Angel Souls and Devil Hearts Read Online Free PDF Page A

of tourists milled about the courtyard, ducking into hallways and rooms. He raised his arms
to begin a spell, and Cody dove toward him, determined to stop whatever the magician had in mind. But as he flew, straight toward the man in T-shirt and blue jeans, a ripple ran through reality, an
illusion taking hold, and the man changed. His clothes became black, blond hair turned white-gray, and his words picked up in rhythm, a new spell.
    He turned.
    It was Liam Mulkerrin.
    Cody turned toward the sky, veering up and away before Mulkerrin could notice him, his mind in temporary shock.
    No! he thought. He’s dead. I saw him die, and Peter with him.
    But he knew that was untrue. He had not seen Mulkerrin die, but pass through into the realm of the real shadows, the demons that had done the sorcerer-priest’s bidding. And Cody’s
friend, Peter Octavian, had carried him there, apparently sacrificing his life.
    But if Mulkerrin was alive?
    He did a slow circle, keeping behind the sorcerer, and when he looked again, Cody saw the spirits rising.
    From out of the stone beneath the frightened tourists’ feet, from the walls around them, ghostly apparitions oozed in wet clouds the color of parchment yellowed with age. They were dark
things, yes, but not demons, not the shadows of hell. As they overtook men, women and children, each fell in turn, the apparitions disappearing within them. When the people rose again, seconds
later, new intelligence burned in their eyes.
    Will Cody looked closer, using other senses, senses born of all that was inhuman within him, to focus his vision. And he saw. The apparitions were just that—ghosts. The spirits of those
soldiers, warriors who had served the prince-archbishops of Salzburg and had been stationed in the fortress whose souls must have returned there, to the place of their greatest duty, after their
deaths. Regardless of everything he knew to be true, Will Cody had never believed in ghosts. And yet here they were; Mulkerrin had called them to his service, and with the humans in the fortress as
physical hosts for the spirits, the sorcerer now had a small force of slave warriors.
    The question, Cody realized, was how he had done it. Mulkerrin had not had this ability before, or he would certainly have used it. Now he worked such magic with no visible effort? Wherever he
had been, Cody thought, as he glided on raven’s wings, he’d been busy.
    And what of Octavian? Where did that leave him ?
    Cody made one final circuit, soaring higher, away from the castle, and prepared to return to the time-worn window where he’d left Allison.
    Allison ! What if the spirits were all over the castle and not just around Mulkerrin? He dove now, hurtling down toward that window, but just before he passed out of sight of the
courtyard, he saw something out of place, something not an attacking apparition or a fleeing human, something subtle—
    It can’t be!
    But he knew it was. Allison had ventured upstairs not bothering to wait the five minutes, her reporter’s instincts forcing her to break her word. She stood in the shadows of a doorway, and
even now, as Cody crested the courtyard walls once again, she emerged into the light, to get a better look at what was happening.
    Already, a dark and heavy cloud, the only true remains of a centuries-old soldier, drifted toward her as if it knew it had all the time in the world. After all, where could she run? And Allison,
for all that she could see chaos had taken over, had not yet discovered the source of this anarchy. She had not yet seen Mulkerrin.
    Where could she run? The question was moot; she wasn’t running.
    The raven, Will Cody, sped on, past the floating thing. He was larger than any raven the world had ever seen, and even now he changed, becoming something else, something completely new in the
world. His talons grew larger, their sharp ends turning soft, strong. Before she truly knew what was happening, Cody had picked up Allison at the arms