Thanks for reading. Here concludes the rough draft of chapter 41, hope you enjoy!
“Hey, is it me, or does that sound like it’s getting faster?” He asked.
“Blood loss does that.” She cocked a critical ear at the sound of the heartbeat. “I’d give you a minute at most until you suffer a myocardial infarction.”
“You said infarction.”
She snapped her fingers repeatedly in front of his face. “Focus, Stirling.”
“So, it sounds like we’re at the part of the conversation where I get the high-pressure sales pitch.”
“Good guess. I know you’ve been thinking of heading back the Skeleton Club and waiting this out. That’s not going to work for me.”
“No?”
“No.”
“How come?”
“What you’ve seen of Knox’s operation is just a small fraction of the whole. He’s personally responsible for the enslavement of thousands of spirits. As someone who’s charged with helping the dead pass over, that offends me on a very personal level. I want it fixed.” She spoke the word with the tone of finality that left no question to the meaning.
“Seems reasonable,” he said cautiously, “but I have a couple questions first.”
“Better ask them fast.”
“Don’t take this as me complaining, but how come you don’t deal with this mess? I’m a magic nerd who taught himself some homemade tricks in his backyard shed. You’re Merciful Death; she who makes the sun black as sackcloth. It seems to me you’d be a lot better suited for a job like this than I am.”
“I’m not allowed to interfere, none of the incarnations are. Death is impartial. I don’t get to choose who dies or when I just oversee one of the aspects of Death.”
“Uh huh, and out of all the millions of people who die on a daily basis, why choose me?”
“That’s not a huge intuitive leap, you already play for team Death. Most magic uses life energy, but a necromancer’s talent draws magic from the absence of life, the downward turn of the wheel. You’re just being officially tagged in.”
She sat on the edge of the chair and crossed her legs again. It was difficult to keep his eyes on her face. She grinned at him in a way that made it clear she knew exactly what effect she was having. He gave her a mental salute. For a young guy whose sex life was rarely off life support, it was a smart strategy. Stupid glands.
“Listen, you‘ve already told Knox to fuck off once, all I want from you is more of what you’ve already done.”
“Yeah, and I’ve been so great at it that I’m about to die of blood loss inside a plastic barrel.”
“You sound like you actually want to pass on.”
“No, I’m just trying to see all the angles here. If The Twilight Zone taught me anything, it was to check the fine print when you make a deal with Death. What exactly are you offering?”
“Work for Death, get a second chance.”
“Work for you?”
“Calm your hormones, Romeo. Not me, my boss. I’ll be the go-between.”
“Can I meet them? I sort of want to meet my potential employer.”
“Sorry, you don’t rate that high. Did you miss the part where you’re dying? No time. In the rare case something needs attending to that we can’t do ourselves, we’ll call you in.”
“What if I don’t like the job. Can I say no?”
“You can always say no.”
“But that would be bad,” he guessed.
“The deal being offered is that you work for Death, in return you get to live. If you refuse, the offer gets taken off the table.”
“Now, tell me if I’m way off-base here, but the only thing you’ve said you can’t do is to kill folks, right?”
“I did say something like that.”
“So, I’m guessing that when you do call on me, I’m not going to be called in to pick up a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread from the store.”
Thump… … thump.
The room around them wavered like the heat haze on hot pavement for an instant.
She gave the room a worried look and rushed ahead. “Stop Knox. Free the souls he has captured.”
“How?”
“You’re smart. Use your head.” She was speaking quickly now.
“Fine, but I want Becky to get her body back.”
“Who?!”
“Rebbecca, my friend. She got caught up in this and Knox got her. I want her to get her body back.”
“I can’t do…”
“That’s my price.”
“If you die, your soul will pass over and there will be no you to make this deal.”
Stirling glanced around with a bored look on his face and inspected his nails.
“Fine. I’ll do what I can. Now can we…”
“What’s your name?”
“What!?”
“Your name? Merciful Death is just too much of a mouthful.”
She furrowed her brows at him, nonplussed. “Emily.”
“In that case, Emily, I agre…”
With a jolt that felt like every particle in his body was being smashed together at the speed of sound, he was back inside the barrel. Blood was drooling out of his mouth to run down his front and his heart was pounding painfully in his chest. He couldn’t breathe, it felt like he’d been holding his breath for a minute. He breathed in hitching gasps that brought no air to his lungs.
Whatever Merciful Death planned on doing clearly hadn’t worked. He was still dying. Panic seized him as he gasped for air. His brain raced. What had gone wrong? Why was he still dying? His heart felt like it was trying to pound its way out of his chest, each beat a painful blow against his sternum.
He clasped his arms around himself in an attempt to squeeze out the pain. In the confined space his forearm knocked something solid in his jacket pocket. It was the medicine bottle he’d picked up off the rack next to Rebbecca’s barrel. Lloyd had said it was like Panacea, but that something was wrong with it. As though thinking of it caused it to wake, the contents of the bottle suddenly resonated with his entire being. It was like the feeling he had when he’d sensed the possessed bodies in Strangefellows. His own power was part of whatever was inside the bottle.
Not having any other plan, but lacking anything else to do, he fumbled the bottle from his pocket with clumsy fingers, uncapped it, and brought it to his lips.
Even above the smell of his blood and leftover preservative, there was a sudden melange of scents inside the barrel. The first was the smell of living things that brought to mind the first mist of green on tree branches on the first warm day after a long winter. Wrapping around it all though was a sickly corruption, not decay, but a stomach rolling burned-bone sweetness that made him nauseous, even over the pain.
Even as the liquid seeped over his tongue, his arm was instinctively withdrawing the little glass bottle.
“Too late,” whispered a little voice in his head.
He tried to spit out the drops, but they evaporated on contact with the warmth of his flesh. The sensation reminded him of a high-end Scotch he’d once sampled, sadly, that was as far as the comparison went.
The flavour blossomed in his mouth like a combination of burned syrup and rotting fish. It was so overwhelmingly foul that he momentarily forgot the pain in his chest. His stomach heaved, and the agony of it made his vision tunnel in.
A feeling of jagged heat radiated out from his mouth, washing down his body. It felt like what he imagined having ice crystals form in your blood would feel like if they were on fire and shaking themselves to pieces at the same time.
He clenched his arms around himself even more tightly, trying to keep himself together in the face of this new pain. He gasped out a spray of blood that he dimly saw run down the inside of the barrel before true blackness covered his vision.
No comments:
Post a Comment