Angel Souls and Devil Hearts (41 page)

How is unimportant. I know you have your suspicions, as does Allison. And I don ‘t speak aloud so she remains calm. I know what has happened to you, win Even I can’t explain it,
but it makes my decisions that much more difficult.

How do you mean
? Cody thought, his eyes narrowing and he saw in his peripheral vision that Allison had stiffened, was aware that something was passing between them.

I mean to keep you alive
, Courage began.

Well, that’s my plan as well
was Cody’s cynical reply.

But you are the only one who can get close enough to Mulkerrin to destroy him. Even I can’t get past that barrier of his
, Courage admitted.

Yes, let’s address that
, Cody said.
Since you know everything, even what l’m thinking, are you who I think you are, and if so, why can’t you simply end this now, kill
Mulkerrin?

I am and I am not
, Courage said in Cody’s mind.
What once lived in me has long departed, leaving only a trace of itself behind.

Cody’s eyes were wide, and he could not hide his shock from Allison.

“What is it, Will?” she asked, coming to his side in time to stop him from collapsing. He looked up at Courage, expecting a consoling, kindly smile but finding only a gravely serious
face.

“Whatever you want me to do,” Cody said, touching Courage lightly on the shoulder, then turning to Allison for a hug.

“What is it?” she asked again, but it was Courage who answered.

“Between you,” John said, “you now have nearly all the pieces to the puzzle you have been trying to solve since Octavian disappeared, the mystery that has haunted our kind
since the church first toyed with our minds. When this is over, you may put it together.

“But first we have to survive.”

And then the ground began to shake, and Cody saw anger flash on John Courage’s face as he looked up at Mulkerrin, who had just begun his third earthquake.

“You’re right,” Cody said quickly. “The humans don’t have a chance.”

Courage looked at them, the couple, one human, one vampire, and pointed at them each in turn, as they all struggled to keep their balance.

“Take care of each other, but stay here until I return,” he said loudly, over the noise of the quake. “Cody has a part to play in this, but it is necessary for both of you to
survive.”

And then Courage was gone, rushing off to join Charlemagne’s warriors, and to talk some sense into Roberto Jimenez.

“What was all that about?” Allison asked, holding her lover tight to keep herself from falling down. Not far from where they stood, a new, wide fissure had appeared, stretching
halfway across the south end of Residence Plaza not far from the shattered dome of the cathedral.

Already the quake was subsiding, and though they could expect more tremors, Cody paid that particular danger little attention. He hugged Allison to him, filled with emotion, wanting to dance, to
shout, to pray. John Courage had made him whole again, when he’d never realized that part of him was truly missing. But first, he sobered; first Mulkerrin must be destroyed, and then the true
battle for the future of all shadows would begin in earnest.

“It’s about what John is,” Cody answered finally, kissing Allison on the forehead, “and what that makes the rest of us.”

“What
does
it make you?” Allison asked, confused by her own suspicions regarding John Courage.

Cody only smiled.

“Concentrate all fire at the bastard’s head!” Roberto menez shouted into his collarcomm. The quake had lasted barely a minute, but it sent a solid signal to
all of them: Mulkerrin had not been weakened at all. They were throwing everything they had at him, but the sorcerer had not so much as flinched. Even now, as Jimenez watched, he was moving forward
again, closer and closer to the small army that opposed him.

Jimenez realized that their only shot would be hammering at one spot on whatever the hell kind of force shield the son of a bitch was generating. That was the purpose of his order. If all
weapons were fired nearly simultaneously at one part of his body—Roberto had chosen the head for maximum damage—perhaps they could break through. If not, they were totally lost. And
then it would be up to the vampires, and he hated that thought. He knew the old saying, the enemy of his enemy, and all that, but once Mulkerrin was gone . . .

“On my mark, all weapons fire on that target!” he shouted again. “Ready! Aim!
Fire
!”

Mulkerrin was hurled, end over end, thirty or forty yards before he was able to right himself in the air. Though Jimenez could tell from where he stood that the energy field had not been
breached, the sheer force of the blast had knocked him back. Even now, a number of Charlemagne’s warriors had taken to the air, some as birds, but others in human form, with wings sprouting
from their backs and swords held high. Charlemagne himself was at the head, and from where Jimenez sat, it appeared as if the “king’s” hands were made of the same metal as his
weapon. In fact, Roberto thought that the swords, and Charlemagne’s hands, might be silver. But he shook the idea from his head—he was fairly certain that was impossible. Still, he
wasn’t positive about anything anymore.

Well, perhaps one thing. Their firepower had been useless, and he doubted the vampires could do any better. They were welcome to try, though, and die trying as far as he was concerned.

And then Mulkerrin shouted something, fury carved into his face. Roberto wished he could hear the sorcerer’s words, but over the noise of gunfire and the screaming of Charlemagne’s
warriors, he couldn’t make them out. Mulkerrin moved his hands in a series of wild gestures that gave Jimenez an inexplicable chill . . .

And then the fourth quake began. But this wasn’t an earthquake, really. Rather, it was a rip in the fabric of the world. Instead of a tremor shaking the entire city, only the plaza beneath
the feet of the human soldiers shook. Sudden realization almost stunned him into silence, but Roberto shook it off.

“Retreat!” he shouted. “The ground is going to go!”

And go it did. Even as his men and women were trying to fall back, escape from the trembling earth, the cobblestones beneath their feet cracked wide open, a fissure fifty yards long and ten wide
tore across the plaza, and half of his soldiers were gone in the space of seconds, falling away into a hole that seemed to have no bottom.

The ground continued to rumble around the hole though it stopped growing. Perhaps two-thirds of the survivors were on the southern side of the gorge, not far from where Charlemagne’s
troops were engaging Mulkerrin to no avail. The other one-third were making an effort to reform into some kind of cohesive unit, in case anything came out of the hole, a definite possibility where
Mulkerrin was concerned.

“Withdraw,” a voice said right next to Commander Jimenez, and with his nerves as taut as they were, he nearly fired on John Courage, who had come to stand next to him without a
sound. Or perhaps, in all this insanity, Jimenez had lost the alarm systems his training had instilled in him.

“What?” he asked.

“Your people are dying, your weapons have no effect. You must withdraw,” Courage said again.

He was so calm, his logic so clear, that Jimenez momentarily regretted not shooting him.

“What makes you think your people will do any better?” he snapped.

“We’ve defeated him before,” Courage said. “We have a better chance, but if we all die, why would you care? You plan to kill us anyway, don’t you? Withdraw your
troops and let us have our shot. If we don’t kill him, you’ll have time to get reinforcements ready. Though I suspect there might be another alternative brewing, one which might destroy
us all.”

Jimenez knew exactly what Courage was talking about. He had wondered all along whether the nuclear fail-safe on this mission would really be used. Now he realized that it very well might.

“What about my people on the other side?” he asked.

“You’ll have to leave them,” Courage answered.

“Fuck that!” Jimenez said, turning back to survey their situation. He’d find a way to get those soldiers out of there.

And then a portal shimmered to life, and Roberto thought he understood Mulkerrin’s plan. The reflective surface of the doorway sprang into being beyond the UN soldiers, separating them
from Liam Mulkerrin. They were trapped between a deadly fall into that hole, and whatever was going to come out of this new portal. Or they would be in a moment.

“Surro!” Jimenez shouted into his collarcomm, seeing that the French commander was among those on the far side of the hole.

“Evac right now! Everybody fall back, head east to . . .,” Roberto mentally scanned the map he’d memorized, “. . . Rudolfsplatz. Diego, get the choppers
moving.”

There was no reply other than the chatter of several hundred retreating soldiers.

“Diego? What’s the problem?”

Still nothing. Roberto’s mind raced. It was possible, he supposed, that Diego and the rest of the Evac team had been attacked and killed by demons, by vampires, by something—but not
very likely. They were out of the way, prepared to evac the troops in case a retreat became necessary. They should have been safe. It was possible, but Roberto knew better. Evac Unit had withdrawn;
Operation: Jericho had been abandoned. Which left only one possible answer. And he wasn’t about to let his soldiers in on it.

“Surro, if Evac hasn’t arrived when you reach the river, swim the fucking thing! Go! Go! Go!”

But he didn’t have to tell them again; they were going. Behind him, the troops on Roberto’s side of the gorge were already heading east at a run, leaving the battle to the vampires.
Across that terrible gash in the cobblestones, soldiers on the eastern edge of the plaza had already escaped. But Commander Jimenez could feel in his gut that time was short.

Before he could shout another command, even urge them to hurry, before he could turn back to John Courage for some reassurance, dark things began to emerge from the portal. They were very tall,
thin creatures with black, leathery skin. From the side, they were nearly invisible, and gossamer, glistening wings hung under their arms. Their eyes burned with a terrible crimson glow visible
even in the daylight, though it seemed to Roberto that the world had suddenly grown darker, as if thunderclouds had rolled in to block the sun. These new creatures, whatever they were, terrified
him.

They had pointed ears, like animals’, blood red on the vulnerable inside and black outside. Their hands were three-fingered, and would have looked delicate were it not for the impossibly
long, red-tinged claws at the ends of the fingers. Rather than feet, their lower appendages were not quite hooves and not quite paws, but similar to each, hard like bone, with short, sharp nails
that clicked on the stones of the plaza. Filled with glistening, red-black needle fangs, dripping bloody drool, their mouths were more like terrible snouts. And their eyes proclaimed the difference
between these creatures and the other demons Mulkerrin had dredged from Hell—they were aware.

Intelligent.

And there were a lot of them.

The creatures poured from the doorway, moving with a fluid grace that was captivating, almost hypnotic, distracting those within range from the terrible smell the things gave off.
Roberto’s stomach roiled with displeasure, his nose wrinkled, and for a moment, he stopped breathing, then covered his face with one hand. And yet, the allure of the creatures’ motion
was such that he wasn’t even aware of this reaction to the stench.

And then his soldiers, men and women, human beings under his command, began to scream and die, and the allure was gone.

“Fire on the godforsaken things!” he screamed into his collarcomm, his finger tightening on the trigger of his H-K auto. “But don’t hit our people!”

“What the hell are they?” he wondered aloud.

“Vampires,” a voice said behind him, and Jimenez snapped his head around quickly. He’d forgotten Courage was standing there, and once again he had almost fired on him.

“What are you doing here?” Jimenez asked. He wanted to ask for help, but couldn’t, not from this . . . And then Courage’s words sank in.

“Did you say these things were vampires?” He kept firing.

“Did I?”

And then Will Cody was there, with the woman from CNN, Allison whatever, and Jimenez couldn’t think anymore. He turned back to the slaughter of his men, wincing at every scream, trembling
with the sound of gunfire and the kick of the weapon in his hands. He ignored the chatter behind him for a moment. Reloading, he saw that the creatures were not harmed by bullets, not in the least.
They were flesh, that was certain, and they could be blown apart. as more than one had been already. But they came back together.

The things seemed indestructible. They herded soldiers into the gorge, some even flying down after them, knowing the men and women would already be dead at the bottom, wherever that was. He saw
Commander Surro, then, grabbed under the armpits by one of the creatures, its talons sinking deep into her flesh as its snout dug into Surro’s throat and tore, and it tossed back its head to
gulp down the flesh. And then the snout returned, dug in deep and began, it seemed, to drink.

As he slammed a new cartridge home into the H-K, Roberto knew.

“They
are
vampires!” he yelled, turning his auto on Courage, knowing it was useless but needing answers. “What the hell is going on?”

Apparently Courage had just been explaining it to Buffalo Bill and the girl, and from the look on their faces, Roberto wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

“As I said,” Courage answered, with a calm that almost made Jimenez’s trigger finger twitch, “they are vampires. But none of their kind has set foot in this world for
nearly two thousand years. In time, if enough of their bodies is left, the humans killed by these vampires will mutate into creatures precisely like them, creatures of utter and complete
darkness.”

“How do you know all this?” Cody asked.

“I killed the last one myself,” he said. “Though it had already infected me with its essence before it died.”