Eric Nylund - All That Lives Must Die

About the table stood the Infernal Board of Directors.

Louis bowed without taking his eyes off any of them.

Sealiah turned to face Louis. She stood at the foot of the table. She wore an evening gown of opal-flecked orchids and clinging copper vines that wrapped her sinuous curves for a predictable effect upon his libido. Her hair flashed red gold, her sharp smile, pure white, and her eyes, slits of emerald.

“We welcome the glorious Morning Star,” Sealiah told him (although from her icy tone, Louis was sure welcome was the last thing she meant).

“Greetings to you, Cousin, Queen of Poppies and Mistress of the Many-Colored Jungles.”

Louis stared past her to the head of the table at the Board’s new Chairman, Ashmed, the Master Architect of Evil.

Ashmed was the most careful among their kind. His friends remained loyal. . and those who did not lived short lives. The Chairman was all business-crew-cut hair, clean shaved, and in a black business suit.

“Welcome, Louis.” Ashmed puffed on a Sancho Panza Belicoso cigar and blew a trail of serpentine smoke. “Kind of you to appear on short notice.”

“Anything for the Board,” Louis replied.

Lev, called Leviathan by some, the Master of the Endless Abyssal Seas, stood on Ashmed’s right. A hundred strands of Mardi Gras beads coiled about his throat, which almost covered his straining-to-the-bursting-point wife-beater tank top. His corpulence matched his endless strength.

“Really?” Lev asked, and his beady eyes widened. “If you’d do ‘anything’-then cut off your right arm. You owe me for that business in Mozambique.”

Lev was too powerful to insult directly, but thankfully his intellect was as dull as his doughy features.

“Almost anything for you, Cousin, would I not do,” Louis told him.

Lev’s fat forehead crinkled as he puzzled this grammatical knot.

The doors behind Louis shut. . which was not a good sign.

“Please, Lev,” a girl whispered, “do not play with your food.”

Louis spied a slender form standing between Sealiah and Leviathan.

“Abigail,” Louis cooed. “I did not see you.” He bowed to her. “A thousand apologies. Destroy everything you touch.”

“Lies and salutations to you, dear Cousin,” Abby replied.

She was so quiet, so lithe-her delicate childlike features artfully covered in translucent gauze and seed pearls-so enticing that Louis could almost forget she was the Destroyer, Handmaiden of Armageddon, and Mistress of the Palace of Abomination.

However, those who underestimated Abby found their guts trailing from their torsos.

Abby held a locust in the palm of her white hand. It shivered and made the most unpleasant buzzing sound imaginable. She stroked the insect and it calmed. “Did you hear? Oz has retired, poor thing. Allow me to introduce our newest Board member.” She tilted her chin to the other side of the table.

Oz had crossed Lev and Abby earlier this year. He was lucky to have escaped with most of his skin intact, a tribute to his eel slipperiness.

Louis peered into the shadows and saw a silhouette on the other side of the table, one he had failed to detect earlier. . which, when you considered that all Infernals lived, breathed, and were part darkness themselves, made this a masterwork of deception indeed.

“Mephistopheles,” Louis said.

Naturally, Louis was disappointed. He had hoped the Board brought him here to offer him a seat.

But why should they? He was dirt, worthless and landless, having the barest scraps of power to his name. Only his reputation for being the Great Liar enabled him to hold his head high among them.

Yet why Mephistopheles? Irritation prickled Louis. After his scandalous behavior at the end of the Dark Ages with that fop Dr. Faustus-and then the operas-all the fame and the paparazzi. This sparked a hundred imitators trying to summon “the Devil” to sell their souls for trinkets. It had been a public relations nightmare.

Mephistopheles had retired, eschewing his family, claiming he had to strengthen his lands and borders.

Sulking, Louis called it.

Or could the rumors have been true? That he actually enjoyed the company of mortals. . perhaps enjoyed them too much? Louis’s smile faltered a split second. If that were the case, if he had fallen in love, had his heart broken as Louis had, he deserved pity.

“So good to. . well. . not see you, Lord of the House of Umbra, Ruler of the Hysterical Kingdom, and Prince of the Mirrored City,” Louis told the darkness.

“Toy not with me, Louis,” Mephistopheles rumbled. A taloned hand extended from the shadows and rested upon the table’s railing, claws dimpling the green felt.

Sealiah cleared her throat. “Gentlemen, let us avoid tearing Louis into bits before we’re done with him, as tempting as that may be. We have business.”

“Yes,” Ashmed said, setting down his cigar. “The business of the twins. We have called you among us to serve as consultant. You’re close to the boy?”

“And the girl,” Louis added. “I am, after all, their father.”

He put on a brave face, but inside, Louis was wounded. They had summoned him here for the children’s sake? Yes, yes, they were important: the key to unraveling the neutrality treaty with the League of Immortals.

But could someone, just once, want him for his own sparkling self?

This was the problem with being a narcissist: No one appreciated you as much as you knew you deserved.

“How can I be of service today?” Louis asked.

“This Board’s previous efforts position the children on a knife’s edge,” Mephistopheles said from his shadows, and his hand chopped down onto the table for emphasis. “Half Immortal, half Infernal. We must bring them into our jurisdiction.”

“Temptations backfired on us,” Lev said. “Those chocolates, the Valley of the New Year. Who knew the kids could use them to their advantage so quickly?”

“I believe,” Abby interrupted, “that Sealiah’s seductress-this new Jezebel-had some success?”

Sealiah betrayed no emotion on her beautiful features. A sign of deception, to be certain.

“Jezebel’s real influence has yet to be seen,” she said.

“And Beelzebub’s attempt to force a solution,” Ashmed continued, “proved disastrous.”

Indeed. Louis had been there when his darling Fiona had parted the head of the Lord of All That Flies from his body.

“We need a new deception to bring them into the family,” Abby said. “And since your blood runs through their veins, Louis, we had hoped you had a suggestion.”

There it was, the one shred of truth in this maneuvering: They needed him.

The universe spun around Louis. He, who was a second ago more common than dirt, was suddenly the golden key to the ambitions of the Infernal clans. This was his chance, but to do what? Place his only two children in danger to gain advantage and power? And land. . one could not forget the land to be gained.

But Eliot was so talented, playing his Lady Dawn.

And Fiona was so beautiful and so strong, and she didn’t even know it.

Poisonous fatherly concern coursed through his veins and muddled his thinking.

This weakness-the vestiges of Louis’s human form, no doubt-would destroy him if he allowed such a cancerous influence to run its full course.

Thankfully, rational thinking prevailed.

Louis was many things, perhaps even a father to his children, but he had never been a fool in the face of opportunity.

“Yes,” Louis replied to the Board, “I know how this might be accomplished.”

The shadow form of Mephistopheles chuckled, and the subsonic noise made Louis’s teeth rattle.

“Doubt if you will,” Louis said, “but I know their weakness: They have been brought up to be ‘good’ children.”