All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [288]
There was silence in the garden as the Board considered. Even the bees stopped their incessant buzzing, leaving only the sound of the foaming champagne fountain.
Sealiah had never recalled silence at any Board meeting. Perhaps after a scuffle when their personal retainers lay about bloody and dead, but this was something else.
Abby finally shrugged. “Fine,” she said. “Whatever.”
Lev nodded. “Yeah, sure, why not?”
Sealiah held her tongue as she considered all the possibilities swirling about her: war and peace, victory and obliteration, all deliciously tempting. But most curious to her was that her cousins seem to be agreeing and moving forward because of Eliot and Fiona. Those two were the catalysts.
Yes, it was the end of all they knew, and the beginning of something wonderfully horrid.
As Sealiah had predicted and wisely positioned herself to be in the center of . . . and benefit the most from all who would suffer.
The one thing she had not predicted, however, was Louis.
He looked proud of his new potential position on the Board, yet wary, his gaze flitting from person to person . . . and then lingering upon her.
Would he be her greatest adversary? An ally? Both?
Whichever outcome, she could ill afford not to keep him near, where he could be watched.
“Of course,” she said without taking her eyes off Louis. “He would be a most welcome addition.”
Louis smiled, part shield, part gloat—which faltered but for an instant.
But in that instant, Sealiah detected something else in the Great Deceiver’s eyes: a flicker of indecision. And yes . . . vulnerability.
She had seen such a look on him when he had been at his son’s side, proud and worried and so piteously feigning his indifference. She had also seen him protect Fiona on the battlefield (placing himself in danger for her sake). What else could it be but a father’s protectiveness? Even love?
Such foolishness. She envied him this love, but she also knew it would destroy him.
Sealiah settled into her chair, knowing everything was going to be all right now, her plans would remain on track, and soon she would command all.
There was, of course, one minor detail left to arrange: Fiona. But she would see to that soon enough. She smiled, thinking how pleasurable it might be.
“Very well,” Ashmed said, and stood. “By acclamation we welcome Louis Piper to the Infernal Board of Directors.”
Louis stood as if to make a speech, but Ashmed cut him off. “Alas, all ceremony and pomp must be postponed. The League of Immortals will move quickly to block our progress.”
Louis sank back into his seat, looking sullen.
Lev smashed his huge fist on the table—destroying that end of the table. “Let’s crush them before they can see it coming.”
“Precisely what I was thinking, Cousin,” Ashmed said. “Let us then discuss how to best use Eliot Post to destroy them, and how he will lead us in a glorious war.”
Sealiah’s smile intensified, knowing that war was inevitable. As was their victory.
69. Father Francis Limehouse, an associate of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) reported in his diary having related his “daft and endless” dreams to Mr. Dodgson of visiting a garden party with a less-than-mentally-stable hostess and company. In 1886, Limehouse was defrocked for alleged sexual liaisons with various socialites of the era, and soon thereafter died from a morphine overdose. Mythohistorians speculate that Lime house’s dreams may have been an opiate-induced, near-death experience—and the Mad Hatter’s tea party in Dodgson’s subsequent “Alice” books might have been a secondhand account of the Poppy Queen’s nightmarish realm in the nineteenth century. Gods of the First and Twenty-first Century, Volume 13, Infernal Forces. Zypheron Press Ltd., Eighth Edition.
84
CYCLE OF VIOLENCE
Cornelius—once called