All That Lives Must Die (48 page)

Eliot would have to review his Freud to figure
that one
out.

He paused, suddenly wary.
Anything
involving Louis, dream or not, had some trick to it.

Eliot froze as he realized there was something in his room that hadn’t been there when he’d fallen asleep. It stood, propped against the corner bookcases.

A guitar.

It wasn’t just any guitar, either, but an electric guitar. Its wood gleamed amber and gold and brass fittings glistened like crystallized sunlight. The fingerboards were ebony with mother-of-pearl inlays in the shapes of stars and swords and crows. There was a bar to adjust string tension on the fly, and six knobs and a few switches along the bottom that he had no clue what they did.

Eliot did know, however, he wanted nothing more than to pick it up, and play it.

But he halted as he recognized the wood grain pattern . . . so mirror-smooth that he saw his face reflected in its flaming colors. He’d seen it countless times before.

Lady Dawn.

“No way,” he whispered.

But why not? What if, in dreaming, he had done this? Played some song of transformation. The Covington conjurers could change one thing into another . . . so it was, in theory, possible.

Eliot didn’t think
his
magic had ever worked like that. And it’d never worked with such precision.

If he hadn’t done this, though . . . that left only one logical conclusion.

Her.

The dream girl had said: “
For thou would I do anything, be anything
.”

Could she be real? Alive?

Was that dream even a dream? The thought of an instrument who was also a young girl—who’d been in his father’s hands for so many years—it sent a shiver of revulsion down Eliot’s spine.

Still . . . he reached out and held his fingers a hairsbreadth over the guitar, feeling a subsonic thrum of her power, of anticipation for his touch.

Eliot took her and slung the guitar over his shoulder.

She was a perfect fit.

His fingers slid along the six steel strings. Different from his violin. Familiar, though, too. Definitely weird.

“We shall together make music the likes of which even God has not yet dreamed. Music to end the world if thou desire.”

Not yet.

Eliot was going to track down his father first. Louis had questions to answer.

               55               

UNDERESTIMATION OF HIS CUNNING

Louis puffed on a cigar he had borrowed from the Night Train’s humidor. He opened a window. These cars were stuffy with the sweat and fear of its usual passengers.

The engine’s screams echoed through the tunnel.

Amberflaxus licked its black fur in the seat next to him. It flicked its ears forward, thinking that noise was prey.

Louis felt better away from San Francisco, no longer obsessing over Eliot and Fiona, and his beloved lost Audrey. How wonderful to be away from the world of light and love!

He was annoyed that he was even thinking of the
memory
of their memories . . . and yet, he found it nearly impossible to stop.

Louis exhaled smoke and watched it mingle with the steaming screams outside.

But stop he must and concentrate on his deceptions, namely how to play with Sealiah and Mephistopheles.

Manipulating mortals was one thing, even Immortals, but his Infernal family? That was ten times the danger. He had to proceed with great care.

Should he betray Sealiah? Or side with her against Mephistopheles?

He chuckled. As if the Queen of Poppies would
want
him on her side, as if he would stick his neck out and actually stoop to physically fighting anyone in her war.

No, the best option was to play both sides against the middle, and then pick over what was left. To accomplish this, however, Louis would need leverage, some fact about the tactics and plans of one to ingratiate himself with the other—just long enough to get into the proper position to backstab and double-cross.

Sometimes the most clichéd schemes were best . . . because they worked.

He marveled at his willingness to embrace the simple truth of it.

The huge Ticket Master entered the car and bowed. He then adjusted the slightly out-of-place tassels of his uniform’s brocade and brushed a bit of ash from the black fabric.

“May I approach, O most noble of deceivers?”

“No,” Louis muttered. “I need nothing.”

“Yes, Lord,” he said, smoothed a hand over his bald head, and then added, “your stop is next, the Poppy Lands.”

Louis cocked one brow. “Oh? I don’t recall saying that was my destination.”

“No, my lord. It’s just your most illustrious offspring was here. . . .”

“Yes, yes,” Louis said with careless wave.

Eliot had been to the Poppy Lands?

“Had been” being the operative verb tense, because Amberflaxus spotted the boy just last night entering that Pacific Heights hovel of his—no doubt to dutifully practice his violin or do his Paxington homework.

But he obviously was not the good little boy everyone believed. He had not consulted Louis as he had promised, and any visit to the Poppy Lands had to have broken dozens of Audrey’s rules. How delightful.

Louis smiled at this new development.

Sealiah’s plans involving Eliot had to be further along than he had dreamed.

But when had he crossed? And more curiously,
how
had he returned?

All this Louis considered in a heartbeat.

“My business today takes me past the Mirrored Realms,” he told the Ticket Master.

The Ticket Master looked disappointed, for he hadn’t tricked any salable information from him.

The Night Train’s last stop was the Mirrored Realms—and anything past that in the Hysterical Kingdom was only the business of the fool who attempted such a journey.

Louis had spoken the truth: He
did
have business past the Mirrored Realms with Mephistopheles . . . just not at this time.

The Ticket Master bowed again, left, and the train slowed.

Louis glanced outside at impenetrable jungle. The only path was the train tracks that cut through. Every flower was in full bloom. Every fungus clouded the air with spore. How deadly. How lovely.

The Night Train pulled into the station house, paused only a moment as required by the Infernal Transportation Pact, and then the brakes released, and the engine chugged ahead.

No one either had departed or gotten on.

Louis looked into the car ahead. No sign of that gossip-mongering Ticket Master.

He turned to Amberflaxus and held one a finger. “Stay,” he ordered.

The animal continued to lick itself, pretending (as always its habit) not to notice him.

Louis borrowed a small bottle of whiskey from the wet bar, and then from the poker table scooped a handful of diamond-studded chips along with a set of dice—the minimal supplies one might need in the wilderness.

He slipped out the back and off the train . . . and infiltrated the Poppy Lands.

The hothouse train station had been shelled, and most of the frosted panes were shattered. A billion bits of glass glistened on the ground.

Of course, the station would be an obvious target. It was only a matter of time before Mephistopheles cut the train tracks as well.

Louis had to act with haste, gather information, and then be on the next train out.

He wrapped his cloak about him and walked in the ditch alongside the road toward Sealiah’s Twelve Towers, her so-called Doze Torres. She would no doubt make her stand in her castles, where she felt safest.

The poppy fields were on fire: violet, lemon, pink, and crimson blossoms withered in the flames. Green smoke drifted over the lands and flashed with hypnotic phosphorescence.

Louis held his breath.

Droogan-dors fought on the distant hills and valleys, flitting wraiths among the gloaming.

A mere league to his left, hundreds of shadow creatures swarmed and circled a legion of Sealiah’s noble knights, the Order of the Thorn. The dark tore at the warriors . . . then their fires burned out . . . and the shades moved in. Frost crackled over the ground there, killing all traces of vegetation.

Mephistopheles was no fool. He carefully whittled away parcels of her land, gathering strength while Sealiah lost hers.

But Sealiah was no fool, either . . . and Louis wondered what trick she had yet to play.

Motion ahead on the road caught his attention: a fat shadow writhed between a dozen poorly defined shapes—rat—crow—worm—camouflaged in the blackness.

Louis slowed, creeping artfully so that nothing should be able to detect him.

A black eye materialized in the mass of the Droogan-dor, however, tracking him, the body underneath coiling to pounce.

He smiled at the creature. “Nice doggie,” Louis whispered. “Just a neighborly visit from a neutral observer. Nothing to raise one’s hackles over.”

It sprang.

Louis sidestepped its charge and dug his nails deep into the shadow flesh, clenched his fists—ripped hide free from flesh and bone.

The thing screamed as it dissipated into an oily mist.

Louis grinned and his pulse pounded. Such wonderful violence. He had not felt the thrill of destroying a lesser opponent in a long time.

Such trivial pleasures would slow him . . . still, Louis paused to admire the black velvet sheen of the Droogan-dor’s skin.

He started again—then halted as he saw how seriously he had miscalculated.

About him, growling and crouching, were a dozen Droogan-dors—each the size of a house, each growing rows and rows of dagger teeth.

“Now boys.” He held up both hands. “Can’t we all be
friends
?”

The monstrosities all took a step back, simultaneously shaking their heads to clear the confusion from the hell-blaspheme oath.
Friends
was not a word uttered without some effort in the depths.

Which is when Louis attacked them.

He didn’t transform . . . not entirely. That would’ve garnered him too much attention. But just a partial shift, claw and fang and wing of bat—to rip and rend and slash.

How could he pass up such fun?

He paused, panting, and realized there was nothing left to fight . . . only shreds and quivering pieces that lay about him.

And curiously, a single cut ran down along his forearm. A trickle of black blood congealed there.

Careless of him.

Or had Mephistopheles’ minions gathered power enough to actually hurt an Infernal Lord?

Indeed. He snugged his cloak tighter and trotted. Time was far shorter than he had realized.

Miles ahead, he spied the tallest tower of the Sealiah’s castles, burning bright with beacons and the swoop and swirl of armored bat defenders flying about.

Skirmishes raged upon the plains and hills and what was left of the jungles, but Louis noted a procession of knights had the right idea . . . as they steadily limped down the road back to the castle, dragging those too injured to walk on their own.

A retreat? So early? It seemed unlikely, yet the evidence was before his eyes.

The damned of Hell mended bone and flesh after a long painful process. Wounded typically were not removed from battlefield. It was a measure that smacked of desperation—not mercy—for there was only one reason to bother: to deny Mephistopheles converting even the weakest of her warriors to his cause.

It also presented Louis with an interesting problem. He slowed his pace and hid in the ditch. Sneaking past so many numbers would take time.

He glanced about, seeking opportunity.

And he found it: a battle had taken place here recently. Among broken lances and smoldering opium stalks, one knight lay in three pieces, each part struggling to find the other and its missing head.

Louis removed the warrior’s thorned mail. “Might I borrow this?” He then kicked the knight’s head across the road into the far ditch. “I thank you, brave sir.”

He donned the armor—a tad loose for his frame—and then shuffled forward along the road, joining the ranks of despondent soldiers marching toward their doom.

Through his spiked and slotted visor, Louis watched as the twelve towers of Sealiah’s fortress loomed larger. Atop each flickered a tongue of flame to keep darkness at bay. This fire was ghostly blue . . . marsh gas piped in from the surrounding flooded lands. In their murky waters, tangles of razor vine squirmed and thrashed and waited for something to wander into their hungry embraces.

More soldiers joined their ranks—hundred and hundreds, but not the numbers that he knew Sealiah had at her disposal.

How badly had Mephistopheles beaten her?

This concerned Louis, not because he felt any pity for his most beautiful adversary, but because it would not give him the chance to take advantage of
her first
.

Or perhaps there was more to this? Certainly Louis had no monopoly on deception (even if he was the
best
at it).

He and the others marched along drawbridges that spanned the wide black waters of the Laudanum River. Along the banks, barrels of oil sat half-buried, awaiting the torch to transform them into floating sheets of fire—unassailable proof against the dark . . . for a time.

Louis then stood before the base of the towering mesa that held Doze Torres. The wisteria-covered earthen ramps that had once zigzagged along the cliff face had been torn away, leaving only sheer rock.

He looked straight up and saw industrial cranes perched on the castles’ walls. On their steel cables, a lift descended that could carry three hundred soldiers.

Louis got on with the others, and it rose into the air.

From this aerial vantage, Louis saw not hundreds, but thousands of soldiers and wobbling cannon and catapults and wagons piled high with soldier pieces struggling back toward the castle from every direction. Most of these ragtag lines came under attack from the darkness.

Louis heard their distant screams and futile shots.

Although if he hadn’t just walked through the killing fields himself, he would have sworn it all had an air of theater to it.

The crane lifted his platform over the ramparts.

A silk spider line brushed Louis’s face, and he absentmindedly brushed it away.

Louis then saw a pleasant surprise: the art of the Poppy Queen’s duplicity.

Within the outer walls surrounding the Tower of Whispering Lilacs, camped under tarps to shield their glow, were ten thousand knights—each with gleaming silver rifle-lances and phosphorescing fungus sprouting from their armor and flesh. There were lines of spore catapults, steam-powered missiles, and squadrons of hanging cluster bats. Firepower to
not quite
assault the Vaults of Heaven . . . but enough to have given them a run for their money should they dare.

Certainly equal to any force Mephistopheles could muster.

He glanced back at the devastated, deflowered Poppy Lands.

All a calculated lure? He didn’t quite think so.

Sealiah’s lands (much like herself) had admirable natural defenses, ones she would not have so casually abandoned. The fact that she had chosen this particular deception was telling.

It was also information that Louis could sell—perhaps so ingratiate himself with the Lord of the Mirrored Realms that he could learn something of
his
plans . . . and in turn sell that information to Sealiah for her most delectable favors.

All the while eroding any advantage either might have over the other, so when the final battle came, the victor would be weakened.

He licked his lips. So dangerous. But so tempting.

The crane set him and the other knights down and they limped toward the Tower of Nightshade, darkest among its fellow flowering structures.

Louis fell behind.

There were precious few shadows in the courtyards with all the pink and lime green and robin’s-egg blue light pulsing from the fungus that grew everywhere. He found a sliver of shade, however, entered its welcome depths, and slinked away unnoticed toward the Oaken Keeper of Secrets.

That was where Sealiah’s map room was (if he remembered correctly). All her plans would be laid out there for the taking.

He almost giggled. How easy this would be.

Of course, she would not expect such a skilled infiltrator—and not him of all her relations. Who was he? Lowly Louis? The earth under her feet? It would not be the first time others had fatally underestimated his cunning.