All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [261]
She didn’t have to say a thing. He knew she’d made up her mind to stay and help. Fiona would always be there for him.
He’d never take her for granted again. He’d never forget what he owed her.
Mr. Welmann ran his hand over his unshaven chin. A dozen expressions passed over his face and his forehead crinkled in deep thought. He caught Eliot’s gaze, however, and nodded, too.
Robert wiped dirt and blood off his face and then spit. “This sucks,” he told Eliot. “Let’s just do it and get out of here.” He glanced at the covered form of Jezebel. “Get you both out of here.”
Eliot marveled at Robert’s bravado as his friend assumed that they even had a chance outnumbered ten to one, and facing a fully powered Infernal Lord on the battlefield.
He gazed at where Jezebel lay. He wanted to sit next to her. But that wasn’t going to get her back. Fighting—with as much power and ruthlessness as he could muster—smashing Sealiah’s enemy and recapturing her lands—that brutal act was ironically the only way he’d be healed and whole once more.
Louis stepped forward. He smiled sympathetically as if it were an afterthought. He set his hands on Eliot’s shoulders. “May we speak? Alone? Father to son?”
Eliot glanced over the edge of the plateau. Mephistopheles’ armies moved closer. Eliot swallowed, trying to be brave as he listened to the enemy’s thunderous approach.
“Make it quick,” he said Louis.
Eliot braced himself for what he expected to be a speech from Louis about love, and lost love, and how all these things were parts of life, and he was really better off without women—like he needed a lecture in that, right now.
Instead Louis removed an envelope from the folds of his shirt. It was so worn, the paper was fuzzy. He handed it to Eliot.
Eliot accepted it. “What’s this?”
“It is for your mother, should I not survive.” Louis glanced about. “It was something that she ought to have taken from me in the first place.”
The envelope was unsealed, and Louis hadn’t said he couldn’t look, so Eliot did.
Within were shreds of paper: newsprint and cereal-box cardboard and old phone bills.
Eliot cocked his head, uncertain what they were.
“My heart,” Louis explained. “At least all that’s left after your mother ripped it out and tore it to bits.” He closed the envelope and set his hand over Eliot’s. “I have a feeling you’ll be seeing her after this . . . and I will not. Please.”
Eliot didn’t get it. Was this a metaphor? Or Louis playing another cruel joke on his mother?
He looked serious. Eliot detected no outright lie, either.
Eliot tucked the envelope into his pocket.
He had a million things to tell his father. He didn’t know how to say them with any eloquence. But there was no time left.
“Look,” Eliot whispered, “I just wanted to say you haven’t been the world’s greatest father. I wish you’d been there when we were growing up. I guess I wish a lot things that will never happen now. Just be careful so there a chance we can get to know each other . . . after.”
“I am always careful, Eliot,” Louis whispered. “Especially in the matters of my own skin.” He leaned closer. “Now, allow me to instruct you in the thirteen ways to avoid getting hit in battle. First there is the classic Secret Principle of Cowardly Misdirection. . . .”
Louis’s voice faded as Sealiah approached them. Five people trailed behind her.
Louis cleared his throat, and continued, “As I was saying, be brave and give the enemy no quarter.”
The people with Sealiah wore no armor and carried no weapons. There was a man with a guitar, a man holding a bass guitar, and one carrying bagpipes. (Eliot had only ever seen pictures of that instrument.) The last two, a man and a woman, had long wild hair and carried no instruments.
Sealiah halted before Eliot and gestured to these people with a wave of her hand. “Eliot, allow me to introduce Kurt, Sid, Bon, James, and Janis.”
They bowed low before him.
“Uh, hi,” Eliot said, and waved. “Who are they?” he asked.
The Queen of Poppies arched a long delicate eyebrow as if this were the stupidest question