Angel Souls and Devil Hearts (50 page)

That in mind, it was nothing for Will Cody to bite open his own wrist, weakened as he was, and share his blood with his friend, his brother, Peter Octavian. There was little enough time, and
true healing would have to wait, but after only a few moments, Octavian was able to stand.

And then the choppers rose over the buildings and fired on everyone in the plaza, and Octavian was on the cobblestones again. But this time, Cody was with him. As Will watched the helicopters,
he realized that they must be from Jimenez’s team, and therefore Allison must be on board one of them, or away elsewhere with the UNSF. But wherever she was, he knew she must be safe.

Peter Octavian was reeling. He had suffered for so long that time had seemed to come to a halt. Madness had in truth overtaken him for a period, perhaps a century, but
eventually his mind came back from that place of escape, back to the pain. For a thousand years, each time he thought Beelzebub could do nothing worse, nothing more, he had found he was wrong. The
final violation had occurred a year ago by Hell’s clock, when the demon itself had entered him, consumed him, possessed him. Like a dream, he had seen everything around him, but had been
powerless to control his words or actions. And when Beelzebub shed him in pieces, Peter had hoped he would die there, on the cobblestones.

But he was old now, and grown powerful under the yoke of the demon. He had never learned magic, but he had become comfortable with his vampiric body, able to control its nearly unlimited
potential. Forged in Hell, he’d become an almost unbreakable weapon. Beelzebub had assumed that possessing Octavian, and tearing his body apart upon leaving it, would destroy the vampire. It
was not the first time the demon-lord had been wrong.

Weakened though he was, Peter Octavian vowed that it would not be the last.

“Let’s move it, Peter. Pick up that sword.” Will Cody pointed to a silver blade that had fallen to the ground.

Instead, Octavian merely held up his hands to show that he had his own silver weapons. Cody was surprised, but only for a moment. He knew how long Peter had been in Hell, how old a vampire he
was now. Still, Peter thought, knowing something and understanding it are vastly different things. To Cody and the others, to Meaghan, Peter had been gone only five years, a heartbeat in the life
of a vampire. Peter had lived more than five hundred years before going to Hell, and nearly twice that long in suffering. He was now one of the oldest shadows alive.

“We’ve missed you, Brother,” Cody said, even as they hurried toward where Meaghan and Courage battled the two remaining demon-lords. Beelzebub was already rising from the
ground, the huge hole in its chest large enough to walk through upright.

Peter smiled.

“I missed you, too, Will,” he said, but he knew it wasn’t the same. He had fond memories of all of them, but those memories were incomplete. It had been so long ago that much
of what their true relationship had been was lost. Peter remembered how he felt about his friends, well enough. But he could not fully recall why. If they survived the day, he was looking forward
to learning once again.

Still weak, he was shoulder to shoulder with his friend Will Cody as they pulled Lord Alhazred off John Courage. The demon-lord’s third eye, in the center of its head, was swollen shut,
and one of its long deadly talons had been slashed off, but still it was dangerous. A noxious stench rose from the flames of its skull, and Alhazred struggled in their grip.

Next to them, Meaghan now leapt to avoid a crushing blow from the tail of Lord Azag-Thoth. The great worm darted in with its wolfen head, missing her throat by a mile and instead tearing at her
left breast. Meaghan cried out in pain, and Peter responded.

“Away from her, worm!” he shouted, digging his hard, sharp silver hands into the serpent’s head and using all his strength to fling it away. Azag-Thoth flopped on the ground
fifteen feet from them, but was already rising.

“Is it really you?” Meaghan asked, not understanding but happy just the same.

Peter only nodded, and then he could see confusion, hurt and doubt on Meaghan’s face. He knew what she was thinking. It was the question she had already asked, though with a different
tone. Was it really him? And by nodding, by saying yes, was he really being honest? He was Peter Octavian, true, but not the Octavian she’d known. It hurt him to think that she mistrusted him
now, but more so that much of what she must have once meant to him was lost forever.

“Thank you,” Meaghan said uncertainly, and Peter favored her with a lopsided grin that felt familiar to him. Then Meaghan was smiling, and he knew that grin must have been familiar
to her as well.

“
A momentary respite
!” Beelzebub’s voice boomed then, as it rose, staggering, to its feet. “
I feel
. . .
refreshed
!”

The demon’s sarcasm was not lost on Peter. It was badly injured, much more so than the slowly healing wound would indicate. Over the time he had spent in agony due to this creature’s
whim, they had become as intimate as cruel lovers. And now Beelzebub saw that he was still alive.

“
Ah, Octavian lives
!” the demon-lord cried. “
I am gratefiul to have the pleasure of killing you one final time
!”

And then, weakened though it was, though they both were, Lord Beelzebub was coming for Peter Octavian, for a final confrontation with its plaything.

“Octavian!” John Courage shouted. “You three must destroy these vile lords. The time has come for me to clash with the architect of this invasion!”

“But . . .,” Octavian began, then was interrupted by Courage’s voice, in his mind, filling his brain.

Ah, Peter, you have suffered so, and you would make the demon-lord pay for his sins against you
, the Stranger’s voice said, calming, soothing, strengthening Peter even as Azag-Thoth
slithered back into the fray and Peter slashed at the worm-lord.

But you are too weak now, to do what must be done
, Courage’s voice said.
And my battle with this creature goes back farther even than your own. It can be killed, but there must
be sacrifice. You will have to lead them from here, keep our people safe
. . .
find Hannibal and destroy him, for he has escaped yet again.

If that is your wish
, Peter said in his mind, knowing there could be no argument. And then he saw wings sprout from John Courage’s back, and the Stranger flew up and away, to face
Beelzebub alone.

“Stay back, brothers!” he called as he rose into the air, for some of Charlemagne’s warriors still lived and wished to come to his aid. “Your time is almost at
hand!”

And when Beelzebub grabbed the Stranger from the air . . . nothing happened. Unlike the warriors of Charlemagne, he did not burn, did not cry out in agony. Instead, his face and arms tumed to
silver, and he began to rip and tear the demon’s flesh. Still, it did not look promising.

Peter could not watch anymore, for with Courage’s departure, only he, Meaghan and Cody were left to battle the two demon-lords who, though severely wounded, continued to fight savagely.
Peter’s face was slashed open by the remaining talon of Lord Alhazred, and the demon screamed at him now.

“You’re not paying attention, Octavian. That’s going to cost your life!”

Peter’s only reply was a feint and then a slice of his own silver claws across the thing’s leathery chest. Green, malodorous pus squirted from the wound, and Peter knew that the
demon was truly wounded. This was its true blood.

Meaghan couldn’t believe that Peter was alive, that it was really him. Nevertheless, he had been drastically changed by his time in Hell, and she felt the pain of what
had been stolen from him. Her happiness at his survival was overshadowed by the pain of Alexandra’s death. Though it had happened, for her, months before, only now, with Alex’s murderer
finally revealed and so close, killing so many others of her kind and responsible for so much mayhem, pain and sorrow—only now did the true rage and fury of her pain reach her.

Whatever she had once felt for Peter was now only the love she had for him as her blood-father. But Alexandra had been her one, true love. She knew that she would never have another like it,
never another person like Alex. And when Courage had flown off to confront Beelzebub, she had wanted to follow. But first, they must destroy his little brothers.

Meaghan and Cody were on either side of Lord Azag-Thoth, its snake-like body whipping back and forth and making it difficult to wound it without receiving an injury in return. But for Meaghan,
as she thought of Alex, the time for caution was long since gone.

Cody went to the right, and Azag-Thoth followed with it’s wolf’s jaws snapping shut. Meaghan jumped up, even as the demon’s poisonous tail slashed at the spot in which
she’d been only a moment before, and she landed on the wide body of the huge worm-beast. She wrapped her silver amms around it, under the head, and pulled back as hard as she could. It did
not have any bones to break, but she could stop its movement at least for a moment.

“Now, Will! Tear the bastard open!” she screamed hysterically, and Cody slashed down with his silver sword, along Azag-Thoth’s body, slicing at least seven feet of its flesh
before the demon-lord’s tail whipped around and knocked Meaghan off its back.

She was lucky. She didn’t know what the demon’s poison would do, and she was battered by the beast’s tail, but the stinging portion had missed her. Instead of falling to the
ground, she held tight with both arms and slid around the front of the creature, its slavering jaws snarling in her face. With a searing sound and a terrible stench of fur, she took its face in
hoth her silver hands and dug in. It could do no more than yelp now, and strike with that stinger, but she dodged it easily.

“Will, the heart!”

“Where?” Cody yelled. “Where do I cut?”

“Go in and find it, damn it!” she shouted, and though she knew he must have thought she was crazy, he dodged the wildly thrashing stinger again and transformed himself into fire,
entering the huge wound he had slashed in the demon-lord’s belly and simply burning the thing’s vulnerable guts.

Will had done it. He was sure to get the thing’s heart if he kept up the flames. Meaghan turned away then, to help Peter destroy Lord Alhazred, which would then leave only—

“
Time to die, Nazarene
!” Beelzebub screamed above them, and Meaghan looked up to see Courage being lifted toward the demon-lord’s mouth. She knew he could not transform
into flame or fire, for fear of being absorbed through the demon’s skin and thus consumed. But there must be . . .

“Yes!” Courage shouted, and Meaghan was stunned as he broke the demon-lord’s grip, finally. “But not for me!”

Meaghan watched, realizing Courage had only been waiting to get close enough to Beelzebub’s face, and now he changed himself into a winged creature the likes of which she had never seen,
with two legs and six arms, all with claws the size of a bear’s—and formed completely of silver. John Courage had transformed his entire body into silver!

In this new form, the Stranger latched his legs and two arms into the face of the Lord Beelzebub, and with the other four arms, all of silver, he began to burrow a hole through the demon’s
face, tearing out its eyes even as the demon howled in a sound that shook the ground.

Silver was poison to vampires! Transforming a small portion of the body was painful. To change the entire body would likely be fatal. And then Meaghan realized that it would be fatal, and that
that was part of the plan, the sacrifice of the Stranger. Of . . .

“The Nazarene!” she said loudly, to no one but herself.

And yet Peter was there, at her side, even as he tore first one and then another heart from the open chest cavity of Lord Alhazred. She saw the fire die in Alhazred’s split skull and knew
it was truly dead.

“You understand then,” Peter said, slumping to the ground and cradling his face with his left hand. His right hand was little more than a stump, but already the fingers were
regenerating. Meaghan wasn’t really paying attention to any of that.

“No!” she shouted at him. “I don’t understand. I can’t understand.”

And now Cody had joined them, standing over Alhazred’s corpse, apparently having finally destroyed Azag-Thoth. He, too, was greatly weakened, and his wounds were healing slowly.

“You do understand,” Cody said. “Even Allison understood, sort of, and she had no reason to.”

“But he can’t be
the
Nazarene!” she said.

And then they were running, scrambling to get out of the way as Beelzebub fell once again, off balance from pain and blindness, insane with hatred for John Courage, for them all. It scratched at
its face, trying to pry Courage off, but it was painful for it even to touch the silver beast that now burrowed into the hole where its left eye had once been. At the north end of the plaza, a
building crumbled, and Meaghan barely noticed.

“It’s not what you think,” Cody said, and his face was lit up with the pleasure of sharing the truth with her. “At least, not exactly. He’s called the Stranger
because that’s what he is, to Heaven and to Hell. The body and the mind
are
the Nazarene, but there is nothing of God in him now.”

“Nothing of God . . .” She shook her head. “How? And how did you . . .?”

“It was the only answer,” he said. “All the clues led there, and Allison figured it out, or at least part of it, as well. John gave us enough clues. Plus, when I was almost
dead, I was a part of the magic, of the power that exists in the nature of the world, that Mulkerrin tapped. I . . . I knew things, then. As to how it happened to him, it’s also how we came
to be.”

“Will is correct,” Peter said, and Meaghan had almost forgotten he was standing there. “I learned all about the Stranger under the demon’s loving care. When the
Stranger’s body was still inhabited by the Spirit of Heaven, he did battle with all kinds of demonic things. It is with him that the magic in
The Gospel of Shadows
originated. But even
that magic couldn’t control the pure vampires, the things that you saw this morning. Instead, he destroyed them, every one, and they haven’t existed on Earth until today.