All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [104]
That’s where Fiona spied Jezebel and her brother.
The darkness crowded about them and obscured her view. She heard Eliot, though, playing Lady Dawn . . . something muffled by the smothering layers of shadow.
She and Mitch shuffled carefully forward.
The shadow creatures looked like man-sized bats (specifically the pug-nosed Desmodus rotundus, vampire bat). They dragged themselves on too-long skeletal limbs that ended in three curved talons. Their claws trailed an oily darkness like squid ink in water. When they smacked open their mouths, more teeth than should have been possible to fit inside their heads flexed outward.
One rushed Fiona, despite Mitch’s light, claws reaching.
Fiona lashed forward—finding her father’s gift, the bracelet about her wrist, once more transformed into a full length of real chain.
She cut the creature in half.
It hit the pavement with a wet splat . . . apparently more than mere shadow, reeking of hot gasoline and ozone.
Fiona gazed at the partially rusted chain and vowed to thank Louis if she ever saw him again.
She turned to Eliot. They had to get out before they got lost in the encroaching darkness.
Next to her, Mitch stared openmouthed at the severed monstrosity that oozed black blood at her feet . . . then to the chain she held. The color drained from his face.
She nodded to his upheld hand and the ball of intense light. “Can you make it brighter?”
“I can try,” he whispered. He licked his lips and concentrated.
The light blazed like a tiny sun. He grunted in pain and his hand blistered.
The shadows about them backed away, their edges sizzling in the intense illumination . . . clearing a path to Jezebel and Eliot.
Fiona now clearly heard Eliot’s music. It was the song he’d played at their first gym match. Only then, he had cautiously plunked out the song. Now he bowed with vibrato, and Fiona felt the music resonate in her bones; it made her want to march forward.
She resisted, though, because she didn’t understand what she saw.
Eliot and Jezebel stood in the center of a hundred shadow creatures that wheeled about them, circling closer.
Jezebel’s hands had finger-length needle claws that dripped venom. Where it spattered on the ground, the asphalt dissolved. Her arms were still slender and porcelain white, but her veins stood out, vinelike and pulsing. Her face was drawn, mouth filled with serrated teeth. But her eyes—they were wild and solid green, glimmered as if faceted emeralds . . . and reminded Fiona of the emotionless gaze of a praying mantis.
A shadow rushed Jezebel, its mouth extended in a gruesome smile.
Jezebel struck—so fast, Fiona barely saw the motion.
The creature fell screaming, withering, clutching at the holes that once contained its eyes, and then it died.
Only then did Fiona see dozens of liquefying corpses about the Infernal Jezebel, dribbling away to the drain in the center of the alley.
An overpowering scent of vanilla reached Fiona’s nostrils. She almost gagged.
Fiona had seen Infernals more disgusting at the Ultima Thule battle, even faced horrific Beelzebub in combat, but she hadn’t seen one part transformed, half human and half nightmare . . . and definitely not someone who sat next to her in class.
Maybe as Louis had said “the fires of Hell” burned in Fiona’s blood as well—but if being Infernal meant unleashing the monster within, then Fiona never wanted to let that side of her take control.
But more than Jezebel . . . it was Eliot that really threw her.
Eliot’s hands were blurs as he played. His eyes were unblinking, staring off into space. About him fog swirled, and Fiona glimpsed a battlefield beyond and hundreds of red-coated soldiers stepping into the alley, bayonets fixed upon rifles, firing in time with the music, and marching forward to battle the shadows. The soldiers fought blade to claw. They died, dozens of them—and still they materialized from the music, never broke ranks, never cried out or showed any emotion . . . like windup toys.
And they sang:
We live to fight