All That Lives Must Die

But her laughter died as she saw three more dragons push forth from the fissures.

How many more of these things were there? Fiona had seen hundreds of these shadows in the alley near Paxington. If that many of these now more-solid shadows caught them in here. . she and Eliot and Robert would get slaughtered.

Skulls and stones fell from the top of the tower and shattered on the floor.

Or they’d be buried alive.

“Outside!” Fiona shouted to Eliot, and pointed at the breach in the wall.

Eliot and Robert and Mr. Welmann moved toward the hole. Eliot hesitated, looking back at her, but Mr. Welmann hustled him through.

Sealiah and Jezebel lingered, though, fighting on.

And Louis? Her father was nowhere to be seen among the knights battling hand to hand, slashing with swords, or hacking with lances. . and in turn, being bitten, crushed, and stung to death by the things boiling from the earth.

This was a losing battle.

They had to regroup and get some maneuvering room.

Fiona felt cold and her feet went numb. Should she stay and look for Louis? He wasn’t even armed. Could he survive this carnage?

Eliot, Robert, and Mr. Welmann, however, were already outside-and that decided it. She’d stick with her brother.

She pushed soldiers out of her way, swung her chain, cleared a path, and jumped through the hole in the tower wall.

It was worse out here.

Fissures radiated from the tower of bone across the mesa. From them it looked like every shadow creature in Mephistopheles’ army pushed through into the melee. The ten thousand knights and soldiers camped in the castles’ inner courtyard had expected an attack from the outside, not from within their own walls. . and they’d been caught unawares.

Thousands of men lay torn to pieces on the flagstones. Officers shouted orders-but few soldiers had the wits to listen as giant centipedes, and oily protozoa, and legions of patchwork men slithered from the earth and swept through their ranks.

Sealiah and Jezebel emerged behind Fiona.

“We must hurry,” Sealiah said. “My knights in the Tower Grave pay for our escape. They will not last long.”

The Queen of Poppies sounded irritated, as if those men dying for her were letting her down by merely getting eaten alive while she made small talk.

Fiona was about to tell the queen that there was no “we” to hurry, and to also ask her what the heck she was going to “hurry” up and do against a force of this size-when she heard Eliot.

“Fiona!” Eliot shouted, and waved to her to join him.

Eliot and Robert and Mr. Welmann had cleared a patch of solid ground by the far wall.

Louis was there, too. He leaned against the wall, brooding as he watched the slaughter. . or maybe he was bored; it was hard to tell.

Fiona ran to them. Sealiah and Jezebel trailed behind her.

“This is where we shall make our stand against the Droogan-dors,” Sealiah declared. She looked absolutely majestic, a queen defending the last of her land.

“Dad,” Fiona said. “Grab a sword-some weapon. Do something!”

Louis smiled. “I am using my deadliest weapon, daughter.” He tapped the side if his head. “I am thinking. As you should be if you care at all about your pretty head.”

“Form a circle about me,” Sealiah ordered. “I shall summon my power.”

“I don’t think so,” Fiona told Her Regalness. “We’re not going to be your body shields. Your strategy of brute force verse brute force hasn’t worked so great against Mephistopheles thus far. It’s probably not going to work now.”

The Queen gave Fiona a look that could have melted tungsten.

Fiona shrugged it off. If dirty looks, divine or diabolical, could have killed her, she would have been stone dead years ago from Audrey’s withering gazes.

One canon on the wall had been turned-it blasted down in the courtyard-and destroyed as many knights as shadow creatures.

Fiona cringed. “It’s like the battle of Ultima Thule,” she explained to the Queen. “Lots of inferior forces fighting a handful of superior ones-that’s you.” That last comment seemed to mollify Sealiah. “Only this time, there are too many opponents, and more coming every second.”

The answer of what to do came to Fiona. Not the how of it, but what had to be done.

“We’ve got to seal their tunnels.”

“They must have been digging through solid rock for days,” Jezebel said. “Started beyond our outer defenses at the river.”

“The entire plateau is riddled then,” Sealiah replied. “With our power diminished, they cannot be sealed in time.”

Eliot stepped forward. “I can do it, I think.” He touched Lady Dawn and the ground trembled.

Sealiah looked at her brother and ate him up with her savage eyes. “My Dux Bellorum.”

“An excellent idea.” Louis set a hand on Eliot’s shoulder. The smile on his face, however, dried up as he took a long look at the Lady Dawn guitar. “What have you done to my violin?” he said, horrified.

“Later-” Eliot shrugged off Louis’s touch. “And she’s mine now. You gave her to me, remember?”

Louis narrowed his eyes and continued to stare at the instrument, looking as if he’d been betrayed by it.

“Sure, you can collapse those tunnels,” Fiona whispered to Eliot, “but can you do it without bringing down the entire mesa and killing us, too?” Fiona had seen Eliot’s power unleashed firsthand: He’d leveled downtown Costa Esmeralda.

Eliot pursed his lips, thinking. “I just need to concentrate.”

She gave his arm a squeeze. This was prohibited by their mutually agreed on “never touch each other” rule, but surrounded, about to be overwhelmed by bloodthirsty shadows, in the middle of Hell-it seemed like the right thing.

Eliot gave her an awkward smile.

“Give him some room,” Sealiah commanded. “Let nothing distract him.”

They spread out to defend Eliot.

And he played.

At first, even though Eliot’s fingers strummed and the strings blurred, Fiona didn’t hear a thing over the clash of steel and shouts and roars in the courtyard. . but she did feel something. It started in her toes, a tingle that traveled through the bones in her legs and into her stomach, and grew into a rumble that made her teeth buzz.

Dust rose into the air.

Three oversized wolves howled at the subsonic noise, whirled, and charged. Fiona braced and swung her chain. Robert picked up a lance. He moved closer, but not too close to her, and held the lance high.

Robert threw the lance; it struck and impaled one wolf.

Fiona cut another down-but the third bit into her arm.

Robert punched the wolf and broke its skull.

Fiona shook the animal off, wincing as teeth pulled out of her flesh with sucking sounds. She winced again at the sight of her blood trickling down her arm.

She looked up at Robert and tried to communicate her thanks.

He met her eyes with a steady gaze.

Eliot’s music ascended into an audible range: it was heavy and ponderous and classical, but older than