Devil's Thumb

by S. M. Schmitz

  “I’ll never let you do this alone. I’ll help you,” Anna told him. Goosebumps broke out over her arms causing the hair to stand up as she stared back at the demon that had taken over Jeremy’s body and had morphed it into something hideous and evil.

  “It may not be here alone. It must have some of Jeremy’s memories if it led the archdemon to your apartment before, so it will know it can’t take us both on its own,” Colin pointed out.

  Anna had been worried about that, too. But those archdemons were somehow able to disguise themselves and they had no way of being able to sense them like they should have been able to. So far, the only thing that got rid of them was using their telekinesis, which was far too destructive in a parking lot sandwiched between two buildings. And it only seemed to provide a temporary reprieve; it wasn’t killing these archdemons anyway.

  The Jeremy-beast lunged at them, and Colin stabbed his dagger into its thick hide and tried to open a gash, but the dagger was stuck. Anna attempted to distract it by thrusting her dagger into its opposite side and the beast turned its head and snapped at her with its pointed granite teeth. The stench from the demon’s mouth left a vaporous cloud around Anna, and as she held onto the dagger still stuck in its side, she kicked it in the jaw to get it to turn away from her.

  Her dagger came loose and she stumbled backward, bumping into someone, and her panic was quickly replaced with relief when she realized it was Luca. He steadied Anna then attacked the demon with Colin. Anna had only a moment to register Lacey had been with him when Colin and Luca were sent flying across the parking lot. The invisible archdemon had decided to show up.

  “Lacey, get back in the restaurant!” Anna shouted at her.

  Lacey protested but Anna shut her up by pushing her toward the building. “Now!”

  Colin and Luca scrambled back to their feet and were contending with a force they could neither see nor feel. But something knocked Colin down again and was strangling him. Luca stood over him, desperately trying to move Colin away from the archdemon, but he was powerless. Anna was the only one who wasn’t. And her husband was pinned to the ground, choking, unable to breathe; for once, Anna had no reservations about using this new power The Angel had given them. The anger and fear in her made it stronger, more uncontrollable and destructive than ever before, and as cars rolled through the parking lot like tumbleweeds and windows blew inward from the impact of the energy she commanded, Colin gasped and sat up. The archdemon was gone for now, and so was Jeremy.

  Anna ran to Colin’s side and threw her arms around him, which almost knocked him down again. “Oh my God, Colin, are you alright?”

  He hugged her back and when he spoke, Anna could hear the smile in his voice. “Damn, Anna, I should let you do that on your own from now on.”

  Luca had been thrown across the parking lot, too, but he wasn’t injured. He may be sore, and he’d complain about it, but as he grunted and pulled himself to his feet, he just shot Anna one of those looks that told her he was mostly impressed and grateful, but maybe a little bit jealous, too. Colin and Anna thought he needed to take it up with his own angel, because they needed all the help they could get with these pissed off archdemons.

  “We need to get out of here,” Colin said, surveying the damage from Anna’s rescue. Anna and Luca helped Colin to his feet, and only then did she remember Lacey had been outside with her. She doubted she’d actually gone back inside the restaurant.

  Colin sighed, “Luca, go find Lacey. She was probably still outside. She may need to go to a hospital.”

  Luca ran back toward the restaurant as they heard the sirens in the distance. Their car had been among the tumbleweeds that had been propelled across the street. Anna and Colin were going to have to find another way back to their hotel. And quickly. They stayed in the shadows as much as they could, only running when they were out of sight from the spectators who had come out to gawk at the mysterious explosion. They passed several bus stops before finding one with a bus picking up passengers.

  It took several connecting buses to get back to their hotel, and by the time they reached their room, they really were exhausted. Anna collapsed on the bed and Colin lay down next to her. “I should call Luca, see if Lacey is ok,” he said.

  Anna mumbled something about that being a good idea. Colin yawned and pulled out his cell phone. His call went to Luca’s voice mail. “He would have called if something were wrong,” Colin insisted as he leaned over to switch off the lamp. Anna’s eyes were already closed. Fighting semi-immortal creatures of Hell could be so damn tiring.

  A rapping at their door woke them. Colin peeked at the clock on the hotel nightstand. It was morning already. The knocking continued and he rolled off the bed while Anna muttered about Luca’s insensitivity to people who didn’t appreciate getting up before sunrise. Colin reminded her the sun had already risen; Anna ignored him and pulled the blankets over her head.

  Anna tossed the blankets back down as soon as Colin looked through the peephole in their door though. Luca wasn’t the one knocking.

  “What the hell is Dylan doing here?” Anna asked, even though Colin had no way of knowing that anymore than she did.

  Colin opened the door, but he wasn’t sure if he should invite Dylan in or not. Dylan had made it pretty clear in Baton Rouge he didn’t want to work with them or be friends with him, so why was he here?

  Dylan stared at Colin for a few seconds before asking, “Is Anna not dressed or something?”

  Colin stared back at him, feeling like he must have a stupid expression on his face. “What?”

  “You just gonna let me stand out here in the hallway?” Dylan sounded exasperated, but Colin was just confused.

  “Depends. Why are you here?”

  Dylan glanced down the hallway to make sure no one was around. “Because I followed it here. And it must have followed you and Anna. I want to know if you’ve killed it yet.”

  Colin sighed and finally backed away from the doorway so Dylan could enter their room. He mumbled something at Anna that may have been “Good morning,” but Anna couldn’t really hear him. He sat at the table near the window and looked between Colin and Anna, waiting for them to speak.

  “It found us last night at a restaurant. But you must have known that if you’ve turned the news on at all,” Colin told him.

  Dylan nodded. “That’s what I thought. And is it dead?”

  “We don’t know,” Anna answered. “We were fighting it in the back of the parking lot between the buildings when one of those invisible archdemons threw Luca and Colin across the lot. It was strangling Colin so I blew it out, but I didn’t see what happened to Jeremy.”

  “It’s not Jeremy,” Dylan reminded her.

  Colin sat on the edge of the bed next to Anna, sorry that their friendship with Dylan had ended like this, but he had no purpose here now. If these archdemons were following Colin and Anna, then staying in Boulder would only lead to Dylan getting hurt. “Luca’s staying with us until we figure out what’s going on with these archdemons, and it’s obvious now we’re the ones they want. Go back to Baton Rouge. Jeremy won’t escape from us again. Not intentionally anyway.”

  Dylan’s eyes narrowed as he kept his gaze on Colin. “I trusted you to take care of it in Baton Rouge, and you didn’t. I’m not leaving Boulder until I know it’s dead. And neither is Max.”

  “Max is here, too?” Anna asked, the edge in her voice warning Dylan how incredibly stupid she thought they were being.

  “Of course,” Dylan shrugged. “Apparently, O’Conner’s forgotten everything we did to help get you back after you were abducted. What loyalty means.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Colin interrupted him, “we explained why we let it live. You want to hold grudges for the rest of your life, then do it, but from someone who’s lived a hell of a lot longer than you ever will, I’m just telling you, it’s not worth it. You’ll be miserable, and neither Anna nor I regret the choice we made. We were hoping Luca could help us find
more information on if it would be possible to undo what’s happened to Jeremy, but we haven’t come up with anything. So it’s done. Hate us or forgive us, but I won’t listen to you insulting my wife or me anymore.”

  Anna recognized Colin’s tone, that chilling undercurrent. She would have known Colin was through with Dylan even if they weren’t telepathic. And Dylan sensed it, too. He seemed torn between wanting to storm out and wanting to stay, because he knew he would never meet anyone else as well informed as the O’Conners and Luca. He bit his lip as he glanced at Anna again, then sighed and fell back into the chair.

  “Alright. I won’t bring it up again. Max and I obviously need your help, but we’re not leaving. We owe this to Jeremy.”

  “Remember how much he’s lost recently, Colin. Between Jas and Jeremy, that’s a lot for any man. Let him help.”

  “I’m not sure how much hunting is up to us, actually,” Colin told him, “there’s a large, organized group here. You should meet the leader and let her know what was going on in Baton Rouge and why you’re here.”

  Dylan arched an eyebrow at him. “Ok, how do I find her? And what do I tell her about you two?”

  Colin and Anna looked at each other because they still didn’t know what had happened to Lacey, and they really weren’t looking forward to having to explain last night to her. Maybe Dylan could save them the trouble. Colin grabbed his phone to call Luca again, and this time, he actually answered.

  “What the hell?” Colin snapped. “We’ve been trying to find out if Lacey’s alive, and you haven’t even been answering your damn phone.”

  “I’ve been busy,” Luca retorted, and Anna could tell by his flippant attitude that not only was Lacey fine, she had most likely won their bet.

  “God, Luca,” Colin groaned, “I’m guessing she’s fine then.”

  “Oh, she’s better than fine.”

  “Ha! We’re going to Dublin, O’Conner!” Anna thought winning bets was an even better way to wake up than drinking coffee. And she was entirely too giddy about dragging Colin back to Ireland. He tried to scowl at her, but she was too adorable when she glowed like that because she’d gotten her way.

  “Dylan and Max are here. They should meet her. They want to help hunt down this demon that possessed Jeremy,” Colin explained, still pretending to scowl at Anna who was still genuinely gloating.

  “Meet us at her apartment in an hour,” Luca told him, and he gave him the address. Colin hung up and shook his head at Anna. “The least you can do if you’re really dragging me to Dublin is bring back your London accent.”

  “You have a London accent?” Dylan asked. He knew their history, but Anna had an affinity for languages and had mastered American English.

  Anna smiled at him, the first smile she’d been able to offer him in over a month. “I used to. We haven’t lived in England in centuries.”

  “Then why do you still have an Irish accent?” he asked Colin.

  Colin turned his scowl toward Dylan. “Because the universe thinks it’s funny, apparently.”

  “Oh, Colin, you need to get over this. Women love Irish accents, you know. Combine it with a gorgeous man like yourself, and it’s a good thing you’re already married to me, or I’d be quite jealous of all the attention you get.”

  But Colin had only ever cared about one woman, and his ancestry, his homeland and ethnicity had made him an outcast and, in many of her family’s friends’ eyes, not worthy of her affection. He would spend his five hundred ten years on this planet since meeting Anna feeling like he’d never been good enough for the woman who had inexplicably agreed to marry him. And she’d spend those same years remonstrating him for feeling that way.

  “So we’ve got an hour to kill,” Dylan exhaled impatiently, “and I’m guessing you don’t have any other experiences that could shed some light on how to track down this Jeremy beast and separate it from the archdemon that’s obviously protecting it.”

  Anna chewed nervously on her lip and Colin asked her to stop before Dylan noticed, but Dylan was smart and observant. He noticed. And he knew Anna and Colin were keeping something from him.

  “What?” he asked, but it sounded like a demand.

  “It’s so silly, Dylan. I don’t even know if it’s useful,” Anna protested.

  “Anna, everything at this point is useful information to me, because I’m working on zero knowledge here.”

  “Truthfully, we didn’t think anything of it at the time. We thought it was a scam, like one of those faith healings or something, but now, we’re not so sure.”

  Dylan spread his hands open and waited. “And? Con or not, we see some weird shit, Anna, so what did y’all see?”

  Anna glanced at Colin and he just shrugged, telling her she may as well share this story then she looked at Dylan. “We may have seen someone becoming possessed.”

  Chapter 4

  Cane Ridge,1801. Colin and Anna found empty seats at the back of the tent on a wooden bench where a couple of men had pressed together to make room for them. They had arrived after the start of the revival and several ministers were already preaching. There was so much noise from the crowd that neither of them could make out what any of the preachers were saying. The men they sat next to didn’t seem as perturbed by their inability to hear; their faces were marked by the rapture of the hysteria sweeping this crowd.

  Anna wasn’t particularly interested in anything these Presbyterian or Methodist ministers had to say anyway. She’d wanted to see what the people were doing and experiencing, and they’d been following the stories of Finney’s revivals in New York. Colin and Anna sympathized with some of his initiatives like abolition and allowing women to pray openly with men, but claiming five thousand million souls had already been condemned to Hell and scaring people into his reforms and beliefs didn’t sit well with Anna and Colin. They knew better.

  But people never wanted to hear how easy salvation really was. They always seemed to want to believe it was for those who lived a lifestyle that almost no one could actually live. So Colin and Anna watched these Awakenings with a growing sense of regret and sorrow. They’d left New York and traveled to Kentucky, following the wave of religious revivalism on the Eastern coast. Ironically, it had brought with it plenty of opportunities for demons to exploit those humans who felt overwhelmed with guilt and shame by those ministers who made them feel hell-bound anyway. And these revivals had kept Colin and Anna busy.

  Anna was watching a woman near one of the ministers on a stump. She kept clutching at her chest and pulling at her hair. Anna had seen people fake this sort of healing or mystical union before. It still fascinated her. She wasn’t sure if these people wanted the attention of the crowd nearby or the minister or if they just wanted to believe in their own salvation, but she always watched with an odd mixture of fascination, pity, and horror.

  Colin was more interested in a different crowd that had surrounded a minister on the stage near the front of the tent. They were the loudest of the group, and this minister had attracted more people than the others who were preaching. Colin wanted to get closer to see what he was saying, but Anna was still watching the woman who kept pulling at her hair and tearing at her dress. The crowd around her had started to move away from her.

  “She’s going to collapse. She’s getting hysterical. I hope there’s a doctor in here,” Anna thought.

  Colin watched her now, too. She was moaning and had started to reach toward the minister but several men stepped toward her and pushed her back. She lashed out at them and screamed in a language no one understood. “Speaking in tongues. That’s original.” Colin was really getting tired of these revivals.

  “I’m worried she’s going to get hurt. We should try to stop this.”

  “How?”

  Anna didn’t know. The woman screamed again and tore at her dress then lunged toward the minister. He stepped back, his eyes wide with fear, and fell off the stump he’d been preaching from. The men who had restrained her before rushed to the mi
nister’s side, which meant she could attack him. She didn’t get far before she was tackled to the ground, pinned down by two of the spectators who were calling for help now. Most of the crowd stood silently by.

  Colin and Anna finally got off the bench and hurried to her side. The woman was thrashing on the ground, still screaming in a language no one understood, her eyes wild with anger and loathing. Anna heard the men muttering around her as she helped hold one of the woman’s legs down.

  “She’s possessed,” he said.

  The woman’s back arched and she shrieked. Colin rolled his eyes. She may be crazy, but she wasn’t possessed. They would have sensed a demon this close to the crowd, and they would certainly sense it now.

  “We need the minister. An exorcism,” another man said. The minister, limping from his fall, stood over the woman and she fixed her eyes, those green eyes filled with a hatred for him, on the man she’d tried to attack. She started speaking in her made up language again.

  Another preacher joined him and they stood over her and started praying, this ritual that was supposed to rid a human of demonic possession. Colin and Anna watched each other instead because they knew exorcisms didn’t work. And she wasn’t possessed anyway. She needed to get out of this tent and into an asylum.

  After ten minutes of prayers and admonitions for this demon to leave this woman alone, her body lay still and she stopped yelling in tongues, but her eyes were fixed on Anna. She wouldn’t look away from her, and that fierce loathing was still there. It unnerved Anna and Colin, but because the woman had quieted and lay still, the preachers claimed they’d successfully rid her of possession, and the other men helped her back up.

  Colin and Anna let go of her legs and stood back, trying to blend into the crowd, but the woman kept her eyes on Anna.

  “I’ve seen enough,” Colin said, still watching the crazy woman suspiciously, “let’s move on. This fire is going to spread through Kentucky. We’ll be here a while.”