| THE LORELEI SIGNAL |
.
| Written by R.S. Bohn / Artwork by Lee Kuruganti |
| The Instrument of Fate |
1. Death Wants a Moment's Peace
Death tunneled its way into the sand, sighing deep for rest from judgment.
Moira on her horse traveled the loneliest beach on earth, reins loose in her hand. She whistled once.
“Go away,” Death said, and clapped a bony hand over its foolish mouth.
“Can’t,” she replied. “The Gates are all backed up. The Devil and the saints are playing cards, waitin’ on you.”
“Not my problem.”
The horse pawed at the sand until Death was forced to arise, grains trickling through its robe and skeleton.
“Fine. But your turn is coming, missy.”
“I know,” she said, and she did.
2. The Horse’s Mane
A thousand souls passed, a thousand more. Death had a glass of wine and waited for the man at table three
to choke on his lobster. He had forty-seven seconds.
He used those forty-seven to reflect on Moira’s hair, so lank of late. It looked more like her horse’s mane, red-
blonde and tangled.
Forty-seven. The young wife panicked. Plates broke, chairs toppled. Death slipped between busboy and wife
and picked the soul, as slick now as he’d been in life.
His bag wasn’t full, but he thought a trip to the Expiry was in order.
No one noticed the spiraling shadow.
3. The Expiry
Death dumped the contents of his bag on the counter. The Expiry flicked through them as if they were playing
cards. Shuffle, fan, shuffle, sort.
“Not much here,” the Expiry sniffed. He turned and pulled a long piece of ticker tape. “Today’s the twelfth, you
know.”
“Is it?” Death barely kept track of time anymore. The calendar over his bed turned its own pages, ignored.
“Say, how much tape is there?”
“There’s tape for all,” the Expiry said, confused and annoyed.
“No, what I mean is, you only give me a piece. Can I have the rest?”
“What? Why would you want that? You’d get all mixed-up. You get what you can handle.”
“I wouldn’t mix it up.” Death crossed his bony arms over his ribcage.
“You would. Everyone knows you would.” The Expiry slumped on his stool, arms also crossed. “Besides,
where would you put it?”
“Oh, I’d put it somewhere. Somewhere safe.”
“Uh-huh. That’s what ol’ Typhon said about that Mengele. Now, no one can find him! He’s lost down there,
somewhere. They may never find him.”
Death did not think it mattered if Josef Mengele’s soul was lost in the bowels of Hell. It was probably for the
best. Also, the Devil was a liar. He probably knew and wasn’t telling.
“Now, stop pouting and get out of my Expiry,” the Expiry said. “Before you get more behind.”
“Just one more thing.” Death stood up straight, willing the winds of emphysema to make his robe flutter and
the visage of a thousand drowned corpses cross his skull. “What if I, Almighty Death, Immortal One, Bringer of
Finality, wanted to know about one soul in particular, one that might be on the tape further up?”
The Expiry leaned on the counter, unimpressed. His forked tongue licked over his face. “Then I would suggest
that the Bane of Mortals get his everlasting bony ass in gear and get caught up, and maybe he’d find out.”
Death hated being the youngest Incarnation on the block.
4. Upper Management
Ignatius frowned. Sighed. Pushed one-eighth of an ounce of something silver into the middle of the table.
The Devil tossed in something similar, crusted black. “So. What do we make of our young Death?” he asked.
“Eh? Boy’s all right.”
The Devil took a sip of the house whiskey. “He’s behind on quota.”
Sebastian shrugged. “They always get behind.” He set down his cards. “I fold.”
“Second Death never was. Or am I thinking of Four?” Death watched Ignatius carefully set in another eighth.
He put in two. “Anyway. Methinks the boy needs a fire lit under him.”
“And you’re just the one to do it, old man?” Gabriel asked, one golden eyebrow raised.
“Perhaps I am.”
“No,” a quiet voice said from the battered green sofa, glass of whiskey balanced on his chest. “Let Moira sort
him out.”
There was a pause, in which agreement was silently tendered. And then the Devil laid down his cards.
“Read them and weep. Oh, that’s right. Angels and saints. You do that anyway.” He leaned across the table
and swept in all the pieces, now like mirror shards in his grasp.
5. A (very) Short List of Things Death Did to Find Moira
Since his failed trip to the Expiry, he’d tried asking a few other Incarnations about Moira, but most of them
treated him as if he was Pestilence or Disease instead of Death. He’d even asked a couple of demons that’d
been lingering about of late, sniggering behind their clawed hands. He’d thought at first the demons had
been assigned by the Devil merely to heckle him as he went about his business, but it finally transpired that
the demons were waiting to steal a very particular soul.
The brutish little tag-a-longs had been quite disappointed when Death refused to give over the priest’s soul;
there had even been a bit of a skirmish. In the end, Death stuck the soul into his bag with the others, and
they’d slunk away, spitting every other step. He wished he’d asked about the Fate before the fight.
One night, he’d hunkered down on the sofa with the Manual of Death and Disassociation for the Newly Installed
Device—which title, he felt, made him sound like an emotionally detached yet homicidal sink faucet—for
information regarding the Fates: their origins, properties, and specifically, their length of office and how to go
about locating one. As with most issues, the manual was unhelpful and thus had been relegated to keeping
the kitchen table from tottering over. Everything in Death’s house, it seemed, was fourteenth-century your-
mother’s-old-cast-offs.
This had left one option: actual work. He’d found ticker tape beneath the couch, in the pocket of robes
destined for the celestial wash, and once, stuck to the bottom of his foot. Soul by soul, Death started to catch
up on his backlog. And still her name did not appear, while the certainty of her impending demise grew
stronger in him.
And then he remembered one way guaranteed to bring Moira: his natural gift of sheer laziness.
6. In Paris Above
“You are in so much trouble.”
Death looked up. At the end of the alley, Moira’s horse stood, breath steaming in the January air. Her pale
legs hung down over its red-speckled hide.
“I’m on a break,” he said, tossing the last of the moldy bread to the pigeons and rats.
“Death doesn’t get a break.”
“Is that so?” he said, peering into the dumpster.
“I’m afraid it is.”
His audience jostled closer. He spread his hands.
“Th-th-that’s all, folks.” A pigeon pecked his hallux. “I mean it. There isn’t any more. Get lost.” The rats
waddled away and the pigeons flapped noisily to the rooftops, and Death stood beside a dumpster in the
alley behind a Parisian café.
Moira slid from her horse and walked barefoot through the gray slush. Death studied a drainpipe with great
interest, tapping it to hear the echo.
“I’m not kidding. You haven’t been keeping up, and you’ve lost fourteen souls.” She glared, feet spread and
arms crossed, the very picture of woman-irritated-by-man. “I’ve found eight of them, but I’ll be damned if I
know what you did with the rest. Any idea what happens to Incarnations who don’t do their jobs properly?”
Death said nothing, believing it to be in his best interest to neither make a smart-assed remark in reply or to
inform her that there had been, perhaps, one more transgression of which she apparently was not aware.
“They’re going to terminate you.”
He shrugged. “So? Let them.”
“I don’t think you understand what it means to be terminated.”
“Heaven or Hell, right? I have a pretty good idea already where I’m going.”
“That’s because you’re an idiot. Follow me.” She turned, and Death pretended he wasn’t going anywhere
with the Fate for the sum total of three seconds before following along in a slouch.
At the end of the alley, she swung up on her waiting horse. Apparently, the Fates were against the wearing
of underpants. As this revelation sunk in, he barely heard her repeating herself. Until she reached down and
thunked his skull.
“I said, get up on the horse. We haven’t got much time.”
Death put a hand on the horse’s great red rump, unbelieving his luck.
And from the café rooftop, casually munching on unlucky pigeons, two demons watched with interest as Moira
and Death began to clop-clop-clop down the Paris street.
7. In Paris Below
Moira scolded with seemingly endless breath. Death barely noticed, so conscious was he of the way her bum
was cradled between his femurs. It wasn’t his fault; he kept his hands on her waist for balance and to keep
some polite distance between them, but the horse’s gentle swaying and sloped back kept him sliding against
her. The robes of Fate were like spider web, so he could feel her hip bones. Also, her waist made delicious
curves under his fingers. It was impossible to listen to her at such a time. He figured he’d catch up later,
maybe get the tail-end of her harangue, as she obviously wasn’t even close to finished.
They passed a graveyard. Death wasn’t a romantic, but he would’ve liked to ask Moira to stop.
At last they came to a halt before a plain black door. She looked at him over her shoulder.
“Get off,” she said.
Behind the door, in what amounted to a cubicle, was an open hole with a steeply winding staircase
descending into gloom. A few hardy tourists, bundled in their winter coats and scarves, were making their
careful way down.
“Let’s go.”
The people they passed shuddered, blamed it on the cold and the eeriness of their activity, and continued on.
Moira and Death left them behind, walking through the stone walls into tunnels and rooms no human had
mapped and yet, their bones had been left behind. Forgotten. So it was these catacombs were a special
place, a disremembered place. The Fate held up a torch, and though Death did not need it, he was grateful
for her light. And they walked further downward, below, below, below.
They walked a labyrinth that Death did not know; he had never been called to this place. It was silent and
black and smelled of mildew and cold earth, and Death wondered if Moira had brought him here to personally
see to his termination. He wondered if she would let him kiss her once before she did, or if he would be a
coward, as he had been so often in life. He made up a little speech as he followed her, in which he asked for
her hand to kiss before she dealt the blow. And then his imagination took over, and after the speech, Moira
told him he could kiss more than her hand, and she sobbed in his arms at the unjustness of his termination
just as they were beginning to know each other better, her breasts bobbing like apples against his chest,
and then—
“This is it,” she said. “We’re here.”
She touched a spot on the stones that became a doorway, so short and slender that even had it been visible,
one could easily have walked past, unnoticing its existence. She gestured for him to enter.
Inside a rough-hewn room with no benches or altar, stacked bones surrounded them from pocked floor to
craggy ceiling. Here the metatarsals, here femurs, here a fan of ribs. Here a skull nestled in a pelvic girdle. In
the silence, Death heard a voice, as from down a well or buried beneath the earth, and drifted towards it.
Somewhere, deep among the bones, quivered the remnants of an old, old soul, lost and gone crazy with
despair in the room. He reached a hand to pluck it. Moira grasped his wrist.
“Don’t.”
“But it’s my job,” he said. “Another Death must have lost it.”
“It wasn’t lost,” she said, pressing his wrist. “And you can’t take it.”
“I can.”
The soul, as if sensing Death at last come to collect it, strained towards his fingertips. And then, all at once,
he heard them.
The other souls.
Waking now at feeling him near. Crying out for him. He spun around, Moira losing her grip on him.
There, and there and there and there. How many? The voices blended, filling his skull with their pleas, their
shouts. He held up both arms, reaching. He could take them all.
Moira grabbed him, yanking on his robes, hauling with a strength that was, frankly, beyond his.
Before she could drag him out, he snatched one soul, one among the many, and then they were in the tunnel
outside again. Death fell against a wall and shook.
“What the fuck was that?”
“That,” she said, “is termination.”
“What are you talking about? Those souls aren’t terminated. They’re nowhere. They’re in there. Trapped.”
“Yes.”
“Why? Who are they?”
“It’s difficult to explain.”
“Do try,” he said, keeping the shard hidden, tucked in his fist as he slid it into a pocket.
“They are your predecessors. And the predecessors of some other Incarnations.” She took a deep breath.
“When man was new, He created us to look after you. All the Incarnations that you know. But the Devil, that
arrogant son of a bitch, saw a way to overthrow Him, using the Incarnations. Ignorant bastard started a
coup, a very bloody one. There was a war, and we split sides.”
“And which side were you on?”
“His, of course. One of my sisters chose to fight for the Devil, as did War and Nature and Love. And a few
assorted paltry little Incarnations like Disease.”
He had to know. “And Death?”
“He chose to fight on our side. In fact, it was because of Death that we won. But he…”
“Didn’t make it.”
“No. When the dust settled, neither had Love or Time. Disease and Fortune also were lost.” She snorted.
“And Scourge. Honestly, we haven’t had a good replacement for that one since. Obnoxious little twats, all of
them.”
“So, what? When an Incarnation dies, they come here? What kind of a reward is that?”
“Not all Incarnations—not the originals. Their souls disappeared. They were just…gone. Those were their
replacements.” She put a hand on his shoulder, the first time she had voluntarily touched him since he’d
arrived on the celestial scene. “Understand something. You are neither mortal nor immortal. There is no place
for you once you become an Incarnation.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Death, backing up. “He makes replacements, but those replacements aren’t good
enough, so he sticks them here, in some kind of lost-and-gone-for-good filing cabinet?”
“Heaven and Hell are for mortals. We Incarnations, the true ones—”
“Careful there, Moira. Your superiority is showing.”
“That’s not it!” She reached for him again, but he crossed his arms and she let her hand drop. “I have no
choice in the matter. These were the rules long before I was even created by Him.”
“Oh, you and your rules! ‘I have no choice,’” he mimicked. “So what you’re telling me is that this is where I go
next. In that room.”
“Yes. But—no, listen to me!—you have a chance. Every replacement Incarnation has a chance to make it last.
Maybe even for eternity. But you’ve got to want it, and you’ve got to give them no reason to terminate you.”
She huffed. “You’d know all this if you’d read the manual.”
“I did read the manual,” he grumbled. “Well, I’m not going in there. Even if I have to do this stupid job for
eternity.”
“You might not have a choice. They’ve called a meeting to discuss your termination. There will be a vote. I
don’t know who will vote for you, though.”
Death realized he didn’t know anyone who would vote for him, either. Maybe the other replacement
Incarnations, if they knew the deal. But if they didn’t, they might just see him as a slacker who sometimes
made their job harder.
He probably should’ve taken this whole thing seriously, but it was a little late now.
“I would. Vote for you. I mean, you haven’t done a horrible job. There’s room for improvement, yes—”
“You’d vote for me?” he asked, incredulous. “All right. Let’s say I make it, and they don’t terminate me. What
about them? The ones in the room? They can’t stay there. That’s cruel.”
“It’s the way it is. The only one who has true province over every soul is Death—the first Death. And his soul
is gone.” She paused, lips open to say something. Shutting. And finally she said, “We wait. For him. For all of
the lost Incarnations. He says their souls have gone somewhere, but they will return. That’s why we pick you,
the mortal ones. We’re hoping that they reappear. Come back. He says they will.”
“And you trust Him?” At the moment, Death wasn’t sure he’d trust anyone who stuck souls away to be
ignored just because He couldn’t decide what they were. It was indecisive and downright unkind.
“I do. I fought for Him once. I would again.” Her eyes fell to his pocket, where a bit of tarnished silver
gleamed. “What is that?”
“What? Nothing. Just a soul I picked up earlier, forgot to bag it. Yeah, I’ll, uh, do that now.” He reached for his
bag.
“No. No, no—that’s not possible.” She grabbed at the thing, but Death sprang away.
“Moira, it’s nothing! Some old geezer’s soul I got in a nursing home in Cleveland.”
“It is not! My God, how did you…? Give it to me!” She lunged, rippling through the space between them and
knocking him back twenty feet. The two of them grappled in the narrow passageway, whirling through walls
and into other rooms. Death hoped it wouldn’t hurt her too much and kicked her viciously in the stomach.
Instead, she spun, her elbow smashing squarely into his ribs, sending him reeling into yet another room. His
kick, apparently, hadn’t hurt her too much.
“Stop!” He barely managed to hold her off, her hands grasping at the shard in his pocket. He grabbed it and
held it aloft. “Stop! Moira, you’re going to die soon!”
She froze, fist inches from connecting with his chin. “What?”
Death yanked open the bag and flung the soul in. “You’re going to die soon,” he gasped, holding the bag
close to his chest. “And Jesus, why do the Fates need to know how to fight like that? That was scary. My God,
you’re scary.”
She straightened to her full height. “We learn to fight because not everyone follows the rules. You can’t take
that soul.”
“I did.”
“But…” She stared, and, he noticed, she wasn’t even breathing heavy. “You can’t. It’s impossible. You don’t
have all the properties of the full office of Death. You’re…”
“A replacement. Yeah. I get that. And guess what?” He jiggled the bag. “I can, and I did.”
She bit her lip in contemplation. “And I’m going to die?”
“Yeah. You’re going to die soon,” he said. “Or whatever it is that happens to special, original Incarnations. I
don’t know when. They won’t give me the tape that far ahead.”
She stared, and after a moment, she laughed. It disconcerted him, that laugh. It wobbled, like a child on a
stilts, a glass on the edge of a table about to fall over.
“It doesn’t matter. Tomorrow. A hundred years from now. But the clock winds down at last. Well. That
explains a lot. Thirty-thousand years,” she said. “It’s about time. I’m so tired.”
“You’re not upset?”
“No. Each Fate gives her own fate to a sister to hold. I thought Clotho had been looking at me funny for the
last decade or so.” Her fingers brushed over a pile of jaw bones. He wished one was his. “If I’m going to die,
then it means a fight is coming. I don’t know what’s going on, but we’re going to that council meeting right
now.”
“I want to go back to that room.”
“Absolutely not. And don’t try me, Death. Next time I won’t hold back. Now come on, we’re going to be late.”
She strode away, weaving through walls and tunnels towards the surface.
“That was holding back?”
She looked at him meaningfully over her shoulder and snapped her fingers. “Like a twig.”
Just as Death thought it would be impossible for the Fate to be any sexier than she was at that moment, and
that a kiss might potentially be within his reach—excluding the possibility of his almost certain termination—
two shadows dropped down in front of them.
The demons rose up from a crouch, tails lashing with eagerness.
“No council for you,” they hissed. “Termination.”
Moira didn’t hold back.
8. Flight Through the Catacombs
The screech reverberated through every one of Death’s bones. For good measure, Death stomped on its skull
one more time. The demon dissolved into the earth with a hot sizzle, leaving behind no soul, which was
unfortunate. Death would’ve liked to hold it in his hand and crush it to dust.
Moira swore, and he whirled. Seeing its companion defeated, the second demon chose escape. Moira flung
herself after it, with Death right behind both of them.
A litany of abuse echoed back at them. “Ugly Fate! She smells like fish guts in her mouth! Pansy Death!
Foolish Death!”
Its flight through the forgotten catacombs took them deeper—the bones were no longer human. The wet
earth and mildew smell was replaced by sulfur and the stench of rot. Moira jerked her arm left, and Death ran
without hesitation. In moments, they had reunited, two tunnels bringing the careening demon and its
pursuers to a single fork. Death got there first.
The demon licked its lips, stretched its jaws, and snapped them shut.
And was gone.
“Where—”
“The surface!” Moira grabbed his arm. “Hold tight. This might hurt.”
Death remembered reading once in a magazine about deep sea divers; he didn’t remember much, as it had
been National Geographic and he’d only picked it up for the pictures of the naked women in Guyana. But he
remembered one shot of a diver, a tiny body on the edge between nighttime-blue and ocean-blue, pressing
upwards. This is what it must feel like, he thought. To be squeezed and have no choice to but to go up.
Just as he wondered if it would hurt very much when his ribs cracked, the open sky exploded above them,
gray and bright.
Moira’s horse was just where she’d left it, standing in the street beside a light post. Only now, it had a demon
beneath one of its massive dinner-plate hooves.
The thing snarled and spit.
“Loathsome Fate! Her so ugly, no one wants her! Get her horse off me!” Claws raked the horse’s leg and
chest. The horse leaned down and casually chomped with giant yellow teeth on the demon’s head. It
screamed, flailing.
“It’s like a terrible red baby,” Death said. “Look at it.” He knelt down. “Does baby need a change? Hm? Does
baby want a—”
A bloody snaggletooth hit him in an ocular cavity and rattled out the bottom of his skull.
“We haven’t got time for this,” Moira said, pushing him aside. “Why did the Devil send you?”
“Stupid Death terminated.”
“Not yet, he isn’t.”
The demon stopped squirming and grinned. “He will be. And Fate too. Hag, hag, hag. Dead hag.”
Death punched the demon in its already-squashed nose.
From her robes, Moira drew silver scissors. She shoved the blades into the demon’s chest, and like its
brethren, it, too dissolved into the earth in a bubbling, steaming sludge. She wiped the scissors through a
hedge and replaced them in her robes.
“I don’t know why the Devil only sent two demons to stop us,” she said, reaching for her horse’s bridle, “but
we need to go, now.”
“Because,” a voice rumbled behind them, “if he sent a horde, it would attract attention. And we only needed
to slow you down a bit.”
They turned. Striding towards them, in his finest furs and boots, was a man so tall and blonde and broad-
shouldered that Death always found himself slumping in his magnificent presence:
War.
9. War is like that
“Erik,” Moira said.
“My dear.” He reached out a hand, turning over his calloused palm to stroke her cheek. She batted him away.
“Ah, don’t be like that. Of the two of you, you, at least, might be spared. And Moira, you know how well I’d
like that. Unnecessary killing is something I abhor, especially when that unnecessary death is of someone so
beautiful. Don’t you agree, Death?”
Death did not like the familiarity with which War spoke to the Fate at all. He stood up straight and opened his
mouth to say something virile and impressive to the mighty warrior.
“Save it, Erik,” Moira snapped. “We’re going to Council, and you can’t stop us.”
War sighed, taking off his helmet. “I’m sorry, my dear. But you should know that when I left, the vote was in
favor of termination.”
“Was it complete?”
“Not yet. But it will be.”
“Then we still have a chance.”
War plucked the red rose from his vest and raised it to his aquiline nose. He inhaled deeply, glanced at Moira,
and tossed it to the pavement. The toe of his boot ground the flower to pulp.
“Once upon a time, my dearest, divinest Fate, you refused my offer. Perhaps, if you had chosen me over…him,
then things would be different. I would not be serving eternal penitence twice: once, kneeling in humiliation
before Him and begging His forgiveness, and then again, watching you search through the eons for one, very
lost soul.” His fingertips casually stroked the hilt of his sword. “I will only offer once more, Moira. But know,
regardless of your answer, that this day holds nothing more for your pathetic, counterfeit Death.” War bared
his teeth, sharp and white. “His term is over.”
“Counterfeit? If you really believed that, Erik, you wouldn’t be here, would you?” Moira glanced at Death. “Get
on the horse. Now.”
“But I don’t understand,” Death said. “What offer? What’s going on?”
“I said, get on the horse! N—”
War’s iron helmet, as large as a pumpkin, smashed into the side of Moira’s face. She fell to the wet pavement,
and War turned on Death, his sword sliding from its sheath in a ringing scream. Moira’s horse reared,
bellowing with rage, and Death reached for a knotted hank of mane. Before he could pull himself up, War had
bolted around the waving hooves and struck Death between the shoulders.
His head on the ground, he thought he saw Moira move.
He thought.
And then he saw no more.
10. The Petty Thief
Parakeets fluttered and chirped, a blue and green tempest inside their wire cage. A box announced, “Paddle
Ball! Fun for Girls and Boys!” the toys haphazardly stacked within. The floor was brown, scuffed linoleum.
Aisles and aisles of cheap, household necessities and the merely frivolous stretched before him. And at the
back, a row of red-topped stools on gleaming chrome bases beckoned, waiting to be spun. Cheeseburgers.
He smelled cheeseburgers.
Death stood in the entrance to the Woolworth’s of his teen years, the place where he had honed first his
shoplifting skills and, later, picked his first pocket.
“Excuse me,” a woman said, pushing past in her tan, belted spring coat.
“Sorry,” Death said. Wait. Had she seen him? He look wildly around, finally catching himself in the security
mirror atop a wall.
No skull. Well, a skull, but it was covered with ruddy, pockmarked skin. No robes. His leather jacket, God, how
he had missed it. He grinned up at his seventeen year old self in all his spotty-faced, scrawny glory, complete
with—
“Hair. Oh my God, my hair.” He put a hand—a fully-fleshed hand—to his slicked-back black hair, and then to
his back pocket where, sure enough, a plastic blue comb awaited. He drew it carefully through his hair,
allowing a piece to fall in front. Very James Dean.
“This ain’t no beauty parlor. You gonna buy something or what?”
Barbara. Dear Barbara, cracking gum with her mouth wide open, horn-rim glasses nestled against her
massive bosom and held there by a chunky silver chain. Her own hair was gray and brown and piled atop her
head in a monument to Aqua Net. It never moved.
“Yeah. I’m looking for a present for my sister,” he said.
“Then get looking, and stop blocking the door.” She returned to her Tales of True Romance!, and Death walked
away.
He stopped at the end of an aisle. Glanced back at Barbara, who was reading and also keeping an eye on him.
The game was on.
What did he need? Nothing. Maybe a pack of Topps, if they had any Superman. But that wasn’t much of a
challenge.
He made his slow way down the aisles. He pretended to inspect a stuffed donkey, then coolly tucked it inside
his jacket. His sister, Mandy, would love it. She was nine, and she had a thing for Eeyore.
A pack of pencils. Sharpener for the pencils. Hey, maybe he’d be an artist. Looked like he was being given a
second chance. So sure, why not? That is, if the whole thief gig didn’t work out.
A small pad of unlined paper. The jacket was beginning to get a bit bulky.
“Leonard dafuckingvinci, that’s me,” he said under his breath.
And then his eyes lit on the birds. A parakeet, stuffed in his jacket? Could he get away with it? He almost
laughed at how thrilling it seemed.
He circled the cage, studying them. Watching how fast they moved, hopping from perch to perch. There were
two doors. Lean in. Act like you’re talking to them.
It was simpler than it should have been. A blue ’keet flapped and then quieted in his fist. He slipped it next to
the donkey.
Maybe he’d give it to Mandy, too. Maybe he’d let it go, once he was outside. He liked that idea better. She’d
be happy with the donkey, and anyway, things shouldn’t be in cages.
The birds all went silent.
He looked up.
Moira stood on the other side of the wire enclosure.
His heart leapt and then fell again.
It was all a dream. He wasn’t seventeen. He was dead.
“Christopher,” she said.
His breath caught at her mention of his name. The doors opened behind her, the sun flooding in and lighting
her hair on fire, strawberries and gold.
In trotted the beasts: great, slavering dogs, jaws opening as they spotted their prey and began to run.
“Moira!”
She stared at him as if she hadn’t heard.
The dogs bounded. Sprang.
“Moira!” The birds exploded in chaos within their cage. She spun, dogs snatching at her, bringing her down.
He ran, jacket opening and his stash falling to the ground, except for the parakeet, which burst out and
disappeared towards the ceiling in a mad dash of blue.
“Christopher!”
11. The Instrument of Fate
The taste of Paris: grit and muddy snow. A sewer rat chittered at him, tapping his cranium and peering into
his sinus cavity.
“I told you. All out. Beat it,” he mumbled.
The rat hopped up and down on his skull.
“I said—”
“Christopher!”
His head whipped around.
Moira.
Battling War. And by the looks of it, not winning. Moira’s horse lay on its side in the street, gore streaking its
hide and hooves. Death sprang to his feet, the rat slipping and clutching onto the cowl of his robe.
“Stop!”
The Incarnations paused, teeth bared, weapons raised: Moira’s scissors were nothing to War’s sword, its
length more than twice that of the Fate herself.
“I’ll get to you in a minute, boy,” War said. “Maybe less.”
He swung, Moira ducking as the massive blade missed her head by a centimeter.
“Get to the Council!” she shouted. “Now! Tell them—”
The flat of War’s sword cracked against her face, knocking her back. She stumbled to the ground, one hand
down for balance, her scissors clattering to a stop several feet away. The tardy heart in Death’s chest
bloomed, filling him with a cold, crimson anger. The trembling rat went still, narrowing its black eyes and
settling itself on Death’s shoulder.
There had been one instrument of Death’s office that he had been loath to touch.
One instrument that had seemed almost…decorative. Frighteningly unnecessary. He’d slid it beneath his bed
with the spider sacs and old comic books. And now, he knew what it was for.
He called it.
War raised the sword over his shoulder for the final blow. Moira lifted her head, pushing back damp, dark
honey tendrils of hair to look up at him with pity in her gray-green eyes.
“I’m sorry, Erik.”
“Too late, my dear,” he snarled.
“It is.”
War hesitated, glancing to where Death had last stood—pathetic, weak Death.
The scythe descended.
Two mortals, climbing up from the catacombs, paused. After a few moments, with nervous grins, they
conceded to one another they hadn’t heard anything, nothing at all. No sound that had carried through their
very bones.
It had been the sound of a god’s sword hitting the pavement.
~ * ~
Red seeped into the bottom of her robes. Her fingers traced sticky patterns across the horse’s shoulder.
“Go,” she said. “You need to get to Council.”
He knelt beside her. Put his hand by hers on the horse’s yet-warm neck.
“Who picks the mortals to be the successors?”
“We all do. We take turns.”
Death studied her profile: her small nose with freckles so fair they almost blended in, almost went unnoticed.
By some. And the faint lines by her mouth—the lines of someone who threw their head back when they
laughed, and did it often. Her hair, falling in uneven waves to obscure her cheeks. And he knew, just then,
that if he lifted her hair, he would find on the back of her neck another small constellation of freckles, and that
she liked to be kissed right there.
“Who picked me?”
She didn’t look at him. “I did.”
The horse’s pulse weakened, fluttered.
“He suffers,” he said.
“Yes.”
Death rubbed between two velvety ears before stroking down the strong, muscular curve of the horse’s neck.
The horse exhaled once more. There was nothing to pluck.
They sat in silence for long moments.
“You’ll find him again,” Death said, getting to his feet. “After all, you found me.”
Moira looked up, eyes dry. “I did.” She stood and took his hand. “And now it’s time to let the rest of them
know.”
They were gone, and Moira’s horse faded away, leaving the street empty but for the dull gleam of War’s
sword in the gutter. And after a minute, a demon skittered up from the catacombs and stole away again with
it in its scaly grasp.
12. The Doorman
Peter manned the door to the underground bar, the Tyrolean, in his old Russian coat with the chess pieces in
the pocket. When Death and Moira appeared across the street, he noted the lack of War, and the particular
presence of the scythe with what was most certainly not rust on its blade. Moving a piece from one pocket to
another, he said nothing when they approached. Moira nodded to the angel, but Death steadfastly ignored
him.
War’s absence was felt in everything at that moment, a confused stuttering among the mortal men whose
hearts were devoted to him and a settling comfort through the beasts and grass and winds. Peter knew it
would not last. He opened the door for the Incarnations, shut it again, and shooed away a little girl with
crossed eyes and a burning faith that would be her undoing. When she refused to budge, he reached in a
pocket and tossed her the moved piece: a red knight on a fearsome hound. He could carve another. She
tested it on her crooked teeth before setting off at a determined march.
The angel watched the sky and hoped that, inside, the boss wouldn’t be too angry at the loss of War. After
all, they really couldn’t afford to lose Death twice.
13. The Minutes
In the basement of the Tyrolean, they came to a heavy brocade curtain over a door. Death saw Moira pause,
consider her somewhat grisly attire, and he slung the scythe to a more comfortable position on his shoulder
and went ahead of her. Let them see the evidence.
The Devil stared at them briefly before touching the brim of his hat to Moira. “Well done,” he murmured. His
moustache smoothed with the tip of a long finger, he hid his smile behind a glass of bourbon. How interesting
things remained, despite the trudge of millennia.
Clothos began to stand, then sat again, beaming at her sister. Death remembered the thread; he searched
within and found that even in the dusty recesses of joints and old fractures, there remained no trace of his
former certainty of her demise.
He had saved her.
He would inform her of this directly, after his proverbial butt had been saved. He anticipated bounteous
thanks.
They crossed the floor and stood in front of a man with his head in his hand as he sat at a table, eyes closed.
Next to him, Chamuel droned on, hunched like a vulture over an immense tome and not pausing even as he
nudged the man with his elbow.
“Eh, what. Oh, Death.” He lifted his head and smiled, eyes brilliant blue. “How good it is to see you again. I
decided to suspend the voting, as it had been somehow neglected that we read the minutes of the last
meeting. Luckily, Chamuel had the ledger, and he’s been catching us up. Must remain official, you know.” He
winked. It was not a subtle wink.
The Devil pulled his hat over his eyes and sighed.
“Moira, my dear. Wonderful that you could join us. Have you tried this bourbon? Uriel got it somewhere, I
don’t know where, but it is positively sinful.” He chuckled. “Eh, my son?”
Drumming his fingers on the table, the Devil acknowledged the sinfulness of the liquor.
Moira did not try the bourbon. Neither did Death. He laid his scythe on the table.
“I have killed War.”
The subdued murmuring in the room paused, and all strained to hear the man’s response.
“You have not killed him, any more than you were killed. He will return to us.” The man touched the scythe,
and it was clean. Standing, slowly, He turned to Chamuel. “Have we reached the end of the minutes?”
Chamuel nodded, thumped the book shut, and shuffled to sit next to the Expiry, whose tail flicked restlessly.
He went to stand in the middle of the room. The expectant faces of angels, saints and Incarnations looked at
Him, looked at Death, and more than one took a long look at the scythe on the table.
“Before voting resumes, you should consider three things.” He held up a pudgy finger. “First, the evidence
suggests that this Incarnation holds the full properties of the office of Death, even those that are not
available to successors. For instance, the death knell rings within him, giving him the knowledge of the
potential death of every creature. Also, he may take those souls which even I have designated as prohibited.”
“What? What’s that mean?” the Expiry demanded.
Death reached in his bag and drew forth the soul he’d removed from the hidden room in the catacombs. It
babbled like a child, and he whispered to it that it would be all right.
He set it on the table before the Expiry. “I think you know where this should go.”
The Expiry glanced at Him, then carefully tucked the bit of soul in the pocket of his vest.
“I do,” he said, and nodded to Death respectfully.
“Also, this Incarnation has the ability to cause the death of any mortal creature he deems fit, not just the
human ones.” There was a murmur amongst the crowd. “This includes, at last count, a terrier dog, a donkey,
a ginger cat, and a black bear. Have I missed any, Death?”
Death ignored Moira’s stare, shuffling his feet. “There was that chimpanzee in that little zoo…”
“And a chimpanzee,” the man finished. “Second thing to consider before you vote, or for anyone wishing to
change their former vote: anyone who votes for the termination of this Incarnation will be banned from the
weekly card night for a period of not less than six hundred years, and in addition, all holiday requests will be
processed directly through me. I hear that Disneyworld in July is an especially wonderful time to visit.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” the Devil said, rolling his eyes.
The man brightened, raising His hands. “Shall we vote? Who votes to keep Death in his current capacity as,
well, Death?”
The Devil downed his bourbon, waved a flippant hand, and made his way to the curtain. Scourge, hunched
and pale, scurried after him, pulling back the curtain.
“I shall be at the game on Friday,” the Devil announced. “I hope to see all of our regular players there. Death,
congratulations.”
“The vote isn’t over,” he said.
“Yes, I believe it is.” He tipped his hat. “It’s good to have you back, old friend.” He disappeared through the
curtain, Scourge following only to appear a moment later, hand raised.
“Me. Er, I vote for Death. To keep him.” He left again.
When the voting concluded, all were, most unsurprisingly, in favor of Death continuing on.
“Excellent. Death is officially not terminated. You are all dismissed. Oh, Love, I think it is your turn to choose. I
expect your candidate for War to be before me tomorrow morning,” He said. As the celestial council filed out,
he turned to Death. “I knew Moira would sort you out. So pleased. Yes. So very pleased by this outcome.
You’ll be back on the job then, straight away, won’t you?”
Death hefted the scythe, weighing it in his hands. “Straight away,” he said.
The basement of the Tyrolean bar smelled like mildewed old garments. He was glad to leave it behind.
14. Straight Away
He didn’t see Moira again for some time. First, he found his way back to the hidden room in the catacombs. All
of the souls clamored for release, and he put each and every one in his bag. When the room was finally,
utterly silent, he left. The Expiry then put each and every bit of mirror in a velvet-lined box, and promised they
would reach their reward in timely fashion. Death said nothing this visit, even as he was handed the mass of
ticker tape that was his work.
After that, he dutifully found every scrap of misplaced tape in his house, and he began to catch up on his
backlog. He moved through the world from death to death, allowing no time to think of anything else.
When he laid the last bulging bag on the Expiry’s counter, the harried Incarnation said an actual “Thank you”
and gave Death, in return, a slip of paper that was not a list of names, times, and coordinates.
It said simply, “The beach.”
Death took his empty bag and left.
15. The Loneliest Beach on Earth
“I’ve been here four days, you know.”
Moira walked across the cold sand, her gown the white of diamonds. She sat next to him. “I thought you
deserved a break.”
“Apparently, I was on a thirty-thousand year break.”
She stared at the water. “It seemed like that.”
The moon began to rise, and the sand turned blue. Little crabs scuttled away from the waves. Death had
remembered many things in four days: that he had once stood on the land where Paris now sprawled like an
ageing and ageless madam, and he had been the one to dig until he found a place to hide things. It had
never been a place meant for souls, however. And he had once won an entire hillock of mirror shards in an
epic card game; he’d told the Expiry to send them all to heaven, knowing that there were a fair amount of
scoundrels and thieves and salesmen in the lot. The trouble those souls got up to on the other side of the
Gates had often brought him mirth.
He remembered that, once, he and War had been friends. His heart ached at the memories.
He remembered another thing, too. And as the moon caressed his bones—for the moon loves Death more
than any other thing on earth—he pushed his cowl back and let its adoration fill in his bones, giving flesh to
the empty spaces.
And then he kissed Moira.
But he had forgotten one thing, and Moira reminded him as she pushed him back in the sands and slipped a
leg over so she was astride him. All that long night on the beach, she reminded him of a great many things he
had forgotten, and some he only pretended to have forgotten. And when the moon, tired of watching over
the two lovers, began to drift out of sight, she walked naked into the sea and came out dripping with pearls.
He slipped one into his pocket, and they parted.
For once, Death did not mind getting back to work. In fact, he whistled for the next week. And when the
Friday night card game came around, he stepped into the room ready to play.
The Devil tilted his head. Death sat across and grinned. The game began again.
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