Asshole.
Right now, Anna agreed with him about that, too.
“I had a strange dream last night. I was in Berlin when the Russians arrived.”
Anna registered revulsion but it wasn’t at his dream. She’d just crossed paths with a copperhead.
“I had another weird dream the other night. This time, I was in Paris during the Revolution. What do you think it means?”
Colin had no idea. “I doubt it has anything to do with us needing history lessons.”
He could sense her amused frustration with him, and he imagined the way she’d shake her head, put that porcelain hand on her hip with the faintest smile pulling at those full pink lips. And then Anna chastised him for thinking about her like that.
Colin tried to clear his mind, but it was difficult. He missed her so much. As they walked farther into the woods, the only other creatures they encountered were supposed to be here: squirrels running up the trunks of the towering pine trees to hide from the invading humans, snakes and lizards burying themselves under the dense bedding of the forest floor, birds fluttering from branch to branch, watching these odd new trespassers warily.
It was unbelievably quiet. Colin took a few more steps into the woods then abruptly stopped. He’d suddenly realized it was too quiet. The birds still chirped and the rustling footsteps of his fellow hunters still sounded behind him, but he couldn’t feel her. The panic welled within him. Surely she hadn’t walked so far away from him that he could no longer feel her?
“Anna?”
He tried searching for her, desperately reaching out but he was reaching for emptiness, just heavy dense Louisiana air. He turned slowly in a circle, wondering how he could have suddenly lost his connection with her.
“Anna!?” he tried again. The panic was suffocating him. He couldn’t breathe. Silence.
He ran in the direction he had last felt her and he could hear Dylan calling for him, asking him what had happened, trailing behind him. The others had followed, but Colin ran faster, the branches beneath his boots snapping under his footsteps. Ahead of him, he could hear voices now. Jeremy and Max. He barreled into the clearing where they stood, staring dumbfounded at him, and Colin grabbed Jeremy’s shirt and pulled him close to his face.
“Where the hell is she?” he yelled.
Jeremy’s eyes mixed with confusion and fear. “Who?”
“Anna!” Colin pushed him away and Jeremy stumbled, falling onto the ground. Jeremy stared up at him, still scared and bewildered.
“She’s in the back, Colin. What the hell’s your problem?”
There was nothing out here. Colin couldn’t feel anything. No demons. No Anna. Nothing. But he ran to the rear of the column anyway, already knowing the terrifying truth. She wasn’t here.
“Anna!” he started yelling for her aloud now. The others realized he was right and started calling her name, but they were met with the same insufferable silence.
“Spread out!” Colin ordered, and the others obeyed, fanning away from him to look for her. The air kept getting thicker and heavier and he was sure he would pass out soon, but he kept searching.
Time must have been passing, but he was no longer aware of it. He didn’t know how long they looked for her. At some point, Dylan approached him and told him they needed to call the police, but Colin ignored him and kept calling for her, both aloud and in that secret way of theirs. Because he knew wherever she was, whatever had happened to her, she could never be found by something human.
Chapter 7
Anna blinked slowly, trying to will the world into focus around her but it was blurry, fuzzy, like she was drunk only she knew she wasn’t. She lay in a room, cold and empty, gray-blue walls confining her. The cot she was on was thin, covered in a vinyl that made a crinkling noise underneath her. She shivered and tried to pull her knees to her chest, but her limbs were sluggish and uncooperative.
A single steel gray door stood opposite the cot she was stuck on, firmly closed, flushed against the monochromatic walls. No handle. No way to open it. She watched it for a while then closed her eyes again. The swirling motion of the room made her feel like she had to throw up.
It was so cold. She shivered again and wrapped her arms tighter around her body, the cot crinkling as the movement shuffled the plastic underneath her. She tried to find him, but her mind was as quiet as the room she was trapped in. How had she even gotten here? She couldn’t remember anything between chastising Colin in the forest then waking up in this room.
She strained to hear any sounds from outside of the room, but the entire building was eerily quiet, like a mausoleum. The thought made her even more nauseated. She opened her eyes and looked up at the ceiling, a dull grayish white, smooth rather than tiled. At least she thought it was smooth. It was swiveling just as much as the walls were. There were no windows. There was no way out. She closed her eyes again, not wanting to see the walls swirl in colorless patterns in front of her.
She thought of him. Maybe a dream or a memory or a combination of the two, but even in her imagination, his presence comforted her. It was a Christmas, she couldn’t even tell which one, and she’d just finished wrapping a present for him when he walked in. She quickly hid it because this one was meant to be a surprise.
It hadn’t been easy to find any vestiges of Catholicism in London, but she’d finally found what she’d been looking for: a small silver medallion with St. Augustine’s image on one side and the phrase Roma locuta; causa finita est on the other.
It was misquoting Augustine, but some Catholics had secretly taken it up as a slogan against the usurpation of the Pope’s power by the English monarchy. Anna slipped the small package beneath the pile of sewing she still meant to get to. One of these days. Anna hated sewing.
Colin called to her from the parlor and she came out of the bedroom, throwing her arms around him and kissing him, brushing the snow off his coat and hat. He smiled guiltily down at her because he knew the snow would leave puddles on the floor, but Anna didn’t care about the small wet pools he would leave behind. He was home.
“Your father came by at work. Wants to know if we can come for Christmas dinner earlier,” Colin turned around as Anna took his coat from him and hung it in the mudroom.
Anna sighed and was about to lament their unfortunate fates of having to listen to her father bemoan the future of the country as it wrestled with its own civil war, and of course it was all the fault of those damn Stuarts, except he probably wouldn’t actually curse unless he really got too far into the bourbon, when she smelled her bread in the oven and remembered it was time to take it out. Colin knew what was in store for them anyway; her father had been not-so-secretly cursing the Stuarts for years, long before parliament decided to fight back.
Colin followed her into the kitchen and watched her as she set the bread on the counter to cool. She gave him a funny look, wondering what was so interesting about the same bread she made almost every single day.
“How are you feeling?” he asked her.
Oh. That.
“Colin, I’m fine. It was nothing. You were sick, too.”
Colin’s brilliant green eyes studied her. “I got over it in three days. You were sick for almost three weeks.”
Anna shrugged it off. He always worried about her. “I’m better now. And tomorrow is Christmas Eve, so I don’t want to hear you nagging me about my health. That can be your gift to me.”
Colin smiled at her and pulled her into his arms. “How can I stop? I love you. You are everything to me.”
He kissed her and the kitchen darkened, disappeared, and then he vanished, too, and Anna was alone, standing in a dark room by herself, cold and afraid. She put her hands out to try to find a wall, but no matter how far she walked, she never ran into anything. She was in a black void, empty and soundless. Even her footsteps made no noise as she kept searching for something to hold onto.
Anna didn’t know if she was still dreaming. This room, this empty space, felt too real, u
nlike the dream with Colin, where it had held that ethereal quality and she’d known he wasn’t with her, it wasn’t Christmas, England was not at war with itself.
Was she trapped in a dark tunnel now? So Anna kept walking, reaching for something that wasn’t there, hoping to find an escape from the endless nothingness. She dragged her feet along the floors, but they were smooth, and when walking in a straight line brought her nowhere, she turned to her right and walked farther. Not even the sounds of her footsteps could find her in this place.
Maybe she eventually fell asleep again or maybe no time had passed at all when the door opened and someone stepped inside, breaking her out of that infinite emptiness. She was back in the cold gray room. Two legs swirled in front of her, walking closer to her. She saw only black pants. They stopped a few feet before her and the knees bent, bringing a man’s face in front of her bleary eyes.
“Anna, is it?” he asked.
She blinked again, but his face wouldn’t clear. He was just a splattering of color.
“How do you know my name?” Even her speech slurred. She felt drunk, as if she’d been the one to hit the bourbon too hard at some fantasy Christmas dinner.
“We’ve been looking for you for a long time, Anna.”
Anna closed her eyes. None of this made any sense. She must be dreaming still. She preferred dreams about Colin and her father and the English Civil War or even the French Revolution.
“Your partner is Colin?”
Her eyes shot open. Oh, God. Colin. Her heart beat against her ribs, but she could do nothing but pray.
“Who are you?” she asked weakly. He had none of the distinctive marks of a demon and no odor. He must be human.
“Doesn’t matter. Sleep now, Anna. Your job on Earth is done.”
And Anna fell back to sleep.
Chapter 8
As night fell and long after Colin’s voice had turned rough and hoarse, he was finally pulled from the forest. He was exhausted and weak and wasn’t even sure who was dragging him away from here – away from the place where Anna had disappeared. He knew he tried to fight him, but he was too weak now.
He wasn’t brought back to his apartment though, and it wasn’t until he was sitting on Dylan’s sofa that he really understood it had been Dylan who finally got him into his car and drove him away from those woods. It was Dylan who handed him a bottle of water and a plate of food, but Colin couldn’t eat. He sipped at the water, but stared blankly at the wall in front of him.
Dylan waited for a while before asking him what Colin knew would eventually come. “You knew she was missing. How?”
Colin just shook his head, not because he still felt obligated to keep their secrets for them, not after today, but he just couldn’t bring himself to talk about her. He was pretty sure it would kill him, and she was still missing. Whatever had happened to her… this had broken their agreement. All deals were off as far as Colin was concerned.
“Colin, I want to help you. I want to help Anna. But you’ve got to level with me. I’ve been watching you both for the past two months, and I’ve always thought there’s something… weird about you two. Beyond how good you both are at this job. If you need help now, then let me help.”
Dylan’s eyes, so dark they were almost black, were full of a sad compassion, and Colin wanted to tell him. He wanted to tell him everything. But he couldn’t. He did want his help though, so he figured half-truths were better than stubborn silence.
“We’ve worked together a long time. We sensed something odd was happening here and were trying to be careful. We didn’t want to risk being recognized as the partners these assholes were most likely looking for.”
Dylan arched an eyebrow at him. “A long time? Dude, you’re both like, what? Twenty-five?”
“Twenty-six,” Colin corrected. “Some of us start younger than others.”
“Guess so.” Dylan sighed and collapsed back into his chair. “Funny. Why is it everyone’s heard of you, but no one knew you worked with a partner?”
Colin kept staring at the same empty spot on the wall, fingering the bottle of water in his hands. He didn’t know how to answer this question honestly. Not even with half-truths. “Anna never wanted people to know about her. Not many people travel around working like we do, and as far as we know, we’re the only partners who do. It would make us awfully conspicuous. We try to hide as much as we can from others.”
Dylan was watching him carefully, and Colin knew he was too smart to be fooled into thinking this was all there was to it. “None of this tells me how you knew she was missing. How far away were we? We must have been at least a quarter of a mile away.”
Colin sighed, defeated. “We’re telepathic.”
Dylan snorted then seemed to realize Colin was serious. “Oh.”
Colin closed his eyes but only for a few seconds. “Can you drive me to a church?”
He opened his eyes and studied Dylan, who was looking back at him quizzically. “Ok… any particular church?”
“A Catholic one.”
Dylan pulled himself out of the chair, groaning as he stood up again, sore from the exertion of chasing a ghost through the woods of south Louisiana all day. “There’s one not too far from here. If it’s open. Don’t they keep churches locked now?”
“Yeah, but I’m not waiting for a priest.”
Colin walked out of Dylan’s apartment first and waited by his car. Dylan finally caught up to him, shaking his head, muttering something about gratitude and manners, but Colin couldn’t care less about his bad behavior. Anna had disappeared. She had disappeared from him.
Dylan didn’t expect Colin to talk on the drive to the church; Colin wasn’t sure he had much more to say right now anyway. As expected, the parking lot was completely empty and the church was dark. It was almost 10:00 p.m. on a weeknight. Why would anyone be here?
Dylan parked near the front doors and Colin walked to the handles, tugging on them, but they were locked as he’d anticipated. It didn’t matter. He’d wait.
Dylan caught up to him and stuffed his hands in his pockets, leaning against the dark bricks of the church’s exterior. “Waiting on divine intervention to unlock these doors for you?”
Colin glanced at him then leaned against the wall himself. “Something like that.”
He could hear the accent in his voice growing thicker. He was too tired and too scared to try to fight it tonight.
“You don’t have to wait, Dylan. You can go back home. I’ll be alright.”
Dylan raised an eyebrow at him again, as if to ask him if he’d lost his mind after the shock of losing Anna today, and he didn’t move.
Colin just shrugged. “Suit yourself then. But this could take a while. Angels work on their own schedules, not ours.”
Dylan stood up straighter and studied Colin carefully, perhaps evaluating him to see if he were, in fact, crazy. “You’re waiting on an… angel.”
Colin studied him just as carefully. “You kill demons. How can you believe in one and not the other?”
“Because I’ve seen one and not the other. If angels exist, where the hell are they and why aren’t they helping us not get our asses kicked? Or killed?”
Dylan was still pissed off about Jas’s death. Colin couldn’t blame him. He was pretty damn pissed off himself right now.
“It doesn’t work that way. It never has. Angels can’t kill, not even something evil. It would cause them to fall and that’s the last thing we need, more of these bastards. And fallen angels become the hardest demons to kill, worse than these archdemons who are after us now.”
“Yeah,” Dylan interrupted, “I’ve heard all of this Biblical nonsense. But it doesn’t explain why they can’t help us.”
“What makes you think they aren’t?” Colin asked, and this time, he wasn’t being a smartass. It was a genuine question.
“Well, I’m not telepathic,” Dylan grumbled.
“You think angels or Heaven owe us something? We’re not selected, you kn
ow. Our ability to see demons and kill them is random. We can choose to fight them or not. Those of us who do fight them do it because we want to protect even those humans who are stupid enough to be suckered into bartering their souls. But look around you. How many churches did we drive by on our way to this one? Salvation is everywhere. Hell’s the one with the cards stacked against them.”
Dylan crossed his arms and kept eyeing Colin, who sighed and put his head back against the bricks. He knew Dylan was about to try to have a theological debate and he was far too exhausted and stressed for it tonight.
“But you asked me to take you to a Catholic Church. Are you saying that’s the right religion?”
Colin snickered. “There’s no such thing. I’m Irish. I was raised Catholic, that’s all.”
“Bullshit. They can’t all be right. Some of them flat out contradict each other.”
Colin shrugged and wished this angel would hurry the hell up. “Most religions have contradictions within themselves. So what? Religions were made by men, not God.”
“Well, does it have to be a Christian faith?” Dylan asked.
Colin shrugged again. He’d never been told one way or the other. There were some things he just chose to accept still on faith.
Dylan wasn’t satisfied by Colin’s noncommittal answers and kept pressing for more specific information, but Colin had grown tired of this conversation. Actually, he was getting tired of standing, too. He sat down and leaned against the metal door of the church and closed his eyes again. He really wished she’d hurry up.
Eventually, Dylan gave up and sat down beside him. He’d occasionally exhale impatiently, but apparently had no intention of leaving. Colin kept trying to reach Anna, but his mind was just as blank and empty as before, filled only with his own thoughts, his own panic and anxiety and despair.
How could he have lost her? Surely, this must be a nightmare because this was impossible. They had been promised.
It was past midnight when Colin finally heard the bolts on the thick metal doors slide out of place. He stood up quickly and pulled on the handle, the door swinging easily open. Dylan had fallen asleep and watched with groggy astonishment.
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