All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [14]
A man with a stern look on his face stepped out of the gatehouse. He wore a navy blue suit with an embroidered Paxington crest. His blond hair was buzz-cut, and his beard was trimmed square, save the two braids that dangled from his chin.
He towered over Eliot and Fiona, but more impressive than his height was his girth. It would’ve taken three muscular men standing side by side to occupy the same space where he stood. His biceps flexed and stretched taut the fabric of his jacket.
He raised a clipboard and made two checks. “Master Eliot Post,” he muttered, “and the Lady Fiona Post. Good morning.”
“Yes, sir.” Eliot panted. “Good morning. Sorry.” He gave this man a short bow, unsure what the protocol was, but very sure that he deserved respect.
Fiona curtsied.
“Congratulations on passing the entrance exam,” the man said.
“Entrance exam?” Eliot echoed.
“A test to see if you have a spark. You’d be surprised how many potential freshmen wander just outside this street, sometimes for days, never giving up, but never having what it takes to get inside, either. So sad.”
The man’s iron stance relaxed a notch. “I am Harlan Dells,” he said. “Head of security at Paxington. Mind you two break no rules while on school grounds or you will answer to me.”
Eliot swallowed.
Harlan Dells glared at Eliot’s backpack.
Eliot felt his violin case shift inside. His hand tingled where Lady Dawn’s snapped string had cut and infected him . . . apparently not so healed as he had thought.
Harlan Dells turned and opened the gate.
Something about the man was familiar. It was like when they had met Uncle Henry; Eliot felt an instinctual fear and some déjà vu. He sensed that Mr. Dells was related in some way. He was an Immortal.
Mr. Dells faced them. “I can hear the grass grow on the other side of the world. I can see the farthest shore, the most distant star . . . and I can be in more than one place at a time, so I can easily spot and catch two troublemakers. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Eliot and Fiona said together.
“Good.” Mr. Dells pointed past the gates—over manicured lawns and marble fountains, across the courtyard to the clock tower and a domed building next to it. “Bristlecone Hall,” he told them. “That’s where your placement exams are this morning.”
The minute hand of the tower clock ticked into the straight-up position, and bells tolled.
“I suggest,” Mr. Dells said, “that you run for it.”
They did.
5. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, inspectors from the State, Fire, and School Accreditation Boards easily found the Main Gate entrance of the Paxington Institute, but when reporters or tourists attempted to locate the entrance, they failed. This might simply be the nature of San Francisco’s convoluted street geometry. In old satellite images, the original Paxington campus does appear exactly where school officials claim (adjacent Presidio Park). Similar modern accounts, however, of the school’s “selectively appearing entrance” have been claimed of the new Paxington Institute on the San Francisco Archipelago. Inquiries made to the Institute result in a detailed set of directions . . . which ultimately prove useless. Gods of the First and Twenty-first Century, Volume 6, Modern Myths. Zypheron Press Ltd., Eighth Edition.
4
WHAT WE DO BEST
Louis Piper, often called the Prince of Darkness, Lucifer, or the Morning Star, mused on the nature of time . . . how when one doted upon a beautiful woman, a moment stretched into days . . . or like now, when one waited for his cousins to deliberate on their endless scheming—it took an eternity.
Louis shifted on the vinyl couch.
This waiting room was devoid of comfort. Windowless, the only ornamentation on the water-stained walls was a USA AS SEEN FROM LAS VEGAS poster. The odor of urinal cake wafted from the adjacent restroom.
Aside from the door marked EXIT, the only other egress was the door leading to the recently relocated Las Vegas Boardroom.
“They should’ve called me in already,” he told Amberflaxus. “Something