All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [160]
His heart fluttered, and his pulse pounded rhythmically through his fingertips.
No, it wasn’t his pulse. His hands rested on the floor, feeling the clack clack clack of the train beneath him.
The moving train.
There was a handkerchief stuffed into his hand. It was white linen embroidered with a single lacy rose that bristled with a dozen thorns. Impressed upon the field of white were a pair of bloody lips. Jezebel’s lips. His blood.
He remembered.
Her kiss had poisoned him.
He got to his feet, wobbled, and slumped next to a window. The train was definitely moving—the Poe Express chugged through fields of red opium poppies as battles raged alongside and fires licked the sky.
No!
Eliot pulled himself from the lounge to the wet bar, staggering, and then to the back door of the rail car, pushing his way through and almost tumbling off the rear platform.
The effort had been almost too much. He slumped to the floor, his heart in his throat, almost passing out again.
But not before he saw her.
Growing smaller as the train accelerated, standing on the edge of the Great Glass Station House, watching him go, her chin tilted up in defiance and pride was Jezebel.
. . . tears spilling down her cheeks.
46
CONCLUSION MOST DIRE
Audrey wondered what it was about the male psyche that made them want to build everything so big.
She sat in the “intimate” living room of Aaron’s log cabin. The rafters were mammoth tree trunks that soared three stories. The sun filtered in through tiny square windows, making a mosaic of the twilight. Candelabras made of antlers hung there as well, their candles lit in anticipation of a long night ahead.
On a more human scale, down at ground level, three river-rock fireplaces roared with scented cedar logs. Audrey sat by herself, as close to the flames as she dared.
The Norwegian winters were very cold.
This was the house Aaron had hand-built, a log cabin in the remote forest. Part hunting lodge, part palatial fortress, his “man hut,” as Dallas called it.
Audrey glanced outside, through the triple-pane insulated windows. The sunset made the snowdrifts look bloodied.
Aaron sat across the room, host of this Council meeting, which meant that everyone had their own tray of liquor and a platter of sizzling barbecue. He was happy, bottle of vodka in one hand, a skewer of charred meat in the other.
Henry sat between them, uncharacteristically only nursing a martini.
Dallas sat close to Henry, giggling at his endless jokes. She wore a collar-to-tiptoe-length mink and little else. She reminded Audrey of a playful ferret, and she wondered if her sister took anything seriously anymore.
Kino stood across the room, away from the fires. His towering figure seemed dwarfed in the great room. His suit was white, and his skin was a shade paler than midnight. Both portents of ill fortune.
Lucia finally breezed in. “Apologies for my lateness,” she said, “but there is a storm front moving in, and Gardermoen Airport in Oslo has all these ridiculous rules.”
“I did offer you a ride,” Henry said with a hint of sarcasm.
Lucia frowned at him and settled into a leather chair, her pink dress flourishing about her. She stretched and curled her long legs under her body. “Where are the others?” she asked, looking about.
“Gilbert and Cornelius send their regrets,” Kino muttered. “We, however, still have a quorum.”
Lucia pondered this . . . just as Audrey had when first told.
Gilbert attended every Council meeting because he’d been Lucia’s loyal supporter. After their recent falling out, though, in both politics and the bedroom, Audrey wondered if his absence today was for personal reasons. On the other hand, Gilbert seemed more like his old self: a fighter and a king. If so, then his absence had meaning beyond some mere lovers’ quarrel.
And Cornelius . . . he had founded the Council in the fifth century, and had missed only three meetings: the night before the coronation of Charlemagne, when Archduke Ferdinand had been assassinated, and the evening of the Trinity