Dead Reign (11 page)

“Where did the other one go?” Death said. “The one behind the bar?”

“He vanished as well,” Booth said. “I’ll investigate.”

Rondeau lifted the gun. “Hold up, Mr. History. This is my club. You don’t want to go behind that bar without permission.” Booth paused and glanced at Death.

“What’s to stop me killing you now?” Death said.

Rondeau shrugged. “I’m not too worried.”

Death approached, his movements somehow hypnotic, like watching a beautiful snake curl and uncurl. “Why is that?”

“You’re the referee in a game I don’t play,” Rondeau said. He wasn’t exactly
enjoying
this—he was worried about Marla, and about Pelham, but he wasn’t worried about his own skin. “The whole death thing is something that happens to other people.” Rondeau nodded. “Ayres knows what I’m talking about. All the sorcerers have heard about me. I’m famous.”

The necromancer cleared his throat. “This man is…more than a man, my lord.”

Death leaned close to Rondeau and sniffed. “Really? I smell flesh. Flesh is grass.”

“If you think flesh smells like grass, you’ve been sniffing the wrong grass,” Rondeau said. “And sure, the flesh is weak, but the spirit is badass. Kill this body, and my mind will just meander on over to Ayres there and hijack his stringy carcass, and when he dies of natural causes—which could happen any minute now, by the look of him—I’ll just jump to another host.” Rondeau’s tone was jaunty, with more bravado than he felt. He didn’t want to give up his young, strong, familiar body for Ayres’s old one. The karmic and moral aspects of body-hijacking were troubling to him, too, but being an unkillable psychic parasite was the one strength he had here, and Marla had always taught him to play to his strengths.

“It’s true, my lord,” Ayres said. “Or so I’ve heard. Rondeau is a sort of…psychic squatter, riding in that body.”

“So Booth there’s a zombie, right?” Rondeau said. “And the nice slicked-back hair and such he’s got, that’s all illusion?” He pumped the shotgun and pointed it at Booth, who remained impassive. “In this bar, we shoot zombies in the head for free during happy hour.”

Death yawned. “This is boring. Perhaps I can’t kill you, but you certainly can’t hurt me.”

“Huh,” Rondeau said. “This is what you call a Mexican standoff.”

“But surely you care for something other than yourself? Perhaps if I put this bar to the torch you’ll be more amenable to swearing loyalty?”

Rondeau shrugged. “This is Marla Mason’s stronghold. Sure, burn it down, if you’ve got the mojo. It’d be tough to burn. But be prepared to reap the whirlwind when she gets back.”

“You people are all very stupid,” Death said peevishly. “I’m a god. I’m
Death.
Threatening me is ludicrous. It’s like a snowball threatening the sun.”

Rondeau shrugged. “They say there are only two certain things in the world: death and taxes. But I can’t die, and I’ve never paid a dime in taxes, so I call bullshit on that. The only thing I believe in is Marla Mason.”

Suddenly Death was beside him, wrenching the shotgun from Rondeau’s hands and flinging it aside. Death had one hand on Rondeau’s shoulder, the other on his thigh, and Rondeau had the feeling the guy could just flat rip him in half with the merest twitch of his muscle. He wanted to pee himself. Fucking treacherous body didn’t have the courage of his mind’s convictions. “Perhaps you can’t die,” Death purred. “But you can suffer, yes? Or would you rather pledge yourself to my service?”

“Yeah.” Rondeau’s throat was suddenly dry. “You make a compelling argument. Count me in. But, ah, I’m kind of embarrassed to do it in front of Ayres. Do you think, do you mind, would it be okay if I just like…whispered it in your ear?”

“Of course,” Death said. “I am a reasonable master.” He bowed his head.

Rondeau leaned forward. He put his lips so close to Death’s ear that he could have kissed him. Rondeau opened his mouth.

Then he Cursed.

Ayres gaped as Death flew backward, as if thrown from a horse, and bounced off the wall. Rondeau—who, a moment before, had been at the god’s mercy—wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, making a face like he’d tasted something awful. Booth rushed at him, pulling a knife he’d gotten from who knows where, and Rondeau made a terrible
noise,
something like a word, but this was a word that made the building’s foundations—perhaps the very foundations of the Earth—groan in protest.

When Rondeau spoke, Booth’s suit caught fire, which should have been impossible, since the clothing was illusory. A moment later, Ayres realized that Booth
himself
had caught fire, his mummified body burning like old dry wood, and the flames were merely emerging from the illusion. As Booth shrieked and rolled on the ground, Rondeau sauntered over, picked up his shotgun, and carefully took aim at Booth’s head. The sound of the shot was shockingly loud, and Booth stopped moving, illusion wholly shattered now, and he was a just a headless corpse, half aflame, on the concrete floor, flecks of his mummified head scattered like chips of wood and dirty porcelain. Rondeau pumped the gun again and approached Ayres, grinning. “Hey there. You know, I told Marla she was being too hard on you. Let the old guy alone, I said. He’s harmless, I said. Well, never let it be said I can’t admit when I was wrong. If you like death so much, let’s—”

Ayres didn’t have much patience for speeches. He lashed out with his walking stick and knocked the gun out of Rondeau’s hands. Rondeau’s eyes went wide and his mouth opened, doubtless to voice another guttural incantation, so Ayres simply shoved his own fist into the man’s gaping mouth and began whacking him upside the head with his stick. Rondeau tried to back away, but Ayres moved forward with him, and then Rondeau bit down on Ayres’s hand, which hurt, but Ayres had believed his own body was a rotting corpse for over a decade; he could handle pain. Rondeau finally threw himself backward, and Ayres’s fist came out of his mouth with a wet pop. Rondeau rolled away, then stood, swaying a little, clearly a bit groggy from the blows to the head. “You’re a nasty old bastard,” Rondeau said, perhaps with something like admiration.

Death moaned and started to move, and Rondeau was off like a shot, disappearing through a doorway at the back of the club that Ayres couldn’t quite focus on—the passage must have a look-away spell on it. Ayres was not quite up to giving pursuit, and besides, his god needed him. The old necromancer went to the groaning Death and knelt as much as his aching joints would allow. “Are you all right, my lord?”

“What—what—there was a darkness, a…a space of nothingness, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t think, I was not aware, but now I am aware of the lack of awareness if…if that…” He sat up, and the look on his face was something that, on a human, would have been existential terror.

“Have you never slept, my lord?” Ayres said. “Or been unconscious?”

Death looked up at him, then rose. “I do not remember the time before I came into existence. I was born—I came into being—with full awareness, and that awareness has been complete and uninterrupted, until…that. How did he do that?”

“Magic,” Ayres said with a shrug. “A very old magic, to work on one such as you. Perhaps it was the language of Rondeau’s true race.”

“Unsettling,” Death muttered. “But certainly an interesting new experience.” He walked over to Booth and kicked the meat and ashes. “Rondeau did this, too?”

“Indeed.”

“Hmm.” Death made a vague gesture with his hand.

Suddenly Booth was whole again, his mummified form as solid as it had been yesterday, and he looked about him with the blank expression of a corpse. “Thank you, sir. The underworld appears much as I left it, and I am pleased to be back here.”

“Yes, well, it seems I have need of allies.” Strangely, the idea seemed to amuse him.

“This Rondeau,” Booth said. “Can you banish him as you did Marla?”

Death shook his head. “I’d need to pluck a living hair from his head to make that work. And even then, the banishment would only apply to the body he has now. He could easily suicide and get a new body, and then we wouldn’t even be able to recognize him.”

“We shall simply be vigilant for his return, sir,” Booth said. “If it’s not too presumptuous, my lord…”

Death shrugged. “Speak.”

“Why not simply kill Marla?” Booth asked. “I know the dagger would then pass to the next chief sorcerer of Felport, but if he proved unwilling to give you the blade, you could simply kill him. You wouldn’t have to kill many before one of them agreed to give up the blade, I’m sure.”

“Is assassination your only interest, Booth?” Death picked up a fallen chair, placed it upright, and sat down, crossing one leg over the other. “My nature is bringing death. Does your…your
postman
sort mail for enjoyment? Why would I kill for fun?”

“Fun, my lord?” Ayres said, feeling he’d lost the thread of the conversation before it was even well under way.

“Booth wants to know why I don’t kill chief sorcerers until one of them gives me the dagger. Because it’s clumsy, obvious, and boring. It’s the difference between swatting a fly or pulling off its wings and watching it crawl around injured until it dies. The latter is more entertaining. I’m going to live for a significant percentage of eternity, gentlemen. Boredom is very dangerous for my kind. Marla Mason is arrogant. It will amuse me to break her. Let her wander in the wilderness for a while, wondering what I’m doing here, with her city.”

“That is the way to lay the city flat,” Booth said, voice resonant with relish. “To bring the roof to the foundation, and bury all, in heaps and piles of ruin.”

“Well, that’s one way to go,” Death said. “I could rain devastation on this place, let Marla watch the smoke rise in the distance, etc. But don’t you think it would bother her more if her city
didn’t
fall apart without her? If it turned out she wasn’t needed here at all?” He grinned, and his smile was not at all like that of a skull. It was much worse.

“Ingenious, my lord,” Ayres said, relieved. He still loved Felport, and had no desire to see it razed. Fortunately, Death’s principle trait seemed to be a sort of whimsical cruelty.

“We could kill a few people, though, just to make the point,” Booth said.

“We’ll see. Death is a wonderful stick to threaten people with. The most basic form of coercive power. But once they’re dead, they just go to my realm, to a hell of their own devising—or of my devising, if I take a special interest. But it’s more fun to watch them squirm up here.”

“Rondeau might still make trouble,” Booth said. He ran a hand through his illusory hair, as if remembering his recently shattered skull.

“I disagree. Rondeau is likely lost without Marla,” Ayres said. “He is her lackey and little more, despite his show of pique just now. I imagine he’ll hide and wait for his mistress to return. You will not find most of your opponents even that formidable. Rondeau has certain qualities that make him uniquely suited to opposing you, but if you don’t let him whisper in your ear again, his magic shouldn’t trouble you.”

“How did you stop him?” Booth’s tone was caught half between annoyance and appreciation.

“I am a very old man, as you have both observed. I have learned a great many things in my life, including how to deal with people like Rondeau.” In truth, he’d just been lucky, but why not make himself seem more impressive in the eyes of Death?

“You’re actually older than I am,” Death said. “In years only, of course. In essence I am as old as the first living thing that ever died on Earth. But perhaps I underestimated your usefulness.” He sighed. “I’d like to take over Marla’s city, bring her people to my side, humble her, prove my strength. Where should I begin?”

“Not with Rondeau. With…some of the more reasonable sorcerers. Those who will understand which way the wind is blowing.” He thought of Viscarro, but Viscarro would probably seal his vaults at the first whisper of trouble, and while Death could surely circumvent Viscarro’s security, Ayres thought it wise to give his master an easier win to start his conquest. “There’s a sorcerer named Granger who rules Fludd Park, and is intimately familiar with nature magics.” He was also essentially a half-wit, hereditary heir to a little minifiefdom of green space within the city. His ancestors had been great sorcerers, but Granger was a good-natured fool with inherited power and a famous name. He would give in to Death’s demands easily, Ayres suspected, and once one of the city’s leading sorcerers joined them, it would be easier to win over the others.

“Yes, fine,” Death said. “We’ll take a walk in the park.” He paused. “I still can’t believe Marla doesn’t have a throne room. No one has standards anymore.”

Rondeau knew what to do. There were procedures. Marla had considered the possibility of a hostile invasion by overwhelming forces—hell, it had almost happened not long ago, when those things that called themselves faeries came pouring out of Fludd Park—though Rondeau had never expected to be the one spearheading counterinvasion operations. Marla was supposed to be here, taking charge, rallying the troops, fucking shit up. But the situation was what it was. Rondeau used an untraceable enchanted cell phone to call Marla, and when he got nothing, not even a ring, he called Hamil and Ernesto, Marla’s closest allies among the city’s sorcerers. He gave them the coded phrase that meant hard-core shit was most assuredly going down. Half an hour after he knocked out Death with a well-placed Curse, Rondeau paced around in what had once been a bomb shelter, underneath the old Savings and Loan building, waiting. He tried to distract himself by browsing the yellowing old paperbacks—1950s potboiler bestsellers—stacked among the crates of dusty rations and bottled water, but though Rondeau usually found distraction easier than concentration, he couldn’t stop thinking about how bad the situation was.

Hamil arrived first. “What’s happened?”

“The god of
death
happened,” Rondeau said.

Hamil nodded. “He came to the club?”

“He came, and he banished Marla.” Rondeau related the story, not even embellishing his own exploits as he normally would. Hamil listened gravely, and when Rondeau was finished he clapped him on the shoulder.