The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy

by Trent Jamieson

  They’re waiting for something. We all are.

  Cerbo isn’t too far from the wall. Ari stands with him, both are as bloody as me, I shift to them. Cerbo looks up at me, and smiles grimly.

  “Well, Mr. de Selby, we did our best.”

  “It’s not over yet,” I tell him.

  “Not until our hearts stop beating, eh? Not until the comet falls from the sky?” He looks at his bloody hands. “What in blazes are they waiting for?”

  “Not a what but a who!” Wal says, landing in our midst. He nods at Cerbo’s inkling. “Hello, Stuart,” he says. The cobra dips its head. Wal flies to my side, drops on my shoulder again.

  “He’s almost at the front.”

  The Stirrers part and Morrigan stands there, cocky as all hell, even without the scythe. He’s holding what looks like a bloody big broadsword. I want to tell my Pomps nearest to pull back, but there is no room: nowhere to go. We’re hemmed in.

  “Let the harvest begin,” he roars, “let death in all its glory reign.”

  “Pompous prick,” Ari moans from behind me. “I never could stand him.”

  Morrigan swings the sword before him with all the strength of a god, heads and limbs fly.

  “That wasn’t meant to happen,” Wal says, his face aghast. He beats his wings frantically, gets some elevation, before dropping back down beside my face. “We’re kind of surrounded, kiddo.”

  We’re in trouble, serious trouble. I shift back to Lissa and Tim. Wal follows.

  “Good enough day to die as any,” I say, and it is.

  Lissa kisses me. “Always a good day to die with you,” she says, then grimaces. “Christ, how emo was that?”

  “I knew an emo once,” Wal says. “It didn’t end well. It never does.”

  We slide our knives across our palms, and prepare to fight.

  There’s a sound like a great wind or a rising conflagration. I turn towards its source. Behind us the root-tips of the One Tree sway. A bluish light burns hotter for a few moments. The air rings. And hands claw their way through the dirt. What new thing is this?

  Mr. D on his bicycle shoots around the front towards me. “Sorry I took so long. Charon sends his regards and these souls from the Ark.”

  Finally the dead have risen, Mr. D at their fore, and they’re not as I know them. Instead of dull and uncaring, or maybe a little scared, the dead have risen and they look pissed off. But it isn’t the only change, guided by a signal I neither hear nor feel, a thousand or so Stirrers from Morrigan’s own ranks turn on their own kind.

  The Stirrer rebellion has begun.

  And as one we rush into that darkness, me at the front. All of my Pomps behind me. Here we are fighting not for a cause, not for a country, but for life and death itself.

  Here is the triumph of Death. Here is Breughel’s painting: a last-ditch battle of the dead.

  Lissa stands to my left. Tim to my right. Their hands are bloody as they grapple with the Stirrers. People scream, howl, yell. Stirrers roar, but they do not stop.

  And there is death. Everywhere there is death.

  Morrigan strides towards us, ignoring the fight, and I know that he’s coming for me.

  “We can’t win here,” Cerbo yells at me. “You need to draw him out.”

  “I know,” I shout back. “He has to go through that portal. Out there, out in the real world we have a chance at stopping him. Here we can’t. The rules are different here. We’re lacking one thing.”

  “What?”

  “Trust me.”

  Morrigan, holding the great sword casually in one hand, steps neatly over the corpse of a Pomp. He has a bag around his waist, and seeing me now he reaches into it, and yanks out Alex’s head.

  I’d kill him now if I could. I’d rip the heart right out of him.

  “Alas, poor Alex. I knew his father well, the drunken fool,” Morrigan says. “Any other friends you would like me to kill? Where’s that bitch girlfriend of yours?”

  I’m trying to speak. I can’t. HD pushes at me. “Oh, it looks like you’re in shock,” Morrigan says. “Look at that!” he chuckles. “I’ve shocked the Orcus. I don’t know whether or not to be honored or horrified. It’s going to be all right, Steven. You have to believe me. I’m just here to make your job easier, get rid of those you love sooner, cut out as much of the dread as I—”

  Lissa hits him in the back of the head with an impressive bone-crunching sort of whack. He jerks forward and I swing Mog at his throat.

  Morrigan’s hands fly out, and he grips the snath of the scythe as though it had never left his hands. There’s a gravity to those palms that I can’t even hope to match.

  Lissa punches away, as I yank at the scythe. But it’s no good, we’ve been here before. I can’t pull it from his grip. Morrigan’s lips curl into the darkest, most dreadful rictus.

  “Shall I kill Ms. Jones now?” The voice is barely a whisper, an intimate breath in my ear, but not lacking in threat. I get the feeling that if he could, he’d bite the side of my face and spit the bloody mess back at me.

  He wrenches Mog out of my hands and swings neatly around in a circle, dancing backwards as he does: the scythe high and whistling towards Lissa’s head.

  I shift.

  The snath of the scythe strikes my back. Nearly snaps me in two, ribs creak, maybe break. I can’t tell. But I clap my arm over the snath: draw the shaft tight and close to my body, the blade curled towards me. It’s a clumsy move, but effective. I stand there, panting, looking at Lissa: her hands bloody, dust streaking her face.

  Her chest heaves. I can feel her hurt. Still, she’s all but ready to start swinging again. I shake my head.

  “Run,” I say, nodding towards the portal.

  Her jaw is set. Her eyes burn stubbornly, no mockery there now, just rage.

  “Run, if you love me. Run.”

  And she does, just as Morrigan drives a boot into my lower back, cracking something. A howl escapes my lips and he cuts down with the scythe. I shift, moments before it strikes my flesh. Only a few meters away, but it’s enough. I get unsteadily to my feet, standing between Morrigan and Lissa, waiting to repeat it over again.

  “Things aren’t going as you hoped are they?” Morrigan says. “I feel for you. It’s terrible when plans go awry, when the reins start slipping no matter how tight a hold you have. It burns the fingers, stings the soul.”

  My chest and back are sticky and bruised. They’re healing quickly but the hurt is deep enough that I can’t speak. I try for a snarl instead. Not a good idea, it only comes out as a wheeze.

  “There’s only so many times you can get between her and the inevitable,” Morrigan says, leaping towards me and flipping the bottom of the scythe at my head. I fling up my hands. Too late, it connects. Hard. Teeth loosen in my mouth, my ears ring. I almost drop to my knees. “Perhaps we should just get it over with, eh?”

  At least I am still between him and Lissa.

  He gets a good grip on the shaft, takes a swift backswing and there’s a peculiar thunder like someone’s slamming two bags of machine parts together.

  Morrigan lowers the scythe, looks up, and catches a bicycle in the face. He hits the ground hard in a cloud of dust.

  “I told you I still had a few tricks up my sleeve,” Mr. D says from behind me. How long has he been standing there? He grabs my arm and starts dragging me away from Morrigan.

  Morrigan rises to one knee, dark blood streams from his face. He looks to Mr. D. “This all you got?” he demands, Mog arcing above his head. It catches another bicycle, an old Malvern Star like the one I used to ride as a kid, and sends it hurtling into the ground.

  “I thought it was pretty good, actually,” Mr. D says, dragging me faster. “Bikes, I’ve always had an affinity for them. And I’ve been here long enough to know how to fiddle around with reality a little.”

  I know this. Here at last is my dream. I can’t help but smile.

  And the bikes plummet, a downpour of bicycles. A penny-farthing takes
out a Stirrer nearby with an explosion of gears and wheels. A Stirrer tumbles. Blood flows. But the Stirrers aren’t the only casualties.

  “No!” Mr. D pales. “No, that wasn’t—”

  But it is.

  The bicycles fall, and they strike Stirrers and Pomps indiscriminately where the fighting is thickest. We don’t miss out though. A ten-speed racer crashes down between us. Knocking a chunk out of my arm, and driving Mr. D to the ground. Dust is thrown up into the air with each fall, so that I can’t see more than a few meters in front of me.

  “Pull back,” I yell. Not that it’s really necessary, everybody’s already getting out of the way, until there’s only Morrigan standing in the middle of the downpour, laughing and cutting bicycles from the air.

  “Really. That wasn’t meant to happen,” Mr. D moans. There’s a bloody gash along one of his cheeks. I can see bone beneath.

  We’ve managed to escape the main fall. Lissa and Tim aren’t that far away, their heartbeats loud in my head. I want to be with them. I don’t want to be here consoling this buffoon. Even if he did just save my life.

  “When will they stop falling?”

  Mr. D looks at his watch. “A few minutes—no more. I’m so sorry.”

  “You do realize that we’re winning don’t you?”

  Mr. D is silent.

  And we are. We’re winning here. I can see that. The bicycles, the dead army and the betrayal of the Stirrer rebels have shifted our fortunes, but this, all of this is meaningless unless I defeat Morrigan himself.

  Just once I’d like to do something that doesn’t come to a battle to the death. That people hunger for this role: it strikes me as crazy.

  “Why are you smiling?” Wal asks me.

  “Things are working out.”

  “It’s not that sort of smile.” But yes it is.

  The wind has changed in the world beyond, it’s no longer the metallic rot of the city. This is all brine, all cold ocean winds with a hint of traffic fumes.

  The sea is life, and here is life knocking on Hell’s door. I’m not surprised when half a dozen seagulls break the surface of the portal, calling mournfully as they do. I’ve no doubt they’ll make a living on the scraps of the Underworld, they’ll mark the sky above the sea of Hell.

  Yet I can’t help feeling sorry for them.

  They’re quickly gone into the Deepest Dark, but the battle remains. And the wind lifts more dust into the air. Choking clouds of it, disadvantageous to both sides. My eyes sting, my lungs burn. I try to hurl it all away, but the dust has grown fickle, the world beyond has enchanted it—or I’ve just lost my knack.

  Morrigan gazes curiously toward the light, anything I suppose must be more attractive than here. I can see that he is weighing up his options, making a decision.

  Then he acts.

  He strides toward the portal, his Stirrers providing cover. There are fewer and fewer of them now, maybe thirty, perhaps forty at most. But they are fighting furiously, fanning out around Morrigan. Not that it matters: Morrigan has the scythe. No one can stop him with that weapon in his hands, not even me. The Pomps move out of his way.

  And it’s then that I realize who stands between him and the gateway.

  Lissa.

  Stirrers hem her in. There’s nowhere for her to go.

  Mr. D pats my back. “Get her. End this. Do what needs to be done.”

  I try and shift. Nothing. Morrigan waggles a finger in my direction, his face a picture of pure delight.

  So, instead, I run.

  Morrigan clears a path through my Pomps. He heads straight toward Lissa. My people are being killed trying to protect her. And she’s pushing past them, calling them back. Lissa refuses to let people put themselves in front of her. She’s swearing, snarling, and I’ve never seen her so mad. I’m crashing through Stirrers, trying to get to her.

  My blood boils from my fingers. Stirrer after Stirrer I hurl back with my touch. My body shudders with the effort, after all this running, all this fighting. And I’m moving fast, but not fast enough. A Stirrer takes me around the legs and I’m on my belly, winded. I lash out a hand, and the Stirrer screams. I get to my feet. Unsteady, but I have to reach Lissa.

  And I make it.

  I stand in front of him.

  “Just you and me, prick.”

  Morrigan grabs me with a free hand, and throws me away easily. I land on my face, twenty, thirty meters away. I get shakily to my feet, helped by a Pomp I don’t recognize. No time for thank yous, I turn back towards Lissa.

  The space between her and Morrigan opens. Morrigan says something. Lissa pulls a knife from her boot and growls at him. Her throw is accurate, takes him in the throat.

  Morrigan stands there a moment, knife lodged just under his Adam’s Apple. He tugs it free, and smiles.

  I try and shift. Morrigan grins at me, shakes his head. Wal shoots from my side straight at Morrigan who, without even looking, knocks him out of the air with the end of the scythe.

  Almost casually, Morrigan hurls the knife back at Lissa. As though it’s the easiest thing in the world.

  I’m sprinting, crashing past Stirrers, leaping over the bodies of my comrades desperate to get between her and that blade. I’m not fast enough. The knife juts from her belly.

  Lissa shivers, her mouth works at words I cannot hear. She presses a hand around the wound, takes a step forward, and throws her other blade. This one Morrigan snatches out of the air, and flicks back, lightning fast. It strikes her a few inches from the other knife, hilt buried deep.

  Blood’s already seeping from the wounds. She drops onto her backside as though someone’s just pulled the legs out from under her.

  I reach her a moment later.

  Morrigan is already turning away, walking towards the light.

  It’s working. It’s working too well. “Not so bad,” Lissa says softly, her hands are sticky with blood. I can smell the death on her. She shakes. Her whole body shakes, and there’s nothing I can do to still it. “Look, the prick’s doing what you wanted him to do. Follow him, take me with you. Get me to the sun, if I’m going to die. Let me die with the sun on my face.”

  “You can have the sun,” I tell her, “but you are not going to die. I won’t let you. And I have some say in the matter.”

  I lift her gently, and walk with her from Hell to earth. But I am not bringing her home to die.

  All around me the Stirrers run toward the portal, Mr. D’s dead soldiers are gone, pushed back by this light, this living world in which they can no longer have any part. Tim runs toward me. Dr. Brooker by his side.

  We walk out into the sun.

  Waves thunder. The light is briefly blinding. The smell of life so strong that I almost choke on it.

  Wal pulls the hair from Lissa face, letting the light shine onto her cheeks. And for a moment there’s color there, beneath the dust and blood, enough that I could almost convince myself that she’s all right. But she’s not.

  “Put her down,” Dr. Brooker says, he rests a hand gently on my shoulder. “I’m begging you, Steven. Put her down. You’re killing her.”

  He throws a thick blanket on the ground, I lay her gently there. She’s shivering. The fight is on behind me. But I can’t go to it. Lissa’s wounded, I can’t leave her. She wouldn’t leave me.

  “Steve,” she whispers.

  I lean in close. “I love you,” she says. “I really love you, but you can’t stay with me. You have to finish this. Please …”

  And I know she’s right, but still, I hesitate.

  Dr. Brooker pushes me away, gently but no less forcefully. “I need space,” he says. “Let me do my job and you do yours.”

  “Her bowel,” I say. “It’s—”

  “Go,” Dr. Brooker snarls, and I catch a glimpse of the doctor of old, the one that wouldn’t think twice about clipping me around the ear.

  “Don’t you let her die.”

  “Finish this,” Dr. Brooker says. “Whatever you have planned, get it done
. Or what I do here won’t matter.”

  I turn, there is Morrigan, surrounded by his Stirrers. He looks over at me, eyes positively twinkling.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he yells, bowing deeply. “Welcome to the end of the world.”

  30

  The world isn’t over yet. I walk across the sand toward Morrigan. HD swells within me. And I let it. I’ve no resistance to it now, no desire but to see Morrigan and the Stirrer god destroyed.

  Time to shine, it whispers.

  “See, see how I fill the sky!” Morrigan stands there, the comet over his shoulder, the bright blue waters of the Coral Sea gleaming. Truly a moment of triumph. He looks over at me, and winks. “Death, thou shalt die.”

  “Tosser,” Wal whispers in my ear.

  The few remaining Stirrers give a ragged cheer, but I’m stalling them as I come, around me my crew have gathered.

  My Pomps and my Ankous are covered in dust and blood, like miners that have just dug themselves out of a cave-in with nothing but their bare hands. All of them look on the edge of despair, but they follow me. And they fight.

  And the Stirrers are banished, one by one. And somewhere behind me, Lissa lies dying.

  At last Morrigan stands alone, waiting. He looks bored. And we have him surrounded. He twirls the scythe in his hands like a baton, then rests it in the crook of his arm and claps.

  “Great team effort on your part,” he says. “But me, I don’t need a team.”

  Neither do I. Not now.

  I send my crew away, back to the edge of the beach, none of them want to argue the point. Tim is the last to go. I shake my head at him. Wal hovers in the distance, midway between Lissa and me. I signal for him to stay there. He has no role in this now.

  I stand before Morrigan, my hand slick with my own blood. My body filled with rage and despair. If Lissa dies…but she isn’t going to die. I won’t let her, and I know I have it in my power to stop that death.

  Morrigan has the towers, the high rises and shops of the Gold Coast behind him, and that great tear in reality of the world. He’s the boss from Hell, literally. All I have is the sea, and its song to my back, the great distances to the horizon.