All That Lives Must Die

waited for.”

Eliot wanted to say something-but his tongue wouldn’t work.

She slid onto his body. Her flesh was warm and she didn’t stop until her face was directly over his.

Eliot finally saw her. Beautiful didn’t describe her features. She had something beyond human, Immortal, or Infernal beauty. Her eyes were amber flecked with gold and blazed wild with passion.

“Not since before time was, doth I so offer myself,” she said, her breath tickling his neck. “Thou art the one I was created for, and thou created for me.”

Eliot could no longer breathe.

Her lips were directly over his. Every curve of her body pressed into his.

“No other hath ever made me feel like thou dost. Not even thine father.”

She kissed him.

Eliot tensed and pulled her closer, smothered in sensation. Every nerve flamed. Color flashed across his closed eyes.

He’d never been kissed like this-not Julie’s urgent passion-not Jezebel’s narcotic sting. This was high art and animal instinct blended. This was beauty and lust and heartbreakingly perfect. It was what every kiss should have been. . but never could be.

The girl pulled away, panting.

“We shall together make music the likes of which even God has not yet dreamed,” she whispered. “Music to end the world if thou desire.”

She pressed her lips back to his. They embraced and burned.

________

Eliot bolted upright.

He was drenched in sweat, and sheets tangled about him. His face hurt as if someone had punched him, bruised, and his lips felt sunburned raw.

Eliot got up and noticed, much to his mortification, something amiss with his groin. He grabbed a pillow to hide the state of his physiology there.

Pulse still pounding, he remembered the dream-especially the girl. How could he forget? And yet, the details were fading fast.

He fumbled for the light on his nightstand, found it, and snapped it on.

Homework papers and books lay scattered on the floor. It was as if someone had come in, tossed it all, and then danced in the mess for good measure.

His violin case wasn’t there.

Eliot dug through the debris. Panic shot through his heart as he found the violin case-just the case neck, busted off and smashed flat.

He held his breath. Was it possible he’d done this? Subconsciously repressed all the anxiety about his music and taken it out on poor Lady Dawn? Crushed her in his sleep?

He tore through the mess, searching, and found more bits of cardboard and leather from the case, but no trace of his beloved violin.

Eliot breathed again.

Okay, it had to be somewhere. He riffled through the papers, piling them on his desk. He looked under the bed, too. The violin wasn’t there, either.

He’d never forgive himself if he’d damaged Lady Dawn. His father had given him the instrument.

His father.

Eliot remembered something the dream girl had said. It was hard to recall much more than her kiss or the way she’d pressed into his body, but hadn’t she said that he made her feel like no other had. . not even his father?

Eliot would have to review his Freud to figure that one out.

He paused, suddenly wary. Anything involving Louis, dream or not, had some trick to it.

Eliot froze as he realized there was something in his room that hadn’t been there when he’d fallen asleep. It stood, propped against the corner bookcases.

A guitar.

It wasn’t just any guitar, either, but an electric guitar. Its wood gleamed amber and gold and brass fittings glistened like crystallized sunlight. The fingerboards were ebony with mother-of-pearl inlays in the shapes of stars and swords and crows. There was a bar to adjust string tension on the fly, and six knobs and a few switches along the bottom that he had no clue what they did.

Eliot did know, however, he wanted nothing more than to pick it up, and play it.

But he halted as he recognized the wood grain pattern. . so mirror-smooth that he saw his face reflected in its flaming colors. He’d seen it countless times before.

Lady Dawn.

“No way,” he whispered.

But why not? What if, in dreaming, he had done this? Played some song of transformation. The Covington conjurers could change one thing into another. . so it was, in theory, possible.

Eliot didn’t think his magic had ever worked like that. And it’d never worked with such precision.

If he hadn’t done this, though. . that left only one logical conclusion.

Her.

The dream girl had said: “For thou would I do anything, be anything.”

Could she be real? Alive?

Was that dream even a dream? The thought of an instrument who was also a young girl-who’d been in his father’s hands for so many years-it sent a shiver of revulsion down Eliot’s spine.

Still. . he reached out and held his fingers a hairsbreadth over the guitar, feeling a subsonic thrum of her power, of anticipation for his touch.

Eliot took her and slung the guitar over his shoulder.

She was a perfect fit.

His fingers slid along the six steel strings. Different from his violin. Familiar, though, too. Definitely weird.

“We shall together make music the likes of which even God has not yet dreamed. Music to end the world if thou desire.”

Not yet.

Eliot was going to track down his father first. Louis had questions to answer.

55 UNDERESTIMATION OF HIS CUNNING

Louis puffed on a cigar he had borrowed from the Night Train’s humidor. He opened a window. These cars were stuffy with the sweat and fear of its usual passengers.

The engine’s screams echoed through the tunnel.

Amberflaxus licked its black fur in the seat next to him. It flicked its ears forward, thinking that noise was prey.

Louis felt better away from San Francisco, no longer obsessing over Eliot and Fiona, and his beloved lost Audrey. How wonderful to be away from the world of light and love!

He was annoyed that he was even thinking of the memory of their memories. . and yet, he found it nearly impossible to stop.

Louis exhaled smoke and watched it mingle with the steaming screams outside.

But stop he must and concentrate on his deceptions, namely how to play with Sealiah and Mephistopheles.

Manipulating mortals was one thing, even Immortals, but his Infernal family? That was ten times the danger. He had to proceed with great care.