The Immortals

by S. M. Schmitz

  Jeremy’s phone eventually interrupted their conversation and he stepped out of the living room to answer it. Without Jeremy in the room, the hunters lapsed into far less consequential topics, like LSU’s upcoming football season. Dylan was mid-argument as to why he thought LSU had a decent shot of making the playoffs this year, which everyone else thought was absurd considering that would put them in the top four teams of the country, when Jeremy returned, looking agitated and nervous.

  “You think you’re ok to go hunting, Anna?” he asked.

  Anna stood up. “Of course. What’s wrong?”

  Jeremy looked at each of the hunters in the room and shook his head sadly. “They haven’t stopped. There was a huge pile up on the new bridge with a chemical leak, and the whole interstate is shut down. No word on death toll yet, but they expect at least half a dozen people were killed. But the accident happened at the exact hour and minute the explosions at the plants occurred except this was in the afternoon rather than the morning. These bastards are still trying to pay us back.”

  Colin and Anna darted into her bedroom to grab their weapons. “Stay where I can see you,” Colin told her then quickly added, “Please.”

  Anna slipped her dagger into the sheath in her boot and smiled up at him. “You too, O’Conner. Don’t forget I’ve had to save you a few times before.”

  Colin kissed the top of her head and pulled his shirt over the hilt of his knife. “Believe me, I’ll never forget. And God, don’t start calling me O’Conner. It’s bad enough Jeremy does it.”

  Anna laughed despite the tragedy weighing on her mind, because Colin was back. Her Colin had returned, and she hadn’t even realized just how badly she’d missed him until now. They joined the other hunters waiting in the living room, and Jeremy looked at Colin expectantly.

  “I don’t think anyone would argue if I temporarily hand things over to you both. We’re out of our league here. And between you, you’ve got over seven hundred years of experience. I can’t compete with that. So what do you want us to do, boss?”

  “I was wrong,” Colin thought, “I preferred O’Conner.”

  Anna suppressed a smile. “It’s only right, Colin. Even if you don’t like the title. Nobody will be able to lead these hunters like you can.”

  Colin actually looked down at her even though no one else knew what they were discussing. “You could,” he insisted.

  “No, for most of our lives we had to hide how involved I was in any of this. I may be an excellent fighter, but as a woman, I was limited in what I could do off the battlefield.”

  Colin sighed because she was right. He’d organized and led hunters before, so he wasn’t reluctant to lead them now, but he didn’t want to do it without Anna this time. “Alright, Mrs. O’Conner, what now?”

  The other hunters were eyeing them, shuffling their weight between feet, waiting for this conversation to turn verbal so they could at least hear it. “No more splitting up,” Anna said. “If we can’t predict when they’re going to interfere with our senses, then we need to stay together. And we need to work only with those whose judgment we absolutely trust. We shouldn’t call Eddie or Tara or Adrián.”

  Dylan snickered. “If we’re only working with people whose judgment I trust, we’re limited to those who are already in this room.”

  Dylan had been joking – at least Colin thought he’d been joking – but Anna looked at him seriously. “Maybe that’s not such a bad idea.”

  Max startled. “There are only five of us. We worked with more than that in a group when we were just dealing with regular demons.”

  “But mistakes can be deadlier now more than ever,” Colin rebutted, and Anna noticed he was making less effort to hide his accent. That made her happy, too. Colin would never understand why she loved it so much, why she’d loved it even as a girl even though the rest of England treated him like he was inconsequential, a nuisance on the already crowded filthy London streets.

  Colin had watched with a detached amazement at the relatively new sense of pride in being Irish that had emerged in recent decades. He still struggled with his own heritage. He also didn’t get the “Kiss me I’m Irish” t-shirt Anna had gotten him, but when he wore it to bed, at least it worked.

  “We won’t be able to get near the bridge and the interstate is shut down. The surface streets will all be a mess. Where are we even supposed to look for these demons?” Jeremy persisted.

  “We don’t,” Anna answered. “We let them come looking for us.”

  Colin drove back out toward White Oak subdivision where they’d killed the archdemon and where Jas had been murdered. He had a hard time focusing on the road or what may eventually come looking for them this afternoon, and instead, his hand kept reaching over to find Anna’s; three months may as well have been three hundred years. Anna laced her fingers through his and watched him, allowing herself now to admire him, because there was no danger in temptation anymore. They were beginning to feel invincible again.

  As he parked behind Jeremy’s car in a vacant field with a “for sale or lease” sign stuck in the ground near the dirt driveway, Anna finally let go of his hand. Colin and Anna had always known they were different, unique, because of all the people in the world – even in the early seventeenth century – two people who could see the supernatural fell in love. When The Angel healed her, Anna didn’t have time for shock or uncertainty. The Angel needed to leave, and Anna had so many questions. She had been given the knowledge of the entire conversation with Colin, but Anna wanted to know if God had brought them together in the first place.

  The Angel just smiled down at her and laid a delicate hand on her head. “No, Anna. People love on their own, just as they hate on their own. But where you find love, you will find us. Where you find hatred, you will find them. You will spend your lives now surrounded by violence and suffering, but when you need to be reminded how much you’re loved, you will know where to find me.” Then The Angel had disappeared.

  Colin remembered this memory with her. They had both been so confused and uncertain as to how they would find her again, and what she’d meant by “where you find love.” Finding tragedy and instances of inhumanity was easy enough. Decades passed before they needed reassurance humans were worth saving after all.

  “So now we wait?” Jeremy asked.

  Colin broke away from his shared memory with Anna and nodded. “We suspect there are three archdemons, and any number of subalterns they want to conjure.”

  Max’s eyes narrowed in frustrated concentration. “Are you telling me these archdemons can create lesser demons from nothing? That all this time we’ve been killing these bastards, they’re just immediately replacing them?”

  “No,” Colin assured him, “they can’t be created from nothing, but they can be created. Sometimes, it’s the souls of humans who are convinced to work for a particular superior.”

  “And these superiors,” Max asked, “who are they?”

  “Haven’t they ever studied any theology or mythology at all?” Anna sighed.

  “Nobody ever seems to study anything anymore. Much easier to just Google something.”

  Aloud, Colin told him, “Fallen angels. It’s why they’re so powerful.”

  Anna shook her head, exasperated. “You fight these demons. Why have you never looked any of this up?”

  Max shrugged. “I was raised Baptist. I’ve heard all the stories in the Bible, I just never thought they were true.”

  Colin turned to watch a few cars passing on the road behind them. So far, those cars were the only sign they weren’t alone out here. “Some of the stories are true. Most aren’t. At least from what I can tell. If you ever get a chance to talk to an angel, you’ll find they aren’t exactly forthcoming with information, especially about Heaven or God. I tried asking her once which religion had gotten it right, and she told me all of them that taught love and forgiveness above all else.”

  Max wanted to ask something else, but Anna felt the creeping, not-belongi
ng sensation at the same time Colin did. Something was out of place here. Something had entered this space that didn’t belong in their world. Anna and Colin reached for their daggers, which alerted the other hunters a demonic presence was approaching. Only Dylan could feel it now. Max and Jeremy didn’t have their heightened awareness, but grabbed their daggers anyway.

  Colin and Anna felt the tingling in their fingers, spreading upward through their hands and arms and outward from their chests. Anna thought it felt like she’d downed a hot toddy, with that same pleasant warmth emanating throughout her body. But this wasn’t the effect of brandy; the gift The Angel had given them had awakened in the presence of this demon.

  Anna couldn’t suppress this smile. “They only thought we were badasses before. Wait until they find out what happens when they piss off Heaven.”

  Colin’s fingers twitched with anticipation. “Forget Heaven. Wait until they find out what happens when they piss off this husband.”

  Two shapes appeared near the line of trees at the edge of the empty lot, one orange-red and smoky, the other a cadet blue opaque silhouette. The blue gray shape surged toward them and Anna swiped at the shape with her dagger. It sliced into the side of the demon, which made a low growling moaning sound, but turned on her, its amorphous shape twisting into a long gray wolverine, its lips pulled back into a snarl over pointed teeth. The gash on its side still leaked the same putrid odor the demon from the apartment had been filled with, but just like that demon, this one wasn’t slowed down by its injury. It swiped at Anna with its hideously thick curved claws, but Colin dug his dagger into the beast’s other side. A flashing popping sound escaped and it snaked its head around to bite his arm.

  Anna pushed her dagger through the thick hide of its neck and although more of that noxious gas escaped, it turned on her, hissing and snapping those beige brown teeth, its jaws dripping slimy trails of yellow stench. Anna’s stomach turned. “Back up, Colin!”

  Colin stabbed it again to distract the demon then backed away from it, but he knew why Anna had asked him to get away from the monster, and he was ready to help her. This new power within them burst forward, and they felt the energy moving all around them. They watched as the hideous impersonation of a wolverine dissipated before them, even the odors blowing away into the atmosphere of the south Louisiana sky.

  But Colin and Anna both had the horrifying realization that this power wasn’t contained; it wasn’t directed just at the demon. Their fellow hunters had been behind them. They spun around but they were alone in the field.

  Chapter 18

  Anna’s heart started beating rapidly and the world started spinning around her. “No,” she breathed, “no, Colin, they wouldn’t do this to us. No.” She didn’t need to explain what she meant. He understood a gift that could so easily kill people was not a gift at all.

  “Dylan was in the room with me at the camp. He was ok. Maybe they’re …” But people don’t just disappear.

  Anna felt the panic rising within her. “Dylan!” she screamed. “Max! Jeremy!” She called their names over and over while turning in circles, scanning the grassy field around them.

  The ditch by the side of the road caught her attention. “Colin, oh God, Colin.”

  “I’ll go look,” he told her. Anna watched him as he approached the deep ditch and peered inside. She felt what he found before he could tell her, and she ran over to him, climbing down into the ditch, checking Dylan’s body even though he was conscious.

  “Careful, Anna, you’re a married woman.” Dylan’s voice betrayed his pain, but he was still teasing her.

  Anna sobbed in relief. “I thought you were dead!”

  Dylan groaned as he sat up. “Next time, just go ahead and kill me.”

  Colin had moved farther down the field where Jeremy’s body was curled inside the ditch. “He’s conscious. He may have a broken rib though.”

  Max had been thrown farther down the field and had landed in a muddy section of the ditch. He was scraped and battered, but got to his feet and sauntered to Colin’s side to help him get Jeremy back to one of the cars. None of them wanted to go to a hospital.

  “How the hell would we explain any of this?” Dylan asked. He winced as Anna lifted his arm and tried to clean some of the dirt and grass away from the laceration on his elbow.

  “If you need medical attention, what difference does it make?” Colin retorted. But the hunters refused, and Dylan insisted he wasn’t even that badly hurt and could still drive. As the injured hunters leaned against the cars, Jeremy looked at Colin and exhaled, “Tell me that was at least worth it. Did it kill them?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Good,” Jeremy winced as he tried to stand up straighter, “because that orangey bastard was kicking my ass.”

  Anna chastised him for trying to stand on his own and made him get in the backseat of the car with Max then she and Colin took them home and badgered them the entire time about reconsidering a doctor.

  Anna waited until they were alone in her apartment again to ask Colin about this new gift. “Do you think we can learn to control it?”

  “I hope so,” but he didn’t sound certain.

  “If we can’t, what good will it do us? We can’t ever use it again when others are around.”

  Colin nodded in agreement. They were lucky this time. Neither of them wanted to risk killing anyone. “It worked though. Maybe we should start hunting on our own.”

  They’d done it often before, throughout most of their lives actually, but never with three pissed off archdemons targeting them specifically. Anna shook her head. “The Angel said we’d need help. She wants us here, with this group.” And then Anna realized what might be so special about this place after all. “Maybe it’s not the city, Colin. Maybe these demons followed us here, and The Angel told us to come here because of who we’d meet. Maybe these hunters are the reason we’re in Baton Rouge.”

  Colin bit his lip, thinking about these three hunters in particular they’d almost killed earlier that day. He genuinely liked Dylan, and The Angel had singled him out, but Max and Jeremy? Especially Jeremy?

  “Colin,” Anna rebuked him, “you’re going to have to get over your jealousy. Jeremy will behave now.”

  Colin mumbled about how Jeremy had better behave now, and walked into her kitchen.

  “Um,” Anna stammered, “what are you looking for?”

  Colin glanced back at her. “It’s getting late. I was going to make us dinner.”

  Anna tried not to giggle. “Do you like frozen burritos?”

  Colin’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “Frozen what?”

  The laugh she’d been trying to hold in escaped. They’d gotten used to a lot of changes over the centuries, but their home had remained a constant place of tradition and normalcy for them. Anything that came out of a plastic wrapper was not traditional or normal. “You weren’t here, my darling. I had no intention of this apartment ever feeling like home without you in it.” And Anna stepped up on her toes to kiss her husband, who was 6’4” and not always so easy to reach.

  Colin pushed some of Anna’s dark hair away from her face and kissed her again, the affectionate and gentle kiss quickly transforming into one of those hungry, passionate kisses and Anna pressed her body as closely as she could to his, running her hands underneath his shirt and tracing the sinewy lines of muscle on his back. He had just pulled her t-shirt off when his phone rang. Anna told him to ignore it, and he certainly didn’t want to argue with his wife.

  It rang again, so Colin sighed and grabbed the phone with one hand while holding onto Anna with the other, still hoping it was a wrong number or some telemarketer trying to get him to take some survey he had no intention of taking. But it was Dylan, so Colin had to answer it.

  Anna didn’t need to wait for him to get off the phone to know they’d be leaving soon. Dylan had gone to Jeremy’s apartment to check on him, and they’d discovered something unusual on his body. Colin told them they’d be
there soon and resisted the urge to slam his phone on the counter.

  Anna smiled coyly at him. “It could be worse, Colin. At least you get to come home with me tonight.”

  Dylan answered Jeremy’s door and led them into his bedroom where Jeremy was lying on his side, watching television. When he saw Colin and Anna, he turned it off and motioned them closer. “Ever seen anything like this?” he asked, pulling the sheet off his torso. His side was badly bruised and Anna grimaced, immediately feeling guilty again, but that’s not what Jeremy had wanted to show them. An orange-red mark like a crescent moon was stenciled into his ribcage, its lines blurred, almost smoky in appearance, much like the other demon they’d seen on the horizon in the field that day.

  “Holy shit,” Anna thought. “Did we do this? When we … destroyed those monsters?”

  Colin was biting his lip again. “It’s possible.”

  Jeremy was looking between them. “So? Have you ever seen something like this?”

  He looked apologetically at Jeremy and told him, “Yes, we’ve seen it before.”

  Chapter 19

  Verdun, 1916. Colin listened as the whistling mortars crossed the air in the distance, followed by the deafening explosion, the ground shaking beneath his feet. He was far enough behind the battlefield that he wasn’t overly concerned about getting blown up, but this war was unlike any he’d witnessed before. If this was the future of warfare, then he was pretty sure all of humanity was completely and hopelessly damned.

  Anna had stopped to help an elderly woman picking dandelion leaves because food was scarce. They had been in this small village southwest of the battle lines for months now, but the lines hadn’t moved. There was no point in moving on as long as the western front remained entrenched here. With so much misery all around them, evil had found plenty of opportunities to exploit and Colin and Anna had been busy.