Angel Souls and Devil Hearts (17 page)

“Now how do we get back?” Meaghan said to no one.

“We find Peter, of course,” Alexandra said, stepping to the edge. “If he’s still alive, maybe he can get us out. If not, we’ll die here with his bones.”

Meaghan looked at Lazarus, and he shook his head.

“We have little choice,” he said, then turned to Alex. “But we have no idea how to find him. For starters, do we go up or down?”

Alexandra laughed then, a sick, angry, frustrated, frightened laugh that scared Meaghan in a way.

“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “This place even looks like the Hell of myth, at least for me. If there’s anything to be found here, we
won’t
find it by
going up.”

“I don’t know if we ought to fly through that,” Lazarus said, pointing at the cinder and ash tumbling down the center of the pit.

“We don’t have to,” Meaghan broke in, standing at the edge of the shelf, pointing along the wall. “There’s a kind of ledge over here that seems to wind down and
around.”

Hell.
One Hour, Four Minutes, Twenty Seconds
After Departure:

Meaghan estimated that they’d been descending for at least half an hour when she fell. It was getting hotter, and Lazarus had left his light jacket behind. They knew that
it must be far hotter even than it felt, for temperatures that would force humans unconscious were just enough to make shadows break a sweat. It was very uncomfortable. Not to mention how filthy
they were, covered in the black soot that seemed to blanket everything.

They had yet to see a single of Hell’s shadows, but agreed that it would only be a matter of time. Still, they found themselves alone. They had given up conversation and conjecture almost
completely, setting their minds to the task at hand, when Meaghan stepped forward, over stone that Alexandra had just crossed, and fell away into nothing. The ledge did not crumble beneath her
feet; rather, it simply fell, in one block section, away from the wall and hurtled down toward the inferno she imagined waited below.

She heard both Alexandra and Lazarus cry her name, but Meaghan was not terribly concerned. Though the heat made it slightly more difficult, it was a simple task to shift her shape into that of a
bat, and rise on the hot breeze she now realized was flowing up from the huge hole in the ground that they had been circling. Soaring back up to where the others stood, looking down after her,
Meaghan knew that the ledge went all the way around, spiraling down to lead them eventually to the point she would have found faster if she’d simply kept falling.

They could fly. How stupid of them to be moving so carefully, so delicately. Lazarus was concerned about the embers falling in the center of the stovepipe, but they didn’t have a lot of
time, and this was time wasted. They could survive a flaming shower if they had to. Certainly there were risks, as they never knew when they were going to run into the demon-creatures who called
that plane home, but—

And then she knew she’d jumped the gun. Winged monsters appeared above and below her, as if she were a diver who’d fallen into a pool of sharks. They circled, leather wings barely
moving, long, pterodactyl-like beaks snapping in the air, making a terrible noise, like doors slamming over and over again. And there were at least a dozen of the flying creatures.

“Meaghan!” She heard Alexandra calling her name even over the snapping of the creatures’ beaks and the high-pitched, roaring call that now went out, like nails on a
blackboard.

Meaghan feinted in one direction, then turned toward Alex’s voice and dove. One of the creatures was right behind her, it’s snapping beak ready to swallow her nearly whole. Ahead,
she saw sanctuary! Alex and Lazarus had somehow found a cave or tunnel leading off the ledge they’d been following, hopefully leading far away from the stovepipe. Now that these guardians, or
whatever they were, had discovered them, they would not be safe in the open.

But she wasn’t going to make it, was she? She thought she could feel the heat from the thing’s nostrils on her back, and knew that at any moment that beak would clamp down on her,
destroying her bat form . . . unless she wasn’t in bat form! And what was that Lazarus was screaming at her from the hole in the wall? Yes!

“Mist!” he screamed.

And Meaghan angled away from the hole in which her friends hid, the flying demon right behind her, and others on its tail. She flew straight at the soot-covered walls, and then she changed. The
demon’s beak snapped down on the spot she had occupied a second before, and the moment of confusion, in which it realized it held nothing in its throat, was enough. It was too late for the
thing to turn away, and the flying demon slammed into the wall, sending a puff of charcoal smoke into the air, bones splintering, black blood spurting. And then it tumbled down into the pit, and as
Meaghan floated over to the cave mouth, Alexandra and Lazarus watched the thing fall. It took so long that Meaghan was with them, watching, when the thing was finally out of sight.

And then the demons were flying, up and away, shrieking as they went . . . and the flames came. Fire rocketed up through the center of the stovepipe, scorching everything in its path, the walls
charred even further as the furnace blasted for several seconds. Meaghan felt her face blistering and heard Alexandra crying out, and then it was over and the flames subsided.

“That sucked,” Alex said with a sniffle, but as Meaghan looked at her lover, her burnt flesh was already healing itself. In fact, she could feel her own flesh healing as well.
Lazarus, who’d been farther back, was barely singed.

“A good thing we weren’t on that ledge just now,” Lazarus said. “I don’t want to guess whether we’d survive something like that.”

Meaghan slumped against the wall of the tunnel, which is what it was after all. Her mind raced and she frowned, looking at Lazarus.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Well,” Meaghan began, “does it seem to either of you that we’re not really thinking very clearly? I mean, since we got here? We could have flown from the beginning,
especially with time of the essence, but we were deterred by that flaming . . . avalanche or whatever it was in the center there. And I ought to have turned to mist immediately when I saw those
creatures, but it took much longer than normal for me to think of it.”

“You’re right,” Alex said, wincing as the last of her blisters cracked and healed. “But what can we do about it? We can’t exactly leave here.”

“The only thing we can do,” Lazarus said, “is watch each other very carefully for signs of muddled thinking. Otherwise, none of us will ever get out of here.”

“So, I guess we’re going down this tunnel,” Alex said. “’Course we have no idea what we’ll meet down there.”

“We’ve been lucky so far,” Meaghan said grimly. “But look at it this way, we can’t stay in the stovepipe, and anything we meet in here has to be a lot smaller than
those pterodactyl things.”

They looked at each other, and then all three of them were smiling, chuckling, and shaking off the dangers they’d just avoided. Alex gave Meaghan a kiss, then helped her up, and they
turned to join Lazarus as he started into the tunnel.

“I hope this thing isn’t just a smaller chimney,” Lazarus said, and they stopped smiling.

And that’s when the screaming started.

All three of them turned around to face the tunnel mouth, and outside, in the stovepipe, they could see the screamers, falling, arms and legs flailing, trailing fire from their burnt and broken
flesh. The chorus of wails came from dozens of beings, some apparently human, men, women and children, and countless other sentient but alien races, tumbling through the air down into the pit of
flame far below.

When Alexandra could not stand to look anymore and turned away, she saw Meaghan with her back against the wall, eyes closed, hands covering her ears. Bloody tears were wet on her cheeks, and
Alex went to her and held her tight, kissing the tears away.

“We’re really here,” Meaghan whispered. “This is really it, isn’t it, Alex?”

“Yes, honey, we’re really here.” Alex hugged her even harder. “But once we find Peter, we get to leave. Don’t worry, we’ll get out of here.”

“Well,” Meaghan said, breaking off their embrace, “what are we waiting for? Lazarus, you watch our backs; I’ll take point.”

“No,” Alex said. “If you can mind-link, you may be our only chance of finding Peter and getting out of here. You’re in the middle; I’ll take point.”

And without another word, they proceeded into the tunnel that way, Alexandra first, then Meaghan and, finally, Lazarus. Meaghan was pleased. She’d thought they would have to rely on their
vampiric senses to “see” in the darkness, but there were open flames burning through cracks in the tunnel’s stone walls. The tunnel itself was warm, but not nearly as warm as
she’d imagined it would be, considering. In fact, it was cooler than the cavern they’d come from. Still, though it was barely perceptible, the tunnel sloped down and to the right.
Several times they came to a fork or intersection where other tunnels ran into theirs, and each time Meaghan made the decision, led by an unidentifiable feeling, a sense of “right.”

They heard no sound but that of their own rustling movement, their snippets of murmured conversation and the slap of Lazarus’s shoes on the stone. Meaghan and Alex both wore sneakers, and
their footfalls sounded much quieter in the flickering dark, but in that silence, they too were audible.

Alexandra stopped suddenly, leaning against the wall and bringing one hand up to stroke through her black hair. Meaghan thought how funny they all looked, covered in grime, but she wasn’t
laughing.

“What is it, honey?” she asked Alex.

“Haven’t you guys noticed it yet?” Alexandra said, surprised. “The tunnel has gotten smaller.”

Lazarus looked around, eyes narrowed, and realized that Alexandra was right. The tunnel had been shrinking gradually as they moved. In fact, he had even begun to stoop slightly because of the
encroaching ceiling, and had barely noticed it. Meaghan leaned against the wall next to Alex, holding her lover’s hand to her lips and kissing it in that way that meant nothing and
everything, requiring a complete response, and none at all. She felt Alex’s fingers tighten in her own, that squeeze the only affirmation her heart needed.

“There’s something else we missed, or at least I did,” Meaghan said. “The incline is getting steeper.”

“So we started in a tunnel,” Lazarus said, “but we may end up in a well.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Meaghan said, then pushed off from the wall. “Let’s go.”

They began walking again, and Meaghan took the lead over Alex’s protests. Immediately, they realized it had gotten darker. With their senses, it was not an issue, but it was strange. Also,
the size and slope of the tunnel was changing more rapidly now, so that they all had to bend to avoid hitting their heads, and shift their weight to avoid falling forward.

“You know what’s strange?” Alex said after they’d been moving along that way for several minutes. “The only demons we’ve seen were those prehistoric-looking
things, and nothing like the creatures Mulkerrin brought through during the Venice Jihad. I mean, if there are any intelligent demons, anybody running the place, don’t you think they’d
know we were here by now? Isn’t anybody in charge? It’s just too quiet. Doesn’t it seem the least bit—”

A cry of pain, or rage, perhaps of both, but definitely human, called to them from the depths of the tunnel. The time for talk was over then, and they hunched over even further and headed down
the tunnel as quickly as they could.

And then something had hold of Meaghan’s ankle, and she was falling forward, arms stretched out, face slamming hard into the sharply angled stone floor, cheekbone cracking, breath knocked
out of her. It happened fast, as she instinctively pulled hard on her foot, the momentum of her fall helping to free her ankle. She heard a surprised gasp from Alexandra behind her, and attempted
to turn and look, but halfway around she was pummeled by the weight of Lazarus landing atop her in the small, confined space of the tunnel. They struggled, tangled together by their limbs and
momentary panic. Freed, finally, they managed to turn themselves around.

“Oh, shit! What the fuck is—” Meaghan crawled forward and grabbed Alexandra’s arms, pulling, just as her lover began to scream.

“
Get’emoffme! Meg! Get’emoffme!
”

Alex was up to her neck in a hole lined with human bodies, corpses in a living death, whose arms and legs trapped her there, tore at her pants and the already bare flesh of her upper body, whose
heads leaned out and fastened lips and teeth to her. Meaghan had nearly stepped right over the hole, a single hand snagging her, but she pulled free. Alex had not been so lucky, had stepped right
in the narrow pit of writhing bodies just as Meaghan fell forward. Finally, Lazarus had stumbled over Alex, kicking her in the back even as she was pulled down and he plowed into Meaghan’s
fallen form.

Now Meaghan stared in horror, and Lazarus said nothing but moved up next to her in the cramped space to grab Alex’s left hand with both of his own so that Meaghan could pull on the
right.

“It’s okay, honey,” Meaghan started, “we’re getting you out! We’re getting them off.”

Meaghan closed her eyes as they pulled, hard, and she thought the popping she heard might have been one of Alex’s shoulders coming out of the socket. When her eyes opened again, Alex was
still screaming but her head had sunk deeper into the hole.

“No!” Meaghan snarled. “
Alex!
”

But Alex wasn’t listening.

“
Alex!
” she screamed again, and this time Alex looked up, away from what was happening below, as claws tore chunks of skin from her immortal flesh, as jaws gobbled down bloody
scraps of her flesh.

Meaghan saw that it was a throat, the gullet of Hell, pulling her lover down for digestion.

“Change!” she yelled. “Alex, change to mist, you’ve got to do it now!”

“I . . . uff . . . I caann’t,” Alexandra sobbed, then giggled, the madness of the pain creeping over her.