Angel Souls and Devil Hearts Read Free

hazel eyes, and he was a rugged-looking, bearded rogue. His brown hair had been cut short only days before, and he still felt slightly
naked. He was a shadow, and she decidedly human and determined to stay that way. They were lovers, and this rendezvous in one of Europe’s most romantic cities was their first real vacation in
nearly a year.
    Five years earlier, Allison had been conducting a CNN undercover investigation into what at first appeared to be nothing more than a particularly vicious cult. But the Defiant Ones had turned
out to be much more than that. They were vampires.
    Not the vampires of myth, to be sure, but the Defiant Ones, now simply called shadows, were the basis for that myth. Like humans, however, they were not all of one nature. Some were vicious and
cruel, others kind and helpful, and many, oh so many, in between. One and all they gathered each year, with humans who had volunteered to feed their red hunger, in New Orleans, Rio, a small village
in Germany, a rotating slate of a dozen or more cities around the world. Five years ago it had been Venice, and it was there that the vampires’ ancient enemy, the Roman church, had attacked
them in force. The lives of the Venetian people were forfeit, as was the city itself.
    The vampires, or shadows as the world called them afterward, had been victorious, and Allison, with her cameraman Sandro Ricci, got it all on film. Yes, Allison had been present for the Venice
Jihad, and if it had not been for her chance meeting with Will Cody, things might have gone quite differently in the months that followed. But she had met him, and Cody had changed her thinking
completely regarding his kind, regarding shadows. And she was not alone. It had been her interview with Cody and Peter Octavian, coupled with footage of the vicious and darkly magical attacks by
the clergy, that solidified the world’s opinion of shadows.
    They were victims, scapegoats, imperfect creatures, so much more than human, and yet so similar; deadly exaggerations of human nature, human interaction, all too easy for people to understand
when presented correctly. And Allison was sure to present them correctly. The Venice Jihad changed the world, for humans and shadows both. And it changed Allison’s world, bringing her
international fame.
    And fortune, of course, let’s not forget that. Between her CNN salary and the royalties coming from her book, Jihad , she had plenty of disposable income these days.
    After serving as anchorwoman for CNN for sixteen months, she returned to the field, reporting from six continents on legal, political and social issues affecting the shadows. The travel was a
huge perk, and Will met her whenever and wherever he could. She had always been gravely serious, but now she had matured enough to lighten up, to have a good time.
    On the other hand, she was pretty certain that Will had regressed. Allison imagined that the Will Cody she saw now was the exuberant, childish and magnanimous Will of his heyday, more than a
century before, when he was known as “Buffalo Bill.” He rarely got tired, and when he did he still hardly ever slept. Which was fortunate, because Will had dedicated himself to three
jobs simultaneously. For Alexandra Nueva and Meaghan Gallagher, his blood-sister and her lover, he was searching for the vampire named Lazarus, and an answer to the mystery of their origin. For the
shadows he was an international media spokesman, and for himself, finally, there was the show!
    As a master showman in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Will had acted in plays and written books. He had created the “Wild West Show,” a world-traveling exhibition
of riding, shooting and dramatization which, though exaggerated to near mythic proportions, still informed the world’s perception of the American West. He had been a pioneer in the
development of the motion picture, bankrolling and appearing in one of the first feature films.
    Well, the Wild