Read The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy for Free Online Page B

don’t get a lot of hawkers.
    I reach toward the door again, then hesitate. Because in that moment it… changes. The door suddenly possesses a sly but hungry patience: as though it’s waiting for me to touch it this time.
Just put your hand up against me, eh.
    Instead, I press my face against the window to the right. Again, nothing but darkness. The hair rises on the back of my neck. Then something slams against the glass.
    I get a brief sensation of eyes regarding me, and of blood. A soul screams through me. It passes, as though thrown, so fast that I don’t even get a sense of who it is I’ve just pomped. I stumble back from the window. They may have moved fast, but they’d been holding on. Their passage a friction burn, I’m seared a little on the inside.
    I don’t tend to get the violent deaths but I’ve pomped enough to recognize one. Someone has just died, savagely and suddenly. Someone I know. Maybe Tanya behind the desk, or Clive from records. Brett was always down there, too—had a thing for Tanya. “Jesus.”
    And then there’s another one. The second death is so quick on the back of the first that I moan with the fiery biting pain of it, then retch a little. Another violent exit, another desperate but futile clawing at survival.
    “Get out of here, Steven.” The voice is familiar.
    My mouth moves, but nothing comes for a moment. I turn toward Lissa, fight my almost instinctive desire to pomp her. At least that would be normal. But the urge passes in a wave of relief. Here she is, at last. How can she do this to me, this rising excitement, even now? But she does.
    “What?”
    “You have to get to Central Station,” she says, sliding around me, slipping out of hand’s reach, then darting in to whisper. “You need to get as far away from here as possible.”
    I blink at her, expect her to disappear, but this time she doesn’t. In fact she seems much more together than I have ever seen her—a layer of confusion has been sloughed away and replaced with a desperate clarity.
    “Hurry. We don’t have much time. Someone is killing Pomps.” She smiles at that, then frowns, as though the first expression was inappropriate. “You’re the first one I’ve managed to save. And I’m getting tired of repeating myself.”
    The door picks that moment to open. Just a crack. A cold wind blows through it, and it’s not the usual breath of air conditioning. From within comes the distant rasping of the One Tree, the Moreton Bay fig that overhangs the Underworld. That sound, a great sighing of vast wooden limbs, dominates the office. Hearing it echo out here in the street is disturbing. Christ, it terrifies me. It’s as though Hell has sidled up next to the living world and has pulled out a bloody knife. I hesitate a moment. I know I should be running but those two pomps in quick succession have scattered my thoughts. And this is meant to be a place of refuge. There’s a gravity to that doorway, born of habit and expectation.
    Lissa swings in front of me. “Don’t,” she says. “You go through that door and you’re dead.”
    And I know she’s right. It’s like a switch finally turns off in my brain.
    I sprint from the doorway, glancing back only when I’m at the lights (fighting the urge to just run out into the traffic, but there’s too much of it and it’s moving too swiftly) to see if anyone, or any thing, has come through the door after me. I get the prickling feeling that someone’s watching me.
    I blink, and the door’s shut again, and that sensation of scrutiny is gone. I take a deep breath.
    “Roma Street Station’s better,” I say, trying to keep focused, even as my head throbs. This really is a bitch of a hangover.
    “What?”
    “Central’s too obvious. If I was looking for someone trying to get out of the city I’d go to Central.”
    Lissa appears to consider this. “You’re probably right.”
    I know I’m right. Well, I hope I am. I need to have some semblance of control, or I