“We should be careful about moving her,” he cautioned.
“Well, we can’t leave her here,” Anna snapped.
“Careful, Anna. He just meant moving her might kill her.”
Anna took a deep breath and closed her eyes briefly. When she reopened them, Andrew was still watching her. “We won’t abandon her, Anna. Listen to her breathing though. I think she has a punctured lung.”
Anna bent down closer to the woman’s face so she could hear her breathing better, and Andrew was right: her rapid shallow breathing suggested only one of her lungs may be working. Anna sat back against the pile of bricks she’d thrown behind her and looked between her husband and this young hunter they’d just met. “Now what?” she asked.
Colin watched the injured woman for a few seconds, trying to determine if she was going to die regardless of whatever they tried to do. “Let’s at least try to get her inside the building across the street. Maybe Andrew can go look for a doctor?”
Andrew nodded and helped them lift the woman from the ground then ran down the black street to try to find help for this broken woman. Colin and Anna carried her as carefully as they could to the nearby building and found a table to lay her on. “At least we didn’t kill her,” Colin said as he stepped back from the woman who was still breathing those shallow ragged breaths.
Anna glanced up at her husband and sighed. “Even if Andrew finds a doctor, what kind of help will he be? Every hospital still operating in the city is overflowing right now, and she needs more than a doctor.”
Colin nodded. “She needs a miracle.”
Anna touched the woman’s forehead gently, but the woman didn’t seem to be aware of her presence. Maybe she was already mostly dead. Colin had told her before that she hadn’t known he was by her bedside for days as she lay dying in their London flat. “It’s still better this way,” Anna decided. “No one should have to die alone.”
“True,” Andrew agreed. Anna startled and turned to look at him in the doorway. He was alone.
“No doctor?” she asked.
Andrew shook his head and handed her the oil lamp he’d brought back with him. “I found one, but he had twenty other patients he was trying to keep alive. He wanted to know if we could bring her to him. I guess if we carried the table…”
Colin didn’t think it would help her, and for all they knew, she could still feel pain and that much movement would only make her final hours on Earth that much more miserable.
Andrew collapsed against one of the walls and slid down onto the floor. “So we can do nothing?” he asked.
Even Anna had to admit some causes simply couldn’t be fought. “We can stay with her. And we can pray for her.”
With the lamp Andrew had found for them, Anna was able to study the young hunter for the first time. His ash blonde hair and pale blue eyes combined with his youthful, boyish good looks gave him an air of such innocence and naivety. But Anna had spent almost three centuries fighting demons: she knew how deceiving looks could be. She smiled at Andrew and sat across from him. “How old are you, Andrew?”
Andrew snorted and told her, “Twenty.”
“And how long have you been twenty?”
Andrew smiled back at her and closed his eyes. “I’m not exactly sure. I was illiterate when I became an Immortal and from a very small Polish village. I think it was sometime in the 1680s.”
“We’ve only got forty years on you then,” Colin said, sliding down onto the floor next to Anna. He’d taken off his jacket to drape over the woman as a blanket and when Andrew opened his eyes, he noticed what Colin had done and took his own coat off to help keep the dying woman warm.
When Andrew sat back down, he glanced at the O’Conners and grinned at them again. “So rumor has it you two are telepathic. Can you turn it off when you want to?”
“No, but why would we want to?” Colin asked. Anna tried not to laugh at her husband because he was so genuinely perplexed by Andrew’s question. For the O’Conners, their mental connection had been the second greatest blessing The Angel had given them, second only to saving Anna’s life. They often forgot most people wouldn’t want someone else in their head all the time.
Andrew just laughed and told him he didn’t think he could handle anyone hearing all of his thoughts, or maybe it was the other way around; maybe that person wouldn’t be able to deal with having to hear all of his thoughts.
The dying woman on the table moaned but didn’t move or speak. Anna got up to check on her, and Andrew stood on the other side of the table, checking her pulse again and placing a hand gently on her chest to feel the movement of her breaths.
Andrew shook his head sadly. “It won’t be long now.”
“We should pray for her,” Anna said quietly.
Colin joined his wife and held her hand. “We’ll pray to St. Joseph. He’ll help take care of her in the next world.”
So the Immortals prayed together over the dying woman in Barcelona, whose life they couldn’t possibly save. When she passed, Andrew helped them to bury her body then left them to continue his hunting for the demons that were flooding Spain during a civil war that was only a precursor to far worse things to come.
Chapter 2
The Immortals had just returned to Baton Rouge and found vacancies in an apartment complex off of Sherwood Forest Boulevard. Anna and Colin had told Luca what Jeremy warned them about in Devil’s Thumb, and they found themselves having to restrain Luca from trying to kill Andrew before leaving Boulder. They weren’t even sure an Immortal could kill another Immortal. Nothing like this had ever happened, obviously, and Anna convinced Luca that the adage to keep their friends close but their enemies closer might be their best hope in determining how to end this threat on all of their lives now.
Luca eventually, and reluctantly, agreed to play along with their feigning ignorance about Andrew’s betrayal, but he refused to share an apartment with him, and really, no one could blame him. But Andrew didn’t seem at all suspicious when they suggested each of the single hunters get their own place, except Dylan decided to get a bigger apartment so Jeremy could stay with him. He wasn’t about to let some asshole fallen angel take over his friend’s body again. Luca’s desire for privacy wasn’t exactly surprising, though, so in those weeks following Jeremy’s recovery as they packed up their belongings in Colorado to return to Baton Rouge, each of the hunters tried to ignore the horrifying truth of what Andrew had done to them.
Anna even still wore the St. Casimir medallion around her neck. After all, it wasn’t St. Casimir’s fault Andrew had turned his back on Heaven and his fellow Immortals, his fellow humans. At some point, he must have been good and compassionate and loving – all of those qualities angels look for when gifting immortality because he had become an Immortal. So she would continue to wear the medallion of his patron saint as a reminder that no one was immune to temptation, and even Heaven could be tricked. Neither The Angel nor Luca’s angel had known about Andrew’s deception.
Anna opened the last box of their belongings and handed Colin the stack of neatly folded shirts for him to stuff into the new, and entirely too small, dresser they’d just purchased from Costco. They didn’t know how long they’d be here this time, and after blowing up their last apartment in Baton Rouge, they didn’t want to waste money on expensive furniture. Besides, Colin still wanted his Porsche; that was a hell of a lot more important than a nice bedroom set.
Anna rolled her eyes and handed him another pile of clothes. Colin just grinned at her. “Don’t worry, my love. We’ll go to Ireland first, then I’ll go get my Cayman. There’s a refugee crisis in Europe right now. Surely when we’re done here, we’ll be sent somewhere near there where I can get my car and you can have a photo album full of pictures of our trip to Ireland.”
Anna stopped packing long enough to look up at her husband and smiled slyly back at him. “Colin, who has photo albums anymore? Have you forgotten what century this is again?”
Colin just shrugged an
d crammed the clothes into the already full drawer. “I don’t know what you do with all of your pictures now. This drawer is full. Why do you have so much clothes?”
“For the same reason you think you need a sports car.”
Colin had multiple reasons for believing a Porsche was a better investment than piles of women’s clothing, but a knock on their apartment door prevented him from delivering any of those reasons. The rapid knock came again, and they knew it must be Luca.
“I’ll let him in,” Colin sighed.
Anna threw the rest of their clothes on top of the dresser and followed Colin into the living room of their new apartment. Luca strolled in, but ever since finding out about Andrew’s betrayal of the Immortals, he had lost much of the swagger and confidence he usually carried with him. It pained Anna to see him like this.
“Good morning, my sweet Anna,” Luca said and kissed her cheek. Anna motioned toward the kitchen and told him there was coffee left.
“Where are the others?” Colin asked.
Luca shook his head and poured himself a mug of coffee then counted out three packets of sweetener. “Don’t know. I think Dylan and Jeremy are visiting family. And hopefully Andrew’s been cast down to Hell.”
“So we’re alone then. Finally,” Colin confirmed. They hadn’t had much time to talk to Luca alone since Jeremy’s retransformation.
Luca looked up from his coffee and nodded. “Yep. That’s why I’m here. God knows I wouldn’t be awake this early otherwise.”
Luca glanced around the O’Conners’ sparse living room. “Where the hell am I supposed to sit?”
“Hey,” Anna retorted, “we keep buying furniture and then either blowing it up or leaving too soon to even sell it. Sit on the lawn chair.”
Luca scowled at the folding chair by the small table near the kitchen. “Are you serious?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Luca, sit down and start talking,” Colin muttered. Colin figured Luca had grown up sleeping on straw beds, yet he was going to complain about having to sit on a folding lawn chair now?
Luca grunted to let the O’Conners know what he thought about their decision to keep their furnishings to an absolute minimum but sat down anyway. Anna and Colin just sat on the floor. Luca stared down at them and mumbled something in his old Italian then offered his friends the best smile he could considering he hadn’t felt like smiling in weeks.
“In case you haven’t noticed,” Luca said, “I’ve been a little obsessed with how Andrew fooled us all for so long. I trained this kid, and I know at the time, there was nothing about him that sent up any red flags. His angel wouldn’t have gifted him immortality and all of these powers if he didn’t believe Andrew was worthy of them. So how the hell has he been tricking us and Heaven?”
“It’s never really made any sense to us either,” Colin agreed. “His angel should know his thoughts, right? So how didn’t his angel know he had turned against us? And for how long?”
Luca tapped his fingers against the plastic armrest on the lawn chair, which just seemed to remind him he was sitting in a vinyl and plastic folding lawn chair in the first place. He offered the O’Conners another disapproving scowl. “In hindsight, I know how Andrew was fooling us,” Luca continued. “After witnessing what both of you can do with this energy gift just by needing to use it in an emergency and doing it, I’d be willing to bet Andrew knew it wasn’t as complicated as he was making it seem. He was just stringing you along, trying to keep you discouraged from mastering this thing, especially you.” Luca nodded toward Anna. He hadn’t been in that cave in the Garden of the Gods, but he had heard every detail of Anna’s battle against Samael.
Anna looked away from Luca because of the pain these memories carried. She and Colin had discussed this so many times; being around others hadn’t discouraged them from going over every detail of Andrew’s disloyalty, including how he hadn’t taught them to use their gifts and, worse, how he hadn’t helped them when Anna was attacked in that prairie outside of Boulder. Andrew had forced Colin to act the only way he knew how, and then pretended to feel guilty about it. And Anna absolutely hated him for it, because Max was dead because of what they’d done.
Colin took her hand and kissed the back of it lightly and Anna rested her head on his shoulder. Luca sighed and told them, “Usually, I’m just messing with you when I tell you to knock off that telepathic shit, but right now, I feel like I’m about to lose my mind between what happened to me in the Garden of the Gods and now this with Andrew. So share it.”
Anna didn’t want to have to say any part of that conversation out loud, but she knew Luca was right; he needed to hear everything she and Colin had been privately discussing for the past few weeks. Luca just nodded along and told her he’d had the same thought. He had wanted to put Colin in a desperate and hopeless situation, maybe to try, once again, to get him to question his faith.
Anna reached up to the medallion she still wore around her neck and held it up for Luca to see. “Why give me this then? Why would he encourage me to pray to a saint?”
“Because in the end, none of the saints or angels did us any good out there. Maybe he wanted us to know that,” Luca countered.
Anna narrowed her eyes even though she wasn’t angry at Luca, but they couldn’t let Andrew know yet they knew the truth about him. “Well, he did help me in that cave. I believe that.”
Luca just smiled at her. “Prayer always helps, my sweet girl. Sometimes, we don’t understand how, but it does.”
“And Amanda,” Colin said, “she never had the chance to meet with Andrew to see if he had a different demon stalking him before Anna killed Samael. He was most likely faking having his own intruder into his mind.”
Luca nodded again. He’d been thinking obsessively about Andrew’s behavior for almost three weeks. “Think about all the help he’s given us since coming here. How it all ended up being wrong, even though we thought he seemed so damn smart at the time. He was the one to identify the markings on that green demon’s back as the marks in Revelations, and that made us all think Jeremy had been transformed by Abaddon. He intentionally led us down the wrong path.”
“Yeah,” Colin agreed, “he sure as hell wasn’t counting on Dylan being as smart as he is and tracking down that professor who specializes in this shit.”
“Sooner or later,” Anna said, “Andrew is going to get suspicious about Jeremy though. Jeremy keeps insisting he doesn’t remember anything about being a demon, but we did come back here because of Jeremy. It’s a pretty unconvincing lie that the only reason we’re here is to reunite Jeremy with his family.”
Luca pointed toward the chair he was sitting in and argued, “You’re doing a perfectly good job at convincing everyone you aren’t planning on being here long.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Luca, if it will shut you up, we’ll go back to Costco this afternoon and find chairs that don’t fold in half,” Colin teased.
Luca seemed placated by Colin’s offer though, and was in the middle of offering to drive them there now when Colin’s phone rang. He glanced at the number and looked up at his wife and Luca. “Weird,” he muttered, “it’s Amanda.”
Anna sat up straighter and Luca stopped pretending to be stuck in the vinyl weaves of the folding chair. He moved closer to Colin to try to listen to the conversation since he didn’t have Anna’s telepathy. Colin saved Luca the trouble of trying to gift himself super-human-hearing and put Amanda on speakerphone.
“You know,” Amanda exhaled heavily, “I like you and Anna. I really do. But I’ll be so glad when I don’t have to call either one of you anymore.”
“Can’t blame you,” Colin told her. “Who told you to call us this time?”
“Same angel, different dream. I don’t even understand all of this message, but she said Andrew’s angel had no idea he’d turned his back on Heaven, and there’s only one way he could hide his thoughts from an angel he’s supposed to be connected to.”
Luca inhaled sharply but waited f
or Amanda to finish. Anna watched his eyes the whole time though, those dark eyes that were usually so full of compassion and mercy had filled with a vengeance and loathing she’d never thought her old friend was capable of. The Immortals were his responsibility, and one of them was trying to either convert or bring down every single one of them on this planet. Andrew would not escape Luca’s retribution.
“It’s kind of like what happened to you and Luca,” Amanda finished. “With those demons getting in your head. Except Andrew must be doing it willingly. Every time his angel comes around, this fallen angel he’s obviously sworn allegiance to is getting inside his head to hide his thoughts. But it must be powerful, because she was able to sense Ahriman inside of you, Colin, which means whomever Andrew is working for now is far more powerful than Ahriman was.”
Luca closed his eyes and muttered something in an Italian the O’Conners couldn’t speak, but Anna kept her eyes on him. “Does she know who his fallen angel is?” she asked.
“No,” Amanda replied. “But there’s only one way to find out. Get him to show himself like you did with Samael.”
Colin made a noise that was a cross between a laugh and a grunt. There was no way he was letting Anna do something like that again. He’d gone to the Garden of the Gods to protect her, and he’d had to stand by and watch his wife fight an extremely powerful fallen angel. And she’d had to do it alone.
Anna smiled sympathetically at her husband, because she certainly wasn’t looking forward to challenging another fallen angel to a showdown any time soon. But Amanda wasn’t finished. “One more thing, then I’m going back to bed. It’s still early here.” The Immortals moved closer to the phone again as if it would somehow provide them more answers by their proximity. “She wants you to hang out with Luca for the rest of the morning. He should be expecting his own visitor soon.”
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