The Immortals

by S. M. Schmitz

  “Oh God,” Jeremy groaned, “don’t tell me hitting on somebody’s wife is on Heaven’s list.”

  Even Colin laughed, and Anna was filled with the hope he’d forgive Jeremy now. Because he really wasn’t such a bad guy, and Anna thought he was a damn good hunter when he wasn’t trying to flirt with her. “No, Jeremy, you’ll be fine. Your heart is usually in the right place. People make everything too complicated. It’s simple really. Love each other. Take care of each other. Help those who need it. All the other things religions get hung up on are the issues of humanity, not God.”

  Dylan took a deep breath and glanced at Colin before looking at Anna again. She was a lot more forthcoming than Colin had ever been, and the hunters had picked up on this. “So why is it we all knew about Colin and not you? Colin got all evasive and weird last night when I asked him. Course he’s usually weird and evasive, but damn, Anna, you’re just as good as he is. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Colin was in such a good mood that he didn’t mind Dylan’s jab about him being weird and evasive. Anna’s Colin wouldn’t have minded anyway, and that made her heart flutter with excitement. God, she had missed him so terribly. “Because I’m a woman, and for most of our lives, it was safer for us to hide my involvement in what we were doing. I traveled with him and just pretended to be his wife, not a fellow hunter, because even when women could see demons, they often weren’t allowed to hunt them. I could have stepped out of the shadows in recent years, but sometimes, I like the anonymity, so I convinced him to keep my involvement in hunting a secret.”

  Dylan’s confusion was clear, but it was Max who spoke first. “Jesus, Anna, you make it sound like you’re from the Dark Ages.”

  “Well, they’re not that far off,” Anna thought.

  “That’s a misnomer, you know. There’s no such thing as the Dark Ages. It was just a bunch of pretentious …”

  “Oh, Colin, rant about the Humanists later. Just tell them our own history.”

  Anna sat next to Colin and held his hand. “Well, my darling, you might as well tell them how I almost died and what you did to save me.”

  Colin looked down at her, and Anna felt it even then – all these years later. He’d make the same decision today, because he had no future without her. There was no life for him without Anna. Colin took a deep breath, and told his fellow hunters their story.

  Chapter 16

  London, 1647. Anna’s fever hadn’t broken in three days. Colin had brought the doctor to her bedside so many times over the past week, but he was insisting now there was nothing more he could do for her. A quarter of the city was sick with tuberculosis and Anna’s frailty, her weakened heart and body that had been so damaged by scarlet fever twenty-six years before, could not fight off consumption.

  Her mother came often, and helped Colin keep cool damp cloths around her face and body to try to control her fever, but Anna had been delirious for days. She often didn’t know who was in the room with her or why. Her coughing would seize her entire body, shaking her violently, and Colin could do nothing but stand by her side, wipe her mouth and face, and clean her as best as he could.

  Colin knew his wife was dying. He had lived with the fear of losing her for ten years, ever since he’d met the beautiful ivory-skinned, dark haired girl in the market who told him she’d defied the odds to live as long as she had. Her doctor didn’t think she’d live past six. He had lived these ten years feeling like he was on borrowed time, that any day God would call her home, and his angel would leave him, alone in a world that was frightening and desolate without her in it.

  That day had finally come. Colin kept water boiling on the stove then set the wet rags out on the railing so the cold December air could chill them. He brought the damp rags to Anna’s bedside and replaced the hot cloths. He tried to do it gently because she was sleeping now, and he didn’t want to wake her. She was so hot. Her breathing was shallow and phlegmatic. The doctor didn’t think she’d make it through the night.

  Colin hadn’t slept much in days, but how could he? His wife was dying. He was certain he must be dying with her. He brought the hot, dry rags back to the kitchen and tossed them in the boiling water. From the bedroom, Anna started coughing again. Painful, throaty, heaving coughs that tore apart whatever heart Colin had left. He couldn’t listen to his wife’s prolonged and agonizing death anymore. He needed to escape. He needed a miracle.

  He thought about running out of his home then, running away from London, maybe returning to Ireland, going anywhere that he wouldn’t have to hear the haunting sounds of his love slowly suffocating, strangled by a disease he couldn’t fight against. But he stepped outside and grabbed a cold rag from the railing on the steps and brought it to her, wiping her face, and as the tears fell from his own eyes, he told her the story about the day he met the girl he knew he’d marry.

  He’d gone to the market as a favor for the woman he was renting a room from. She’d written down exactly what she wanted from the butcher there because she apparently still didn’t believe a poor Irish boy could be literate. But Colin had simply taken the note from her and promised her he’d give it to the butcher. He’d read it as she was writing it out, of course, and he didn’t think there was anything terribly difficult about remembering three lamb shanks and two links of pork sausage. He also thought he was getting kind of hungry.

  As soon as he entered the butcher’s shop, he handed him the note and the money from his landlady, and stepped back from the counter to wait. He’d discovered a lot of Englishmen tended to think the Irish were thieves. The butcher wrapped the meats and handed them to Colin and he turned to leave, relieved to be away from the distrusting stare of the grumpy butcher. It was never much fun to be scrutinized by a large man holding a meat cleaver.

  It was then he met Anna who was about to enter the same shop he was leaving. Colin had just stepped onto the sidewalk when Anna approached the door and she almost walked into him. She backed away politely and apologized, but Colin’s mind had gone blank. He was convinced he’d just run into an angel on a dirty, smelly street in London while holding a stack of bloody meats.

  He wanted to talk to her, introduce himself, tell her it was his fault and he should have been paying more attention when he walked out of the shop, anything. But if he spoke, she would know the truth about him. Perhaps, he thought, it would be better for her to think he was rude or just stupid than to know the truth. So he didn’t say anything. He smiled and nodded at her and was going to keep walking, but Anna stopped him.

  “Did you just move into this neighborhood?” she asked. London was a big city, a crowded city, and there were always new people moving into it. Colin wasn’t sure why she would ask him a question like that, if he had said or done something incredibly inappropriate or offensive, and he felt his cheeks flushing. He bit his lip and looked down at the sidewalk.

  “Yes, a couple of months ago.” And he heard it, that damn accent that had done nothing but caused everyone here to treat him like he was a thief, an idiot, a beggar.

  He expected her to turn away from him and walk into the butcher’s shop now, but she stayed on the sidewalk with him. “Oh, are you from Ireland?” She didn’t make it sound pejorative; it was just a question.

  Colin nodded, still too ashamed to speak in front of her. “I’m Anna.”

  Colin told her his name then she asked him what he was doing in London, if he liked it here, if he missed his home or his brothers, and never once, did she talk down to him or make him feel like there was something wrong with him because of where he’d been born and raised. They both had people waiting on them, though, but before Anna went inside the butcher’s shop, she made Colin promise he’d call on her the next day. And Colin knew it could be disastrous, but he was pretty sure he was already halfway in love with this angel he’d just met on the street outside of a butcher’s shop in London.

  Anna’s fever seemed to be getting worse. She didn’t even know he was there. But Colin kept talking to her, and cle
aned the sweat from her forehead and neck and described the times he’d visit her at her parent’s house, the way they’d sit across from each other in the parlor, trying to be proper and polite, but after a while, his presence in their home became accepted. They were still careful not to touch each other too much, but they moved closer to one another, talked with more familiarity.

  Colin reminded her of the trip to the lavender fields when he first told her he’d been saving so he could ask her to marry him. Four months later, he approached her father and told him about the second job he’d taken to save enough money for a nice flat for Anna and to pay for her doctor, and he asked him if he could marry his daughter. And that middleclass Anglican Englishman smiled at this once poor, Catholic Irish boy and told him if he made his daughter happy, he had his blessing.

  Colin replayed all of those memories for her, but Anna never registered recognition of any of them. He was talking to a ghost. When the latest coughing fit passed and her body stilled again, he left her bedside with the filthy rags and threw them away. He meant to walk to the steps outside to retrieve the cold cloths for her, but he never made it. His legs collapsed beneath him and his body trembled with his overwhelming grief as he cried for the woman dying in their bed. He could do nothing now except pray.

  Colin had been saying lots of prayers throughout the past week, but he had nothing now except prayer. He didn’t even know what to pray for. He prayed that God would end her suffering. He prayed that God would end his own. He prayed for a miracle. Colin didn’t know how long he stayed on his knees in the parlor in his flat, crying and praying, pleading and begging, offering his life instead of hers. It must have been a long time; another coughing spell hit Anna, but Colin couldn’t move. He couldn’t stand. He knew he should go check on her, but he was unable to leave the place where he’d fallen. He had nothing left to give her. He remained on his knees and kept praying. He just wanted to die with her.

  At some point during the night, Anna’s scratchy ragged breaths grew more desperate and Colin, still on his knees in his parlor crying and praying, thought surely, this night would kill them both. He had given up. He hadn’t run away to Ireland or fled London or his home with Anna, but he’d escaped all the same. He couldn’t go to her bedside again. He was too weak. In the end, he’d failed her.

  Colin felt a hand on the back of his head, a gentle touch, a comforting presence. He flinched from the unexpected contact and looked up to see her for the first time. He thought he was hallucinating, that the torment of Anna’s suffering, the knowledge of losing her, had driven him to insanity, because standing in front of him was a young woman with long pale yellow hair the color of wheat and soft gray eyes that exuded kindness and love. Colin decided if he was hallucinating, this wasn’t such a bad thing to hallucinate, because he was sure she was an angel, and he immediately felt calmer, more peaceful in her presence. And he hoped she’d come to take them both.

  “Colin,” even her voice projected that tenderness and compassion, “she doesn’t have much longer.”

  Colin stared up at her with so much faith and hope. “You’ve come to save her?”

  The Angel eyed him seriously. “I’ve come to offer you a deal. You and Anna are special. You can sense evil in this world, which means you can fight it and kill it. I can restore her health, but it will change you both. I will give you gifts to help you, but you will have to agree to fight against this evil for five hundred years.”

  Colin shook his head. He was most certainly hallucinating. And this hallucination didn’t even make any sense. He wondered if hallucinations ever made any sense though. “How are we supposed to fight something we can’t see? And five hundred years? We’ll be dead long before then.”

  Anna’s coughing forced The Angel to look away from Colin. Her pale gray eyes filled with worry and mercy. “You will see them, Colin. They are demons and they’ll take many forms. I will give you and Anna the ability to know what the other is thinking, as well as the speed and strength you will need to fight these demons. And you and Anna will live, because for the next five hundred years, you will be immortal.”

  Colin couldn’t even understand what The Angel, this apparition or delusion of his deranged mind, was trying to tell him. He had been praying for a miracle, but surely this was not it.

  “You must hurry, Colin,” The Angel continued. “She doesn’t have much time. You will need to make a decision quickly.”

  Anna gagged, choking on whatever she was trying to cough up. Colin forced himself to his feet and stumbled to the bedroom where Anna’s ragged breaths were shallow and irregular. He watched as she struggled to take those last breaths, and he turned to The Angel and asked her, “We’d be together, for all five hundred years? Do you promise?”

  The Angel nodded. “Yes, you will be together. Always.”

  Colin looked back at his wife, so close to leaving this world now, and touched her pale thin hand, hot and trembling. “Save her then. We’ll do whatever you want.”

  And Colin sealed their servitude for half a millennium in their London bedroom in 1647.

  Chapter 17

  The hunters stared silently at Colin as he finished his story. He couldn’t blame them for the expressions on their faces that insisted they were sitting in a room with a crazy person. Dylan, though, had seen The Angel and he had been blessed by her, too. He was the first of the hunters to take a deep breath and speak.

  “So, you’re like, almost four hundred years old?” Colin and Anna nodded in acknowledgment. Dylan thought for a few moments then added, “Doesn’t life ever get boring?”

  Anna laughed. “Not when you’re traveling all over the world fighting creatures of Hell.”

  The corners of Max’s eyes wrinkled as he looked between Anna and Colin. “Don’t you ever get tired of each other?”

  “No,” they replied at the same time. And it was true. Colin was certain he could spend eternity on this planet with Anna. He was counting on spending eternity with her elsewhere.

  “What happens at the end of your deal? When you’ve served five hundred years?” Dylan asked.

  Colin shrugged a shoulder, although truthfully, he’d started looking forward to it about a hundred years ago. “We finally get to die. Together.”

  “That’s it?” Dylan asked incredulously. “Fight scary-ass minions of Hell for us for five hundred years, then just die? You don’t even get to grow old together?”

  Anna smiled at him. “We’ve lived so many lifetimes together. We still have a few to go. Just because our bodies haven’t changed doesn’t mean we haven’t. And I was about to die and leave my husband a widower at 26. We were given the chance to be together in this life far longer than anyone else. We’re not the only immortals, but we’re the only couple, and that makes us far more blessed than any other living human. Can you imagine being a servant of Heaven but being alone through this?”

  Dylan sighed and shook his head. “I can’t imagine living to 90, let alone five hundred. Just seems they could give you the rest of your lives the way they should have been, that’s all.”

  “The way it should have been would have meant my wife died of pneumonia in 1647. And that’s why we’re here now,” Colin reminded him.

  Dylan was about to argue with him, but Jeremy stopped him. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and studied Colin closely. “Why do you think you’re here then? Why Baton Rouge?”

  Colin shook his head. “Don’t know. In the past, demons congregated where humans were already causing a lot of suffering. It was easy work for them. But nothing unusual is going on here. It’s just one more reason all of this doesn’t make any sense. We shouldn’t have lost our telepathy in the woods, we shouldn’t have lost our ability to feel these demons’ presence, they shouldn’t be getting stronger and faster than us, and they sure as hell shouldn’t have been able to abduct Anna. Nothing human can kill us, but these demons …”

  “In other words, we’re screwed,” Max sighed, interrupting him.r />
  “We can’t let them believe that,” Anna told Colin. “You know what happens when people abandon hope.”

  “There are rules,” Colin explained, “and these rules have governed this game between Heaven and Hell for thousands of years. They can’t be broken, but they can be bent, and Hell has figured out how to bend them. So we have to figure out how they’re doing it and stop them.”

  “What rules?” Jeremy asked, his forehead creased in confusion and concern, because this was not the reassurance the hunters had been looking for.

  “You already know some, like how Hell can’t take a soul without the owner’s permission. Angels can’t kill, which is why they aren’t involved in this directly, so there was a compromise. A small number of humans would have the ability to see demons when they stepped on the Earth, and they would be able to destroy them. Taking away a human’s ability to sense a demon is bending the rules, because it’s not permanent. We can still do it, but they’re interfering with our senses somehow.”

  “Wait,” Dylan interjected, “does this mean angels who come to Earth can be killed then, too?”

  Colin and Anna glanced at each other. These poor creatures were defenseless. “Yes,” Anna finally said. “Same rules apply. The same humans who can see demons can see angels, and could theoretically kill one. But demons can kill angels, too.”

  “Shit,” Dylan sighed again, sinking back into the sofa. Colin understood his reaction. Anyone who had ever met an angel would want to protect it.

  The hunters had so many questions, and Colin and Anna tried to answer them all, but they were mostly concerned about what was happening in Baton Rouge, and they felt just as lost as the others. As the afternoon wore on, Colin became aware of Anna’s increasing pleasure and satisfaction that he was gradually acting more like himself and not the man he’d become without her. And Anna had missed him so much. He held onto her hand and would occasionally remind her, in that silent way of theirs, how completely he loved her.