A shrill screech startles me. I flinch, then glance over at the window leading to Hell. Someone's hanging from a harness and cleaning the glass from the outside with one of those big plastic squeegees. He's slowly sinking into view. This is a first. He's a big fella, pale skin, long black hair pulled back into a ponytail, a strong jaw marked with stubble. The harness digs into his shoulders. What is a living person doing in Hell?
He waves, I wave back.
Then he pulls out a gun and fires. It's such a casual movement that I hardly notice it. Don't even react until it's done. My stomach flips, I throw my hands in the air, and stumble backwards, then catch my balance on the back of a chair.
The window stars, but doesn't implode. You have more than double-glazing when your office faces Hell.
Through the fragmentation of the glass, I see the 'cleaner' frown.
I look at the door; I'm much further from it than the window. If I run that way I'll probably get a shot or two in the back and, while I'm at it, lead him into the office. Enough people have died in here this year already. It seems clear that he's only after me – and if this is about me, I want to keep it that way. Besides, I've taken bullets before and survived them easily. I lift up a chair. Not the throne, that weighs a bloody tonne.
He fires again. The window shatters this time, glass going everywhere. The bullet thwacks against the wall behind me. Alarms sound throughout the building and the One Tree's creaking intensifies to a dull roar now there's no glass to block it out. Hell has entered the building.
My arm tingles, then burns. Wal extrudes from my flesh. He pulls the most impressive double-take I have ever seen, his wings fluttering madly.
'What the hell?'
'Gun!' I shout. 'Assassination attempt!'
'Right, then. Shouldn't you be running the other way?'
'Shut up and help!' I yell.
I charge towards the gunman, the chair gripped in my hands as though it's some sort of medieval weapon. Here's a guy with a pistol, and me with something that I bought from IKEA. My boots crunch over glass, a big chunk of which slides through the side of my shoe and into my foot. It should hurt more, and it will, I'm sure, but right now all it does is make me angry.
I jab the chair at his head. He leaps back with all the grace of a gymnast. Fires again.
Misses.
But not quite, my ear stings. I resist the urge to slap a hand over the wound. It hurts more than the last time I was shot.
Wal's already buzzing around the bastard's head, and the gunman slaps him away easily, but Wal is back just as fast.
The gunman arcs out on the end of the rope, a pendulum packing a pistol. As he hurtles back in, I hurl the chair at him. He struggles to weave out of the way and the backrest hits him in the head with a sickening crunch. He swings in, then out, and in again, hanging limp.
I hobble over to him and reach out, but suddenly he falls, a long tail of rope following him. I peer down into the Underworld and watch him tumble, his limbs twitching. It's a bit of a mess when he hits. The mess itself is gone a moment later, back to the living world. He wasn't from the Underworld, that's for sure. Someone's just received a very nasty, splattery surprise.
'Watch it!' Wal yells. 'There's someone on the roof!'
Who the hell is that? I swing my head up – stupid, stupid, that's the best way to lose your face, but I have to look – and someone ducks for cover. But I catch a glimpse of the stork-like beak of a plague mask.
I jerk back in from the window, and shake my head at Wal, who grimaces and then shoots up past me, hurtling towards the roof. He's gone a moment, before swooping back. He tears past me and hits the carpet hard, but is back in the air almost at once.
'Shit,' he hisses. 'That hurt. Not enough Hell here for me to fly properly.'
'Did you see who it was?'
'Oh, yeah, I'm all right. And no, I didn't, they were gone.'
Then the first bastard's soul arrives, lit with the bluish pallor of the dead. I'm the nearest entity capable of pomping him. I should have expected him.
He blinks – like the dead do, and his death was more sudden than most – surprised, perhaps, at who he's ended up with. He snarls at me, his every movement a blur, as though he can't find traction here. There's a terrible weight of anger in him. It's holding him here where his lack of flesh can't. I try to use it to my advantage.
'You're not going anywhere until you tell me who sent you.'
'You'll find out soon enough.' His voice is quiet, controlled, and then he's running at me, a final act of defiance, and one I'm not expecting. I can't stop the pomp from happening. He tears through me, a scrambling fury of claws. This fellow didn't expect to die, and he's mad about it, but not enough to betray his boss. In fact, I can tell he blames me. After all, I didn't die and I was supposed to.
Well, he doesn't have my sympathy.
The pomp is painful, but fast, then he's gone, and I'm left standing, feeling dizzy. Rubbing at my limbs. No one should die with such rage inside them. It leaves me hurting, and angry. Dissatisfied on every level.
'You really should clean up in here,' Wal says, picking up another chip packet.
'Don't you start,' I growl.
My mobile chirps. I drag it from my pocket. It's a text from Lissa: Of course you do.
What?
My office door swings open and Wal slips from air to arm. The ratio of earth to Hell has shifted in earth's favour. There are shouts, another ringing alarm, and Tim and a couple of the bigger guys from the office rush in. They look at me then at the broken glass. All this mess. It's the first time I have a real excuse for it.
'Naked.' I lift the phone up in the air. 'Of course!'
'What the – Steven, are you right?' Tim demands, then his eyes widen. 'What the fuck happened to your ear?'
Oh, I'd forgotten about that. I reach up and touch it. My fingers come back bloody. I'm aflood with wooziness. Jesus.
'Someone just tried to kill me. And a second someone killed them, from upstairs, on the roof – Hellside, but you should check the real roof, just in case…'
Tim looks at the men with him, nods, and they run off. Leaving him, me and the phone.
I sway near the broken window. Perhaps I should move away from that drop. 'Sorry about the mess.' And then I remember the glass in my foot.
'Watch your step,' I say, as darkness swallows me.
8
I' m rushing through the creaking, mumbling dark. Knives whisper and flash around me, winding and slashing at each other. In their wake, smoke trails and bodies fall where there were none – as though the knives have knitted their victims' existence and demise in the same instant.
My boots crunch on ash and bone.
A man gibbers on the hill. He sees me, comes rushing down. I stand and wait, uneasy, my belly cold. But I will not run. I recognise him at last.
Morrigan.
'You didn't think you had it that easy, did you?' he says.
The earth is a mouth, a great swallowing mouth. Morrigan tumbles and is gone.
I am rushing through the dark. The knives a circle of stone around me.
A hand closes on mine and I can't get free.
Another hand, and then another grabs me. Someone pulls out my index finger, and cuts. Severs the digit from the palm.
'One by one. That's how it works.' It's Morrigan again. He brings his face close to mine. 'You never should have won. The job's too big for you. Your feet are too small for the boots you're clomping in.'
I push him away. He slashes out with a whispering knife. Another finger falls. I'm awake. I check my fingers.