All That Lives Must Die

Eliot and his band played on.

More soldiers appeared and fought, and screamed, and died for him.

Not enough, though.

Mephistopheles and the vast bulk of his remaining army reached the base of the mesa. The clouds darkened.

Patchwork soldiers and giant ants tore through Eliot’s exhausted army.

Eliot stopped playing. His arm was numb, and he felt as if he’d run out of notes in the song. There had to be some limit on how many ghosts he could raise.

A hundred centaurs broke though and charged Sealiah’s phalanx.

The Queen’s warriors set their rifle lances.

The centaurs fell upon them, hacked and clawed-but their assault was thrown back and they tumbled down the slope.

Archers rained death on the enemy as their ranks slipped and struggled in the mud.

The glowing red eyes of the Infernal Lord surveyed the terrain, and his terrible tactical situation. Mephistopheles thrust his pitchfork into the ground and it crackled and frosted, spreading up the hillside, freezing bodies and streams of blood in place, turning the landscape into a gruesome collection of solid shadow, contorted anatomy, and broken weapons.

The Infernal shouted, and it sounded like thunder.

His army roared in response-and charged up the hill with renewed strength.

Sealiah ordered the howitzers that squatted upon her walls to fire, and commanded the industrial cranes to tip their loads.

Eliot gaped as Mephistopheles’ armies stumbled and faltered. Shells exploded about them; tumbling rocks and debris crushed them; clouds of arrows pierced them.

Ten thousand lay destroyed before Sealiah’s final defenses.

Mephistopheles raised his pitchfork, and with a low growl, motioned them away from the Twelve Towers Mesa.

His scattered forces, stopped, turned, and retreated.

Had Sealiah won?

Eliot had never imagined the tide of battle could have turned so fast.

The Queen of the Poppies moved to the front of her line. She called for a horse and an Andalusian mare was brought to her. She hoisted herself into the saddle and took up a rose-twinned lance.

“Trample their bones!” she shouted.

A cheer rose from her army. Sealiah’s cavalry, the Knights of the Thorned Rose, joined her, and they charged at breakneck speed down the hillside. Soldiers and archers followed.

Eliot spied Mr. Welmann on horseback, too, a gun in one hand, a cutlass in the other.

He also spotted Robert and Fiona moving more cautiously down the treacherous slope, straight for Mephistopheles.

This was wrong. How had Mephistopheles, who had steadily won battle after battle and gained so much land, power, and troops. . so badly miscalculated?

Sealiah should have stayed put, reloaded her artillery, and shored up her defenses.

But she’d sensed victory. She’d smelled blood.

Eliot smelled it as well and his pulse pounded. Bloodlust. It was intoxicating. It clouded his thinking.

And he bet Mephistopheles knew that, too.

Sealiah and her knights rode down and trampled everything in their path.

Mephistopheles and his armies retreated to the river’s edge. The Infernal Lord grasped the pitchfork embedded in the ice, the one he had used earlier to freeze the river. With a crack, he pulled it free, shattering the frozen layer, sending a massive ripple up and down the length of the waterway.

Eliot didn’t get it. He’d just blocked his own retreat.

Unless. .

. . this had been a lure to draw Sealiah out.

From the depths of the river for miles in both directions, shadow creatures and dripping patchwork men emerged onto the bank. Thousands of them appeared from their murky underwater hiding place-and they kept coming, drenched and nearly frozen. . but ready to fight as they swelled the enemy’s ranks.

Mephistopheles laughed. It was the sound of bones shattering and metal wrenching.

It made Eliot want to hide and close his eyes. It was as if everything he’d been through in the last year vanished; he was a little kid again hiding under the covers, afraid of the dark.

The two armies met on the slopes.

Sealiah’s forces had momentum, but they were now vastly outnumbered.

They fought valiantly, slashing and shooting. The Poppy Queen’s warriors pulled back into defensive circles- but they were no match for Mephistopheles as he laid waste to scores of knights with a single swipe of his pitchfork.

Queen Sealiah touched the earth and screamed her frustration.

It was frozen. Nothing could grow here.

Eliot snapped out of the terror that gripped him.

He shifted his mental gears and prepared to play his most powerful piece of music, “The Symphony of Existence.” He’d jump to the last movement about the end of the world; he’d bring earthquake and floods.

And while he was sure that would work. . wouldn’t that destroy both sides down there? He had nowhere near the control he’d need to keep from killing Robert and Fiona, too.

Fiona, chain in hand, sliced her way through the shadow legions, moving toward the Infernal Lord.

All about her Eliot glimpsed flashes of silver-the lighting fast motions of two curved blades. It was Louis. He was there. Then not. Then back-stepping from shadow to shadow and never appearing in the between spaces. His father cut down patchwork soldier, panther, and the countless nameless things that rose from the dark to strike from behind at Fiona.

Without Fiona ever noticing.

She fought her way forward-to within a hundred yards of Mephistopheles.

Robert, however, got to him first. Saliceran blazed in his hand, and he didn’t even have to touch the shadows to make them wither and die. Robert looked strong and courageous. He was the real hero here-not Eliot-no matter what pronouncements the League had made.

With that flaming sword, Robert might have a chance against a creature that was part shadow.

Eliot knew then how he could help.

He turned to his band. “I’ve got to play something. . personal,” he whispered.

“You play it, baby,” Janis murmured and set her hands over her chest. “Go ahead and I’ll sing my heart out for you.”

The others in his banded nodded.

Eliot played “Julie’s Song.”

More than anything now he wanted to hear the hope in that song. . and with luck, see the light that’d come with that hope. Light enough maybe to weaken the shadowy Mephistopheles.

He plunked out the notes slow and smooth, thinking about Julie’s life and her pain and how it all ended.

Sid and Kurt joined him, adding a bittersweet rhythm. Bon let the bagpipe sigh with remorse, and James and Janis let loose a lamentable wail.

Eliot wanted to cry. They’d gotten it. It was so sad.

Would it work, though? Julie was long gone. And even Jezebel existed no more-she’d been “snuffed.” But that didn’t mean Eliot’s hope for her and him together had to die as well, did it? Could hope survive in Hell? Or was it supposed to be annihilated here the instant it was created?

No. He felt it-warmth and pain and longing that churned in his heart

In fact, he’d never felt more than he had now-maybe because it was impossible and doomed. Those things just made his hope stronger.

He turned her song around, struggled to move the notes upscale, bringing the story of Julie and her life back to the light.