by Eric Nylund
“No,” Fiona said with absolute certainty. “It’s my choice what I want to be.”
“Then it’s my choice, too,” he told her.
“Don’t be stupid,” Fiona whispered. “Things can’t end like this: us on different sides.”
Eliot shook his head. “You just don’t understand.” He turned and walked away.
Sarah started after him, but stopped when she saw the look of contempt on Fiona’s face. She hesitated, took a step toward Eliot, but then halted and stayed with Fiona.
Fiona could have gone after her brother-maybe even have stopped him, or at least, made him listen to her.
But she didn’t.
He had gone too far. He was lost to her.
“And so,” Sobek murmured, “as I have foreseen: the Heralds of the End of Days are split asunder.”
71. “I have stared into the eyes of Ancient Death. Was this our future? Our doom?” Thus begins Sarah Covington’s first entry in what would later be known as her notorious Secret Red Diaries. Sarah Covington had kept journals before and concurrent with her “red” diaries, but those contained details of her pre-Paxington personal life, ongoing Covington political dramas, and her familial teachings. The Secret Red Diaries, on the other hand, detail her long and tortuous relationships with the Post twins. Given where those relationships ended, her writings provide a unique mortal’s perceptive to their fantastic journeys, the wars to come, and the eventual fate of the Middle Realms. Gods of the First and Twenty-first Century, Volume 11, The Post Family Mythology. Zypheron Press Ltd., Eighth Edition.
87 PATCHED
This was a bad idea. Audrey felt it chill her to the bone, despite the cashmere wrap about her shoulders. She set her hands over the votive candle on the table and let the light and shadows play over her fingers.
When she had heard what happened to Eliot and Fiona-after worrying for weeks and weeks when they’d disappeared-that they’d fought in a war in Hell. . she had almost died.
She had sworn to kill Louis for his recklessness.
Then she calmed and understood that it had been a logical move for the Infernals. . that her children were more powerful than ever. . and that certain opportunities now might present themselves before the end of the world.
It was a childish dream that she could love again or that her family could ever be whole.
She sighed.
A pity she had not the courage to cut Louis from her heart. Had that been selfishness or foolishness?
She looked across the walkway and saw moonlight flicker like a thousand fish upon the waters of the Canal Grande of Venice. Lovers strolled arm in arm by the sidewalk café. A breeze ruffled the jasmine in their planter boxes and filled the air with their cloying scent.
She was surrounded by people in love in the most romantic city on Earth. . ironic, because she was alone.
This was the spot where she and the then-masked Louis Piper had talked all night, waxed poetic about life and longings and how only simpletons fell in love. As the dawn had broken upon the canal and tinged the silver waters red, they had lifted one another’s masks-and she had felt the piercing of her heart, and known that she was a simpleton, too.
Love.
Cornelius had told her even the Primordial Ones had loved after a fashion, although it had been a savage thing compared with the refined emotions of their Age.
The waiter came and refreshed her cup of minted Turkish coffee. “Still waiting, madam?”
She nodded.
Indeed, what a simpleton she was then and now. She rose from her seat and straightened her silver silk gown. She had dressed for the opera with matching arm-length gloves, pearls, and heels-all courtesy of Madame Cobweb. Her effort wasted.
She was about to turn and walk away, when she spotted him.
Louis, the Grand Deceiver, and the only man who could so irritate her, hurried through the crowds. When he saw her, his face lit with all the passion and intensity she remembered from their first morning together. He wore a tuxedo with tails and diamond studs-and turned every woman’s head.
“Audrey, beloved,” he said, and reached for her hands (which she pulled away). “I would have rather died than be late, but there was something of the utmost importance that required my personal attention.”
He implored her to sit, and she reluctantly did so.
“Really?” She mustered as much icy sarcasm as she could, and yet Atropos, Cutter of all Things, and Death incarnate, felt her heart flutter and her pulse race with warmth she thought she would never feel again.
A black cat leaped onto the linen-covered table between them-its tail fluffing into Louis’s face.
Louis stiffened and grabbed the animal by the scruff of the neck. In response, the cat’s claws extended and dimpled into the tablecloth, dragging it with him.
“Don’t, Louis.” She gently took the animal and set in the seat next to her.
The waiter stared at the cat, frowning-but Audrey stopped any protest from him with a single glance.
She stroked Amberflaxus and the cat turned and turned and nuzzled her hand for more. “I’m surprised more people haven’t noticed this poor creature by now, and drowned it in a well.”
Louis shrugged. “That might be for the best.”
“You don’t mean that.”
He thought about it a moment. “No.” He narrowed his eyes at the cat, then his gaze roamed over her gown, and his mood brightened. “You look absolutely radiant tonight, my dear.”
Audrey stopped petting Amberflaxus and held up her hand. “Let me make it clear that I came only because you said you wanted to talk about the children.”
His smile flickered to life. “Do you think you can lie to me? About this? Your coquettishness flatters me.”
Audrey closed her eyes. How could she forget? Louis, the Father of Lies, of course, would hear the false words spilling from her lips.
She exhaled. “Yes,” she admitted, “I came for the children and to deal with you once and for all-but mainly for the children.”
His smile turned mischievous, and he reached into his tuxedo and pulled out a folded manila envelope. He pushed it across the table.
Audrey opened the flap. Inside were two sheets of curling vellum that felt rough and cold even through her gloves. She unrolled them and read along the top:
WARRANT OF DEATH
Her breath caught as she scanned the bottom of the page, seeing the filled-in name: ELIOT POST.
She flipped to the other page and saw: FIONA POST.
Only Louis ever had the ability to render her speechless-but this, even for him, was going too far. Audrey, however, found her voice. “How did you get these? You shouldn’t have even been able to enter Altium-”
Louis waved her concerns away. Yes, yes. Technicalities and details. That pesky Pactum Pax Immortalis. I shouldn’t be able to touch anything that belongs to the League.” He slapped his hand across the page in utter defiance of the centuries-old treaty.
“Unless one of us gave it to you,” Audrey whispered. “Unless you had help.”
“Before you ask how and who,” Louis replied, “allow me my little secrets for a while yet. Without an air of mystery, I fear I would as bland as all those other dull Immortals in your life.”
Audrey knew prying information out of Louis when he was being difficult would be harder than wrestling the ocean. But what Immortal in their right mind would have helped Louis? And the more important question: Why?
She returned her attention to the documents and pulled off her opera gloves. She had an opportunity. She slid her finger down the center of the pages-then across-and then made two diagonal marks with her fingernail.
The pages shuddered, sparked with magic, and flowered into a thousand shreds of confetti.
Audrey brushed the trash off the table.
“Well,” Louis said, raising an eyebrow, “that should keep Fiona and Eliot safe from the League-at least until the Council can come to consensus again. Which should that take wh
at? A month? All summer?”
“Perhaps,” Audrey murmured.
Would Lucia wait that long? Had the League ever taken action without its bureaucratic processes?
“Does that then satisfy your need to tend to our children first?” he asked.
“No. It delays the danger; it does not eliminate it.”
Louis sighed. “The world in which our children live will always be filled with danger. We cannot eliminate it, and it would be foolish to try.”
Audrey considered this. . but said nothing.
“There is one more thing we might do, however,” Louis whispered and looked about. “We can gather support, in secret, for the coming war. Not for one side or the other, but for them.”
Louis would not mention such a thing unless he had already taken action. “You will not be able to keep that secret for long.”
“No,” he admitted. “The best secrets are the ones least kept.”
“When they find out-both families-we will have to take bold, bloody action. Will you be ready for that?”
“It gives me chills of pleasure when you speak thusly,” Louis purred.
He reached for her hand again, but she moved away before he could distract her.
Audrey opened her clutch. “I have a gift for you as well,” she said.
“Oh?” Louis said and looked surprised for once in his life.
She wasn’t sure she should do this. It would be as dangerous as slipping Cerberus from his leash. . or arming a nuclear device. But all her second-guessing couldn’t stop her now; this already been decided-not with her head, but with her newly awakened emotions.
Audrey took out a battered enveloped, so worn the paper was fuzzy and it almost fell apart at her touch.
“Eliot left this with a note explaining how you gave it to him before the final battle in the Poppy Lands. I. . I was moved.”
She gingerly removed the contents: bits of bank statements and torn dollar bills and old restaurant receipts and post-it notes and tissues-all of it had been meticulously taped back together into a proper heart shape.
Audrey set the thing on the table between them, took Louis’s hand, and set it upon the battered token.
His smile went slack with astonishment as he beheld it. “What have you done?” he whispered.
She patted his hand. “I give you your heart back, Louis, healed and whole.”
He gazed at the paper heart, tracing its rough edges, speechless for the first time.
“I’m sorry,” she said, uncomfortable with his silence. “I am so good at cutting things. . not so good, though, at patching them together. It was the best I could do.”
Louis met her eyes. “You realize, of course, you may have just sealed the both our dooms? I forgive you-and more. Much more.”
Louis picked up the token in both hands, brought it to his chest, inhaled, and savored it for a moment. . and then presented it back to Audrey.
“For you,” he told her. “It was always yours to do with as you wished: to treasure and keep safe-or to tear into a million pieces again. I have no defenses against you.”
She hesitated, actually reached out and touched it-then halted. “No,” she whispered. “I am not ready. Perhaps one day, Louis, but not now.”
Louis frowned and it made his nose and jaw seem more crooked. “Of course, my dear. What else do we have, if not all the time in the world?”
Amberflaxus batting at her hand, interested in the heart.
“No,” she told the cat. “This is not a toy.”
Louis snorted. “Watch that wretched animal,” he warned her. “Of all the creatures in all the worlds, that one would most love to get a piece of me to devour.”
He retrieved his paper heart and tucked it into his tuxedo.
Audrey stroked that cat’s back to mollify it (and grateful for the distraction). “No one has noticed your pet, and your lack of. .?”
“I have been lucky,” Louis told her.
Audrey scrutinized Louis and the space about him that flickered in candlelight. The deviation from normality was subtle at night, and yet, when one knew what to look for. . it was glaringly obvious.
Louis cast no shadow.72, 73
That was Audrey’s fault. When she had first learned that Louis was Infernal, she had flown into a blind rage-stabbed at him, meaning to sever his power from his physical form, and then cut his heart out so he could love no other.
All of which she managed, but her first strike had astonishingly missed, and instead cut off his shadow.
And like all parts of the Grand Deceiver, it was wily and evasive, and had run from her, finally taking the form of a cat.
A shadow cat that had grown to enjoy its freedom.
She scratched under Amberflaxus’s chin. The cat purred. It was still a part of him, yet somehow, a creature all its own: an annoyance, his spy, a mischievous imp that was Louis incarnate.
Louis scattered a handful of euros on the table to pay for her coffee. “Come,” he said, “and leave that creature or he will tear your gown.”
“Are you taking me to the opera? I’ve heard Ferruccio Busoni’s Doktor Faust is playing tonight.”
Louis’s face curled with disgust. “Surely you jest.”
Her lips formed a rare half smile. “I do. No, I thought we would walk and talk. It has been so long, Louis. And there is so much to consider.”
He smiled back. “Just talk?”
“Yes, for now. But it is a start between us.”
Louis considered for a long time, his expression uncharacteristically solemn, and then finally nodded. “A start then.” He offered her his hand.
Audrey didn’t trust Louis, the Prince of All Lies; she never would, either. But they had a common interest: the welfare of their children. And, counter to all her common sense, part of her still adored Louis. Or was this merely the memory of a younger love that she still felt?
The old passion was gone; they could not go back to it. . but she was willing to moving forward with Louis, as what? Friends, enemies, allies, or lovers once more?
She wasn’t sure. But she was sure that she wanted to find out.
Audrey took Louis’s hand, and together they strolled into the darkness.
“Tell me, then,” she whispered to him, “everything.”
72. On the Nature of Shadows in Identification: Unattended shadows are thought by some cultures to be ghosts unable to end their existence in the Middle Realms. The Zulu tribe holds that a dead body cannot cast a shadow. An alternative view is that shadows are a representation of God’s presence around an object (cf. a halo). Early European beliefs claim that a man without a shadow was a witch or had sold his soul to the Devil. These legends remain hypothetical; however, it is a fact that vampires cast no shadow as do all similar limbic undead species. A Modern Hunters Guide to the Unliving, Valor Mitchellson amp; Nikola Telsa, Double Fork Lightning Press, 1890, London.
73. Wendy sews on Peter Pan’s shadow after he has lost it in J. M. Barrie’s The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up. -Editor.
88 THE STORM THAT NONE SURVIVE
Dallas looked from her penthouse suite across the winking lights of nighttime Manhattan.
It was dazzling. Like herself.
She had dressed to the nines for the occasion in a slip of a black thing, sequined stockings, and five-inch stiletto heels. But she had had a lifetime of this glamour-several lifetimes, in fact. . and was ready to leave it behind.
Grow up? Not a chance. She had grown up before, and it wasn’t her.
But the time to change to something else had come.
She turned the card over and over in her hand. . as if she flipped it enough times she would see the secret message on it, explaining it was just a bad joke.
It had arrived by special messenger this morning-a goshawk that had perched on her balcony, screeched once at her, left the card fluttering to the floor, and then had flown off to slaughter pigeons.
The card was engraved with curlicue calligraphy that was ne
arly impossible to read.
Lucia sent it-to annoy her-to worry her-to make her cry.
She understood why her older sister, Audrey, was so cruel. She had strategic reasons.
Lucia was cruel, not out of necessity, but because it made her feel powerful and others around her weak. Dallas supposed that was a strategy as well.
She sighed, wondering if all sisters tortured one another so, and then read the message again:
You are summoned before the Council of Elders, the Temple of Whispers, immediately and forthwith to receive instructions. We meet at dawn. This is NOT a request.
Dallas had already heard what had happened to Eliot and Fiona. She knew Lucia wasn’t going to “instruct” her on anything. First she’d grill her on how she’d escorted the twins through the Lands of the Dead. (Kino would absolutely die.) They’d talk about her “lack of responsibility,” assign some punishment, but ultimately, they’d do what they always did and dismiss her as inconsequential. . and then move on to what they really wanted to talk about: how Eliot had gone over to the other “side.”
It had all spun completely out of control.
And while Dallas could take care of herself and any League meddling, Eliot and Fiona could not.
She had gotten a glimpse into the psyches of the twins. They were young and yet they understood more about the truth of things than most Immortals.
Fiona would take responsibility for the entire world if they let her. It could crush her. But Fiona knew the League needed a real leader-not a bureaucracy. If they didn’t kill her first, she might one day be that leader.
Eliot, on the other hand, just wanted enough freedom to figure out who he was. Poor kid. He believed that there was neither clear-cut good nor evil when it came to Immortals and Infernals. . just individuals with their own agendas.
There might be some truth to that, too.
Certainly their father had helped-perhaps for his own selfish reasons, but nonetheless he had helped them. . while many in the League would love to see both twins dead in the name of political stability.