Angel Souls and Devil Hearts (49 page)

Why don’t they turn to mist to avoid his touch
? she asked John Courage in her mind.

His body will absorb the mist, or flame, like a million omnivorous mouths
, Courage answered, reminding Meaghan of Alexandra’s terrible death. With that memory, she resolved to die
for her lover’s pain, to do anything she could to destroy the demon, or return it to Hell.

Meaghan
. Courage’s thoughts were somber.
Lazarus taught you new forms in Hell, did he not?

Yes
, she answered, and then she was at his side as he grabbed a sword of his own.

“But how did you . . .?” she began aloud, and he waved her question away.

“Your hands, before, they were steel,” he explained. “You saw Charlemagne do it, I know, but if you can stand the pain, if you can concentrate through it, you can do this as
well.”

And as Meaghan watched, a new and deadly alchemy transformed the Stranger’s hands and arms into silver.

“All of Charlemagne’s warriors are old enough to do this, and if not for Lazarus’s tutoring, I would have thought you too young, but you’ll have to try. Cody probably
isn’t able to, so he’ll be most vulnerable.”

Then they turned to face the demon-lords, with Beelzebub laughing above them, those opposing him quickly dwindling in numbers.

It’s not hopeless
, Meaghan told herself.
It’s not!

Have faith
, Courage said in her mind.

She was trying.

Who are you, really
? she asked in her mind.

Cody knows
, he said, and though Meaghan tried to probe his mind further, to find the answer she sought, he blocked her out.

And then Beelzebub’s voice rang out in the shattered square, louder than before, as if it were gaining in power rather than suffering from the vampires’ attack. But it was the
thing’s words that startled Meaghan most.

“
Something is amiss
!” it said, and the ground rumbled, the huge crack across the plaza stretching even wider. “
You hide your plans from me, as if you might actually
be able to hurt me
?”

And the demon leaned over, hands on its hips, ignoring the pain of the swords being thrust at it, and its face seemed to hang fifteen feet in the air, right above its smiling demon-lord
brothers, and too close to where Meaghan, Cody and Courage stood.

“
Don’t flatter yourself, Stranger
!” it roared. “
You don’t have the power to hurt me now
.”

And then Beelzebub rose up and began swatting at the warriors surrounding it, sending three more burnt skeletons crashing into the pavement. The other, smaller demon-lords had been slowly
advancing on Courage and Meaghan, Alhazred smiling happily, confident that they had all the time in the world. And then Lord Beelzebub took a step toward them, and suddenly the other three were
charging ahead.

Meaghan concentrated, suffered the pain, and the transformation Courage had promised was hers. Her hands were long and thin, the fingers elongated into daggers of silver. She was her own weapon.
Still, she wielded the sword, and it had fused to her, joining with the silver that her flesh had become. She leapt over Azag-Thoth as it struck out at her with both snout and stinging tail.
Slashing as she flew through the air, she tore through that stinger with her left hand, and the demon-lord bucked with the pain.

She landed only a foot away from Pa-Bil-Sag, who was slower than the other two, and even as the obese creature moved to attack her, she saw Courage struggling out of the corner of her eye,
fighting to keep out of Azag-Thoth’s path, fighting to get inside the long reach of Alhazred’s talons. Silver flashed, and Meaghan heard Alhazred shriek as one of its arms was sliced
off at the joint. And she could hear Courage loudly shouting yet another spell.

Pa-Bil-Sag leered at her, the tentacles in its mouth whisking out and one actually latching on and tearing a chunk of flesh from her face before she grabbed a handful of them, searing them with
the silver of her hands. She barely felt the pain of the silver herself now, but the demon surely did. Meaghan hadn’t been aware how far those tentacles could reach, but now she was more
careful. She feinted to one side, then thrust to the other, trying to get behind Pa-Bil-Sag . . . and it worked.

Ducking down, Meaghan put all her strength into one 2-handed slash of her sword, low to the ground, and was rewarded with a piercing shriek. Like rotten melons, PaBil-Sag’s huge scrotal
eyes burst as the silver blade passed through them, spraying steaming ichor into the air. Totally blind now, the beast fumbled to turn toward Meaghan lashing out. But she was no longer there. She
stayed behind the demon-lord now, slashing at its back and neck.

“
Tirrama shaluti Sha Kashshapti Sha Ruchi ye
,” John Courage yelled, beginning the spell that Meaghan hoped would send the demon-lords back to Hell. “
Shupu yi
arkhish
. . .”

“
Enough with your words, Nazarene
!” Beelzebub boomed, then sloughed off the half dozen or so warriors who still opposed it and, grinning, moved in on John Courage, the
Stranger, unopposed. It was clear the two would meet in battle at last, and Meaghan feared for John’s life.

But what was it the demon-lord had called him?

No
! That’s impossible, Meaghan thought.
He can’t really be
. . .

And then she had latched herself onto Lord Pa-Bil-Sag’s back and dug all of her sharp silver fingers into its chest, searching for the hearts she knew were there, searching for the way to
kill the thing. Her mind was reeling with the implications of what she’d heard. Only feet away from her, John Courage was bloody and battered, fighting a losing battle against Alhazred and
Azag-Thoth, as Beelzebub stomped ever closer, and now leaned down toward them.

And then a thrashing, hacking sound filled the air—not a human sound, not a living sound, but a sound of Earth, a tenuous grip on reality. It was the sound of helicopter rotors, and
gunfire.

Four UN Security Force choppers crested the tops of the buildings at the north end of the plaza. They had no markings, but Meaghan was certain of their identity just the same. Which meant that,
regardless of his misgivings, Commander Roberto Jimenez must have seen or heard what was happening here and ordered his evacuation team to assist. And here they were.

And then Meaghan realized that assist might not be the right word, as the choppers fired everything they had at everything and everyone in the plaza. Automatic-weapons fire strafed the
cobblestones all around them, and even as Meaghan felt several bullets rip through her flesh, she watched as Cody, John Courage and the demons were also hit. As she fell under Pa-Bil-Sag, she
prayed, truly prayed, that the human fools would put their hatred aside and unload on the most obvious target, the biggest.

And they did.

Simultaneously, more than likely at Jimenez’s order, all four choppers launched two missiles right at Lord Beelzebub’s chest. Even as Meaghan was rolling on top of Pa-Bil-Sag, as her
hands locked on the demon-lord’s two hearts crushing them in her silver grasp, poisoning the demon’s vital organs, the missiles hit home. Beelzebub had a smile on its face, but when the
missiles exploded on contact, they blew it right off, even as they blew a hole eight feet across in the center of its chest.

It fell backward, across the ruins of the Salzburg Cathedral, and screamed as the back of its open wound landed on the holy ground. An arc of green flame shot after the choppers as they receded
into the distance, toward the fortress, but it did not reach far enough.

Beneath Meaghan, Pa-Bil-Sag was dead. Beelzebub was already moving, struggling to rise after the blow it had been dealt. That was inevitable. Conventional weapons could hurt the demon-lord, but
not kill it. Meaghan didn’t know if even silver could kill it, but they would have to find out. Meanwhile Courage was still trying to defend himself against the other two demon-lords, and
Meaghan rushed to his aid.

Thinking once again about what Beelzebub had called him.

Nazarene
!

Salzburg, Austria, European Union.
Wednesday, June 7, 2000, 11:03
A.M.
:

In a city empty of all life save those creatures gathered in the ruins of a beautiful plaza, which had seen near constant battle for hours upon hours, with the shattered dome
of a cathedral only yards away, chaos reigned.

Will Cody picked up a silver sword that had fallen not far from where Peter Octavian lay, and he had much weighing on his mind, on his soul. He tried not to look at Peter’s remains, his
sadness at the demon’s violation of his blood-brother nearly overwhelming, the disgust more so. Beelzebub had killed Alexandra, had used Peter, defiled them both. Cody would see the
demon-lord dead if he could. But if that were impossible, he was certainly not going to allow it to remain on Earth, to defile his world the way it had done his family.

Courage and Meaghan had both found swords and were about to join together to face the demon-lords, and Will Cody would go to them, stand at their side to the death. But something held him back,
worked at his mind, like a whisper, or some vital bit of information, barely forgotten but crucially so. He could smell the demon. The stench of it was fierce, and he realized that the wind must
have shifted. That stink was awful, and he thought of Hell, wondering how Meaghan and Lazarus had dealt with the stench of demons there. And Peter had been there for a thousand years!

And what of Peter?

Cody finally looked around to where the remains of his friend, Peter Octavian, had been left behind when Beelzebub had shed his flesh-and-blood disguise. His heart ached as he looked at the
gore-covered, barely recognizable form, but not only for Peter. In less than a day, the world they had carefully constructed in the wake of Octavian’s original sacrifice had crumbled around
them. Hannibal had betrayed them and had more followers than any of them had imagined.

They shouldn’t have been surprised, Cody chided himself, for it had been Hannibal who originally organized a volunteer corps of humans who gave their blood and often their lives up for
their vampire masters. Hannibal had once had a worldwide network of vampiric and human spies, and they had been foolish to think that the Jihad in Venice had changed any of that. They’d
thought Hannibal would want to protect himself within the image of propriety, and he had. But they had overestimated his patience with such politics.

Mulkerrin had returned and, in the brief battle that ensued, taken thousands of human lives and destroyed hundreds of vampires, many of whom Cody had known. But Mulkerrin had been nothing more
than a tool, a ploy to force the vampires, the shadow people of Earth, to search Hell for Peter Octavian, and bring him back . . . to smuggle a demon-lord across the border to Earth. Beelzebub
could not be blamed for Hannibal’s actions, but all the murders perpetrated by Mulkerrin might as well have been performed by the demon’s own hand.

Cody sensed some movement in his peripheral vision and spun, on guard, to his left.

“Peter,” he hissed, not wanting to call out, and in an instant he was by Octavian’s side. Still covered with blood, a long tear up his back open enough to show a spinal column
knitting itself back together, Octavian shivered, his eyes closed tight in a grimace of pain. But he was awake! Aware! Alive!

Will
! Octavian’s mental voice was weak, distant, though he lay at Cody’s feet, but Will knew he would survive. Given time.

I’m here, Peter
, he thought, sending not just the words, but feelings of comfort and reassurance along their mind-link.
You’re going to be all right, Brother
.

And so this had been the whisper in the back of his mind, an open channel of communication with Peter’s lonely and wounded soul. He looked at the torn muscles and skin of Octavian’s
back, legs and shoulders, and at his bloody, matted hair. In a few minutes, it might be possible to move him, but for the moment, John and Meaghan would have to fend for themselves. Cody would not
abandon his brother again.

Will
? Peter’s thoughts came stronger now, and he was able to turn over slightly, his eyes open, pained, but looking at Cody’s face.
Where’s Meaghan
?

At that, Cody looked over to where Meaghan and John were fighting, in close with the demons, and then Beelzebub screamed at Courage and threw off his other attackers, finally able to go directly
after his ancient enemy. And Cody knew that they needed him now.

Peter, I’ve got to go
! Will sent desperately along their mind-link.
We’ve got to go; the others need our help. Can you walk
?

Need
. . .
to feed
was all Octavian managed, and when Will looked down, he saw that Peter’s eyes were closed again.

In his human lifetime, Will Cody had always tried to stay on the side of the angels, and he’d known many noble souls. Though he’d lived longer in his current state, he’d known
far fewer since becoming a vampire. Peter Octavian was one of the noblest souls he’d ever known. Even before they’d met, it had been Octavian’s goodness, his humanity, and the
comfort he had achieved with his vampiric life, that had inspired Will to defy the wisdom of their people and try to hold onto what humanity he had left. And when they finally had met, it was the
honesty in Octavian’s lopsided grin that had convinced him to make amends with his blood-family.