All That Lives Must Die

herself. She touched her rubber band always on her wrist in case she needed it.

She and Eliot halted thirty paces from Sobek, close enough to speak, but, she hoped, out of the crocodile’s lunging strike range. How easily could such a monster just snap them up? They might not even get a chance to fight back.

It smelled of blood and rotten meat, and a musky scent that her primitive brain defined as “reptilian.”

“So much has happened,” she whispered.

“I have watched the water and read your futures,” it said. “Come and see with thine own eyes.”

Was this a trick to lure them closer?

Fiona didn’t think so. How could this thing still be hungry? And yet she hesitated because the animal part of her brain was rightfully afraid and suspected the creature had a supernatural hunger that was never sated.

Eliot, however, stupidly brave as always, walked forward.

So Fiona followed.

One foot in front of the other she moved until they felt Sobek’s stinking, moist breath on their faces.

There was a rivulet between them and the crocodile-a stream through which water burbled along with strings of algae and floating bits of paper.

“Look,” it commanded.

Fiona squinted into the water (one hand still on her rubber band). Her eyes defocused, and she saw the waves and currents blur into lines of light and shadow that crossed and fluttered and stretched from here and now. . farther downstream and off in the future.

As Aunt Dallas had showed her how to do so long ago.

Her lifeline stretched on and on as far as she could see. It pulsed like quicksilver. There were many others in the surrounding weave: golden threads and silver lines and coarse flax fiber and taut leather cords. Some wound about her thread. Some snapped and fell away. Some new strands joined with hers farther on-ones that glimmered like emerald and ruby and sapphire and threw off sparks of light.

It seemed normal, she guessed. Was it possible everything was going to be okay?

Farther along, however, she saw new threads: concertina barbed wire and battered chains. Her line cut through those, leaving snapped and severed lives in the wake of her destiny.

She smelled brimstone and fire and blood.

There were smaller fibers, too: thousands of fine ordinary cotton threads that were broken or burned away by the larger lines pushing forward and distorting the pattern.

War. There was going to be a war, and Fiona would lead the charge.

How many would die because of her?

Or was the right question, How many would she save?

It was so obvious now-Immortal versus Infernal. Good versus evil.

And where was Eliot’s thread? There was nothing there that felt like him.

Far off, though, waves and melodies rebounded through the fabric, ripples and blurs that had to be his music. . but it was not bound to her thread.

She blinked and looked up.

Sobek had crept so close that Fiona could have reached up and touched its snout.

Eliot shook his head. “I don’t see anything. It’s all tangled ahead.”

But Sobek’s slitted eyes locked with Fiona’s. “You saw.”

“Yes,” she breathed. “A war.”

“Not just a war,” Sobek rumbled. “The war. Among the gods and the angels. . war among everyone. . everywhere. Armageddon.” The reptile looked at Eliot and then back to her. “And you will choose sides.”

Deep down, Fiona had known this was coming. She had once hoped that both sides of her family could get along-that there’d even be some sort of corny reunion between her mother and father and all their relatives.

But now that they’d gone to Hell and come back?

It was clear how evil the Infernals were. . that given a chance, they wouldn’t stop at fighting for just their lands. . they’d come to mortal realms. And the only thing that had been stopping them was the League of Immortals and the Pactum Pax Immortalus. . until she and Eliot had come along.

“It’ll be like Ultima Thule all over again,” Fiona murmured. “We’ll need someone to lead us in battle. Is he still alive?”

“He?” Sobek held her gaze a long time, and then said, “Ah, Zeus? Odin, Ra, Titan Slayer, and Dux Bellorum of all Battles? I cannot see him. Not since long ago.”

“But is he alive?” Fiona whispered.

“I cannot say.”

That wasn’t an answer-but it didn’t matter. There were answers enough here for Fiona. She knew what she had to do.

“I’m going to find him,” she said, stood tall, and took in a deep breath, despite the stench. “And if I can’t find Zeus, or if he’s really dead, then I’ll find another to lead the Immortals.”

And if she couldn’t find a leader among them? She wasn’t sure. She’d cross that bridge if she came to it.

“Don’t,” Eliot said. “Hasn’t there been enough fighting? There’s got to be another way. Let me try to talk to Dad and Sealiah.”

Fiona laughed. “Talk? That’s not what they do! All they do is lie and backstab and take whatever they are strong enough to take.”

She heard the truth in her statement ring like a silver bell in the air.

“There will be war,” Sobek declared. “That much is clear. Many will die. . though you should not grieve. All that lives must die-the gods-the angels-all must move on.”

Fiona felt a stab of sorrow as she thought about Mitch and all the other people she might know who could be killed. But how many more would die if she did nothing and let the Infernals have their way?

Eliot, however, went on as if he hadn’t heard Sobek’s prophecy. “Just give me a chance to fix things,” he said. “I can do it.”

“You can’t fix Mom and Dad,” she spat. “You can’t fix any of them. They all want this. And they want you, too.” She stared into his eyes, pleading. “Don’t go over to their side. Come with me to the Council. They can help us. And give up Jezebel-she’s nothing but poison.”

“I know what she is,” Eliot whispered. “But there’s more to it now than just her.” He stared at some distant point and his forehead crinkled in frustration. “I have to find out what being part of that family means. We’re both half Infernal.”

“No,” Fiona said with absolute certainty. “It’s my choice what I want to be.”

“Then it’s my choice, too,” he told her.

“Don’t be stupid,” Fiona whispered. “Things can’t end like this: us on different sides.”

Eliot shook his head. “You just don’t understand.” He turned and walked away.

Sarah started after him, but stopped when she saw the look of contempt on Fiona’s face. She hesitated, took a step toward Eliot, but then halted and stayed with Fiona.

Fiona could have gone after her brother-maybe even have stopped him, or at least, made him listen to her.

But she didn’t.

He had gone too far. He was lost to her.

“And so,” Sobek murmured, “as I have foreseen: the Heralds of the End of Days are split asunder.”

71. “I have stared into the eyes of Ancient Death. Was this our future? Our doom?” Thus begins Sarah Covington’s first entry in what would later be known as her notorious Secret Red Diaries. Sarah Covington had kept journals before and concurrent with her “red” diaries, but those contained details of her pre-Paxington personal life, ongoing Covington political dramas, and her familial teachings. The Secret Red Diaries, on the other hand, detail her long and tortuous relationships with the Post twins. Given where those relationships ended, her writings provide a unique mortal’s perceptive to their fantastic journeys, the wars to come, and the eventual fate of the Middle Realms. Gods of the First and Twenty-first Century,