Angel Souls and Devil Hearts (10 page)

But still, Meaghan was a woman full of doubts and insecurities, and so she was glad to have the distraction of a common enemy. Though Mulkerrin’s return frightened her almost more than
anything else, it also gave her one problem upon which to concentrate her thoughts, and a time in which she did not have to concern herself with long-term questions. Only immediate solutions
mattered. She was also glad to be returning home to Alexandra Nueva, whom she loved more than life, more than what little was left of her humanity, more than the goodness in that elusive thing she
persisted in thinking of as her soul.

And Alexandra’s kiss, her touch, her voice, served to soothe Meaghan’s doubts, to quiet the storm in her soul. Alex gave her the first part of an answer to their forever question:
the nature of their kind. Meaghan knew they had the capacity for atrocity, horror and great evil, but Alexandra, who had lived such terrible acts, been a hunter of humans and reveled in it, was now
a constant reminder that the shadows also had the capacity for love, for kindness, for great good. Like humanity’s, the shadow soul contained an extraordinary duality of spirit, but magnified
a thousandfold.

But the question remained.

Meaghan shook such thoughts from her head as she rushed along the sidewalk toward her Back Bay home. Alex would be waiting, she knew, packed and ready to scramble off to Otis Air Force Base.
They’d be in Germany in less than seven hours. By then it would be nearly 3
A.M.
in Salzburg, and hell would be in full swing.

She rounded the corner by their brownstone, and there was Alexandra, sitting on the steps with their bags packed, like a child with whom no one will play. The image didn’t last long,
though, as she looked up at Meaghan and smiled that beautiful smile of hers. Whatever they faced, they would do it together. Always.

“Hello, sweetie,” Meaghan called to her as she approached.

Alex stood up and handed Meaghan her bag, then gave her a firm kiss, nuzzling for a moment. When she pulled back, she sighed, knowing there was work to be done.

“Time to go, sugar,” Alex said, and shouldered the strap of her own bag.

They locked hands, and Alexandra raised her free one to call over the inconspicuous government sedan that waited at the corner to rush them to Otis. The car was there in a moment, and the
clean-cut, quiet type who stepped out of it was wearing sunglasses and did not smile. These two factors had always seemed to Meaghan a prerequisite for working in government security. CIA, FBI,
OSP, NSA—the letters didn’t matter. They all looked the same, as if they were all grown in the same laboratory somewhere.

Brrr. A chilling thought.

Their bags were in the trunk, and Alex had already climbed in. Meaghan had one foot in the door when a hand landed on her shoulder, strong enough to stop her.

“Wait,” a cold, familiar voice said.

In the space between heartbeats, Meaghan turned, pulling the hand from her shoulder and toward her, prepared to strike its owner with a ferocity born when she died. Then she saw the face of the
being who had accosted her, and could not have been more surprised. She knew she’d recognized that voice.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Alexandra spat the words as she got out of the car behind Meaghan, just as their driver finally freed his sidearm from its holster. For a distracted
moment, Meaghan pitied humans their loss of superiority. They would never again be the strongest or the fastest, the best at anything. But the thought was passing. There were far more important
issues at hand.

“Yes,” Meaghan said with barely suppressed anger and frustration. “Where exactly
have
you been, Lazarus?”

The smile of greeting had left the ancient shadow’s lined face as soon as Alex spoke. Only grim resolution remained.

“I would like to say I expected a more, shall we say, cordial reunion. But I did not, and so, shall not. Why don’t we go inside?”

Meaghan and Alex looked at each other, both still quite angry. Meaghan spoke only because Alexandra had even less control of her temper.

“You may not realize this, but we have far more important things to worry about right now than you. If you’d wanted to talk to us, you should have shown up when we still wanted to
talk to you.”

With that, she turned and began to usher Alex back into the sedan. The driver still stood at attention, wary and stupidly unafraid, his ego denying his own uselessness.

But Lazarus was not through.

“Cody is Mulkerrin’s prisoner,” he said.

And now they were prepared to listen.

Meaghan and Alexandra had first met the vampire known only as Lazarus the night before the Venice Jihad. He had fought at their sides, in the sunlight. Octavian had just
revealed Rome’s treachery to them, revealed that they could exist in the sun without fear of death. But it was new to them, and painful, and many were afraid even to try. Lazarus, on the
other hand, did not seem at all pained by daytime battle, or surprised by their newly expanded shapeshifting abilities. In fact, they were forced to surmise that he’d been aware of them from
the start. Lazarus had participated in the battle only until the tide had turned irrevocably in their favor, and then he had departed.

Peter Octavian had known Lazarus was different, had suspected something of the truth, and Lazarus had hinted that he was on the right track. But then Peter was gone. Meaghan and Alexandra had
made the same connections, but later, as Will Cody searched the world for Lazarus and found nothing.

Centuries upon centuries earlier, when the church realized it would be impossible to destroy all of the so-called Defiant Ones, the shadows who refused to bow to Roman Catholic rule, sorcerous
clergymen trapped as many as they could. Using dark and hurtful magic, those sorcerers tampered with the minds of the vampires they captured, ingraining within them certain . . . weaknesses. These
shadow creatures had complete control over their own molecules. With the church’s influence, they now believed that they could not enter holy ground, could not bear the touch of silver or
blessed water, could not change their shape into any but supposedly “unclean” animals or mist, and most importantly, could not bear the touch of the light of day. Of these all, only
silver’s poison had a grain of truth.

Lies all, but so effectively woven into the minds of these Defiant Ones that they infected those others with whom they came in contact after their release, as well as each successive generation.
Lies that would cause the vampires own minds, own powers, to destroy them.

Psychosomatic suicide.

The Church believed that these controls would enable them to control the shadows from afar. And for a time, it had worked. And then came Peter Octavian. He had overcome the pain of sunlight,
though other such triumphs eluded him. Peter had abandoned the life of hunter, and instead spent his time in the service of humans, investigating their losses and broken hearts and crimes. It was a
subject of great fascination for him. Eventually, this vocation led him in pursuit of a book, a book stolen from the bowels of the Vatican:
The Gospel of Shadows
. It detailed all of the
atrocities perpetrated by the Church on their kind, as well as the many magical spells used to control other creatures of darkness, from beyond what they referred to as “the veil.”

In the end, Peter had carried the church sorcerer, Liam Mulkerrin, to the other side of that veil, leaving The Gospel of Shadows behind in his people’s safekeeping. Meaghan and Alexandra
had kept it from the world’s governments, even from the United Nations, and fear prevented any of those powers from attempting to take it.

And what of Lazarus?

Within the pages of
The Gospel of Shadows
, a tainted pope spoke of five Defiant Ones who had been captured but whose minds were impossible to tamper with. They were to be executed, but
then in a terrible battle they escaped.

“You’re one of the five,” Meaghan said now, as they settled onto the sofa in the living room of the brownstone she shared with Alexandra. Alex took a chair.

“Pardon me?” Lazarus said, eyebrow arched.

“You are one of the five who were never brainwashed,” she elaborated, knowing it was unnecessary. “Peter figured it out before he . . . died, and Alex and I did, not much later
than that.”

The room was silent, and the smile returned to Lazarus’s lips. He looked at Meaghan, then to Alexandra, who stared at him in return with open hostility.

“Proceed,” he said.

“Cody searched the world for you,” Alex finally said. “We know you are one of the five. What we want to know is, who are the others? Where are they? Where were you in hiding?
And how do you know about Mulkerrin’s return?”

Alex paused, her tough exterior momentarily revealing the concern beneath. “And what makes you say Cody has been captured?” she asked.

Lazarus smiled now, wide and friendly, almost like an excited child.

“Well done!” he said, and for a half second, Meaghan thought he would applaud.

“Actually, there were four of us, not five. Mary was killed during the escape. Martha is in Salzburg now, preparing to help however she can. Who is the other? Good question. I tend to
think of him as ‘the Stranger,’ and for now, that should be good enough for you. We were in Greece when Cody came looking, and we knew where he was all along. He could not have found me
because I didn’t want to be found. You three were doing quite all right on your own. As to how I know about Mulkerrin’s return and Cody’s capture, I cannot, or rather I will not,
say. Know only that I wish to remedy both situations as expediently as do both of you. Which is why I am here, after all.”

Lazarus could see the questions ready to erupt from the lovers, and so he continued.

“Cody is, as far as we know, all right. I expect he is captive in the Hohensalzburg fortress at the south end of the city.”

“Well, what the hell are we waiting for?” Meaghan finally asked. All other questions could be put aside, but Mulkerrin must be destroyed and, if possible, Cody freed.

Lazarus stood, ran his hand through his shoulder-length brown hair and stepped away from the sofa. Meaghan watched him. His prominent nose gave his face an aquiline aspect, and the wrinkles of
his olive-complexioned face and his brown eyes were quite expressive. She realized that he didn’t look exactly the same as he had during their previous meeting. He was different in subtle
ways: the shape of his nose, the point of his chin, even the color of his hair.

Was this by choice, or did great age such as Lazarus had endured wear away the memory of oneself? Did such ancient shadows become just that, shadows of their former selves? How different, then,
did he look from his true countenance? How long must one live to forget his or her appearance? Disturbing questions all. She had asked what they had waited for, and yet she was aware that time, for
Lazarus, would be different than it was even for them.

And yet, Alexandra was not quite so understanding.

“While we suffer your silence,” she snarled at Lazarus, “my blood-brother awaits his death. Speak your mind, Lazarus, or we go, now.”

Alexandra looked at Meaghan then, and although it was clear who was the leader among them, Meaghan knew that this time, her lover would accept no argument, no instruction, no suggestion. Once,
Alexandra had wanted her blood-brother, Will Cody, dead. Now he and Rolf Sechs were her only family, and she would not lose them.

Lazarus walked toward the restored masonry fireplace, and rested a hand on the mantel as he examined the room. Art surrounded him: what appeared to be a genuine Monet next to a framed,
toilet-paper sketch by Andy Warhol. And yet it was here, by his right hand, where lay the one piece of art that mattered. Lazarus knew that the two women, each once a lover to Peter Octavian, had
taken it and perhaps these others, from his abandoned apartment after the Jihad. The sculpture was a perfect likeness, a bust of Octavian himself, ponytail and lopsided smile intact.

“This,” Lazarus said sternly as he lifted the sculpture and turned it to them. “This is our weapon. Mulkerrin has returned from Hell, where Peter Octavian took him, far more
powerful than before. He has achieved such a feat without even the so-called
Gospel of Shadows
to guide him. It makes one wonder, does it not? For if Mulkerrin has gathered such power to
him, what might Octavian have accomplished beyond the veil? What powers has Hell given to him?”

Silence.

Salzburg, Austria, European Union.
Tuesday, June 6, 2000, 3:24
P.M.
:

Allison Vigeant was being pulled, dragged really, across Makartsteg, a narrow bridge spanning the Salzach River. John Courage was trying not to be rough, but he would hear no
argument. Not that he could have heard her over the screaming. Allison imagined that they must look like a swarm of insects from above, so many people clogged the bridge and the streets around it.
Several times she had almost been separated from John, but he roughly shoved people out of the way if he had to.