Angel Souls and Devil Hearts (30 page)

He pointed to Jared, who looked at Stefan for instruction.

“He wants you on his team,” Stefan said, not needing any communication from Rolf to understand.

Rolf had expected the apparently young man, who might have been far older than he, to look to Martha for approval of this choice, but he was pleasantly surprised when Jared only nodded and
stepped forward to stand beside him.

When he had chosen eleven others, Rolf turned to face the humans again, and Commander Jimenez had just finished giving the details of the plan for their attack on Hannibal. With demons running
loose down there, buildings burning and locals in the line of fire, it was not going to be easy.

This time, when Jimenez turned to meet Rolf’s stare, that was all the communication which was necessary.

“Let’s hit it,” Jimenez said quietly. “And God bless us all.”

Hell.
One Hundred Three Days, Two Hours
and Twelve Minutes After Departure.

Lord Pa-Bil-Sag had been as good as his word. He had indeed, transported them to the surface . . . a surface they had never expected to exist. And yet they’d found
themselves there and so had to incorporate that into their view of this world. Hell was apparently a planet. They had discussed, at first, whether they were in a different dimension or an uncharted
part of their own universe, but neither could come up with any real evidence or logic to support either question. And what was important was that they were there.

They had walked through a fiery portal conjured by Lord Pa-Bil-Sag and found themselves stepping out onto a broad, dusty plain. The darkness of the sky was cut by the light of fires shooting
from the earth like geysers all around them, cinders floating away on the hot breeze that whipped past, roasting the planet. Rock formations went from familiar to incredible, and some looked as if
they’d been built rather than occurring naturally. Despite the fires around them, they’d had no trouble determining which way their destination lay. Pa-Bil-Sag had referred to
“the fires,” and far off in the distance, flames engulfed a mountain ridge shooting high into the air, lighting the entire horizon line as if it were dawn at that end of the world. But
no sun ever rose; the dawn was perpetual, a promise, a cruel tease.

After two weeks of walking, after they had spent three months in Hell, both Meaghan and Lazarus had finally started to feel a little hungry. Though they would be able to function completely for
quite some time, hunger would eventually unhinge them. They had known then that slowed time or not, they would need to find blood eventually.

Two more weeks had passed. They had alternated between walking and flying, though Meaghan had been a bit nervous about flying when she thought about the winged creatures that had attacked her in
the stovepipe. Finally, their trek had led them to a huge gate in the middle of what could only be described as a desert. In some places. the sand had been blasted with such high heat that it had
turned to glass. Beyond the gate, glass spires stood tall at the foot of flaming mountains, and it was hot enough that Lazarus wondered aloud how the spires kept from melting.

“A better question is how we’ve kept from melting,” Meaghan said, only partly joking. After all, though they could have turned to flame and ashes themselves, their human shapes
would not have been able to withstand the kind of heat necessary to create glass from sand.

“It does seem,” Lazarus admitted, echoing Meaghan’s thoughts, “that those mountains aren’t giving off as much heat as you would expect.”

They stood for a moment in silent reflection. They’d been quiet through much of the month it had taken them to get here, Meaghan mostly thinking of Alex, and of what she might say to Peter
if they found him. She had no idea what Lazarus was thinking, but guessed part of it was the other thing on her own mind: time. If they’d barely begun to hunger after three-and-a-half months,
that meant barely more than a day had passed in their own world. How much time had passed for Peter in Hell while five years had gone by on Earth?

All of those things were on Meaghan’s mind now, and she assumed on Lazarus’s too. Not to mention the new questions as to Lord Pa-Bil-Sag’s “brother,” the glass
spires beyond the gate, and the most obvious question of all.

“What now?” Lazarus asked, and Meaghan snickered then smiled to show she meant no offense.

“No idea,” she admitted. “Though I don’t think the denizens of Hell take kindly to uninvited guests. I’d like to vote against flying over this thing. On the other
hand . . .”

She looked at him, and knew he understood.

“We could just knock,” Lazarus said, and they nodded together.

And so Meaghan stepped forward and pounded on the gate, its ringing sound making them both realize that what they had imagined was some kind of metal was actually a dark black glass. The gate,
then, was hollow glass, offering no protection at all.

Meaghan shot a look at Lazarus, who merely shrugged.

“Then again,” he said, “who would come here uninvited?”

They waited a long while, and each pounded on the glass several times more, but there was no answer.

“It’s not as if we can come back later,” Meaghan said finally. “And then again, if the place truly is empty, what better time to try to get Peter out of here?”

“If he’s actually in there,” Lazarus said.

“Oh, he’s in there,” Meaghan said, “I can feel him.”

Which was true. Throughout their entire journey, she had sensed that they were going in the right direction, and as they got closer, she had known that he was there, at the fires that were their
destination. She had called out to him with her mind several times each day, but what bothered Meaghan was not that she received no answer. What bothered her was that when she tried to reach out
and make contact, force the connection, she was shunted aside. It disturbed her that she was forced to consider that Peter might be consciously blocking her out, shielding himself from her the way
that he and Cody had shut out the rest of Von Reinman’s coven for many years.

And if Peter was intentionally blocking her out, Meaghan couldn’t begin to guess why. Or perhaps she could, but the path down which those thoughts led was one, at least for the moment,
better left untraveled.

“That’s it,” she said, breaking the silence and startling Lazarus, who’d grown used to it. “We’re going in.”

Meaghan became a cloud of mist, spreading herself thin to be as inconspicuous as possible, and Lazarus followed suit. Floating above the black glass of the gate, their minds, ephemeral things in
that state, were able to feel the place, the sprawling city of glass, the fires that burned within, and its emptiness. As they floated through the city, Meaghan reaching out her mind for Peter,
they did not see anything living—not a demon, not a human, not a thousand suffering souls. Still, Meaghan focused on the mind of her bloodfather, Peter Octavian, and though he tried to block
her out, those efforts were almost a beacon, leading them toward him.

The city was vast, its glass buildings of widely varied styles, some imitating those of their own world, with turrets, terraces, eaves and steeples, and many of boring, square design. Others
were foreign, alien, and at first glance seemed ugly because of it, though as they became more familiar, Meaghan found many of them to be strangely beautiful. And above it all, at various heights,
were the spires. As if they were a trap laid for some beast that might fall from the sky, the spires stretched up throughout the city, sharp as spikes. Nearly every other building rose from its
foundation, many of which were mediocre, to become, at its apex, a towering knife of glass. Other spires simply sprang from the ground, no building for a base, no purpose other than themselves.

Meaghan thought of icicles hanging up rather than down, and was pleased with the image, or as pleased as she could be, considering how unsettling the overall picture of the city was. They neared
its far border, where the black cinder mountain stood blazing in the sky, and the closer they got, the hotter it became and the more she could sense Peter.

Why are you blocking me
? she asked in her mind, nearly frantic.
Can you have been here long enough to forget? To forget your people? To forget me
? And though her love for Alexandra
had superseded everything that had come before, she could not suppress the sadness that that thought instilled. How long would she have to live to forget those she had loved? It was a question
Meaghan never wanted to answer. And unbidden came the memory of the loss of
The Gospel of Shadows
, the fear that they might never escape from here. That they might join Peter here forever,
rather than returning him to his own world.

They were close now, and she floated to the ground and returned to her human form. Lazarus followed close behind and questioned her as soon as he had changed.

“Have you found him?” he asked.

In truth, she could not say yes. She knew that Peter was very close, but so close that she was finding it difficult to choose one direction over another.

“He’s near,” she told Lazarus. “But we’ll have to search.”

Meaghan realized that the elder vampire was no longer paying attention to her. He stared past her shoulder, then turned away from her and looked around them, disgust and disbelief etched in his
features.

“God, no,” he muttered, and Meaghan barely caught it as she whirled . . . and understood

Though she had sensed the buildings while in mist form this was the first good look she’d gotten with her true eyes. And she shared her companion’s horror. The glass was not
perfectly clear, but rather tinted red. There were no doors, no windows. In fact, it was easy now to see that the structures were solid glass, without any rooms or interior at all. Almost.

Lazarus walked to the nearest building, a huge thing that looked for all the world like a medieval castle, battlements and all. Meaghan watched as Lazarus stared into the glass, and reached out
a hand as he bent to peer into its pinkish red depths. He laid his palm on its surface . . .

. . . and screamed in pain. Pulling back his hand, Lazarus left the first layer of skin behind, and Meaghan looked at that flesh as it blackened, charring down to nothing and sliding down the
glass.

“It’s impossibly hot,” Lazarus snarled, and Meaghan turned to look at him just as his hand began to heal up.

She knew what he meant. If the glass all around them was that hot, why wasn’t the air itself hotter, never mind the fire burning on the mountain nearby? Still, those questions paled in
comparison with the others racing through her mind. Meaghan walked to Lazarus and put her hand on his shoulder, and he lifted his head to again peer into the glass. Neither spoke.

Trapped inside the glass, faces frozen in horror and pain, bodies locked into place like flies encased in amber, were this region’s Suffering. They could not move, and breathing did not
seem to matter. The heat of the glass seared their naked skin red, but nothing more, as if they were constantly being healed enough to withstand continued torture. They looked at one particular
woman, limbs contorted wildly, legs up and out as if she’d been frozen in the midst of a terrible rape, and Meaghan had to wonder if the glass was inside her, inside all of them, as well.

“Her eyes moved,” Lazarus said, almost in a whisper, and Meaghan shivered.

She had to turn away, and Lazarus turned as well, eyes closed as he walked with her, as if to deny what they’d seen. It dawned on her then that the reddish tint to the glass had to be the
blood of the Suffering, and she was glad she had looked away. Beside her, Lazarus opened his eyes and they both realized that they could not avoid seeing the Suffering here. The entire city was a
Hell of glass, with no relief for the damned, or their witnesses.

“Peter’s here,” she said, but almost couldn’t believe it. “This way, toward the mountain.”

Lazarus nodded and they moved on, the fire so huge that even at this distance its roar was incredibly loud, the crackle nearly deafening. As they approached, ash fell from the sky like fine
snow, and soon they realized they were walking on, and in, layers of it that had fallen over time. They had not noticed before, but now they could see that the blaze did not start at the base, but
more than one hundred feet up the mountainside. There, even over the roar of the flames, they could hear another sound. That of suffering. The damned burned there, on the mountain, cried out for
deliverance that never came. Yet Meaghan wondered whether they were not fortunate in comparison with those within the glass. For at least the flames varied, died down at times. For the others . .
.

And Peter was probably one of them. She refused to think about it any longer.

“
Where are you?!?
” she screamed finally, the thought bursting from her aloud. “We need you, you son of a bitch.”

“Meaghan,” Lazarus said softly, and she turned to her right to see him pointing along the outskirts of the glass city, along the mountain range, to a structure they hadn’t seen
before. This one was closer to the mountain than any of the others. It was tinted red, or appeared to be in the flickering flame from above. Its spire climbed higher than her eyes could see.

And she knew. Lazarus had sensed it as well, the difference in this one. Its red was darker, and yet where every other structure had clearly held dozens of sufferers, their dark forms visible
even from a great distance, they could see only one form in this spire. Lazarus had pointed it out because of that difference, and because it was set so close to the mountain, but as soon as she
looked at it, Meaghan’s focus grew sharper, into certainty. It was Peter.

Salzburg, Austria, European Union.
Wednesday, June 7, 2000, 8:12
A.M.
:

Hannibal’s coven had been moving through Salzburg when his blood-son Hector brought the news that the UN security force was moving down into the city proper. He’d
known immediately that they were after him, but he’d also been stunned. How could they abandon their attack on the sorcerer, a much greater and more immediate threat? And yet they
were
coming.