital covered in blood.

  “I ran barefoot as fast as I could to the hospital. I knew where it was because there was a doctor there who took pity on me and would often bandage me up when he saw the bruises I had sustained. I came into the emergency ward and asked for my mother. I told them she had cuts and bruises and a baby inside her.

  “I managed to find her. Her tummy was flat again; the baby wasn’t there. She said the doctors took him away to be monitored. ‘You have a baby brother’, she said to me. ‘His name is Mortimer’. She took my hand. ‘Don’t tell Mortimer about his parents. He’s better off not knowing about us.’ She made me promise her before she died.”

  Sid stopped for a moment as he rubbed his eyes. Death had risen from his chair and now leaned on the edge of his desk, looking at Sid intently. The other Deliverers didn’t notice me as I looked at them. They were glued to Sid’s every word. I looked back at him just as he resumed.

  “The last thing I heard about my father was that he was locked up in jail for murder for life. About time, I thought. We had no other family so we were sent off to the orphanage. We stayed there for another four years. It was nearly as bad as being with my parents: beatings, little food, and carers that didn’t care.

  “The carers separated me and Mortimer early on. Whether it was ‘policy’ or because they wanted to break every child down individually, I watched my brother slowly become hateful. He didn’t know that I was his brother, but I still kept an eye on him from afar. In the times that we were together, I told him he had been abandoned by his parents. He seemed to accept it. Better that than the truth.

  “We made our great escape in the middle of the night: me, Mortimer and a few other kids. The orphanage was getting full and they wouldn’t look for us anyway. We figured we would try our luck in the streets of London. We walked all night and eventually, we found safe haven in an abandoned barn on the edge of town.

  “For the next 10 years or so, we lived as petty thieves. We had each other’s backs. We grew up and despite the hard life, things were tolerable. Mortimer would still wake up in the middle of the night, gripped with terrors only he could see. ‘Why? Why?’, he would scream. I knew that he pined for the parents he never knew. His desire to know why he was abandoned consumed him. It hurt me to see him this way, but I couldn’t tell him. I wanted him to grow stronger and forget about it.

  “Then one fateful day, he came back. He looked… different. He had been spending a lot of time away from us, more than usual. Something had changed him. ‘I’m sorry’, he said before he pulled out a knife and killed us all. Every, single one of us… or so he thought. I managed to make it out alive, but only just. I had stolen some bandages earlier and hid them. By the time I patched myself up, the others had died.

  “I never saw him after that, not until a lot later when he became the infamous Mortimer Wildblood. I had burnt down the barn with my dead friends in it, leaving no trace of us behind. I moved to a different part of London and took up work as a paramedic. Eventually, I opened up my own practice, dedicating myself to the homeless people of London.

  “Eventually, he starts appearing in newspapers as this devious killer. He gets caught and is meant to be hanged. I got a glimpse of him that day. Apparently, he had escaped again and they couldn’t recapture him.

  “His crimes died down and everyone eventually forgot about him. As I patched people up, I would think about Mortimer from time to time, wondering if he was still alive. Wondering if I would see him again before I died. Then all hell breaks loose in London, I’ve got a huge gash in my leg, you lot appear and I see him spraying Mortimer with bullets!”

  Sid’s eyes were popping out of his head as he abruptly finished up, looking wildly at Walter. Walter took a step back, unprepared for the sudden mention. As Sid calmed down, everyone seemed to come out of a trance. Agatha was shaking slightly. She turned around and stared into the fireplace. Tracy followed her, putting an arm around her shoulder. Silas stared up at the ceiling thoughtfully while Tor stared at Sid.

  “Th-thank you for sharing that, Sid,” I said shakily. I wasn’t expecting a tale of such epic proportions. Guess it was a good thing that he had a seat. He grumbled and waved indistinctly, reclining in the chair. His eyes darted back to me.

  “So what do you want with me, then?” I looked at Death. The bronze specks in his hazel eyes seemed to flash as he gave me a slight nod.

  “Sid, when Tor and I brought you that jogger, you called us ‘superheroes’.”

  “Well that’s what you are, aren’t you? What with your guns and everything,” he said, his eyes swiveling down to my hip.

  “We’re not ‘superheroes’. We’re called Deliverers. Mortimer is part of a group called the Tormented. He’s supporting a man called Dante. You can call him… a terrorist of sorts.” Sid looked at me dubiously. I drew my Lucent Gun, laying it flat on my hands.

  “These guns are used to defeat the Conflicted, foot soldiers of the Tormented if you like.” Sid rubbed his stubbly chin thoughtfully.

  “The fellows with guns who surrounded us at Westminster Station?” There were nods all around the group.

  “When we shoot the Tormented with our Lucent Guns, it just stuns them.” Sid’s eyes widened as he heard this.

  “They don’t die?”

  “Well, technically they’re not alive. At least not in the traditional sense.” He looked at me thoughtfully.

  “So when he,” Sid cast another dirty look at Walter, “was filling Mortimer up with lead, he was just stunning him?” I nodded.

  “If we don’t, they will shoot us and they will Cease–” Walter stopped and cleared his throat. “They will kill us.” Walter and Sid stared at each other, neither willing to be the first to blink.

  “The Tormented,” I said loudly, walking directly between Walter and Sid’s standoff, “have only one weakness: their torment.” Sid stopped glaring at Walter and focused his attention on me. “Their torment is also their greatest source of strength. It allows them to be invincible as long as they don’t know the answer to the question that torments them.”

  “And what question might that be?”

  “Every Tormented has a different question. It’s something that consumes them from the inside out, causing them immense pain that blackens their heart and permanently stains their soul.” Agatha said solemnly. A flashback briefly entered my mind: Tor and Stan locked in battle, while the cargo ship they were on was being
thrown about like a toy tug boat in a vicious storm.

  Sid stood up. Everyone stepped aside as he made his way toward the fire, except Walter. Sid stopped inches away from him. He looked up at casually at Walter, who was half a foot taller than he was. I shot a warning look at Walter, but he continued glowering at Sid. Just as I thought they were going to come to blows, Sid sidestepped around Walter and stood in front of the fire, his hands nestled in the small of his back. We watched him as he stared into the fire for a moment.

  “And this is where I come in.” I exchanged looks with Agatha. I walked towards Sid and stood next to him and put a hand on his shoulder. He eyed it then glanced up at me.

  “Mortimer ended my life. Death took me out of the waiting room, just like he did with you and he gave me a choice. I could be granted a second chance at life on the Overworld if I helped him defeat the Tormented or I could go back out to the waiting room and face judgment.” Death had silently watched proceedings from his desk until then. He pushed off his desk and stood on Sid’s right.

  “Judgement is based how pure your heart is. Based on the thousands of people you helped over more than half your life, it’s almost certain that you would be judged favorably.” He looked down at Sid, his hazel eyes reflecting the roaring flames in the fireplace. “My question for you now is, are you satisfied with your contributions to the world or do you want to make a difference in your life one more time?” Sid kept staring into the fire. His eyes flickered as he considered Death’s question.

  “I don’t want a second chance at life, though. What would be the point of me going back in when I’m well past my best before date?” Agatha laughed out loud, making Tracy jump. She gave me a bewildered look. Was there something about the Weston boys that made our resident Catholic nun weak at the knees? Death smiled blandly.

  “If that’s not what you want, I won’t put it in your contract.” Sid stepped away from the fire. He walked to the middle of the room, looking up at the ceiling. The ever present clouds of London’s skies rolled through the portal. Sid smiled wistfully.

  “I want to go back in time, back to when I was a boy. I don’t want my father to be a violent drunk. I don’t want my mother to be a prostitute. I want Mortimer to be born into a house of love and acceptance. A house where my mother isn’t dying, where she doesn’t have to promise me not to tell my brother the truth about his parents.” He looked down from the ceiling at Death. “Can you do this for me?” Death looked at him and shook his head.

  “There are many things I can do, but going back in time and changing who people are is not one of them.” Melancholy swept over his face for a second before disappearing.

  “Hm. Shame.” He looked back up into the ceiling. “I choose judgment then.” Just as I was about to object, Agatha walked up to Sid. She stood in front of him and forced him to look at her.

  “Sid,” she said firmly. “The person that Mortimer was spending a lot of time with was me. We were lovers.” Sid’s eyebrows rose so high that they were in danger of being permanently lost in his sandy, gray hair. “The day he nearly killed you, he found me, got down on one knee and proposed… with blood on his hands.” If it was possible, Sid’s eyes opened even wider.

  “Surely you jest?” Sid said, chuckling. Agatha shook her head sadly.

  “Sadly, I’m not.” Sid cupped his hand over his mouth as he looked away from Agatha.

  “No wonder he seemed so giddy when he came back from his little rendezvous,” Sid said, eyes flicking up to Agatha. “He was with you.” Agatha nodded, eyes bright.

  “It was never meant to be but at the time, it was a highlight of my life. I couldn’t accept his proposal though. For the years that followed until my demise, I blamed myself for the deaths of thousands of innocent Londoners. I can’t go back and change what happened, but I did decide to become a Deliverer so that I can stop the man that I love from hurting any more people. If I am able to Cease him, that is reward enough.” Agatha gently grasped Sid’s hands and held them. He looked at them then into her face.

  “If you love Mortimer as much as I do, you will become a Deliverer and help us put a stop to his madness.” Sid’s eyes searched Agatha’s face. Seeing that there was nothing but honesty there, he sighed.

  “OK, OK… but only because I can’t say no to a sister of the Catholic Church.”

  Twenty-One

  “There’s something not right about him,” Walter growled. He was watching Sid sign Death’s contract with his fountain pen. Death notarized the contract then shook his hand. The other Deliverers had already left Death’s office.

  “What’s not right about him?” I said, glancing at him quizzically. Walter was quiet for a moment.

  “He’s too old.” I laughed out loud, getting glances from Death and Sid. I covered my mouth to stifle my laughter as they returned to their private discussion.

  “Please Walter, you know that age plays no factor once we’re in the Underworld.” I turned to face the senior Deliverer. “Besides, you’re no spring chicken yourself.” I expected him to vehemently defend his age but he just kept openly staring at Sid.

  “He’s hiding something.” He grumbled. I sighed and rolled my eyes.

  “And you’re not?” Walter looked sharply at me, searching my face for a moment. He turned around and stared into the fire.

  “Everyone’s hiding something, even if they don’t realize it,” I said, joining him by the fire. He silently watched the flames hungrily lick the grate. “Besides, this is Ceasing Mortimer we’re talking about. If we’re able to rid the world of that crazed Tormented, does it matter what he’s hiding?”

  “Famous last words, Rose.”

  “I don’t have to worry, I’ve got you,” I said playfully bumping into his shoulder. “And Agatha, Tor, Silas, and Tracy. You’ve all got my back and I’ve got yours.” Walter grunted indistinctly. If he wanted to play the grumpy old man card, fine. I turned on my heel and walked towards Death and Sid.

  “Congratulations Sid,” I said, enthusiastically sticking a hand out. He gave me a firm handshake in response; not too weak, not too overpowering. I liked it.

  “So what now then, I’ve become a delivery superhero just like you lot?” I giggled as I looked up at Death.

  “You are a Deliverer as of a few minutes ago, yes. The others have gone to get your gear. An important step will be to see if the Lucent Gun accepts you. It’s a divine weapon that can sense the purity of your soul. As long as the goodness in your heart outweighs the darkness, you will be accepted.”

  “And what about training? I’ve never held a gun before, let alone fired one.”

  “Neither had I,” I said, smiling at Sid. “Tor is our resident ass kicker here. He’ll train you up. What I’ve found though is that getting back into the Overworld is the best way to get used to your Deliverer state. Defeating your first Conflicted unblocks your senses and lets you start moving faster, think quicker and shooting more accurately.” Sid crossed his arms and looked at me.

  “And what about Mortimer?”

  “We’ve got a team of workers who can tap into surveillance cameras all over London to track the whereabouts of the Tormented. They’re working on locating him now,” Death said confidently.

  “When I see him I just… shoot him?” Sid shuffled uncomfortably on his feet as he said this.

  “You have to talk to him. You have to present to him the question that’s been tormenting him for his entire life. Then you have to give him the Truth. He has to hear it and acknowledge it. Once he has, any Deliverer who has witnessed the sharing of the Truth will be able to Cease Mortimer.” Sid moved back toward the portal. He stood underneath it and looked up.

  “There’s nothing he wanted to know more than why his parents abandoned him,” Sid said solemnly. “I fed him a lie as a child and it has flourished into this, this…” he raised his hands, trying to find the right word. He let them drop despondently as he dropped his head. Death excused himself and walked towards Walter. Together, they
left the room. After I heard the door click shut, I walked over to Sid.

  “Should I have just broken my mother’s promise? Should I have told him who his parents were? Are the deaths of thousands of innocent people my fault?” He looked down at his hands. Seeing that they were trembling, he balled them into fists and put them by his side.

  “Sid,” I said gently. “You were young. Your mother was dying. You had to be strong very early on. No one blames you for keeping your mother’s promise.” His shoulders slumped and he bowed his head.

  “Maybe I wouldn’t get judged favorably if I went back out to the waiting room. Maybe all the lives that I saved over the last forty years are outweighed by the deaths I inadvertently caused.”

  “That’s why you’re here,” I said firmly. Sid wouldn’t look at me, but I could see the pain in his eyes. “Ever since we came to London, we have been trying to find the truth about Mortimer. Then you appeared out of nowhere and helped us out. I then helped you out when you were held hostage.” I looked at him. “We were meant to find you because you were meant to put an end to this.” He eventually looked at me and nodded.

  “Come on, let me show you around.” We left Death’s office and walked back through to the control room. Sid’s eyes widened as he looked at all the workers bustling about, trying to relay important information to each other. He stared at the huge wall of screens on the left, each showing a different surveillance camera to a different point in London. Just as I stopped in the middle of the room to introduce it to Sid, the clear glass door leading to the meeting room disappeared and Agatha came out. Seeing us, she smiled warmly and glided toward us.

  “Hello Sid, I trust that Rose has been a good guide to you so far?”

  “This is the only room I’ve seen besides the waiting room and Death’s office, but she hasn’t been too shabby… yet.” I raised an eyebrow at him. He gave me a quick wink in response. “I take it this is where you find information about the Tormented?” Agatha and I nodded.