All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [58]
19. There are two dozen major, and a score of lesser, mortal magical families. Among many interests, they control global pharmaceutical conglomerates, diamond mines, crime syndicates, and political infrastructures. Although nowhere near as powerful as the Infernals, or as influential as the League of Immortals, they collectively control one twelfth of the world’s assets. Gods of the First and Twenty-first Century, Volume 14, The Mortal Magical Families. Zypheron Press Ltd., Eighth Edition.
15
THE TRUTH WILL HURT
Jezebel stepped off the Night Train, slipped off her loafers, and set her bare feet upon the black loam of the Poppy Lands of Hell.
She wriggled her toes, felt her blood pulse, and felt the warmth and life flow back into her bones.
Although she wore the uniform of a Paxington schoolgirl (not the pantyhose, however; there were limits to what she would endure), and although she looked much like a mortal girl (albeit one of extraordinary and enchanting beauty), within her heart beat pure poison and hellfire.
She was Infernal. This was her domain.
They belonged to each other.
Jezebel inhaled the pollen-laden air, tasted the odors of vanilla and honeysuckle, the sweet decay and mold spore.
Behind her, the train hissed and screamed and pulled out of the station house.
Jezebel picked up her book bag and strolled to the adjacent stables.
Servants bowed and scraped before the Duchess of the Many-Colored Jungle and Handmaiden to the Mistress of Pain.
They handed her the reins of the readied Andalusian mare.
The snow-white beast neighed, stomped with razor-shod hooves, and then bowed its head as well, recognizing her status.
Jezebel mounted, wheeled about, and galloped toward the Twelve Towers to make her report.
The Poppy Lands lay in perpetual twilight. Luxuriant fields of color spread in all directions; opium flowers and orchids looked like a galaxy of fallen stars. Between thunderous hoofbeats, she heard the endless churning of worm and cockroach through the rich soil. In the distant hills rose the jungle, thick and dark, covered with vines and moldering with resplendent fungus.
She dimly remembered what it was to be mortal in this realm, and she recalled being repelled by the narcotic decay and the overwhelming vapors.
This was a dim memory, though—the vestiges of her hope-filled human soul.
It hurt to remember.
Her Queen had told her if she ignored it, it would soon go away—like the summer sniffles.
Indeed. She was Jezebel now, filled with the power of Hell, primordial and more intoxicating than the opium to which she had once been so addicted.
The serfs of the fields genuflected as she rode past.
They did not tend to the poppy harvest as usual, but rather cultivated spear and pike thickets, rolled spore cannons upon the backs of the giant bats as the animals hissed and squeaked in protest, and propped suits of plate armor among the twining bramble . . . which would coil and fill them and bring them to life.
As she neared the cliffs of the Twelve Towers, she saw engineers strengthening its fortifications. Antiaircraft artillery squatted upon the ramparts. The walls were heavy with creeping death vines, which bristled with thorns and oozed a flesh-corrosive toxin.
Even the land prepared for inevitable war. The Laudanum River that wound through the valley rainbowed with oily slicks as the jungle that had overgrown its banks wept poison to make it a moat of death.
Jezebel clattered up the cobblestone road and through the castle’s raised portcullis.
Guards in thorn armor and flower-laden