anything truly “classical.” It spoke of layers of stone and how they rumbled over one another, rising into hills and ridges and mountains, others plunging deeper, under the ocean floor, and into an endless molten sea.
The thick wall behind them cracked.
Eliot’s song layered chords of bass notes over one another.
The earth beneath Fiona’s feet shifted and plumes of dust shot up from the fissures.
“He’s doing it,” Jezebel whispered, her eyes wide with wonder.
Sealiah did not look so enthusiastic, frowning as she nodded at her Tower Grave. “My personal guards have failed us,” she said.
A dragon within the tower poked its snout though the hole, and then pushed through the tower’s wall, demolishing that section. The tower shuddered-base to steeple-and a thousand skulls rained down, clattering and shattering.
Another dragon pushed out after the first, casting its head about, and then fixed its dark stare at them.
Fiona braced, and drew her chain between her hands, ready to fight that thing. . although not quite sure how she was going to fight something
“I will go,” Jezebel said. She drew in a breath, trembled, and then she whispered to her Queen, “It is time.”
Sealiah gazed at her protegee with what might have been called “pity” on a normal person, but on the Infernal’s perfect features it looked alien.
Fiona was about to interrupt this little moment between them-those dragons were slinking closer, moving faster, sniffing and snorting, growing excited.
The Queen, however, stroked Jezebel’s face and kissed her on the cheek. Whatever trace of pity that had been on Sealiah’s features vanished. “Do what you must.”
Jezebel looked over at Eliot once-then whirled about and strode toward the dragons.
Despite the eminent danger, Fiona paused. The skin at the base of her spine crawled. Something just occurred between Jezebel and Sealiah that had zero to do with this fight-something wrong.
“Hey!” Fiona said, and started after Jezebel.
Sealiah held out a slender arm to block her. “You belong by your brother’s side. He is the only thing that matters now.”
Jezebel crossed the courtyard toward the Tower Grave. She called to a dozen knights finishing off a squad of patchwork men. They came to her, lances at the ready, and together approached the shadow dragons.
Jezebel shifted form, tiny curled horns pushed out of her head, wings sprouted though slits on her armor, and claws grew out holes in the tips of her gauntlets, but it wasn’t like gym class. She remained human size.
Eliot’s fingers danced up in scale, the notes came faster, and he transitioned from a major key and an orderly Baroque cadence to a minor, insistent beat.
The ground splintered. Deep within the mesa came a grinding as stone stressed and then shattered with an agonizing noise that was oddly in harmony with Eliot’s song.
Meanwhile, the dragons decimated Jezebel’s knights-but even as they were ripped to pieces, Jezebel took a lance and stabbed one in its throat.
Fiona moved to join her. She had to help her. Sealiah couldn’t stop her this time.
Eliot, however, did.
The mesa shifted. . the
The ground under her dropped six feet. Fiona tumbled, and Robert caught her.
Dust exploded from the cracks about them.
The mesa tilted. The outer wall on the other side of the courtyard crumbled.
Then all motion stopped.
And so did Eliot. His hand rested on his guitar strings to still them. He sank to one knee and hung his head.
Fiona, Robert, and Mr. Welmann went to his side. Louis looked at the destruction and nodded appreciatively.
The knights fighting rallied, reorganized, and drove many of the shadows off the edge of the plateau.
“Should. . do. . it,” Eliot said, exhausted. “All the tunnels are sealed.”
But after he said this-an acre of ground of the far side of the courtyard fell away, taking tents and knights and shadows along with it.
“Okay. .” Fiona held her breath waiting for more of the mesa to disintegrate. . there were cracklings under her feet. . but they slowed. . and settled. . and stopped. “Okay,” she told Eliot. “That was pretty good.”
There was a whoop of triumph, and Fiona looked up and found the source: Jezebel.
The Protector of the Burning Orchards and Handmaiden to the Mistress of Pain lifted the severed head of the last dragon over her head with both hands. She was drenched in black blood, her torso crisscrossed with claw marks, and a wild grin split her face. She let loose with another cry-part cheerleader whoop and part Viking war cry.
Behind her, the Tower Grave collapsed.
There were so many femurs and hips and ribs, so many skulls, it looked like the millions of bones fell in slow motion. . even the large, fossilized, horned, several-ton dinosaur skulls from the apex tumbled through the air with a semblance of grace.
Eliot lunged forward.
Jezebel was so close. Any one of them could have crossed the distance between them in a few seconds.
But there wasn’t a few seconds.
Fiona and Robert grabbed Eliot and held him back.
“No!” He struggled in their grasps.
Bones impacted and shattered about Jezebel. She looked surprised-whirled this way and that. . and then realized what was happening. Too late.
One massive fossilized stone skull crushed Jezebel.
“No. .,” Eliot whispered, and gripped Fiona tighter.
Fiona hadn’t known how she felt about Jezebel. Was she a pawn of the Infernals? Or had she participated in their schemes to get Eliot with willful glee?
Fiona knew how Eliot had felt about her, though.
And seeing Jezebel killed in front of him while he could do nothing-that was the worst thing she could imagine happening to one person who loved another.
“Eliot,” she said. “I–I’m sorry. So sorry.”
She held him.
Louis came to them. “Alas,” he murmured, “such is the agony of love and-”
Fiona glared at her father for his callousness. The look on his face, however, halted her from giving him the chewing out he deserved.
Louis’s eyes were wide now. He was scared.
Not even when Fiona’s mother had confronted him in that Del Sombra alley (and had been ready to kill him) had she seen her father scared.
What could possibly scare Lucifer, the Prince of Darkness?
She followed his gaze across the courtyard to where the wall had tumbled away.
Fiona saw the river valley beyond. .
. . and she instantly understood that the nightmare creatures that had crawled up through those tunnels and attacked them had been a diversion.
Covering the valley was a seething mass of shadow at least a hundred thousand strong, the full force of the enemy’s army. Fiona’s mind reeled at what she saw in the center of this: standing a hundred feet tall, a tower of blackness and blazing red eyes, was the shadows’ lord and master-Mephistopheles.
