MORTAL COILS (78 page)

“Can
I cut it?” Fiona asked.

“I
honestly don’t know. But you’ll have to try because the satellite weighs a
considerable amount and will be impossible for you two to simply carry off.”

“Five
minutes,” Robert called from the front.

The
lights of Las Vegas were long gone. They were on a dirt road, and the
limousine’s headlights illuminated sagebrush and dust clouds.

“I
guess that’s enough about the base,” Eliot said. “I wanted to talk more about
our father, though.”

Uncle
Henry found a handkerchief and dabbed his lips. “Oh, that was a slip of the
tongue. I shouldn’t have said a thing about that. Really, it is for your
grandmother to discuss.”

“And
where is she?” Fiona asked.

“Dealing
with a few loose ends,” Henry said. “Some bad people were following you, and we
couldn’t allow that.”

“They’re
not ‘bad people,’” Eliot said, anger creeping into his voice. “Don’t treat us
like kids. We know they’re the other side of our family. I want you to tell me
more about Louis Piper.”

Uncle
Henry looked out the windows. “I suppose this is no longer news,” he quietly
said. “Louis met your mother at the Venice carnival. I told you about the
carnival? They wear these masks—”

“You
told us that already,” Eliot said. “Stop avoiding the issue. Everyone said our
father was dead. Instead, he’s some homeless person? How did that happen?”

Uncle
Henry scooted backward in his seat, making the leather squeak.

“Eliot,
my dear boy,” he whispered. “Please, do you know what your Aunt Lucia and
grandmother would do if I spoke of this?”

Eliot
and his sister together glared at him.

Uncle
Henry blinked, then with a great sigh said, “Oh, very well, life is too short
to keep such secrets.” He leaned forward. “Your mother felt that Louis was a
threat to you, but she still loved him and thus could not bring herself to
actually kill him. A very foolish sentiment, I might add.” Uncle Henry finished
his drink. “So she merely removed his power—cast him down in a lower form to
the mortal world.”

“Why
didn’t someone offer us that option instead of the heroic trials?” Fiona asked.
“I’d rather be normal than dead.”

Her
suggestion made Eliot’s stomach turn. He loved his music. Was it his own
natural ability, though? Or something supernatural? Was it worth risking his
life for?

“Alas,”
Uncle Henry said, his features becoming uncharacteristically stony, “this is a
trick only your mother could perform. One she never shared with the League or
anyone else.”

“So
Louis is just human now?” Fiona asked.

“Human,
but hardly ‘just.’ He possesses many lifetimes of knowledge and has ties to the
other family, which make him dangerous. I urge you to avoid the man. Certainly
never trust him.”

“Because
he doesn’t have our well-being in mind?” Eliot retorted. “Like he might send us
on near suicidal tests to figure out which side of the family we belong to?”

Uncle
Henry’s gaze fell to the floor, and he looked wounded. “Have I not bent every
rule I could to help you?”

Eliot
felt the ire drain from him. He was about to say he was sorry for ever doubting
Uncle Henry, but halted . . . remembering Louis’s advice to stop apologizing so
much. Did Uncle Henry really care anyway, or was he just manipulating them?

Robert
killed the limousine’s headlights, slowed, and pulled off the dirt road. “This
is it. The shortest way to Area 51 is southwest from here—about a six-mile
hike. Sorry, it’s the closest I can get you.” Robert got out and came around to
open the door on Fiona’s side.

Eliot
slid out after her.

It
was cold. Uncle Henry handed them both fleece-lined windbreakers.

“Thanks,”
Eliot said, and pulled it on.

Fiona
embraced Robert. “Thank you for everything,” she whispered to him. “If I don’t
see you again . . . I just . . . I just wanted to say . . .” She touched her
forehead to his.

Robert
whispered something back to her. Eliot couldn’t make it out, but Fiona shook
her head.

Eliot
looked away, embarrassed. It made him uncomfortable to see his sister all
clingy, but he understood. If Julie were here, he would have wanted the same
thing.

He
wondered where Julie was now. He scanned the southern horizon. He hoped she was
safe in Los Angeles.

“Move
quickly,” Uncle Henry said. “Remember your past successes. I know you can do
this.”

Eliot
nodded. He slipped on his backpack, making sure Lady Dawn was secure and his
flashlight ready.

Fiona
detached herself from Robert and marched into the desert.

Eliot
hesitated, looked one last time at Uncle Henry and Robert. Robert gave him the
thumbs-up sign.

Eliot
turned and followed his sister into the dark. “Hey!” he hissed. “Wait up.”

Fiona
didn’t slow down, but rather increased her gait, slogging through sand and onto
a hard, dry lake bed.

“I
wouldn’t have to slow down,” she muttered, “if you weren’t such a Partula
turgida.”

Eliot
remembered that one. A Partula turgida was a snail, a particularly slow one.
Nice colors, but supposedly extinct now . . . maybe because it was too slow?
Nice double meaning.

He
didn’t have it in him to come up with a good comeback insult, so instead he
asked Fiona what was really on his mind. “How you feel?”

She
walked for a few moments, then replied, “Okay, I guess. A little weird inside.
It’s hard to explain. I’m just angry.”

“At
who?”

“I
don’t know.” She sighed. “Everyone. Grandmother for not caring, or at least
never showing us she does. Henry, Lucia, and the Council for putting us through
this. Louis? I don’t know if I should feel sorry for him or mad that he never
told us who he really was.”

Something
crashed through the sagebrush. Eliot fumbled out his flash-light and clicked it
on.

A
jackrabbit bounded over the brush and vanished.

Eliot
exhaled and turned off the light, hoping no one had seen it.

“Do
you think,” Fiona said, “Louis was in the alley all this time just to watch us?
Isn’t that kind of creepy?”

“I
think he cares about us. There’s nothing ‘creepy’ about that.”

He
wanted to tell her how Louis had been earlier tonight—a transformed, powerful
man—but he wasn’t sure where to start . . . and it felt like a secret between
him and his supposed father.

“If
he is a fallen angel, I bet he was the one called Lucifer,” Eliot told her.
“That’s one of the names I found in Mythica Improbiba.”

“Louis
Piper,” Fiona whispered. “Lucifer—makes sense.”

“One
of thirteen Infernal clan names. There are others: Leviathan, Azmodeus,
Beelzebub, and Mephistopheles. Those could be our cousins.”

“It
feels weird. Do you—” Fiona’s mouth worked for a moment without words, then she
said, “This sounds so stupid.”

“What?”

“Do
you feel like a god? Or an angel?”

They
walked in silence and Eliot thought about it.

The
moon rose and made the desert a pale silver landscape. It was peaceful. Funny
that just ahead was a military base full of secrets. That’s how Eliot felt
about his life. It seemed so ordinary a few days ago . . . but it turned out
there were fences and guards and minefields he was about to stumble across.

What
if Uncle Henry had never found them? Would he and Fiona have continued living
with Grandmother? Homeschooled, working part-time jobs, and then what?

“No,”
he finally answered. “I don’t feel special.”

“Just
ordinary, nothing’s-changed Eliot Post, then?”

“Ordinary
would be a step up.” He sighed. “I know all these things from books, but it’s
nothing practical. I don’t have any friends. I’d be happy just to be able to go
to school and experience what every other person gets to.”

The
possibility of having a normal life seemed astronomically remote tonight. Eliot
imagined that he and Fiona were walking on the surface of the moon—might as
well be for all the connection they had to the real world.

“How
about you?” he asked.

“I
don’t know how to feel when everything I’ve been told is a lie. Is Grandmother
really our grandmother? Henry our uncle? Our father turns out to be alive and
evil incarnate. Is it possible that our mother is alive, too? Am I really who I
thought I was?”

“You
think we’re even brother and sister?”

“I’m
sure we are,” she muttered. “I’m not that lucky.” She suddenly halted. “Shhh.
Listen.”

Eliot
strained his ears. There was a car, a big one, running over the dry lake bed.
To the right.

He
heard another to their left.

And
two more in the distance . . . straight ahead.

“I
don’t think those are the routine patrols Uncle Henry mentioned,” Fiona
whispered. “Wouldn’t be so many—coincidentally surrounding us.”

“Should
we run for it?”

“No.
Play something.”

Eliot
stepped away from her. “What do you mean? Play what?”

“I
don’t know . . . you got a million rats to lead us to Souhk. Can’t you make a
few jeeps stall? Or hide us somehow?”

Eliot
rubbed his fingers, thinking. The last two times he’d played, the music had
fought him for control. There had been an earthquake in Franklin Park. The fire
in the carnival had come to life and spread, almost consuming them before they
got away. He loved playing his violin . . . but its music was beginning to
worry him, too.

“There
might be something,” he whispered. “Something I just learned. But it’d be hard
to do.”

Fiona
squeezed his shoulder roughly, then let go. “Better decide if you want to try
that or try to outrun all-terrain vehicles, little Partula turgida.”

Her
sarcasm was laced with poison barbs, suggesting if they got caught, it’d be his
fault for not trying.

Eliot
wanted to throw that back in her face and tell her to cut those vehicles in
half if they got too close.

But
she was right. Once they were on the base, she would be able to get them into
the vaults and the satellite casing.

Out
here—it was up to him.

He
could’ve kicked himself; he should’ve been thinking about this as they walked,
not about the family.

He
pulled out Lady Dawn and rested her on his shoulder. Her strings vibrated in
anticipation.

“Stand
behind me,” he told her. “Close, but don’t get in my way.”

He
set bow to strings and played.

He
didn’t bother warming up with the nursery rhyme “Mortal’s Coil.” There was no
time. The sound of the trucks was close. He jumped right into the middle of the
symphony he’d seen in Louis’s alley—a part where the music twisted around in
ever increasing complexity.