Angel Souls and Devil Hearts by Christopher Golden Read Free Book Online

people, but the first person we’ll tell is the mayor, and let him and his people worry
about evacuating. We’ve got other concerns. Second, as far as help goes, you can believe it’s on the way. I’ve already been in touch with Alexandra, and they’ll
be—”
    “How? I was with you the—”
    “In my head, remember. We’re of the same blood-father. Everything we just lived through, she was there with me. She knows what’s happening and I’m sure that she and
Meaghan are already scrambling help for us. No, we can’t take this bastard on alone, but we can start making preparations for when the cavalry does arrive.”
    Allison looked at the floor for a second, took a couple of deep breaths, then picked up the phone again.
    “This is Allison Vigeant from CNN News,” she told the hotel operator. “Get me the mayor, please, this is an emergency.”
    Cody smiled then. This was the woman he’d fallen in love with in Venice. She was back in action. And to think he’d been certain she and Sandro Ricci, the cameraman who’d worked
with her in Venice, would end up together. Will Cody thought he was pretty perceptive when it came to people, but he had to admit he’d called that one wrong. Though he’d seemed like a
nice guy, and was certainly brave, Sandro had turned out to be an arrogant pipsqueak. When Cody saw her again, in Rome, three weeks after the Jihad, Allison, who’d been pointing a gun at
Will’s head the first time they met, had made her attraction to him no secret.
    It was amazing, really. He’d spent his human life as two people, one man torn between two callings. One, William F. Cody, had been a buffalo hunter, an army scout, a scoundrel who gambled
and drank and stole beer shipments with Wild Bill Hickok. The other, “Buffalo Bill,” was an entertainer and the star of thousands of dime novels with barely an ounce of truth in them.
One scalped Chief Yellow Hand in memory of an idiot named Custer, while the other was known around the world, even among the American tribes, as a kind, fair, generous man who was good with
everyone’s money but his own.
    Two people, one man. When Karl Von Reinman had brought him to the life of shadows, as Cody October, Will had at once been excited and repulsed. He couldn’t be changed. From the beginning,
though he’d never really needed it, he continued to carry a gun. He rebelled against his coven, sought a life of adventure, and was reviled for it. Over time, his two natures merged, and by
the time of the Venice Jihad, he had become nearly as much of a hero in his heart as he had been made by time and legend.
    He remembered what it was like to be human, to be afraid. And his relationship with Allison helped to keep both things close to him, the fear and the heroism. She helped him be what he was
without trying to fulfill the expectations of others, hard enough as a human, and harder still once the world found out he was alive, and a vampire. He was happy to license the revival of Buffalo
Bill’s Wild West Show, but he wouldn’t perform. His serious commentary was in the film industry, and there he would be known as Will Cody.
    Whatever shadows were, whatever William F. Cody had become, Allison reminded him, and he became a reminder to his own kind, that vampires had human hearts. Never let it be said that we have
no souls , Meaghan Gallagher had said to him once. Words to live by, even if you lived forever.
    “No!” Allison shouted at the mayor of Salzburg over the phone. “You don’t understand . . . Yes, I am with Colonel Cody right now, and the threat is real. That is why your
communications are malfunctioning. Believe me, troops are on the way, you must evacuate.”
    She was silent for a moment, and even across the room, Cody could hear every word the mayor said in reply. There was no way he was going to take any action based on her word alone, even if
“Colonel” Cody backed her up. He just couldn’t take such a risk.
    “Can you