Angel Souls and Devil Hearts

by Christopher Golden

  Now, with the ravens at the point, they trooped along Morzgerstrasse, a wide highway, already cleared of cars in the evacuation. Twice they had been confronted by Austrian and German military roadblocks, and both times Allison had been called upon to speak for them. Though they obviously did not trust the shadows, and the German soldiers wanted to hold them back, or try at least, the Austrians wanted their nation saved, and so waved the shadows on. Allison didn’t know whether to be more surprised that they had been confronted, or that they had been allowed to move forward.

  “Demons,” Charles said, finally, and Courage barely noted the word. Apparently the ravens had alerted their blood-father—for Allison was fairly certain that that was what Charles was to his soldiers—of the presence of Hellish creatures ahead.

  Quickly, the vampires moved around Allison and John Courage, and Allison realized they were protecting her the way a herd would protect its young from predators. Courage was with her as extra insurance, but Charles was at the front of the group, preparing to confront the few demons they had come upon.

  “It’s a good thing we’re here,” John said to her. “This area is being ravaged. It looks as though most of the military is concentrating on the fortress, but these people need some help.”

  “And that’s us, huh?” Allison asked, and her tone was such that John looked at her strangely.

  “Something?” he wanted to know.

  “Lots of things.”

  “Ah, your questions again,” he said and smiled. “Well, let’s hear what you’ve got so far, my journalist friend.”

  Allison just didn’t know what to make of Courage. Though he seemed unwilling to speak of his origins, he was perfectly happy to have her discover them; he seemed, in fact, to want her to do so. So be it, she thought.

  “Okay,” she said, eyes narrowing. “You’re at least twelve-and-a-half centuries old, and capable of metamorphosis that is beyond any other shadow I’ve known. Wood, metals, things the others haven’t even considered. Your current appearance is not your true appearance—”

  “Why do you say that?” he interrupted.

  “Let me finish. You receive a deference from those familiar with you that is unlike anything I have ever seen among your kind. You pray to God, are aware of events before they take place and know things about other shadows that you should not know. And you seem to be in the right place at the right time. Also, you know a lot more about the origins of your kind than any other shadow I’ve known, yet you refuse to discuss them. Finally, call it a hunch, but I’d say you’re blood-father to both Lazarus and Martha, as well as to our friend Charles here, and I can’t even begin to imagine where that train of thought will take me.”

  They kept walking, Courage looking down at the road. When he raised his head and spoke, he was looking around.

  “I can tell you’re exhausted,” he said. “Why don’t we find you something with wheels on it?”

  “Fine by me,” she said, and meant it—she was exhausted. “But first let’s finish our little chat here.”

  “You mean you aren’t finished?” he said, a false innocence coming over his face.

  “Don’t even . . .,” she began, warning him, but she didn’t need to. He was prepared to talk to her. As for how much he would tell her, that was another question.

  “First, tell me a couple more things,” he said. “Like why you don’t think this is my true appearance, and what makes you think I’m blood-father to those you mentioned.”

  “When you introduced me to Martha,” she began, “you told me she was Lazarus’s sister, and Jared and Isaac his sons. If she was your sister as well, you would have said so. The way the three of them treated you, I got the feeling that you were in charge, and that Martha didn’t need to speak to communicate with you.

  ‘As far as Charles is concerned, that was even more of a hunch, but it also ties in with your age and appearance. The soldiers who first met us did not recognize you immediately. You had to perform some change which you purposely—no, don’t argue—purposely did not allow me to see. Only then did they know you. But even though Charles had been down there just as long as they had, and therefore had not seen you for at least twelve centuries, he knew you immediately. I guessed that this was through your mind rather than appearance. And of course, for such an emperor to defer to you, who would seem so young in the scheme of things, there could only be one answer as far as I was concerned.

  “You’re the boss,” Allison said, and watched him for a reaction.

  John Courage smiled then and gave a small clap

  “Bravo,” he said, even as the noise of the slaughter of demons continued to the north. “But as you can tell, there really isn’t a ‘boss’ per se.”

  “Not in general, but certainly you have a coven of your own, though its size is still a mystery to me.” Allison nodded, satisfied with what she’d determined thus far, but Courage seemed deep in thought and did not reply.

  So she punched him, hard, in the shoulder, the way a child might punch her younger sibling to get even for some imagined transgression. John looked at her, eyes wide, simply stunned at the action, and Allison gave an exasperated sigh and frowned. And then the corners of John’s mouth began to turn up, and they couldn’t stop themselves from laughing at what Allison had done. John gave her a little shove, to let her know he understood her game, and she punched him again.

  “Don’t mess with me,” she said, in a boxing stance. “Now, give with some answers.”

  As John’s laughter subsided, Allison wondered what she was doing, playing around with a being as old and powerful as Courage obviously was. She’d never really thought about it, but put to the question, she realized she would have expected shadows as old as John and Charles to be crinkly old wise men. And that couldn’t have been further from the truth, though Charles looked the part.

  “You’re right on track,” John said. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Allison, your instincts are very, very good.”

  “What about the praying?” she asked. “What’s the story with that?”

  “Charles is a pious man, as am I in my way,” he answered, quite serious.

  “But, the others, the younger ones . . .”

  “A product of their long persecution by the Church, which you helped to end, by the way.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Thank you.”

  “John,” she said, exasperated, needing to know, “what’s the truth? What aren’t you telling me? Will and the others are tortured because they don’t know what they really are, what their origins are. If you know, you’ve got to tell them.”

  Courage said nothing.

  “Do you know?” Allison pleaded. “If you’re praying, does that mean vampires aren’t evil by nature? But then what of Hannibal, and the others like him?”

  Courage nodded, as if deciding something for himself.

  “I do know,” he admitted. “But it is in searching for the answers to those questions that our friends, and the rest of my kind, will create them. To you I say that we are not natural, we do have a taint of evil, but we also have a trace of the divine. Like man, we have free will with which to determine our individual destiny. I will tell some of them, to ease the burden the question lays on their souls, but only those who have already chosen which side to follow, the demonic or divine.

  “And I will tell you,” John said, sincerely, “but not now.”

  Allison’s mind was spinning, hungering for the answer to a mystery the depth of which she was only just beginning to understand. She realized something else, something the existence of Hell should have tipped her off to. No matter what she’d believed in the past, here was a creature telling her that God did exist—not that he had faith that God existed, but that, in no uncertain terms, there was some kind of . . . of being that exerted an influence on Allison’s world, something “divine.” Something to be prayed to. And as much as she believed it, more than ever now, she didn’t know it, the way John did.

  But she wanted to. Still
, he had said he would tell her the whole story, the true nature of the shadows, and she knew that there were revelations to be had in that story. And if he wasn’t prepared to tell her now, it was worth waiting for.

  “Just one thing,” she asked. “At least tell me who you really are, your name, where you’re from, how old you are.”

  John’s smile returned, even as they started to move ahead once again. The demons had been dealt with, and she and John were shuffling forward to join Charlemagne in front of the soldiers.

  “Ah,” he said to Allison, almost in a whisper, “but that would give it all away.”

  And now she was really confused. But at least it kept her mind off Will Cody.

  Just then they were passing a convoy of evacuees and were once again questioned by Austrian troops. Allison was relieved to hear that the military believed that all or nearly all civilians had been evacuated from the area, and as John and Charles spoke to the officer, a bizarre thing happened. From the backs of several troop carriers, now filled with frightened people driven from their homes, several figures rose and jumped.

  A total of eleven men and women came toward them, ignoring the shouts of the soldiers, and Courage translated for her as they spoke to Charlemagne. They were offering their blood. Some were blood-cultists, others volunteers and worshippers, but at least half were merely people who wanted to see that their homes were returned to them, that their city was saved from further destruction, and Charlemagne’s soldiers were the only ones they had seen heading into the city rather than away from it. Once the soldiers had given up attempting to stop the people, several of them also offered their blood.

  Charlemagne accepted, and the convoy waited as each vampire in turn took only a taste of life, to bolster his strength. It was a bizarre tableau; vampire warriors lining up to share in the blood of those people whose lives they were attempting to save, but it gave Allison infinite hope for the future, and pride in humanity. Maybe they could win this thing, and share the world after all. Maybe.

  Above them, the sky was blue and the sun warmed their faces, but up ahead death hung over the city of Salzburg in a terrible curtain of unnatural clouds. Allison had enjoyed smelling the early summer air, but now the wind shifted, and her nose wrinkled at the scent of something rotten that was carried south to them on the breeze.

  Salzburg, Austria, European Union.

  Wednesday, June 7, 2000, 7:58 A.M.:

  Hannibal was no fool. He was very concerned with the apparent retreat of Roberto Jimenez’s troops from Hohensalzburg Fortress. After all, if the foolish humans and their traitorous vampire allies could not be counted upon to destroy the sorcerer Mulkerrin, then Hannibal would have to sway from his plans and join the battle as well.

  For the moment, however, he continued upon his original course, secure in the knowledge that his new coven could act without fear of any serious opposition.

  The President of the United States was dead, and that bitch Julie Graham as well. Hannibal was upset that his blood-son, Garth, had been destroyed during the assassination, and that the vice president, and the old Greek, Marcopoulos, had escaped. He had learned as much through his psychic rapport with his blood-son Sitoshi, who had led the attack, and torn out the President’s throat with his own teeth. However, in retrospect, Hannibal thought that leaving Vice President Galin, a rabid xenophobe, alive might only serve to speed his plan to fruition.

  In the days before the Venice Jihad, Hannibal had set up a worldwide coven, a network consisting of more than one hundred of his own blood-sons and -daughters and their offspring. He had an international stable of human spies as well, inside nearly every nation’s government, which pulled strings in human politics and carefully monitored those of shadows. Hannibal had been one of the architects behind the volunteer program, through which humans enamored with the vampiric mystery of the Defiant Ones offered their own blood, often their own lives, for a chance just to be in the presence of an immortal. He had been a power.

  And then Venice, and Von Reinman’s coven proved themselves to be far stronger than he had ever realized. They averted one disaster, gaining a huge following among their people, and caused, in Hannibal’s eyes, another. Many of his coven had died during that final battle with the Church, and Hannibal had been confused, unsure of his support in the community. He had had no choice but to seemingly conform to the new world order that was quickly established.

  But only with words.

  For in action, Hannibal never changed. He rebuilt his power base, reenergized his coven, used his status as chief marshall of the SJS to draw other shadows, not his bloodsons but powerful and like-minded vampires in their own right, to his cause.

  Blood.

  Hannibal took pride in his savagery, his bloodlust, his skill as a hunter of men, and his coven. His people had always been the scourge of humankind, and would be again. It was their nature, their destiny, to take the blood and the lives of humans. They were predators, and humans their only prey. And now that their existence had been revealed to the world, all the better, for rather than stalking one human, Hannibal would now prey on the fears and the political weaknesses of an entire world.

  The first step, of course, was to shatter the peaceful co-existence of vampires and humans, one which had been tenuous at best. It was not proving terribly difficult. Though Hannibal’s plans had not been fully conceived, Mulkerrin’s return had presented the perfect opportunity to execute them. There would be so many shadows in one place, at one time . . . and so many humans. His assassins had killed the President, and now he was certain that the United Nations secretary general, Rafael Nieto, was trembling in a well-guarded room somewhere. Well, let him tremble. Hannibal would get to him eventually.

  And now, with the world’s attention focused not only on the battle with Mulkerrin, but on the state of the UN’s alliance with the shadows, he had upped the ante yet again. While his softhearted brothers and sisters fought alongside the humans above, Hannibal had gathered more than fifty of his coven to him in the north of the city, out of range of the communications-inhibiting magic of Mulkerrin. While at the fortress the UN commanders could not be told of the President’s assassination, the actions of Hannibal and his men were easily recorded and transmitted around the world by media cameramen. Through that bitch Allison Vigeant, whom Octavian’s clan had rescued from his cellars, the world’s media had discovered the Defiant Ones. And Hannibal would use those same tactics to his own ends.

  He let the cameramen live. Otherwise, it was a slaughter.

  It had begun when his followers gathered and dispatched the stray demons that rampaged through that portion of the city. And yet, the vampires destroyed the demons only because they, themselves, were threatened. But once the demons were destroyed, they had gone after the police and military in the area. And once the people had no more protection, Hannibal and his coven went hunting through the streets and alleys, through crumbling homes and still intact blocks Hunting for blood.

  And now, Hannibal knew, he had drawn the attention of the combined human and vampire forces at the fortress. They had withdrawn from that battle, but he knew it was only a matter of time before they made another attack. He was right, and wrong, as it turned out. They would, of course, mount another attack, but Hannibal’s assumption that they would not be able to spare troops to come after him was obviously wrong.

  Even now, as he watched his blood-daughter, Pamela, feast on an adolescent boy she had dragged into the street, even as he received mental reports that at least a dozen of those SJS members he had not recruited had defected to his cause, Hannibal’s first son, Hector, flew to him as a bat, changed to his true form and growled a warning.

  “They approach!”

  “What?!?” Hannibal was incredulous, for he had heard Jimenez issue no such orders over his collarcomm . . . but of course the commander would be smart enough to change frequencies if possible! Damn!

  “A large force comes down from the fortress, and it is made up almost entir
ely of humans!” Hector said, obviously stunned himself that an event Hannibal had been certain would not happen was now happening.

  Hannibal was confident that his coven could destroy the humans if necessary, but he was also confused. Why would they abandon their attack on Mulkerrin, a more immediate threat at least in their perception, to launch an assault on him?

  “How many of the human soldiers come after us, and how many remain to battle the sorcerer?” he asked.

  “They are all coming after us,” Hector said, shaking his bead in wonder. “It seems only shadows remain to launch another attack on the fortress.”

  Astonishing, Hannibal thought. They’re sure to lose. It was outrageous in his mind. First, Hannibal would be forced to slaughter the human armies (which he had intended to do only after they had destroyed Mulkerrin), losing many of his own in the fight, and then he would have no choice but to use his remaining forces to help his traitorous kindred destroy Mulkerrin.

  Jimenez must be insane!

  As much as it hurt him to do so, Hannibal had to create an alternative possibility, a new course of events.

  Stop, he commanded them mentally, no more killing.

  And how he hated those words. As he sent his psychic orders to his blood-children, so they passed them on to members of the coven not of Hannibal’s family.

  Take as many of the humans as you can, he told them. We will use them as shields in order that I may speak with the human commander. I must know why they turn away from the fortress. None of you will attack, none of you will draw the blood of the captives you now take . . . until my order. This is a minor delay, nothing more.

  Hannibal vowed to enforce that guarantee. He was furious with the unforeseen change in plans and wanted nothing better than to tear Roberto Jimenez’s head from his body. And he promised himself that he would indulge that urge, as soon as Mulkerrin was out of the way.