The Innocence of Death Read online

  Yolanda shifted in her chair and said nothing. I sighed.

  “Alright, fine. I suppose we’ll have to go make a visit to Life and ask her about Magnus,” I said. Yolanda licked her lips nervously.

  “We could…go talk to…” Yolanda struggled to come up with another person we could interview. We didn’t even have enough to know Magnus’ last name, only that he was Norwegian and had been eviscerated.

  “Face it,” I said, feeling a ball of nervousness in my stomach, “we’re going to have to talk to Life. She was the one who cared.”

  “I don’t like leaving Death’s realms. Except to visit Graveltoes. But there’s bad things out there,” Yolanda whispered. I, oddly enough, was very interested to see what was beyond my boss’ lands. The thought of having to explore made this whole murder situation far more bearable. So far upon arrival, I had been poked by unidentified creatures, talked to assassins who probably wouldn’t hesitate to kill me, and been handed a job I couldn’t understand, nor did I really want. The alternative, though, was much worse. And this was only my second day here. I wanted to see those things I had glimpsed outside the car’s windows on my trip here. I wanted to learn more about Elsewhere. The sooner I got this investigation over with, the sooner I could get on with my new life.

  But Yolanda was obviously scared. So, like the sympathetic boss I am, I nodded in understanding and made her help me anyways. “I’m afraid we’ll have to leave Death’s lands, though. The answers are out there, not in here. How do we get around? Is there a way to contact Ygg…Egg….the chauffeur?’

  “Yggdral works for Death,” Yolanda rubbed her foot over the floor, not meeting my eyes. “He won’t go anywhere unless its official. This is very…not official.”

  “And what does that mean?” I asked slowly. Yolanda frowned and looked studiously at the floor.

  “We’ll have to take…we’ll have to go by wyvern,” she said.

  “Uh… what?”

  “Wyvern. They’re trained to carry up to seven people,” Yolanda grumbled. “They’re the most reliable way of transportation if you don’t have a car and you don’t have magic.”

  I knew she was unhappy. Everything I had seen thus far indicated that I should listen to Yolanda, that her instincts and fears were accurate, but I couldn’t help myself. I pushed my glasses up my nose and grinned.

  —

  It became apparent almost as soon as we got to the wyvern station why Yolanda hated it. The wyvern was large, scaly, and with many pointy bits. It had massive claws on its back feet and its wings were tipped in claws that were even larger, like they were compensating for only having one set of legs. Their tails, too, were tipped in spikes that looked like they would impale you faster than blinking. A set of wooden stairs was wheeled over to the side of the wyvern. It flushed a deep red then settled back into the sort of greyish blue that I had first seen. I looked up at the massive box strapped to the creature’s back and discovered a few problems. First, the seats were made for people of relatively normal size. Yolanda was quite a bit bigger than that. But, more than that, we would be sitting in the open air, barely strapped in. The wyvern wasn’t like a bus, either. It moved. It was extremely disconcerting to be jostled up and down or side to side every time the wyvern shifted.

  They were fascinating creatures, though. I climbed up the steps and sat in the seat next to Yolanda, peering over the side of the box at the ground some many feet below. “Are all dragons this big?” I asked. I must have said it too loudly, because nearly everyone froze and turned their heads to look at me.

  “Cal,” Yolanda said quietly, tying the leather straps as tightly as they would go. “Wyverns and dragons are not the same thing. Wyverns have two legs and are a lot more, ah, bestial in nature. Dragons are magically gifted and would slaughter you alive—slowly—for comparing them to wyverns.”

  “Why? They’re just animals,” I said. I shrugged, “Okay, they’re really cool, magical animals, but still.”

  Yolanda bared her teeth in what was closest to a grimace. “Don’t tell any dragon that. Ever.”

  “Indeed,” a voice said. A person sitting in front of us turned and looked at me with thinly disguised contempt. He was pasty white with dark hair and eyes shadowed by an overly large fedora. He wore a white suit, which somehow managed to clash with his skin, and gloves on his hands. In fact, every part of him except his face was covered by something, and that was set in shadow. And, if that weren’t obvious enough, when he smiled at my ignorance, there were fangs showing. I didn’t bother asking Yolanda any questions, deciding it might be better to keep my ignorance about, well, everything to myself. I figured I’d wait and see what happened. We wouldn’t want me reduced to a pile of dust because I’d mistaken a goblin or something for a vampire.

  “Dragons are some of the most intelligent beings known in Elsewhere,” the man continued in a smooth drawl. It was probably meant to be superior or intimidating or something, but I did not much notice. “They only resemble wyverns in looks. They’re certainly not related.”

  “Thanks for the tip,” I said, doing my best to maintain my polite smile. These people had nothing on Old Lady Harcourt, I thought. She would have this vampire in a puddle of apology within thirty seconds.

  “You must be new to be so stupid,” the man said. “Or were you brought along for the troll’s snack?”

  “Actually, I’m the new marketing and publicity agent for Death,” I said cheerfully. I held out my hand. “Cal Thorpe. And this is my assistant, Yolanda.”

  For some strange reason, this introduction caught the man’s attention. He perked up and took my hand eagerly. “A pleasure, Cal. May I call you Cal? Oh, wonderful! I’m Prince Thaddeus Bartholomew Yannick Wentworth, of the House Vampyr. You’re a marketing agent, you say?”

  “I am,” I nodded. “I deal with pretty much anything my clients need. Public relations, image boosting, social media marketing and branding, general marketing campaigns. I can find the best way to make a person look fantastic at events. I’ve done poster design and advertisements and…well, I mean that’s what I used to do. It’s a bit different, here. I’m not doing much marketing at the moment. I’m still settling in…”

  I didn’t want to get too involved in my current problems. Who knew what the people in Elsewhere would say when they learned of what had happened? I didn’t even know if this sort of thing was normal. Did people know about the broken marriage of Life and Death? Did people care about supernatural occurrences that were far from what I imagined were usual? I realised, just then, how much research I had to do. It was like starting my entire understanding of the world from scratch.

  “That’s such a shame,” Prince Thaddeus said. “If you ever want to get back into marketing, then please let me know.”

  “Er, okay?” I said, slightly confused. Yolanda said nothing, which was either a sign that I should stop talking or a sign that I was doing something completely harmless.

  “It’s so difficult to get a good idea of who we are when you can’t even take a picture of us! No social media updates, except boring text. And who wants to read that when they could look at a picture? And not to mention that we can’t even look in mirrors to figure out if what we’re wearing looks good on us. We have to rely on everyone else to tell us,” Thaddeus complained, waving his hands dramatically.

  I exchanged a look with Yolanda, who shrugged.

  “There was this one time that my aunt Margery had to be at a Faerie Solstice ball and ended up the butt of everyone’s jokes. Her brother—not my father—had decided to tell her that she looked wonderful in a bright yellow monstrosity. It was horrible.”

  “I imagine,” I said. I must have looked quite puzzled, because Prince Thaddeus threw back his head and started laughing. I noticed that when he did, not even a little bit of his skin touched the sunlight. That was quite the hat.

  “You must be confused,” he said, purring like a cat. “But the fact is, most of the mortal stories have it wrong. Yes, we’re pu
t off by garlic and wooden stakes and crosses and all that, but we’re also incredibly vain. It’s a by-product of not being able to see what you look like in a world of beautiful things. We want to be beautiful as well. So people like you—who deal with image and perception—are like jewels to us.”

  “That is both gratifying and terrifying,” I said with my best cheerful smile. Yolanda nudged me with her elbow. I winced and glared at her. She widened her eyes, probably as a warning.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Thaddeus said. “We don’t kill people like you. You’re too valuable.”

  I was about to say something more, expressing relief, when Yolanda cut in, her voice sharp, “But you can enthral them.”

  I recoiled and looked up at my assistant in shock. “Enthral?”

  “They used to require a taste of your blood,” Yolanda spat, “but now it is easy enough to mesmerise with the voice. A whisper here, a word in the ear there and your free will goes away.”

  Thaddeus looked like he was about to say something when the wyvern lurched. I surged back against the seat, my head jerking. No sooner than I had gotten a breath in and the wyvern lurched again. Two flaps of the enormous wings out to either side and we were airborne. The wind, thankfully, became too loud for any real conversation, not to mention I had to focus on catching my breath.

  Yolanda did lean over and shout something in my ear, “Try not to get eaten! Death would be very unhappy.”

  Ah, yes, well.

  After about thirty seconds, I discovered another reason why Yolanda hated wyvern-travel. It was appalling. Unlike an airplane, the ride was not smooth at all. You jerked up whenever the creature flapped and back down on the upstroke. The leather straps across my hips felt frighteningly insecure in holding me in place. I couldn’t hear anything and I’m fairly certain that if I opened my mouth, a bug would fly in at the wrong moment. If there were even bugs in the Elsewhere.

  That was a cheering thought, which made me smile for much of the remainder of the trip.

  Yolanda sat next to me with her hand pressed firmly over her mouth and looking far more green than she normally did. I really hoped she wasn’t going to be sick.

  Finally, we landed. I lurched from the seat as quickly as I could, staggered down the wooden steps, and fell to the ground with all the grace of a dying cat. Yolanda, at least, wasn’t any more graceful. Thaddeus and the other passengers, however, descended with immortal elegance. The vampire prince helped me to my feet.

  “I promise not to enthral you,” he said, holding up his hands in innocence. “You work for far to powerful a being to risk it. Just…”

  “Just what?” I gurgled, feeling my own stomach settle back into place.

  “If you don’t mind taking on a few more clients…or if you have any tips?”

  I will say this: the poor vampire looked desperate. And given the fact that his suit clashed with his very skin and his hair sported an unusual shape, even under the hat, I couldn’t blame him. I sighed and looked around, making sure Yolanda wasn’t going to sneak up on me. She was still a ways off, resting her head against a tree. “Alright. Fine. I will say this: have you considered hiring an artist?”

  “An artist?” Thaddeus looked shocked.

  “Sure. Digital technology lets some artists paint photo-realistic images. You get enough of them and you could create a whole slew of portraits. It wouldn’t be as fast as a picture, but even a five-minute sketch would be something.”

  Thaddeus widened his eyes and grinned, showing off those fangs again. I took a step back. He shook my hand vigorously and marched away, looking like I had handed him a gold medal. A moment later and he winked out of existence. I cleaned the lenses of my glasses and looked again, but my eyes had not deceived me. The vampire was gone.

  Yolanda reached me at last, scowling in distaste at the wyvern. “Welcome to the Land of the Living,” she grumbled, waving an arm.

  I looked around and whistled in appreciation. It was almost the mirror image of Death’s lands, but where everything there was grey and silver and white and black, here there was colour everywhere. The leaves on the trees sported a more vibrant array of greens than anything I had ever seen. The sky was intensely blue and everywhere I looked, life thrived. Birds sang. Deer grazed on the grass next to the resting wyvern, completely unconcerned by its presence. I was fairly certain I saw people dressed in green and brown flitting through the trees.

  “Wow,” I said. “It’s—”

  “Saturated,” Yolanda said in distaste. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go find the palace.”

  I put my hands in my pockets, kicked my feet over the blades of grass and happily followed my angry assistant to go find the Halls of Life.

  The house was even more grand than Death’s manor, which would have seemed impossible had I not witnessed it firsthand. There were turrets and enormous stained glass windows and, except for the fact that it was too modern, I would have called it a castle. Or, as Yolanda had said, a palace.

  Inside, there were too many people hanging about in various stages of partying for me to notice much of the decor. I saw small people with bird wings laughing together by a fountain pouring out champagne. Yolanda sniffed and said, “Cherubs. All drunk.”

  There were vampires dancing together in a candle-lit room. I only knew them as vampires because they were dressed extravagantly and had absolutely no sense of fashion. That, and I thought I caught a glimpse of Prince Thaddeus whispering excitedly with a short, squat woman. Then there were beings of extreme grace in various colours—pale white, green, brown, blue—and an aura of power about them that I studiously avoided. There were elves with their pointed ears and cat-slanted eyes. I even saw a being that looked very similar to Graveltoes, if he had been twice as tall.

  Everyone was either laughing or drinking or dancing. There were musicians playing and games going on. The music style changed as you went from room to room, leaping through jazz to disco to country. My ears started pounding by the time we made it through the front half of the palatial house. I was handed a drink by a laughing woman with curling goat’s horns, the smile on her face too broad to be natural. I saw people sleeping happily on couches and others carrying plates of food. The entire house was one long, never-ending party, I discovered. People coming and going as they chose. It was full of life.

  And it was too loud.

  Yolanda and I managed to snag a haggard looking footman to take us to Life, and were directed to a long gallery at the back of the house, well away from the rooms of partying people. As soon as the doors closed behind us the sounds from the rest of the house faded away completely. The long hallway was framed by tall windows on one side and portraits on the other. A strip of plush, bright red carpet, muffled what little sound did slip into the hall. The gallery was lit only by whatever sun streamed through the windows, though that was enough to feel bright and energetic. The light fell upon the portraits, done in a number of styles. I looked at one of them and blinked in surprise.

  It was of a human.

  She was beautiful, in a perfectly ordinary sort of way. Her hair was bright, vibrant red and she wore clothing that was probably early Native American. Next to her picture was one of a man wearing the clothes I would attribute to early Scottish. And another, next to his. All the way down the gallery, enormous pictures covered the walls, all of humans.

  Frankly, it was a little creepy.

  Yolanda and I found Life standing before the last portrait in the gallery, next to a door gilded with gold leaf. She stood there with a quiet fury radiating out, her arms wrapped around her and her very breath making the air crackle.

  “So he sent you, then,” Life hissed, not turning her attention away from the picture for a moment. I risked stepping a few inches forwards to get a good look. The picture was of a man in modern dress: jeans and a fisherman’s sweater. He had blonde hair, green eyes and the look of someone who could get into trouble just by smiling. A trickster, if ever there was one.

  “Is thi
s…?” I asked.

  “Magnus,” Life said, her voice sharpening over the second syllable. “My beloved champion.”

  “Champion?” I frowned. He looked more like a boater to me. Maybe he had some sort of hidden martial arts talent.

  Life curled her lip and deigned to glance in my direction. I immediately wished she hadn’t. Her gaze flattened me, literally. I fell to the ground and struggled to breathe, to move. Yolanda let out a strangled sound and I could see her also struggling against some invisible force out of the corner of my eye. After half a minute or so, Life clicked her tongue and shook her head. The pressure lessened enough to allow me a gasping breath.

  I coughed and spluttered my way into standing and moved quickly to go stand by Yolanda. It seemed safer to be far away from Life.

  “You wouldn’t know what it is to be my warrior, my champion,” Life sneered. “Not when you gave up so easily on your own life. Don’t you know most people survive a single bullet wound? And it was on your right side. You would have been rushed to the hospital. Who knows, you might have lived. But you chose instead to give up.”

  “Uh, what? How do you know about—”

  “Just as my husband,” Life spat the word, “knows when people die, or are near to dying, so do I know when people give up on me. On life. My warriors, though, fight for it with every last breath in their body. They want to experience the world. They want to live with their entire soul. They are my favoured ones.”

  “So you give them an unfair advantage?” That just seemed like cheating to me. “Give them what they want?”

  Life tilted back her head and let out a single bark of laughter. “You are ignorant if you think that it is in my nature to do such a thing. Don’t you know Life isn’t fair? That when something bad happens, people have to pick themselves up and say ‘that’s Life?’ Life is a cruel mistress. But Life is worth pursuing. And my warriors, no matter how cruel or unfair or wrong I may be, woo me anyways. And I love them for it.”