“Are you threatening us?” Ari says, and she looks rather like she hopes I am.
“Threatening doesn’t even begin to describe what I am doing.”
I lean forward in my chair. HD pulls the broadest, scariest smile across my face.
Tim raises his hand. “What Steve is trying to say is—”
“What I’m trying to say is quite simple. The fight begins and ends here. For whatever reason, the End of Days is going to be decided in Brisbane. And this is where we will fight it. And I need your help, but if you aren’t willing to help me…I’m sure your subordinates are.”
Ari actually smiles at me genuinely. At last, something they understand.
Good lord, I’d been going about it all the wrong way. My visits, my polite requests. All I’d done was confuse them. They’d just expected me to come out and tell them what to do!
“We fight, and we fight until we win. And we do it the old-fashioned way, with knives and blood.”
I stand up and call the Knives of Negotiation from their dark sheaths. In a moment they have become the scythe. The Ankous cringe, but there’s a touch of supplication there. They may not respect me all that much, but they’re a fan of what the Death of the Water called the accoutrement. “Don’t forget we have this weapon at our disposal. Don’t forget what I contain within me.” Madness. Death. Destruction. “We are not powerless, and we will not lose. Comet or no comet.”
The scythe becomes the knives once more, hidden within my jacket. My eyes catch Lissa’s. Her lips curve a little smilewise, and I know I’ve won my audience. They may not realize, but she’s the one who really counts. Endlessly skeptical. Endlessly forgiving. I only hope I am as good. We’re saint and sinner bound up in each other, not sure when we’re which.
We’d sacrifice everything for the other. That has to count for something.
“Go home,” I say. “Put your house in order. Hold your loved ones, though you will not be able to for long. Soon we are going to fight. And some of us will fall. But we will win, because we have to. Because it isn’t our time to lose.”
“That went well, I think,” I say once they’ve all gone.
“Really,” Tim leans against the door to my office. “What about the speech I gave you?”
Oh, I’d forgotten about Tim’s speech. “Sorry, mate. Just the adrenaline. Public speaking, you know how it is. They reckon more people dread public speaking than death. Well, with me, it’s certainly true.”
“Yeah, you did OK,” Tim concedes. “They seemed to respond well. But did you have to pull out the damn scythe?”
Lissa snorts. “It’s a bad habit he has.”
“Shock,” says Cerbo. “They were in shock. I know I am.”
What? You were the one who wanted to sacrifice them all! “Why?” I demand.
“Because for the first time you sound like Suzanne. You sound like a leader.”
I feel my face burn. I don’t know if I’m pleased or insulted.
“I suppose I better put my house in order, too,” Cerbo says and with a nod he shifts back to the States.
I send Tim off to be with his family. A new shift of Pomps come on, they’re rowdy for ten minutes or so then quiet as they settle into work, and it’s Lissa and me, alone in my office.
“So,” I say. “What are we going to do with ourselves?”
“Let’s go home, make some dinner. See what happens.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” I say. The day has been crazy hectic, but tonight doesn’t have to be.
I pull her to me to shift us to our unit but Lissa shakes her head. “No, let’s just walk. OK?”
And we do.
17
Lissa and I leave Number Four by the front door, hand in hand. Today may have been the busiest day of my life, but tomorrow could be the last. We stroll down George Street and into Alice Street, the Botanical Gardens to our right. The moon’s yet to rise. Our shadows join, then part, join, then part, as we pass beneath the street lights. Even this late, a steady flow of traffic rumbles by heading towards the Expressway’s on-ramp and the Captain Cook Bridge. A couple of drunks are doing something loud and stupid in the gardens and not seeing the cop walking toward them from the road. Ah, now that brings back memories.
You could almost believe that nothing has changed and that the end of the world isn’t nigh.
Almost.
I stop at the doors to our building and take a deep breath.
“Isn’t it something,” I say, “coming home together.”
Lissa slides her arm around my waist and squeezes. “Yeah, it is.”
A car honks its horn at us or the drunks in the gardens, I don’t know which, but the moment is broken. And I catch a glimpse of the comet and can’t pretend the world isn’t slouching towards something dark and deadly.
We go inside and take the lift up to our floor.
Dinner is simple, bread and cheese. Lissa drinks a couple of glasses of wine, I stick to the water. It’s at once harder and easier than I had thought it would be. Is this the start of something new? I can’t say, there’s a bottle of rum under the bed in the spare room. There are another two in the kitchen. I could…but I don’t.
I can’t remember when we last just chatted like this. Maybe it was on the road heading up north through Central Queensland, she a dead girl, bound to me by an embarrassing ceremony involving masturbation and magic, and me fleeing for my life. How can we talk so easily when the end of the world is glowing in the sky? Maybe because it’s a relief.
For the first time since I saw Lissa in the Wintergarden those many months ago, and Jim McKean’s Stirrer-inhabited body started shooting at me, I don’t feel afraid. I don’t need to drink.
For a moment I think of the gift that the Death of the Water gave me—even if it’s come at a cost.
Lissa kisses me. “I like you much better when you’re sober.”
What? Do my lips move when I’m thinking? “When am I not sober?”
Lissa laughs. “The question is, when have you been sober?”
“I resent the implication.”
“I’m not implying anything, Steven. You’ve been drinking like there’s no tomorrow for nearly five months.”
“Maybe there isn’t any tomorrow.”
“I know that you don’t really believe that.”
I sit up. “You’re right, I don’t. There’s going to be a tomorrow, and a tomorrow after that.” I look out at the comet. “Even with that thing in the sky, I’m certain of the tomorrows.”
“That’s my boy,” Lissa says.
Problem is, I’m not certain of our tomorrows being together.
“Maybe that’s why the Death of the Water held me so long. He was letting me dry out. I’m the Orcus, nothing can really harm me, but all that drinking was starting to screw with my head.”
“What, the Death of the Water as rehab? I prefer to think of it as a malicious sociopath.”
“How did you put up with me?”
Lissa kisses me again, softly on the forehead. “Steve, I lost my parents two years ago. What followed after…I did some crazy things, self-destructive things. I dated Eric Tremaine for one.”
“That explains it. I always wondered how you ended up with that jerk.”
“Eric was a charming jerk, and older than me, but I knew he was trouble. I just wanted to hurt myself. I couldn’t…I couldn’t understand why I was alive and my parents weren’t. I didn’t believe I deserved it.”
“What? Deserved all that pain, all that loss?”
“But I was still breathing, and they weren’t. We see death every day, but we never really deal with it. You’ve been through so many changes, was it any wonder that you would have some teething problems?” Lissa says.
Teething problems is putting it mildly, and we both know it. Nearly destroying our relationship. Putting everyone in the business offside. Hardly teething, more like desperate failure. But here I was, still moving.
“They would have been much worse w
ithout you,” she says. “And it’s not just the loss you’ve experienced and the awful things you’ve gained. I know what you do every night. I know how you go out and hunt them, they’re cunning and cruel the ones that you chase. Is it any wonder that you drink?”
“Why do you stay with me?”
“Because for all that, you’re pretty fabulous, Mr. de Selby. I’m proud of you. You’ve done well, you’ve done better than well.”
“We all have.”
I open the balcony door. “You know, I always wanted to see a decent comet. When I was kid…do you remember Halley’s Comet?”
“Yeah,” Lissa says. “Totally disappointing. Nothing like this.”
“See? There’s an upside to everything.” I put my hands on the balcony rail. Something catches my eye, down on the ground. It’s a fraction of a glimpse, but I have a crow that gives me more.
A white figure below, wearing a bright orange wig, stumbles clumsily from the footpath into the building.
“A Stirrer’s walked through the front,” I say.
Lissa leans over the balcony, but it’s too late to catch sight of it. “Really?” She sighs, crinkles her face with concentration. “Yeah, I can feel it.”
The sensation is at once familiar and shocking, because we haven’t felt it in a while. “It’s unmasked,” I say.
“Why would it be unmasked?”
“Maybe it wants us to know it’s here.” And we certainly do. Its presence builds. A sick bitterness in my throat. A dark anticipation that lifts the hairs on the back of my neck.
There’s a knock on the door. Nothing ominous. Nothing threatening or sly. Just a quick rap of knuckles against enchanted wood.
I walk towards the door, but Lissa pushes past me.
“Before you open that there’s something you need to know,” I say.
“What?” Lissa demands. “It’s a Stirrer, there’s nothing I need to know.”
“OK then.”
Lissa flings back the door. “It’s a clown! It’s a fucking clown.”
“Yeah, a clown.”
“I hate clowns.”
“I know.” And she does. Lissa may be able to fight Stirrers without blinking, she’s faced off some pretty terrifying shit, but give her a clown and she falls apart. It’s what happens when you read Stephen King’s It as a child. She’s not all that fond of Tim Curry either.
“You prick!”
The Stirrer takes a step forward, hands stretched out before it, and winces as the collective power of all the brace symbols in the unit strikes it.
I’ve got to say, I’m impressed. Lissa, well, she’s less so.
“I’m unarmed,” the Stirrer says softly.
“You don’t need to be,” Lissa snaps. A Stirrer’s presence is deadly enough. “Get the fuck out of here, before you kill my goldfish.”
“I only want to talk.” The Stirrer raises its hands.
“You trying to make my skin crawl?”
The Stirrer looks down at its painted palms. “I was trying not to draw attention to myself.”
“Really,” Lissa says. “When does dressing up as a clown not draw attention?”
“This body is quite…old. The paint, it hides the decay.”
“Can you juggle?” I say.
The Stirrer frowns. “He could. He could juggle before he died. He lived alone. He died alone, no one found the body.”
“You’re telling me his soul’s still out there?” I ask.
“No. No, I let it pass through me. A fair exchange. But such a sad death.”
“A death which you are mocking dressed like a clown,” Lissa says.
“No, he was good clown.”
“There’s no such thing as a good clown!” Lissa leans against the door, her knife out, pointed at its face.
“Please, before you try that,” the Stirrer says, glancing at Lissa’s dagger. “I want you to listen.”
“What, another threat? Another ominous pronouncement? I’m tired of all that. I know what’s coming,” I say.
The Stirrer shakes its head vigorously. “I promise you that you won’t get any of that from me.”
“You’ve twenty seconds, and come inside,” I say, ignoring Lissa’s black stare. I chuck it a pen. The clown quickly draws the mask, and comes inside. “Twenty seconds,” I say, looking at my watch.
The Stirrer takes a deep breath or the imitation of one. “I understand why you wouldn’t trust us, Mr. de Selby. We’ve had our… problems. But I really would prefer it if you don’t stall me immediately.”
“Its words are poison,” Lissa spits.
The Stirrer has gone to a considerable amount of trouble to prevent being stalled. The body it inhabits may have dressed as a clown, but it’s also an excellent defense against stalling: the gloves, the layers of clothes, and the greasepaint itself.
“My name is Lon, and like some of my kind I have grown weary of this war. You would not believe how infrequently someone with my beliefs achieves a stir. The process is rigorously controlled. The last time you stalled one of my compatriots who tried talking to you we were extremely disheartened.”
I can imagine that to be true. A Stirrer had waited for us in my parents’ kitchen—not too wise a choice since Stirrers had killed my parents there. Not only that, but it had been the same Stirrer that had once inhabited Lissa’s body while she was dead. Maybe we should have given it time to talk. But the wounds were too fresh, and we’d been distracted by Rillman’s attempts on my life.
Lissa seems pleased at the Stirrer’s words—the wounds may still be too fresh for this conversation to occur. She looks about ready to slide the knife down her palm. I’m signaling at her to stop, and it’s hard for me to muster the will to do that. This hatred and mistrust is so ingrained.
HD flares up inside me, and I’m almost dragging a stony knife down my own palm.
Lon takes a step back, pulling its arms in closer to its stomach. “Yes, there is enmity between our races. But there need not be.”
“Enmity,” Lissa growls. “I’ll give him bloody enmity.”
“We are enemies as ancient as life itself,” the Stirrer says hurriedly. “But even we, my people, my clan, if you will, think this is taking it too far. We have our city, and our excursions into your world. Is there any need for more? I am not here to threaten or to harm.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Once you would have had human spies in our city, but the last of those was caught and killed months ago.”
I nod my head.
“You have no one to tell you that our god can be defeated, but the window is a narrow one.”
“How narrow?”
“It has marked the sky with its coming. And soon, it will also walk the earth and the Underworld as one of you to prepare the way. It is at that time that it will be weak, and can be stopped.”
“And how do I stop it?”
Its gaze drops to the blades at my belt. “With the scythe.”
“Where will this person appear? When?”
The Stirrer shakes its head. “I don’t know that. Only that it will be in a place familiar to you. And that it is soon. You must be ready to strike, and strike hard, or the days of your world are at an end.”
The Stirrer looks at Lissa. “You have my word that I did not kill this body. A blockage in his heart took him. Nothing more. I can do no more good in this world, send me home.”
“Why are you doing this?” Lissa demands. “Really.”
“To some of us our home is beautiful, and our home.” Lon sounds almost snarky. “This desire to regain what was lost so long ago—it is an empty thing.” The Stirrer stares at me. “You have seen our city, and our lands.”
I think of the cold and the dark. The soft sounds of the roots of the One Tree, and the sky luminous and shifting. The way dust will dance if you know how to guide it, and the things that it shapes, the color that it reveals. “Yes there is beauty there.”
“Christ,” Lissa says. “We’ve go
t ourselves a Stirrer equivalent of an atheist.”
Lon shakes its head. “No, our god is undeniably extant. The truth is I don’t like being told what to do. This has nothing to do with belief. I believe that the start of days is upon us, but I would rather they were stalled.” It shudders. Its red clown-lips flap. “Now, let me go home,” it manages a truly horrible grin, “before I kill your goldfish.”
Lissa cuts her hand, touches the Stirrer’s face, and when he is gone she frowns.
“That’s the first time that’s ever happened.”
“A Stirrer wanting to go home?”
“Yes, but no, not that exactly. It’s the first time it hasn’t hurt to send one there.”
She shivers, and I pull her to me.
“Fucking clowns,” she says.
I’ve my crows hunting Stirrers throughout the city, seeking out nests. They darken the sky with their scrutiny, streaking from the edges of the Sunshine Coast to the Gold Coast, the great suburban swathes that make up not only Brisbane but the whole of South East Queensland.
People love it here. They come in their thousands, two thousand every week. The population is swelling, and not just the human population, but those things that use the dead as hosts. I’ve hunted in the darkest alleyways of the Valley, and in the sprawling houses of Hamilton. They’re everywhere. And without my ability to shift, and my eyes in the sky, I wouldn’t be able to cope with the increase.
Imagine a net, dark and spreading across a city. Every strand is an eye carried on wings that beat and snatch against the air. Brisbane is a big city, broad, not the most populous in Australia, by any means, that title belongs to Sydney, but it is spread out, rolling up and down the hilly plains—the Mcmansions in the outer suburbs, the units closer in, a few pockets of older places hanging on grimly. And my net covers it all.
When Lissa sleeps, I go out and I stall what I can. There’s not an evening when I’m not busy, scarcely an hour passes where a Stirrer isn’t found and I’m forced to drop everything and drive it back to the Deepest Dark and the city of Devour.
And I’ve learnt to savor the job.
The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy Page 65