binding its prey in its web.
'How bad is it, Steven?' Mr. D asks.
'Well, I'm here aren't I?'
'You have a point. I would have expected Tremaine, your father, or even Sam.'
'I can't tell you about Sam. But Dad's gone. Tremaine, too.'
'So everyone senior?'
'They're dead,' I say, and Death nods.
'I felt them, but I couldn't be sure. Everyone dies eventually. Call me biased, but that's what life's about. Even I can die, and without my Pomps, my position here is… tenuous. Morrigan knows that. He knows that my power is at an end-the prick.'
I clench my jaw. 'It isn't fair.'
Mr. D laughs. 'Nothing's fair, Steven. Not in the games we play.'
I catch a movement out of the corner of my eye. An engine roars. And then an SUV strikes Mr. D from behind.
It nearly takes me too, but I'm just that little bit closer to the gutter, and Mr. D's hand pushes out precisely at the moment of impact, throwing me to one side. Death slides under the wheels. Bones crack like thunder. The SUV pulls away and shoots down the street.
I run to Mr. D's side, I try and help him. I didn't know Death could bleed, but he's bleeding all right. His clothes are sticky with it. There's blood leaking from his ears, and his lips and teeth are rubicund. I start dragging him off the road.
'Get away, Steven,' he says, and pushes my hands from him. He's still strong-I'm flung from the road, the breath knocked out of me.
Mr. D stands, his legs shaking, his face messed up. One of his eyes has closed over. 'Perhaps you should run,' he says to me.
But I'm stuck to the spot. The SUV has come back and it hurtles into him. This time it turns in a tight circle and hits him again, then again. Morrigan's behind the wheel, smug as all hell, and by the time he's done, Mr. D is a lump of blood and rags on the ground. Finally I regain the will to move.
'Don't even think about it.' Dad steps from the passenger-side door and points a rifle at my head.
'Dad, I-'
'How thick are you, Steven? I'm not your father,' he says in my father's usual irritated tone. How can I think of him as anything but my dad? But the moment my eyes meet his, there can be no doubt. There's a wild, tripping madness there, and a vast alien hatred. His skin glows with a lurid, sickly light. Stirrers shouldn't inhabit the Underworld this way. Its true form is slowly burning through his flesh.
A week ago this was my father, though that animated spark has gone and has been replaced by the enemy. Still, if you're going to die, die pissing something off. 'Dad-'
He swings the rifle at my head.
'None of that,' Morrigan says, sliding out of the SUV.
The rifle butt stops just centimeters from my skull.
Morrigan rolls Mr. D's body over with his foot, and smiles. 'So it's done. Death be not proud and all that,' he says, rubbing his hands gleefully. This is Morrigan as I have never seen him. So damn happy. He terrifies me, more than Mr. D ever did. 'Death is dead.'
'Why?' I demand, and Morrigan wags a finger in my face.
'Need to know basis only, I'm afraid. And you know too much as it is. But don't be too sorry for him. The bastard deserves every last instant of pain.' Morrigan glances over at Dad. 'End it.'
Dad fires.
At the same time cold fingers run over my flesh. Everywhere. They're brushing everything. I'm smothered in a rushing, tapping, piercing density of ice.
A voice whispers in my ears. 'The rules are changing, Steven.'
Then I'm in that dark space again, and the last thing I hear is Morrigan's weary voice.
'Oh, fuck,' he says.
28
Crack!
That's how I wake, with a jolt and a deep gasping breath, as though I've been drowning.
Crack! The door nearby shudders.
Crack!
Dust, centuries old, spills from the top of the bookcases that line one wall.
Crack!
Mr. D sneezes. 'Don't worry, I made this office with my own two hands. The doors are reinforced with my own blood, and the blood of my enemies. There's a bit of strength in them yet. Do you take milk?'
I nod my head as Mr. D pours my tea into a fine china cup. I've been here once before, so long ago that I'd almost forgotten about it. It's the inner sanctum, the throne room. Mr. D's big chair is up at the other end of a long wooden desk, and it's covered with carvings of figures running, fighting, dying, all of them gripping daggers, and is utterly incongruous with the metal, plastic and leather business chairs that face the desk. Morrigan covets that deathly throne. It shivers and sighs and seems to stare back at me. I feel the intensity of its regard. How can an inanimate object have such a tangled scowling presence? I can't imagine anyone ever wanting to sit in such a thing.
The desk is submerged in paper-scrunched up balls of it, rough teetering piles of it, and all of it covered in Mr. D's dense scrawl. Post-it notes fringe one side of the desk.
Mr. D catches me glancing at the papery chaos. 'I never bothered with a computer for the real work.' He lifts a hand and Post-its flutter like jaundiced butterflies from the table toward his wrist. 'Who needs one, eh? Though I do like my Twitter.' He reads the notes that he'd called to him, and frowns. 'There are too many names I know on these things.'
I'm quick to forget about that, though. Something else has grabbed my attention. Mr. D really does have the original 'Triumph of Death' on his wall. There are all those skeletons getting jiggy with the damned. Mr. D has always seemed a little too smug about this picture for my liking, but here it is, in all its splendor.
I walk up to it and shudder. Looking closely, I don't see the Orcus in those skeletons, or Pomps, I see Stirrers. And I'm thinking about that impending Regional Apocalypse.
'Quite a piece of work, isn't it?' Mr. D says. 'I, um… procured that for myself a long time ago. One of the benefits of this job. Well, it was.'
'What the fuck is going on?' I ask, turning away from the picture. It's bigger than I expected, and I can feel all those mad eyes staring at the back of my neck.
Mr. D sends the Post-it notes fluttering back to the desk. 'Death and death and death, I'm afraid.'
There's an almighty crack and the door behind him shudders. We both jump.
'Well, that was a big one.' Mr. D passes me my cup and saucer. His mind is already wandering to a new topic. It's not just his face that jumps around.
'There are other spaces, other places, and they proceed endlessly, universes and universes. One day, death may not be needed. But we're a long way from that.' Death sips his tea casually, even as the door and bookcases shake. 'I keep up with my reading. I like physics, I like the possibility that one day death will be irrelevant. After all, death is merely a transitional state. The body is devoured, and made alive again in all the creatures that devour it. And the souls of those gone are absorbed into the One Tree, sinking through it to eventually track across the skies of the Deepest Dark.
'Death's job, Steven, is to shape the Underworld, to bring to it a neatness, a less savage afterlife. And that's all I've ever done, managed my little alternate universe. Other RMs do it differently, but we're all here to provide a peaceful transition, to make sure the dying continues as it should, and to stop the Stirrers. That's the position Morrigan hungers for.'
