Angel Souls and Devil Hearts Read Online Free Page B

Jack, a haggard, hard-looking man with something lurking in the
shadows of his face that Jack had never had.
    “What’s wrong with you?” George asked him.
    “Not a blessed thing,” not-Jack said in a voice that George had never heard before, a voice that scared him.
    “In fact,” he said as he moved around to put George between himself and the wall, “I’ve never felt better in my life. I feel perfect .”
    Matt and Tammy came around the corner.
    “What are you guys doing . . .,” Matt began, but he shut up when Jack turned to look at them.
    Tammy saw it before any of them, even Jack, and she screamed. A huge hand shot out of the hole in the wall, clutching George like a child’s doll, talons impaling his face, stomach and
side. Tammy’s was the only scream as her brother disappeared through the hole in an instant. Matt stared, mouth open wide, and Jack just smiled.
    “Jack!” Matt finally said. “ Jack ! Do something!”
    Matt ran to the wall, but by the time he reached it, it was only stone again, and he pounded his fists against it. When he turned, Jack was standing out on the watchtower with Tammy in his arms.
She was sobbing loudly with her eyes closed. But Jack was staring directly at him, and as Matt started to move into the open, Tammy’s crying began again. Jack lifted her, with incredible
strength, and hurled her, wailing, out over the edge of the tower. From there, it was a straight drop to the trees five hundred feet below, and Tammy screamed all the way down.
    Matt was on Jack in a moment, the two scrabbling on the stone floor of the tower. Matt was on top, and his hands locked around Jack’s throat, choking him, but Jack stopped fighting back.
Instead, he touched the bare skin of Matt’s arm with one hand and the stone floor with the other hand and mumbled one word through his choking gasps.
    Matt Monahan turned to stone, a statue, made from the same rock as the fortress itself, almost growing out of it. It was simple for not-Jack to pry himself loose from the statue’s grip,
breaking several stone fingers in the process. The statue looked quite alone. And somehow, too new
    “Well, this is an old castle,” not-Jack said in his not-Jack voice. “And you, boy, have got to look old.”
    A hard roundhouse kick and the statue’s head, a head which had once belonged to Matt Monahan, flew into the air and tumbled down the mountainside to join the corpse of his wife, broken and
twisted at the bottom of the cliff, an offering to the fortress itself
    Above, the laughter began.
    Salzburg, Austria, European Union.
Tuesday, June 6, 2000, 2:16 P.M. :
    Just below the watchtower, in a crumbling hallway with large, open windows, an area off-limits for visitors to Festung Hohensalzburg, Allison Vigeant and Will Cody heard the
screaming begin. As Cody searched for the fastest way out and up, Allison gasped and called for him to come back to the window. Only seconds had passed, but Tammy Monahan’s body had already
fallen too far for Will to rescue her, whatever form he took.
    “Stay here,” Will said to her, and Allison winced.
    “I’ll find my way up and meet you topside,” she said.
    Will bit his lip.
    “Please,” he asked. “Stay here?”
    “Five minutes,” she said, and looked at her watch.
    In seconds, a large raven flapped out of that window and took to the sky, circling above the fortress, the only bird in the sky. As he dipped among the wind currents at that height, Will Cody
watched as the man who had been Jack Rice turned Matt Monahan to stone, then smashed the head from the statue’s neck and sent it flying over the edge.
    Sorcery, Cody thought, and the very idea chilled him, ruffling his feathers. For as far as he knew, the one book that held the secrets to such magic, The Gospel of Shadows , was safe in
Meaghan Gallagher’s possession. But this was magic, just the same.
    The sorcerer moved away from the watchtower, back toward the main section of the castle, where dozens