I can’t do this.
But I have no choice.
They’ve chosen me. Does it make them brave or cowards? After all, they’re leaving me with one god-awful mess.
I can’t do this alone. But then I realize that I’m not. That I’ve never truly been alone. Lissa, Tim, Alex—they’ve got my back. They’ve never failed me.
Lissa! I need to find Lissa.
Suzanne’s logic seems right on this one. Rillman will hunt her down if he can’t find me, and I doubt Solstice’s protection will be up to the job. But they’re the least of my reasons. I would die for Lissa.
I shift to a point in the center of the city. To the immediate west, the lightning storm is a webbed incandescence. My senses have expanded, but they are still dulled by Rillman’s electrical web. I search her out. There is nothing. She is not in the city. I try her hotel room. It’s empty. No, not quite. I can sense something, a recent death nearby. I shift to the room next door. There’s a body there. A Pomp, one of Suzanne’s. The poor guy’s throat is slashed. This is not good.
I grab my phone. It’s dripping wet, but it seems to be working. A no-signal message flashes at me. Maybe that’s from the dunking. Maybe it’s Rillman’s electrical attack. I shift to Number Four.
Chaos! All the Ankous are here, their heartbeats clamoring. I stand in the middle of them, saturated with river water. I can’t help scowling at them all.
“How many of you knew about this?” I demand. None of them look me in the eye. They’re all frightened.
“Tim?”
He shrugs. “I didn’t know anything. You think I could keep this a secret?”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Not unless you can shift back onto that bridge,” Li An’s Ankou says. I don’t know her name. I’m going to have to learn all their names. No time for that now.
“No, not with the amount of electricity being generated,” I say. “There’s no way.”
“And while we quake, our masters die on that bridge,” she says.
I grimace. “Well, if there’s nothing we can do about Rillman, I need you to return to your offices. Keep everything running. We can’t let the Stirrers take advantage. The Death Moot is a bust, but we have work to do. Your people need you. I need you, all of you, to keep doing what you do best. They’re not dead yet.” Though I can’t help thinking of Kiri, the blade jutting from his chest; the ease with which Rillman took out Travis. “Go! See to your schedules.”
One by one the Ankous leave.
Now it’s just Tim and my staff. They’re all looking at me. “And that goes for you, too. We have souls to pomp. Stirrers to hunt down.”
They scatter quickly to their workstations. I motion to Tim. “Meeting, now.”
“I swear,” Tim says. “I knew nothing about this. Not until they shifted us here, together.”
“That’s OK,” I say. “I’ve got to find Lissa. I can’t feel her, she’s not in the country anymore. Rillman’s likely to go after her.”
“And just how are you going to find her? She’s not a Pomp anymore.”
“I have my means.”
Tim raises his eyebrows. “And I have her email password. It was an accident,” he says quickly. “I didn’t mean to uncover it, but—”
There’s a commotion at the lift. Alex. He’s paler than I’ve ever seen him. Someone tries to stop him but he just pushes past them, and stalks over to us.
“I’ve been trying to call,” Alex says. “But the phones are out, all over the city. Did you have anything to do with that?”
“Rillman,” I say. “He’s killing the RMs, and I’m stuck here. Maybe Solstice—”
“That’s just it. That’s why I’ve been trying to call. There is no Solstice,” Alex says. “There are no Closers. It’s a front. I don’t know how he managed it, who he bribed, but Internal Affairs are raiding his offices now. The staff—half of them are Stirrers. We’re going to need your help, or more people are going to die.”
Lissa! Solstice had people following Lissa! If they’re Stirrers…
Tim’s already running through the office, directing staff to call every Pomp they can. I look at Alex.
“You and Tim are going to have to deal with this. I need to find Lissa, she’s in danger.”
He nods. “We can handle it.”
I shift home and rifle through what is left of Lissa’s things there as I boot up my Notebook. No clues. My phone chirps; a text from Tim: Lissa’s email password.
I get online, open her email and there it is. A ticket booked to Wellington. She has an aunt living on the North Island. Flights to New Zealand are so cheap these days it makes sense she’d visit her. By my laptop is the photo album of Lissa’s. She must have been flicking through it before our fight. There’s an old Polaroid from a Death Moot marked “1974.” Lissa’s parents are pressed into a small group with Suzanne—she’s looking as fresh as ever. I recognize that forced grin.
Lissa’s mom’s face is fixed. She must have known by then. Christ, any business is a small world. I know how I would feel if I thought Lissa was seeing someone behind my back. How did I ever let this happen? I should have been up front about the deal from the beginning.
Then I see Rillman, his tight smile, his arm around Don, Alex’s dad, at the side of the group.
It’s him all right. But that’s not what catches my eye, makes me suck in a sharp breath. There’s a tattoo running down his forearm. A tattoo I’ve seen before.
Smauget. The dragon.
Solstice is Rillman.
Or Rillman became Solstice.
What might Stirrers do on a plane?
I focus my mind on Lissa, reaching out across the distance, reaching out beyond the edge of the shore. And there. I sense her! I’ve never shifted into a moving vehicle before, let alone a plane, but she is my center, my heart. I could shift to her anywhere.
A moment later I am thirty thousand feet in the air, standing next to Lissa.
I exhale, a sigh that really wants to become a scream, but I stop it before that. Shit, how did things get so bad, so quickly? Lissa looks at me and scowls, but that doesn’t disguise how tightly she is holding onto her seat. It seems the plane’s hit some nasty turbulence.
The flight’s crowded. If anyone is surprised by my sudden appearance they don’t show it. I look down the aisle. No one seems to have noticed me, but that may well be because of the bad weather.
The seat next to Lissa is empty, and I drop into it.
“That seat’s taken,” Lissa says. She looks tired, but resolute. There’s maybe one too many Disney pins on her blouse, as though she’s overcompensating.
“We need to talk,” I say.
“I told you not to follow me.” She doesn’t let go of her seat. The seatbelt sign is flashing. She sniffs the air. “I can smell smoke. You’ve been smoking?”
I shake my head. “Of course not. I only smoke when I’m drunk.”
“And when aren’t you drunk these days?”
I brush the insult aside. “There’s something you need to know.”
“You’ve left it a bit late, wouldn’t you say?”
“I don’t think it’s ever too late for us. I have to believe that.” I lower my voice to a whisper. “It’s Solstice. He’s Rillman.”
“What?”
“I don’t have time to explain, but he’s got two guys tailing you. Don’t ask me how I know. I think they’re Stirrers.”
Lissa’s face hardens. “The prick!” Then her eyes narrow. “You got him to tail me. You’re the reason they’re here in the first place.”
“Look, no matter how much it might look like that, he wants you dead. He knows I’m hopeless without you.” I don’t mention Suzanne’s guard or the fact that he’s dead.
Lissa doesn’t look too satisfied with the answer I’ve given her, but she’s already thinking the problem through. “Right. If they’re Stirrers you’re going to need a Pomp by your side.”
“You’d do that?”
“Bloody hell, de Selby, I love you.”
Yeah, she does. No matter how things turn out, no matter how stupid I’ve been, she loves me!
“Then you have to know I would never cheat on you. That I couldn’t.”
“But why did you lie to me?”
“Because you were so against the whole idea of Suzanne’s offer. Lissa, I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“How about a little trust?” she says.
“Exactly!”
And now we’re glaring at each other again.
“This isn’t over,” Lissa sighs. “Just do what you have to do.”
She reaches up and touches my lips with her fingers. There’s serious voltage in that gesture, more electricity than anything Rillman generated on the bridge. It silences me and, oddly enough, focuses me on the job at hand.
I hold her head and transfer my power into her: feel that familiar link. It’s such an intense intimacy. For a moment, we are closer than ever. Bound in each other. Feeling what the other is feeling. It’s like gazing in a mirror with another’s eyes. The familiar becomes unfamiliar. Our eyes widen. Our breaths quicken. What wounds me most of all is the hurt I sense within her. This is my fault. I caused this pain, and anger.
I shudder with the strength of it, and then my fingers drop from her brow. Lissa is a Pomp again. She blinks at me, and I catch myself blinking, too.
“I should never have hurt you,” I whisper.
“Steven, this is about us. Not just you. We got into this quickly; it was always going to be difficult. I—I’m not used to long-term relationships. I thought it would be easy, and—but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Trust me next time. Trust me to be strong enough, because I am.”
Yeah, she’s stronger than me.
“And what about you? Why don’t you trust me to do the right thing? I made a mistake, but I would never cheat on you. I’m not your father, and—”
The plane shudders. The storm outside is building. We have to find those Stirrers.
I look around. There’s no one I’d consider suspicious. Then I glance at the front of the plane. The toilet light is on, and it’s flickering, flaring from dim to bright. And always just before the lightning bursts outside.
“In there,” I say, slipping Lissa my knife once I’ve surreptitiously slit my own palm.
I walk down the aisle to the toilet door. One of the attendants shuffles toward me, gripping the seats tightly, but my glare is enough to stop them.
At the front of the plane I can hear the pilots’ muted talk in the cabin. They don’t sound too happy. Having a Stirrer so close wouldn’t be helping either. Reflex times would be slowing. Everybody on the plane including the pilots probably has a headache. Not good when you’re trying to fly through a storm. And looking through the nearest window I can tell this is a whopper.
I knock on the toilet door, and the moment I touch it, I recognize the presence of the Stirrer. Right then. I lean back, put my shoulders against the door behind me, and kick as hard as I can.
The door crumples. The Stirrer’s sitting on the toilet lid. Its eyes widen, almost comically so.
“You.”
“Yeah, me.”
Someone crashes down the aisle toward me. Another Stirrer. I turn my head in time to see Lissa leap out of her chair and stall it. And then my Stirrer is swinging a fist at my skull. I duck back, and it grabs me by the lapels and swings its head against mine.
Hey, that’s my move.
I almost drop to the floor with the force of it. I slam my bloody palm in its face and it staggers back, its eyes flickering. Outside, lightning crashes and crackles. The plane swings violently to the left, a drunken sort of lurch.
I slap my palm against its face again, and this time it collapses on the floor. Then both souls lance rough-edged and furious through me. I drop to my knees as shocked attendants rush in my direction.
I look over at Lissa, and she’s OK.
Then it hits me, a psychic fist clenched around my heart. Hard nails of pain rip through my flesh. It’s another fragment of the Hungry Death. I’m floored by it. My back bends, my limbs stiffen. It lasts only a moment, then I can move again.
I get to my feet; giddy with power.
I push the attendants out of the way, which is easy. They scramble toward their seats. The seatbelt lights are still flashing and there’s a rough noise coming from one of the engines. The plane drops, people scream. All the lights above Lissa’s head go off, then flare back on in a way that no lights should.
I realize I shouldn’t be here. How could I have been so stupid? I’m barely containing all this death pouring into me. My flesh creaks, my eyes feel like they might burst with the strain of this. Another fragment. I grit my teeth and stagger down the aisle. I can taste blood. It’s filling my lungs, lubricating or facilitating the arrival of the Hungry Death.
Maybe that will be the last one. Maybe Rillman has been stopped. I think of the battle raging on the bridge, all those RMs dying, cramming me with this manic, lustful energy.
I try and shift. I can’t. It’s like the Sea of Hell again. Something is holding me to this place—or someone.
“You need to be in your seat.” A flight attendant, perhaps a little braver than the rest, is at my side. Every passenger on the plane is staring at me. A couple of the bigger ones are considering doing something. What? What could they do against me?
I swear that, for a moment, the attendant recognizes me on some deeper level: what it is that I am. Or maybe she just sees a crazy person. She nods her head, swallows a deep breath. “OK, sir.”
She scrambles away, moving like a crab; I’ve never seen a flight attendant so spooked before. Someone else is already asking for assistance. I can tell she really wants to go to her own seat, that she’s as scared as the others, but it doesn’t stop her. She helps them with their seatbelt.
A dreadful hush descends upon the plane. HD is rapturous, positively bloody gleeful. I push it down.
I’m back with Lissa; stepping over the Stirrer corpse. “I have to get out of here,” I say.
“What’s wrong?”
“Rillman. He’s killing RMs. I’m absorbing more of the Hungry Death. I could destroy this plane.”
“Shift then. The Stirrers are dealt with,” Lissa says.
“I’m trying.” I close my eyes, concentrate. It’s no good.
Another wave of the Hungry Death strikes me. The lights around me explode. The plane can’t handle what’s going to happen. HD swells. I try to shift again. Still nothing. I look around wildly for an exit hatch.
There, not too far away. I take a step toward it.
Lightning strikes the plane, a dozen incendiary bursts. And some of them are coming from me. Outside, the storm is raging, with a darkness deeper than anything the Stirrers are capable of. The plane judders, swings, drops. I slam into the ceiling. The attendant has hit her head. Blood flows. A trolley hurtles past me, crashes into the attendant. Her death pulses through my flesh. People scream. HD howls out its pleasure.
I try to shift again. Still no good. I’m fixed here by the transformation occurring within me, the new and horrible thing I’m becoming.
Lissa looks at me. She has her seatbelt on tight.
Shift, damn it! Shift! They’re all going to die if I don’t. But I can’t. It wants them to die.
And all I have is the thin fabric of you, the Hungry Death whispers with more force than I’ve ever experienced. I can pull myself through that whenever I want to. And I will. You were one of thirteen warriors, but twelve have deserted you.
Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.
The plane jolts like a creature kicked and whipped and gripped by a deathly god. The sky is a dark fist around it. Fuck. Oh fuck. This is all my stupid fault.
There’s a moment of calm. And my phone chirps. I look at the LCD: the schedule. Oh, no. Two hundred names. Lissa’s is at the top.
It’s too late.
“Steven—” Lissa’s hand folds over
mine.
The plane bucks, up and down, faster than I can adjust to. I feel the plane flash in and out of this world and Hell. My presence is causing this. The transition alone is killing some people. I’m weightless, then heavy. I smack my head against the nearest headrest. Lissa’s hand slips from mine.
Time runs down here, bleeds away. Death is coming. I’m coming. This is all my fault. The air stinks of blood and piss and smoke.
“Hold my hand,” I say to Lissa, snatching it anyway, just as the plane starts to tumble. There’s a noise like the grinding of giant teeth, a dreadful rending. The plane is lit with a blue light. The pre-death light. Lissa’s as bright with it as the others. I have seen her that way before, and I will not see it again.
The last fragment of the Hungry Death enters me. I feel it pushing against my flesh. The Orcus are dead, all but me. I am the last. And it terrifies me. HD loves it.
Lissa’s not looking at me: her eyes are wide. The noise must be terrible but I can barely hear it. I snap my head around in time to see the back end of the plane split from the front, as though something has torn it off.
This plane falls tonight. Two hundred shattered lives. And it’s but the beginning. All that ending ahead, and me/we at the fore.
I wish HD would shut the fuck up.
There are screams, guttural, terrified. Someone laughs. It’s a peculiar sound; it cuts through me. And HD is joining in.
“I picked the wrong bloody flight, didn’t I?” Lissa says.
“Jesus,” I breathe. Every time I blink I can see the One Tree. I can hear it creaking. I force my eyes open. “Oh, Jesus.”
Lissa holds my gaze. “Don’t be scared,” she says, above all that noise.
Mr. D’s words come to me: Sometimes terror is the only response. I’m not scared. I’m terrified.
She touches my face. “It’s OK, Steven.” Her hands do not shake, there is more strength in that touch than in all of me. We have been here before. I just never expected to be here again so soon.
“I love you,” I say.
I grab Lissa’s hand and try and shift. It hurts. HD pushes against me. It’s hard and toothed. The meat of me is screaming with it. I haven’t felt this human since … since Morrigan cut me with the stony blade. The universe pushes. But I push back. I push back hard and it shrinks away. And this time I shift.
The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy Page 50