All That Lives Must Die

The die tumbled, popped, and skittered to a halt. .

. . Six crows.

Even.

Eliot exhaled. He’d won.

Louis shrugged off the chains and gag and stretched. “Well rolled, my boy. A pleasure to see you.” He smiled at Fiona. “Thank you, too, my dear.”

Sealiah seemed pleased. And why shouldn’t she? Even losing she had Fiona’s brother and father to fight in her war.

“You can go,” Eliot whispered to Fiona. “This doesn’t have to be your fight anymore.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she told him.

Eliot was being so magnanimous and noble (and that positively irked her). There was no way she could just walk out on him. But there was no way she was fighting for the Queen of Poppies, either.

Louis rubbed his hands. “Before we go any further,” he said. “I insist that if my son and I are to fight, it be as your Dux Bellorum with full honors and rights.”

“Ducks Bell-what?” Eliot asked Fiona.

“Latin maybe?” she whispered. “Duke of war?”

She was pretty good with foreign languages, but this was a new one on her.⁶⁴

Sealiah looked at Louis. “If you have something to fight for, I suppose you might actually risk your pretty skin. And since there will be much of the Hysterical Kingdom to divide should we win. . I would throw you a scrap.”

He bowed as deep as possible without taking his eyes off of her. “Your wisdom is exceeded only by your beauty.”

Sealiah scoffed, drew one of her curved daggers, and pricked her thumb. She went to Louis and smeared his forehead with the shape of a little star. “By the bond of blood and war so joined,” she murmured, and lingered close to his face a moment.

She withdrew.

Louis beckoned to Eliot and he came and got the same treatment.

Louis then turned to Fiona. “Come my daughter, join us, and fight by our side.” He opened his arms as if he wanted to embrace her.

Fiona had often dreamed of a moment of reconciliation with her father. Her forgiving him. Him accepting her. It was something she’d never get from Audrey.

But it couldn’t happen like this. . in Hell. Right in the middle of a war.

Fiona had to decide, though. Leave or stay. Fight or not. Get drawn into a war that was none of her business, or just walk away and go back to school where she belonged.

She took a step toward them.

There was a crack. The earth rumbled. The tower shook and skulls rained down.

The floor split, caved in, and from tunnels below-the shades of damnation poured forth.

64. Dux is Latin for “leader.” The earliest usage of Dux Bellorum appears in the literatures of King Arthur, where he is described as the “dux of battles” among the kings of the Romano-Britons in their wars against the Anglo-Saxons. The military title survived until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 (although, the Italian Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, used the title of Dux [Duce in Italian]). The term also rarely appears among the Infernals and Fairies, most notable was the Green Knight, the Dux Bellorum of the Fey. War Immortalus, Benjamin Ma, Paxington Institute Press LLC, San Francisco.

74 UNDERLYING DARKNESS

Fiona fell back, knocked over by an emerging serpent the size of a bus.

Her adrenaline surged. Worries and thoughts of Infernal politics and family vanished as the snake’s scales flashed before her eyes: jet black, mirror smooth, rippling muscle.

The snake circled, its body uncoiling from the tunnel below.

Fiona jumped to her feet, her blood pounding and her chain once more in her hands. There was no time to be afraid.

The snake hissed and struck.

Fiona held her chain before her-severed fang and sinew and flesh.

The serpent’s head tumbled from its body. Venom and black blood pooled at her feet.

Shadow creatures wormed from the earth and fought Sealiah’s knights everywhere in the enormous chamber. There were snakes, lizards, and crabs-part flesh and part shade. They tore and bit, and in turn, were shot and hacked by the knights.

Like the shadows Fiona and Eliot had fought in the alley by Paxington.

Not quite. These weren’t changing shape. . and they felt solid. Real. More dangerous.

Eliot held Lady Dawn and blasted a giant scorpion that squeezed out from between the rocks (although he just blasted it into a bazillion tiny black scorpions).

Soldiers crawled from the cracks in the tower’s foundation as well. These damned souls had been stitched together with parts missing, or extra parts added, or blades riveted in place of hands. Robert pummeled two headless patchwork soldiers wielding obsidian knives.

Part of Fiona’s mind rebelled. This was every nightmare she’d had come to life.

An overgrown black mantis that could’ve eaten a horse lunged at her-she whirled her chain-and it splattered into a mass of chitin and ichor.

So gross.

And so much for deciding if she was going to fight this fight.

The still-thinking part of her mind, though, thought this was like gym class: the tension. . the ever-present danger. . the urge to fight or run and not even think.

She knew what to do. She had to cool down and assess the tactical situation.

A thrall of Sealiah’s knights encircled their Queen and leveled rifle lances at a horde of onrushing men. There were thunder and flashes and smoke-and the shadow soldiers were blasted into bits. . but still they crawled forward.

Robert struggled and grappled with a black tiger.

Eliot strummed Lady Dawn and the air rippled; the light from the nearby glowing mushrooms on the walls dazzled to magnesium brilliance.

The cat withered in the light-and Robert snapped its neck.

Fiona moved toward them to help.

But the cracks in the floor between her and them widened.

A reptile hand pushed aside massive stones. . with claws as big as scythe blades.

A limb thrust through, and then a smooth lizard head emerged from the earth-hissing and snapping; it devoured five knights with one bite.

This dragon pulled its hindquarters free and its tail whipped about, crushing everything in its wake, impacting the tower wall, and blasting skulls and stones and metal supports-making a hole to the outside.

Through it Fiona glimpsed flashes and motion. The battle wasn’t just in here.

Queen Sealiah advanced on the great beast, and as she did, she grew talons and fangs, and flowers sprouted in her footsteps. She was as pale as the dragon was ebon. She drew her sword, its tip broken and jagged and dripping poison.

Fiona had seen that sword. Her father had skewered Beelzebub with it.

The dragon slashed at Sealiah; she stabbed its claw.

The beast cried out and the limb went lame. It hobbled and snapped at her.

Sealiah punched it in the snout.

The dragon had scraped her arm, however, and came away with her blood on its teeth. It reared back and roared. The veins in its neck bulged, turning a nacreous green with poison.

Sealiah laughed as the creature thrashed and fell. . shivered, and became still.