All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [158]
Eliot didn’t budge.
He scrutinized what lay ahead, not liking what he saw. In some battles, Queen Sealiah’s forces outnumbered the shadows three to one and pushed them back. In a few cases, her forces lit the fields on fire to drive the shadows away (at best, a delaying tactic). But in the majority of the battles, it was an even match . . . with lots of casualties on either side.
Eliot wasn’t sure what happened to the souls of the dead when torn apart by shadow creatures—if they ceased to exist, regenerated, or just lay there in pieces for all eternity.
He was pretty sure, though, he knew what would happen if he got torn into tiny pieces.
“That way’s too dangerous.” He drew Jezebel closer to him. “The safest path is back.” He pointed over his shoulder. He could just see the top of the train station’s glass spires.
“No,” she insisted. “I cannot leave. I must fight.”
“No, you don’t,” he told her. “Come back with me. We’ll get you a dorm room at Paxington. The Droogan-dors would never dare come there.”
“Where I’d be safe?” Jezebel dropped his hand, and her face turned cold. “Where I would slowly die?”
Eliot looked at her. That was no lie—but he was light-years from understanding what she meant.
“The land,” she said, growing annoyed with him. “You saw the connection.”
He nodded, starting to get it. When the Droogan-dors won, they took the land and made it Mephistopheles’. And logically, the more land that Infernal Lord had, the stronger he became . . . while Queen Sealiah lost her land and grew weaker.
“What happens if you lose?” Eliot whispered. “Lose all the land?”
Her hand rose to her throat. “There would be no more Jezebel. At best, the soul of Julie Marks would belong to Mephistopheles. But in all likelihood, as a Duchess of the Royal House of Poppies, I would be destroyed.”
Eliot refused to accept that. His father had lost all his lands and not been destroyed . . . but he was the Great Deceiver, and a full-blooded fallen angel. Jezebel wasn’t.
“Okay,” he said, “that’s it, then. I’m staying and fighting.”
“No, no, no.” She pursed her lips. “We’re only going to the castle so I can be safe and you can get an escort out of here. I won’t let you die for me.”
He crossed his arms. “I’m not leaving you.”
Cannon fire lit the nearby ridge, and bioluminescent puffballs whooshed overhead, lighting the sky like ghostly meteors—impacting and exploding on the opposite side of the valley with flashes of pastel lights, illuminating the solid wall of onrushing shadow.
Jezebel balled her hands into fists. “You—are—so—stubborn!” she said through gritted teeth, and she shook her platinum curls.
She grabbed his hand and raced back the way they’d come. “Fine. The train, then. My orders definitely do not cover this.”
As they ran, her wounds bled once more. Was it the sudden motion? Or was it because Queen Sealiah was losing?
Eliot risked a glance back.
Knights upon giant centipedes charged downhill; monster bats screeched overhead, dropping lines of phosphorescent napalm—and rushing down the opposite hill against these forces, a tide of dark, full of limbs and jagged maws and a thousand unblinking eyes.
Eliot turned and ran faster—and slowed only once they got inside the great glass station house.
“How long?” he panted. “Until another train?”
“We do not wait,” Jezebel replied.
She went to a wrought-iron pillar and opened a call box. Inside was an ancient phone. She turned a generator crank and spoke into the fixed microphone: “Ready the Poe. No delays.”
Jezebel replaced the earpiece and closed the box. She then moved to his side, seemed to deflate, and rested her forehead on his shoulder. “I was going to tell you you’re a fool,” she said, “but I think you already know that.”
Eliot held her lightly.
She let him, leaning closer. “I . . . I just can’t believe you came for me,” she whispered. “I tried so hard to push you away. Why didn’t you go?”
Eliot tilted her chin up and looked into her eyes. They were a shade of blue-green he hadn’t seen before—part Jezebel, part Julie.
He wanted to