Angel Souls and Devil Hearts (22 page)

“That would be wise,” the man said, and she flinched.

He had read her mind! This could not be one of the damned, whatever they were, she thought. This was a true demon, not like the shadows they had battled before, not like those creatures who had
been enslaved by Mulkerrin’s magic.

“Everything you see is real, tangible,” the demon went on, apparently ignoring her thoughts now. “But the logic behind the Suffering, which is what we prefer to call them, the
reasons for their presence, their purpose, is nothing you could ever hope to understand.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Meaghan noticed movement, and far across the pit she saw a shadow-demon, apparently slave to the true demon, the size of an elephant. It plowed through the damned,
the Suffering as the demon called them, with its huge snout. Every so often, it hung its head back, chewing—its jaws munching the bodies—and swallowing, not for a moment distracted by
the shrieking and moaning all around it. The thing digested the sufferers and, as the three of them looked on, shat them out whole, covered with some kind of waste. The thing moved on, and the
shit-covered sufferers shrieked insanely, knowing that it would be back for them again.

Meaghan was finally able to turn away, and she felt quite sick in her stomach. Even though she would have found an open artery quite attractive at the moment, the shit and blood that swirled in
this enormous pigpen disgusted her beyond words.

“It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it,” the demon said, and giggled, reading her mind again.

“Lazarus?” she asked when she realized he’d not spoken a word since they’d emerged from the tunnel. She turned to find him with his back to the pit, though keeping the
demon in his peripheral vision. Standing there, erect and proud, his face more sad than repulsed, he gave Meaghan a sense for the first time of an innate goodness in this vampire. Though many
others, herself included, tried hard, there was something in Lazarus she had not ever sensed in their kind. At that moment, he looked almost—
No
. Meaghan stopped that line of thought.
No matter what good could be found in her people, no matter what words could be used to describe them, she found it impossible to think of any of her kind as “holy.”

Lazarus smiled at her then, dispelling the image. He looked as if he were about to speak, finally, but his mouth snapped shut, and they both turned their full attention back to the demon at the
pit’s edge. It was changing.

“Really,” the creature said, “this was just for you two. I didn’t want to scare you off, you know.”

The demon grew then, its true form bursting through the skin facade it wore. A ripple of horns like daggers stood along its spine, and its talons hung nearly to the ground. The thing’s
hair burned, and the face fell down around its neck like a scarf. Its true head was cloven halfway to the snout and flames leapt from inside the beast’s skull.

It lifted its hands, and fire sprang up from the pit, singeing their faces and shooting up through the stovepipe in a terrible torrent. It lasted for several seconds, and when it ended, a shower
of bodies began to fall, their flesh slapping into the pile and onto the rocks with the sound of raw meat dropped into a sizzling pan. When the demon finally turned its three eyes back on them, all
the humor had fled its demeanor, and only a cruel cynicism remained. Meaghan thought it strange that she had never worried about the creature’s attacking them, but Hell had been affecting
their thought processes from the beginning. She promised herself that they would be more careful.

“Lord Alhazred,” Lazarus said, bowing, and the demon’s eyes narrowed.

“How do you know my name?” the demon-lord demanded, but Lazarus ignored the question.

“I bear the greetings of the Stranger,” he said, and the demon blinked several times, surprised, and then sneered.

“Do you, now?” it said, with a voice like an echo in an empty room. “It has been a long time since we have seen the Stranger, down here,” the demon said to Lazarus though
it continued to look at Meaghan

“He is well,” Lazarus said. “However, he needs your assistance.”

“Does he?” Lord Alhazred said, and Meaghan noticed the demon’s penchant for responding with questions.

“You are surprised?” Meaghan asked, quickly, earning a sharp look from Lazarus and a noticeable twitch in the huge horn that now protruded from between the demon’s legs.

“Should I be?”

“You don’t know?”

“You don’t think so?”

“Should we think so?”

The demon-lord stopped then, staring at her, tired of its own game.

“What do you seek?” it asked.

“One like ourselves, Peter Octavian by name,” she said “also known as Nicephorus Dragases.”

“He’s a prisoner?”

“We don’t know,” Lazarus said, trying to regain control. “He came here a long time ago, with another named Mulkerrin. Mulkerrin has escaped, and the Stranger wishes to
send him back to you, but to do so we need this Octavian.”

“I remember the arrival, I admit,” Alhazred said and nodded, finally giving up its game of questions. “But they weren’t my responsibility.”

“Can you help us?” Meaghan pushed. “Will you?”

“A request from the Stranger?” The demon-lord laughed shrilly, cynically. “Of course I’ll help.”

It gestured toward the tunnel from which they’d emerged, and then it disappeared. A portal appeared in its place, burning red with flame rather than silver like those they had seen before.
Meaghan was immediately concerned. This demon-lord seemed malicious enough, and she suspected malevolent was closer to the truth. Could this portal be a trap?

“Oh, it’s safe, foolish vampire,” the mind reader said and laughed. “It would be in bad form to destroy agents of the Stranger. This is the fastest way for me to help
you. Through there you’ll find many more of the Suffering, but if you ask the other lords, you may find your friends’ point of arrival. From there, well, you never know.”

The creature turned back to its work, raising its hands so the flames leapt up again, bodies raining down in their wake.

“How do they come to be here?” Meaghan forced herself to ask.

Lord Alhazred turned around, shaking its head.

“Silly thing,” it said. “The Suffering are always here, no matter where else they may be.”

Lazarus grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the portal. The passage was not as painful as she had expected. And of course, nothing compared to what the Suffering endured.

Salzburg, Austria, European Union.
Wednesday, June 7, 2000, 7:11 a.m.:

Knowing.

That was the strangest thing about it. The knowing. He knew, for instance, that dozens of feet above the chamber in which he lay, the sorcerer Liam Mulkerrin worked his magic, marshaled his
forces. The fortress was like a small village surrounded by stone walls, and it was nearly filled with his soldiers, living, breathing human beings whose bodies had been invaded, possessed, by the
spirits of those who had once been posted to that place. The spirits themselves were not evil, but the semblance of life Mulkerrin offered them in exchange for their service was irresistible.

He knew.

Soldiers manned the open windows, though many were hundreds of feet atop sheer walls. Huge, mindless slave demons patrolled the battlements of the fortress and prowled the many halls of the
lower levels even as hundreds of their kindred poured out of new passages onto the Earth plane, tearing into those who would lay siege to Mulkerrin’s base.

He knew.

The battle raged all around the monolithic structure and though the humans held their own, in the end, the battle was destined to be quite one-sided. Mulkerrin’s resources were almost
limitless, and yet he could feel that the once-priest did not know his own abilities well enough to use them, and what he did use took a toll on him, his grip on the magic being tenuous. The
sorcerer stood in the middle of the open courtyard in the center of the fortress, his concentration complete. He was surrounded by a black, swirling mist through which he was nearly invisible,
though the sun shone down on the courtyard.

And that was beginning to change. Thunderclouds pregnant with a monstrous storm, glowing with a sickly, reddish radiance which the human soldiers below deemed wholly unnatural, moved slowly in
from the south, as if answering a call Mulkerrin had sent.

He knew, but it wasn’t knowledge that came from experience—not from seeing, or hearing, or touching. It was a transcendant awareness which reached out from that cold, dark chamber
and encircled the fortress, not yet able to envelop completely the battle, the attacking forces, but spreading. He knew Mulkerrin, then, completely and totally, the sorcerer not believing such an
intrusion possible and therefore not registering the subtle penetration of his soul. Of his magic. The knowledge, the awareness, met the magic, and danced with it in the ether, becoming intertwined
with the magic, intrinsic to it. Whatever Mulkerrin commanded, that joining gave him knowledge of, awareness of. And that awareness sent tendrils of anger, hatred, disgust, into the magic, not
tugging or pulling, not screaming, but insinuating, tainting, whispering to it, so that it changed.

And in the glory that was his evil, Mulkerrin barely noticed.

Down in that cold, dark chamber, at the center of the awareness that enveloped the fortress, that joined with and unsettled the magic, he lay. And below the awareness, the knowing, the magic,
was pain. Pain both simple in its totality and incredibly complex in its persistence.

His blood had been spreading in a large pool for many hours and was beginning to cake into many of the grooves between the stones of the floor. The gaping hole in his chest, where the bones
stuck sharply out at all angles, had long since stopped sucking at the air. His eyes were open, but he did not see. He did not blink, or breathe, did not smell, or hear.

His hair was long and white, the beard and mustache the same color, and his skin was mottled, wrinkled and pale. His body was tiny, shriveled, the hands like claws, the limbs truncated. Rot had
appeared in several places, especially around the ragged chest wound.

Thum-tum.

A trill went out, into the awareness and the magic, and Mulkerrin felt it, through yards of stone, like a pre-orgasmic shiver. The sorcerer merely laughed, thinking it nothing more than the rush
of the magic.

Thum-tum.

This time, the awareness suppressed the trill, confined the tickle of it to a more subtle level. He reached out, with his own awareness, and smoothed out the lines of what he felt. Above the
pain, within it, enveloping it and giving it birth, he knew.

Thum-tum, thum-tum, thum-tum.

He knew.

Thum-tum, thum-tum, thum-tum, thum-tum, thum-tum thum-tum, thum-tum, thum-tum, thum-tum, thum-tum, thum-tum .

The newly formed, tiny, infant heart rattled along like a freight train, speeding out of control to do a job it was never meant for. It screamed at the trauma of the pain, but kept drumming as a
thin film of muscle stretched across the open wound. Around the body, blood that had dried, scabbing the stone floor, was wet again, warm again. And just as it had slowly seeped from him, pooling
on the floor, so now it was absorbed by his skin, through his pores, flowing back into his body like the tide rolling in. And high tide wouldn’t be long.

Cody knew.

Washington, D.C., United States of America.
Tuesday, June 6, 2000, 11:25
P.M.
:

The American media had become far too powerful over the past few decades, and as Henry Russo, the President of the United States, prepared for his midnight address, he silently
vowed to himself to research new ways to stifle their nagging, insistent voices, at least to quiet them long enough for a man to think!
Call it censorship
, he thought.
Call it whatever
the hell you like
! Nevertheless, he would not be bullied by a bunch of reporters.

Or so he told himself. In reality, that was exactly what had happened in the past, and what had happened today. Doubtless, despite his best efforts, it would continue long into the future.
Though there was not yet news from inside Salzburg, word from Austrian media had been pouring in all day. First about the earthquake, felt by a very few, and then about the military evacuation
taking place. In addition, several people had been picked up on the outskirts of the city, apparently refugees, spinning tales of monsters rising from the earth. Of course, it didn’t help
that Doris Toumarkine from
The Hollywood Reporter
had called to confirm a story that Will Cody and Allison Vigeant had been in Salzburg at the time. Heaven forbid somebody not know where
celebrities were vacationing!

Just fucking dandy!

Henry had held off as long as he could, but with Operation: Jericho already under way, it would do no harm to present the news of that op to the world. Certainly, it was his duty as President to
be sure his own press conference was held before that of the UN secretary general. And he knew Rafael Nieto would be up at first light with a report of the battle. No matter that they fought the
war together—the political skirmishing must go on. And maybe then he could get these reporters out of his hair, just for a little while.