Trent Jamieson - Death most definite

I back away.

A sudden gust hits the branch and it flexes. Now it's wet and slippery, and I stumble backward and fall, which is what saves me as Morrigan slashes out. My cheek flaps open, a raw line of pain across my face. Better that than my eye.

Morrigan's hungry for it and I'm just me-I'm hesitating, fighting the blade. It's only going to be a matter of time. My death is imminent and Morrigan knows it. The bastard is grinning like the Cheshire Cat.

I think of Lissa, everything that she has had to endure, and just what Morrigan might do to her if he wins. I want her. I want to be with her. My lips curl, and my cheek tears a little more. Salty rain rushes into the wound, splashing against my teeth. I get back on my feet.

Fucking Morrigan.

He swings up and under at my chest and I grab at his wrist and catch it before the blade strikes my skin. I don't even know where that move came from, but I hold his wrist and twist, muscles juddering in my arms.

He winces, and I loosen my grip, though I'm still holding on too tight for him to pull away. I duck away from his flailing free hand, but not before it strikes me in the side of the head.

His eyes narrow. "That's the story of your life, Steven. Do you really want this?"

"I want to live. I want my family back."

"Neither is going to happen. So just give it up."

He punches down on my wrist and snatches his hand from my grip, but as he pulls away, my knife hand is swinging around and it catches him in the middle of his palm.

I yank the blade toward me, tearing flesh. "How's it feel?" I growl. "Hurts doesn't it?"

He kicks up and catches me hard in the crotch. I stumble back again, the tree shaking beneath my feet. Mr. D looks on, his face expressionless. The other Deaths are motionless, captivated. Each face is a rictus of pleasure. There's blood in the water and the sharks are circling-their eyes might be blank and cold, but their jaws are working, widening into that most devouring sort of smile.

I slide on my arse away from Morrigan. The stone blade is slick with rain and blood but I hold it tightly. All I can taste and smell is the iron scent of my beating heart. Morrigan casually kicks me in the chest, and ribs break. I'm nothing but pain, and searching eyes.

"You really drew this out, de Selby," Morrigan says. "Just like your bloody father, he never knew how to get to the point. It's only fair that I draw it out now, at the end. And to think you took up the blade. You even considered that you might be able to make it as one of the Orcus."

He kicks me again. And my chest is on fire, a liquid fire that has me gasping. "Look at them, boy! Look at them! They'd eat you alive in under a minute."

Then his boot finds my mouth, once, twice. I spit out teeth.

My mouth can barely contain all the blood in it. I can't catch my breath. All I'm breathing is ruddy and choking. My vision spots as Morrigan transfers the blade from one hand to the other. My brain is empty but for the pain. I can't even move.

He drives the knife toward me. I weave-well, fall-to the right. Oh, the pure broken-ribbed agony of it. Surely there's not much life left in me, there can't be. But there's something, a wild and raging vitality, and it burns inside me. I can barely see, my eyelids are swelling with blood, everything is torn and battered from the toes up, and it doesn't matter. This is what death comes to. This is what it is all about.

Morrigan scowls. "Just die. It's over, don't you get that? It's over."

Wal's in trouble too. He's a blur in the near distance, hemmed in by all those sparrows. He's snatching them out of the sky, and hurling them down. But there's more than he can handle. Inky wounds streak his flesh. Sparrows are snapping at his wings. One breaks, and he falls. The sparrows are all over him, smothering him, pecking, devouring.

I scramble backward, trailing blood, and spit out another tooth.

Well, fuck it. It's over.

I smile. Nothing else. Just that broken grin. Morrigan charges at me, driving down toward my chest with his stony knife.

My breath roars in my head. My mind goes blank. I duck away from his blade.

Morrigan stumbles, and in that moment-in the absence of my own will-my own stone knife guides me, subsumes me, so that all I am is something cutting and deathly. There's a force, ancient and hungry, bound by its own cruel covenants, and it propels my hand. The blade glides forward, almost languidly, and it slams into Morrigan's left eye with a wet detonation.

He screams and I push the knife in further. I get to my feet-I don't know how, but I do-and he stands with me. Morrigan and I are one thing, swaying, unsteady, joined with a dreadful intimacy by the bloody length of the knife.

"Not enough," he mumbles, but there is no force in him, just the soft exclamation of a dying man. "Not enough."

I don't know if he is talking about him or me. His words mean nothing. He's carried on my blade, blood bubbling from his eye. I wrench his knife from his loosening grip and slash it across his throat. I'm screaming. All I am is death, violent, terrible death. There is no room for me, just this.

It scares me. I see the edge and somehow step back. I let go of the knives. And it's me again, and I'm horrified.

Morrigan's body spills blood as it topples to the broad limb of the tree. It shudders once, then is still. And he lies there, an old man, bent and broken and bloody, and I killed him. The Negotiation is ended. Jesus, how did it end up this way?

"Good work," Mr. D says.

"No, it wasn't." That's all I can manage. My breath is whistling through the hole in my cheek. Every heaving breath is agony, and it feels like I'm leaking fluids from every pore and orifice. As the rain lightens and the storm heads out, deeper into the Underworld or out of it altogether, I'm ready for death myself.

Mr. D pats my back, and the touch is gentle, but even that hurts enough to send a painful shudder through me. "Yes, it was. You know, you're the first person to ever win a Negotiation who hadn't engineered it in the first place. I don't know what that means, but-"

"Some fucking negotiation!" I spit blood. It splatters across the rough bark of the tree.

"It's not finished yet. You've won the right to exist, to be RM, to sit upon the throne of Death, to have the high six-figure salary."

Mr. D's fingers drive into my back. Agony runs through me. It's jagged and dirty and I scream. Then the deeper pain melts from me. Ribs shift beneath my chest. The torn cheek knits closed. I'm almost a whole man again, except I'm more than that. Something passes from Mr. D to me, a coiling and vast prescience. Mr. D is diminished and I, well, I don't know what I am anymore.

"So it's over?"

Mr. D shakes his head. "Steven, it's only beginning."

Go the cliche, but he's right. Oh, is he ever right. There's no sense of closure, merely a cruel momentum. When am I ever going to get a chance to stop, to mourn?

The other Regional Managers crowd around. They're quick, as management always is to recover from shock outcomes, each one slick and ready to engage in damage control. It's all I can do to stop scowling at them. Not a single one of them stepped in to help while my family and workmates were being slaughtered. But is there any point railing against death?

I'm going to find out, but not today. Healed or not, I'm exhausted.

I look up and Wal winks at me, then winks out of existence. I glance at my arm, and he's back there, a motionless 2D inky presence, smiling benignly. This job has some perks after all.

The sparrows are all gone.

No one else seems to have noticed either event. New Zealand's Regional Manager, Kiri, nods at me, then grins a huge grin. The sort that shows far too many perfect teeth, all of them sharp. At least he doesn't go for Mr. D's theatrics, his face keeps the one terrifying visage. "Good one, eh mate." He slaps my back warmly. "Never liked Morrigan. He was a prick as far as I'm concerned."