All That Lives Must Die

“Wouldn’t try that either,” Mr. Welmann remarked. “Those bones are some of the exposed bits of the World Serpent. Start messing with that. . it might wake up.”⁶¹

They’d learned about the world serpent in Miss Westin’s Mythology 101 class. That thing was supposedly strong and venomous enough to kill even gods.

Fiona chewed her lower lip. She turned to Eliot. “I know you think you need to do this,” she whispered, “but it’s crazy. I’m not helping anymore.” She glanced at Amanda. “I’m hoping you’re not going to force us to come along.”

Eliot couldn’t look her in the eye.

How could she even think that? Sure, he may have not told them the entire truth to get them to come. . but he wasn’t going to make any of them risk their lives.

“You know what I’m asking you to do,” she murmured.

“Yeah,” Eliot said. “I know. I’ll do it.”

He wasn’t sure what hurt more: Fiona’s accusation. . or the fact that she was abandoning him when he needed her the most.

He unslung Lady Dawn and stepped toward the gate.

How to charm open something that looked like it could withstand a nuclear blast? Not with head-on force. The gate had shrugged off Fiona’s attempt.

This required subtlety.

Eliot strummed Lady Dawn and picked out the notes of the “Mortal’s Coil” nursery rhyme. He let the notes wander as he found his way to a new tune: a precise clockwork song with a metronome steady heartbeat. This was the song of the gate. Eliot heard the echo of the song in the gears and cogs, the wound springs, in every rivet and bolt. He picked his way over the notes, and felt blocks and tumblers-and with the tiniest of flourishes, he tickled one of those tumblers into place.

He smiled. This would be easier than he thought.

The gate, however, vibrated of its own accord-the barest rumble that flipped the tumbler back into place.

“It’s fighting me,” he whispered to Fiona.

“Then play harder-or faster-or louder,” she said. “Whatever it takes.”

Robert walked back from the edge of the cliff, his face drawn tight with worry. “Eliot, I wouldn’t play any louder, if I were you. Look.”

Eliot stopped playing. He put on his glasses and then he, Fiona, Mr. Welmann, and Amanda followed Robert back the edge.

The cliff dropped a mile straight down. Switchbacks started from the top and descended into smog. Rivers of lava snaked around mesas of black basalt-their bases eroded by the molten stone. Meteors streaked across the sky, so did the occasional on-fire, out-of-control airline jet.

Eliot winced as one plane crashed and burst into a fireball.

He’d gotten a glimpse of the Blasted Lands at the beginning of the school year. It’d scared him then. . still did. But something was different.

Fiona said, “It’s quieter.”

Eliot knew there were damned souls here-dozens had rushed the gate and tried to escape last time-but Eliot hadn’t expected to see thousands of them down there. . and all of them quiet.

They formed lines that stretched to the horizon. Each person carried a large stone that, when they got to the end of the line, they dropped into the lava below. . and then went back for more. The stones disappeared in flame, but elsewhere, they’d actually started to pile up, making jumbled shorelines, and in some places damming the lava altogether.

“What are they doing?” Eliot whispered.

Mr. Welmann wiped the sweat off his face with a red handkerchief. “Something, that’s for sure. Since Beelzebub died, the Blasted Lands were taken over by a new Infernal boss. Looks like he’s put everyone to work.”

Eliot remembered with Louis had told him: “We are monarchs of the domains of Hell, the benevolent kings and queens over the countless souls who are drawn there to worship us.”

But not everything was different under the new management. In some areas, people fought one another, full-scale wars waged atop a few mesas, the losers tossed over the side into the fire.

“You see them now?” Robert asked Eliot. “The crazy ones? I don’t think we want them hearing you playing and coming up here.”

Eliot imagined tens of thousands rushing the gates. . and him and the others fighting, trapped with their backs against the wall.

He turned to Amanda, worried she might freak out.

But she wasn’t; instead, she stared with open fascination at the lakes of lava and burning mountains. She took a step closer-and Eliot set a hand on her arm, pulling her back from the edge.

“Hey,” he told her.

She blinked, breaking whatever weird trance she’d fallen into, and nodded at him. Amanda’s eyes, though, still glimmered as if they’d absorbed the heat of this place.

Mr. Welmann dug into the pack that Aunt Dallas had given them. He took out a pair of binoculars and gazed through them. “Hmm.” He handed them to Eliot and pointed between two mesas.

Eliot squinted into the binoculars, his gaze traveling over jagged obsidian, and smoldering fissures, and then saw what Mr. Welmann had: A simple suspension bridge swayed across the chasm. It was made of rusted cables and black metal. . an arc a half-mile long that swung in the heat.

It looked amazingly untrustworthy.

He moved his view left and right, and spotted more of these bridges. They linked one mesa to another, and then to fields beyond the lava. The Blasted Lands leveled out there into plains of ash.

Eliot then spotted a fine straight black line-no, two parallel lines-that ran over the plain and vanished in the distance.

“The Night Train’s railroad tracks.” Eliot handed the binoculars to Fiona. “That’s how we’ll get out. We can use those bridges to cross, and then follow the tracks right into the Poppy Lands.”

She looked and snorted and said, “The Poppy Lands are not the way out.”

“They’re our only way now,” Eliot said. “I’ve been on those tracks. Nothing touches them-not people, flaming meteors, falling planes-even the ash stays off them. They’re protected somehow.”

Mr. Welmann nodded, believing him. The others, though, looked unconvinced.

“And they run straight to the Poppy Lands,” he said. “Even if you don’t want to help me with Jezebel, there’s a station house there with a private train. I’m sure it’ll take you guys back.”

“You’re sure, huh?” Fiona crossed her arms. “More likely we’ll have to steal it.”

“You have a better idea?”

She looked back at the shut Gates of Perdition and pursed her lips. “No. . I don’t.” She thought for a moment, and then asked, “Can you play a few notes and clean up the air like you did in the gym match? We don’t want to choke along the way.”

Eliot nodded. He took a deep breath and plucked a few Spanish flamenco notes on Lady Dawn, imagining a coastal breeze. The temperature dropped twenty degrees, and the air sweetened.

“Then okay,” Fiona told him. “We’ll give it a try. Robert, take point. Eliot after him-Amanda and me. Mr. Welmann, bring up the rear, please.”

She was using her “team leader” commanding voice that was really getting on Eliot’s nerves.

Robert must have felt the same way, because he hesitated and looked like he wanted to give Fiona his own version of vocabulary insult. Eliot gave him a slight nod. Robert nodded back and headed down the switchbacks.

Fiona pulled Eliot aside. “We’ll catch up in a second,” she told Mr. Welmann and Amanda.

She whispered to Eliot, “Are you sure about this? I mean, I’m your sister. . I’ve got to help you, no matter what.” She looked extremely awkward saying this. “I think I know what Jezebel means you. . but it’s not just you and me at risk. Robert, he can take care of himself. And Mr. Welmann, well, he’s already dead, but if his soul gets trapped in Hell. .” She hesitated and swallowed. “But Amanda. . I wish I could leave her