All That Lives Must Die (28 page)

Fiona had never seen her brother like this before. He’d been stupidly brave, sure. But not the center of a battle and conducting troops like some general. It was like one of his daydream fantasies come to life.

But it was strategically stupid to fight here.

It wasn’t just the shadow monsters—although their numbers seemed endless, and certainly any one of them looked like they could tear them to pieces.

It was this alley. It was a sideways passage through nothing. A void in space that, if they weren’t careful, they’d get lost in and never find the way out.

Already Fiona felt her sense of direction swimming.

“Eliot!” she shouted.

Eliot jerked away from the reloading cannon crews, squinted as he finally noticed Mitch’s light, nodded, but kept playing.

“This way,” Fiona called.

The shadows about them pushed in.

Fiona wouldn’t let them stop her—not when she was so close.

She turned to Mitch and told him: “Duck.”

Confusion washed over his face—but only for a moment—then he understood. He crouched and held the ball of light before his body.

Fiona spun her chain overhead and let out the full length.

Where whirling metal touched shadow and flesh, there was smoke and blood and shrills of pain . . . and the enemy moved back.

Fiona and Mitch crept forward past outstretched talons and hissing maws.

Jezebel moved to the other side of Eliot, her pale arms reddening as if severely sunburned by Mitch’s white-magic light.

“You can’t keep fighting,” Fiona told Eliot. “We’ve got to get out—while we still can.”

Rather than be delighted at his rescue, Eliot looked annoyed.

“She is right,” Jezebel said, blinking in the strong light. “The Shadow Legions are endless in their realms . . . which are near. I can feel them, and I can feel us getting pulled deeper into the darkness.”

Eliot looked around them. “Okay. But which way is out?”

Fiona turned and couldn’t see the exit.

She had, however, left a trail of fallen monsters. Connect any two points, and you had a straight line. In theory, anyway . . . in normal space. She wasn’t sure if the geometry she knew applied here.

“Back this way.”

Fiona led them—Mitch next to her, his light brighter than ever; Eliot next, who continued to play (although his music changed, sounding like a retreat now); and Jezebel last, walking backward so she faced the tide of creatures that followed.

Eliot left his cannon crews behind.

They fired together once more—a storm of smoke and screams and shouts—then shadows covered them, coinciding with the end of Eliot’s song.

Fiona saw a sliver of light overhead, and the buildings tilted back to their proper standing positions. Then the passage straightened and she spied the Paxington alley.

She broke into a trot and they followed, emerging in the warm afternoon.

Jezebel looked as she had in class: no claws, her praying mantis eyes back to normal.

Fiona, though, would never forget the monster inside the girl.

Mitch closed his hand and his light winked out. “Apologies,” he said to Jezebel.

“No need. Your white magic was necessary to keep the Droogan-dors at bay,” Jezebel replied, unperturbed. “I am in your debt, Stephenson.”

“Those creatures were from the Shadow Legions,” Mitch told her. “Beelzebub’s operatives, right?”

“Your intelligence on Infernal affairs is outdated,” Jezebel replied. “Urakabarameel and Beelzebub are dead”—she paused to make eye contact with Fiona—“and with these forces leaderless,
any
Infernal Lord could now command them.”

“But why attack you and Eliot at all?” Fiona asked.

“I was their target,” Jezebel said. “I tried to explain to Eliot that my Queen is at war with Mephistopheles. It is not wise to be near me—save on the Paxington campus, where the school’s magics keep all but students and instructors out.”

Eliot set Lady Dawn back in her case and shut it. His eyes were ringed with dark circles. “None of that matters,” he said. “We’re all safe.” He turned to the side passage—or rather where the side passage had been—and touched the solid brick wall.

“Thanks,” he said to Fiona. “Another few minutes . . . I don’t know what would’ve happened.”

He looked like Eliot again, her little brother, normal and nerdy.

But in battle, he’d reminded Fiona of how the Immortals had been as they faced overwhelming power of the Infernals at Ultima Thule, and she felt a surge of admiration for his courage—however stupid he’d acted.

“I must take my leave,” Jezebel said. “Again, my thanks.” She nodded to Fiona and Mitch. To Eliot she said, “This incident should prove how much of a fool you are. Stay away from me.”

With that, she turned and marched out of the alley.

“What’s her problem?” Fiona asked.

Eliot shook his head. “A lot’s happened,” he whispered. “A lot I need to tell you.”

“Sounds like you two need to talk,” Mitch said, and his easy smile returned, like nothing had ever happened. “How about a rain check on our date?”

Date?

That caught Fiona off guard. They were going to have a date? It was not an unwelcome surprise . . . it just complicated everything.

“S-sure, that would be nice,” Fiona managed.

“Let me walk you to the street,” Mitch said, glancing over at the still-solid brick wall. “Just in case.”

“Thanks,” Fiona said, feeling a blush color her face. Then she turned and whispered so only Eliot could hear: “Whatever is going on—whatever you need to talk about—it’d better be
good
!”

28
. Dr. Johan Georg Faust, a fifteenth-century alchemist and astrologer, who became the origin of the Dr. Faustus literature (notably Marlowe’s
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus
[1604] and Goethe’s
Faust
[1808]). Papal investigations confirmed that Johan Faust did make an Infernal pact, gained fame and fortune, and fathered a dozen bastard children before his demise. One of these children was born of the Lady Dorchester Stephen, the progenitor to the Stephenson clan.
Gods of the First and Twenty-first Century, Volume 14, The Mortal Magical Families.
Zypheron Press Ltd., Eighth Edition.

               29               

DECEPTION BY MOONLIGHT

Eliot explained everything to Fiona as they walked home: how Jezebel had been Julie Marks in Del Sombra; how the Infernal Queen, Sealiah, had used her to try to get to him—but instead Julie had saved Eliot . . . got dragged back to Hell and punished for it, too.

He went on telling how Sealiah was probably trying
again
to use Jezebel to get to him. Eliot owed it to Jezebel this time to help her, save her somehow.

It felt good to share this with someone. Fiona would, of course, believe him. And she had to sympathize with Jezebel; see that she was as much victim as they were in the Infernals’ schemes.

Fiona listened, looking shocked, angry, and incredulous by turns.

As they rounded the corner to their street, Fiona said, “I think Jezebel . . . Julie—whatever you’re calling her—was right.”

“Jezebel,” Eliot told her. “Right about what?”

“That you’re an idiot, and you should stay away from her.”

Eliot halted and crossed his arms.

He detected no lie in Fiona’s statements—which really irritated him—but Eliot didn’t think his half-blooded Infernal lie detector covered insults from a sibling (which would have been
half
of what Fiona said).

“She was bait for the Infernals,” Fiona said slowly as if she were explaining this to a moron. “She admitted it. You saw what it’s like in Hell. How can you want to get mixed up in that?”

“Because she needs our help,” Eliot said.

Fiona looked unbelievingly at him. “It’s just part of their plan. Make you feel sorry for her. Draw you in deeper.”

“Maybe,” Eliot whispered. “But I can’t ignore the other side of our family any longer. I want to learn their game and play it to my advantage.”

Fiona’s mouth dropped open. “It’s no game. And they’ve been doing this for thousands of years. You can’t ‘play’ with them. Stay clear of Jezebel or”—Fiona hesitated, choking her words out—“or I’ll tell Audrey.”

Eliot stared at Fiona, shocked.

She stared back.

The world felt as if it had stopped spinning. Birds ceased singing. The traffic quieted.

Don’t tattle to Audrey or Cecilia: this was the one brother–sister protocol that they had never,
ever
violated. Why bother? Audrey always found out anyway.

“Do that, and I’ll tell about you and Robert,” Eliot blurted out.

Fiona shrugged. “What’s to tell? It’s over. Probably best for Robert if the League knows we’re not together, anyway.”

“So, I’ll tell Audrey about Mitch and your ‘date’ today. You could bring him home for her to meet.”

Fiona paled.

That hit a nerve. Eliot would never really have mentioned Robert or Mitch. He liked them both, and drawing either to Mother’s attention was dangerous. But it had been worth lying to see Fiona’s face, let her know how it felt to have people you care for get in the way of Infernal, or Immortal, forces.

“Okay!” She held up her hands. “You win. Do what you want—just leave me out of it.”

“Whatever,” Eliot muttered, and then because he still couldn’t believe she had seriously considering telling on him, added, “Onychophagist Phasmida.”

That was a not-so-clever opener for vocabulary insult.

Onychophagist
meant “nail biter,” a reference to the old pre-goddess, nerdy Fiona. She used to bite her nails all the time. And Phasmida was the order of stick bugs, a shot at her too-slim figure.

Fiona reddened, angry and embarrassed, as she puzzled out the meanings. She narrowed her eyes and told him, “I wouldn’t talk with your mouth full, merdivorous
Microcebus myoxinus
.”

Okay, Eliot admitted his insult had been a
little
mean. Fiona’s, though, was cruel.

Merdivorous
meant “dung eating” (he’d seen that one a bunch of times, looking up scarab references recently). And
Microcebus myoxinus
was the pygmy mouse lemur, the smallest primate in the world—with eyes so large, they looked as if they wore oversized glasses. Most lemurs were herbivorous, or occasionally insectivores, so that dung eater was just gratuitous . . . although the alliteration was a skillful twist.

He scoured his brain for some word he’d saved for a special occasion to blast Fiona back—then he spotted a Brinks armored truck in front of their house.

Two guards got out and walked up to the front door. One carried a box.

Eliot and Fiona glanced at each other—communicating this game of vocabulary insult was now paused—and raced toward them.

They met the guards on the porch just as Audrey open the front door.

Audrey eyed the men suspiciously, and then stared at the package.

Both guards looked uneasy. “Delivery for Ms. Audrey Post?” one said.

“I am she,” Audrey told them.

“Would you sign, ma’am?” One guard offered a clipboard with forms in triplicate.

“What is this?” she asked.

“Special delivery,” the other guard said, looking at Eliot and Fiona as if this explained everything.

Audrey continued to stare at the package and signed without looking at the forms. “Set it on the stoop, please.”

They did so and the guards left, practically running back to their armored car.

Audrey waited until the truck drove off. She then asked Fiona and Eliot, “How was school today, children?”

“Fine,” Fiona said, and shot a glance at Eliot.

It was a lot weirder than “fine,” but how could Eliot even start to explain? Even for them, it had been an unusual day.

Eliot decided to add nothing by way of explanation, and instead asked, “Is that package for us?”

Audrey continued staring at the box as if she could see through it. On it were labels with Cyrillic lettering and a dozen overlapping customs stamps. “No,” she said. “For me.”

“Are you going to open it?” Fiona asked.

Audrey picked it up, shook it gently, and turned it over and over. “I believe so.” She went inside.

Eliot and Fiona followed her upstairs.

Audrey set it on the dining table, took out a pair of scissors, and sliced through tape and paper.

Inside were Styrofoam peanuts and a tiny egg.

It was a Fabergé. Eliot had seen pictures of them in encyclopedias. This one was the size of a hen’s egg. It had to be authentic, because it glimmered with inlaid diamonds and flowing sinews of sapphires, which gave the impression of water flowing over its surface.

Audrey inhaled and her eyes widened. “Lovely . . . ,” she whispered.

Fiona, also apparently touched by its beauty, reached for it.

Audrey moved it away.

“Sorry,” Fiona whispered. “It’s just so . . .”

“Yes,” Audrey replied. “
Too
entrancing, I’m afraid.” She frowned and removed the manifest from the box, scanning it.

“Who’s it from?” Eliot asked.

“A private collection in Bangkok,” Audrey relayed, reading the manifest, “the director of antiquities in Moscow, and then to an art house in Paris . . . but these are just half truths.”

She returned to the egg and touched a sapphire on its equator. There was a click, and the top portion hinged into seven slices that opened like the petals of a lotus.

Within was a minutely crafted scene of a gondola sailing down a canal—the entire thing made of gold and silver, lapis lazuli and aquamarine, and sparkling diamonds everywhere, so it looked like moonlight and stars reflecting on nighttime waters, tiny fish frolicking alongside the boat, a boatman with pole in one hand, his passengers a man and woman embracing.

There was a tiny whir, and music tinkled from within the egg.

Audrey stared somewhere else, far away and long ago. Emotion trembled upon her lips. She whispered,
“Quasi una fantasia.”
29

She looked on the verge of tears, but she blinked and was back in the present.

Audrey snapped the egg shut. “It is from your father,” she said, her tone frigid.

Uncle Henry had once told them how their mother and father met at the Carnival in Venice. Both masked, they had fallen in love before they knew each other’s true identities.

Audrey tore through the pages of the invoice. “How did he find us?” Her finger traced through shipping codes and credit card information—halting at a phone number. She slammed the pages onto the table.

Eliot jumped, startled by the sudden violence.

“This . . . ,” Audrey said in a deliberately calm voice, “is
our
phone number. Our
very
unlisted phone number. Only those in the League have it.” She cocked her head, thinking, then turned to Fiona and Eliot. “May I see your phones?”

A peculiar numbness tingled through Eliot’s extremities, and it felt like the floor dropped from under him. He hadn’t done anything wrong, had he?

“Uh, sure,” he said.

He and Fiona got their phones and set them on the table.

Audrey glanced at Fiona’s, then nodded, and made a little
take it away
gesture.

She stared at Eliot’s twice as long, then picked it up with two fingers as if it were a stinging insect. After looking at it, this way and that, she set it on the table and grasped her scissors.

Faster than Eliot could follow, she snipped at the phone—cutting it in half.

He felt something pass through
him
as well, a sensation of lightning from his throat to the base of his spine, followed by a nerve-jangling shudder. His heart pounded in his chest, and he found himself unable to take a breath.

And his phone . . . it wasn’t
his
.

The two halves on the table were from a smaller, older phone. The beige plastic was well-worn, dirty, and missing half its number buttons.

“Your phone was stolen,” Audrey explained. “This is a cloned copy, from, I’m almost certain, Louis.” She spat out his name and turned her glare fully upon Eliot. “Where and when did you see him?”

Eliot had seen Audrey serious, maybe even angry before, but not like this. The world closed in around him. There was a gravity to her words that he seemed to fall into. But he managed to take up a breath and gather his courage. He wouldn’t let himself be bullied.

“At the café,” he told her, “just outside Paxington.”

Next to Eliot, Fiona shifted nervously as if he might mention she was with them.

But Eliot was talking about this morning when he’d been alone with the Prince of Darkness.

Eliot remembered how fascinated Louis had been with his new cell phone, too . . . how he had picked it up.

That’s when he must have made the switch.

Louis had played him for a fool as easily as he had so many others.

“Eliot,” Audrey said, her words softer now. “You must be careful. Louis speaks the most delicate mix of lies and truths. You will not be able to discern one from the other with him. He is called the Great Deceiver for good reason.”

Eliot nodded. Louis obviously hadn’t lied to him. He of all people would know Eliot would be able to sense outright lies. He’d known Eliot would rely on his new ability . . . and completely fall for his more sophisticated mistruths.

Audrey turned to Fiona, asking, “How could you let your brother talk to that creature? I thought
you
knew better.”

Fiona inhaled, but before she could answer, Eliot cut her off. “She wasn’t there,” he said.

If anyone was going to get into trouble for talking to Louis, it would be him. Just him. Fiona had encouraged him
not
to speak to their father.

“Very well,” Audrey said with a sigh, “let me see your credit cards.”

Eliot and Fiona dug through their bags and retrieved their platinum charge cards.

Audrey scrutinized Fiona’s, then flicked it back to her. She examined Eliot’s. “Both are real. At least Louis did not gain access to the League’s discretionary funds. That is some conciliation.”

With her scissors she cut Eliot’s credit card into a dozen pieces.

“What did you do that for?” he cried.

Audrey arched one of her eyebrows at his outburst. “Because you have let your father take advantage of you. You should never have spoken to him against my wishes. You should not have any interaction with that side of your family. They will destroy you. Or worse, they would use you to destroy others.”

Eliot’s outrage cooled.

Use him to destroy others?
Isn’t that what Louis had told him, too? That both Infernal and Immortal families would try to use Eliot and Fiona to circumvent their neutrality treaty and start a war?

Could
some
of what he’d said been the truth?

Audrey swept the credit card fragments into her palm. “You have a great deal to learn. And until such time, you cannot be trusted with such valuable League assets.”

Like Eliot had even used the stupid credit card—like he ever would have a chance between all his studies, gym class, getting dragged to Hell, and fighting in alleys.

Audrey plucked up the priceless Fabergé egg, stormed in the kitchen, and came back with the trash can. She hesitated only a moment as she gazed once more at the egg—then dumped it.

Eliot glared so hard at her, with so much anger, that it felt like his gaze bored right through his mother.

For one moment, Eliot let his anger take him, and the blood burned through every vein and artery . . . and then he cooled it and contained it all, compressing it to a white hot spark deep within his core.

“I’m going to my room,” he muttered. “I’ve got homework.”

Fiona tried to say something, but Eliot walked away.

Once in his room, he closed the door and slid a few boxes of still-unpacked books against it.

Then
he fumed.

But what good was getting angry, unless you did something with it?

He set his pack on his bed, pulled out Lady Dawn, and tried a few notes of that song the egg played. They flowed like water over his hand and strings; moonlight danced and reflected off his walls. The song was a little sad.

It soothed his soul.

He was about to grab the bow and really play, when his eyes lit up on his bookshelf. Wedged between volume seven of
The Golden Bough
and
Languorous Lullabies
was a thick segmented book spine covered in dark gray leather.