'I don't need them anymore. I want you gone.' My voice is barely a whisper, but there is a dreadful force behind it. Mr D diminishes, nods.
'As you wish.' He throws a glance askew at Wal, as if to say sorry. Then he picks up his bike and rides away into the dark. I watch him until the gloom swallows the flickering red of his tail-light.
Rillman coughs. Wal flits in front of him again.
'You want me to go, too? I swear I won't go so easily,' Wal says. None the less I tap my arm and he is nothing more than a tattoo, his face twisted with a bunched zippering of cherubic teeth.
I fashion a chair out of dust, and drop Rillman in it.
He coughs, spits blood. He's not bound. I don't need to do that.
'You can run,' I say. 'But I will find you. Have no doubt of that.'
He eyes the knives I've left resting on a nearby root tip of the One Tree. They're no longer the scythe. I raise one hand and that's what they become. I'm intuiting a lot, but I know I can call that scythe to me in a second, just as I know its name is Mog. In a breath, a single breath of that name, it will find me.
He looks shiftily from the scythe to me, and back again. I dare him with my eyes. But Rillman has had enough.
'Why did you do this?' I ask. 'Tell me and I might be gentle with you.'
'I hate you,' Rillman growls. 'You got what I wanted. While Mr D was alive he locked me out. But you, you were so interesting. So naive. You were the only RM not like them. You were the one who I wanted to suffer, not just kill, because you didn't deserve what you had been given. I've been a long time in planning this, and when you won your Negotiation and changed the rules… Well, you have to realise that I had to make you pay.' He sneers at me. 'Is it any wonder that governments agreed to my requests, when I showed them what I was capable of, with but the merest sliver of an RM's powers? They've been frightened of Mortmax for a long time, the consequences of it. And they're terrified of you.'
Yeah, they have a bloody good reason to be now. HD's pleasure radiates through me.
'I knew it would only be a matter of time until it fell apart, and the world's governments would be left picking up the pieces anyway. The Thirteen have lurched along for an age. But everything ends.' He fiddles with his tie with his restless jerky fingers.
'Yeah, when you murder them.'
Rillman's face darkens. 'All of them were murderers. Every single one, and I know you're not stupid enough to believe otherwise. You want to become a murderer, Steven?'
'I'm Death. It's what I do.' Mog quivers in its resting place. And the new and ancient part of me remembers its endless predation, its racing hunger. It would be easy to give into that. After all, it's what nature intended. It's so like humanity to shape things into much more convoluted patterns. I've a chance to break them all, starting with the death of Rillman. One enemy removed. 'And maybe it's your time,' I say.
Rillman shakes his head. 'I've read your files, Steven, it's not in you.' He's waiting. There's a pulsing vein in his forehead and a slight smile breaks the line of his lips. Then he scowls and maybe, for the first time, I have the real measure of the man, and what I see is shocking. There is too much of my rage in there. 'You're just not that kind of guy.'
I grab him by his lapels and lift. 'I am now.'
This close, I can feel what it is that gives him power: the thing that Neti gave him that allows him to slip from the land of the living to the land of the dead, and back again. It shivers inside him like a second beating heart. This is a free pass between the gates of the two worlds, and it belongs to me! I don't know how Aunt Neti stole it, but I want it back. I yank him to his feet, touch his face with my hands, grip his skull hard, and draw that power from him.
It hurts. Because what he has is fed by pain and anger. I drag it into me; more power, more of the essence that is now so much of what I am. I understand the truth that is the Hungry Death, its persuasive presence, and the tiny thing that is the man before me. I close one hand around his neck, curious how that might feel, and then the other hand.
And I squeeze.
He grabs my wrists. He struggles. He kicks out at me, and thrashes. But I do not relax my grip. If anything I tighten it. HD laughs, and I laugh too, until I feel Rillman's spirit pomp through me. It bursts free, not towards the One Tree, but straight into the Deepest Dark. I watch it there, and then, something bright and eight-armed snatches out and grinds out the light within it.
I'm left staring up into the dark.
I drop Rillman's body.
Mog drifts towards me. I close a fist around its curving snath and back away from the corpse. Let the dust engulf the body.
I'm empty, weak. I can barely stand. My hands grip Mog so tightly that my knuckles ache. It's the only thing that is keeping me upright.
Wal pulls himself from my arm. 'What have you done?'
The body is there, between the two of us. It's answer enough.
34
I shift to my office. It's late. Ten. I can hear someone using the photocopier. Such an everyday sound.
I'm sick, but it's not from the shifting. Mr D was right, all I needed was practice. I smile, and spew into the bin, but it's not cathartic. There's no release in it. Just pain.
I slump into my throne. It's bigger now, far bigger, all encompassing. It dominates the room like the dark seat of some dark empire, and yet I hardly notice it. I settle in, and my pain ebbs, a little. But I have worse hurts. I put my head in my hands.
All the world's heartbeats rain down on me, all those clocks winding down, all that strength pulsing towards its undoing.
And that's the least of it. Every time I close my eyes they're there – those innocent deaths of which I was the cause, that final pomping of Rillman's soul.
I sit in my throne, sobbing, drowning in the world's pulse. Tim's is there. So is Lissa's. I can pick them out like threads. Mr D once said that the sound becomes soothing – the cacophony a lullaby. Here I am, struck by those billions of heartbeats, and then I feel Lissa nearby. I drag myself from the comfort of the throne and Mog blurs, becomes the knives again. They rest, bound by sheaths knitted from evening, on my belt. I shift through the wall, and there she is.
'Steven, are you all right?' She's been crying, too. I should have sought her out straight away, but I couldn't face her. I can barely face her now.
'Yes,' I say. 'Are you?'
'I think so.'
Then I'm holding her and I can almost forget the pain and guilt I'm feeling. Finally she pulls from me.
'You shouldn't have done that,' she says. A vein pulses in my head. Does she know? 'You shouldn't have come after me like that.'
'You know I had no choice. I've nothing left but you.'
'I know you were trying to do the right thing. But Christ, you -'
'I should have told you about Suzanne. No more secrets, right? I promise.'
She touches the knives at my belt, curiously.
'They're mine,' I say, 'and, to be honest, I don't want them out of my sight. I'm the only RM left standing. Mortmax International is my responsibility now.'
'And HD?'
'It's under control, I think… I don't know. Rillman – Solstice is gone. He won't be a problem anymore.'
In my office I can hear the unmistakeable ring of the black phone. I ignore it. Lisa looks at me questioningly. 'It can wait,' I say. 'We need to get out of here.'
Lissa holds me tight, and it's all I can do not to crush her in my grip, so desperately do I need that contact. 'Where do you want to go?' she asks.
'Home,' I say.
I shift with her in my arms. And we are back in my parents' place, in the hallway, Mum's perfume as strong as ever.