All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [236]
“Kino,” Mr. Welmann muttered. “Not someone to tangle with.”
Fiona strained to hear, but heard only the wind.
“Go—” Dallas made little shooing motions. “I’ll drive around and leave false tracks for that old sourpuss.”
“Oh, Eliot, wait.” Dallas leaned close to him and whispered. Eliot nodded, and then she kissed him on the forehead.
“This way,” Mr. Welmann said, hefting the pack over his shoulder. “I know a shortcut.” He bowed once more to Dallas (she curtsied back this time) and then he marched toward a forest of dead trees.
Robert followed, and so did Eliot.
Fiona looked back to Dallas for some encouragement or parting words of wisdom, but her aunt’s attention was firmly fixed on the Borderlands. Without another word, Dallas climbed in the van and drove off.
The scant sunlight (and a fair amount of Fiona’s courage) faded with her aunt’s departure.
“Let’s go,” Fiona muttered to Jeremy and Sarah and Amanda—all three of them suddenly looking less thrilled by Eliot’s quest.
Nonetheless, they followed Mr. Welmann into the forest.
“What’d she tell you?” Fiona asked Eliot.
He looked away. “It was personal.”
Probably some advice on how to get a girl not to hate you—Eliot desperately needed that.
Fiona itched all over. She didn’t want to be here, either. This was beyond stupidity; Eliot was going to get them killed . . . which was precisely why she had to go along: to make sure that didn’t happen, dragging him back unconscious and bleeding if that’s what it took.
But Fiona swore it was the last time she’d get him out of trouble of his own making.
They trod upon a crooked path through the forest. Overhead a few stars appeared through the tangle of skeletal branches. Fiona didn’t recognize any constellations; the points of light seemed smaller and colder than they should have been.
The dead forest ended at the edge of a dry lake bed. The earth was cracked and blasted, and volcanic ash spiraled into whirlwinds. A hundred yards from here, the land fell away—plunged miles down to the lava fields of Hell. The sky was coal black, but beyond the cliff’s edge, the horizon glowed like a furnace.
Amanda stood transfixed, staring at the roiling thermals and flashes of fire.
There was, thankfully, a fence between them and Hell. It looked as if a monolithic dinosaur had crawled onto the edge of the cliff, clung there, and then perished, leaving curved femurs and rib bones and talons that made a gigantic tumble of a barrier. For good measure, someone had added rolls of concertina wire (bits of cloth and flesh clinging to its spurs) along the top.
Set in the center of this fence stood the Gates of Perdition. They were bronze and rusted steel, gears and cogs and worn filigreed hinges oxidized blue-green. Spikes bristled from every surface. There were six combination locks . . . some thimble tiny, others that you’d need both hands to turn.
Only a certified crazy person would try to open this thing.
“So how do we open it?” Eliot whispered to Mr. Welmann.
“I can do it.” Mr. Welmann ran a hand over his beard-stubbled face. “Then I’ll jam the lock so it doesn’t shut. It’d be a heck of a mess if we got stuck on the other side.”
“How exactly are you going to open it?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” Mr. Welmann’s bushy eyebrows bunched. “But I know I can. Like I knew to wait for you and your brother. I think dead heroes are supposed to be able to get into Hell”—he swallowed—“unfortunately.”
Fiona heard the rumble of approaching thunder.
She turned.
Headlights pierced the haze of volcanic ash—far away, but they turned and vanished.
Robert closed his eyes and concentrated. “V-8,” he said.
Mr. Welmann nodded. “That’s a three hundred ten horsepower V-8,” he corrected. “Specifically from a black 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham.”
“Kino’s car?” Fiona asked.
Robert slipped on his brass knuckles.
“Don’t even think about it,” Mr. Welmann warned Robert. “Your aunt might be crazy enough to play chicken with Kino in that van of hers . . . but even she wouldn’t dare tangle with the Lord of the Dead on his home