MORTAL COILS (99 page)

“Dad?”
she whispered.

Louis
turned his attention to them. His gaze softened for a fraction of

an
instant, then immediately hardened. “Ah, yes, children. I’ll have you out in a
moment. Just one or two things I must take care—”

Beelzebub
gritted his teeth, and with his obsidian dagger he pushed the tip of the broken
sword back through his chest.

Louis’s
eyes widened. “You cannot do that.”

Beelzebub’s
smile returned. “You think I did not take precautions?”

The
black lines of poison spread over his chest like a road map contracted to a
point and faded.

“You
think when Sealiah first appeared before the Board,” Beelzebub continued,
reaching back to remove the blade with a great wet sucking sound, “that I would
not search for an antidote to its most infamous venom?”

Louis
for the first time was without words.

Beelzebub
considered the broken weapon in his hand, then tossed it aside. “Such toys
belong in the days of old, dear Louis. Not in a world with biochemical
laboratories at one’s disposal.”

He
slapped Louis with the back of his hand.

Louis
barely managed to raise the sleeve of his camel-hair coat to block the blow. It
did little good. The force sent him flying into, and through, the remains of a
cinder-block wall.

“No!”
Eliot screamed.

Fiona’s
blood pumped hard and fast through her body again. She was mad. No one did that
to her family—even if it was her weird father.

She
had one hand free. She had to find something to cut this monster.

“I’m
shocked by such sentimentality,” Beelzebub said to the dust-smoldering hole
that Louis had made. “You have been human too long. If only you could see
yourself. When I kill you in a moment, it will be for your own good. You will
thank me later.”

Beelzebub
turned back to Eliot and Fiona. “But first, more important matters.”

The
hole in his chest sealed. A tiny scar was all that remained of what should have
been a mortal wound.

But
that was the point, wasn’t it? Beelzebub wasn’t mortal.

And
maybe she wasn’t either.

Eliot
elbowed her.

Fiona
(irritated that her brother would pick this one, perhaps final, moment to
distract her) tore her gaze from the blade poised to slash down and cleave her
open and glanced at Eliot.

He
was looking at something . . . not Beelzebub’s blade, but rather the jewel
dangling about his neck. Eliot shoved his elbow into her ribs again— hard—and
nodded above the ornament for emphasis.

She
looked. It was difficult to take her eyes off the magnificent sapphire, but she
did, and then she understood what Eliot was trying to tell her.

It
was staring her right in the face: the jewel was on a leather cord.

A
cord looped around Beelzebub’s neck.

Her
free hand shot out and up, fingers twining about the leather thong.

Fiona
would forever remember Beelzebub’s smile. So charming. So evil.

So
confident that he was all-powerful and had them at his mercy.

No
one would ever make that mistake again.

Her
focus was laser sharp. The cutting edge materialized the instant she touched
the cord.

Fiona
pulled with all her might.

The
loop around Beelzebub’s neck became a circular guillotine blade as it
sliced—smooth as glass—through skin, flesh, bone, and then whipped free through
the air.

His
smile faded and he almost looked peaceful standing before them, holding the
means of her death in one hand . . . before the head of Beelzebub, the Lord of
All That Flies, toppled free from his shoulders.

75

FAMILY
REUNION

Beelzebub’s
head hit the asphalt and rolled to a stop, eyes staring up at the stars. His
headless body crumpled like an empty coat.

Eliot
braced himself, expecting a spray of blood, but only a trickle oozed from the
severed stump. Bugs crawled out, however, and took wing: mosquitoes and gnats
and flies all swirled about Beelzebub in a cloud . . . that then faded to wisps
of smoke and blew away.

It
all happened so fast. Another few seconds, and it would have been Eliot or
Fiona on the ground dead.

Eliot
tore his gaze away from the gruesome sight. “You okay?”

Fiona
didn’t answer him. Instead, she tightened her grip on the sapphire and leather
thong and glared with a pained expression at the decapitated head.

“There
was no other way. You had to do it. You saved us.”

“Of
course I had to do it,” she snapped. She finally looked away. “I’m sorry. I
just always seem to end up cutting and killing things. . . . Maybe it’s what I
was born to do.”

An
explosion lit the horizon. It came from what had been the gas station at the
end of Vine Street.

Eliot
coughed and smelled acrid smoke. He pulled against their chains. “You better
get us out of these.”

Fiona
pulled on her twisted arm to no effect. “Give me a little room so I can get
free.”

Eliot
exhaled to make himself smaller, but he stopped when he spied Louis crawling
from the hole in the wall.

“Louis,”
he said. “Help us.”

Louis
didn’t look at them. He strode directly to Beelzebub and spread his arms over
the corpse.

Fiona
tensed as if she were going to have to fight.

Louis,
however, kept his distance. His lips moved, but Eliot didn’t hear any words;
rather, he felt them in the air. It was as if the entire world became still to
listen to these inaudible sounds.

The
lines of chalk on the walls and street glimmered and glowed. The arcs flexed,
and the symbols pulsed with life.

Power
transfer. That’s what Louis had said the diagram was for.

The
chalk flared and burned magnesium brilliant—sparks danced upon the lines.

Eliot
felt power surge through him, too. It made his hair stand, tingled through
every fiber, and filled him to the bursting point.

It
felt as if he were drowning in the stuff.

Fiona
gasped, feeling it as well.

But
Eliot didn’t think this power was meant for them. The lines seemed brightest
near Louis. The air crackled about him. He was swathed in light.

Louis’s
body stretched, fingers elongating and nails pointing, and horns curled from
his skull. Behind him, a barbed tail swished. Bat wings rose from his spine and
spread across the night, blotting out the stars, cloaking the world in inky
blackness.

The
flow of energy abruptly ceased. The lines of chalk sizzled and disintegrated to
dust.

Their
father stood before them, as he had been before, immaculately groomed in his
camel-hair coat. Only there was one difference: Louis looked as if he now owned
the universe.

“At
last,” Louis breathed. “It is good to be back.”

Fiona
grunted and finally freed her other arm. She severed their binding chains with
a single stroke.

Louis
regarded her, his eyes lingering on the sapphire in her fist. “I see neither of
you need my help.”

“We
don’t need anything from you!” Fiona told him.

“That’s
not fair,” Eliot said. “He stabbed Beelzebub, risked his life to save us.”

“Sure
he did,” Fiona replied.

“No,
no,” Louis said to Eliot. “Your sister has every right to be angry, especially
with me. I placed you both in great danger. I assure you, though, the

only
way you shall survive both families is with your father’s protection—a father
with his full Infernal status intact.”

Eliot
and his sister shared a look. What they had seen a moment ago . . . was that
their father’s true form? Like the woodcut in Mythica Improbiba?

There
were so many things Eliot had to know. “Let’s at least listen to him,” he
whispered to Fiona.

Fiona
lowered her arms.

“Both
families want to use you,” Louis explained. “I may be the only one who wants
what’s best for you . . . because I love you.”

Fiona
scoffed.

None
in the family, apart from Cee, had ever told Eliot or his sister that they
loved them. When Louis said it, it sounded like a foreign language to Eliot’s
ears . . . something he could almost understand . . . but not quite.

“Come
with me.” Louis held out his hands. “There will be no rules. Together, we are
stronger.”

“Like
a real family?” Fiona asked, half-disbelieving, but also half-intrigued.

“Yes,”
Louis replied emphatically.

Eliot
saw a riot of emotions on his sister’s face. In truth, he was confused, too. If
he had learned one thing in the last few days about his family, though, it was
that he had to think and be careful—because nothing was as it first appeared to
be with these people.

But
Louis was his father. This felt different. He trusted him . . . or, at least,
he wanted to trust him.

“What
do you think?” Eliot asked Fiona.

“I
. . . I don’t know.”

Louis
beckoned to them with open arms, and his smile filled the shadows.

But
that smile abruptly vanished.

He
looked past Fiona and Eliot, past the rubble and burning buildings, to Midway
Avenue.

“Of
course, now you show your face,” Louis muttered. “How like a woman to have the
most perfectly inconvenient timing.”

Eliot
and Fiona turned.

Robert
limped out of the shadows, helped along . . . by Grandmother.

Fiona
wanted to run to Robert; he was hurt. She only took a single step toward him,
though, before she stopped—feeling a tidal pull between

Grandmother
and Louis. They were like the north and south poles of the magnet, equal but
opposite, and Fiona wasn’t sure which way to go.

Eliot
touched her arm. “Wait.”

He
must’ve felt it, too.

Despite
the ruins and flames surrounding her, Grandmother looked as she always did. She
wore her khaki silk top, faded jeans, and combat boots. Cee had told them
Grandmother was sixty-two years old; tonight in the firelight, though, she
looked timeless.

Grandmother
gathered herself taller than Fiona had ever seen as her eyes shifted first to
the remains of Beelzebub, then to Louis. Her cropped silver hair glowed like a
halo. Her expression—one of placid hatred— could’ve been chiseled from
alabaster.

“Find
us transportation,” Grandmother told Robert.

“Yes,
ma’am.” Robert limped off, holding his ribs. He gave Fiona a quick glance and a
nod as if everything were going to be okay . . . but his eyes were full of
unease.