All That Lives Must Die

wall sconces and lowered their rifle lances at Louis. They would not miss.

“Not a word from you,” she cautioned Louis.

She held her rage in check only because she felt the smug satisfaction of being right.

Louis had come. He had tripped but a single of her black widow warning lines that crisscrossed every square meter of her castles’ walls. Even without the warning, though, she knew he would eventually have tried to enter this room. It was too much of a temptation for one so far fallen from glory.

And for once, the crowned, clown Master of Deception had been caught red-handed. Perhaps weakened by his association with too many mortals? Or had he only allowed himself to been captured. . part of some more intricate ruse?

Nothing was ever what it seemed with this one.

Louis sighed and nodded his head in the slightest of bows. The rogue even had the temerity to smile!

She admired such daring. Almost enough to forget he had come to betray her and sell her battle plans to Mephistopheles.

Would the slightest of dalliances hurt? Louis was handsome and cunning once more-all the things she remembered that had once attracted her to him. And he was never more attractive than when in the midst of his duplicity.

But such thoughts made her vulnerable. She exhaled. If she took advantage of his weakened position for her pleasures, she would be exposed in their intimacy. . and he would take advantage of her as well.

Perhaps mutual vulnerability was the very definition of “intimate.”

Louis opened his mouth.

Sealiah held up one hand and stood, keeping the jagged end of Saliceran pointed at his throat. She walked over to him.

Louis shut his mouth, no longer smiling.

“Your words are too sharp,” she whispered. “So I shall not give you the chance to cut me.”

She motioned and three of her champions searched him. They found wallet, cell phone, handkerchief, poker chips, dice, and bottle of Irish single malt whiskey-but no weapons.

“His cloak,” she said. This was a game for her now. Certainly Louis would not be here without tricks up his sleeves.

Her champions ripped it off and examined it: ordinary black wool.

Louis held up his hands in mock surrender.

As if this would make her think him defenseless. She knew better than to fall for his simpleton’s misdirections.

She looked from his hands, to his animated angular face, to the floor-to the flickering shadows cast by her guards. . to the decided lack of any shadow attached to Louis’s feet.

“Of course,” she said, “you would not risk coming with it. But where I wonder does your shadow now roam?”

Louis shrugged, and the simpleton look of innocence on his face told her no answers would be soon forthcoming.

“So be it.” She moved to his back and raised Saliceran.

One thrust and she could forget Louis. That would be best.

Under normal circumstances, having him underfoot was dangerous. In wartime, leaving Louis alive could be a fatal oversight.

And yet why did she still imagine him joined with her? Was that so impossible? Him by her side as Urakabarameel once had stood?

Yes.

And a thousand times no.

It had been so long since she trusted another. This above all else was why the Post twins fascinated her: brother and sister, part Infernal, and yet they worked together. It was such an obvious strength, something her kind had long forgotten.

She lowered Saliceran (although the blade twisted in her grasp, sensing her equivocation-and sensing that it would not taste Infernal blood tonight).

“Take him to the Well of Mirages,” she told her Captain. “Set three guards to watch him at all times. Have them stuff beeswax in their ears so he may not trick them with his silvered reptile tongue.”

The Captain grabbed Louis by his shoulders.

“I yet have a use for you,” she said.

Louis’s smile returned-that smirk all men don when coming to the wrong conclusion.

Sealiah was all too happy to deflate his zeppelin-sized ego. “Not for that, my un landed and unimportant cousin. I would not stoop so low for so quick a snack.”

His unassailable grin faded.

“I have another use for you. . involving your family.”

Louis eyed her with suspicion, and he twisted in her Captain’s grasp. “Eliot is mine,” he growled. “Leave him to me.”

The Captain struck the back of his head with a mailed fist, and Louis fell to his knees.

Sealiah laughed. It was good to see him so clueless. There was no greater satisfaction than hoodwinking one’s relations. She ran a razor-edged fingernail down his chin. . careful not to break the skin because the scent of his blood would drive her crazy.

“Not Eliot, my dear Dark,” she whispered. “I already have the boy well in hand.”

Louis’s face registered confusion for one instant, then crystallized into an unreadable mask. He was quickly analyzing and recalculating his plots.

But too late. The Deceiver was no longer playing in this game.

“There’ll be none of your usual tricks,” she said. “The Well of Mirages has once more been repaired and will not bend or fold to your will. Glow fungus covers its walls, so there are no shadows to slip through, either.”[53]

Sealiah ordered her Captain, “Make him comfortable.”

The Captain nodded, understanding that she meant the opposite. He dragged Louis off, and the Deceiver did not even struggle.

In fact, his smile returned.

Perhaps she should have skewered him while she was in the mood. Well, if he turned into his usual annoyance, she could always fill the Well of Mirages with molten lead. Let him grin at that!

But such pleasantries aside, she had more serious matters to consider. Time was short, and Mephistopheles moved closer with every heartbeat-to either destroy her or be destroyed by her trap.

Sealiah turned to the map table and examined the pieces in play. Mephistopheles’s shadows were near the station house. A few more hours and he would cut the rail lines.

Her trap was not merely the hidden army within Doze Torres. Even those forces would only make the final battle more bloody; their two sides were too evenly matched.

Two more pieces have yet to be brought onto the board-figuratively and literally.

The timing was delicate; she had to wait until the last possible moment to maximize the drama. That was a necessary risk. Sealiah knew the hearts of men and how to manipulate them, but she also had to make up the mind of a young woman-and that was a much more difficult task.

She withdrew the letter she had written weeks earlier, and made sure all was in proper order and her signature and seal were intact. All as it should be. No need to let some fussy Paxington protocol stop her greatest ploy.

She gestured at the ceiling, and a tiny mouse-tailed bat spiraled down. It lit onto her cupped hand.

She rolled the letter into the tube fixed to the creature’s leg. “Take this to the Ticket Master. Caution him to tamper not with the seal. He would not wish to irritate the intended recipient. Few survive the disapproval of Miss Westin.”

The bat chirped once, understanding.

She tossed it into the air and the bat fluttered out the window.