All That Lives Must Die

The train tracks continued down the slope-cutting through forest and jungle.

They followed them.

Whatever chemicals or magic protected the train tracks, it also kept the vegetation off. Still, as they entered the jungle, the trees crossed overhead and formed a tunnel.

The bugs left them alone, too. That was a good thing. There were clouds of metal wasps, giant beetles that bored into hardwood like it was Styrofoam, and butterflies that fumed acid vapor trails in the air.

“Doesn’t look like there’s a war going on here,” Robert said.

Fiona took a few pictures with her cell phone camera.

Mr. Welmann held a hand, indicating they halt. “Don’t be too sure,” he said, and pointed ahead.

The train tracks ended. Jungle blocked their way.

“Line’s been cut,” Mr. Welmann said. “That’s one of the first things you do in the war. Sever your enemy’s supply routes and communication. Get them alone. Wear them down.” He frowned.

Fiona stepped up to the jungle. “Everyone back.” She pulled out her chain and spun it over her head. She turned the whirling mass flat, and walked into the jungle where the tracks used to run.

Branches, vines, and roots sheared about her in a circular path.

Eliot and the others followed-at a respectable distance, but not too far back, because as soon as Fiona passed, tendrils wormed back and new braches extruded.

Thirty more paces like that and they emerged back onto clear tracks.

Ahead was a train station that looked like a gigantic hothouse, one that someone had taken a baseball bat to and busted every pane of glass.

Standing outside the station were six knights in mirror-polished steel plate mail embellished with gold and emerald inlay. Foot-long thorns bristled from their armor. They held weapons that looked part hunting rifle, part medieval execution ax.

Robert drew his gun. Fiona touched the chain on her wrist, but then instead pulled off a rubber band and stretched it.

The knights saw them, and they sank to one knee.

“Well,” Fiona whispered, “that’s. . different.”

“Huh,” Robert said. He lowered his gun, but didn’t holster it.

“It will be okay,” Eliot told them, and plodded ahead.

Like the Ticket Master who had bowed before Eliot on the Night Train, these guys had to have mistaken him for an Infernal Lord.

As Eliot and the others approached, the knight in front stood, and with his head still bowed, he said, “Most noble Master Post, and Miss Post, son and daughter of the Prince of Darkness, we are your honor escorts, the Knights of the Thorned Rose, Queen Sealiah’s personal guards.”⁶²

These guys knew exactly who they were.

“Honor guard, right,” Robert said with a snort. “Why should we believe you guys?”

Fiona shot him a look for being so rude.

The knight standing turned his stilted visor to Robert, and stared at him a long moment.

“Because, sir,” that knight said, “the dismembered bodies of three hundred of the finest soldiers and knights litter the road from here to the Twelve Towers-proof enough that we have fought and bled and suffered long to clear a way so you may proceed unmolested to our Queen.”

“Do we even really need to go any farther?” Fiona asked Eliot. She turned to the knight and inquired, “Is Jezebel with you? Or close? She’s the one we want to talk with.”

“No, great Lady,” the knight said, and ducked his head apologetically. “The Duchess of the Burning Orchards is at the side of our Queen.”

Fiona sighed. “Figures.”

“A second, please?” Eliot said the knight in charge.

Eliot stepped back with the others and they huddled. “We have three options,” he whispered. “Steal a train and get out of here.”

“I’m betting the tracks are cut in both directions,” Mr. Welmann told him.

Eliot nodded in agreement. “We go ahead, but on our own.”

He gazed down the road and saw the burning remains of soldiers, twisted armor and broken lances, smoldering napalm, and torn bits of shadow slithering. . a swath of ruin and battle for miles. Here and there, however, body parts twitched and moved.

What happened to the dead in Hell when they-what was the right word for it-died? Did they slowly come back together? Or did they just lie there in pieces forever?

Eliot swallowed, trying not to get sick again.

“Or,” Eliot said, “we let these guys take us to their Queen.”

“Into what might be a trap,” Fiona reminded them.

“I think they’re telling the truth about them fighting and dying just to help us,” Eliot said.

Fiona chewed on her lower lip. “Well, they don’t seem like they want to immediately kill us. That’s progress.”

“I don’t want to go back through those Blasted Lands,” Robert murmured.

“Or hoof it through the rest of Hell,” Mr. Welmann added.

Fiona sighed and shook her head. “I guess we go with the welcoming committee. . for now.”

Eliot returned to the knights. “Please,” he told them, “show us the way, sir.”

The head knight motioned to his men. They rose and formed a loose circle around them. Eliot didn’t particularly like being surrounded by armed warriors, but they seemed okay; none of them looked directly at them, and their weapons pointed away.

Still, instinct told Eliot not to trust anyone in Hell.

The Poppy Lands were worse than Eliot remembered from his previous trip on the Night Train. The earth was scorched in spots, frozen in others, and heaps of salt scattered everywhere so nothing could grow-some regions so blasted and broken that it didn’t look like either Queen Sealiah or the attacking shadows controlled it.

These lands felt abandoned and wrong.

They hurried over terrain that looked like the surface of the moon-and over a half-burned bridge that spanned a river choked with vegetation and oil slicks and bodies and chunks of ice.

On the horizon glowed the Twelve Towers of Queen Sealiah. They perched upon the edge of a cliff. Each tower was different: one was an ancient tree with only a crown of a few spare branches; one was ghostly white and taller than all others; one flickered with lines of phosphorescing fungus. Searchlights played through the air. Cannon and cauldrons smoldered atop the outer walls. Industrial cranes stood among the towers, casting their long steel arms back and forth.

As they neared, one crane lowered a platform.

With a wave of his gauntlet, the head knight indicated that they get on.

Eliot hesitated. Once they got on this thing and were inside those walls, it would be harder to turn around and leave if they wanted to.

Queen Sealiah was more than just the monarch of this domain of Hell. She was also part of his family. And Eliot had met only one of his father’s relations, Beelzebub. He’d tried to kill him and Fiona. Eliot didn’t think that’s what Sealiah had in mind, though.

He looked around, took a deep breath, and stepped onto the platform.

His sister, Robert, and Mr. Welmann got on, too, and it rose into the air.

He saw the land for miles around-desolate, burning, and shattered. Oddly, there was no fighting. If this was a war. . where was everyone?

The platform lifted up and over the outer wall, where there were hundreds of artillery pieces poised ready to fire, archers, and knights peering through telescopes. Clouds of insects and bats swarmed around them in formations.

Within the great courtyard were tens of thousands of armored knights and soldiers. They hurried to reinforce the walls, sharpen weapons, and load rifles.

Before Eliot and the others they parted like a retreating tide, all falling to one knee in supplication.