Angel Souls and Devil Hearts

by Christopher Golden

  They could fly. How stupid of them to be moving so carefully, so delicately. Lazarus was concerned about the embers falling in the center of the stovepipe, but they didn’t have a lot of time, and this was time wasted. They could survive a flaming shower if they had to. Certainly there were risks, as they never knew when they were going to run into the demon-creatures who called that plane home, but—

  And then she knew she’d jumped the gun. Winged monsters appeared above and below her, as if she were a diver who’d fallen into a pool of sharks. They circled, leather wings barely moving, long, pterodactyl-like beaks snapping in the air, making a terrible noise, like doors slamming over and over again. And there were at least a dozen of the flying creatures.

  “Meaghan!” She heard Alexandra calling her name even over the snapping of the creatures’ beaks and the high-pitched, roaring call that now went out, like nails on a blackboard.

  Meaghan feinted in one direction, then turned toward Alex’s voice and dove. One of the creatures was right behind her, it’s snapping beak ready to swallow her nearly whole. Ahead, she saw sanctuary! Alex and Lazarus had somehow found a cave or tunnel leading off the ledge they’d been following, hopefully leading far away from the stovepipe. Now that these guardians, or whatever they were, had discovered them, they would not be safe in the open.

  But she wasn’t going to make it, was she? She thought she could feel the heat from the thing’s nostrils on her back, and knew that at any moment that beak would clamp down on her, destroying her bat form . . . unless she wasn’t in bat form! And what was that Lazarus was screaming at her from the hole in the wall? Yes!

  “Mist!” he screamed.

  And Meaghan angled away from the hole in which her friends hid, the flying demon right behind her, and others on its tail. She flew straight at the soot-covered walls, and then she changed. The demon’s beak snapped down on the spot she had occupied a second before, and the moment of confusion, in which it realized it held nothing in its throat, was enough. It was too late for the thing to turn away, and the flying demon slammed into the wall, sending a puff of charcoal smoke into the air, bones splintering, black blood spurting. And then it tumbled down into the pit, and as Meaghan floated over to the cave mouth, Alexandra and Lazarus watched the thing fall. It took so long that Meaghan was with them, watching, when the thing was finally out of sight.

  And then the demons were flying, up and away, shrieking as they went . . . and the flames came. Fire rocketed up through the center of the stovepipe, scorching everything in its path, the walls charred even further as the furnace blasted for several seconds. Meaghan felt her face blistering and heard Alexandra crying out, and then it was over and the flames subsided.

  “That sucked,” Alex said with a sniffle, but as Meaghan looked at her lover, her burnt flesh was already healing itself. In fact, she could feel her own flesh healing as well. Lazarus, who’d been farther back, was barely singed.

  “A good thing we weren’t on that ledge just now,” Lazarus said. “I don’t want to guess whether we’d survive something like that.”

  Meaghan slumped against the wall of the tunnel, which is what it was after all. Her mind raced and she frowned, looking at Lazarus.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Well,” Meaghan began, “does it seem to either of you that we’re not really thinking very clearly? I mean, since we got here? We could have flown from the beginning, especially with time of the essence, but we were deterred by that flaming . . . avalanche or whatever it was in the center there. And I ought to have turned to mist immediately when I saw those creatures, but it took much longer than normal for me to think of it.”

  “You’re right,” Alex said, wincing as the last of her blisters cracked and healed. “But what can we do about it? We can’t exactly leave here.”

  “The only thing we can do,” Lazarus said, “is watch each other very carefully for signs of muddled thinking. Otherwise, none of us will ever get out of here.”

  “So, I guess we’re going down this tunnel,” Alex said. “’Course we have no idea what we’ll meet down there.”

  “We’ve been lucky so far,” Meaghan said grimly. “But look at it this way, we can’t stay in the stovepipe, and anything we meet in here has to be a lot smaller than those pterodactyl things.”

  They looked at each other, and then all three of them were smiling, chuckling, and shaking off the dangers they’d just avoided. Alex gave Meaghan a kiss, then helped her up, and they turned to join Lazarus as he started into the tunnel.

  “I hope this thing isn’t just a smaller chimney,” Lazarus said, and they stopped smiling.

  And that’s when the screaming started.

  All three of them turned around to face the tunnel mouth, and outside, in the stovepipe, they could see the screamers, falling, arms and legs flailing, trailing fire from their burnt and broken flesh. The chorus of wails came from dozens of beings, some apparently human, men, women and children, and countless other sentient but alien races, tumbling through the air down into the pit of flame far below.

  When Alexandra could not stand to look anymore and turned away, she saw Meaghan with her back against the wall, eyes closed, hands covering her ears. Bloody tears were wet on her cheeks, and Alex went to her and held her tight, kissing the tears away.

  “We’re really here,” Meaghan whispered. “This is really it, isn’t it, Alex?”

  “Yes, honey, we’re really here.” Alex hugged her even harder. “But once we find Peter, we get to leave. Don’t worry, we’ll get out of here.”

  “Well,” Meaghan said, breaking off their embrace, “what are we waiting for? Lazarus, you watch our backs; I’ll take point.”

  “No,” Alex said. “If you can mind-link, you may be our only chance of finding Peter and getting out of here. You’re in the middle; I’ll take point.”

  And without another word, they proceeded into the tunnel that way, Alexandra first, then Meaghan and, finally, Lazarus. Meaghan was pleased. She’d thought they would have to rely on their vampiric senses to “see” in the darkness, but there were open flames burning through cracks in the tunnel’s stone walls. The tunnel itself was warm, but not nearly as warm as she’d imagined it would be, considering. In fact, it was cooler than the cavern they’d come from. Still, though it was barely perceptible, the tunnel sloped down and to the right. Several times they came to a fork or intersection where other tunnels ran into theirs, and each time Meaghan made the decision, led by an unidentifiable feeling, a sense of “right.”

  They heard no sound but that of their own rustling movement, their snippets of murmured conversation and the slap of Lazarus’s shoes on the stone. Meaghan and Alex both wore sneakers, and their footfalls sounded much quieter in the flickering dark, but in that silence, they too were audible.

  Alexandra stopped suddenly, leaning against the wall and bringing one hand up to stroke through her black hair. Meaghan thought how funny they all looked, covered in grime, but she wasn’t laughing.

  “What is it, honey?” she asked Alex.

  “Haven’t you guys noticed it yet?” Alexandra said, surprised. “The tunnel has gotten smaller.”

  Lazarus looked around, eyes narrowed, and realized that Alexandra was right. The tunnel had been shrinking gradually as they moved. In fact, he had even begun to stoop slightly because of the encroaching ceiling, and had barely noticed it. Meaghan leaned against the wall next to Alex, holding her lover’s hand to her lips and kissing it in that way that meant nothing and everything, requiring a complete response, and none at all. She felt Alex’s fingers tighten in her own, that squeeze the only affirmation her heart needed.

  “There’s something else we missed, or at least I did,” Meaghan said. “The incline is getting steeper.”

  “So we started in a tunnel,” Lazarus said, “but we may end up in a well.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Meaghan said, then pushed off from the wall. “Let’s go.”

  They b
egan walking again, and Meaghan took the lead over Alex’s protests. Immediately, they realized it had gotten darker. With their senses, it was not an issue, but it was strange. Also, the size and slope of the tunnel was changing more rapidly now, so that they all had to bend to avoid hitting their heads, and shift their weight to avoid falling forward.

  “You know what’s strange?” Alex said after they’d been moving along that way for several minutes. “The only demons we’ve seen were those prehistoric-looking things, and nothing like the creatures Mulkerrin brought through during the Venice Jihad. I mean, if there are any intelligent demons, anybody running the place, don’t you think they’d know we were here by now? Isn’t anybody in charge? It’s just too quiet. Doesn’t it seem the least bit—”

  A cry of pain, or rage, perhaps of both, but definitely human, called to them from the depths of the tunnel. The time for talk was over then, and they hunched over even further and headed down the tunnel as quickly as they could.

  And then something had hold of Meaghan’s ankle, and she was falling forward, arms stretched out, face slamming hard into the sharply angled stone floor, cheekbone cracking, breath knocked out of her. It happened fast, as she instinctively pulled hard on her foot, the momentum of her fall helping to free her ankle. She heard a surprised gasp from Alexandra behind her, and attempted to turn and look, but halfway around she was pummeled by the weight of Lazarus landing atop her in the small, confined space of the tunnel. They struggled, tangled together by their limbs and momentary panic. Freed, finally, they managed to turn themselves around.

  “Oh, shit! What the fuck is—” Meaghan crawled forward and grabbed Alexandra’s arms, pulling, just as her lover began to scream.

  “Get’emoffme! Meg! Get’emoffme!”

  Alex was up to her neck in a hole lined with human bodies, corpses in a living death, whose arms and legs trapped her there, tore at her pants and the already bare flesh of her upper body, whose heads leaned out and fastened lips and teeth to her. Meaghan had nearly stepped right over the hole, a single hand snagging her, but she pulled free. Alex had not been so lucky, had stepped right in the narrow pit of writhing bodies just as Meaghan fell forward. Finally, Lazarus had stumbled over Alex, kicking her in the back even as she was pulled down and he plowed into Meaghan’s fallen form.

  Now Meaghan stared in horror, and Lazarus said nothing but moved up next to her in the cramped space to grab Alex’s left hand with both of his own so that Meaghan could pull on the right.

  “It’s okay, honey,” Meaghan started, “we’re getting you out! We’re getting them off.”

  Meaghan closed her eyes as they pulled, hard, and she thought the popping she heard might have been one of Alex’s shoulders coming out of the socket. When her eyes opened again, Alex was still screaming but her head had sunk deeper into the hole.

  “No!” Meaghan snarled. “Alex!”

  But Alex wasn’t listening.

  “Alex!” she screamed again, and this time Alex looked up, away from what was happening below, as claws tore chunks of skin from her immortal flesh, as jaws gobbled down bloody scraps of her flesh.

  Meaghan saw that it was a throat, the gullet of Hell, pulling her lover down for digestion.

  “Change!” she yelled. “Alex, change to mist, you’ve got to do it now!”

  “I . . . uff . . . I caann’t,” Alexandra sobbed, then giggled, the madness of the pain creeping over her.

  “Do it!” Meaghan screamed. “Change!”

  And Alex began to transform, mist swirling in the throat cut out of stone. But the dead creatures there would not stop, and their mouths and nostrils opened, heads craning as far out from their woven mingling as possible as they inhaled Alexandra, breathed in as much of the mist as they could.

  Meaghan was nearly sick, about to scream to Alex again, and then one of the faces in the hole caught her eye. It was looking at her as it sucked in the essence of her lover. Its eyes locked on hers and its grin widened. Meaghan looked around at the other faces and saw that many of them, some not human-looking at all, also stared at her, also grinned. And then she knew Alexandra had been right. Their presence in Hell had been no secret, and whatever knew they were there was truly evil, and intelligent.

  And before she could try to help any further, Alex changed again, to fire this time, and Meaghan wanted to cheer but could only watch and hope. She and Lazarus had to back away slightly, as the throat seemed to widen and hands reached out and groped around its stone edges for them. She wished for The Gospel of Shadows, for any power it might have held, but knew that wishes were only that.

  A twinge of triumph swept through Meaghan as the flesh of the throat, the arms and bellies, breasts and legs, penises and buttocks, faces and eyes, especially eyes, began to blacken and blister under the fire that was Alexandra Nueva. The eyes that had been staring at Meaghan burst, spurting some black, malodorous liquid, but the faces kept on grinning. With a scream of fury, Meaghan began to crawl forward, but Lazarus held her back.

  The dead mouths were sucking in the flame as easily as they had the mist. Even as lips charred to the teeth, the flames disappeared through the open mouths of the damned creatures. Meaghan broke Lazarus’s hold and rushed forward, upward on her knees. She lay on the stone and reached down into the burning gullet and began smashing faces, breaking skulls, shattering bones.

  And then they had her, and were pulling her down, headfirst, into the throat of Hell. She could feel Lazarus pulling from behind, and she thought she felt the bones in her left ankle break in his grip. Claws tore at her face and throat; teeth took a bite from her cheek. She opened her eyes even as a burnt, skeletal hand reached out to pluck them from her skull—and then Alex was there, face-to-face with her, blocking the attack of that hand. Her face was covered in blood, her beautiful chocolate skin shredded to the bone from the lips down. Hanging upside down as she was, Meaghan could see that Alex’s left breast had been torn away with her left arm. Below that, she was just gone.

  Gone.

  Hanging gore was all that remained there, but still, Alexandra thrashed her upper body, her right arm broken but flailing at the voracious damned around her. Her efforts were a distraction to the creatures of the throat, and their hold on Meaghan loosened, only for a moment, but long enough for Lazarus’s pulling on the other end to make a difference. Meaghan’s head, shoulders and arms, all that had been pulled into the hole, popped out, and then she was being dragged on the stone. She had one, final glimpse of Alexandra, love and pain in her eyes, and tears on her cheeks, and then nothing.

  Meaghan sat up, backing away, and she could feel her broken ankle, the tears in the flesh of her face, neck and arms, all healing, even as she heard the sounds of what remained of her lover being consumed. She backed into Lazarus, who had saved her, but neither had been able to save Alex. Their strength was meaningless, she thought. How could they have thought to survive such a journey? Mulkerrin’s creatures had been mindless, but here, in Hell, it was different. She had seen those eyes, the cruelty there.

  Hell was aware, and it knew them.

  Meaghan turned her head from the sight of the burnt hands grasping at the air around the open throat, scratching at the stone for the food that had escaped. She fell into Lazarus’s arms, and he held her uncomfortably, as she wept in a manner all too human. She knew he could not find words to comfort her, and she was glad. She did not want to be comforted.

  “Alex,” she sobbed. “Oh, my God.”

  Meaghan had purposely not addressed God since becoming a vampire during the Jihad five years before. She’d been confused, uncertain, no matter what she told her own kind. But now she knew.

  She’d seen it up close, and now Meaghan Gallagher knew that, no matter what she was, she was not evil.

  “Dear God,” she sobbed, her heart crying, her chest exploding, “We need you . . . We all need you.”

  Lazarus held her hand tight as he led her farther down into the tunnel, and soon the only sounds were of her w
eeping. First her parents, then her lover and best friend, Janet Harris, then Peter Octavian, and now Alexandra—everyone Meaghan Gallagher loved, died. She could not help but think that she was just one more tortured soul, suffering, in Hell.

  8

  Washington, D.C., United States of America.

  Tuesday, June 6, 2000, 8:14 P.M.:

  “Where the fuck did they go, George?”

  Henry Russo was not fooling around. George Marcopoulos sat in the study of his Washington, D.C., home and argued with the President of the United States. In addition to the two men, both U.S. Secretary of State Julie Graham and United Nations Secretary General Rafael Nieto were attending the video conference.

  George wasn’t in the mood.

  “Listen, Henry, you can play hardball all you want, but I’m in the dark just as much as you. The difference is, I care what happened to them, not just why they aren’t on their way to Austria. Give me a break, will you? These are my friends!”

  “That’s what has me worried, George,” Julie Graham said grimly.

  “And just what the hell is that supposed to mean?” George snapped.

  “What it means,” the President resumed, “is that we think you know what happened to Nueva and Gallagher, and we want to know if it poses a threat to us and to Operation: Jericho!”

  “If it poses . . . Are you out of your fucking mind?’` George lost it completely. “Don’t you know who you’re talking about here? These two women—”

  “Vampires,” Graham said, stabbing.

  “Vampires, yes!” George roared. “Women first, human beings whether you believe it or not. They are your greatest allies among their kind. Without them, the entire world might have suffered in the wake of the Venice Jihad. They are almost solely responsible for the peace you have today, and you dare imply—”