I look down and notice that, not too far below, there are Stirrers with machine guns. One of them points up at me. I hear a distant crack, crack, cracking and the wood near my feet explodes. I get out of the way, quick smart.
Even more worrying is the helicopter racing over the city toward this branch.
I don't know how long I've got, but I can hear the chopper drawing nearer. It's a peculiar looking thing, with huge, flat tear-shaped blades that look as though they're made of brass. But the Stirrers in its cockpit are grim- and melty-faced and all of them are carrying guns-old AK-47s. Morrigan's ambitions are huge, but he's still obviously working on a budget. One of the chopper crew points in my direction.
"That can't be good," Wal says, less than helpfully.
All I can do is try and climb faster.
The wind is picking up: salt driven on the air. A storm rushes along the surface of the sea, pelting toward the city. I grin into the wind, feeling somehow recharged by it. Out there beyond the edge of the city the great dark sea is crashing against the shore. Even here things rage and swell and live a kind of life, and my cares fall away from me all at once.
I'm wearing that smile on my face when I see her, but it doesn't last.
The One Tree has bound itself around her with rough fingers of bark. Lissa's eyes are milky with death. There is no recognition there. I might already be too late.
One of her fingers wiggles.
I touch it, and feel the slightest warmth, just the barest hint of life.
I don't want to be here and, above all, I don't want her to be here. If I could tear down the Underworld I would. But I don't have that power, just my love and my will. I'm terrified of failing, I'm terrified of succeeding. The only thing I don't doubt are my feelings for her.
The branch fights me all the way. It grows thorns. It snaps at my fingers with little teeth. I bleed pulling the bark off her, and maybe that's what does it, because the tree gives her up at last. I lay her gently onto the branch.
I touch her face. There's a flat warmth to her flesh that is almost worse than the cold I was expecting. Her eyes are dull, barely green at all, and nowhere near the startling, quick to fire color that I remember.
I hold her in my arms. She is still. I can't feel any more warmth. I lower my lips to hers and a force, a presence, a fire passes through me in a brief, agonizing flash. The tree shakes. Something howls, the light dims and I get a vague sense that the whole Underworld has paused. Even the storm seems to be waiting.
Then Lissa coughs and shudders. Her eyes widen. "Steven?"
"Lissa." My darling Lissa.
Her face wrinkles. "Steven, this isn't some sort of cruel joke, is it?"
"It better not be." I'm grinning again, a smile so wide that it hurts. My hand rests on her cheek; her skin is warming. And her eyes, they're no longer as flat, as lifeless. Shit, of course that could just be wishful thinking-that's gotten me here as much as anything else, even if Wal doesn't believe it.
"So how do we do this?" I ask her, and she frowns.
"Do what?"
"I'm taking you back."
"There's no… You can't. Not an Orpheus Maneuver," Lissa says. "You'll get yourself killed."
"That's been on the cards for about a week now," I say.
"No, you have to leave me here. You can't."
"Another bloody optimist," Wal says. "How do you two get out of bed in the morning?"
Lissa's eyes regain some of their gleam. "Who's your little friend?" she asks.
"Little friend!" Wal snorts. "This woman lacks sensitivity. Throw her back, Steve. There's more fish in the sea."
"Hmm, I don't like him either," Lissa says. "He's much better as a tatt."
Introductions are quickly made above the increasingly vocal wind. The dark clouds bunching up near the horizon are sliding toward us fast.
"I'm getting you out of here," I say.
"But the thing is that Orpheus Maneuvers always fail."
"Paradigm shift," I say, then kiss her.
She kisses me back. Her flesh warms, then burns. I feel her excitement. Her hands are getting busy at the back of my head, pulling me in closer, and I'm holding her face. When we finally pull away she looks into my eyes.
"I love you, Steven. Find me," she says.
There is a sudden blinding brightness. I'm on the One Tree alone. Lissa's gone. I'm not sure where, the Deepest Dark or back to the land of the living. I stand there looking out at the Underworld, and stare at all those bodies closest to me, wrapped in tree. Most of them are Pomps. The nearest one is Don.
"How about a kiss then," he says and grins lasciviously.
I roll my eyes.
"Good to see you, de Selby," he says, though he's already slipping into that post-caring dead state. "Morrigan. Did he send you here?"
"No, Mr. D, after he died. Morrigan tried though, and he's going to pay."
"You make sure he does. I'd just paid off the place in Bulimba and Sam had moved in. Not bad, eh? I spent my childhood in a bloody caravan in Caboolture, and there I was with a classy lady like Sam. She's still alive, isn't she?"
"Yeah, I haven't felt her here."
"Good."
"He'll pay, I promise." I feel that sense of urgency winding up in me again. I need to find Lissa again. And then we'll make Morrigan pay for what he's done.
"Good on you, kid," he says. "Now get going, there isn't much time."
There are cries in the distance. Stirrers. I walk to the edge of the tree. Peering over it, I can see dozens of them rushing up the stairs. Bodies tumble everywhere as the Stirrers push them out of the way.
"I'm not sure how I get out of here."
"There's really only one way," Derek says. He's standing behind me. The tree has yet to take him. "Make sure you get Morrigan." The bastard has his hand in the small of my back. He hardly has to push at all.
I tumble off the tree. There are cries, I hear gunshots, but they can't hurt me now. I'm moving too fast. I spin in slow circles as the ground rushes up. It's terrifying, my stomach is a dozen flips behind me, and I think it's so unfair that, even here, my body holds on tight to vertigo.
"Sorry," Wal says, "sometimes this doesn't work."
"Now you tell me."
The ground beneath me opens its great earthy maw and I'm enveloped in loamy darkness, and then I'm out, and once more in the whispering Deepest Dark.
Lissa's soul is a brilliance in the dark. It coruscates, and I recognize it immediately with a certainty that only years of pomping, and true love, can provide. Oh, how I love her. She's my Lissa, and I'd go through Hell a thousand, thousand times to find her. And if I lost her I would do it again.
I reach for her soul and it bites me, bites and scratches in a way that no light should. I yowl into the void, but I hold on. The soul is chaos in brilliant form. It is all that is love and hate, it is all that is passion and hopelessness, and madness. It is so definitely madness. But so is what I'm doing.
I am holding her essence.
I bring it to my chest and Lissa's soul passes through me. It's a fierce liquid pain, and one I've never known before, but there's also a rightness to it and an intimacy that goes far deeper than what we shared when we made love. It spreads through my flesh, seeps into my bones.
A Pomp is a gateway, a conduit, and that doorway can extend back to the living world. I don't fight it, just let it happen. Until it's over.
At last, I release my breath.
She's gone. Again. I look up into the sky, where all the souls are flickering like stars, shining and waiting, waiting perhaps for the love that is life to call them back again. And I realize that this is what we're fighting for, this aching brilliance. This is what the Stirrers want to destroy.
And suddenly I'm scared, because it seems so fragile. I felt the essence of Lissa, held it in my hands, though already the clear memory of it is fading. My flesh cannot hold it, shouldn't hold it. Life is longing, it isn't certainty. That is what is most wonderful, and awful, about it.
I take a deep breath in the cold. It's time I went home. Time I faced Morrigan.