Devil's Thumb

by S. M. Schmitz

  Anna heard Colin warning her not to say it, but she ignored him. “How long ago was this? For all you know, you did ruin her life because no one would marry her after she slept with you.”

  Colin’s voice sighed in Anna’s head. “I am ten seconds away from leaving.”

  “Not true,” Luca argued, “I wasn’t the first man she’d slept with and I’m sure I wasn’t the last. No one married her because she claimed she could speak to the dead, like a medium or something.”

  Colin stopped chastising Anna in his mind and actually focused on Luca. “Wait, how do you know she couldn’t?”

  Luca laughed then realized Colin was serious. “Oh. Because it’s not possible...” But Luca’s voice trailed off as he realized Anna and Colin were basically doing just that. “Ok, but lots of people have claimed to be psychics or mediums or whatever, and they’re most certainly just cons. Or crazy.”

  “Or,” Colin retorted, “we’ve always assumed we’re so damn smart because we can see demons and angels, but we don’t understand even a fraction of what’s possible in this world.”

  Dylan nodded in agreement. “I don’t know about your ex-girlfriend, but I know until a couple of months ago I never thought angels walked around this planet like demons, I never would have thought there were immortal people here, and I sure as hell would have never thought we could have powers like the kind I have or have seen. And now Jas and Max have figured out how to do this dream-stalking thing.”

  Even Andrew was starting to waffle and he played with his coffee mug as he watched the exchange among the other hunters. “So we keep an open mind from now on. We obviously need to, because we’re all at a loss right now. Still doesn’t make this purgatory, though, Colin. Far from it.”

  “No such thing anyway,” Luca added. “And this is coming from someone who’s been Catholic since before the Reformation. But the Church got this one wrong.”

  Anna reached for her medallion again and Andrew gave her another sympathetic smile. She wondered how many times St. Casimir had offered him consolation during these long years as a hunter. But then she started thinking about St. Casimir himself, and the Church and being sanctified and the contrivances of men that so many people still held sacred. “Maybe they got everything wrong. Or not everything but most things. How would we know?”

  Luca had been mid-sip again and for the second time, his hand froze in the air as if his body couldn’t understand the question anymore than this brain. “Now’s not exactly a great time to be questioning your faith, Anna. Not when there are a group of pissed off archdemons that have you at the top of Hell’s hit list.”

  Anna kept her fingers around the image of St. Casimir, though, and kept her eyes on Luca. “But we know there’s no such thing as purgatory. We know there’s no such thing as damnation. A person makes a choice. They choose good or evil. And we know wherever humans are causing more suffering, these demons congregate and are stronger. We always assumed we humans were the pawns in this game, but what if we’re the ones controlling it? What if it’s people who make Heaven or Hell more powerful depending on the choices we make and they’re the ones who are pawns in our game?”

  All of the hunters stared silently at Anna, and even Colin’s mind became quiet. Luca, their oldest friend and leader who had trained every Immortal still alive, finally set his cup down and shook his head slowly as he thought about what Anna was suggesting. “If that’s the case, my dear friend, we’re fighting a war we can never win.”

  Chapter 18

  Anna and Colin knew they were going to have to get used to functioning on little sleep now, but they were both tired and cranky by that afternoon as they met Andrew in another empty field to practice using this power neither of them wanted to practice using. Luca and Dylan were a few miles away, as Luca trained Dylan how to use his new speed and strength. It wasn’t an entirely new gift to Dylan, but he’d been given those gifts as a mortal in order to help find Anna after she was abducted. Now, with five hundred years of hunting looming ahead of him, he would need to know how to use them as expertly as the others.

  Anna covered her mouth as she yawned again and tried to apologize to Andrew through her weary breath, but he hadn’t slept much either. He may not have demons haunting his dreams, but the loss of Lacey and Max weighed on him heavily, too. He had just confided to Colin that he felt responsible for what happened because he hadn’t done more to stop the demon that was attacking Anna; he’d hesitated and been far too unsure of himself, and he’d left Colin no choice but to save his wife the only way he knew how.

  Andrew’s confession had led to several minutes of the two men arguing about whose fault yesterday’s tragedy wasn’t before Anna stopped them. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, it was nobody’s fault except the demon’s! Can we practice now?” Anna felt like she was yelling. She didn’t usually yell at people, especially her husband, but she was so tired and she was getting a headache. She was already wondering if they could stop on their way back to Devil’s Thumb to get that Demon Ale Dylan wanted. This time, she wasn’t turning it down.

  Andrew motioned to the plastic buckets and reminded them what Dylan had suggested right before Jeremy had shown up on the horizon. Since Heaven had always intended for them to work together, perhaps he’d been wrong in directing them to practice separately and they should learn to control this gift together, too. Colin and Anna concentrated on the plastic cylinders in the distance then watched them splinter into tiny fragments. The pebbly dust on the ground swirled in angry tornadoes where the buckets used to stand.

  Anna thought about asking Andrew if they could call it quits for the day. This was only the first set of buckets they’d destroyed. “Anna, come on. We can learn how to control it. Andrew’s already running out there to replace the targets.”

  “Where are they getting all these buckets anyway?” Anna folded her arms again and she felt like she was pouting. She wondered if she looked like she was pouting.

  “Yes.”

  “Colin…”

  “You were wondering, just trying to be helpful. And I don’t know where all the buckets are coming from. Luca’s getting them from somewhere. He’s probably got another half-crazy girlfriend stashed somewhere who hoards used five gallon buckets.”

  Anna giggled because with Luca, there was no telling. “Some of these look new. I think he’s buying them.”

  Andrew jogged back to their sides and motioned to the row of orange buckets he’d just laid out. “Ok, this is probably only going to make sense to Colin and I didn’t want to say this in front of you, Anna, but … when I was practicing, I used the same kind of … stamina tricks. You know, distractions...”

  Colin snorted and eyed the buckets in the distance then shrugged. “I don’t think that’s going to help Anna.”

  Anna shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve known every thought that’s gone through your head for 368 years. I think I know what Andrew’s talking about.”

  Andrew actually blushed and kicked at the ground, leaving shallow ruts where his boots slid back and forth. “Well, try it then.”

  Colin thought for a few moments. “Basically, we just need to focus on anything that’s not related to what we’re doing, but it really needs to keep our minds engaged. Like a real problem or something, not just if Luca really has a crazy bucket hoarding girlfriend.”

  Anna nodded in agreement even though she was kind of curious about Luca’s current list of lovers, considering he’d just added Lacey to that list and they’d buried her in a different prairie the day before.

  “That’s not helping, Anna. Think of something besides our dead friends.”

  “Sorry,” she mumbled aloud. “What about a memory? We get pulled into memories together. They can be really distracting.”

  Colin liked her idea and searched for one that would keep both of their minds on the past and not on those ridiculous orange buckets on the horizon. He brought them to South Africa. Anna traveled with him to the turn of the 20th century where her
native homeland, which had turned itself into the world’s largest empire, was attempting to usurp the two last strongholds of Afrikaaner power and semi-independence in South Africa. By the time Colin and Anna arrived, the British had already adopted their scorched earth policies and erected concentration camps for the native Afrikaaners. Starvation and disease epidemics were ravaging the mostly women and children who had been herded into these camps, and even though it wouldn’t be the last time Colin and Anna witnessed humans corralled into camps in deplorable conditions, it was the first. And Anna never forgave her country for it.

  They had heard of something similar happening in Cuba and the Philippines, but they hadn’t seen it themselves. Walking past the rows of tents and makeshift huts with emaciated corpses dying from outbreaks of typhus and measles, Anna and Colin forgot why they had come to South Africa in the first place. The Angel had told them a vicious war was being fought here and Hell was taking over. They sensed demons around them, but neither would draw their weapons or search for them. There were far too many children lying on cots, their bodies bloated from starvation, their skin bearing the obvious signs of disease and impending death. Anna had stolen a nurse’s uniform and Colin had stolen one from a British solider, and no one questioned them as they walked among the crowded aisles to offer what help they could.

  As night fell, they could no longer ignore the demons lurking around the camp and they were forced to abandon the children they could do nothing to save. The evidence of the camps’ conditions hadn’t reached England yet; the outrage that would erupt over these people’s neglect would eventually change what was happening here, but Anna and Colin had no way of knowing that at the time. And Colin and Anna had channeled their anger and disgust into hunting every demon that prowled on those abandoned souls. It was a busy night for them.

  Somewhere in this memory, Colin had reached into Anna’s mind just long enough to suggest they try again. As they both remembered pursuing a slate blue lion around the perimeter of the camp, they targeted the orange plastic buckets in the distance. They splintered apart and Anna immediately dropped the memory and kicked a rock in her frustration. But Andrew was unperturbed. “Hey, it’s fewer pieces than last time. That’s progress.”

  Colin watched him as he ran back to the line of destroyed orange buckets and sighed as soon as he was out of earshot. “Perhaps a memory that doesn’t piss us off would have been better.”

  “I’ll come up with the next one,” Anna suggested. She didn’t think it was the memory itself that had caused them to fail – again – but the difficult nature of trying to channel the energy that was all around them. Andrew trotted back to them, smiling and encouraging them to try the same thing. He seemed to think the pieces were definitely larger which meant they were getting closer to being able to knock the buckets over without obliterating them, and once they could do that, they could move on to keeping the energy they were wielding in a single direction rather than arcing out around them.

  Colin grinned at Anna as she tried to think of a memory that didn’t involve them seeing humans being hurt, killed or mistreated. She finally decided to skip their immortal lives. There weren’t many memories in those three and a half centuries that didn’t involve human misery. Instead, she held onto the first memory that crept into her mind from their mortal lives, the Christmas she gave him the St. Augustine medallion he still wore around his neck.

  They had just gotten back from her parent’s house where they’d had dinner on Christmas. Her father had a few too many glasses of brandy and they’d listened as quietly and patiently as they could to him ranting about the Stuarts and how they would be the downfall of England, and the Scottish crown should have never been combined with the English one anyway. Colin fidgeted with his brandy glass but hardly touched the drink. He’d heard this rant from his father-in-law often enough before and agreed the Scots should have remained separate, but he was Irish and he wanted them both out of his country. No Englishman was going to agree with him on that though, and he would never argue with Anna’s father.

  By the time they got home, they were both tired and the cold damp London air was making Anna’s breathing difficult and painful. She was prone to bouts of pleurisy and felt the inflammation creeping up on her again on the heels of the illness she had recently gotten over, but she was trying not to show Colin that she was hurting. He worried too much about her. But Colin always watched her so carefully; he knew anyway, and led her into their bedroom where he started a fire and made her sit down in front of it then he covered her in blankets and wouldn’t listen to her protests. Anna wanted to get up because she had one more gift to give him.

  The concern on Colin’s face as he disappeared into the kitchen to make her some tea almost made Anna stay in the chair as he’d asked her. But the little square box she’d carefully wrapped and hidden under the pile of sewing she would get to one of these days was waiting for her. She tossed the blankets aside and stepped silently across their bedroom floor to the table in the corner and reached under the pile of clothes, her fingers grasping the box, and she pulled it out just as she heard Colin coming back.

  She wouldn’t make it back to the chair by the fireplace and underneath the blankets in time; he caught her standing near the bed and she put her hands behind her back and smiled at him slyly. He smiled back at her, but he still looked worried. “Anna,” he began, but she stopped him.

  “I had to. I have one more present for you.”

  “I could have gotten it,” he told her. He’d walked back to the chair and straightened the blankets, waiting for her to sit back down. Anna wouldn’t comply until she’d given him the gift she’d looked all over London for. She shook her head at him, still offering him the same smile that told him she was secretly proud of herself for something. Colin gave up.

  “You sit,” she commanded. Colin sat down on the edge of the bed.

  She sat next to him and handed him the box and watched him with the excited anticipation of knowing she’d found some small way to remind her husband that she loved him just as he was, just as he’d always been. He’d never have to change for her. Colin pulled the medallion out of the box and flipped it over, reading the Latin inscription on the back. “Rome has spoken; the case is finished.”

  Colin looked up at his wife. They both knew Augustine had never actually said it, but it didn’t matter. It was a statement of support for the papacy. A support of Catholicism at a time when being Catholic in England was tantamount to treason. “How did you find this?” Colin asked her.

  Anna’s smile broadened and she tilted her head at him. “I can have my secrets.”

  “Secrets that could get you accused of being Catholic?”

  Anna just shrugged. “I married one.”

  Colin’s eyes danced from the way Anna was teasing him now; God, he loved her so much. “I converted, remember?”

  “For my parents. Not for me. You’ll never have to change anything for me, Colin Aedan O’Conner.”

  Colin hid that medallion for many years before Anna convinced him they were immortal now; he should wear it without fear. He had worn it ever since.

  Colin had been so caught up in remembering this Christmas from so long ago that he’d forgotten about the orange buckets in the distance. He could feel the medallion against his chest as Anna pulled him through this Christmas and the pride he’d felt that his wife had found this symbol of her acceptance of him. Even though he always wore the St. Augustine medallion now, he rarely thought of that Christmas anymore. There had been so many since then. But remembering it with Anna now made it seem like they were both in their London flat, his concern about the chest pain he knew was bothering her again temporarily dissolving as she rested her head against his shoulder and he put his arms around her, telling her it was the most thoughtful gift anyone had ever given him.

  Anna waited until that moment, right before he insisted she sit in the chair by the fire again as the teakettle began whistling on the stove, to remind Colin
about the buckets. She didn’t give him much time to react; there was no countdown or strategizing this time, and Anna closed her eyes as the buckets once again blew apart. Andrew didn’t hesitate. He ran over to the line of orange debris and Colin reached for Anna’s hand, bringing it to his lips. “Don’t give up so easily. How long did it take you to find this medallion anyway?”

  Anna sighed and opened her eyes. It had been so long ago, she wasn’t even sure anymore. “A few months. I finally met a couple who had just moved to London from Avignon, and I bought it from the wife. Before that, I’d been asking some Catholics in the city but no one wanted to try to track one down for me no matter how much money I offered them.” Being Catholic wasn’t actually illegal in England, but there was so much anti-Catholicism, men feared they could lose their jobs and reputations if they were practicing Catholicism in secret. French immigrants were less likely to have the same kind of reservations, since everyone expected them to be loyal to the papacy anyway.

  “Three months to track down one gift for me. So when did you become so impatient Mrs. O’Conner?”

  Anna smiled up at Colin. “About the same time I realized I could microwave frozen burritos.”

  Andrew had reached the remnants of the buckets and held a chunk of bright orange up for them to see. “Hey!” he called to them. “Definitely bigger!”

  “See? It’s working. But we’re still not buying any frozen burritos.”

  “Coward.”

  She’d never even gotten Colin to try one. She thought she may have better luck going back to France and scavenging for dandelion leaves than getting Colin to eat anything that came out of the freezer in a plastic wrapper.

  Andrew was about to set out another row of the same kind of bright orange plastic buckets when his phone rang. Colin and Anna watched him as he listened, then exchanged some sort of animated conversation before looking over his shoulder at Colin and Anna. He picked up the new buckets and walked back to them instead. “Apparently, we’re done for the day. That was Luca. He just heard from one of the hunters Lacey used to work with, and there’s a demon prowling the streets in Gunbarrel. We need to get back to Boulder.”