All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [234]
“Care?” Dallas asked. “I care about puppies and daffodils, but I wouldn’t risk my life for them. I wouldn’t risk the souls of my friends and family, either.”
Dallas scooted closer to Eliot. “Give me the truth and nothin’ but, or I turn around.”
Eliot flushed.
Fiona felt the heat from Eliot where she sat, but he wasn’t embarrassed; his eyes gazed straight into Dallas’s.
“I love her.”
Dallas was quiet and stared back, nodding.
“When I think of Jezebel,” Eliot whispered, “I burn. I can’t think of anyone or anything else. I’d risk everything I had, or ever will have, for her.”
Fiona’s mouth opened to protest. Or maybe it’d just dropped open from the shock of hearing those words come out of her brother . . . the only occasionally heroic, and always nerd—now so determined, and against all odds . . . so romantic.
It was a side of him she’d never seen. A side, quite frankly, so devoid of reason, she could have done without.
And yet, it might be a sign that her immature brother was finally growing up. He was making the wrong choices, sure . . . but at least making his own wrong choices for once.
Jeremy rolled his eyes. Wisely, though, he said nothing.
Sarah and Amanda sat on the edge of their seats. They hung on Eliot’s words.
Robert looked outside, pretending not to hear. (This had to be a macho guy thing; they’d die before they’d ever admit to having a romantic bone in their body.)
Dallas sighed and fanned her face and chest. “I believe you, and I’ll do everything I can to help.”
She put the van in neutral and rolled through the gate.
Then Dallas floored it.
The van raced down a stone-paved path and through a city of mausoleums. Rows of gravestones stretched to the horizon.
They went over a hill, and there were lawns and fields and a clear river running alongside them. Many mausoleums here had their walls torn down, and the stones used for barbecues and playgrounds and handball courts. People tossed Frisbees and ran and laughed and ate and drank and looked like they were having the time of their lives.
Fiona shuddered. But that wasn’t right: no one here was having the “time of their lives” . . . because they were all dead.
The honored dead, Uncle Kino had called them, resting here before they went somewhere else. “The dead are restless,” he’d said. “No one living, not even I, understands what moves them.”
The van’s rear wheels slipped on a patch of grass. Dallas leaned over the steering wheel, concentrating.
Fiona checked her seat belt. “What’s the rush? We want to get there in one piece, right?”
“Exactly why we need speed,” Dallas said.
They slid around a curve. The van bounced, rocked, almost tipping.
“Kino has alarms that go off when anything alive enters his domain,” Dallas said. “His guards will investigate, and then they’ll fink us out.”
She swerved around a tree growing in the middle of the road. The side mirror hit and shattered.
“Why should Kino care who comes here?” Eliot asked, hanging on with both hands to a ceiling strap.
“He protects Elysium Fields,” Dallas replied. “Infernals, Outsiders, and Older Things always try and muck up the natural order. They collect souls.”
Eliot looked at Fiona and shrugged.
Jeremy, though, nodded. He apparently had more experience with the dead, having spent centuries in the Valley of the New Year in Purgatory.
“I can get you to the edge of the Borderlands,” Dallas said. “If I cross that, then Kino himself will notice and personally come. That would put an end to everyone’s trip.”
Fiona remembered how mean her Uncle Kino was. Worse even than Mr. Ma.
“So how are we supposed to find the gate?” Fiona asked. “You said you’d take us there.”
“I said ‘I’d get you there.’ There’s a big difference.”
The road’s paving stones became a broken jumble. The trees looked dry and sickly and the grass was dead. Wind buffeted the unaerodynamic van. Iron gray clouds covered the sky.
“We’re almost there.” Dallas looked right and left, squinting.
“What are we looking for?” Eliot asked.
“Your guide. Someone dead always shows up for a true hero. They never