All That Lives Must Die (61 page)

It rolled and bounced and spun up on one corner like a top.

Eliot leaned forward, his gazed fixed upon the die.

Sealiah, too, stared at it.

The spinning cube gyrated back and froth.

Dots of sweat appeared on the Queen’s brow. Eliot’s hands clenched and whitened.

The die tumbled, popped, and skittered to a halt. . . .

. . . Six crows.

Even.

Eliot exhaled. He’d won.

Louis shrugged off the chains and gag and stretched. “Well rolled, my boy. A pleasure to see you.” He smiled at Fiona. “Thank you, too, my dear.”

Sealiah seemed pleased. And why shouldn’t she? Even losing she had Fiona’s brother and father to fight in her war.

“You can go,” Eliot whispered to Fiona. “This doesn’t have to be your fight anymore.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she told him.

Eliot was being so magnanimous and noble (and that positively irked her). There was no way she could just walk out on him. But there was no way she was fighting for the Queen of Poppies, either.

Louis rubbed his hands. “Before we go any further,” he said. “I insist that if my son and I are to fight, it be as your
Dux Bellorum
with full honors and rights.”

“Ducks Bell—what?” Eliot asked Fiona.

“Latin maybe?” she whispered. “Duke of war?”

She was pretty good with foreign languages, but this was a new one on her.
64

Sealiah looked at Louis. “If you have something to fight
for
, I suppose you might actually risk your pretty skin. And since there will be much of the Hysterical Kingdom to divide should we win . . . I would throw you a scrap.”

He bowed as deep as possible without taking his eyes off of her. “Your wisdom is exceeded only by your beauty.”

Sealiah scoffed, drew one of her curved daggers, and pricked her thumb. She went to Louis and smeared his forehead with the shape of a little star. “By the bond of blood and war so joined,” she murmured, and lingered close to his face a moment.

She withdrew.

Louis beckoned to Eliot and he came and got the same treatment.

Louis then turned to Fiona. “Come my daughter, join us, and fight by our side.” He opened his arms as if he wanted to embrace her.

Fiona had often dreamed of a moment of reconciliation with her father. Her forgiving him. Him accepting her. It was something she’d
never
get from Audrey.

But it couldn’t happen like this . . . in Hell. Right in the middle of a war.

Fiona had to decide, though. Leave or stay. Fight or not. Get drawn into a war that was none of her business, or just walk away and go back to school where she belonged.

She took a step toward them.

There was a crack. The earth rumbled. The tower shook and skulls rained down.

The floor split, caved in, and from tunnels below—the shades of damnation poured forth.

64
.
Dux
is Latin for “leader.” The earliest usage of
Dux Bellorum
appears in the literatures of King Arthur, where he is described as the “dux of battles” among the kings of the Romano-Britons in their wars against the Anglo-Saxons. The military title survived until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 (although, the Italian Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, used the title of
Dux
[
Duce
in Italian]). The term also rarely appears among the Infernals and Fairies, most notable was the Green Knight, the
Dux Bellorum
of the Fey.
War Immortalus
, Benjamin Ma, Paxington Institute Press LLC, San Francisco.

               74               

UNDERLYING DARKNESS

Fiona fell back, knocked over by an emerging serpent the size of a bus.

Her adrenaline surged. Worries and thoughts of Infernal politics and family vanished as the snake’s scales flashed before her eyes: jet black, mirror smooth, rippling muscle.

The snake circled, its body uncoiling from the tunnel below.

Fiona jumped to her feet, her blood pounding and her chain once more in her hands. There was no time to be afraid.

The snake hissed and struck.

Fiona held her chain before her—severed fang and sinew and flesh.

The serpent’s head tumbled from its body. Venom and black blood pooled at her feet.

Shadow creatures wormed from the earth and fought Sealiah’s knights everywhere in the enormous chamber. There were snakes, lizards, and crabs—part flesh and part shade. They tore and bit, and in turn, were shot and hacked by the knights.

Like the shadows Fiona and Eliot had fought in the alley by Paxington.

Not quite. These weren’t changing shape . . . and they felt solid. Real. More dangerous.

Eliot held Lady Dawn and blasted a giant scorpion that squeezed out from between the rocks (although he just blasted it into a bazillion
tiny
black scorpions).

Soldiers crawled from the cracks in the tower’s foundation as well. These damned souls had been stitched together with parts missing, or extra parts added, or blades riveted in place of hands. Robert pummeled two headless patchwork soldiers wielding obsidian knives.

Part of Fiona’s mind rebelled. This was every nightmare she’d had come to life.

An overgrown black mantis that could’ve eaten a horse lunged at her—she whirled her chain—and it splattered into a mass of chitin and ichor.

So gross.

And so much for
deciding
if she was going to fight this fight.

The still-thinking part of her mind, though, thought this was like gym class: the tension . . . the ever-present danger . . . the urge to fight or run and not even think.

She knew what to do. She
had to
cool down and assess the tactical situation.

A thrall of Sealiah’s knights encircled their Queen and leveled rifle lances at a horde of onrushing men. There were thunder and flashes and smoke—and the shadow soldiers were blasted into bits . . . but still they crawled forward.

Robert struggled and grappled with a black tiger.

Eliot strummed Lady Dawn and the air rippled; the light from the nearby glowing mushrooms on the walls dazzled to magnesium brilliance.

The cat withered in the light—and Robert snapped its neck.

Fiona moved toward them to help.

But the cracks in the floor between her and them widened.

A reptile hand pushed aside massive stones . . . with claws as big as scythe blades.

A limb thrust through, and then a smooth lizard head emerged from the earth—hissing and snapping; it devoured five knights with one bite.

This dragon pulled its hindquarters free and its tail whipped about, crushing everything in its wake, impacting the tower wall, and blasting skulls and stones and metal supports—making a hole to the outside.

Through it Fiona glimpsed flashes and motion. The battle wasn’t just in here.

Queen Sealiah advanced on the great beast, and as she did, she grew talons and fangs, and flowers sprouted in her footsteps. She was as pale as the dragon was ebon. She drew her sword, its tip broken and jagged and dripping poison.

Fiona
had
seen that sword. Her father had skewered Beelzebub with it.

The dragon slashed at Sealiah; she stabbed its claw.

The beast cried out and the limb went lame. It hobbled and snapped at her.

Sealiah punched it in the snout.

The dragon had scraped her arm, however, and came away with her blood on its teeth. It reared back and roared. The veins in its neck bulged, turning a nacreous green with poison.

Sealiah laughed as the creature thrashed and fell . . . shivered, and became still.

But her laughter died as she saw three
more
dragons push forth from the fissures.

How many more of these things were there? Fiona had seen hundreds of these shadows in the alley near Paxington. If that many of these now more-solid shadows caught them in here . . . she and Eliot and Robert would get slaughtered.

Skulls and stones fell from the top of the tower and shattered on the floor.

Or they’d be buried alive.

“Outside!” Fiona shouted to Eliot, and pointed at the breach in the wall.

Eliot and Robert and Mr. Welmann moved toward the hole. Eliot hesitated, looking back at her, but Mr. Welmann hustled him through.

Sealiah and Jezebel lingered, though, fighting on.

And Louis? Her father was nowhere to be seen among the knights battling hand to hand, slashing with swords, or hacking with lances . . . and in turn, being bitten, crushed, and stung to death by the things boiling from the earth.

This was a losing battle.

They had to regroup and get some maneuvering room.

Fiona felt cold and her feet went numb. Should she stay and look for Louis? He wasn’t even armed. Could he survive this carnage?

Eliot, Robert, and Mr. Welmann, however, were already outside—and that decided it. She’d stick with her brother.

She pushed soldiers out of her way, swung her chain, cleared a path, and jumped through the hole in the tower wall.

It was
worse
out here.

Fissures radiated from the tower of bone across the mesa. From them it looked like every shadow creature in Mephistopheles’ army pushed through into the melee. The ten thousand knights and soldiers camped in the castles’ inner courtyard had expected an attack from the outside, not from within their own walls . . . and they’d been caught unawares.

Thousands of men lay torn to pieces on the flagstones. Officers shouted orders—but few soldiers had the wits to listen as giant centipedes, and oily protozoa, and legions of patchwork men slithered from the earth and swept through their ranks.

Sealiah and Jezebel emerged behind Fiona.

“We must hurry,” Sealiah said. “My knights in the Tower Grave pay for our escape. They will not last long.”

The Queen of Poppies sounded irritated, as if those men dying for her were letting her down by
merely
getting eaten alive while she made small talk.

Fiona was about to tell the queen that there was no “we” to hurry, and to also ask her what the heck she was going to “hurry” up and do against a force of this size—when she heard Eliot.

“Fiona!” Eliot shouted, and waved to her to join him.

Eliot and Robert and Mr. Welmann had cleared a patch of solid ground by the far wall.

Louis was there, too. He leaned against the wall, brooding as he watched the slaughter . . . or maybe he was bored; it was hard to tell.

Fiona ran to them. Sealiah and Jezebel trailed behind her.

“This is where we shall make our stand against the Droogan-dors,” Sealiah declared. She looked absolutely majestic, a queen defending the last of her land.

“Dad,” Fiona said. “Grab a sword—some weapon. Do
something
!”

Louis smiled. “I am using my deadliest weapon, daughter.” He tapped the side if his head.
“I
am thinking. As you should be if you care at all about your pretty head.”

“Form a circle about me,” Sealiah ordered. “I shall summon my power.”

“I don’t think so,” Fiona told Her Regalness. “We’re not going to be your body shields. Your strategy of brute force verse brute force hasn’t worked so great against Mephistopheles thus far. It’s probably not going to work now.”

The Queen gave Fiona a look that could have melted tungsten.

Fiona shrugged it off. If dirty looks, divine or diabolical, could have killed her, she would have been stone dead years ago from Audrey’s withering gazes.

One canon on the wall had been turned—it blasted down in the courtyard—and destroyed as many knights as shadow creatures.

Fiona cringed. “It’s like the battle of Ultima Thule,” she explained to the Queen. “Lots of inferior forces fighting a handful of superior ones—that’s you.” That last comment seemed to mollify Sealiah. “Only this time, there are too many opponents, and more coming every second.”

The answer of what to do came to Fiona. Not the
how
of it, but
what
had to be done.

“We’ve got to seal their tunnels.”

“They must have been digging through solid rock for days,” Jezebel said. “Started beyond our outer defenses at the river.”

“The entire plateau is riddled then,” Sealiah replied. “With our power diminished, they cannot be sealed in time.”

Eliot stepped forward. “I can do it, I think.” He touched Lady Dawn and the ground trembled.

Sealiah looked at her brother and ate him up with her savage eyes. “My Dux Bellorum.”

“An excellent idea.” Louis set a hand on Eliot’s shoulder. The smile on his face, however, dried up as he took a long look at the Lady Dawn guitar. “What have you done to my violin?” he said, horrified.

“Later—” Eliot shrugged off Louis’s touch. “And she’s
mine
now. You gave her to me, remember?”

Louis narrowed his eyes and continued to stare at the instrument, looking as if he’d been betrayed by it.

“Sure, you can collapse those tunnels,” Fiona whispered to Eliot, “but can you do it
without
bringing down the entire mesa and killing us, too?” Fiona had seen Eliot’s power unleashed firsthand: He’d leveled downtown Costa Esmeralda.

Eliot pursed his lips, thinking. “I just need to concentrate.”

She gave his arm a squeeze. This was prohibited by their mutually agreed on “never touch each other” rule, but surrounded, about to be overwhelmed by bloodthirsty shadows, in the middle of Hell—it seemed like the right thing.

Eliot gave her an awkward smile.

“Give him some room,” Sealiah commanded. “Let nothing distract him.”

They spread out to defend Eliot.

And he played.

At first, even though Eliot’s fingers strummed and the strings blurred, Fiona didn’t hear a thing over the clash of steel and shouts and roars in the courtyard . . . but she did
feel
something. It started in her toes, a tingle that traveled through the bones in her legs and into her stomach, and grew into a rumble that made her teeth buzz.

Dust rose into the air.

Three oversized wolves howled at the subsonic noise, whirled, and charged. Fiona braced and swung her chain. Robert picked up a lance. He moved closer, but not too close to her, and held the lance high.

Robert threw the lance; it struck and impaled one wolf.

Fiona cut another down—but the third bit into her arm.

Robert punched the wolf and broke its skull.

Fiona shook the animal off, wincing as teeth pulled out of her flesh with sucking sounds. She winced again at the sight of her blood trickling down her arm.

She looked up at Robert and tried to communicate her thanks.

He met her eyes with a steady gaze.

Eliot’s music ascended into an audible range: it was heavy and ponderous and classical, but older than anything truly “classical.” It spoke of layers of stone and how they rumbled over one another, rising into hills and ridges and mountains, others plunging deeper, under the ocean floor, and into an endless molten sea.

The thick wall behind them cracked.

Eliot’s song layered chords of bass notes over one another.

The earth beneath Fiona’s feet shifted and plumes of dust shot up from the fissures.

“He’s doing it,” Jezebel whispered, her eyes wide with wonder.

Sealiah did not look so enthusiastic, frowning as she nodded at her Tower Grave. “My personal guards have failed us,” she said.

A dragon within the tower poked its snout though the hole, and then pushed through the tower’s wall, demolishing that section. The tower shuddered—base to steeple—and a thousand skulls rained down, clattering and shattering.

Another dragon pushed out after the first, casting its head about, and then fixed its dark stare at them.

Fiona braced, and drew her chain between her hands, ready to fight that thing . . . although not quite sure how she was going to fight something
that
big . . . let alone
two
such monsters at once.

“I will go,” Jezebel said. She drew in a breath, trembled, and then she whispered to her Queen, “It is time.”

Sealiah gazed at her protégée with what might have been called “pity” on a normal person, but on the Infernal’s perfect features it looked alien.

Fiona was about to interrupt this little moment between them—those dragons were slinking closer, moving faster, sniffing and snorting, growing excited.

The Queen, however, stroked Jezebel’s face and kissed her on the cheek. Whatever trace of pity that had been on Sealiah’s features vanished. “Do what you must.”

Jezebel looked over at Eliot once—then whirled about and strode toward the dragons.

Despite the eminent danger, Fiona paused. The skin at the base of her spine crawled. Something just occurred between Jezebel and Sealiah that had zero to do with this fight—something wrong.

“Hey!” Fiona said, and started after Jezebel.

Sealiah held out a slender arm to block her. “You belong by your brother’s side. He is the only thing that matters now.”

Jezebel crossed the courtyard toward the Tower Grave. She called to a dozen knights finishing off a squad of patchwork men. They came to her, lances at the ready, and together approached the shadow dragons.

Jezebel shifted form, tiny curled horns pushed out of her head, wings sprouted though slits on her armor, and claws grew out holes in the tips of her gauntlets, but it wasn’t like gym class. She remained human size.

Eliot’s fingers danced up in scale, the notes came faster, and he transitioned from a major key and an orderly Baroque cadence to a minor, insistent beat.

The ground splintered. Deep within the mesa came a grinding as stone stressed and then shattered with an agonizing noise that was oddly in harmony with Eliot’s song.