by Eric Nylund
It hurt to remember.
Her Queen had told her if she ignored it, it would soon go away-like the summer sniffles.
Indeed. She was Jezebel now, filled with the power of Hell, primordial and more intoxicating than the opium to which she had once been so addicted.
The serfs of the fields genuflected as she rode past.
They did not tend to the poppy harvest as usual, but rather cultivated spear and pike thickets, rolled spore cannons upon the backs of the giant bats as the animals hissed and squeaked in protest, and propped suits of plate armor among the twining bramble. . which would coil and fill them and bring them to life.
As she neared the cliffs of the Twelve Towers, she saw engineers strengthening its fortifications. Antiaircraft artillery squatted upon the ramparts. The walls were heavy with creeping death vines, which bristled with thorns and oozed a flesh-corrosive toxin.
Even the land prepared for inevitable war. The Laudanum River that wound through the valley rainbowed with oily slicks as the jungle that had overgrown its banks wept poison to make it a moat of death.
Jezebel clattered up the cobblestone road and through the castle’s raised portcullis.
Guards in thorn armor and flower-laden lances saluted her and helped her dismount. The Captain bowed and indicated the Queen awaited her pleasure in the Chamber of Maps.
She raced up the stairs of the Sixth Tower, the so-called Oaken Keeper of Secrets.
It was not wise to keep the Queen waiting. Ever.
She paused outside the chamber to adjust her skirt and smooth her Paxington jacket, to make sure her hair was just right.
Jezebel sensed Sealiah near. They were connected through the Pact of Indomitable Servitude, the oath that broken and damned Julie Marks had taken to transform herself into Jezebel. It made her a part of Sealiah’s will, Julie’s soul consumed and replaced by the shadow of the Queen of Poppies. Jezebel felt this in her very atoms. She did not struggle against it. One might as well try to struggle against breathing.
She entered the chamber, bowing low, not daring to look upon her Queen before instructed to.
“I shall tend to you in a moment,” Sealiah said. “And rise. Submission becomes most young girls. . but not you.”
The Queen of Poppies had dressed to kill today. A sheath of gossamer metal clung to her curves-liquid dark-matter silver that had been in existence before the mortal Earth had been dust gathering in void.
Jezebel’s gaze settled on the emerald that sat in the delicate V of Sealiah’s collarbone. This stone was the personal symbol of Sealiah’s power. It pulsed, daring any who desired it to try to rip it from her.
Jezebel had a sliver of that stone within her left palm-a gift and living link to her Queen.
Her fingers rolled into a fist. How she would love to taste more.
She averted her eyes from this obvious temptation, however, and her gaze landed upon the curved daggers, Exarp and Omebb, strapped to Sealiah’s thighs. . as well as the broken Sword of Dread, Saliceran, sheathed on her hip.
That terrible blade was said to have been broken as it struck the Immovable One in the Great War with Heaven. It had killed thousand of mortals and Immortals. The metal wept venom equal to the rage of the one who wielded it.
Jezebel then turned her attentions to the map table. It was a model of the Poppy Lands from the Valley of the Shadow of Death across the Dusk End of Rainbow to Venom-Tangle Thicket. Miniature infantry and fungus bat squadrons, Lancers of the Wild Rose, and Longbow of the Order of Whispering Death guarded key strategic locations. . waiting for the enemy to make its move.
Bumblebees flew from open windows and landed upon the table. Covered in pollen and sticky with nectar, they waddled, buzzing among the unit markers and pushing them to their latest positions.
Sealiah plucked up one black-and-amber insect, its stinger half the length of its squirming body. “Tell the Lancers to pull back to the Western Ridge. Bury antipersonnel mines as they go.” She then blew on the creature, and it took to the air.
“Now,” Sealiah said, and finally turned to Jezebel, “how was school?”
Her Queen was, as always, breathtaking: bronze skin, her hair gleaming copper and streaked with platinum, and eyes that knew the depths of seduction and addiction.
Jezebel had to resist the urge to fall down in worship. “I passed entrance and placement exams without incident, my Queen.”
The entrance to the Paxington Institute had been obvious to her Infernal senses. And between the answers provided for her, as well as weeks of intensive study from tutors, Jezebel had earned a B+ on the written exam, of which she was extremely proud.
Her former incarnation, Julie Marks-when she bothered to go to high school at all-had scraped by with Cs.
“Of course you passed.” Sealiah arched one delicate eyebrow. “Or you would dare not show your face here.”
Jezebel felt her cheeks heat, and she carefully averted her eyes so her Queen did not see the hate within.
“Tell me about the twins,” Sealiah ordered.
On a side table, the Queen unrolled the circular mat for a game of Towers, a game that to Jezebel seemed part checkers, part chess, and had a long list of rules that seemed improvised half the time.
“They passed their tests, too. We are on the same team: Scarab.” Jezebel continued with a narration of their first day, explaining the composition of their team (including a report on Robert Farmington, who surely worked for the League), their tour of the Paxington campus, and the Ludus Magnus.
She told Sealiah how Fiona and Eliot reacted to it all. How they were so naïve about everything. It was pathetic.
“You think your Eliot Post is weak, then?”
“No, my Queen. There is something still to the boy. I can feel it growing within him. Something that. .”
Jezebel couldn’t find the words. She wasn’t sure how she felt about him. . something no doubt left over from her weaker, mortal self.
“You are drawn to the boy?” Sealiah narrowed her eyes at Jezebel as she searched her heart. “Beyond his mere power?”
Jezebel opened her mouth to deny any attraction.
But that would be a lie. One her Queen would instantly detect. Such simple deceptions were the greatest insult one Infernal could give to another.
So she said nothing.
Sealiah inspected her nails: bloodred and pointed. She then set a handful of white cubes upon the Towers game mat. “Does he suspect who you were?”
“He may.” Jezebel fidgeted. “He looks at me-I mean, like all the boys, of course. But, I think he sees a shadow of. . she who I was.” Jezebel couldn’t speak her former name aloud. She loathed the weak creature she had been. “It shall not be a problem. It will be child’s play to deflect his questions.”
Sealiah stroked Jezebel’s cheek with one fingernail, cutting the flesh. The sensation sent shivers through Jezebel. “You will tell him the truth if he asks,” Sealiah said. “All of it. Even, and especially, about Julie Marks.”
Jezebel inhaled and took an involuntary step back.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “I thought I was to get close to the twins. Help them so they would be sympathetic to our cause. Wasn’t I going to be friends with Fiona? With Eliot? How will the truth help that?”
Jezebel realized too late that withdrawal from her Queen’s presence, questioning her orders-either could be reason to be annihilated.
Sealiah, however, merely smiled and tilted her head. “These are still our goals, my pet. But Eliot is far more Infernal than any yet suspect. I have reports of his music quelling the borders of the disputed Blasted Lands.”
Eliot had been to Hell? Jezebel wanted to ask how and when and what he had played.
For a terrible moment, she was Julie Marks again, yearning to hear her song once more. Her heart filled with hope and love and light.
She quickly snuffed those weaknesses before Sealiah saw them-and ripped them from her chest.
Still. . she
didn’t understand.
Sealiah must have seen the confusion on her face, because she said, “If the boy continues to develop his stronger, Infernal nature, then he will certainly be able to do what any young lord of Hell can: sort lies from truth.”
Jezebel wrestled with her Queen’s command to tell the truth. Deception had been the entire basis of her relationship with Eliot. He had fallen for sweet, innocent, and vulnerable Julie Marks, the new manager at Ringo’s Pizza-not runaway, died-of-a-heroin-overdose Julie Marks from the alleyways of Atlanta, not Julie Marks who had made a deal for her life and soul in exchange for seducing him into damnation everlasting.
“Shhh,” Sealiah said, “quiet your thoughts.” She looked down upon her, her features a mix of pity and disgust. “Since you have yet to be trained on the higher arts of trickery, our young Eliot will sense any attempt to hide the truth-so do not. It would backfire and further alienate you from him.”
“I shall do as you say, my Queen,” Jezebel said. “But. . won’t he hate me?”
“Oh, my precious dear-of course he will. How much you have yet to learn of men.”
Sealiah drew Jezebel closer and slipped her arms about her shoulder. This felt wonderfully warm and comforting and yet terribly dangerous at the same time.
“Eliot will hate you, at first. But you will then have the boy’s interest. . which, when mixed with his good intentions and budding manly concerns, will curdle into love.”
Jezebel understood. She didn’t like her part it in, but she nonetheless appreciated the cleverness of the ploy-both dreaming of and dreading what would happen to her and Eliot when it came to fruition.
“Then,” Sealiah said, glancing at her game of Towers, “we will have him.”
16. BREAKFAST SPECIAL
Eliot ran along the sidewalk. Fiona raced him to the spot on the granite wall where the entrance to Paxington hid in plain sight.
He’d gotten a few paces ahead of her because she had to dodge a flower cart parked on the sidewalk (and she was too prissy to run around it on the street-even a few feet).
He stopped at the wall, touched it, and panted.
She shrugged as if to say, Whatever-I let you, but couldn’t speak because she was breathing too heavily.
Eliot knew they wouldn’t be late today-absolutely not.
He’d learned how to set the alarm on his new phone and gotten up extra early. He hadn’t wanted to take any chances, though, so he and Fiona raced all the way from the breakfast table down through Pacific Heights, onto Lombard Street to here.
Eliot opened his phone, double-checking that they had plenty of time to make it to class. They did.
He found the crack in the wall, focused on it, and this time it was easy to slip around the corner that shouldn’t exist.
It still felt weird.
Fiona came in right behind him.
The alley to Paxington was shaded, and the ivy-covered walls cooled the already chilly air. Café Eridanus was full, the outdoor tables taken by older students eating pastries and drinking lattes before school started.
Eliot paused and inhaled scents wafting from the café: freshly ground coffee and steamed milk, a slightly charred citrus odor from flaming crêpes suzettes, melting butter, bacon, and sourdough bread just out of the oven.
“Come on,” Fiona said, and moved toward the gate.
Eliot’s stomach complained, and he lingered. He would die if he had to sit through an entire lecture, or at the very least, he wouldn’t be able to hear Miss Westin speaking over his grumbling digestive tract.
“Just a sec,” he said. “I’ll grab a bite-”
Eliot’s mind halted mid-thought. Even his stomach stopped rumbling.
His father sat at one of the outdoor café tables under the sky blue canopy. Three older Paxington boys stood around him, so Eliot hadn’t seen him at first.
The plates and coffee cups at his table had been shoved aside. Louis moved his hands over the tablecloth, shuffling three cards.
“Don’t take your eyes off it this time,” Louis told the boys. “Not for an instant!”
Eliot edged closer. Fiona was right behind him.
Louis’s cards were facedown on the table, and each creased down the center so they could be easily manipulated. One was dog-eared. Another had a water spot in the center.
Eliot felt something off. . and understood Louis was trying to fool the boys by making the shuffling look so simple and the cards so easy to identify.
“Now,” Louis asked the boys. “Where is the Queen of Spades?”
“That one.” A boy pointed to the center card.
Another told him, “No, it’s the one on the right.”
Louis smiled. “Are you sure?”
He looked up as he said this, and caught Eliot’s eyes. Something passed between them, a slight tilt of the head, recognition, and an invitation to watch and learn.
“I’m sure,” the boy said, “the center card. Flip it already and pay up.”
Louis obliged. The card was the three of hearts.
“I’m sorry,” Louis said, genuinely sounding sad. “You’ll get it next time, I’m sure.” He scooped their money off the table.
The boys asked for one more game, but Louis said no. “I have other customers this morning.” He gestured at Eliot and Fiona.
The three boys left, muttering and arguing over how they had lost track of the queen.
Eliot and Fiona moved to the table.
“You came here to see us, didn’t you?” Eliot asked.
“Of course, my boy.” Louis clasped him warmly by the shoulder. “You look dashing in that uniform, by the way. The girls shall swoon.”
Eliot felt instantly two feet taller.
Louis turned to Fiona. “And you, my dearest Fiona, you look. .” He gesticulated with his hands, but couldn’t find the right words as he looked her over. “So nice.”
Fiona crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
“True,” Louis said. “I am often not where I am supposed to be. And your mother has promised to kill me if I ever came near you again.” He shrugged. “But she does not know of this meeting, so the point is moot.” He stood, pulled out a chair, and gallantly offered it to Fiona.
Fiona remained standing and glared at him.
Louis was unfazed by this. He looked for the waiter, saying, “Let us not dwell on the ugly past and all these wretched parental custody issues, shall we? Let us just forgive one another, order breakfast, and chat. There’s so much lost time to make up for.”
“Forgive each other?” Fiona said. “What have we done that needs your forgiveness?”
Louis raised a finger. “Tut-tut. I won’t hear of it. All is forgotten and pardoned.”
Eliot sat.
Sure, he was still mad at Louis for using them as bait to lure Beelzebub into a trap (a trap, by the way, that hadn’t worked). Only by the narrowest of scrapes had they not been killed. And sure, Louis was an Infernal, the Prince of Darkness, and perhaps evil incarnate. But he was their only relation who had ever given them straight answers. Something in very sort supply these days.
Besides, Eliot was hungry.
A waiter came and took out a notepad.
“Shall it be two or three specials?” Louis asked Fiona.
She toyed with the rubber band on her wrist, and then reluctantly settled into the chair.
“Ten minutes,” she told Eliot. “No more. If we’re late again for class. .”
“Yes,” Louis purred, “Miss Westin once had a guillotine for her tardy students.” He looked utterly serious and he made a chopping motion onto the table. “Three specials,” he told the waiter. “Make it a rush.”
“Oui, Monsieur Piper.”
Eliot studied his father. He looked so different from the dirty homeless person he’d been just a few months ago. . and definitely different from the bat-winged fallen-angel woodcuts he’d seen in Paradise Lost (part of last night’s reading assignment). Louis w
ore black slacks and a black silk dress shirt undone to his sternum (with buttons that looked like real diamonds). Eliot thought this might be what a stage magician would look like.
But it was Louis’s face that fascinated Eliot most. His eyes sparkled as if he had just been laughing; his nose was crooked and hooked at the end; his thin mustache and goatee were immaculately trimmed and pointed; and his silver-streaked hair had been pulled back. It gave him an air of casual grace, elegance, and above all else. . mischief.
“What do you want?” Fiona asked their father.
“What I want?” Louis got a faraway look in his eyes and stroked his chin. “I want my family to be whole and happy. I want you two to graduate from Paxington maxima cum laude, bar none, merito puro! I want to sail a galleon of solid gold upon a lake of jewels in my treasure kingdom the size of Nevada! I want the love of a beautiful woman. All women! I want the respect and adulation of billions. I want the world to be my pearl-stuffed oyster!”
Louis made eye contact with the waiter. “Although,” he said with a sigh, “I’d settle for a cup of this establishment’s wonderful Turkish coffee. What about you, darling daughter?”
“I want you to stop calling me that,” she said.
“I want answers,” Eliot chimed in before his sister worked up a head of steam.
Louis brightened and turned to him. “And so you shall have them, my boy. Ask! Anything. I shall be your unbiased oracle.”
The waiter brought coffee and orange juice and a basket of steaming blueberry muffins drizzled with butter.
Eliot tore into a muffin, drank half a glass of juice, and then said, “Uncle Kino drove us to the Gates of Perdition. To show us where Infernals come from. Was it really Hell? Is that where you live?”
Louis considered for a moment, and slipped four sugar cubes into his coffee. “He showed you. . yes, but only the absolutely most wretched part. It’s like driving through the worst sections of Detroit and being told that is America. Why, you’d miss out entirely on Disneyland and Las Vegas.”
“Please,” Fiona scoffed. “Are you saying there are nice parts of Hell?”
“There are forests, jungles, and cities filled with exotic delights,” Louis said. “There are circuses, meadows of flowers, castles filled with lords and ladies-realms beyond imagination.”