The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy

by Trent Jamieson

  Then a Stirrer drops from the nearest tree and comes barreling toward us.

  “Steven!” Lissa shouts, and she’s suddenly in front of me but, of course, it crashes through her. If I hadn’t bound her to me she’d be gone.

  I don’t have enough warning to do more than tense as its shoulder slams into my stomach. I crumple over its back then hit the muddy ground again, with a groan.

  “You should never have come here.” I recognize the voice, Tremaine. The Stirrer looms over me. “But I’m glad you did.”

  Hatred breeds hatred. Stirrer Tremaine has it in for me far worse than the living one ever did. “Morrigan will be here soon, but I can kick the shit out of you before that.”

  “Have a go, Flatty,” I say, hardly from a position of strength.

  Tremaine swings a boot at me and I grab it, catching it mere centimeters from my face. The kick jolts through my body. He yanks his foot, but I’m holding on tight and I’ve got a good grip. I push him hard. He’s on his back. I stagger to my feet, I have to finish this quickly. I need to get into the tower before Morrigan arrives. I kick him, then bend down. I slap my hand against his face and realize that he’s wearing some sort of mask. I feel his smile beneath it.

  “Not so easy is it?”

  My hand yanks the mask free. He punches me in the stomach and I throw up all over his face.

  Seems that blood isn’t the only way to stall a Stirrer. He gasps then shudders, and is still.

  “Christ,” Lissa says from behind me. “You’re an innovator.”

  I’m too shaky and sore to be embarrassed. The rain is crashing down with even greater force and my stomach is an ache that extends all the way to my mouth. And I know what I’ve been fighting for—just another gateway to pain. To make it even worse, a soul pomps through me. People never stop dying. The taste of blood is added to the delightful mix of vomit and terror.

  “We have to get this over and done with,” I manage. “Follow me, mud boy,” Lissa says quietly, her voice carrying easily above the storm.

  We circle the tower once. It’s metal, a rusty red. Up close it looks even more like a lighthouse than anything as industrial as a gas stripper.

  “Follow you where? There’s no way in, besides it’ll be full of baffles and gas-stripping stuff. Maybe we need to do this outside?” I’ve decided I really don’t want to go in there. I’m feeling sick with fear. “Yeah, out here would be better.”

  Lissa shakes her head. “Put your hand against the wall.”

  I brush a hand across the cold metal, hesitantly. “See, nothing.” I’m lying though, there’s a definite buzz to the metal, and the moment I touch it I can hear bells tolling in my skull.

  Lissa gives me her darkest grin. “I’m sorry, Steve. But this isn’t that easy. You know it isn’t. Keep your hand on the wall. And you’re going to need the craft knife.”

  I pull the knife from my pocket.

  “There’s a reason why this is so hard to do.”

  I understand that. We can’t be encouraging people to cross over into the Underworld, even to the edge of the Underworld. It’s easy enough to enter Number Four. Sure it requires a little blood, but only a pinprick, because that is an entranceway sanctioned by Mr. D. This is something else. This is a back doorway and its lock is much more complicated, much more demanding.

  Lissa points to a spot on the back of my hand. “There,” she says.

  I know what to do. I drive that craft knife right through to my palm. I tear my throat with the scream.

  The tower jolts and I leap back, my hand burning. The wound has healed, but darkly, and where the wound was is now a smoking scar. And where my hand was there is now a door. It opens inward with the force of the wind, clanging against the inside of the tower.

  “Go the magic and shit,” I growl.

  “You always this cynical?”

  I nod, peering through the doorway. It’s dark in there. “Sometimes, but mostly only when I’m half frozen to death and covered in mud, and I’ve just driven a knife through my hand. After you.”

  Lissa walks through and I follow, closing the door behind me. It’s an effort against the wind, but when it shuts it stays shut.

  26

  So what do we do now?” I shrug the pack from my shoulders.

  We’re in the gloom of the tower, in a space that shouldn’t be. We’re somewhere between worlds—a bubble of time and space, its surface marbled with possibilities, and far too many of them are grim. Whether I succeed or fail has never mattered more than now. The walls of the tower are marked at regular intervals with glowing brace symbols. No Stirrer could enter this place.

  The air is rank with a back-of-the-throat burning odor of cat piss and vomit. Magic door and what not, it still bloody stinks. There’s crushed up fast-food wrappers and soft-drink cans cluttering the floor, and a used condom opposite the door—hardly a clinical place for what I imagine is about to be done. But then maybe that’s the point of it. Maybe it has to be rough and raw, and there’s certainly something in the air, a little like the quiet expectancy of the doorway to Number Four.

  The rain is loud against the metal walls, and the trees outside sound like they are thrashing in the storm as though the riverfront’s become some giant’s moshpit. Inside the tower, everything rattles and creaks and groans. What’s more, there is a bell tolling in the distance: really bloody portentous. I feel like I’m on some sort of carnival ride, one that is exceedingly fast and poorly maintained.

  “It’s going to hurt,” Lissa says. “More than the knife through your hand.”

  “I know it’s going to hurt.”

  “No, you don’t. You just think you do.”

  “Look, are you trying to talk me out of this? If that’s the case I would have been more open to persuasion before we made our way through the storm, before I fell in the mud and was nearly struck by lightning, and before being almost kicked to death by Tremaine. And just where else are we going to go anyway?”

  “Have you got that marker and the craft knife?” Even now in the dark, with me scared and sweating, she can’t help but smirk. Somehow, it helps.

  I dig around in my pack and pull out the marker. The knife is clenched in my hand.

  “So you’re a Pomp, right,” she says. I nod. “Well, you’re going to have to be your own conduit. You’re going to have to pass through yourself into the land of the dead. Well, to its edges, anyway. You don’t want to go too far in—the further you go, the harder it is to come back.”

  “I’m going to the Underworld? I’m sure every Stirrer I’ve faced could have sent me there much less painfully.”

  “And much more permanently,” Lissa says.

  “Then how am I going to draw Mr. D out? If he’s still around.”

  “He’ll be around; he’s trapped or hidden somewhere. This ceremony will not only bring you firmly into the Underworld, it’ll also break through whatever’s holding him. It’s essentially a summoning ceremony, but one where you show a real commitment.”

  “Mr. D won’t be happy. You know what he’s like.”

  “Yeah. But trust me, he will be impressed. Do you have a handkerchief or tissue?”

  I feel in my pockets. Nothing.

  “Then you’ll have to use your shirt. You’re going to need to soak it in blood.”

  “All right then.” I take off my shirt.

  Lissa whistles and I give her a look. It’s not like she hasn’t seen it all before. But it breaks the tension, and then she’s all business.

  “You need to cut here and here.” She points to two points on my shoulders. “It’s absolutely necessary that you sever the arteries there, and only those arteries. They’re the portal wounds. I’m sorry, Steve. You’ve got to bleed for this to work. Profusely. Mark those points with your pen.”

  I shiver, my skin is all gooseflesh. She reaches out a hand to touch me, and stops just before contact. I look into her eyes and can see her recognition of my fear.

  “You’ll be all righ
t. The binding ritual went perfectly. Just don’t forget that shirt.”

  The binding had been a quick wank—a little messy, but hardly fatal. I’ve never felt as close to death as I am now. The precipice is before me and I’m the one who has to step off it. If I look too intently at the edge I know I’m not going to do it.

  The adrenaline from the fight and the stabbing of my hand is fading. All I have to do this with is me, terrified and tired me. If I die, at least it’ll be on my own terms. That has to mean something.

  I mark the two spots Lissa has pointed to. The first one is going to be easy, if driving a knife into your own flesh is ever easy. I click the knife blade free of its plastic sheath. It glows dimly.

  Everything is silent. I can’t hear the storm. My entire universe has narrowed down to this. There’s such a thrumming tension running through me that I could snap. Then all of a sudden my head is pounding, beating time with my heart. This is more horrible than I could have thought, and I haven’t even started. Calm down. Calm down. Calm down.

  I take a breath, and push the knife into my flesh. It’s hard to apply the right amount of pressure. My hands don’t want to do it, and a lot of me agrees with my hands. Most of me in fact.

  But, shit, I need to.

  I push and cut. At first there is no pain. That doesn’t last. “Oh, God.” Blood spurts, ridiculously and vividly. I drop to my knees.

  “Breathe,” Lissa says, as though I am giving birth, somehow. I feel naked before her, stripped down to my essence. “Breathe. I’m here with you, Steven. I’m here.”

  I never realized just how far blood could jet from a wound, and its bursts are fast and forceful because my heart is racing. I’m shaking. Part of me is wondering just how much time I have before I lose consciousness, but that isn’t going to get me anywhere. I clamp down on my thoughts with whatever will I have remaining, because there’s only one action left to me.

  I drive the knife into the shuddering meat of my other shoulder, my hands sticky and slippery with my own blood.

  “The shirt,” she says.

  I’ve dropped it. Christ, I’ve gone and dropped it!

  A bell is ringing. Ha! The voice of Eric Tremaine is rattling around in my head. How the hell did you survive this far?

  I swing my head left and right, searching for the shirt. I’m clumsy, drunk with the loss of blood and the pain and the shock. My vision is spotting, narrowing down. There it is! Away from the mess of my wounds, untouched by blood. Definitely unsanguine. How the fuck did that happen?

  It’s you, Tremaine says, buried in my head somewhere, a new voice for my own self-loathing. You. Derek’s there too, and they’re both laughing, having a right old time, slapping each other on the back like the old chums they are. See you in hell.

  I scramble desperately toward the shirt, through the blood that was once part of me and that is still pouring from me, though with less and less urgency now. The well is dry, gentlemen. The well is dry. I reach out one bloody paw and grab the shirt. “Lissa—”

  Darkness smothers me like death.

  PART TWO

  THE ORPHEUS MANEUVER

  27

  You come out of that sort of dark and you know you’re done. You’re dead, or you’ve brought the Underworld to you—and there’s not a lot of difference between the two states.

  Lissa’s looking at me, her gaze heavy with something—pain maybe, or relief. We’re in the tower. Only we’re not. We’ve made it through to the fringes of the Underworld. I can feel it, not just in the silence, because there is no storm on this side, but in my flesh, just as I do when I’m at the office, only this is purer, darker and more terrible.

  “I’m—” That’s all I manage, my body is startling me. It’s not how I remember it: except it is. The wounds are gone.

  And there is no blood. Anywhere. Not a single drop of it within the curved space of the tower. I open my hand and there is the shirt so, yeah, there is some blood. The material is dark and dry with it. I fold it up and put it in my pocket. My backpack is next to me. I grab another shirt and slip it on.

  I’m whole, and hale, except the cherub tattoo on my biceps is burning, as though it has only just been inked. I ignore it. Quite frankly I’ve experienced much worse in the last few days. The air, too, is fresh. No cat or drunk has ever marked this place.

  “You did good,” Lissa says. “For a moment … I thought you did too good.”

  And I want to kiss her. Her lips lack their usual blue-tinged pallor. In fact, her cheeks are flushed. There’s not even a moment’s hesitation. It’s the only time I’ll ever get the chance. I reach over and I touch her face, and it’s warm against my fingers.

  “Jesus,” I say, and I can feel the pupils of my eyes expanding so fast they hurt.

  “Here,” she says, “in this place, we can touch. Here, we’re the same.” She holds my hand against her face. That contact of warm skin against warm skin is electric, and her beautiful eyes are wide. “But I don’t know for how long. Steve, I can feel the One Tree calling me. I’ve denied it for so long.”

  I pull her to me, hardly hearing her.

  “I—”

  Then we’re kissing. And I’m on fire. There is part of me railing against this madness. We’re in the land of the dead. There is no time for this. But, really, my sense of time is gone. It has been since I drove the knife into that first artery. In a heartbeat such reservations burn away, and all I want is her.

  Lissa pulls at my shirt, and I’m tugging at her blouse, and trying to get my jeans off at the same time.

  I stumble out of them, awkward as all hell, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing does except her. Her skin is soft against my chest. My lips find the hollow of her neck, my arms find an aching rest against her back, and there’s a synergy, a perfect motion between us. I kiss her gently, then slide down, my lips grazing her skin, feeling her shudder through my lips.

  I’m on my knees tugging at her clothes, then burying my face in her, rough and soft and wet. I’m tasting her, devouring her with a hunger that I never knew I had, that I never believed I could deserve.

  “Steven,” she breathes.

  I am so hard. How can I have an erection here? How can I feel this way? The questions fall from me. They have to, because I want this so much.

  I slide up against her. My body feels like it’s fused with hers, that we’ve somehow melded together. I can feel her heart beating beneath her breast. It’s crashing and pounding like mine, and here, in this gateway to the Underworld, it dazes me. Then I remember that we’re not yet one, and then we are. And that should be enough to bring me to orgasm, the long lack of such sensations, the liquid heat of it. But I don’t and I don’t and when we do it’s an epiphany of fire.

  “Oh, my,” she says.

  “Oh, my,” I say right back. My body is sore, but it’s a good sore.

  I kiss her so hard my lips hurt. I run a thumb along her cheek, then hold her head gently, staring into her eyes, trying to peer into the green-gated glory of her soul.

  She smiles at me, and it’s a different sort of smile. Not sardonic in the least. I feel for the first time that I’ve gotten past the armor, that I’m really seeing her.

  Still there’s part of me that’s thinking, Well, only one place to go from here, can’t beat that, and another part is yelling, Shut up, shut up, shut up! and there’s another part that’s just beaming, grinning like crazy. My head’s become an awfully crowded, complicated space.

  Sex with a dead girl. That sets a new low for Pomps. Except we’re both sort of dead now.

  And, here’s the thing: I don’t care.

  I open the door.

  There’s a cold wind blowing, strong and smelling of rain, a memory of the world I had just left. I shiver and pull my duffel coat about me.

  The ritual was a success. We’re somewhere, and I have the means to bring Mr. D to me and, perhaps, find a way to end Morrigan’s Schism. And, hell, I’m in love. Totally in love. I almost spin. Buried in all t
his dreadfulness, I’ve found a perfect moment. I’m happy for the first time in longer than I care to admit.

  I glance around.

  We’re in Death’s neighborhood, but not George Street. We’re in the park in the Underworld equivalent of West End—the tower is behind me. The river’s flowing in front of me, but has a dark luster more like licorice than water. It’s Brisbane but not Brisbane. There are gaps, places where the wind whistles through from… There’s one near the tower, between it and the river, and I peer into its depths. Someone stares up at me and there is a jolt of recognition. I’m looking at my face. It winks at me, and then is gone, and I’m staring into a dark space as deep as the one I fell into to get here. Why the hell am I down there?

  I look up, my eyes taking a while to adjust to the light. Across the river are the Underworld versions of the suburbs of Toowong and Auchenflower. In the living world the Corolla is in Toowong, in Auchen-flower my house is nothing more than a pile of smoldering wood. Traffic is congested along Coronation Drive, and behind it all Mount Coot-tha rises, and it’s there that the dead gather. Here the mountain is topped by a tree, a Moreton Bay fig, that reaches into the sky, its lower branches extending over the inner suburbs, its roots sliding all over the mountain, and descending into the city in great blades of wood.

  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.