All That Lives Must Die

This waiting room was devoid of comfort. Windowless, the only ornamentation on the water-stained walls was a USA AS SEEN FROM LAS VEGAS poster. The odor of urinal cake wafted from the adjacent restroom.

Aside from the door marked EXIT, the only other egress was the door leading to the recently relocated Las Vegas Boardroom.

“They should’ve called me in already,” he told Amberflaxus. “Something is wrong.”

Next to him on the couch, his cat ceased licking its iridescent black fur and blinked.

“Yes, yes, I know,” Louis replied. “One cannot go from King of the Panhandlers to Chairman of the Board in a single season, can one?”

Louis reached to stroke Amberflaxus.

The cat, lightning quick, batted his hand away and gave a look of offense.

“No? You’re saying what right do I have to make such claims? I, who have wandered homeless and clueless as a mortal for sixteen years, his power severed and heart ripped asunder by the woman he loved?”

Had he really loved? Louis had forgotten. Perhaps it was just a bad dream.

His cat returned to licking himself.

Louis leaned closer. “You make perfect sense. Consider, though, my friend, that in the span of a few days, I have regained my Infernal status, killed our loathsome cousin Beelzebub, and absorbed his power. What stops me from marching in there and demanding a seat on the Board?”

Amberflaxus tore into the vinyl couch-shredding wildly as if the plastic were alive.

His sentiments were obvious: Louis was a fool.

Any of Louis’s relations had the power to slay hero or demon. But without land, Louis was a pale imitation of a real Infernal. Land made them what they were.

The door to the Boardroom eased open.

No one emerged to invite Louis in, a sign of his lower-than-dirt status. So be it.

He stood, brushed cat hair from his charcoal gray suit, and straightened his bloodred tie.

Amberflaxus bit into the couch’s stuffing, shaking nubs of fluff.

“Wait here,” he told the animal.

Louis turned, donned his armored smile, and entered.

The Boardroom had been a private gambling den during Prohibition. Six billiard lamps hung from the rafters, making cones of dust-filled light. On the far wall hung a gigantic computer screen showing the local news coverage of the Babylon Garden Hotel and Casino as preparations were made to demolish the place in one well-engineered implosion. That was Beelzebub’s nightclub, the last of his old bones being scattered in a final act of well-deserved degradation.

In the center of the room was a craps table padded with green felt, its lines and numbers worn smooth with age where bets were placed with chips, gold coins, or souls.

About the table stood the Infernal Board of Directors.

Louis bowed without taking his eyes off any of them.

Sealiah turned to face Louis. She stood at the foot of the table. She wore an evening gown of opal-flecked orchids and clinging copper vines that wrapped her sinuous curves for a predictable effect upon his libido. Her hair flashed red gold, her sharp smile, pure white, and her eyes, slits of emerald.

“We welcome the glorious Morning Star,” Sealiah told him (although from her icy tone, Louis was sure welcome was the last thing she meant).

“Greetings to you, Cousin, Queen of Poppies and Mistress of the Many-Colored Jungles.”

Louis stared past her to the head of the table at the Board’s new Chairman, Ashmed, the Master Architect of Evil.

Ashmed was the most careful among their kind. His friends remained loyal. . and those who did not lived short lives. The Chairman was all business-crew-cut hair, clean shaved, and in a black business suit.

“Welcome, Louis.” Ashmed puffed on a Sancho Panza Belicoso cigar and blew a trail of serpentine smoke. “Kind of you to appear on short notice.”

“Anything for the Board,” Louis replied.

Lev, called Leviathan by some, the Master of the Endless Abyssal Seas, stood on Ashmed’s right. A hundred strands of Mardi Gras beads coiled about his throat, which almost covered his straining-to-the-bursting-point wife- beater tank top. His corpulence matched his endless strength.

“Really?” Lev asked, and his beady eyes widened. “If you’d do ‘anything’-then cut off your right arm. You owe me for that business in Mozambique.”

Lev was too powerful to insult directly, but thankfully his intellect was as dull as his doughy features.

“Almost anything for you, Cousin, would I not do,” Louis told him.

Lev’s fat forehead crinkled as he puzzled this grammatical knot.

The doors behind Louis shut. . which was not a good sign.

“Please, Lev,” a girl whispered, “do not play with your food.”

Louis spied a slender form standing between Sealiah and Leviathan.

“Abigail,” Louis cooed. “I did not see you.” He bowed to her. “A thousand apologies. Destroy everything you touch.”

“Lies and salutations to you, dear Cousin,” Abby replied.

She was so quiet, so lithe-her delicate childlike features artfully covered in translucent gauze and seed pearls-so enticing that Louis could almost forget she was the Destroyer, Handmaiden of Armageddon, and Mistress of the Palace of Abomination.

However, those who underestimated Abby found their guts trailing from their torsos.

Abby held a locust in the palm of her white hand. It shivered and made the most unpleasant buzzing sound imaginable. She stroked the insect and it calmed. “Did you hear? Oz has retired, poor thing. Allow me to introduce our newest Board member.” She tilted her chin to the other side of the table.

Oz had crossed Lev and Abby earlier this year. He was lucky to have escaped with most of his skin intact, a tribute to his eel slipperiness.

Louis peered into the shadows and saw a silhouette on the other side of the table, one he had failed to detect earlier. . which, when you considered that all Infernals lived, breathed, and were part darkness themselves, made this a masterwork of deception indeed.

“Mephistopheles,” Louis said.

Naturally, Louis was disappointed. He had hoped the Board brought him here to offer him a seat.

But why should they? He was dirt, worthless and landless, having the barest scraps of power to his name. Only his reputation for being the Great Liar enabled him to hold his head high among them.

Yet why Mephistopheles? Irritation prickled Louis. After his scandalous behavior at the end of the Dark Ages with that fop Dr. Faustus-and then the operas-all the fame and the paparazzi. This sparked a hundred imitators trying to summon “the Devil” to sell their souls for trinkets. It had been a public relations nightmare.

Mephistopheles had retired, eschewing his family, claiming he had to strengthen his lands and borders.

Sulking, Louis called it.

Or could the rumors have been true? That he actually enjoyed the company of mortals. . perhaps enjoyed them too much? Louis’s smile faltered a split second. If that were the case, if he had fallen in love, had his heart broken as Louis had, he deserved pity.

“So good to. . well. . not see you, Lord of the House of Umbra, Ruler of the Hysterical Kingdom, and Prince of the Mirrored City,” Louis told the darkness.

“Toy not with me, Louis,” Mephistopheles rumbled. A taloned hand extended from the shadows and rested upon the table’s railing, claws dimpling the green felt.

Sealiah cleared her throat. “Gentlemen, let us avoid tearing Louis into bits before we’re done with him, as tempting as that may be. We have business.”

“Yes,” Ashmed said, setting down his cigar. “The business of the twins. We have called you among us to serve as consultant. You’re close to the boy?”

“And the girl,” Louis added. “I am, after all, their father.”

He put on a brave face, but inside, Louis was wounded. They had summoned him here for the children’s sake? Yes, yes, they were important: the key to unraveling the neutrality treaty with the