by Eric Nylund
“Of course the damned come back,” she told him. “Their torment must be eternal. But Jezebel is neither one of the damned dead nor a true Infernal. She is an elevated creature, born of my power, and as there is so little land and power left to me, her existence has been. . snuffed.”
Eliot took a step closer to the Poppy Queen. “There has to be a way.”
Sealiah smiled at the challenge in his tone.
His blood burned and he struggled to keep his anger from rising. He took a deep breath, held it, and slowly exhaled.
He realized Sealiah hadn’t answered his question about what happened to dead Infernals-but he had to keep his focus on Jezebel. She was the only thing that mattered.
“She’s gone,” Eliot whispered to her, “but there is a way to get her back, isn’t there?”
Sealiah’s smile vanished. “As I said, she is tied to my power and lands. Help me recover them.”
Eliot pursed his lips. “I’ve already agreed to help you fight.”
“You must do more than that, Eliot. You must fight and win. Do that and only then can I restore her.”
He nodded. As if he had any choice now.
Sealiah moved off and shouted orders for her knights to gather weapons, ready artillery, and prepare for battle.
Eliot looked at Fiona. He needed his sister more than ever.
Fiona still looked uncertain. He didn’t blame her. This was all part of a complicated Infernal plot-and they both knew it. For his part, however, it was a plot he’d walked into with open eyes to save Jezebel. For him there was no turning back.
He glanced at his father, who looked like he had something to say, but remained silent. He’d probably tell Eliot that there is no difference from someone in love and someone damned in Hell-eternal torment for both. Maybe he’d be right.
Fiona stood straighter and finally nodded.
She didn’t have to say a thing. He knew she’d made up her mind to stay and help. Fiona would always be there for him.
He’d never take her for granted again. He’d never forget what he owed her.
Mr. Welmann ran his hand over his unshaven chin. A dozen expressions passed over his face and his forehead crinkled in deep thought. He caught Eliot’s gaze, however, and nodded, too.
Robert wiped dirt and blood off his face and then spit. “This sucks,” he told Eliot. “Let’s just do it and get out of here.” He glanced at the covered form of Jezebel. “Get you both out of here.”
Eliot marveled at Robert’s bravado as his friend assumed that they even had a chance outnumbered ten to one, and facing a fully powered Infernal Lord on the battlefield.
He gazed at where Jezebel lay. He wanted to sit next to her. But that wasn’t going to get her back. Fighting-with as much power and ruthlessness as he could muster-smashing Sealiah’s enemy and recapturing her lands-that brutal act was ironically the only way he’d be healed and whole once more.
Louis stepped forward. He smiled sympathetically as if it were an afterthought. He set his hands on Eliot’s shoulders. “May we speak? Alone? Father to son?”
Eliot glanced over the edge of the plateau. Mephistopheles’ armies moved closer. Eliot swallowed, trying to be brave as he listened to the enemy’s thunderous approach.
“Make it quick,” he said Louis.
Eliot braced himself for what he expected to be a speech from Louis about love, and lost love, and how all these things were parts of life, and he was really better off without women-like he needed a lecture in that, right now.
Instead Louis removed an envelope from the folds of his shirt. It was so worn, the paper was fuzzy. He handed it to Eliot.
Eliot accepted it. “What’s this?”
“It is for your mother, should I not survive.” Louis glanced about. “It was something that she ought to have taken from me in the first place.”
The envelope was unsealed, and Louis hadn’t said he couldn’t look, so Eliot did.
Within were shreds of paper: newsprint and cereal-box cardboard and old phone bills.
Eliot cocked his head, uncertain what they were.
“My heart,” Louis explained. “At least all that’s left after your mother ripped it out and tore it to bits.” He closed the envelope and set his hand over Eliot’s. “I have a feeling you’ll be seeing her after this. . and I will not. Please.”
Eliot didn’t get it. Was this a metaphor? Or Louis playing another cruel joke on his mother?
He looked serious. Eliot detected no outright lie, either.
Eliot tucked the envelope into his pocket.
He had a million things to tell his father. He didn’t know how to say them with any eloquence. But there was no time left.
“Look,” Eliot whispered, “I just wanted to say you haven’t been the world’s greatest father. I wish you’d been there when we were growing up. I guess I wish a lot things that will never happen now. Just be careful so there a chance we can get to know each other. . after.”
“I am always careful, Eliot,” Louis whispered. “Especially in the matters of my own skin.” He leaned closer. “Now, allow me to instruct you in the thirteen ways to avoid getting hit in battle. First there is the classic Secret Principle of Cowardly Misdirection. . ”
Louis’s voice faded as Sealiah approached them. Five people trailed behind her.
Louis cleared his throat, and continued, “As I was saying, be brave and give the enemy no quarter.”
The people with Sealiah wore no armor and carried no weapons. There was a man with a guitar, a man holding a bass guitar, and one carrying bagpipes. (Eliot had only ever seen pictures of that instrument.) The last two, a man and a woman, had long wild hair and carried no instruments.
Sealiah halted before Eliot and gestured to these people with a wave of her hand. “Eliot, allow me to introduce Kurt, Sid, Bon, James, and Janis.”
They bowed low before him.
“Uh, hi,” Eliot said, and waved. “Who are they?” he asked.
The Queen of Poppies arched a long delicate eyebrow as if this were the stupidest question ever asked in all of Hell. “I would not send you into battle ill-prepared, my young Dux Bellorum. They are your band.”65
65. Fans have speculated for decades who precisely composed Eliot’s original band. While the surnames commonly mentioned match famous personas, one must not forget that Sealiah, the Queen of the Poppy Lands, was at that time responsible for the souls of those who had died from overdoses-a very large number of musicians, indeed. Eliot remained tight-lipped about the identities of his band members, not wanting their fans or families to unduly suffer, knowing they were in Hell. Still, fans wonder, and most would have “sold their souls” to hear them perform together. Having heard the band play firsthand, I can tell you that price would’ve been a bargain. The Secret Red Diaries of Sarah Covington, Third Edition, Sarah Covington, Mariposa Printers, Dublin.
76 LAST MOMENTS TOGETHER
Eliot felt broken inside and that broken part didn’t care about anything anymore. But part of him wanted to scream and toss caution to the winds and play the heck out of Lady Dawn and smash Mephistopheles’ armies to atoms.
. . And maybe then Jezebel would be by his side.
Or was it being in Hell that made him feel that way? Maybe after this was over, he and Fiona and Robert should just go back to Paxington, hit the books, and figure out how to get through the rest of the school year without being killed, maimed, or flunking.
Eliot shook his head clear of those thoughts. He stood on a stage that had been set up near the edge of the mesa.
To the left, the land sheared away where he’d collapsed the tunnels. That now provided a way to the top of the plateau, a treacherously steep slope, but one soldiers and shadow creatures could rush up. He flushed with embarrassment that he’d caused this, but better that than letting the enemy crawl up through the middle of their defenses.
This was where Mephistopheles’ armies would try to overwhelm Sealiah’s forces-and it was where the Que
en had concentrated her armies and artillery.
Archers and cannon had been positioned along the walls on either side of the slope. Industrial cranes dangled platforms piled with rubble-ready to release those loads and start an avalanche. Five hundred soldiers with rifle lances and tower shields formed a phalanx in the center of a breach. To either side, two thousand foot soldiers waited with ax and crossbow, net and pike. Mr. Welmann was there, too, with saber in hand and flintlock pistols tucked into his camo sweatpants. Behind them were the Poppy Queen’s Calvary-three hundred mounted knights who could rush through the line and knock the enemy back. . although Eliot thought this a measure of last defense, because once they charged down that steep hill, getting back up wouldn’t be an easy option.
Eliot had read about every important battle, thanks to Audrey and Cee’s homeschooling: Thermopylae, Waterloo, and Gettysburg. He remembered how high the casualties had been even for so-called victories.
Sealiah’s defensive line looked solid, though.
But enough to win?
At the base of the Twelve Towers Mesa, shadows flitted, crisscrossed, and grew longer and darker until they reached the river in the valley. Beyond those riverbanks was a solid mass of black. Clouds the color of coal covered the sky and plunged this world into night.
Eliot put on his glasses, squinted, and caught glimpses of what moved in that darkness: large forms with haunches and pointed insect legs and blinking eyes that crawled over one another like it was all part of the same thing. The dark stretched to the horizon, endless and impenetrable.
Mephistopheles stood at the head of his ranks. The Infernal Lord rumm-bled within a swirling thunderhead that rose a hundred feet into the air. He was a giant flickering in and out of sight: an armored leg, a muscular arm, a barbed pitchfork the size of a telephone pole.
A pair of eyes, red and unblinking, stared back at Eliot from those clouds, two concentrated points of fury that meant to destroy them all.
Yeah. . whatever.
As if Eliot hadn’t seen that look a million times before from almost every relative he’d met since his fifteen birthday.
But this bravado was another lie. The truth was, he was scared.
It wasn’t like when he had Fiona had fought Beelzebub. The Lord of All That Flies had been holding back because he’d wanted to take them alive. And he’d trounced them. . up until Fiona had decapitated him with his own necklace.
This was entirely different: an Infernal Lord ready to battle, not holding anything back, with the full strength of an army at his back and drawing upon all the power of his lands in Hell.
Something inside Eliot wanted to curl up and hide.
He glanced at Fiona and Robert. They stood nearby onstage. Maybe they all wanted to be close before the battle started. Of maybe it was because the stage had the best view. Or maybe it was because Fiona wanted to be far from the Queen. (He had a feeling that if his sister wasn’t about to fight Mephistopheles, she’d be going at it with Sealiah.)
Fiona talked strategy with Robert-well, actually, they argued about the hows and whys of the upcoming war like it was another gym match.
Eliot stroked Lady Dawn, his fingers magnetically drawn to her strings. . feather touches that make the lightest of notes. That steadied his nerves, and he got a weird feeling it calmed Lady Dawn as well.
He took off his glasses and carefully put them away.
“Hey, man. .”
Eliot turned. The guitarist Sealiah had called Kurt nodded through his long hair at Lady Dawn. “That was cool, but you better plug in.” He hitched his thumb at the wall of amplifiers behind him.
Eliot shook his head.
Kurt looked confused; then he glanced at Lady Dawn and this gaze wandered over her polished wood and brass fittings. “Got it,” he whispered. “You’re the man. We’ll jump in as soon as you go.”
“Thanks,” Eliot replied.
Kurt went back to the guy on bass, Sid, and the one with the bagpipe, Bon. They murmured to one another, Sid looked at Eliot and then Lady Dawn, and his upper lip curled in a half snarl and he nodded appreciatively.
Meanwhile, the singers, James and Janis, sauntered up to the microphones on either side of Eliot. James took off his shirt, tapped the mic, and said, “Do your thing with the Lizard King.” Janis smiled at Eliot and mouthed, It’s cool, baby.
He smiled back at him, but inside his stomach churned.
How was he supposed to play with these people when he had a hard enough time just controlling his own music?
Fiona came to him, sparing a few uncertain glances at Eliot’s band.
“Here’s the plan,” she whispered, all business. “Robert and I are going to try a blitz to get to the rear of their lines after the initial clash. There should be enough confusion for us to move quickly.”
Eliot imagined his sister and Robert strolling casually past the thousands that would be trying to hack one another to bits.
“That’s crazy,” he told her.
“Sure it is,” she replied, and frowned. “But I’m betting this is like any other gym match.”
Eliot gave her that special you’ve hit your head look that he saved for occasions like this. (Okay, there had never been an occasion like this before. . but he gave her that look anyway.)
“I mean, there’s a goal,” Fiona said, exasperated that she had to spell it out for him. She nodded at the towering clouds that shrouded Mephistopheles.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Eliot said.
“We take him out and we’re betting his army falls apart. It’s simple.”
“Okay, that makes a microscopic amount of sense,” he told his sister. “If you don’t consider that Mephistopheles is probably a bazillion times as powerful as Beelzebub was, has an army. . and that we almost lost to Beelzebub back in Del Sombra.”
Fiona crossed her arms and frowned. “Got a better plan? I’m listening.”
Eliot thought about it. Yeah, sure, if Robert or Fiona could stop Mephistopheles, his army would scatter, scared by anything that could kill their Lord and Master. So it was a fine plan. . provided they had a small tactical nuclear weapon with which to take out the Infernal.
But Eliot finally said, “I guess we go with your plan.”
He resisted the urge to say stupid plan.
“I’ll need your help,” Fiona said. She bit her lip and glanced at his guitar. She always got weird when she talked about his music, as if it was something she didn’t like or understand but nonetheless had to tolerate it. Like Cee’s cooking.
Eliot guessed he felt the same way about her cutting. He suppressed a shiver.
“You’re going to have to do something to help us get close to Mephistopheles,” she said. “And when we get there, you’ll have to weaken him. . but in a way that doesn’t blow us up or anything.”
Eliot wasn’t sure how it was to accomplish any of that; he was making this up as he went along. He just hoped he didn’t get her or Robert killed.
“I’ll do my best,” he said.
They stood there. There was a long moment, awkward silence.
Eliot then looked Fiona square in the eyes. “I’m really sorry.”
How to explain it? He wasn’t sorry he’d come to save Jezebel. But he was sorry he had risked their lives. And he was sorry he’d gotten them into a jam with no way out except a bloody fight that might end get them tortured for all eternity if they lost.
She punched him in the shoulder. “What else was I going to do on Wednesday night except study for finals?”
Eliot tried to smile, failed, and shrugged. “Trogium pulsatorium?” he muttered.
That was the soft-bodied, wingless insect commonly called a “bookworm” (although technically it was a louse). This was a poor attempt at vocabulary insult, but it was all he had at the moment.
It was nice to have a moment of something normal between them. Maybe the last time that’d happen.
“Good one,” she replied, and uncharacteristically offered no co
unter-insult. Instead she looked around and sobered. “Have you seen Louis?”
“Just a second ago. He was at the back of the lines.”
Louis was no longer there, though, and Eliot wondered if his father would be fighting. . or hiding?
Sealiah mounted the stairs to his stage and joined them. Tiny star-shaped orchids sprouted from the links in her armor and drizzled pollen, a cloak of wisteria-laden vines flowed behind her, and clouds of wasps circled high over her head.
Her perfume was intoxicating. Eliot felt dizzy and drowning, but he didn’t mind.
She looked more beautiful than before, like a carving by Michelangelo, as if the impending battle and bloodshed brought out the best in the Infernal queen.
Eliot’s band fell to their knees, and even Eliot felt obliged to give her a short bow.
Fiona stood with her hands on her hips.
“Soon it starts,” Sealiah said to them. “There is a final detail to attend to. Mr. Farmington?”
Robert shucked on his Paxington jacket, came over, and gave her a short bow as well.
“While Eliot and Fiona have more formidable weapons than I could ever provide,” Sealiah said as her gaze slid over the length of Robert. “You, my young hero, have only that toy.” She nodded at the brass knuckles on his hands (the ones that could punch through solid stone).
Robert cupped his fist. “Yes ma’am.” He flushed, but then recovered. “But I know how to use them.”
“No doubt.” She drew her broken sword and held it at an angle so Robert could see its jagged tip, the length of its patterned Damascus steel, and the poison that flowed and dripped onto the stage. “But would you accept the sword Saliceran and wield it in my name?”
Robert’s eyes drank in the weapon, and his hand drifted toward the handle.
It was terrible. And powerful. Eliot didn’t meet any special sense of magic to understand that. It was also something old. Something never meant to be touched by human hands.
“Don’t,” Fiona whispered.
Robert pursed his lips, and purposely didn’t look at Fiona. “Thank you, ma’am. I’ll take you up on that.”