All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [269]
Robert, however, got to him first. Saliceran blazed in his hand, and he didn’t even have to touch the shadows to make them wither and die. Robert looked strong and courageous. He was the real hero here—not Eliot—no matter what pronouncements the League had made.
With that flaming sword, Robert might have a chance against a creature that was part shadow.
Eliot knew then how he could help.
He turned to his band. “I’ve got to play something . . . personal,” he whispered.
“You play it, baby,” Janis murmured and set her hands over her chest. “Go ahead and I’ll sing my heart out for you.”
The others in his banded nodded.
Eliot played “Julie’s Song.”
More than anything now he wanted to hear the hope in that song . . . and with luck, see the light that’d come with that hope. Light enough maybe to weaken the shadowy Mephistopheles.
He plunked out the notes slow and smooth, thinking about Julie’s life and her pain and how it all ended.
Sid and Kurt joined him, adding a bittersweet rhythm. Bon let the bagpipe sigh with remorse, and James and Janis let loose a lamentable wail.
Eliot wanted to cry. They’d gotten it. It was so sad.
Would it work, though? Julie was long gone. And even Jezebel existed no more—she’d been “snuffed.” But that didn’t mean Eliot’s hope for her and him together had to die as well, did it? Could hope survive in Hell? Or was it supposed to be annihilated here the instant it was created?
No. He felt it—warmth and pain and longing that churned in his heart
In fact, he’d never felt more than he had now—maybe because it was impossible and doomed. Those things just made his hope stronger.
He turned her song around, struggled to move the notes upscale, bringing the story of Julie and her life back to the light.
The sky brightened.
Eliot played louder, building in complexity, building until he thought his heart would fill and burst.
Sid and Kurt belted out this new tune; Bon trilled triumph on his bagpipes; Janis and James cried tears of joy.
Over the battlefield, clouds dissolved, and a beam with sunlight cut through the air. Where it struck the ground, the ice thawed. Where the light touched the shadow creatures—it obliterated them.
Mephistopheles paused from his slaughter.
He turned his red gaze at the sky, blinked, and nodded as if in appreciation.
He then stretched one hand toward the horizon.
A cracked moon rose over the distant hills, smoothly and silently crossed the cloud-covered sky . . . and interposed itself between the sun and the land. The sun’s brilliance danced about the moon’s circumference in a coronal display—and then dimmed.
Eliot stared, stunned.
An eclipse? He had to be kidding.
The Infernal Lord had the power to move planets in this world? How could any of them stand against that?
Fiona stopped her charge and gaped up in awe.
Robert, though, kept running. He screamed and closed in on Mephistopheles, Saliceran raised to strike him down.
The Infernal Lord of the House of Umbra narrowed his eyes with disdain. He tossed his pitchfork. The lance struck Robert—impaled him, and pinned him to the ground.
Robert lay there limp . . . and dead.
78
JUST THE TWO OF THEM
Fiona involuntarily clutched her stomach as if she’d been stuck. “No,” she whimpered. Something that size impaling a human body—it would’ve shattered internal organs, broken the spine.
Robert was still. His blood pulsed out onto the ice.
Mephistopheles had killed him.
Robert had been her friend (although she hadn’t let him be much of one) . . . and he’d so much more than a friend last summer. She’d only wanted to protect him and had pushed him away, replaced him with Mitch.
He’d been the one. The first boy she’d kissed and the first one she had had feelings for. The only one for her, hadn’t he been? Now there’d never be a chance to explain any of this to him.
The hate and heat came, spreading through her—blood on fire, boiling into her extremities.
She’d see Mephistopheles dead at her feet.
Fiona pulled her chain taut. The air between its links crackled and screamed.