But these were like no skyscrapers she had ever seen and their weird geometry—harsh, cutting angles—confirmed for her that they were nowhere on Earth. There were lights in those distant towers, the same way there were streetlights burning just above her now, and yet Meaghan was suddenly sure that those signs of life were false. She knew, intuitively, that those buildings were as empty as the streets around them.
“Meaghan!” Alexandra called from behind.
Meaghan turned to see Alex waving for her to come back. Obviously she’d found something, and Meaghan hoped it was an answer, rather than more questions. She walked back past Lazarus, and as she got closer to Alex she began to notice the destruction. She had to step around a huge crevice which had torn open the ground. To her left, charred embers were all that remained of two adjacent homes. To her right, all of the windows in one building were shattered, the lack of glass in the street suggesting an external force as the cause. Several others had their heavy wooden doors torn out, frames shattered, brick and stone smashed, steps crushed under incredible weight
Fifty feet from Alexandra, with no wind at all, Meaghan could smell it. Filling her nose and activating an all too human gag reflex—it wasn’t the smell of death, but of what comes after, the rotting. She came to a halt two yards away from her lover, but Meaghan didn’t need Alex to point the way. Her nose brought her around to the sight of the crumbled remains of an entire building, most of which had collapsed into a huge crevice much like the one in the street Other than the remains of the foundation wall and what had fallen outside that wall, the building was gone, into the crevice. But the crevice was apparently not a bottomless pit, because it wasn’t empty now.
The bodies were not piled, they were packed, tight, with no discernible relationship or continuity. The dead, many burned, maimed and disemboweled, were all ages and races and both sexes. Some clothed, some naked, their stink was the only thing they shared besides death. Intertwined like dozens of lovers locked frozen in the midst of an orgy, the dead were, without question, human. And yet Meaghan could again detect an essential difference. Perhaps it was the heightened senses she had as a shadow, or mere logic in the face of their alien surroundings.
“My blood!” Alexandra said finally, and Meaghan realized they had both been holding their breath.
“We don’t know where we are,” Meaghan said and shook her head, “and now we have no idea how this happened. What did this?”
“More importantly,” Alex said, grabbing Meaghan’s hand, “is it coming back?”
“Let’s get back and see if Lazarus has some answers.”
They turned to go, but Meaghan caught sudden movement out of the corner of her eye, and as she turned, she noticed that the street was no longer silent. Staring out over the sea of dead once again, she was prepared to think she had imagined the movement, though the new sound, a sort of distant chuffing, like a powerful pump, remained. And then the movement came again, a ripple, a wave sending arms and legs flailing and blood spattering, as something huge moved under the dead. With the drying scab ripped from the top of the mass grave, a new, more powerful wave of odor rolled over them, and this time Meaghan did gag.
And then the cesspool erupted in a fountain of gore and decaying flesh, spraying sixty feet into the air. Meaghan and Alex were spattered by the initial burst and then showered in gobs of humanity, body parts raining down and slapping the ground around them. In front of them, rising up through the falling dead, was a behemoth unlike anything either of them had seen, even during the Venice Jihad.
At the same time, however, both Meaghan and Alexandra knew immediately that this creature was a sibling to those from Venice, a shadow-demon from the Hell Mulkerrin had dredged once too often. It’s long snout was huge, the eyes on either side a dozen feet apart. It’s hundreds of bared teeth were long and sharp as sabers, covered with gore, flesh hanging in strings from its black lips. The nostrils of the snout were flaring, blood spraying in a fine mist, and it occurred to Meaghan that the things were like the blowholes of a whale, and that the remains of the dead the creature had consumed had been blasted out of those nostrils with explosive power.
And thinking of that power, she had to wonder how much of the creature was still underground, to supply the energy for such a burst. It’s green-scaled flesh was still coming and they had yet to see limbs. It’s head seemed snake-like, or more accurately, sharklike, as it continued to rise from the hole. Then, heavy under its own weight, it flopped forward, its jaws clacking together only yards from where they stood. At the edges of the hole, they now saw relatively small, lizardlike talons appear and begin to claw at the remains of the building’s stone foundation, pulling forward.
Watching in fascination, Meaghan’s attention was finally brought back to their safety as Alex grabbed her arm.
“Meaghan!” she said, obviously not for the first time. “Do we fight, or get out of here?”
Meaghan looked at her lover, saw the concern in her eyes, the questions there, held for later. She knew them for they were the same questions in her own mind. She looked at the huge shadow, then back to Alex.
“Screw that,” she said, “we’re out of here. If it catches us, then we fight.”
Lazarus was running up behind them now, the Gospel clutched in his hands. As they turned to flee from the creature, they nearly ran him down.
“Run!” Meaghan shouted at him.
“What?” Lazarus looked as if he’d been goosed, his eyebrows lifting as his mouth fell open.
“Run!” Meaghan said again, and this time Lazarus did turn his steps back the way he’d come, but not without a frown of great displeasure. Meaghan knew it was difficult for him, who had probably not run from anything since his human death.
But, she thought, wisdom being the better part of valor, he can go to . . .
“So,” she said as they ran, “where are we anyway?”
“Well,” Lazarus said, slowing down now and looking over his shoulder, “we’re not in Hell if that’s what you’re wondering.
“It’s stopped,” he added, coming to a complete halt and turning back the way they’d come.
Meaghan and Alex also stopped, and now they watched from several blocks away as the huge creature settled itself back into the mass grave that had become its home. As far away from it as they were, they could still hear the chuffing noise, which meant the monster was sucking the flesh and bones of the dead into its mouth, but this time there was no explosion from its nostrils. Soon, the thing was out of sight and the hole itself was merely a gap in the block of buildings.
“So if we’re not in Hell . . .?” Alexandra said, making a conscious choice for all of them to put off discussion of the demon until they were gone from this place.
“Where are we?” Lazarus mused aloud, holding up The Gospel of Shadows to emphasize his words. “A good question, but the answer isn’t in here . . . Or maybe it is.”
“How do you mean?” Meaghan asked, but she could see in Lazarus’s eyes that his mind was drifting someplace else. She repeated the question, and finally he faced her.
“I have a theory,” he said, spreading his arms to encompass everything around them. “The Stranger has told me many times that there are worlds other than our own, but I thought he meant this ‘Hell,’ and whatever passes for Heaven, if anything does. We know that Hell exists because that’s where these creatures come from, and it’s discussed in the book. But what if there are other planes as well, planes not mentioned in the Gospel?”
Alex and Meaghan exchanged glances, and Meaghan was amused to see the way her lover’s brows arched in obvious doubt.
“Just a minute,” Alexandra interrupted. “Are you trying to say that we’re in some kind of alternate world, like a parallel dimension or some such thing? I mean, give me a fucking—”
“Don’t jump to conclusions, Alex,” Meaghan broke in. “Lazarus may be on to something here.”
Lazarus was surprised at her defense, but appreciated it.
Meaghan’s mind was racing, and she paced in time to its rhythm, chewing on her right index knuckle in a way that Alex had always found endearing.
“Okay,” she said and stopped pacing. “Are either of you familiar with the theories of Stephen Hawking?”
Both nodded then began to speak, but Meaghan cut them off.
“No, just listen. Hawking postulated that the existence of black holes, which he has proven, themselves prove the existence of parallel universes because some matter which passes into the hole does not emerge. It has to go somewhere. Now, if Hell is one of these parallels, then the portal that we used to travel here, and those Mulkerrin was able to create, have got to be . . . what? Gray holes? Somehow they allow matter to pass in both directions but do not have the vacuum effect of a black hole.”
“Do you know how crazy this sounds?!” Alex yelled, frustrated and already tired.
Meaghan flinched.
“Honey,” she said. “There’s no need to yell like that.”
“No need to . . .?” Alex was dumbfounded. “This is not like a domestic squabble or something, Meg. How can you be so calm?”
“You’re not,” Meaghan smiled. “I have to be.”
Alex was sorry, and the two embraced a moment as Lazarus spoke.
“The only problem,” he said, “is that if all of this is true, we still don’t know exactly where we are, what happened here, or how to get out.”
They were all quiet then, and in the silence finally heard the noises in the buildings all around them. Lazarus spun quickly and saw a thin, bony face disappear from behind a window. He started for the house, thinking there were people there after all, but Meaghan stopped him.
“I saw some too,” she said. “In fact, I think they’re all around us now, but they’re not what you think.”
“How can you know what I think?”
“‘Cause it’s exactly what I would have thought, if I hadn’t seen that.” She pointed down the street toward the city skyline, and in the shadows of buildings, small, bony wolflike creatures scampered, with faces like those from the windows around them. A pair of huge, fat, hairy bipeds, one with tusks pushing out from its face, emerged from the distant darkness.
“He’s been here,” Meaghan whispered, and then louder: “Mulkerrin had to have been here!”
“We were waylaid here en route to our destination,” Lazarus started in, “and so was he. Now it becomes clear. Mulkerrin isn’t just after vampires now, he just wants to conquer, to destroy.”
“So this is a sneak preview of what happens if we don’t stop him?” Alexandra asked. “So what are you waiting for, Lazarus? Get us out of here.”
Though he still didn’t like to flee any more than he wanted to let these females fight for him, Lazarus knew what their responsibilities were. As the skeletal demon-wolves moved in for the attack, their gargantuan brothers slowly falling in behind, he opened the book to the spell that had gotten them where they were. He hoped the same spell would allow them to complete their trip. He didn’t bother to tell them he had no idea if it would.
Unlike most younger shadows, Lazarus prayed. The Stranger had assured him that someone was listening. And at that moment, Lazarus made a conscious decision to believe him.
The first of the demon-wolves reached Alex and Meaghan, but they didn’t have a chance. The vampire women were much more powerful, and shattered the creatures’ bony frames with ease. But the huge, brown, ape-like shadows approached now, so slowly, and the tusked one in the lead became uglier as it moved closer. Its black lips pulled back from blacker gums in a roar through strong, sharp, clenching teeth. Alex clamped her hands over her ears.
“Come on, Laz,” Meaghan shouted, “how ’bout it?”
And then the portal was there.
“Go,” he shouted, standing with the book in his hand, and in seconds Meaghan and Alexandra were through the passage, magical or scientific, and the two great beasts roared their displeasure.
Lazarus turned to go, clutching the Gospel to his chest and leaping for the portal. In midair, his legs were snagged crunching painfully in the huge hands of the tusked creature, whose anger had added speed to its attack. Lazarus fell face-first toward the ground, his hands flying out to break his fall and The Gospel of Shadows tumbling into the air . . . through the portal.
Furious, Lazarus turned on the creature its mate not three steps behind, and ignoring the pain in his crushed legs, forced them to burst into flame in the creature’s hands. Matted with disgusting hair as it was, the creature’s body caught the fire, and it spread rapidly over its form. The creature howled in distress and began to beat at its burning arms and chest, only succeeding in spreading the flames. As it crawled to the portal, the last sight Lazarus had was of the demon’s mate arriving to help, and having the flames leap from one to the other instead.
As the cold womb of pain presented by passage through the worlds enveloped him, Lazarus had to wonder about those creatures. Other than vampires, he’d never seen shadows with mates before, never seen them care for one another. Had they, then, been an example of the native life forms of that universe that became demonic half-breeds the way Lazarus and his kindred had been?
As he was belched out onto hot, hard stone, at the feet of Meaghan Gallagher and Alexandra Nueva, Lazarus felt momentarily sorry for the creatures and wished he could take back the flames. And then his companions were at his side, helping him up even as his legs finished their self-healing. He breathed a sigh of relief as he scanned the cavern in which they now stood.
They were on a rocky shelf, which was slashed out of the wall behind them. Though apparently made of stone, the wall and shelf were black, charred by terrible flames, and their feet kicked up a fine powderlike soot while flakes and bubbles crunched under them. Flames burned from cracks in the walls, and burning ash fell in a light shower from somewhere high above, whirled into eddies by wind currents that buffeted them with heat as well. The wall behind them curved around, and in the distance they could barely make out the shimmering flames from the opposite wall. They could see hundreds of feet above, and no ceiling, so that all three assumed they were in a hole of some kind. And far, far below, the fire burned.
“It’s a wonder our portal didn’t open above that,” he said, looking down at the red glow of the pit beneath them. “It reminds me of a stovepipe. Though strangely it does look somewhat like what I’d expected.”
“We were just talking about that,” Meaghan said. “Maybe part of the spell controls the point of egress?”
Lazarus thought about that, the spell. The spell! What the hell happened to . . .
“The book!” he snapped at them, noticing that neither held it. “What happened to the book?”
Meaghan and Alex looked quite alarmed.
“What do you mean?” Alex hissed. “You had the damn book!”
“I was attacked,” he mumbled. “It flew from my hands and through the portal. I thought it would . . .”
They all looked down, around their feet, realizing the futility of the act even as they performed it, and then out over the abyss.
“Do you think?” Alexandra said, but Meaghan shook her head as they looked down into nothing.
“No. I think we would have seen it come through and go over.”
“So then what?”
Meaghan didn’t have an answer, but Lazarus turned to face the black wall where the portal had been.
“Lost,” he said. “Lost somewhere between that devastated world and this place.”
“Great!” Alex snapped.
“Now how do we get back?” Meaghan said to no one.
“We find Peter, of course,” Alexandra said, stepping to the edge. “If he’s still alive, maybe he can get us out. If not, we’ll die here with his bones.”
Meaghan looked at Lazarus, and he shook his head.
“We have little choice,” he said, then turned
to Alex. “But we have no idea how to find him. For starters, do we go up or down?”
Alexandra laughed then, a sick, angry, frustrated, frightened laugh that scared Meaghan in a way.
“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “This place even looks like the Hell of myth, at least for me. If there’s anything to be found here, we won’t find it by going up.”
“I don’t know if we ought to fly through that,” Lazarus said, pointing at the cinder and ash tumbling down the center of the pit.
“We don’t have to,” Meaghan broke in, standing at the edge of the shelf, pointing along the wall. “There’s a kind of ledge over here that seems to wind down and around.”
Hell.
One Hour, Four Minutes, Twenty Seconds
After Departure:
Meaghan estimated that they’d been descending for at least half an hour when she fell. It was getting hotter, and Lazarus had left his light jacket behind. They knew that it must be far hotter even than it felt, for temperatures that would force humans unconscious were just enough to make shadows break a sweat. It was very uncomfortable. Not to mention how filthy they were, covered in the black soot that seemed to blanket everything.
They had yet to see a single of Hell’s shadows, but agreed that it would only be a matter of time. Still, they found themselves alone. They had given up conversation and conjecture almost completely, setting their minds to the task at hand, when Meaghan stepped forward, over stone that Alexandra had just crossed, and fell away into nothing. The ledge did not crumble beneath her feet; rather, it simply fell, in one block section, away from the wall and hurtled down toward the inferno she imagined waited below.
She heard both Alexandra and Lazarus cry her name, but Meaghan was not terribly concerned. Though the heat made it slightly more difficult, it was a simple task to shift her shape into that of a bat, and rise on the hot breeze she now realized was flowing up from the huge hole in the ground that they had been circling. Soaring back up to where the others stood, looking down after her, Meaghan knew that the ledge went all the way around, spiraling down to lead them eventually to the point she would have found faster if she’d simply kept falling.
Angel Souls and Devil Hearts Page 12