All That Lives Must Die (58 page)

That was a good thing, too. On a nearby mesa, a battle raged as hundreds of people screamed and hurled rocks at one another, clawing, biting, and punching. There weren’t two sides; it was everyone against everyone else. It was like they had all lost their minds.

The trail ended. Here the first simple suspension bridge arced to an adjacent plateau (one with no obvious war waging upon it). The bridge dangled a half mile above a raging river of molten stone.

Eliot felt his resolve evaporate.

Robert leaned over the cliff’s edge and spit. It sizzled into vapor the instant it was outside Eliot’s protective musical bubble. “Whoa,” he said, impressed.

But Robert, being Robert, stepped onto the bridge without another thought . . . and Eliot had to keep up with him or his friend would fry. The really strange thing was that Amanda, who had always been scared, walked right onto the bridge after Eliot.

The heat was terrific and the smell of sulfur and copper overwhelming. Eliot held his breath and played faster and louder so they wouldn’t die from the fumes.

He didn’t want to look down, but he had to see where he set his feet.

Far below, orange and red liquid boiled and churned and popped. Drifting by were tiny dots of smoldering solid stone crust.

They passed the low midpoint of the bridge and started climbing back up. Eliot spied the top of the plateau again. There were people there—not the crazy fighting ones, but the working ones.

The damned formed a line, shuffled along with rocks, dragging, rolling, and shoving them along until they got to the edge . . . where they pushed the stones into the river.

Then they turned back, presumably to get another rock.

And much to his relief, not one of them gave Eliot or the others a second glance; in fact, they seemed to be going out of their way
not
to look at them.

Some wore rags, but most wore nothing. Their nude bodies were gaunt and reddened from the heat. They were bruised and scraped, and they all had burns—mostly on their hands and bare feet, but a few of them were completely covered in burn scars.

It reminded Eliot of Perry Millhouse, whom he and Fiona had killed in their second heroic trial. Perry Millhouse, who Eliot knew had actually been the Titan Prometheus, long fallen from power.

That’s where they’d met Amanda. Perry had kidnapped her and used her as bait.

He glanced back at Amanda. Her hair was plastered to her forehead and her cheeks flushed.

Funny, you’d think that someone who’d been the prisoner of a homicidal maniac whose preferred method of killing enemies was burning them alive would look a little
less
fascinated with fire.

They trod up the rest of bridge and stepped onto the plateau. From here, two bridges led to other mesa tops—both, more or less, getting them closer to the plains of the Blasted Lands.

“Which way?” Fiona asked.

Eliot stood on his tiptoes for a better look, which was when he saw the top of the adjacent plateau.

A thousand people crowded its edge—pushing and shoving to get onto the suspension bridge—running across, screaming and snarling . . . straight toward them.

61
. An intriguing Chimera Heresy penned by Sildas Pious in the thirteen century pertains to Jörmungandr (aka the World Serpent). In Norse mythology, the giant snake is prophesied to emerge from the ocean, poison the sky, and then battle Thor (the god and the monster slay each other). This event supposedly occurs at end of the world, Ragnarök. In the Pious’s legend, however, valkyries with flaming swords and Christian angels fight the beast, chain it, and bury it under the earth. One of the chain links was forged into the Gates of Perdition. Centuries later, when Jesus Christ is said to have arisen and opened the gates of Hell, Pious explains these were the Dolorous Gates, not the Gates of Perdition. He claims that on the day the Gates of Perdition are destroyed, the Beast will rise, and it will signal
both
Ragnarök and the Christian Judgment Day, when the dead will be released from Hell.
Gods of the First and Twenty-first Century, Volume 5, Core Myths (Part 2)
. Zypheron Press Ltd., Eighth Edition.

               71               

THE HEROIC STAND OF AMANDA LANE

Eliot didn’t understand why there were so many people—all angry at him.

What had he done?

Thousands crowded along the edge of the distant plateau. They raised fists, threw rocks, and hurled insults in a dozen languages.

Was it because he was alive? Or because he’d
willingly
entered Hell, and they’d all probably wanted out? Or maybe like Robert said: they were crazy.

Eliot faced the bridge connecting the two plateaus and turned up the gain on Lady Dawn to the halfway point.

Mr. Welmann’s eyes widened, and he reached to stop him.

Eliot couldn’t waste time talking. Mr. Welmann didn’t know what he was capable of. In fact, it’d be simple to stop them. If anything,
that
was the scary thing: how easy it’d be . . . and how much Eliot had enjoyed the destruction before in Costa Esmeralda.

He blasted out a power chord.

The other bridge wobbled and the slack stretched taut from the onslaught of sound. The damned on the bridge held up their hands to protect themselves—but were flung off like rag dolls.

Eliot belted out three more chords, and that felt good.

The rusty iron of the bridge heated and twisted like taffy . . . stretched apart and fell into the chasm.

Mr. Welmann clamped a hand on Eliot’s arm over and pulled it away from the guitar.

“Let go,” Eliot told him, annoyed. “I got rid—”

But Mr. Welmann wasn’t even looking at Eliot; instead, he scanned the horizons. He lifted a finger indicating silence, and cocked his head, straining to hear.

“No,” Mr. Welmann whispered. “Listen.”

The sound was, at first, barely audible over the rumble of the distant volcanoes. Eliot heard one cry, then a shout of discovery, and then a combined wail of rage that spread over the land.

From the cliffs they’d traversed, the damned poured out of caves and crannies. Thousands and thousands of torches flared to life upon the slopes. And from every plateau and mesa, the shouts of not thousands—but tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of angry souls combined into a thunderous roar.

Eliot let the magnitude of his mistake sink in. He’d messed up in a big, big way.

“Nice,” Fiona muttered, shaking her head.

“What’d you want me to do?” he asked. “Let them get to us? Fight them all? Don’t you think that would’ve made a little noise, too?”

He started coughing, the air once again hot and reeking of metal. His hand drifted back to Lady Dawn’s strings, instinctively plunking the notes that cleared the atmosphere.

Fiona started to say something, but her mouth stayed open, gaping, as she stared past Eliot.

He turned and saw what had shut his sister up.

Where the bridge he’d just destroyed had been, a thin line appeared in the chasm. It was spiderweb fine, but it thickened and buds appeared that turned into chain links—then another line stretched next to it, and strands of metal wove between them.

Like the Gates of Perdition that had sealed after Fiona had cut into them, this bridge was growing back.

The damned across the chasm cheered and jeered.

“We can’t fight,” Mr. Welmann said. “No matter how strong you kids think you are, they’ll always be more of them to fight.” He nodded toward the other suspension bridge that led to the Blasted Lands. “We go that way. Fast.”

Without any argument, they raced for that bridge, their only escape.

A cluster of the working damned gathered at the bridge, all crowding to get on the thing and get away, too.

Robert sprinted ahead. He plowed into them, knocking six over with one blow, and clearing a path for him and the others to run ahead.

Eliot and Mr. Welmann jogged onto the bridge after him. Amanda was right after them. Fiona lingered, and came last.

And Eliot knew why.

As they tromped off the bridge and onto the next mesa, Fiona turned and severed the chains.

It fell into the lava.

If it was like the other bridge, though, it’d grow back. Destroying it would buy them only a minute or so.

The working damned here scattered, abandoning their rocks. Eliot jumped onto a boulder and looked around. Five bridges radiated off this plateau, connecting to others . . . only now, from every direction, the angry damned came. So many, he couldn’t count them. They flowed across the land. The only thing preventing the damned from quickly overwhelming them were the bridges—they let them across only a few at a time.

If Eliot and the others didn’t get out of here, they’d have no choice: they’d have to fight and fight—and against a few hundred . . . maybe even against the first thousand, they’d win.

But after an hour of battling, he and Fiona, Robert and Amanda would falter. They’d need food and water and sleep.

There was
one
way, though. One bridge clear for now. It led to another plateau, which in turn had a single bridge to the Plains of Ash.

“There’s a way out of lava fields,” Eliot told them, jumping down. “I can get us onto solid ground.”

Robert had his brass knuckles on one hand, held his Glock in the other. “How many are coming?” he asked.

“All of them,” Eliot replied.

“Just run,” Fiona told everyone. “There’s no time left to think this through.”

So Eliot ran. He ran before the fear could catch him and stop him cold.

But as he and the others got onto the bridge, he couldn’t stop thinking that this plan didn’t make any sense.

So what if they got onto the plains? That eliminated the danger of them falling into lava, but if they wouldn’t stop the bridges from reforming, and it wouldn’t stop the damned from pursing them. How long could they all run?

At the midpoint of the bridge, Amanda halted.

Eliot turned and grabbed her hand. “It’s okay,” he said, not at all convinced of this. “Don’t be afraid.”

But as he saw the look on Amanda’s face, he knew the word
afraid
didn’t apply.

At least to her.

Amanda’s lips pursed together and trembled with emotion. Her eyes still smoldered with fascination—
for real
. They glowed and flickered with mirage heat.

Amanda dropped his hand.

“I can stop them,” she said. “You go on.”

“What? . . .” Fiona almost ran into her—and halted, seeing her burning eyes, too. She stepped around her next to Eliot.

“You have to go.” Amanda’s hands gripped either side of the chain railing. Where they touched the iron it heated . . . dull red . . . orange . . . and then yellow and smoldering.

“I can’t hold it in much longer,” Amanda said, struggling to get her words out. “It’s this place. It’s so hot. And their anger. I can feel it all burning.”

Eliot reached out to touch her, but the heat was too great.

The heat. The fire. Eliot had seen one person with this power before. And so had Amanda.

“Perry Millhouse?” Eliot asked. “He did this to you?”

Tears welled in the corners of Amanda’s blazing eyes, but they didn’t get the chance to spill upon her cheeks; instead, they sizzled and steamed away.

Robert and Mr. Welmann came back to see what the trouble was, stopping, astonished at the sight of her.

“I can’t even tell you,” Amanda whimpered. “It hurts to even think about him. But after you saved me, everything changed. That night I had to get the heat out. I let it go. I had to . . . and I burned everything—my house—my dog—my parents . . . none of them survived.”

She looked away, unable to meet their horrified gazes.

Eliot felt sick, but everything made sense about Amanda now. Perry Millhouse had had something planned for her all along. Maybe he’d wanted to pass his power on to another generation, or maybe it was some revenge thing aimed at the League—but whatever his reason, the Immortal fire of Prometheus pulsed through Amanda Lane.

And when Eliot and Fiona had rescued her, taken her home, no one understood the power inside her. Uncle Henry and the others in the League of Immortals must’ve felt sorry for her and sent her to Paxington.

All those little fires on the obstacle course and when the dorms had burned over semester break: that had been Amanda.

She looked back at them, her eyes slits into a blazing furnace.

“I can’t hold it much longer,” she whispered. “And that’s okay. Whatever’s inside me, it’s never done me any good, but now, I can at least save my friends.”

Amanda inhaled sharply and winced.

“Don’t,” Robert told her. “Even if you melt the bridge, it’ll just come back.”

“You’re so noble, Robert,” she said, her voice stronger than Eliot had ever heard. “How I wish you were
my
hero.” She didn’t look at Robert, though, as she said this, rather her gaze firmly fixed on Eliot. “Don’t worry. I
will
stop them.”

The metal bars under Eliot’s feet got too hot to stand on. He took two steps back.

“There has to be another way,” Eliot told her. “Just give us some time to think.”

Her hair lifted, charged with static electricity, turning to dull red and then orange. The metal she touched heated to white and sagged. “There’s no time for me,” she said.

Amanda Lane turned and walked back they way they’d come.

Flames licked her legs and arms and spiraled about her in jets of gold and green plasma. The heat from her body was tremendous.

Eliot and the others jumped back.

The army of the damned reached the edge of the plateau and streamed onto the bridge . . . pausing at the sight of her.

“Amanda!” Eliot called.

She kept walking, the air about her wavering, her footprints melting metal.

“We’ve got to move.” Mr. Welmann pointed down.

The lava in the chasm boiled and churned. Geysers showered molten rock into the air. Waves rebounded and crashed against the plateaus, crumbling their bases.

A whirlpool formed beneath Amanda, following her as she moved along the bridge; the swirling lava glowed hotter until it hissed silver vapor and blazed a blue-white too painful to look at.

Eliot had to play her something, a song to cool her spirit.

How had she managed to keep all that heat inside for an entire year? She should’ve told them.

Or had been his fault? Eliot had been so wrapped up in his own problems, that he’d never really been a friend for her.

He focused, thought about her, and started to strum his guitar.

“No way, man.” Robert grabbed him and pulled him back.

“Don’t,” Eliot growled. “I can do this.”

Fiona shook her head. “Not this time,” she told him. “Go! Before you get us all killed, you idiot.”

So he ran, half pushed along by Robert and Fiona, and he didn’t look back until he got to the other side of the bridge.

When he finally turned, he saw the damned running along the bridge toward Amanda.

They couldn’t get close. The ones in front screamed and burst into flame, floundered, and blasted back into dust. The ones in back kept pushing forward, though . . . dooming those ahead of them.

Amanda blazed like a sun fallen to the earth.

The bridge melted and fell apart. She hovered in midair.

The lava under her erupted—plumes and gouts of molten rock and metal exploded. A tidal wave of lava surged in all directions, consuming the mesas and plateaus in its path.

Eliot turned and ran.

He no longer wondered how, or if, there was a way to save Amanda. He just ran. The encyclopedia part of his mind had nothing to say. Faced with a towering wall of pure fire, the only thing left was animal instinct.

They ran over the broken land, scrambled up dunes of ash, and crunched over a dry lakebed . . . until he and the others were out of breath and his legs felt like lead. (Even dead Mr. Welmann was panting and exhausted.)

They stopped and looked.

A volcano pushed upward where Amanda had made her stand. It spewed fire and rock upon the land and hissed clouds that blackened the sky.

Nothing would get through that—dead or alive.

As Amanda had promised.

Eliot watched for a moment. Lightning flashed among the clouds, but there was no rain.

He wished he’d been there for her at school. But he’d just complained about her and treated her like a weakling . . . when in fact, she had been just struggling to contain a power that, if she’d unleashed it, could have killed them all.

The words Eliot spoke not an hour ago echoed in his head: “
It’s my responsibility. And my fault, if anything goes wrong.”

He’d gotten her killed.

Coming here and bringing her along had been his idea. But worse, even if he had known about her unstable power, if he’d had a choice to make between Amanda and Jezebel . . . he still might have made a choice, and it would’ve been Jezebel, not her.

That made him, what?

Was he like his father? Evil?

Eliot sank to one knee. He was dizzy . . . and unsure of everything.

He threw up.

Fiona came to him and set her hand on his shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault,” she whispered.

She didn’t understand. Yes, he felt guilty over Amanda’s death, but what he really felt terrible about was that along with Amanda dying, something had been burned out inside him, too.

Eliot hunched over and threw up again.

Coughing, he stood up straight. “I’m okay now,” he told them, and then pointed. “That’s the direction I saw the train tracks.”

And then, one foot in front of the other, he started moving again.