Page 49 of Dead Serious: Case 3 Mr Bruce Reyes
Death gives a little hum, his eyes intent as he watches me.
“You said something about bloodlines,” I muse. “Is Bruce connected to the portal or the actual bookshop?”
“Yes.”
“Yes?” I repeat, blinking in surprise that he actually answered a question. “Which is it? Yes to the portal? Or yes to the bookshop?”
“Yes.”
“Both?”
Death makes a small noise of frustration.
“This is ridiculous.” Tristan chews his lip as he watches Death pick up my untouched shot glass and down the contents. Suddenly, Tristan’s gaze narrows. “Maybe we’re going about this all wrong,” he mutters. “Death?”
Death refills his glass and sets the bottle down before glancing at Tris.
“You said you’ve always been around since the beginning of time?” He nods and Tristan continues. “Do you have a boss? Like, someone higher up than you? What I mean is, you keep telling us you’ve got rules you must follow that prevent you from helping us. Who set those rules and what happens if you break them?”
Maintaining eye contact with Tristan, Death lifts the full glass to his lips and tips his head back. I watch the line of his exposed throat as he swallows, and I wonder if he is actually capable of getting drunk or if he just likes the taste of tequila.
He sets the glass slowly back on the table. “It’s not as simple as that,” he finally says, his brow creasing. “I came into being eons ago. You think there was a god or a being that was powerful enough to create me? I emerged with the birth of the universe from Creation itself. I simply became, but I was not alone.”
“So, you just… poof.” Tristan mimes a little explosion with his hands, and I fight back a smile as Death stares at him flatly. “So let me get this straight. You just appeared, came into being or whatever, along with the universe. So where did the rules come from? I mean, who made them up?”
“You’re thinking too linear,” Death murmurs. “This isn’t Moses and his bloody tablets. No command was ever spoken, no words ever written, yet they thrum through my veins, through my very being, as old and immutable as the song of the universe itself.”
“I see, pre-programmed rules… gotcha.” Tristan tilts his head, seemingly fascinated, and I have to admit the two of them lost me at Moses. “What is your purpose?” Tristan asks.
“I bring balance,” Death says simply.
Tristan stares at him, his fingers tapping out a restless staccato on the tabletop, and I can see the gears in his head churning as he considers Death’s words. Funnily enough, it’s the same look he gets when he’s playing Sudoku.
“You bring balance,” he mutters. “Which means you must have an opposite… a counterpart.”
I stare at Tris, but his gaze is still locked on Death. “What?”
“I’m right, aren’t I?” Tris’s voice is soft and contemplative, and sometimes I forget that Tristan is smarter than almost anyone I know. “If you bring balance, then there must be another that brings the opposite… someone who brings chaos.”
Death pushes the glass away with a sigh.
“The storm,” I suddenly realise. Tristan diverts his attention to me, and I can feel Death watching me intently too. “You said the storm wasn’t natural. It doesn’t behave like an ordinary storm, and that’s what’s got the experts so baffled. It’s brought nothing but chaos and shows no sign of letting up.”
Tristan nods. “It must be part of all this.”
“And the bones,” I continue. “Do you remember how I said it looked like the ground had opened up and spit the bones out in a nice neat little package?”
Tristan’s mouth opens in a silent O, and he pauses for a second before turning back to Death. “You told me that if Bruce crossed over into the light and left the doorway unattended, it would mean chaos on earth,” he says in a rush. “In my dream, when we were at White’s in Mayfair, you said we had sixteen days from the moment Bruce’s bones were uncovered.” He swivels his attention back to me, his eyes bright as his words tumble over themselves. “Remember what they said on the news last night? There’s some very rare kind of eclipse that only happens a few times in a century and the next one is in ten days.”
“Okay.” I rub my forehead, trying to keep up with Tristan’s thoughts, which are tumbling over each other as his mouth tries to keep up with his brain. Shifting my bad leg, I wince inwardly and wish I had my painkillers with me, although it’s probably good that I don’t. I’m having enough trouble keeping up with Tristan without the pills making my brain sluggish.
“When Bruce took me to the bookshop at Christmas, the first time he showed me the doorway, the doorway appeared in shifts. He said it has to do with some sort of alignment. Well, an eclipse is an alignment of the Earth, sun, and moon. If those smaller alignments allowed the doorway to open up just enough to let souls through into the afterlife, what kind of doorway would open up when powered by an incredibly powerful and rare eclipse?”
“Fuck.” My brain finally catches up to Tristan’s. “Whatever is on the other side of that doorway wants out, and it’s going to use the eclipse to do that.”
“What if Death’s opposite… let’s call him Chaos for the sake of convenience, is trapped on the other side of that doorway?” Tristan says to me. “He can’t come through into our world, not completely. I get that. But what if the closer the days get to the eclipse, the weaker the veil between the worlds becomes? He might be able to let just enough of his power slip through, like a slow leak.”
“The storm?” I guess.