Angel Souls and Devil Hearts (21 page)

These were the first words the UNSF commander had spoken to him, or any of the shadows, since they had departed Munich. He had not even spoken to Rolf, whom Hannibal thought Jimenez might
actually trust.

“I have ears, Commander,” Hannibal said, having indeed listened quite closely as the other commanders made their reports to Jimenez. “We are not
that
different.”

Hannibal turned to Rolf then.

“And so thus far, Commander Thomas is safe and sound. An admirable woman, don’t you think?” he asked his subordinate.

Rolf glared at Hannibal, but did not bother pulling the voice-pad from his belt. Roberto Jimenez raised his eyebrows but said nothing, and the other soldiers on the strike team, shadows
included, were intelligent enough to look only at their feet.

Hannibal chuckled to himself as Rolf looked away. Did the fool really think he was not spied upon? Did he truly expect Hannibal to miss something as monumental as the coupling of the American
commander and the deputy marshal of the Shadow Justice System? Ah, well, sex will do that, Hannibal thought. He mourned once again Rolf’s unflagging loyalty to his dead mentor’s clan,
to Gallagher, Nueva and Cody. The mute would have been an asset, no question, to Hannibal’s plans, especially considering his new involvement with Commander Thomas.

The lingering smirk on Hannibal’s face finally drove Rolf to reply. He took out his voice-pad and wrote: “None of us is safe while Mulkerrin lives.”

Hannibal only nodded, with a slight shrug and an innocent look on his face. Oh, Rolf certainly knew something was up. In fact, Hannibal took a particular pleasure in confusing his deputy. For
instance, he had allowed Rolf to handpick the six shadows who would accompany Jimenez’s strike team. Rolf could then be certain Hannibal’s accomplices would not be among them, or so he
thought. Hannibal had enjoyed the surprise on Rolf’s face when he had not argued the choices, and in his frustration, Rolf had changed the lineup several times, finally giving up when
Hannibal still did not respond.

The truck rolled along the
bundestrasse
, Route 155 according to the signs, and out the back they were able to see the traffic leaving the city, the broken-down vehicles, and . . .
Ah,
there we are
, Hannibal thought,
a stray
! As the truck carrying the strike team passed, Austrian soldiers emptied automatic weapons into the still moving body of a demon-creature who had
strayed too far from the city. There would be many who wandered away from Salzburg without being killed, Hannibal knew, and he made a mental note to try and round those up when all of this was
over. It was likely they could be put to good use.

The strike team did not stop to help the Austrian troops, who may or may not have succeeded. Hannibal looked over at Jimenez, but his face was a mask of meditation, as were those of the rest of
the soldiers. Only Hannibal seemed above the grave atmosphere in the truck, and he knew his levity was unappreciated. He glanced at Rolf and saw that, though also serious, the mute was
concentrating on something other than Operation: Jericho. He was staring at Hannibal with open suspicion and dislike, even hate.

Excellent. Hannibal hated phonies.

The truck slowed down and took a right turn. Hannibal saw the sign for Rudolf-Biebl-Strasse, and snickered at the street name.

“All units,” Jimenez touched his right collarbone, “move to secondary positions immediately. Rodriguez, lock in holding pattern above Jericho. Austrian emergency personnel will
be behind you so, do not, I repeat, do not stop to assist civilians. Sweep the streets, flamethrowers up front. Destroy all hostiles. Move out.”

Hannibal closed his eyes, knowing that Rolf would be certain to notice and not caring if he did. He listened carefully as each commander detailed his or her unit’s move from preliminary to
secondary position.

Commander Thomas’s unit had encountered fourteen demons of varying sizes on her short trek to Rainberg. There had been no concentrated resistance whatsoever, as the demons seemed to be
roaming about with no direction. Commander Gruber’s troops had met with an extraordinarily large water-based shadow in the river, and two of the Ducks had been capsized, several men killed.
Still, they made it to Mozart’s Plaza with nearly their entire complement, thanks in large part to the efforts of the SJS soldiers with them.

Commander Locke’s unit had met almost no resistance on their march from Hellbrun Castle to the stadium. In fact, there had been little by way of destruction, either from demons or from the
earthquake, and the area had been the fastest and easiest to evacuate. Commander Surro’s troops had had slightly more trouble, but were lucky to find the bridge intact when it came time for
them to cross the Salzach. The two units had combined and scaled the mountainside, encountering a huge number of shadows and setting fire to a large portion of the woods below Nonnberg Abbey, where
Maria Von Trapp was said to have been a novice. When Locke brought this up, Surro merely scowled at him over her collarcomm. Nevertheless, and again with the help of the shadows, their secondary
position was attained.

In all, though the total number of troops including the paratroopers had been nearly twenty-five hundred, only thirty-seven soldiers had been lost, twelve of them Austrians who had been killed
during earlier evacuations. It had been much too easy.

“It’s a mousetrap,” Hannibal suddenly said aloud, and this time the strike force did look at him, some with open hostility. Rolf looked ready to pounce if he made a move.

“What?” Jimenez snapped.

“It’s a mousetrap, Commander.” And now Hannibal smiled, for though this was not a part of his plan, it would certainly be a joy to watch.

“Mulkerrin is the cheese, you see,” he said seriously, lecturing. “He’s there, all right, waiting for you. The real thing. But the closer you get, the greater your danger
of having your back broken.”

“There are thousands of us!” Jimenez said.

“Ah, true,” Hannibal said, “but his reinforcements are endless. He can demolish your troops even if you’re a million miles away, in safety, but to stem the tide of his
creatures, you’ve got to kill
him
.”

“We’ve destroyed all the creatures we’ve found.”

“Ah, yes, but now reverse the analogy,” Hannibal said. “For every rodent you kill, there are usually a dozen more lurking about, in their holes, waiting for you to turn your
back.”

Jimenez just looked at Hannibal for a minute, and the vampire knew that the commander was trying to decide what to believe. Hannibal watched as he looked over at Rolf, obviously seeking a second
opinion. When the mute simply nodded, Jimenez swore loudly, even as he thumbed his collarcomm.

“Do it!” he ordered. “Move in, fry anything that gets in your way, and watch your asses. It’s possible we’ve been flanked. Rodriguez, when the front door goes down,
your people hit the silk.”

There was one thing Hannibal admired about Jimenez, though he was loath to admit it. The human had a no-bullshit attitude and didn’t rely on moronic military jargon, code words and the
like. He was all soldier, and showed not a trace of the officer he’d become. He played by his own rules. It was a shame the commander hated shadows so much, or Hannibal might have made him
one.

On the other hand, Hannibal realized, that could still be amusing.

As the huge attack force began to converge on the fortress and the strike force abandoned their vehicle to walk the last half mile—knowing that being inside the truck would be a
liability—around them, before them and especially behind them, portals that had been opened during the earthquake now spewed forth hundreds of demonic creatures. New portals began to open in
the side of the fortress wall itself, demon-creatures leaping from within to tumble down the slopes out of control, savaging whatever soldiers were in their way when they finally regained their
footing

And while Jimenez barked orders into his collarcomm, Hannibal began to change. By the time Jimenez turned to seek his help, all he saw was Rolf Sechs diving through a cloud of mist, trying to
grab at it as it drifted away.

Hell.
Twenty-Four Days, One Hour, Sixteen Seconds
After Departure:

Meaghan Gallagher knew very little about her current situation, but there were two things of which she was certain. She and Lazarus were in Hell, which for the first time in
her life she really thought of with a capital H, and her one, true love, Alexandra Nueva, was dead.

It was not a simple bit of knowledge, but rather one she had come to understand over days, weeks. Her first love, Janet Harris, had been killed by the sorcerer Liam Mulkerrin. They were now in
search of her second, Peter Octavian, whom, though she had never been certain of his death, she had never expected to see again. She felt nothing regarding a possible reunion with Peter, except a
slight glimmer of hope that they would somehow escape this place in time to prevent Mulkerrin from turning Earth into a world overrun by monsters, a world like that darkened plane they had passed
through on their way to Hell.

First Janet, then Peter, and now Alex, whom she’d loved most, and best. Alexandra had been an angry woman at first, and a vicious one, but their initial coupling had led quickly to Alex
remembering her humanity, regretting many of her actions, and allowing love and kindness back into her world. Meaghan had fallen in love with her easily after that. It had been Alex who’d
engineered Meaghan’s leadership of the shadows, not anything of her own doing. It had been Alex who had brainstormed the Shadow Justice System. It had been Alex who pushed Cody back into the
limelight, forced him to become everything he was capable of.

Alexandra Nueva had been the rhyme and reason behind so much of the new existence for their people, and behind Meaghan Gallagher’s entire existence. And now she was dead. Of course, at
first Meaghan had argued with Lazarus. She knew that there were very few things from which shadows would not recover. But Lazarus brought her again and again back to the moment when she had seen
the horrible, burning faces in that hole sucking Alex’s flames in through their mouths and nostrils, flames that were Alex herself, body and soul. She had been consumed by dozens of different
creatures, split apart and digested in so many pieces. Only now, after countless days, could Meaghan really admit the truth.

Her lover was dead. The hours of begging Lazarus to return to that spot, to attempt to revive Alex—that was all over. After it had happened, they had continued down the ever-steeper,
ever-narrower tunnel, until it had indeed become a hole. As mist, then, they had floated down that well, finding nothing for hours, perhaps more than a day. Once in a while, tired of keeping the
one form, or perhaps too comfortable in it, they would shapeshift into bats so that they could rest, tiny claws stuck to the rock walls of the hole.

Twice they had floated on past “throats” similar to that which had consumed Alexandra—killed her—but they were mist and passed so quickly the hands and mouths could not
touch them. In the end, the hole began to widen, and turn so that eventually it became a tunnel again, and when it did, they changed into their human forms and took turns sleeping, something
neither had
had
to do in a long time. Lazarus’s patience grew ever shorter in dealing with her outbursts concerning Alex, and he became more and more concerned with the barrenness
they’d found thus far in Hell. Their prospects of finding Peter and escaping with him seemed to grow more dim with each passing hour.

As the days had passed, Meaghan lost her faith in Lazarus. Once he had seemed so powerful to her, so filled with knowledge. She had respected that, feared him in a way. No more. Though she was
certain there were many things about their plight that he kept from her, she knew there was also much he had been unprepared for, unaware of, and she didn’t look to him for answers
anymore.

Now, as they made their way through the tunnel, after weeks of traveling, Meaghan found it quite strange that she had no need of sustenance, and apparently neither did her companion. Had she
gone so long without blood in her own world, she would have been a ravenous lunatic by now. Perhaps, she considered, though they felt each moment pass, though their bodies told them when another
day had ended, perhaps the bloodthirst was still governed, through some tenuous connection, by the far slower passage of time in their own world.

Suddenly Meaghan was sure this was the truth. Which would mean that, though weeks had gone by in Hell, less than a day had passed on the other side. Why, the battle had barely begun! Though she
knew her certainty might be somewhat premature, Meaghan was excited. She and Lazarus would now be able to tell time in their own world based upon the bloodthirst. Their suffering would be their
clock.

She was about to tell him when the tunnel began to widen drastically, and she saw that they were coming into a cavern ahead. Unlike the stovepipe where they had first arrived, and the tunnel in
which Alex had met her end, the solid rock path they had been following had very little light. There had been few of the fiery cracks in its walls, but luckily there had been enough for their
vampiric vision.

The cavern they entered now had plenty of light. Flames licked the walls of the enormous, empty space. At the opposite end, the cavern opened onto the edge of a flaming pit at the bottom of a
stovepipe. It might have been the pit they’d appeared in originally, or it might not—Meaghan could not say. At the edge of the pit stood a naked man, or something like a man. They
approached with caution, yet before they had taken half a dozen steps in his direction the man turned and motioned for them to come closer.

“Take a look,” he said, motioning to the pit. “It’s really quite fascinating.”

And they did. In the pit, atop huge stones red with fire bodies writhed in ecstasy and torment. Like those they had seen tumbling through the stovepipe so long ago, some looked human while
others were not even vaguely humanoid. It was impossible to tell how many different beings were in the pit. Meaghan refused to consider the implications, to wonder how these creatures had gotten to
Hell and what their crimes had been. She would not bow to the Judeo-Christian myths she had been taught as a girl.