“Great,” Luca muttered, “so that makes three people I’ve trained with awesome superpowers that I don’t have. Remind me again why I’m doing this?”
His angel’s smile broadened, revealing a mouth full of straight white teeth, and he chuckled, “You’re irreplaceable to us, and you know that, and that’s why you’re still doing this.”
Luca narrowed his eyes at the angel. “Keep talking.”
But the angel just shook his head and rolled his eyes at him. “I’ll feed your ego another time, Luca. You’ll have to go find Andrzej on your own and bring him back here. If Colin and Anna leave, these archdemons will just follow them. He should be in Caracas.”
“Should be?” Luca shot back. “Doesn’t your Heavenly GPS work any better than should be?”
The angel shrugged again. “You Immortals move around a lot.”
“Immortals?” Lacey asked, but everyone ignored her, except the angel who offered her a sympathetic smile.
“Do you know anything about these archdemons and how they’re interfering with our senses?” Colin asked.
“Afraid not,” he answered. “I have a feeling that’s something you’ll have better luck figuring out than us.”
“Wait,” Lacey interjected again, “what do you mean immortals?”
Anna was starting to feel sorry for her. “What about Jeremy?” she asked softly.
The angel turned his sapphire eyes toward her and chewed on his lip, a nervous human habit, and Anna wondered where he’d picked that up. “They’re breaking rules, Anna. This isn’t just bending them but violating them.”
The hair on the back of her neck prickled. “What does this mean? How can they just break the rules? Aren’t there consequences?”
The angel nodded, keeping his brilliant sapphire blue eyes on her. “You must stop them. Or it means war.”
Then Luca’s angel was gone.
“Son of a bitch,” Luca muttered.
Anna’s wide eyes flashed to Luca and she pointed a finger at him. “You said angels can’t fight! It would cause them to fall! What does he mean it would lead to war?”
Luca stepped back, surprised by Anna’s sudden anger. “They can’t kill. There’s a difference. I don’t know what they’re planning. They’d need an army of Immortals to fight a war.”
Lacey walked into their circle. “What the hell are immortals?” she shouted.
Colin hardly glanced at her before turning his attention back to Luca. “We are. Luca, get to Caracas and find this Andrew guy, and let him know I can’t speak Polish, he’s just going to have to go by Andrew while he’s here.”
“That’s kind of assholey,” Luca joked. At least Colin thought he was joking. But he really couldn’t pronounce most Polish names.
“It’s not my fault they hate vowels.”
“Forget the dude’s name,” Dylan interrupted, “why didn’t your angel answer Anna’s question about Jeremy? That was kind of assholey.”
“He did,” Luca said. “Anna asked about Jeremy and he said they broke the rules to transform him. She didn’t ask if we could save him.”
“Ugh,” Anna groaned, “why do angels have to be so damn literal?”
“When you say you’re immortal …” Lacey began, but the poor woman was ignored again.
Anna tapped her fingers against the edge of the water bottle Colin had handed her. “He also didn’t say we couldn’t save him.”
“Anna,” Dylan sighed, “don’t start this again.”
But Anna shook her head at him. “No, Dylan, you don’t understand how angels talk. How they operate. They don’t lie or play games or manipulate people, but it’s like there are some things they can’t just come out and say. Like they have rules, too, and they actually do follow their rules because they’re angels. Think about what he told us. Hell broke the rules to transform Jeremy. If we can’t stop them, it will lead to war. That’s it. He never told us we must destroy Jeremy to set his soul free or anything. And believe me, angels care about our souls.”
Dylan exhaled slowly and eyed her seriously for a few moments, considering what she’d proposed. “But Anna, we have no way of knowing how to help him. And if we kill him, wouldn’t that at least free his soul? Isn’t it trapped in this demon’s body now?”
Anna was still tapping the side of her water bottle, deep in thought. “Compromise,” she offered. “Give Colin and me a couple of months to try to turn up something on human possession, and if we’re still just as lost, you will never hear us argue about it again. I will destroy it myself with this utterly ridiculous energy crap that may or may not ever serve any other purpose.”
Dylan glanced back at Max and by the look on Max’s face, he wanted Dylan to take the deal. “Fine, Anna. Two months. And that’s only assuming none of us get into a life or death situation with this demon.”
Lacey marched into the center of the hunters and scowled at each of them. “What the hell are immortals?” she yelled again.
Luca raised an eyebrow at her. “People who fight for Heaven and can only be killed by demons.”
“You?” she asked incredulously.
“Um,” Colin stammered, “why don’t we head back to the cars?”
Luca was unconcerned though. “Sure.”
“So how old are you?” Lacey asked, her features mixing with apprehension and maybe even disgust as she recalled what she’d done the night before.
“Twenty-eight,” Luca told her, “just like I told you.”
Lacey put her hands on her hips and scowled at him, and Anna and Colin felt like they should walk back to the cars, but their feet wouldn’t cooperate. They watched the drama unfolding in front of them instead. “And how long have you been twenty-eight?”
Luca bit his lip. “Eh, I don’t actually know. Over six hundred years, but I don’t know what year I was born. Sometime in the 14th century.”
“Oh my God,” Lacey mumbled, backing out of the circle and away from Luca. And then Anna didn’t like feeling like she was ancient either, so she heard herself saying, “It’s not like our bodies age, you know. They stay exactly the same. He really is just like any other 28 year old.”
But Lacey had heard enough and started walking back to her car. Dylan shot Luca a nasty look and hissed, “That’s what you get for being dishonest,” then followed her toward the road.
“For the record,” Luca stated, “I never lied.”
“For the record,” Colin sighed, “I don’t give a shit.”
Max stuffed his hands into his pockets and watched Lacey and Dylan as they walked away. “I’m starting to wonder why I left Baton Rouge.”
Colin snickered and was about to offer a few good reasons to go back when he felt the unnerving sensation of something not belonging in this open field. Something had followed them here.
Anna had already grabbed her dagger and Dylan had stopped walking, having sensed the demon’s presence, too. He called to Lacey to grab her weapon but it was too late. She had separated herself from the other hunters and the demon singled her out, throwing its massive slate gray body at her and knocking her onto the hard rocky ground. Its bulbous form had transformed into a bear and it swiped at her with its long curved claws as she lay under it on the ground. They could hear her screaming as they ran toward the beast attacking her.
Dylan had been closer to her and reached the demon first, thrusting his knife into its back as it reached down to bite Lacey’s face. It let out a piercing scream and turned its chartreuse eyes on Dylan. It wouldn’t get off of Lacey though. It had her pinned to the ground and its claws were digging into her shoulders and legs. Anna and Colin could see the blood dripping from her University of Colorado t-shirt as they reached her.
“He hurt it with his knife,” Colin observed, reaching into the sheath on his belt for his knife, and stabbed it into the demon’s bear-like face. It was trying to bite Lacey again. A hot gush of fetid air rushed out of the wound he created. Dylan, Anna and Luca stabbed at the beast’s legs trying to f
orce it to remove its claws from Lacey’s body.
Colin thrust his knife under the demon’s neck and opened a long gash and a whistling leak of its rotten essence escaped. Lacey turned her face and closed her eyes. Max had finally caught up to them and helped them now, but the demon was losing its shape, its edges blurring from bear to a slate gray mist. “Max, get her out of here!” Colin shouted. Max reached underneath the misty form and grabbed Lacey’s bloody body, cradling her in his arms. The hunters sliced through the shrieking mist until it settled to the ground, nothing more than a powdery dust amidst the rocks and dirt around them.
But no one had time to appreciate the death of this demon. From the side of the road, they heard Max yelling, “Hurry! She’s not breathing!”
Chapter 7
Anna had just stepped out of the shower in their hotel room that evening when she heard Colin’s phone ringing. Luca had called to update them again on how Lacey was doing. The doctor that had just come by thought she would be able to go home in a few days. Luca had told the hospital staff they had been hiking when she stumbled across a mother bear and her cubs, and now warnings about black bears and what to do if you crossed paths with one were all over the news. At least the demon had chosen an animal indigenous to the region. They would have had a hell of a time trying to explain an attack by a lion or something.
Colin thanked Luca for the update then set his phone on the nightstand, yawning and mumbling about how he was sure this was all part of Hell’s plan to delay Luca’s trip to Caracas in order to find Andrew. Anna had heard this already. Both in her mind – at least a dozen times – and out loud.
“He’ll be leaving for Caracas in a few days. It’s not like getting plane tickets into Venezuela is that easy, you know. It wouldn’t have happened instantaneously, anyway,” Anna reminded him, for what felt like the millionth time.
Colin yawned again. This day had taken an enormous toll on all of them. “We should start looking for an apartment tomorrow. We need to find a place that will have a vacancy for Luca, too. He wants to stay in the same complex.”
Anna switched off the lamp and lay beside her husband. “So do you think Lacey has forgiven him for being ancient after saving her life and everything?”
Luca had been the one to perform CPR on her after she went into shock and her heart stopped beating. “I think she would have forgiven him anyway. Luca can be really persuasive when he wants to be.”
Anna couldn’t stop yawning either. She wanted to talk to Colin about this Immortal Luca’s angel had told them about, one they’d only met a couple of times, and the possibility of learning to control this gift, about the knowledge that someone else in the world had this particular blessing. But she closed her eyes and she must have fallen asleep because she was no longer in a hotel room in Boulder, Colorado but in Leipzig. French troops had just moved past the house where she and Colin were staying.
Napoleon’s forces had surrounded the city and everyone expected the coalition that had amassed against him to pursue him here. Colin and Anna had been following the French army for a few years now, and were hoping his crusade to conquer the rest of Europe was almost over. They were tired of the constant warfare.
“They’ll probably billet,” Colin told her, looking away from the window where he’d been watching the passing columns.
“They always do,” Anna replied. They were renting a room here. If soldiers came to this house and demanded a place to stay, they would be forced out.
Colin was about to curse the French – again – when he backed away from the window and grabbed his coat. “There are three demons following this column,” he told her.
Anna looked up from her book in surprise. Finding two together was somewhat common. But three? Demons were far too greedy and territorial to cooperate long enough to work together in one area, unless one of them was a superior and commanding the others. With three of them, it made it more likely there was a superior here. Anna tossed her book aside and hurried into her coat. Now that they were closer, she could feel them, and they were all lesser demons, but they were together and that suddenly made their job in Leipzig a hell of a lot more interesting.
She and Colin snuck out the back of the house to avoid detection by the passing French troops. The three demons, none of which were bothering with an Earthly form but drifted behind the soldiers in clouds of smoky amber, didn’t notice the hunters at first. Colin and Anna followed them and as they crept closer to the rear of the formation, the demons sensed the hunters’ presence and turned on them, morphing into perverted versions of rams and goats. Anna and Colin gripped their daggers tightly and prepared to fight one of the few uneven battles they’d ever encountered.
A strange whirring sound pulled Anna out of that narrow street in Leipzig, and in her dream, she looked around her, trying to place the source of this noise that was so out of place in 1813. This was not a sound that belonged here. But there was no here, now; she was surrounded by stark whiteness and nothing else. She felt Colin’s hand brush against the side of her face and she slowly opened her eyes, returning to the hotel room in Boulder and smiled at her husband, although the dream still bothered her, and the sound was gone.
“What was that?” Colin asked her.
Anna closed her eyes again. “Just a dream.”
“The Leipzig thing was a dream. I mean after that.”
The only way Colin would have known what she was dreaming about was if he’d been awake. Anna opened her eyes again to look at him. “You weren’t sleeping, my love?”
“I was, but something woke me up. Guess I was having a bad dream of my own. I woke up at the part where we started chasing those demons and they turned into animals. But then it was like … you were yanked out of the dream.”
Anna’s heart accelerated and she felt nauseated. “What did you see after that?”
“Nothing. I couldn’t even sense what you were dreaming about.”
Anna’s arm wrapped around Colin’s waist and she pulled herself closer to him. “Oh God, Colin,” she whispered, “what if he’s here? What if he’s still messing with my mind and can separate us again?”
Colin’s grip tightened around her. “It will never take you away from me again. Maybe it was just a …”
But Anna knew he couldn’t think of a reason he wouldn’t have been able to get sucked into that whirring white world without her. There was only one reason. One explanation. Her abductor had found her and was still preying on her mind.
Chapter 8
Colin didn’t sleep well the rest of the night. He kept waking to make sure Anna was still lying next to him, still sleeping and dreaming and that her dreams were only hers. And they must have been, because he couldn’t imagine any archdemon invading her thoughts and forcing her to dream about a carnival with a Ferris wheel whose cars were made from giant shoes. Colin was a little freaked out when she made him get in one anyway, and she didn’t even pick the sturdy looking work boot: they had to sit in the espradille. He was also certain the only reason he knew it was an espradille is that he was checking on Anna in her dreams and she knew what an espradille was.
In the morning, he called Dylan and Max and asked them if they wanted to look at apartments with them. Really, Colin and Anna just needed a ride. They’d lost their car in the attack outside of the Italian restaurant. Immortals needed a different kind of help from the angels who had made deals with them: because they didn’t age, they couldn’t hold a job for a long period of time, and once the modern era hit and employers insisted on all sorts of paperwork, they often didn’t work at all. So Anna and Colin had a bank account that mysteriously never emptied, but they’d never questioned it either. But they still didn’t have a car.
Max and Dylan agreed to pick them up and look at a few places, and it was Max’s idea to check the classified ads for someone selling a car who would be willing to take cash. Getting the title transferred would be easy. Money wasn’t the only thing that mysteriously appeared in their lives when t
hey needed it, like social security numbers and passports.
Dylan wanted to check out The Hill first, a trendy and beautiful area of the city next to the university. Colin and Max thought there were too many college kids there and didn’t want to be bothered by loud parties all the time. Colin may only look 26, but he felt like he hadn’t acted his age in … well, almost four hundred years. They ended up finding a complex they could all agree on for no other reason than the name: that day, they signed two leases on apartments in the Devil’s Thumb subdivision of Boulder, Colorado.
Colin put a down payment on a third for Luca and called him to tell him to come sign his lease before leaving for Caracas, because there was no way they were not going to living in a place called Devil’s Thumb.
Luca joined them at Old Chicago’s for lunch and it was only then Colin brought up Anna’s dream and how something had awakened him just in time to feel her slip away again. Anna explained the part of her dream Colin hadn’t been able to sense for himself, the odd whirring noise, the complete blinding whiteness around her. Luca drummed his fingers nervously on the table, watching Anna uneasily.
“I know what my angel said, but maybe I shouldn’t go to Caracas right now. I shouldn’t leave with something like this going on.”
Anna protested before he could even finish speaking. “No! You have to go. We need Andrew so he can help us learn how to use this gift or it’s useless to us. And I’m positive it’s the only way to destroy these archdemons or The Angel wouldn’t have chosen this gift. Please, Luca, just go and don’t worry about me.”
The look on Luca’s face told everyone at the table that was going to be impossible. He stopped drumming his fingers and sighed, “My sweet Anna, I’ll go, but … don’t go anywhere on your own. Not even with another hunter. Stay with Colin. If you can stay with Colin and several other hunters, even better.”
“I was with a bunch of hunters when I was abducted the last time, remember? And I still have no clue how that happened. I can’t remember any of it.”
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