As she neared the cliffs of the Twelve Towers, she saw engineers strengthening its fortifications. Antiaircraft artillery squatted upon the ramparts. The walls were heavy with creeping death vines, which bristled with thorns and oozed a flesh-corrosive toxin.
Even the land prepared for inevitable war. The Laudanum River that wound through the valley rainbowed with oily slicks as the jungle that had overgrown its banks wept poison to make it a moat of death.
Jezebel clattered up the cobblestone road and through the castle’s raised portcullis.
Guards in thorn armor and flower-laden lances saluted her and helped her dismount. The Captain bowed and indicated the Queen awaited her pleasure in the Chamber of Maps.
She raced up the stairs of the Sixth Tower, the so-called Oaken Keeper of Secrets.
It was not wise to keep the Queen waiting. Ever.
She paused outside the chamber to adjust her skirt and smooth her Paxington jacket, to make sure her hair was just right.
Jezebel sensed Sealiah near. They were connected through the Pact of Indomitable Servitude, the oath that broken and damned Julie Marks had taken to transform herself into Jezebel. It made her a part of Sealiah’s will, Julie’s soul consumed and replaced by the shadow of the Queen of Poppies. Jezebel felt this in her very atoms. She did not struggle against it. One might as well try to struggle against breathing.
She entered the chamber, bowing low, not daring to look upon her Queen before instructed to.
“I shall tend to you in a moment,” Sealiah said. “And rise. Submission becomes most young girls. . but not you.”
The Queen of Poppies had dressed to kill today. A sheath of gossamer metal clung to her curves-liquid dark-matter silver that had been in existence before the mortal Earth had been dust gathering in void.
Jezebel’s gaze settled on the emerald that sat in the delicate
Jezebel had a sliver of that stone within her left palm-a gift and living link to her Queen.
Her fingers rolled into a fist. How she would love to taste more.
She averted her eyes from this obvious temptation, however, and her gaze landed upon the curved daggers, Exarp and Omebb, strapped to Sealiah’s thighs. . as well as the broken Sword of Dread, Saliceran, sheathed on her hip.
That terrible blade was said to have been broken as it struck the Immovable One in the Great War with Heaven. It had killed thousand of mortals and Immortals. The metal wept venom equal to the rage of the one who wielded it.
Jezebel then turned her attentions to the map table. It was a model of the Poppy Lands from the Valley of the Shadow of Death across the Dusk End of Rainbow to Venom-Tangle Thicket. Miniature infantry and fungus bat squadrons, Lancers of the Wild Rose, and Longbow of the Order of Whispering Death guarded key strategic locations. . waiting for the enemy to make its move.
Bumblebees flew from open windows and landed upon the table. Covered in pollen and sticky with nectar, they waddled, buzzing among the unit markers and pushing them to their latest positions.
Sealiah plucked up one black-and-amber insect, its stinger half the length of its squirming body. “Tell the Lancers to pull back to the Western Ridge. Bury antipersonnel mines as they go.” She then blew on the creature, and it took to the air.
“Now,” Sealiah said, and finally turned to Jezebel, “how was school?”
Her Queen was, as always, breathtaking: bronze skin, her hair gleaming copper and streaked with platinum, and eyes that knew the depths of seduction and addiction.
Jezebel had to resist the urge to fall down in worship. “I passed entrance and placement exams without incident, my Queen.”
The entrance to the Paxington Institute had been obvious to her Infernal senses. And between the answers provided for her, as well as weeks of intensive study from tutors, Jezebel had earned a B+ on the written exam, of which she was extremely proud.
Her former incarnation, Julie Marks-when she bothered to go to high school at all-had scraped by with Cs.
“Of course you passed.” Sealiah arched one delicate eyebrow. “Or you would dare not show your face here.”
Jezebel felt her cheeks heat, and she carefully averted her eyes so her Queen did not see the hate within.
“Tell me about the twins,” Sealiah ordered.
On a side table, the Queen unrolled the circular mat for a game of Towers, a game that to Jezebel seemed part checkers, part chess, and had a long list of rules that seemed improvised half the time.
“They passed their tests, too. We are on the same team: Scarab.” Jezebel continued with a narration of their first day, explaining the composition of their team (including a report on Robert Farmington, who surely worked for the League), their tour of the Paxington campus, and the Ludus Magnus.
She told Sealiah how Fiona and Eliot reacted to it all. How they were so naive about everything. It was pathetic.
“You think your Eliot Post is weak, then?”
“No, my Queen. There is something still to the boy. I can feel it growing within him. Something that. .”
Jezebel couldn’t find the words. She wasn’t sure how she felt about him. . something no doubt left over from her weaker, mortal self.
“You are drawn to the boy?” Sealiah narrowed her eyes at Jezebel as she searched her heart. “Beyond his mere power?”
Jezebel opened her mouth to deny any attraction.
But that would be a lie. One her Queen would instantly detect. Such simple deceptions were the greatest insult one Infernal could give to another.
So she said nothing.
Sealiah inspected her nails: bloodred and pointed. She then set a handful of white cubes upon the Towers game mat. “Does he suspect who you were?”
“He may.” Jezebel fidgeted. “He looks at me-I mean, like all the boys, of course. But, I think he sees a shadow of. . she who I was.” Jezebel couldn’t speak her former name aloud. She loathed the weak creature she had been. “It shall not be a problem. It will be child’s play to deflect his questions.”
Sealiah stroked Jezebel’s cheek with one fingernail, cutting the flesh. The sensation sent shivers through Jezebel. “You will tell him the truth if he asks,” Sealiah said. “All of it. Even, and
Jezebel inhaled and took an involuntary step back.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “I thought I was to get close to the twins. Help them so they would be sympathetic to our cause. Wasn’t I going to be friends with Fiona? With Eliot? How will the truth help that?”
Jezebel realized too late that withdrawal from her Queen’s presence, questioning her orders-either could be reason to be annihilated.
Sealiah, however, merely smiled and tilted her head. “These are still our goals, my pet. But Eliot is far more Infernal than any yet suspect. I have reports of his music quelling the borders of the disputed Blasted Lands.”
Eliot had been to Hell? Jezebel wanted to ask how and when and what he had played.
For a terrible moment, she was Julie Marks again, yearning to hear
She quickly snuffed those weaknesses before Sealiah saw them-and ripped them from her chest.
Still. . she didn’t understand.
Sealiah must have seen the confusion on her face, because she said, “If the boy continues to develop his stronger, Infernal nature, then he will certainly be able to do what any young lord of Hell can: sort lies from truth.”
Jezebel wrestled with her Queen’s command to tell the truth. Deception had been the entire basis of her relationship with Eliot. He had fallen for sweet, innocent, and vulnerable Julie Marks, the new manager at Ringo’s Pizza-not runaway, died-of-a-heroin-overdose Julie Marks from the alleyways of Atlanta, not Julie Marks who had
