Dylan unlocked his car doors and grumbled, “Of course I’m going with you, asshole, just reminding you I thought we should get some sleep first.”
Colin almost smiled.
He tried calling Jeremy again, but he still wasn’t answering his phone. At least Max answered this time. Colin explained they were going back to the woods to look for Anna again, and Max was understandably reluctant. Dylan must have gotten tired of listening to Colin explain, unsuccessfully, why it was so urgent for them to go now. He stuck his hand out and Colin placed his phone in Dylan’s palm.
“Max, just get your old ass out of bed and meet us down there. And go wake up Jeremy. We need everyone except Eddie and Tara. Oh, and probably not Adrián either.”
“Definitely not Adrián,” Colin mumbled.
Max must have been arguing with Dylan, but Dylan apparently got cranky after midnight.
“Just go,” he interrupted. “I got hauled off to a Catholic Church tonight and I saw some weird shit, man… No, weirder than what normally happens there. Just trust me, if Colin wants to go tonight, we should go.” Then he hung up on him before Max could argue anymore.
“You think that’s actually going to work?” Colin asked.
Dylan glanced at him then fixed his eyes on the dark highway in front of him. “Max trusts us. He’ll be there.”
As they pulled up behind Colin’s car that was still in the same spot as the previous morning, Max drove in right behind them. Colin could tell he wasn’t in the car alone, but he couldn’t make out who was with him. Dylan finished spraying himself with mosquito repellant then tossed the canister to Colin, who waited impatiently for everyone to hurry the hell up. It was 3:00 a.m. and everyone was exhausted, but no one seemed to understand how little time Anna had. Or maybe they just assumed she was already dead.
Jeremy yawned as he stretched his legs out of the passenger side of Max’s car. Colin resisted the urge to stab him in at least one of those legs. Max reached for the can of mosquito repellant as Colin finished spraying himself.
“So what’s the plan O’Conner?” Jeremy asked, suppressing another yawn.
If Anna was dead, he decided to beat the shit out of Jeremy before killing himself.
“I’m hoping they want me as badly as they wanted her. So I’m here.”
Jeremy stared at him like he must be joking and was still waiting on the punch line.
“You’re leading us all into a trap?” he finally asked.
“Hopefully, I’m leading us to Anna.”
Another car pulled in behind Max’s with three more hunters, so there were seven of them here now, including Colin and Dylan. He didn’t think their odds were so bad. But then again, he would have taken on the Devil himself to get Anna back.
“Well, come on, I can practically feel the snakes crawling over my boots and they’re freaking me out,” Dylan claimed, and he started walking into the woods. Colin followed him.
Max felt obligated to correct him.
“Snakes don’t crawl, Dylan. They have no legs.”
“Max, I don’t give a crap how they move. They scare the hell out of me. I’d take on a demon any day. As long as it didn’t look a snake.” Dylan paused and turned to face Colin. “You’ve never come across one of those have you?”
Despite the Hell he was still convinced he was in, Colin smiled. Anna hated snakes, too. “No. Too clichéd perhaps.”
“Anna hates them, too. But I’m sure you already know that.” Dylan had continued walking deeper into the dark woods. They each turned on their flashlights.
“Yes. She always has.”
They walked in silence for a few minutes before Max asked, “How long have you known her?”
Colin tried reaching out again, even though he knew how futile it would be. They seemed completely alone in these woods. But they’d seemed alone the morning before when something had abducted Anna, so maybe they weren’t alone now after all.
“We were sixteen when we met,” Colin said, stepping over a rotted branch hidden among the pine needles on the forest floor.
Jeremy slowed down. “You know each other?” He hadn’t been around for Colin’s explanation to Dylan, and Max had apparently figured that much out on his own.
Colin rolled his eyes but kept walking. “Yes, we’ve worked together for years.”
“Why the hell did you pretend to be strangers then?” Jeremy asked, still irritated by this news as if it were somehow more important than Anna’s disappearance.
“Because we were told to. As far as I know, a demon has never gotten away from us, but they found out about us somehow, and they must have been looking for a man and a woman working together.”
There was more to it than that, but Colin had no intention of sharing any of his past with Jeremy.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Jeremy mumbled. “You still came here together. And who could have warned you these bastards were on to you, anyway?”
Colin flashed the beam of his light around the thick canopy of trees above him. Why did Jeremy have to be so goddamn annoying?
“The Angel warned me.”
Jeremy snorted but Dylan told him to shut up. He’d seen this angel himself. And she’d done something to him so he could help Colin find Anna. So Jeremy started assaulting Dylan with questions and Colin was relieved he was at least leaving him alone for now.
Dylan replayed the entire encounter from the church and the other hunters listened quietly, nobody interrupting him to ask questions, not even Jeremy. They had known Dylan longer, and they knew Dylan wouldn’t make up something like this.
“I don’t know what she did to Colin, but I think she’s given him all sorts of these gifts over the years. And Anna, too. That’s why they’re both so fast and strong and can sense these demons long before we can. He won’t tell me what this new power she just gave him is though.”
“Why not, O’Conner?” Jeremy asked.
Colin aimed the beam of his flashlight along the roots of the trees, up their gray-brown trunks. Nothing that didn’t belong here. Unless you counted seven humans making entirely too much noise in the middle of the night and disturbing every living creature that did belong here.
“If Anna’s dead, it won’t matter anyway.”
Dylan stopped walking and flashed the beam of his light in Colin’s face. Colin squinted and looked away.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Dylan demanded.
He didn’t want to argue about damnation or souls or any of what most people believed to be true. Anna didn’t have time for that kind of a discussion. So he did the easiest thing and just lied. “Our gifts work together.”
“Oh.” Dylan started walking again and Colin blinked a few times to try to get the flashing purple lights to disappear from his vision. Bastard really didn’t have to shine the light right in his eyes.
“So how many demons do you think you and Anna have killed?” Jeremy asked, swatting at a bug that flew near him.
Colin shrugged, which was a wasted effort considering it was so dark in these woods. “Thousands, I’d guess.”
Several of the hunters muttered variations of holy shits, but for the most part, he was still trying to tune them out and focus on finding any sign that could lead them to Anna. Another hunter, Ben, who was walking toward the back slapped at a bug and asked, “How is that even possible?”
“We travel a lot,” Colin sighed. Why did they have to ask so many questions? “Now, would you all shut up and pay attention to what you’re doing?”
Colin concentrated on trying to pick up any signal that an immortal, or mostly-immortal-creature-of-Hell, was nearby, but the woods were so damn quiet. Mostly, he just heard the buzzing of insects and the sounds of their footsteps snapping twigs or rustling the leaves and pine needles on the forest floor. He thought about what The Angel had told him, how even she didn’t know how these demons were hiding from them. It was like they’d found some loophole to the rules of this game. Goddamn cheaters.
“Everybody stop,” he hissed. The column behind him froze. “Something has found us.”
Chapter 11
Anna’s tears had soaked her arm as she kept her face buried on the cot, trying to block out the sound of his cries, the tormented screams, the agony in his voice when he called for her. Nothing could block those sounds, though: not these walls, not her arms, not the passage of time or even death itself.
She had prayed for a very long time but she wasn’t sure if God or the angels could hear her prayers from Hell. It didn’t stop her from trying. Eventually, though, she ran out of ways to plead for help, to beg for an end to this nightmare. At first, she lay there with her mind so wounded and eviscerated she was certain she would never think again. All she would ever be able to hear were his tortured screams, and that was a sound that would be permanently etched in her mind.
But gradually, an image, another dream or a memory, she still wasn’t sure what was reality in this place, started shuffling through those dark corners of her own pain and personal suffering, and when she recognized him, she grabbed onto it, and held on as tightly as she could. Part of her understood it was a pattern now: a happy, comforting dream replaced by a terrifying nightmare, but he was there in her mind, so young and so healthy and so free from this suffering.
She didn’t really know him yet. When he showed up at her house after meeting her near the market where she’d gone to buy a ham hock to make soup, she was surprised he’d come after all. He was so nervous as he stood in her doorway, trying not to fidget or shuffle his feet as he asked her mother if he could visit her. Anna peeked around the door in the kitchen, holding her breath for her mother’s response.
He was poor and he was Irish, which meant he was Catholic, and Anna knew those were all reasons for her mother to send him away. He was a handsome boy, with light brown hair and eyes so green they sparkled like emeralds, and even then, he was tall and strong, although he’d grow another six inches by the time he reached adulthood.
Irish or not, nobody else was coming for Anna, and her mother knew that. Nobody wanted a sickly wife. Anna listened to her mother sigh and invite Colin in, and he stepped inside her home. Anna hurried to the stove and started the fire under the teakettle. She was sixteen, and she went through long stretches of time where she was confined to her home, so she knew how to be a good hostess.
She opened the pantry and found the biscuits she’d made the day before and set them on the table. She listened as her mother asked Colin how he’d ended up in London, and if he’d come here alone. Anna already knew the answers to those questions. She’d spent as much time as she could talking to him in the market the day before.
She crept as close to the door as she dared without her mother knowing she was eavesdropping so she could listen to him anyway. She thought Colin was the most beautiful boy she’d ever met, and she loved his accent. She’d met plenty of Irishmen before, and never thought much of their speech, but from him, it was charming and endearing and she could have listened to him speak all afternoon.
He was explaining how he’d moved here recently after the death of his father. His father was a sharecropper and he didn’t want to follow in his footsteps. He wanted to learn a trade, to do something besides owe a landlord for the rest of his life. His two older brothers had stayed behind in Ireland and were farmers.
“And are you apprenticed?” her mother asked.
“Yes, Madam, with Mister Wrightson.”
“The printer?” Her mother sounded impressed.
Anna smiled. Colin was quite smart, actually. He could read and write; no one else in his family had been able to. When he was seven, his village had gotten a new priest, and he found out this one was actually literate and he’d gone to him, this small boy with vivid green eyes, and implored him to teach him to read. Colin even knew some Latin now.
But Colin would never brag. “Yes, Madam. I help him with the press and binding.”
“Well, that’s impressive, Mister O’Conner. You’re living with Madam Cooper?”
Colin acknowledged he’d rented a room from her. The teakettle started whistling and Anna rushed to the stove to move it off the fire. The door to the kitchen opened and Anna turned away from the stove to greet her mother and the young man who’d come to visit her.
“Anna,” her mother instructed, “you may use the good teacups.”
Anna thanked her and her mother left the door open as she disappeared into the front of the house. Anna smiled at Colin and he smiled shyly back at her, exhaling slowly because he’d known how audacious it had been to call on a middleclass Englishman’s daughter. But Anna had begged him to come, and he’d desperately wanted to see her again, so he’d risked the humiliation, even getting fired from his job, just to take this chance.
Anna set a teacup and saucer on the table for him and invited him to sit down, but he didn’t touch his tea. He continued to finger his hat with the same nervous and excited energy, even though her mother had obviously let him in. The worst part was over. Anna sat across from him.
“We serve the priest tea in these cups,” she whispered.
“She can’t think that highly of Mister Wrightson,” Colin whispered back.
Anna bit her lip, trying not to giggle, but it didn’t help. “Just be glad she didn’t ask you about your religion. She can overlook everything else.” Anna was still whispering, but she knew if they didn’t start speaking normally, her mother would come back to see why.
Colin smiled at her again, and even his eyes seemed to laugh with her. “Then I’ll convert.” And he didn’t bother whispering that part.
Anna stirred her tea, but only to give her something to do because she was embarrassed. She still didn’t know what this boy saw in her, why he was here when she had been so honest with him, probably too honest. She was forthcoming to a fault, or at least that’s what her mother told her.
She glanced at his untouched cup of tea and the fluttering in her stomach grew stronger. “Do you not like tea? Do you not drink tea in Ireland? I can make you something else.”
Colin was still smiling at her. “I like tea. I’m just really nervous and don’t want to spill it all over myself. I’m trying to make a good first impression. Or second. I guess this is really a second, isn’t it?”
Anna tried to remember the polite kinds of questions a hostess would ask her guest, but her mind was empty, and she found herself blurting out the most random details about herself or asking him the most personal questions about himself, and she’d blush and look down at her tea again, but Colin laughed and always answered her anyway. And he assured her he loved hearing everything she wanted to share about herself, and soon, the afternoon had passed and he had to leave. Anna’s mother walked him back to the parlor and she listened breathlessly as Colin asked if he could call on her again.
The dream faded, and the kitchen where she’d had tea with Colin dissolved into a desert, overbearingly hot and dry with gusty winds blowing grains of sand into her eyes and skin like sharp beads of shrapnel. Anna tried to shield her eyes from the glaring sun and the stinging wind with her forearm, but it did little good. She turned slowly in a circle, but she was surrounded by sand dunes and nothing else. The sun shone down on her in its merciless full force from the center of the bright blue sky. Another hot gust of air hit her and she stumbled backwards and fell into the scorching sand.
Anna yelped from the burning pain and tried to lift herself to her feet, but the sand kept shifting underneath her, and she slid down onto her hands and knees. She was sure she would go blind soon, either from the reflection of the sun shining in her eyes or the sand scratching her corneas. She could feel the blisters forming on the palms of her hands already f
rom the sweltering heat of the sand. The intensity of the sun’s rays would soon burn her skin, and there was no shade anywhere around her.
Anna managed to get on her knees then kept her weight on one foot. When she’d balanced herself, she steadily rose and found she could stand again, holding her arms out for balance against those gusts of wind that kept trying to push her back into the searing sand. She couldn’t stay here. She would most certainly die if she stayed in this spot. Her only hope was to walk and pray she could find shelter and water.
Her steps dragged through the sinking sand and she kept the wind to her back. It would occasionally push her forward and she would stagger but refused to fall again. Her hands still bore the burns from the last time they touched the sand. She tried to blink the grit from her eyes but there were no tears, just dry scratches whenever her eyelids moved. She couldn’t spit the sand from her mouth because the saliva had disappeared. Her mouth was as desiccated as the desert around her.
Anna trudged through the infinite roasting desert, crossing dunes and trying not to slide down the opposite side as the sand avalanched beneath her feet, but it stretched on in endless miles. And the sun never changed its position in the sky above her, but continued to beat down on her in its merciless cruelty. She could feel her skin bubbling in agonizing blisters from the burns caused by the rays of the midday sun, but she could do nothing to prevent them. There was no shelter here. There was no water. She had no salvation.
Anna lost count of her steps, and the golden sand world around her began spinning. She was losing consciousness. She knew she was going to pass out and die here, with the blazing sun still shining brutally down on her burned and blistered body. Anna collapsed and felt the searing stinging pain of the sand as it touched her already wounded body, but she could no longer move. This was her death march. And it had come to an end.
The overpowering cold of the empty room surrounded her and reminded her where she was. There was no desert. She was not dying. But she was not in London, or with Colin either. Dreams. They had only been dreams.
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