by Eric Nylund
Eliot paled, but in a level voice, he asked, “What can we do to help?”
“Fight with us,” Sealiah told him, leaning forward. “If you battle at Jezebel’s side, our chances greatly improve. With your sister’s strength and that of your hero companion added to that, victory would be assured.” Her eyes gleamed, and Fiona saw a spark behind them now: the flickering green fires of bloodlust.
Whose blood, and whose lust, however, Fiona wasn’t sure of.
“Excuse me a second, Your Majesty.” Fiona held up a finger. “Eliot and I need to talk.”
She pulled him six steps back. Robert and Mr. Welmann joined them.
“I’m staying,” Eliot whispered to her.
Like she couldn’t have guessed that, and yet, that didn’t stop her from hissing back, “Are you crazy!”
Eliot shrugged.
“She’s right,” Robert said, looking physically pained to admit this. “I’m all for helping, but this side has its back against the wall. They’re going to lose.”
Eliot frowned and shook his head. . but nonetheless looked uncertain.
Fiona had seen this before. Eliot knew he was wrong, but he was about to dig in his heels anyway and never give up.
She felt like slugging him, which actually had some appeal. She bet she could knock Eliot out, and then, as she’d promised herself, drag him back to San Francisco for his own good.
She glanced at the Queen and the hundreds of soldiers surrounding them. She wasn’t sure how well walking out of here was going to go over with the Flower Queen, though.
She had to take charge before Eliot redoubled his resolve and went beyond being a mere idiot-and became a suicidal idiot.
“We can’t help you,” Fiona told Sealiah. She nodded at Jezebel, and said, “I’m sorry.”
Jezebel gave her a curt nod. Not even a flicker of hate. . as if she wanted them (okay, probably just Eliot) safe and far from here, no matter what it’d cost her.
Sealiah appeared unruffled.
Fiona didn’t like that one bit.
“Perhaps,” the Queen said as her predator smile reappeared, “I may offer some other incentive?”
“I really doubt it,” Fiona said.
Sealiah arched one brow and gestured. Two guards dragged a man forward. He was bound in silver chains and a metal band covered his mouth.
It was Louis.
Fiona blinked and looked again. It was her father.
“Let him go,” she and Eliot said together.
“Louis is my prisoner.” Sealiah walked behind their father and yanked on his chain, pulling him to his knees. “We will do as we please with him.”
Eliot unslung his guitar.
Fiona found that her bracelet was loose in her hand.
Around them, hundreds of knights leveled their rifles.
“Cool it, kids,” Mr. Welmann whispered. “There are other ways to make deals-especially with them.”
Fiona didn’t get what he meant, but Eliot seemed to because he nodded, stepped forward, and asked, “So, you’re saying if we fight for you, you’ll let our father go?”
“I do not know about ‘letting him go,’ ” Sealiah said with a theatrical wave of her hand, “but I will let him live, which is better than the fate that awaits him if Mephistopheles wins.”
Fiona locked gazes with her father-he couldn’t speak because of the gag-but something in his eyes said that there was a lot more going on here, and a lot more at stake than just his life.
“No deal,” Eliot said.
The guards around them crowded closer.
Sealiah smile deepened and fang tips protruded. Bloodred claws appeared from her fingertips.
“Then,” she purred, “we are at an impasse. Unless you wish to roll for terms?”
Louis gave Fiona and Eliot an almost invisible nod of his head yes.
Understanding dawned on Eliot’s face. “You mean dice?”
“Yes,” Sealiah said. “Just name the terms you wish.”
“My terms. .?” Eliot pondered. “I’ll fight for you-for Jezebel’s sake,” he said, “but I want you to let my father go immediately.”
Sealiah tapped her full lips, thinking, and her claws retracted. “Agreed, as long as he is willing to fight for my side as well.”
Louis gave a lamentable sigh.
“And,” Eliot said. “You let my sister and my friends go back.” He looked at them. “If, that’s what they want.”
“If you win the roll,” Sealiah said. “Of course.”
“Wait, I’m not agreeing to any of this,” Fiona protested.
Sealiah held up her hand indicating silence, and Fiona thought she better shut her mouth.
Eliot had a plan-what precisely she wasn’t sure-but if she lost her temper now, things would get bloody fast.
“And if I win,” Sealiah told Eliot, “you fight for me and also pledge your life and soul with an unbreakable oath.”
“No way!” Fiona shouted.
The thought of her brother bowing and scraping before this creature was too much. She started forward, her bracelet chain in her hand, growing and lengthening, links sharpening to circles of razor.
Could she even fight Sealiah and her knights? Would the Pactum Pax Immortalus neutrality treaty between the fallen angels and the League prevent her from interfering? Or was she enough her father’s daughter. . enough Infernal, to cut the Queen’s head off as she had Beelzebub’s?
Maybe it was time to put that to the test once more.
Eliot turned to her-and the look on his face stopped her dead in her tracks.
His eyes were cold and dark and resolute. Despite everything they’d been through, he looked like, for once in his life, he knew exactly what he was doing.
On the other hand, Eliot always-and she meant always, without fail-got them into more trouble.
But that look. .
She finally blinked. “Okay,” she murmured. “Just don’t screw this up.”
“You’ll be the first to know,” he told her.
Fiona figured it couldn’t hurt to let Eliot try whatever it was he had up his sleeve-because if it didn’t work, she planned on getting out of here anyway, Eliot in tow, even if that meant cutting down everything in her way.
“I offer you one in six odds,” Sealiah told Eliot.
“Even odds.” Eliot said. “Or no deal. Take or leave it.”
Sealiah shrugged as if this were a trivial matter. She passed one hand over another, and as if by sleight of hand, a small white cube appeared. It was a six-sided die, with tiny symbols on its faces.
She descended the stairs to meet Eliot and offered it to him.
He accepted the die and examined the sides. Etched onto the faces was a scrimshaw head-eating-tail snake, two prancing dogs, three crossed scimitars, four stars, five hands (each making a different rude gesture), and six ravens on the wing.
“Odd or even?” Sealiah asked.
“Even, if your Majesty pleases.” Eliot turned the die so six scrimshawed black birds faced up.
Eliot closed his hand and shook the die. He concentrated, blew on his fist, and cast the die onto the steps.
It rolled and bounced and spun up on one corner like a top.
Eliot leaned forward, his gazed fixed upon the die.
Sealiah, too, stared at it.
The spinning cube gyrated back and froth.
Dots of sweat appeared on the Queen’s brow. Eliot’s hands clenched and whitened.
The die tumbled, popped, and skittered to a halt. .
. . Six crows.
Even.
Eliot exhaled. He’d won.
Louis shrugged off the chains and gag and stretched. “Well rolled, my boy. A pleasure to see you.” He smiled at Fiona. “Thank you, too, my dear.”
Sealiah seemed pleased. And why shouldn’t she? Even losing she had Fiona’s brother and father to fight in her war.
“You can go,” Eliot whispered to Fiona. “This doesn’t have to be your fight anymore
.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she told him.
Eliot was being so magnanimous and noble (and that positively irked her). There was no way she could just walk out on him. But there was no way she was fighting for the Queen of Poppies, either.
Louis rubbed his hands. “Before we go any further,” he said. “I insist that if my son and I are to fight, it be as your Dux Bellorum with full honors and rights.”
“Ducks Bell-what?” Eliot asked Fiona.
“Latin maybe?” she whispered. “Duke of war?”
She was pretty good with foreign languages, but this was a new one on her.64
Sealiah looked at Louis. “If you have something to fight for, I suppose you might actually risk your pretty skin. And since there will be much of the Hysterical Kingdom to divide should we win. . I would throw you a scrap.”
He bowed as deep as possible without taking his eyes off of her. “Your wisdom is exceeded only by your beauty.”
Sealiah scoffed, drew one of her curved daggers, and pricked her thumb. She went to Louis and smeared his forehead with the shape of a little star. “By the bond of blood and war so joined,” she murmured, and lingered close to his face a moment.
She withdrew.
Louis beckoned to Eliot and he came and got the same treatment.
Louis then turned to Fiona. “Come my daughter, join us, and fight by our side.” He opened his arms as if he wanted to embrace her.
Fiona had often dreamed of a moment of reconciliation with her father. Her forgiving him. Him accepting her. It was something she’d never get from Audrey.
But it couldn’t happen like this. . in Hell. Right in the middle of a war.
Fiona had to decide, though. Leave or stay. Fight or not. Get drawn into a war that was none of her business, or just walk away and go back to school where she belonged.
She took a step toward them.
There was a crack. The earth rumbled. The tower shook and skulls rained down.
The floor split, caved in, and from tunnels below-the shades of damnation poured forth.
64. Dux is Latin for “leader.” The earliest usage of Dux Bellorum appears in the literatures of King Arthur, where he is described as the “dux of battles” among the kings of the Romano-Britons in their wars against the Anglo-Saxons. The military title survived until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 (although, the Italian Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, used the title of Dux [Duce in Italian]). The term also rarely appears among the Infernals and Fairies, most notable was the Green Knight, the Dux Bellorum of the Fey. War Immortalus, Benjamin Ma, Paxington Institute Press LLC, San Francisco.
74 UNDERLYING DARKNESS
Fiona fell back, knocked over by an emerging serpent the size of a bus.
Her adrenaline surged. Worries and thoughts of Infernal politics and family vanished as the snake’s scales flashed before her eyes: jet black, mirror smooth, rippling muscle.
The snake circled, its body uncoiling from the tunnel below.
Fiona jumped to her feet, her blood pounding and her chain once more in her hands. There was no time to be afraid.
The snake hissed and struck.
Fiona held her chain before her-severed fang and sinew and flesh.
The serpent’s head tumbled from its body. Venom and black blood pooled at her feet.
Shadow creatures wormed from the earth and fought Sealiah’s knights everywhere in the enormous chamber. There were snakes, lizards, and crabs-part flesh and part shade. They tore and bit, and in turn, were shot and hacked by the knights.
Like the shadows Fiona and Eliot had fought in the alley by Paxington.
Not quite. These weren’t changing shape. . and they felt solid. Real. More dangerous.
Eliot held Lady Dawn and blasted a giant scorpion that squeezed out from between the rocks (although he just blasted it into a bazillion tiny black scorpions).
Soldiers crawled from the cracks in the tower’s foundation as well. These damned souls had been stitched together with parts missing, or extra parts added, or blades riveted in place of hands. Robert pummeled two headless patchwork soldiers wielding obsidian knives.
Part of Fiona’s mind rebelled. This was every nightmare she’d had come to life.
An overgrown black mantis that could’ve eaten a horse lunged at her-she whirled her chain-and it splattered into a mass of chitin and ichor.
So gross.
And so much for deciding if she was going to fight this fight.
The still-thinking part of her mind, though, thought this was like gym class: the tension. . the ever-present danger. . the urge to fight or run and not even think.
She knew what to do. She had to cool down and assess the tactical situation.
A thrall of Sealiah’s knights encircled their Queen and leveled rifle lances at a horde of onrushing men. There were thunder and flashes and smoke-and the shadow soldiers were blasted into bits. . but still they crawled forward.
Robert struggled and grappled with a black tiger.
Eliot strummed Lady Dawn and the air rippled; the light from the nearby glowing mushrooms on the walls dazzled to magnesium brilliance.
The cat withered in the light-and Robert snapped its neck.
Fiona moved toward them to help.
But the cracks in the floor between her and them widened.
A reptile hand pushed aside massive stones. . with claws as big as scythe blades.
A limb thrust through, and then a smooth lizard head emerged from the earth-hissing and snapping; it devoured five knights with one bite.
This dragon pulled its hindquarters free and its tail whipped about, crushing everything in its wake, impacting the tower wall, and blasting skulls and stones and metal supports-making a hole to the outside.
Through it Fiona glimpsed flashes and motion. The battle wasn’t just in here.
Queen Sealiah advanced on the great beast, and as she did, she grew talons and fangs, and flowers sprouted in her footsteps. She was as pale as the dragon was ebon. She drew her sword, its tip broken and jagged and dripping poison.
Fiona had seen that sword. Her father had skewered Beelzebub with it.
The dragon slashed at Sealiah; she stabbed its claw.
The beast cried out and the limb went lame. It hobbled and snapped at her.
Sealiah punched it in the snout.
The dragon had scraped her arm, however, and came away with her blood on its teeth. It reared back and roared. The veins in its neck bulged, turning a nacreous green with poison.
Sealiah laughed as the creature thrashed and fell. . shivered, and became still.
But her laughter died as she saw three more dragons push forth from the fissures.
How many more of these things were there? Fiona had seen hundreds of these shadows in the alley near Paxington. If that many of these now more-solid shadows caught them in here. . she and Eliot and Robert would get slaughtered.
Skulls and stones fell from the top of the tower and shattered on the floor.
Or they’d be buried alive.
“Outside!” Fiona shouted to Eliot, and pointed at the breach in the wall.
Eliot and Robert and Mr. Welmann moved toward the hole. Eliot hesitated, looking back at her, but Mr. Welmann hustled him through.
Sealiah and Jezebel lingered, though, fighting on.
And Louis? Her father was nowhere to be seen among the knights battling hand to hand, slashing with swords, or hacking with lances. . and in turn, being bitten, crushed, and stung to death by the things boiling from the earth.
This was a losing battle.
They had to regroup and get some maneuvering room.
Fiona felt cold and her feet went numb. Should she stay and look for Louis? He wasn’t even armed. Could he survive this carnage?
Eliot, Robert, and Mr. Welmann, however, were already outside-and that decided it. She’d stick with her brother.
She pushed soldiers out of her way, swung her chain, cleared a path, and jump
ed through the hole in the tower wall.
It was worse out here.
Fissures radiated from the tower of bone across the mesa. From them it looked like every shadow creature in Mephistopheles’ army pushed through into the melee. The ten thousand knights and soldiers camped in the castles’ inner courtyard had expected an attack from the outside, not from within their own walls. . and they’d been caught unawares.
Thousands of men lay torn to pieces on the flagstones. Officers shouted orders-but few soldiers had the wits to listen as giant centipedes, and oily protozoa, and legions of patchwork men slithered from the earth and swept through their ranks.
Sealiah and Jezebel emerged behind Fiona.
“We must hurry,” Sealiah said. “My knights in the Tower Grave pay for our escape. They will not last long.”
The Queen of Poppies sounded irritated, as if those men dying for her were letting her down by merely getting eaten alive while she made small talk.
Fiona was about to tell the queen that there was no “we” to hurry, and to also ask her what the heck she was going to “hurry” up and do against a force of this size-when she heard Eliot.
“Fiona!” Eliot shouted, and waved to her to join him.
Eliot and Robert and Mr. Welmann had cleared a patch of solid ground by the far wall.
Louis was there, too. He leaned against the wall, brooding as he watched the slaughter. . or maybe he was bored; it was hard to tell.
Fiona ran to them. Sealiah and Jezebel trailed behind her.
“This is where we shall make our stand against the Droogan-dors,” Sealiah declared. She looked absolutely majestic, a queen defending the last of her land.
“Dad,” Fiona said. “Grab a sword-some weapon. Do something!”
Louis smiled. “I am using my deadliest weapon, daughter.” He tapped the side if his head. “I am thinking. As you should be if you care at all about your pretty head.”
“Form a circle about me,” Sealiah ordered. “I shall summon my power.”
“I don’t think so,” Fiona told Her Regalness. “We’re not going to be your body shields. Your strategy of brute force verse brute force hasn’t worked so great against Mephistopheles thus far. It’s probably not going to work now.”
