Gradually, the memories of being in the demon’s apartment that afternoon were coming back to her, and she started moaning, but Colin knew it wasn’t from pain. She wasn’t in pain anymore. She was only disoriented and confused.
“Anna, my love, open your eyes, you’re alright now. You’re home.”
Anna’s eyes fluttered open, her dark brown eyes meeting his and Colin had to concentrate on his breathing, his heartbeat, anything to keep from crying now. He didn’t want to upset her.
Anna offered him a weak smile. “I must be getting old.”
Colin kissed her forehead. He wouldn’t allow himself to do anything else. Not now. “No, they’re getting stronger. Faster. Neither of us are keeping up the way we should.”
“Do you think that means we can stop?” Anna asked, and Colin felt his heart shatter, a painful bursting in his chest. “I didn’t mean it that way, Colin.”
Anna tried to sit up, but he wouldn’t let her.
“Rest. You’re almost healed. And you know what happens…”
“I know,” Anna assured him, and she reached out and touched his face, tracing the lines of his jaw with her fingers.
Colin knew he needed to leave. It was dangerous to stay any longer now that she was awake. Anna understood that, too.
Colin went back to his own apartment and pulled out his tablet again. With trembling fingers, he described the demon’s initial presence, its transformation when it was injured, its ability to keep fighting even through those gaping wounds. And even though each touch of his keypad made that hollow burning ache in his stomach worsen, he detailed the way it had grabbed Anna and held onto her, how she couldn’t even fight back through her pain. When he was finished, he tossed his tablet on the sofa beside him and went to bed.
But Colin couldn’t fall asleep that night. He kept seeing Anna being dragged underneath that demon over and over and over in his mind, and no matter how many times he told himself she was fine, she was alive, she was healing, he couldn’t stop feeling like he’d come so close to losing her. Because it shouldn’t have happened. None of this should be happening to them.
It was after midnight when he decided trying to fall asleep was pointless, no matter how much his body was begging him for it. His mind simply wouldn’t allow it. He grabbed his laptop to do some research on this particular demon they had encountered today – it was unusual for the energy within them to have such a potent odor. Maybe that could provide some clue as to what the hell was going on in Baton Rouge with these bastards.
The breaking news headline on his homepage stopped him from doing any research on overly smelly demons that night. Another plant, another explosion, another hard to control fire. Colin grabbed his phone and called Jeremy. For the second night in a row, he woke him up with news of an explosion, more people dead, more hurt, all because of them. These archdemons weren’t screwing around.
“Colin, what the hell did you expect them to do?” Jeremy was angry, but Colin wasn’t sure if it was at him or just at their hopeless situation.
“This is high profile. This is uncharacteristic. I don’t know. Everything about this place has been… strange.”
That’s a damn brilliant explanation, Colin thought bitterly.
“I don’t know what to do,” Jeremy admitted. He sounded defeated already.
Colin took a breath, trying to reason with himself, talk himself out of saying the words he knew were coming, but there was no reason, no logic, no compelling argument against it. He had to say it.
“We go looking for them tomorrow. During the day. We’ll at least have the advantage of daylight. And we keep hunting for them from sunup to sundown until we find these bastards.”
Jeremy was thoughtful for only a few seconds before telling Colin, “I’ll call the others and let them know.”
Demons weren’t weaker during the day or anything, but they were usually more cautious, not to mention it was a hell of a lot easier for hunters to see them during the day. So maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe they’d even get lucky and be able to isolate them, fight them one at a time rather than trying to take on an entire group of archdemons. Colin agreed to meet Jeremy at their headquarters downtown in the morning, then turned the light back off on the lamp next to his bed and tried again to fall asleep.
It must have worked, because he was suddenly running down a cobblestone street littered with broken glass and bricks. Whirling buzzing noises above him occasionally sent him ducking into hollow buildings, but as soon as it passed, he stepped into the street again and kept running. He had to hurry back to her. He’d left her alone with a woman who was dying to try to find help, but from what he could tell, there wasn’t much left of this city. And the Russians were coming.
Another bomb made that whistling sound in the sky and he jumped into a different abandoned building. Only this one wasn’t abandoned like he’d thought. He heard the shuffling of feet, the simultaneous clicking of the hammers on the revolvers behind him. Colin put his arms above him and turned around slowly. They were only boys. He swallowed the dusty saliva that had collected in his mouth from running down these broken shattered streets. His German wasn’t very good but they’d be able to tell he wasn’t Russian. The tallest boy looked at him closely then looked at the others, shaking his head.
“He doesn’t look Russian. Think he’s British?”
Colin flinched. He’d never be British. One of the other boys, who didn’t look more than ten, yet still had a revolver aimed at Colin’s chest, nodded his little head in agreement. “A British spy probably.”
“I’m Irish. And not a spy. I was an immigrant. I moved here before the war started. I’m just trying to get back to my flat.” Colin realized the Irish distinction had virtually no meaning anymore, and if these boys had studied history or geography at all, they would know that. But he’d spoken without thinking. He was saved though by something that pulled their attention away from the Irish-British-spy.
Outside, a different thundering rumbling sound distracted them all. The boys lowered their guns to run over each other as they hurried to a window to look down the street.
“Tanks! Fucking tanks!” the tall boy shouted.
Colin picked up the small package he’d been holding and tucked it inside his jacket pocket.
“Get out of here. Haven’t you heard about them? Go hide, now!” he ordered the boys. And they turned away from the window, running toward the back exit. It had probably been a long time since any of them had met a young man, and they didn’t hesitate to obey him. They were just children, after all.
He listened as the tanks rolled closer, the clapping of their tracks against the stones in the street making an eerie echo in these narrow spaces, and he couldn’t help feeling like they were all damned now.
Colin’s eyes opened to the pale morning light creeping lazily through the drawn blinds in his bedroom. He blinked a few times as he stared at the barren wall, a boring beige. His eyes focused on the equally boring brown dresser beneath it. He wasn’t in Berlin. Where was he? The ringtone on his phone forced him to sit up and as he broke away from the sleepy haze of an odd sort of dream, he remembered. He was in Baton Rouge. And it was time to go hunting.
Colin drove to the small brown brick building downtown where Jeremy was already waiting. A few of the other hunters were already here as well, including Anna. He tried to steady his hands as he hurried inside, anxious to see her and know she was completely healed. She was fine. He heard their voices in the break room and stopped outside the door, waiting in the hallway as he eavesdropped on yet another conversation. This was getting to be a really bad habit.
“Why the hell did you and O’Conner take off after that demon alone yesterday, anyway?” Jeremy asked her.
Colin was definitely punching this guy somewhere before leaving Baton Rouge.
He couldn’t see her, but he knew what Anna was doing anyway. She opened her can of Diet Coke and sat down at the table, pulling a box of artifacts they’d collected f
rom different hunting trips toward her.
“Because we followed its trail then we killed it. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?” She started digging through the box, far more interested in its contents than in her conversation with Jeremy.
“With a bunch of pissed off archdemons in town, it could be dangerous for you two to work alone right now, I think that’s all Jeremy’s saying,” Dylan added.
And Colin thought that’s why he’d always liked Dylan – he was smart, cautious and respectful. He had also never wanted to punch him.
“I wasn’t alone. I was with Colin,” Anna reminded them. She was studying something from the box that may have been a tooth or a claw or… well, she wasn’t really sure.
“I think you trust him too much,” Jeremy muttered.
That comment pissed her off, but she’d learned to become an excellent actress over the years. “Maybe you don’t trust him enough.”
Jeremy snorted. “Why should I? He’s a loner and he’s made it perfectly clear he doesn’t want to work with anyone except you, and quite honestly, he’s probably just trying to get laid.”
“Well, Jeremy should know,” Anna thought cynically.
“He’s right. I am just trying to get laid.”
Anna tried not to laugh, so she took a sip of her Diet Coke instead. Dylan sighed and for the first time, Colin heard someone else’s voice, another hunter named Adrián.
“Not that I blame him,” he said. And Colin added Adrián to the list of guys he wanted to hit before leaving Baton Rouge. It was getting to be a long list.
Anna ignored him. Jeremy told him to shut up.
“Oh, come on,” Adrián, apparently, was not going to shut up, “you’ve been trying to sleep with her for the past two months and haven’t gotten anywhere. Besides, everyone knows Latin men make better lovers.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, I’m going to stab him with this tooth or claw or whatever the hell this thing is,” Anna warned.
Colin had heard enough, too. He walked into the break room and sat across from Anna at the table. The room grew quiet as everyone watched him, perhaps wondering how much he’d overheard. Anna pretended to be unfazed by the conversation that had just taken place.
“What do you think this is?” She handed the weird bony demon body part over to Colin, who was still torn between wanting to punch Jeremy and wanting to jam this curvy tooth thing in Adrián’s neck.
“Looks a bit like the talons on that demon from yesterday,” Colin said, handing it back to her.
Anna grimaced as she remembered the monster’s claws digging into her leg, ripping her skin and tearing into her thigh. By this morning, there wasn’t a mark on her, but the memory wouldn’t fade as easily.
“Not as thick though,” Anna pointed out.
Jeremy flopped into a chair and rubbed his eyes, yawning. “What difference does it make? We’ll categorize all that stuff later.”
“Where’d this box come from?” Colin asked.
Jeremy yawned again. “Max had it. Dropped it off yesterday. He was doing research on some of the things we’ve collected from kills recently. Don’t think he turned up much.”
“These are all a little odd. Just a little different than what we’re used to seeing, like everything else here,” Anna observed.
Colin looked in the box at the rest of the assortment: bony growths, claws, teeth. Body parts that should have dissipated when the demon was destroyed but for some reason, hadn’t. They’d gotten used to that part of fighting demons here – their bodies didn’t evaporate once their energy was dispersed, but they all left behind some remnant of the form they’d taken. They had yet to find any real pattern to the items they’d collected.
Adrián watched them as they studied another artifact from the box. “So what is your story, O’Conner?”
Colin shot him a leave-me-the-hell-alone glare, but Adrián persisted. “Dude, you’re an asocial jerk. She’s never gonna sleep with you.”
Anna dropped the bone or fang back into the box and stood up, her hands balled into fists. “I am right here in the room. Don’t you ever talk about me like this again.”
Adrián just looked her over and smiled in a way that was entirely too suggestive and provocative, and Colin stood up, too. “Leave her alone, Adrián.”
It was all he could say because he wanted to kill the guy, and there had been so few times he’d ever encountered another human being that made him feel like committing murder.
Jeremy had finally realized how serious the situation had become and that no one was joking around anymore. He ordered Adrián to go make sure the cars were stocked so they could go hunting then looked apologetically at Anna.
“Sorry about that,” he said once Adrián was outside.
Anna nodded but was too angry to speak yet. Colin turned his violent fury on Jeremy. “Don’t ever let him speak like that to her again.”
“Careful, Colin. You’ll make him suspicious.”
“It will make them all suspicious when I kill that asshole.”
“You can’t kill a human unless it’s self-defense. I’m pretty sure that was implied in our deal somehow.”
Colin didn’t answer her. He was still scowling at Jeremy.
“I can’t control what Adrián says,” Jeremy shot back. He was getting angry now, too, and Anna wanted everyone to just shut up and get out of here.
“You’re supposedly the leader here.” Colin had stepped closer to Jeremy, who instinctively backed away from him. “You’ll figure out how to control him or I’ll make sure it’s never a problem again.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Jeremy asked, but Colin was already walking out of the break room.
Anna stared after his back then looked at Jeremy. She felt like she should be the one to apologize now, but for what? Colin would never stop protecting her, and he felt like Adrián had threatened her. She couldn’t blame him for reacting the way he had.
“We should just go,” Anna suggested. “This will blow over. Just make sure Colin and Adrián aren’t working together.”
Jeremy nodded in agreement and looked at her sheepishly. “I really am sorry about what he said to you. He can be kind of a disgusting asshole at times.”
Anna smiled and didn’t even have to fake a smile this time. When Jeremy wasn’t trying to flirt with her, he was actually friendly and likeable.
Colin and the other hunters regrouped at the same rural area outside of Baton Rouge the email had originally told them to go to. Camps and deer stands dotted the woods around here, but it wasn’t deer hunting season. Colin wasn’t too worried about getting shot.
Colin waited impatiently for Anna’s car to arrive, his rage from earlier still lingering and he just needed to see her and know she was safe. He saw her car pull up behind Jeremy’s and he exhaled slowly as she climbed out, her long dark hair pulled back into a sleek ponytail, and even in her dark blue pants and red shirt, she still looked every bit the angel he’d always suspected she was.
Jeremy stood next to Colin and looked at the assembled hunters around them. Colin figured Jeremy had no clue what to do now.
“Want us to split into two teams?” Colin asked, but really, he was giving Jeremy directions.
Jeremy nodded and split them up, and when he separated him from Anna, he felt the heat rising in him, the hatred and anger resurfacing, but Anna felt it, too. “It’s ok, Colin, we won’t be far.”
He took a deep breath and tried to calm down. “Of course he kept you on his team. And with Adrián.”
He could almost hear her sighing in his head. “It’s better this way, Colin. We’re the two best hunters out here, and one of us will be with each group. Now stop pouting and focus on finding these archdemons so we can get out of this city.”
He turned his attention back to Jeremy just in time, because Jeremy was asking him what kind of weapons he thought they’d need to kill these archdemons. Normally, Colin would have immediately known, but after the past coupl
e of days, he felt like an amateur again.
“They’re changing all sorts of stuff. I don’t know how they’re doing it, but what’s worked in the past may not work now. I’d still try the dagger with the combination metals first, but someone in the group should be prepared to strike at it with a fixed blade in case the dagger doesn’t work.”
Demons were old. Really old. Newer alloys didn’t work as well on them because they didn’t exist when these demons were created. Stainless steel may be the symbol of the modern age, but it usually didn’t do a damn thing to hurt a demon. Colin’s dagger and knife were also extremely old.
But Jeremy nodded along like he’d anticipated Colin’s response and sent the groups into the woods. Colin resisted the overwhelming urge to roll his eyes behind Jeremy’s back. It would have been kind of immature, but it also would have been a lot less obvious than flipping him off.
“He may be at the bottom, but he’s still on my growing list of people you need to let me hit before we leave this place,” Colin told Anna.
Anna bit her lip as she walked away from him, trying not to laugh at him. “I’ll help you with Adrián. He’d better hope he doesn’t get lost in these woods with me.”
Colin almost stumbled over a thick branch on the ground at Anna’s comment. “Go for whatever body part is most accessible. I’ll be there as quickly as I can.” He was pretty sure Anna rolled her eyes at him.
Colin led his group of hunters into the woods, the thick trees soon obscuring much of the morning sunlight. It smelled strongly of pine and mosquito repellant, but Colin wasn’t complaining. He thought mosquito repellant was one of the best inventions man had ever made.
As he searched around him for any sign of a demonic presence, he also kept checking on Anna. She had quickly dropped back, trailing the group to keep away from Jeremy who was walking up front. “Did he hit on you? Now?”
Anna sighed again. “He asked me what I thought of your recommendations, and I told him I agreed with you. Then he told me after a day like today, he was going to need a drink and asked me if I wanted to go with him.”
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