“Colin wouldn’t leave you,” Dylan insisted.
He knew their car was gone, and Colin must have driven somewhere, but Dylan had been with Colin from the moment Anna was abducted to when he found her. He couldn’t believe Colin would leave.
“I don’t know where he’s going,” Anna replied.
She’d already told him this, too. She knew he’d planned on going somewhere when he left, but he hadn’t been thinking of anyplace in particular. Anna had just assumed he was going to drive around and calm down. When he still hadn’t come home hours later, she’d tried calling his phone, but he didn’t answer. She found his phone in their bedroom, the volume still turned off from the night before.
Luca and Andrew had offered to come with them to the Garden of the Gods, but Anna and Dylan could tell it was a half-hearted gesture. Neither of them wanted to go, and neither of them wasted much effort in trying to talk Anna and Dylan out of doing something so dangerous. Anna had never felt more alone in her life. Even those first three months in Baton Rouge couldn’t compare to this.
They waited at the Visitor’s Center until sunset and the park closed then drove back to Boulder in silence. As they pulled into the parking lot at their apartment complex in Devil’s Thumb, Anna searched for their white Toyota Camry, even though she already knew he wasn’t here. She would have felt him.
Dylan paused by Anna’s door and touched her arm gently. “You gonna be ok? I can sleep on your couch, if you want.”
Anna was torn between wanting to be alone, and being terrified of the silence inside her apartment and especially inside her own head. But she offered Dylan the bravest smile she could manage and promised to call him if she needed him. He made her promise twice that she would call – no matter what time it was – before he walked to his own apartment.
Part of the reason Anna had declined Dylan’s offer was because she couldn’t bring herself to sleeping in the bed without Colin. She needed the sofa herself. She grabbed her pillow from her side of the bed and threw it on the couch and tried not to dissolve into complete hysterics, but she was pretty sure she failed.
They’d finished off all of the beer the night before so she found a bottle of wine she and Colin had bought to go with the Saltimbocca he had been planning on making for Anna. She may have an affinity for mastering languages, but he had a talent for picking up local cuisines wherever they went.
Anna didn’t bother with a wine glass. She grabbed the first cup she saw – a plastic cup from a Colorado Avalanche game. She didn’t even know where the cup had come from. On her list of supernatural mysteries, the appearance of team paraphernalia was ranking pretty low right now.
She turned the television on to try to distract her from the complete emptiness she felt in her mind, but only the wine seemed to be helping with that, so she drank more. About halfway through the bottle, she must have fallen asleep. At least, she was pretty sure she was asleep because she was definitely sure she wasn’t supposed to be in Stalingrad.
Anna tried to remember why she was here. There was no war… the second catastrophic war to burden this country had already ended. Why had she come to this Russian city? She was standing inside a building, but it was empty. She looked around for Colin and didn’t see him and when she tried to reach out for him, she couldn’t sense him either.
Anna’s heart accelerated as she realized she was completely alone. She rushed to the glass doors in front of her and pulled on them, but they didn’t open. She looked for another exit, but her only other choice was a black spiral staircase and she didn’t want to go upstairs. She picked up a chair and tried to break the glass in the door, but it didn’t shatter.
“Colin!” she shouted.
Where was he? How had they gotten separated? He didn’t answer her. She called his name again, louder this time so that it hurt her throat when she screamed his name, but she was panicked now. She couldn’t find him. This wasn’t possible. They had been promised.
Anna swung the chair at the glass door again, but it only stung her hands. The glass didn’t even crack. She decided to try a window instead and swung the chair with as much force as she could. The reverberation knocked her over.
“Colin!” she cried.
She looked down at her hands. They were bleeding. There was no glass on the ground; she must have cut her hands on the chair somehow. She put her head between her knees and closed her eyes. She tried finding him again. He was gone.
A hand wrapped around her arm and tugged softly and Anna jumped. Her head snapped up and she had to stare at this young woman for a few seconds before she was able to place her and remember who she was.
“Jas?”
When Anna didn’t stand, Jas knelt beside her. “My God, Anna, what happened to you?”
Anna looked down at her hands again, but Jas wasn’t talking about her hands. “I don’t know. I can’t remember why I’m here, and I’m trapped in this building and Colin’s not here. Where is he?”
“I don’t know. But you’ll find each other, Anna. Don’t worry.”
But Anna shook her head. “No, you don’t understand. I can’t sense him and he’s gone.”
Jas’s eyes never left her. She sat on the floor next to her friend and reached inside a pocket, producing a white handkerchief, which she wrapped around Anna’s bleeding hand. Anna had the strange thought that Jas probably hadn’t had the handkerchief in her pocket for long, but she couldn’t remember why she would think such a thing.
“I was still there in the Garden of the Gods yesterday,” Jas said, as she reached into another pocket to produce another handkerchief for Anna’s right hand. “After Max and I chased off those demons and Adriel showed up. I heard everything he said.”
Most of those words didn’t make any sense to Anna. Where was Garden of the Gods? And who were Max and Adriel?
Jas sighed and smirked at her friend. “Girl, you’ve gotta lay off the wine. You’re incredibly difficult to talk to when you’re drunk.”
“I’m drunk?” Anna asked.
She didn’t feel drunk. But maybe that’s why she couldn’t sense Colin. That happened sometimes when she had too much to drink.
Jas nodded and confirmed she had fallen asleep drunk.
“I’m asleep?” Anna asked. Anna was beginning to feel both drunk and stupid.
“Ok, Anna, look at me and focus. It’s not 1953, you’re not really in Russia, and you only know me because we met in Baton Rouge and I was killed by an archdemon. I’m a ghost. And yesterday, you and the other Immortals, including Colin were attacked by a huge ass demon army at Garden of the Gods in Colorado. Max, your other ghost friend, and I helped scare them away, then this fallen angel who’s been harassing you and Colin for months now showed up and planted all this shit in their minds about Heaven being their real enemy. Ringing a bell yet?”
Something in all of those words, and there were so many words, seemed familiar to Anna, but she was having such a hard time pinning any of it down.
“Colin?” she asked feebly.
Jas sighed again and muttered something about being glad she was dead and couldn’t drink anymore. She’d had no idea drunk people were this annoying.
“I’m not sure what’s going on with Colin. I’m tied to you. Max is tied to Colin, though, so I talked to him before you fell asleep and I came here. Colin left because he was convinced you wanted him to leave.”
Anna jerked her hand away from Jas. “Colin would never think that. He would know better because he knows all my thoughts, don’t you remember that?”
“Anna, I don’t have time to stay here and argue with you. When you sober up tomorrow, you remember two things. One: you’re obnoxious in your dreams when you’re drunk. And two: you have to find Colin. He’s in danger, Anna. I don’t know what that fallen angel did, but we both know this isn’t Colin. And your other friends… save Colin first. Leave Dylan in Boulder to try to help the other two.”
A loud rumbling thundering noise outside made Jas look away fr
om her finally. Anna followed her gaze but didn’t see anything.
“Anna, I’ve got to wake you up now.”
Anna shook her head and grabbed onto Jas’s arm. “Jas, please. Where is he? How am I supposed to find him?”
Jas smiled at her, but it was a strained smile, a scared smile. She brushed the loose strands of hair off of Anna’s damp cheeks and hugged her friend. “You’ll find him, Anna. Because not even Hell can keep you apart.”
A sharp pain behind Anna’s eyes made her open them slowly, carefully, as the rising sun invaded her living room. She stared at the television in front of her. It was still on, showing a rerun now of Mad About You. Anna remembered watching that show with Colin.
Colin.
Anna sat up, even though the stabbing pain in her temples worsened and the room spun. She looked around the living room helplessly and ran her hands through her tangled hair. She pulled them toward her face and studied her palms. They weren’t bleeding. There were no scratches.
“You’ll find him, Anna. Because not even Hell can keep you apart.”
Anna swallowed and fresh tears spilled from the corners of her eyes.
“How?” she whispered. “Jas, Angel, please. Please, help me.”
Anna closed her eyes and focused on the piercing pain in her head; it was a welcome distraction from the silence.
“Please,” she prayed again. “Why have you abandoned me?”
The ringing of her cellphone interrupted her prayer. Anna opened her eyes and tried to remember where she’d thrown her purse last night. It was on the kitchen counter. She dug the phone out of her purse but didn’t recognize the number. She wasn’t going to answer it because it was a Boulder area code. It couldn’t be Colin. But a voice that sounded suspiciously like Jas’s, and Anna suspected she was still a little drunk, told her to answer it anyway.
“Anna?” the woman’s voice greeted her.
Anna rubbed her aching forehead as she tried to place this voice. She recognized this voice. And then she remembered.
“Amanda?”
“I had a dream last night. Someone who claimed to be an angel told me I needed to call you as soon as I woke up. She said you needed my help.”
Anna’s hand stopped rubbing her forehead and dropped to her side.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I do. Desperately.”
She hadn’t been ignored. The Angel hadn’t abandoned her after all.
Chapter 14
Colin awoke in the small motel room in Los Angeles around noon. He’d driven straight through from Boulder. He knew he should be hungry but had no interest in eating. He couldn’t help wondering what would happen to an Immortal if they refused to eat, if there were some divine intervention that would force calories into his body to prevent him from starving to death. They’d probably force him to eat dandelion leaves.
Colin pushed the covers off of him and sat up. Whether he ate or not probably didn’t matter. He missed her so much already, he couldn’t see how he could possibly survive much longer anyway. But she had wanted him to leave her. He was certain of that. His lack of faith and his refusal to hunt anymore had broken them. He gave the motel phone one last wistful glance before grabbing his clothes to get dressed.
He had driven to L.A. because he didn’t know where else to go. He had only been trying to put distance between them, to give her the space she needed, to get out of her head. He’d thought about hitting I-10 now to head east but that wouldn’t put enough space between them. He needed to get off this continent. So instead, he was going to the L.A. International Airport. He’d used the motel’s single lobby computer to purchase a ticket to Glasgow.
He didn’t really want to go to Scotland, there had just been seats available on this flight. He had too many memories with Anna there; happy memories from so many lifetimes ago when they’d both been mortal and blissfully unaware that demons stalked the Earth, when they’d been confident in Heaven’s righteousness. Colin pulled his shoes on and glanced at the hotel clock. His flight wouldn’t leave for another three hours, but he had nothing to pack. There was nothing left for him to do in this motel room.
Colin stopped at a department store on his way to the airport to buy a backpack he could carry with him, mostly so he wouldn’t look suspicious traveling to another country without any luggage. At least with a carryon, he could claim he was a light packer, and most people he’d met in this country couldn’t tell the difference between a Scottish and Irish accent anyway. He thought they must be deaf. Or stupid. Or maybe a little of both. But he could claim he was just going home to visit family since he traveled with an American passport now. No one would question him.
He grabbed a few things to put in it then drove to the airport. Colin wished he had a way of getting the car back to Anna; it was the car she’d wanted, after all. Besides, he’d left her with no vehicle. But he knew the other Immortals would take care of her. And it’s not like used Camrys were hard to find.
Colin presented his ticket at the counter then waited through the long security line. He’d left his daggers and knife in the car. He wouldn’t be needing them anymore. He got through security fairly easily considering he had so little on him. By the time he found his gate, he only had an hour to kill before his flight would start boarding. He found an empty seat and opened the book he’d bought at the store.
It was a book Anna had read years ago and had told him he would like. He’d promised her he would read it when he had time, and he’d never gotten around to it. By the time they announced his flight was boarding, he’d read almost one-third of the book. He wasn’t surprised the book was entertaining; Anna knew everything about him.
He had a two-hour layover in London, which was one of the last cities in the world he wanted to be in. Even Heathrow Airport only reminded him of his wife and the life they used to have together. He’d finished the novel somewhere over the Atlantic so he had to find a newsstand where he could buy something else to read on the rest of his flight.
He was waffling between a National Geographic magazine and a paperback novel when a young woman with strawberry blonde hair bumped into him. Colin dropped the novel he’d been flipping through and she smiled up at him and offered to get it.
Colin decided to just get them both. He didn’t know where he was going after Glasgow anyway. She handed the novel to him and Colin reached for it, but she didn’t let go.
“Where are you heading?” she asked, a distinct American Midwest accent lingering in her speech.
Colin sighed. She looked faintly familiar and had probably been on the flight from L.A. She may be waiting on the same plane, so there was no point in lying. “Glasgow.”
“Oh, me too! Well, technically, I’m going to Edinburgh, but the plane is landing in Glasgow.” She let go of the book and Colin tossed it on the counter, but she didn’t seem to get the hint he wasn’t interested in talking to her. “Are you from Scotland?”
Colin tried not to roll his eyes. He probably did though.
“No,” he said.
The guy behind the counter who rang up his books was trying not to laugh. Colin thought the cashier was probably doing a better job not laughing than he was doing of indicating he wasn’t interested in Miss Congeniality. She was still chatting as the cashier handed Colin his purchases.
“This is my first time in Europe. I just graduated from Notre Dame over the summer, so this is my graduation present.”
Colin was going to walk away but he stared back at the girl who hadn’t stopped talking since picking up his book. “Wait, you just graduated from college and you’re traveling the world alone?”
The girl’s smile shifted and she tilted her head at him. “Well, I don’t have to be alone.”
Colin was sure he rolled his eyes this time. “Stop hitting on men in airports. Or anywhere. Stay with tour groups and get back home in one piece.”
He turned to walk away, but she grabbed his arm. “We’re going to the same city. Sort of. If you’re so worried about
my safety, you could join me in Edinburgh and be my tour guide. You look like you can handle yourself.” She hadn’t let go of his arm. Colin pulled it away from her.
“I’m married,” he told her.
She raised an eyebrow at him and glanced down at his left hand. “No ring?”
Colin looked down at his own hand as if he were surprised by the absence of a ring on his finger. But he knew there was no ring there, of course. He and Anna had always taken their rings off to hunt, and it had been over two hundred years since they had both left them in a small room they were renting in Munich to chase the demons that were following Napoleon’s army back to France. When they returned to the building where they had rented a room, they found it destroyed and burned to the ground by the troops as they passed through the city.
They’d gone back the next day after the embers had cooled to dig through the rubble, hoping for some miracle, but their rings were gone. They never replaced them. They were simple gold bands, but their value had nothing to do with the material they were made from. They had exchanged their vows with those rings. Anna had become his wife the day he slipped that ring on her finger. And there wasn’t a diamond or metal in this world that could replace the value in that.
He’d been quiet too long and this girl picked up on it.
“Separated?” she asked.
Colin didn’t know how to answer her.
“What’s your name?” he asked instead.
She smiled broadly at him. “Olivia.”
“I’ll help you get to your hotel in Edinburgh, but that’s it. I’m not even staying there. And you’ve got to be smarter about interacting with strangers, because you don’t seem to understand how dangerous this world is.”
“Well, fortunately for me, there are knights in shining armor running around to keep me out of trouble,” she cooed.
Colin shook his head and gave up. He was done fighting evil. But some people seemed hell bent on looking for it anyway. Tahel had been right all along. People had to be responsible for their own choices.
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