All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [235]
“But we don’t know anyone like that who’d help us,” Fiona told her. “I mean, no one that’s dead.”
Dallas perked up in her seat. “Then who’s that?”
She pointed to a clump of twisted trees and the person-shaped shadow standing there. It stepped out and waved at Dallas’s van.
69
BETRAYAL AT THE GATES OF PERDITION
Fiona squinted. She couldn’t see who this “spirit guide” was supposed to be.
Aunt Dallas eased the van to a halt and flicked on the headlights.
The person waiting outside was a man.
Robert jumped up, banging his head on the roof, but that didn’t slow him as he opened the side door, jumped out, and ran to the man.
It was Marcus Welmann—the middle-aged man who’d come to their old Del Sombra apartment on their fifteenth birthdays—the man who had taught Robert to be a League Driver—and the person who’d been killed by their mother. He’d also been nice enough to help them escape the Borderlands the first time they came here.
Mr. Welmann opened his arms and embraced Robert.
The two stayed like that as Fiona and the others climbed out of the van, and then Mr. Welmann released Robert and looked into his eyes.
Tears streaked Robert’s cheeks, something Fiona thought she’d never see. She wanted to look away; it was such an intensely personal moment, but Robert then turned to face them, smiling (and quickly wiping away any traces of those tears).
Mr. Welmann wore the same AC/DC T-shirt, camouflage pants, and sneakers they’d last seen him in. Did the dead ever change clothes?
“Marcus says he can get us to the Gates of Perdition,” Robert told them. “Open the thing, even, if we want.”
“Mr. Welmann,” Fiona said with a nod of greeting. “How’d you know we were coming?”
“Hi, kids.” Mr. Welmann bowed toward Dallas, and he added, “M’Lady.” He cleared his throat and straightened his shirt. “Remember how I said last time the dead are restless and get an itch to move on? Well, I got that feeling right after we parted ways.”
Robert shot Fiona an accusatory glance that could have melted cast iron.
She’d never told Robert about Uncle Kino’s kidnapping them and bringing them here, or about Mr. Welmann. But what was she supposed to say? Oh, Robert—by the way, Eliot and I were in the Land of the Dead yesterday and we bumped into your old teacher, the one our mother killed. That would’ve gone over well.
But Mr. Welmann had also asked her to pass along a warning to Robert: that whatever he was doing at Paxington, he was in over his head. That he should just ride away.
Between the relief at surviving that trip to the Borderlands, homework, and the dramas of gym class, though, it’d slipped her mind (Eliot’s too apparently).
That, and she and Robert hadn’t exactly been speaking to each other all year.
How had they ended up so far apart? What had started as her trying to protect him from the League by putting a little distance between them . . . had become a huge rift. She wasn’t sure if they were even friends at this point.
“I felt pulled here.” Mr. Welmann looked toward the darkening skies farther into the Borderlands. “It’s not exactly the direction I had thought I’d be going.” He shrugged. “But I figured it couldn’t hurt too much to take a look-see.”
He clapped Robert on the shoulder. “When you guys showed up, I knew it was right. Like fate or something?” His gaze drifted to Dallas, and he raised an eyebrow.
Dallas shook her head. “I wouldn’t say that exactly. Hang on a sec.” She rummaged under the driver’s seat and got a purple day pack with a stenciled peace sign. She tossed it to Mr. Welmann. “A few things I’d packed for emergencies: granola bars, water, first aid kit—stuff like that.”
Mr. Welmann hefted the tiny pack (which seemed heavy). “Thanks.”
It was odd that Mr. Welmann got a “feeling” and came here just when they needed him. Coincidence? Aunt Dallas trusted him . . . but Fiona didn’t know.
Dallas looked back to Elysium Fields and cocked her head. “If you’re going to do this, you