All That Lives Must Die (57 page)

SECTION

    VII    

WAR IS HELL

               70               

MISSTEPS IN THE BLASTED LANDS

Eliot banged on the gate. The gears of locking mechanism, the web of filigree, and the impenetrable mass of bronze—none of it budged.

And why should it? It had withstood the frenzied pounding of damned souls on this side for countless millennia.

He had a feeling it would stand until the end of time.

“Tell me you jammed the lock,” he whispered to Mr. Welmann.

“Sorry, kid.” Mr. Welmann wiggled his fat fingers. “I was lucky to get my arm out in time.”

Why had Jeremy slammed the gate on them? It didn’t make sense. Eliot turned. Still, they had gotten here . . . and this is where he wanted to be, wasn’t it?

Not quite. This place was as different from Jezebel’s Poppy Lands as you could get. The horizon wavered in the raw heat. There was no sun. Dull red light shone from
below
the edge of the cliff a dozen paces from the gate.

Eliot shucked off his Paxington jacket, already drenched in sweat.

Robert had his off, too. Amanda had her arms crossed protectively over her chest, jacket and all, as if she were cold . . . or maybe in shock.

The air had an iron taste and it made his lungs burn. The ground was ash and dust and pumice. There were footprints . . . lots of them, and Eliot swallowed, remembering the dozens on this side that had stormed the gate the first time he and Fiona had been here.

Where were all those dead now?

“W—what do we do now?” Amanda whimpered. She stood next to Fiona, her back to the gate, trying to stay close to the edge of Hell, as if she stood right on the line, maybe no one would notice she was on the
wrong
side.

Fiona pounded on the gate. Her jaw clenched. “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do,” she said. “We’re going to kill them when we get back to school.”

“We don’t know why Jeremy shut the gate,” Eliot said. It felt wrong to defend Jeremy, but Fiona’s reaction was so violent. “Maybe he saw Kino coming and closed it to protect us.”

“Sarah looked so”—Amanda search for the right words—“surprised. I don’t think she knew why, either.”

“Doesn’t matter why,” Robert said. “The Covingtons will either get caught by Kino, get away clean, or . . . if I know Jeremy, he’ll talk his way out of trouble. But they’re on the other side. We’re here.” He hucked a rock over the edge of the cliff. “On our own.”

“Better scout around,” Mr. Welmann told him.

Robert nodded. He pulled out his Glock 29 and inched toward the cliff.

“I know why he did it,” Fiona said. “He’d wanted to reorganize Team Scarab. Now he can go back and say there is no more Team Scarab. He and Sarah can transfer to a team with a better ranking. Smart—in a cold-blooded killer sort of way.”

“Jeremy is crazy competitive,” Eliot replied, “but he wouldn’t . . .”

He couldn’t finish that thought, because it felt like a lie. What
wouldn’t
Jeremy do to make sure he graduated? Suddenly Eliot wasn’t so sure he was beyond murdering them.

Fiona turned, the color rising in her cheeks. “We’re done,” she said to Eliot. “This mission to get Jezebel, I’m calling it. We’re down two people. I don’t care if Uncle Kino pounds us flat”—she nodded at the cliff and the lava fields beyond—“there’s no way we’re crossing that.”

“But we haven’t even tried.”

Eliot hated this: him pleading like he was her “little” brother. Like she was in charge of everything all the time. Why couldn’t she just believe in him?

Fiona pulled the rubber band off her wrist. She stretched it into a line, staring at it until it was so slender that it flickered, half invisible. She let go. The stretched band stayed elongated and she held it like a rapier.

She plunged it into the gate.

Bronze sparked and squealed, protesting. Fiona pushed all the way in, grunting from the effort. With both hands, she dragged her edge in a large circle, slicing the metal.

The bronze heated, became molten . . . and sealed behind her cut.

Fiona withdrew and stared as the last bit repaired itself. “Huh,” she said.

“You can’t force the Gates of Perdition open,” Mr. Welmann told her. “No one ever has, not even the Titans.”

“We’ll just see about that.” Fiona rummaged in her book bag and took out the silver bracelet Louis had given her. It lengthened and its links swelled to the size of her fist. She narrowed her gaze, focusing. The edges of the rusty metal tapered and sharpened to glistening razors.

She swung it at the gate.

The bronze shrieked and sparks fountained like fireworks. Fiona became a blurry outline against the light.

Eliot had to look away and blink furiously.

The light faded and he looked back.

Fiona stood there, chain in hand . . . a slender bracelet once more.

She sighed at this failure and scrutinized the fence on either side of the gate. The bones and concertina wire curved along the edge of the land—and then over—spines and rib bones sticking out from the cliff.

“Wouldn’t try that either,” Mr. Welmann remarked. “Those bones are some of the exposed bits of the World Serpent. Start messing with that . . . it might wake up.”
61

They’d learned about the world serpent in Miss Westin’s Mythology 101 class. That thing was supposedly strong and venomous enough to kill even gods.

Fiona chewed her lower lip. She turned to Eliot. “I know you think you need to do this,” she whispered, “but it’s crazy. I’m not helping anymore.” She glanced at Amanda. “I’m hoping you’re not going to force us to come along.”

Eliot couldn’t look her in the eye.

How could she even think that? Sure, he may have not told them the entire truth to get them to come . . . but he wasn’t going to
make
any of them risk their lives.

“You know what I’m asking you to do,” she murmured.

“Yeah,” Eliot said. “I know. I’ll do it.”

He wasn’t sure what hurt more: Fiona’s accusation . . . or the fact that she was abandoning him when he needed her the most.

He unslung Lady Dawn and stepped toward the gate.

How to charm open something that looked like it could withstand a nuclear blast? Not with head-on force. The gate had shrugged off Fiona’s attempt.

This required subtlety.

Eliot strummed Lady Dawn and picked out the notes of the “Mortal’s Coil” nursery rhyme. He let the notes wander as he found his way to a new tune: a precise clockwork song with a metronome steady heartbeat. This was the song of the gate. Eliot heard the echo of the song in the gears and cogs, the wound springs, in every rivet and bolt. He picked his way over the notes, and felt blocks and tumblers—and with the tiniest of flourishes, he tickled one of those tumblers into place.

He smiled. This would be easier than he thought.

The gate, however, vibrated of its own accord—the barest rumble that flipped the tumbler back into place.

“It’s fighting me,” he whispered to Fiona.

“Then play harder—or faster—or louder,” she said. “Whatever it takes.”

Robert walked back from the edge of the cliff, his face drawn tight with worry. “Eliot, I wouldn’t play any louder, if I were you. Look.”

Eliot stopped playing. He put on his glasses and then he, Fiona, Mr. Welmann, and Amanda followed Robert back the edge.

The cliff dropped a mile straight down. Switchbacks started from the top and descended into smog. Rivers of lava snaked around mesas of black basalt—their bases eroded by the molten stone. Meteors streaked across the sky, so did the occasional on-fire, out-of-control airline jet.

Eliot winced as one plane crashed and burst into a fireball.

He’d gotten a glimpse of the Blasted Lands at the beginning of the school year. It’d scared him then . . . still did. But something was different.

Fiona said, “It’s quieter.”

Eliot knew there were damned souls here—dozens had rushed the gate and tried to escape last time—but Eliot hadn’t expected to see
thousands
of them down there . . . and all of them quiet.

They formed lines that stretched to the horizon. Each person carried a large stone that, when they got to the end of the line, they dropped into the lava below . . . and then went back for more. The stones disappeared in flame, but elsewhere, they’d actually started to pile up, making jumbled shorelines, and in some places damming the lava altogether.

“What are they doing?” Eliot whispered.

Mr. Welmann wiped the sweat off his face with a red handkerchief. “Something, that’s for sure. Since Beelzebub died, the Blasted Lands were taken over by a new Infernal boss. Looks like he’s put everyone to work.”

Eliot remembered with Louis had told him: “
We are monarchs of the domains of Hell, the benevolent kings and queens over the countless souls who are drawn there to worship us.”

But not everything was different under the new management. In some areas, people fought one another, full-scale wars waged atop a few mesas, the losers tossed over the side into the fire.

“You see them now?” Robert asked Eliot. “The crazy ones? I don’t think we want
them
hearing you playing and coming up here.”

Eliot imagined tens of thousands rushing the gates . . . and him and the others fighting, trapped with their backs against the wall.

He turned to Amanda, worried she might freak out.

But she wasn’t; instead, she stared with open fascination at the lakes of lava and burning mountains. She took a step closer—and Eliot set a hand on her arm, pulling her back from the edge.

“Hey,” he told her.

She blinked, breaking whatever weird trance she’d fallen into, and nodded at him. Amanda’s eyes, though, still glimmered as if they’d absorbed the heat of this place.

Mr. Welmann dug into the pack that Aunt Dallas had given them. He took out a pair of binoculars and gazed through them. “Hmm.” He handed them to Eliot and pointed between two mesas.

Eliot squinted into the binoculars, his gaze traveling over jagged obsidian, and smoldering fissures, and then saw what Mr. Welmann had: A simple suspension bridge swayed across the chasm. It was made of rusted cables and black metal . . . an arc a half-mile long that swung in the heat.

It looked amazingly untrustworthy.

He moved his view left and right, and spotted more of these bridges. They linked one mesa to another, and then to fields beyond the lava. The Blasted Lands leveled out there into plains of ash.

Eliot then spotted a fine straight black line—no,
two
parallel lines—that ran over the plain and vanished in the distance.

“The Night Train’s railroad tracks.” Eliot handed the binoculars to Fiona. “That’s how we’ll get out. We can use those bridges to cross, and then follow the tracks right into the Poppy Lands.”

She looked and snorted and said, “The Poppy Lands are
not
the way out.”

“They’re our
only
way now,” Eliot said. “I’ve been on those tracks. Nothing touches them—not people, flaming meteors, falling planes—even the ash stays off them. They’re protected somehow.”

Mr. Welmann nodded, believing him. The others, though, looked unconvinced.

“And they run straight to the Poppy Lands,” he said. “Even if you don’t want to help me with Jezebel, there’s a station house there with a private train. I’m sure it’ll take you guys back.”

“You’re sure, huh?” Fiona crossed her arms. “More likely we’ll have to steal it.”

“You have a better idea?”

She looked back at the shut Gates of Perdition and pursed her lips. “No . . . I don’t.” She thought for a moment, and then asked, “Can you play a few notes and clean up the air like you did in the gym match? We don’t want to choke along the way.”

Eliot nodded. He took a deep breath and plucked a few Spanish flamenco notes on Lady Dawn, imagining a coastal breeze. The temperature dropped twenty degrees, and the air sweetened.

“Then okay,” Fiona told him. “We’ll give it a try. Robert, take point. Eliot after him—Amanda and me. Mr. Welmann, bring up the rear, please.”

She was using her “team leader” commanding voice that was really getting on Eliot’s nerves.

Robert must have felt the same way, because he hesitated and looked like he wanted to give Fiona his own version of vocabulary insult. Eliot gave him a slight nod. Robert nodded back and headed down the switchbacks.

Fiona pulled Eliot aside. “We’ll catch up in a second,” she told Mr. Welmann and Amanda.

She whispered to Eliot, “Are you sure about this? I mean, I’m your sister. . . . I’ve
got
to help you, no matter what.” She looked extremely awkward saying this. “I think I know what Jezebel means you . . . but it’s not just you and me at risk. Robert, he can take care of himself. And Mr. Welmann, well, he’s already dead, but if his soul gets trapped in Hell . . .” She hesitated and swallowed. “But Amanda . . . I wish I could leave her somewhere safe. She has no idea what she’s gotten into.”

Eliot understood her frustration. Fiona was taking all the responsibility for this onto
her
shoulders—like she really was captain and this was another match. The responsibility must be driving her crazy.

“This isn’t turning out like I thought,” Eliot told her. “But it’s still
my
plan—not yours. Whatever happens out there, I know you’re doing your best to protect everyone, but it’s my responsibility, and my fault, if anything goes wrong.”

She stared at him, confused, as if it were an alien concept that Eliot could take leadership and responsibility for something, but then she nodded.

They tromped down the switchbacks, catching up with the others.

“Hey, cool air is back.” Mr. Welmann turned as Eliot got close. “That’s nice.” He sweated profusely, which was weird, considering he was dead.

Eliot kept playing quietly as they walked. He didn’t look back.

It took a while to get to the bottom of the switchbacks. How long, Eliot wasn’t sure. Time felt “slippery,” as if no time had passed, but simultaneously, it felt like it took forever, too.

No one spoke, heeding Robert’s warning not to attract any undue attention.