Angel Souls and Devil Hearts (26 page)

“Rodriguez,” he snapped into his collarcomm, “what’s taking your guys? We need extra strength on the gate, I said. Get those shadows out here.”

Rodriguez didn’t reply, but a sudden squealing shrieked from Jimenez’s comm, forcing him to cover his ears, and the commander couldn’t be certain his message had been received.
Satellite communications were out, so they’d had to rely on primitive broadcast methods in the field. Still, they seemed to be working for the moment.

“They’re here, Commander,” came the computer-generated voice of Rolf Sechs behind him, and Jimenez looked up to see a bat flying above the gate, signaling the arrival of
Rodriguez’s shadow unit. Sechs put away his voice-pad then, and the assault on the gate began anew, joined by pulling from the other side. As Jimenez’s strike force, of which forty-six
men still lived, stood and watched, roughly sixty gray-clad vampires tore and dug at both sides of a magically protected gate. On the hill to their left, soldiers shot grapples into the sheer stone
wall and began to scale it. Shadows with no immediate chore changed form and flew to the top of the wall with ropes, anchored them, and let them down for the human soldiers to climb.

By God, Jimenez thought, they were going to do it.

And then the gate opened and swung wide, crushing a number of shadows behind it. It was clear that it had not been their diligence that opened the door, for even now it pushed tight against the
wall, attempting to destroy the vampires it had trapped. Jimenez let out a breath he hadn’t been aware of holding as he saw the mist float from behind that door, signifying that the shadows
were all right. He had no love for the creatures, but he needed them. And now the gate was open, though apparently by choice.

What to make of that?

“Move!” he shouted, though he needn’t have. The team had passed the point of waiting for his order. Under normal circumstances, he would have felt bound to reprimand them. But
now . . .

“Get the son of a bitch!” he yelled as he led the pack, screaming, up the curving path toward the courtyard, the air around him turning suddenly cold, and the sky darker than ever.
Rolf Sechs ran beside him, and Roberto was pleased to see that the shadow did not shapeshift, but remained in human form. Also, though his speed was greater, Sechs stayed with him, and Roberto had
to wonder whether the creature thought he was
protecting
him.

“Rolf,” Roberto thought he heard somebody whisper, and then the vampire fell to the ground, writhing in pain, with his hands on his head. But Roberto Jimenez was commander and could
not stop for one soldier.

He rounded the corner and came into the courtyard just behind several of his men and half a dozen shadows. The tableau that unfolded before him was grotesque. His forces had begun to come over
the walls, firing into Mulkerrin’s soldiers and demons and at the sorcerer himself, though none of the bullets were able to reach him. Several dozen shadows had already come over the wall,
and they engaged warriors and demons alike, shrugging off the friendly fire as Jimenez had known they would. And in the center of it all, sheathed in a greenish glow, was Mulkerrin.

Kneeling before him with her head buried in his crotch was Gloria Rodriguez.

“
No
!” Jimenez screamed, and started toward them.

Rolf lay on the cold ground, feeling every stone and pebble that pressed into his flesh, hands holding his head as the voice boomed his name again.

Rolf
, it said, but softer this time, as if it knew it had hurt him.

And then it wasn’t an “it” anymore, for Rolf recognized the voice.

Cody
, Rolf thought, sitting up and shaking his head.

Yes, it’s me.

You’re all right?

Strong enough to mind-link at least; otherwise I don’t know. But never mind that. They’ve got to go—the humans. They’ve all got to go.

And then the words stopped, and the rapport that they’d always shared, the mind-link which had allowed them, as children of Karl Von Reinman, to experience events as one, to know things
the other knew, to hold actual, mental conversations, told Rolf the story, everything he needed to know. In seconds, he knew Cody’s pain, knew he was not yet healed, but knew that he had
somehow joined his spirit to the magic flowing around the castle. And Rolf also knew why the humans had to go.

He moved more swiftly than ever before, knowing that Cody would be safe for now, knowing what he must do. In two heartbeats he had come in sight of the sorcerer, and Commander Jimenez racing
toward him. Rolf had to prevent that meeting, for hovering about Mulkerrin, just outside of that vile green glow, was a spirit cloud, the ghost of a dead soldier, and it began to drift toward
Jimenez.

Rolf caught up to the commander just as the ghostly mist started to waft around his head. Rather than simply knocking him out of the way, the mute shadow bent and threw the commander over his
shoulder on his way to the other side of the courtyard, where there seemed to be relatively little going on.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Jimenez yelled as Rolf put him down, then turned to look back at Mulkerrin. “Gloria!”

He went to run back there, but Rolf grabbed him by the arm, shaking his head in a firm
no
. But Jimenez’s eyes were wild; he wasn’t paying attention. He reached inside his
shirt, and in a second he brandished a silver dagger-crucifix in front of Rolf’s eyes, something Rolf had seen before. In Venice. He didn’t have time to wonder where the man might have
got something like that. Jimenez lunged for Rolf, stabbing forward toward his belly, but when his knife and hand got there, they passed only through flame.

Jimenez cried out, briefly, in pain, then switched the knife to the other hand and, holding the burnt one gingerly away from his body, made to go after Rolf again.

“Damned thing!” he shouted, but Rolf grabbed his wrist, holding it nearly tight enough to crush it, then shoved him to the ground, the dagger clattering to the stone. By the time
Jimenez had regained his feet, Rolf was searching frantically inside his jacket for his voice-pad.

Jimenez came after him again before he could pull the pad out of his jacket, but Rolf stopped the commander, with one hand this time, and then slapped him, hard, across the face. Their eyes
locked, Jimenez’s burning with hatred and Rolf’s imploring, trying to send a message. He held up a hand and with incredible speed whipped out his voicepad and scrawled upon it with a
suddenly elongated fingernail.

“Soldier spirits possess you. Humans must leave,” the electronic voice said, translating Rolf’s stunted scribble.

A woman screamed, and they turned. The two warriors, shadow and human, saw it at once. Mulkerrin had thrown Rodriguez out of his sphere of influence, onto the stone floor of the courtyard, and
the vile cloud was hovering over her . . . and then it disappeared inside her.

In seconds she was on her feet, H-K in her hands, and firing up at the soldiers, her own troops, coming over the wall of the fortress. Rolf glanced at Jimenez, and knew that the commander
understood, that he had seen the look on his lover’s face, in her eyes, and that it wasn’t her anymore.

“Dear God,” Jimenez said, then looked back at him. “But they can’t possess
you
?”

Rolf shook his head, pocketed his voice-pad, bent down and retrieved the commander’s dagger and returned it to him. Jimenez barely looked at the thing as he sheathed it. Rolf shooed him
away, using both hands.

“Dear God,” the commander said again, then spoke into his collarcomm. “Withdraw! Immediately! All human troops withdraw from the fortress immediately. SJS troops assist in the
evacuation and keep Mulkerrin’s human soldiers away from our people at all costs! Do it now, people, or we’re done for! All units converge at the Nonnberg Abbey. SJS forces keep
Mulkerrin contained within the fortress.”

And then the comm was off, and Jimenez turned to Rolf.

“Now what the hell do we do?” he asked, knowing an answer would have to wait.

The exodus began, the shadows acting as guards, protecting the humans from their former comrades, trying not to kill those possessed, for the ghosts within them would only find new hosts. But as
Rolf and Jimenez followed the outside wall, passing Mulkerrin on their left, the sorcerer laughed louder and louder, and several of the possessed soldiers turned their guns on one of their own, on
Gloria Rodriguez. They kept firing until each had an empty clip, and only then could Jimenez look away, look up at the man, the thing, responsible. Rolf dragged the commander away even as Mulkerrin
looked straight at them, clearly aware of his actions, enjoying himself immensely.

Outside the gate, and over the roar of gunfire, Rolf heard the cawing of birds above him. He looked up to see three eagles fly overhead, then swoop down to land, transforming into shadows
he’d never seen before: a short, stout female and two young males, twins.

“Rolf Sechs,” the woman said and nodded, and next to him Commander Jimenez turned toward the newcomers obviously wondering if this were another threat. Rolf wondered as well.

“I am Martha, and these are Isaac and Jared, the sons of Lazarus,” the woman went on. “We are here to assist you with the sorcerer, and you should know that reinforcements are
on the way. Also, I am saddened to inform you that the disgusting Hannibal has returned.”

“Hannibal!” Jimenez snapped. “Now? He’s on Mulkerrin’s team after all then.”

“Actually, Commander Jimenez,” Martha said calmly as they jogged down the path that would lead to the abbey “he will not attack your forces, because he wants you to destroy
Mulkerrin, so that he does not have to. In fact, he and his coven have eliminated a great many of the demons left behind in the city.”

Rolf could sense Martha’s hesitancy, and though he guessed what was coming, he was not prepared for it.

“Then what’s the problem?” Jimenez asked.

“They are murdering those of the townspeople they are able to find, feeding off them.”

A scream built in Roberto Jimenez’s throat, but whether it was the name of his murdered lover or a damning curse he would never know. For he swallowed it, and as the
scream dropped down into his belly, it burned.

Oh, how it burned.

Salzburg, Austria, European Union.
Wednesday, June 7, 2000, 7:32
A.M.
:

Liam Mulkerrin was a madman, and he knew it. More to the point, he reveled in it. Once upon a time, so long ago to him, he had been a Roman Catholic priest. But more than that,
he had been a sorcerer, the most powerful in centuries, whose power led him to engineer what should have been the destruction of all “Defiant Ones,” and the seed of his own eventual
control over the world’s most powerful church.

Indeed, it would have been so, if not for Peter Octavian and the other children of Karl Von Reinman. Octavian had become the savior of his people. Mulkerrin had been stopped, his followers
killed or dispersed, his power gone, and he had been taken, body and soul, into the very Hell from which he had been calling his servants for nearly a century. Once the demons had discovered he was
there, within the confines of their world, they were . . . less than charitable. He and Octavian had been there together, for what seemed like forever, among the Suffering, amid the politics of
Hell.

And though they’d suffered, so had their strength grown. With pain came power, and Mulkerrin began to see his previous goals as foolishness, locked into parameters created by his human
experiences. As years flew by, as Hell worked changes upon his body, and his soul, Mulkerrin grew to be something more than human, with the taint of the demonic upon him. His desires followed suit,
informed by the demonic infection in his soul. Though the minds of the Suffering were easily invaded by Hell’s masters, the demon-lords, Mulkerrin used his agony to blind them. Even as his
body suffered, and his mind registered every excruciating moment, so did a part of it, the part he would call “soul,” become more aware. He spread his spirit, his aura, as far out from
his physical form as he could, searching for a sign, any sign, of a weak spot in the barrier between worlds.

And eventually, when he found that spot, the sorcerer made his escape, leaving his demon-masters in a terrible fury, for they could not come to this plane unless individually, and specifically,
called.

In the forever he had spent in Hell, Mulkerrin’s faith in Heaven had only grown. And while his body and mind had been tainted by his time there, and his power, his magic fed upon the fires
of the place, he knew his soul was pure. For he had talked to God. While in Hell, the voice had come to him, and Liam Mulkerrin had experienced revelations that had humbled even him.

“Let’s make a deal,” God had said to him, though not in so many words. And Liam was in ecstasy. God wanted him to escape back to his birth-world to begin a new, and final
crusade. Liam was to cleanse the world of the taint of Hell of the vampires that now lived among God’s children and of all other impure souls. The world was to be subjugated to the will of a
new church, with Mulkerrin as the rock upon which it would be built. He alone would judge the guilty, he would mete out their justice. The world would become purgatory for its inhabitants, and when
they were judged ready by Mulkerrin himself, he would send them to their God.

And any who attempted to prevent God’s word from becoming reality would be cut down by his right hand Liam Mulkerrin, and sent to Hell. When Mulkerrin was done, when he had achieved all
God had set out for him then the Lord had promised to wipe the taint of evil from him and take the judge, the once-priest, to His bosom. And God helped Liam to rise above his suffering, to escape.
God promised that if Hell sent its vile issue after him, or one of its foot soldiers, like the fiend Peter Octavian, then Liam would be given the power he needed to prevail. God told his former
priest that he’d been right all along, that there was glory in pain—his own and that of others. It was this skill that made Liam the perfect tool, God told him: the ecstasy such work
brought to him.