All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [258]
“Should . . . do . . . it,” Eliot said, exhausted. “All the tunnels are sealed.”
But after he said this—an acre of ground of the far side of the courtyard fell away, taking tents and knights and shadows along with it.
“Okay . . .” Fiona held her breath waiting for more of the mesa to disintegrate . . . there were cracklings under her feet . . . but they slowed . . . and settled . . . and stopped. “Okay,” she told Eliot. “That was pretty good.”
There was a whoop of triumph, and Fiona looked up and found the source: Jezebel.
The Protector of the Burning Orchards and Handmaiden to the Mistress of Pain lifted the severed head of the last dragon over her head with both hands. She was drenched in black blood, her torso crisscrossed with claw marks, and a wild grin split her face. She let loose with another cry—part cheerleader whoop and part Viking war cry.
Behind her, the Tower Grave collapsed.
There were so many femurs and hips and ribs, so many skulls, it looked like the millions of bones fell in slow motion . . . even the large, fossilized, horned, several-ton dinosaur skulls from the apex tumbled through the air with a semblance of grace.
Eliot lunged forward.
Jezebel was so close. Any one of them could have crossed the distance between them in a few seconds.
But there wasn’t a few seconds.
Fiona and Robert grabbed Eliot and held him back.
“No!” He struggled in their grasps.
Bones impacted and shattered about Jezebel. She looked surprised—whirled this way and that . . . and then realized what was happening. Too late.
One massive fossilized stone skull crushed Jezebel.
“No . . . ,” Eliot whispered, and gripped Fiona tighter.
Fiona hadn’t known how she felt about Jezebel. Was she a pawn of the Infernals? Or had she participated in their schemes to get Eliot with willful glee?
Fiona knew how Eliot had felt about her, though.
And seeing Jezebel killed in front of him while he could do nothing—that was the worst thing she could imagine happening to one person who loved another.
“Eliot,” she said. “I—I’m sorry. So sorry.”
She held him.
Louis came to them. “Alas,” he murmured, “such is the agony of love and—”
Fiona glared at her father for his callousness. The look on his face, however, halted her from giving him the chewing out he deserved.
Louis’s eyes were wide now. He was scared.
Not even when Fiona’s mother had confronted him in that Del Sombra alley (and had been ready to kill him) had she seen her father scared.
What could possibly scare Lucifer, the Prince of Darkness?
She followed his gaze across the courtyard to where the wall had tumbled away.
Fiona saw the river valley beyond . . .
. . . and she instantly understood that the nightmare creatures that had crawled up through those tunnels and attacked them had been a diversion.
Covering the valley was a seething mass of shadow at least a hundred thousand strong, the full force of the enemy’s army. Fiona’s mind reeled at what she saw in the center of this: standing a hundred feet tall, a tower of blackness and blazing red eyes, was the shadows’ lord and master—Mephistopheles.
75
BROKEN HEARTS OF HELL
The entirety of Hell and everyone in it—Fiona, Robert, Sealiah, Louis, and Mr. Welmann . . . along with the thousands of surviving knights upon the plateau—all of them blurred. Eliot’s vision narrowed to a pinpoint on the girl he’d risked everything for.
He watched as the giant fossilized skull of the Tyrannosaurus rex plummeted toward where Jezebel stood unaware, smiling, her arms uplifted in her moment of triumph.
Eliot smiled. She looked so happy.
And then she was gone.
The skull had hit her and she vanished.
No. That was a lie his brain told him to keep him from going insane—but Eliot had learned to detect lies (even when lying to himself).
He had seen every moment: her arms and body crumpled and compacted, armor straps exploded, and bones snapped as the stone skull crushed her into the ground.
Eliot faltered and slumped into Fiona and Robert’s grasp.
Where his heart had been, there was