immortals - complete series

by S. M. Schmitz

  Anna sighed and shook her head. “Just because something is an accident doesn’t mean people aren’t still to blame.”

  Jas turned back around to look at Anna again. “I liked you from the day you showed up in Baton Rouge. Colin never gave me the chance to get to know him, though I’m sorry for trying to get you to convince him to go out with me. I obviously didn’t know he was your husband.”

  Anna laughed, and wanted to reach out to her friend and hug her, to cry against her shoulder and let the burdens of the past couple of months wash over them, but she was talking to a ghost. She didn’t know the rules for interacting with ghosts. She was afraid Jas would disappear at any moment.

  “Did you know Dylan was in love with you?” Anna asked her instead.

  Jas shook her head, and the normal joviality of her expressions softened. “No, I never knew. He hardly ever even talked to me. I wish he’d asked me out or let me know he was interested. I would have said yes.”

  Anna sighed. “Maybe it was supposed to work out this way. Make it easier for him if there was no way to save you.”

  “Maybe,” Jas agreed. “But I don’t think Heaven knows what’s going to happen to us. Free will, you know.”

  Anna just nodded.

  “Regardless,” Jas continued, “you’re right. It’s easier for him now since we never even dated. It’ll be easier for him to get over me.”

  “Jas, I’ve lived a long time. We never get over losing people we love. We just learn to cope eventually.”

  Jas blew a frustrated breath through her lips. “I was afraid you were going to say something like that.”

  Anna cast another furtive glance in the direction of the slave owner. This memory had returned to her with better clarity now; she knew Colin would be walking away from him soon having reached an agreement to purchase three children. Then they’d be leaving south Louisiana to make the long and dangerous trek northward to get them to safety.

  Jas must have sensed they were running out of time. “I don’t think they can get you if I’m here,” she said.

  She was still eyeing the slave owner, and Anna was sure if Jas’s ghost had been armed, she’d be brandishing her weapon now. Not that Anna blamed her at all.

  “What do you mean?” Anna asked.

  Jas finally tore her gaze away from the sweaty man in the linen suit and moved closer to her friend. “Those demons that have been taking over your dreams. I don’t think they can reach your mind if I’m here instead. And Max can help Colin while he sleeps. It’s not fool proof. They’re stronger than we are. They’ll figure out eventually how to kick us out, but for now, when you sleep, I’ll come to you.”

  Anna stood up straighter, edging away from the rough bark of the tree. “That dream in Petrograd. Were you really there?”

  Jas nodded.

  “But why? And why were you warning me Colin needed help? It doesn’t make any sense. We caught up to that demon and killed it.”

  “I was trying to figure out how to do this. Visit you in your dreams, I mean. It ain’t easy, that’s for sure. I couldn’t stay long in Petrograd, I kept feeling something trying to suck me back out of the dream. I can still feel it. But I’ve already told Max what he needs to do, and he’s with Colin now.”

  Anna’s eyes brimmed with tears again at the thought of Max’s ghost visiting Colin in his dream. Even in death, their friends were still trying to protect them.

  “Max…” Anna whispered, but Jas held her fingers to Anna’s lips.

  “Sh, Anna. Of course Max is sad about leaving his family, but knowing he can help you all now maybe more than he ever could have alive is at least giving him a great deal of peace.”

  Jas jumped at a sound or vision or something Anna couldn’t see or hear. She turned around to look for the source of whatever had frightened her, but Jas offered her a weak smile.

  “It’s getting too close. I’m going to have to wake you up. But, Anna…” Jas took a deep breath then hugged her tightly, and Anna sank into her friend’s arms, which felt just as real and warm and comforting as she remembered them. “Tell Dylan he was one of the best men I’ve ever known.”

  Then Anna woke up. She blinked a few times before remembering she was in their apartment in Devil’s Thumb, and Colin was staring back at her. She gasped as she realized he had woken up just before her, and he already knew she’d been dreaming about Jas. And Jas had been right: Colin had fallen asleep, submerged in a different world where the French had been at war – yet again – this time with the Prussians. His memory had been just as distorted when Max had shown up beside him – out of place in 1870, both because he hadn’t lived then and his attire was very much of a man who had just left the casual wear department at a Macy’s, not of a French or Prussian soldier.

  Colin had spent most of his dream begging Max to forgive him, and Max had spent most of the dream telling Colin to stop begging him for forgiveness he didn’t need to give. He had to save Anna, and if it had been his wife, if he had been the one with the power to save her, even knowing others might get hurt, he would have done the same thing. When Max finally got Colin to shut up, he told him what Jas had told Anna, about their theory that they may be able to help protect them while they slept, at least for a little while, and when they felt themselves being pulled from these dreams, they could wake them. These archdemons would eventually figure out how to work around them, they always did, but for now, Jas and Max had found meaning in their deaths and were eager and excited to help their friends.

  “Did you hear her?” Anna asked Colin. “The last thing she told me?”

  Colin had been awake already, so of course he had, but Anna wasn’t sure how she was supposed to deliver this news to Dylan.

  Colin brushed the stray strands of her hair away from her damp cheeks and smiled at her. “I heard her. And I think you just tell him exactly the way Jas told you to. It’s what she wants him to know.”

  “It’ll only make it harder for him, don’t you think? Knowing if he’d had the courage to ask her out, how different their lives might have been?”

  “We don’t know why Dylan never told her the truth. Or why she never told him. I suspect Dylan never did because he suffered from the same complex I always have: he was convinced she was too good for him and she was out of his league. And Jas wanted to ask me out, but wouldn’t do it. I think she was just shy, even though people who didn’t know her better would find that hard to believe.”

  Anna laughed, another of those aching sobbing laughs, because he was right. Jas was beautiful and smart and seemed so confident, but she had always been second-guessing and doubting herself. When a child grows up with parents who expect perfection, self-doubt must be the inevitable outcome. She wasn’t the first friend they’d had who had won the genetic lottery but could never recognize their own value.

  “We should see how Dylan’s doing anyway. First morning waking up as an Immortal… at some point, it will hit him, just how long five hundred years is.”

  Colin reached for his cell phone and only then did Anna notice how long she’d actually been asleep. The dream had seemed so quick, but she’d slept for more than four hours.

  “How long were you asleep, Colin?” she asked, looking at the time on the phone, wondering how it could possibly be right.

  “About the same. I fell asleep right after you.”

  Colin sensed something was making her nervous. “Anna, dreams are always like that. We’re never aware of how much time is really passing, even when ghosts or demons aren’t popping into our heads.”

  Anna nodded but something still seemed off. Wrong. It was too much time. “Did you dream about anything before the Franco-Prussian War and Max?”

  Colin shook his head. “No, that was it.”

  Anna couldn’t remember anything before that plantation either. But she hadn’t been there for four hours, and she was sure of it. “We both did so much talking, we should have kept our mouths shut and let them speak. There must be something else. Wh
at if they couldn’t find us at first? If it takes them a while to find us, and they were the ones who had to snatch us away from these demons?”

  Colin sighed and rubbed the heel of his hand across his eyes. “Like they’re playing tug of war with us as soon as we fall asleep?”

  Anna sat up and looked down at him.

  “Yeah,” she breathed, “I think that’s exactly what they’re doing. And sooner or later, Jas and Max won’t be able to find us in time.”

  Chapter 17

  Dylan’s apartment was only two doors down from theirs. Knowing he’d probably gotten as little sleep as they did, Colin and Anna felt a little guilty as they knocked on his door, but he opened it anyway and looked like he’d been awake for a while. He held up his coffee mug and nodded toward his kitchen.

  “Help yourself. Just brewed it.”

  Anna didn’t need a second invitation. Even though Colin had witnessed The Angel bringing someone back from the brink of death before, he looked Dylan over anyway now that the sun was up and he could see him better. He looked just as he always did, except maybe a little tired. Dylan caught Colin studying him and closed his door with an exasperated sigh.

  “Dude, I’m fine. Your own wife almost died. Wasn’t she fine as soon as your angel healed her?”

  Anna stopped stirring her coffee and glanced up at him. “She’s your angel now, too, Dylan. She’ll be the one who visits you when you need help.”

  Both of the O’Conners waited for some kind of recognition of what his servitude meant for his future – his very long future, but he just shrugged and set his coffee mug down on the counter.

  “True. Do I have to call her the angel though or can I make up my own name for her?”

  Colin was tempted to smell Dylan’s coffee to see what he’d put in it. Why the hell would The Angel’s name be the most pressing concern he had right now? Anna grinned and Dylan caught her.

  “Cut that out. It’s bad manners to talk about your friends when they can’t hear you.”

  Colin snickered but agreed with him. “I was just wondering what you spiked your coffee with.”

  Dylan’s forehead wrinkled with his confusion. “Two sweeteners. They’re on the counter if you don’t believe me. I was going to get some more of that Demon Ale yesterday, but well, shit happened and I never got around to it.”

  “How can you not be freaking out?” Anna asked.

  She had expected to spend the morning consoling and comforting their friend, not listening to him make jokes about a tragedy that was still too painful for Colin or Anna to talk about.

  But Dylan just shrugged again. “Anna, I was basically dead. You saved my life. I’m grateful. I’m sorry as hell we lost Max, but we all knew the dangers involved in this job, even long before you two showed up and all this weird stuff with the archdemons followed. I think after losing Jas and Jeremy, Max and I had just accepted how easily it could happen to us, too.”

  Dylan looked more carefully at Colin then added, “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to be irreverent. I know you feel guilty about yesterday. I shouldn’t have said that. I really was planning on getting The Beast, but dude, I looked this brewing company up online and I gotta show you this.”

  Dylan got off the stool near his counter and grabbed his cell phone. He pulled up a web page and handed the phone to Colin. “Look at the label on this one. That White Rascal. It almost kinda looks like that human-turned-demon you guys hunted down in Nanjing, doesn’t it?”

  Anna put her coffee down to look at the image on the screen.

  “Whoa,” she muttered, “it didn’t have those red things on its head, but yeah. Awfully close if this white rascal runs around on all fours.”

  “Huh,” Dylan took his phone back and gave the screen one last speculative glance before eyeing Colin and Anna again. “You don’t think whoever started this brewing company had any real knowledge of demons, do you?”

  “How old is this company?” Colin asked.

  “Not old. Founded in 1993.”

  “So the founder is most likely still alive,” Colin ventured.

  Dylan nodded. “Yeah, but I doubt he gives the tours himself.”

  “Does it matter? So what if he can see demons? He wasn’t one of Lacey’s hunters.” Her name caught in Anna’s throat and she took a sip of her coffee to try to push down the heartache that had resurfaced.

  “Just weird. Maybe you’re right though and it doesn’t mean anything. Besides, there’s plenty of descriptions on the internet that are pretty damn accurate.” Dylan sat back down and Anna kept her eyes fixed on her coffee. She’d put a bit of creamer in hers and the color reminded her of the smooth brown of Jas’s skin, that beautiful rich caramel, and she didn’t know if ghosts could stick around the living when they were awake, but she had promised her.

  “I dreamed about Jas last night,” Anna said softly, keeping her eyes on her coffee, but she could see the way Dylan’s body tensed at Jas’s name.

  He was quiet for a few moments before that tension melted away and he told her, “Lucky you.”

  “No, it wasn’t just a dream. She was there. Just like the archdemons can get in our heads, especially when we’re asleep, she found me in a dream. It’s the second time she’s done that. She said she’s been trying to figure out how to help us when these demons start invading our minds, because when she’s there, this demon can’t be. But it’s stronger than her, and it eventually pulled her out of my dream and she forced me awake.”

  “Holy shit,” Dylan mumbled. “Just like Jas though to figure out a way to keep fighting even after death.”

  “Not just her,” Colin said. “Max visited my dream.”

  Anna was still vacillating between gazing at her coffee and trying to meet Dylan’s eyes, and Dylan was far too observant not to notice.

  “She told you something you don’t want to tell me. Just say it, Anna. I can handle it. What? Are these demons about to target my mind now?”

  Anna shook her head. “She didn’t say. If she knew, she would have warned me. But she did want me to give you a message.”

  Anna finally met his eyes and they registered his surprise, but he waited silently for Anna to just deliver this message from a dead woman. Anna groaned and buried her head in her hands.

  “Ok, now you’re freaking me out,” Dylan warned her.

  “You’ve just been through so much lately.”

  “We all have. But you’re still freaking me out.”

  Anna lifted her head and sighed. “She told me to tell you she never knew how you felt about her and she wished she had. And that you were one of the best men she’d ever known.”

  Anna dropped her eyes again and focused on her coffee. The room had gotten so quiet they could hear Dylan swallowing, his shallow breaths as he realized what Anna was telling him.

  He exhaled slowly and propped his chin in his hand, studying his own coffee now. “I guess asking her to wait five hundred years for me is a little unfair, right?”

  Colin smiled. “I have a feeling time has a different way of passing for them. There is no end. It must.”

  “Five hundred years is still a really long time,” he countered.

  “Dylan,” Anna said, “it’s nothing when you compare it to eternity. You have half a millennium left on this planet. Just be as happy as you can. What makes Jas happy right now is trying to figure out how to protect us. She loved being a hunter and she’s figured out a way to still fight them even on the other side. She thought it was the most important thing she’d ever do in this life, and I’m willing to bet, even after this is over, she’ll try to figure out a way to keep helping us.”

  Dylan lifted his head and smiled at his cup of coffee. “Yeah, that sounds like Jas.”

  “If you had each known, it most likely wouldn’t have changed anything. Nothing would have stopped her from going to White Oaks that night. You would have a different set of memories, and I’m not sure it would make your long life now easier if things had been different.”


  Dylan finally looked up from his coffee at Anna, at Jas’s friend, this woman she was still trying so hard to save. “Why would she have thought that about me anyway? That woman could have had any man she wanted.”

  “Told you,” Colin thought. He remembered thinking the same thing about Anna and wondering what this angel in London ever saw in the poor Irish son of a sharecropper.

  Anna tilted her head at Dylan and studied him again. What was it with these men being so convinced the women they loved were too good for them because of their pasts?

  “She was right, Dylan. She is right, I mean. Only Jas’s body is dead, but she is still our friend, and she is still a hunter, and she does love you. But,” Anna stopped him before he could protest, “if you spend the next five hundred years moping and pining for a woman you won’t see again until you die, she’ll probably be royally pissed off at you. And that’s not the way you want to start off eternity with the woman you love.”

  Colin snorted. “Actually, that’s probably a fitting way to start off eternity with any woman.”

  Anna slapped his arm. Colin backed away from her and Dylan laughed. She warned Colin if he kept it up, they may be testing that theory, but Anna was only joking. Until their assignment in Baton Rouge when they’d been separated and Colin had acted so unlike himself, she’d never even really been mad at him.

  Dylan’s eyes were still smiling when he leaned toward Colin and asked him, “Probably a stupid question to ask the O’Conners this, but you believe in soul mates then?”

  Colin had still been rubbing his arm even though Anna had only been playing; he was just teasing her, too, but he let his hand fall. “Of course we do. Not that people are made for each other, but some are certainly happiest when they’re with the right person. But we also think most people never get lucky enough to find someone whose spirit is so much like their own they’d count as a soul mate. Maybe they meet after death. Honestly, before Jas and Max showed up, we’d never met a ghost before.”

  “Huh,” Dylan’s fingers drummed against his counter. Ghosts were an entirely new element to their supernatural battle and even though these were their friends, it was still a little creepy. “You think they can haunt people? Like moving things and rattling chains and shit?”