Luca finally looked away from the phone lying on the floor between the hunters and grinned at his old friends. “It’s about damn time. Let’s see how these bastards like all three of us blasting them back to Hell.”
Chapter 3
Luca insisted on waiting for his angel to show up in his own apartment since he actually had real furniture. Anna told Colin not to complain; he most likely also had food, and they were out of eggs. And bread. And she was hungry. As soon as they stepped into his apartment, Anna started dropping hints, claiming Italians knew how to do breakfasts right, which she didn’t really believe because she was English: she thought there was something wrong with expecting a person to eat nothing but a roll for breakfast. When Luca just smiled and agreed with her, she added, “You’ve always been a good cook.”
Luca tried not to laugh as he kept nodding along with her. “That’s true. I am a man of many talents.”
Colin rolled his eyes, but Anna wasn’t giving up this easily. “I’ve already had my coffee. Just make my damn croissants, Luca.”
Luca finally laughed and corrected her, “Cornetto, my sweet girl. I’m not French.”
“Luca, at this point, I’m willing to forsake my stomach’s demands and settle for bread. Just bread. Hand it over,” Anna teased.
Luca’s eyes danced as he made a grandiose gesture toward his real dinette table and told the O’Conners to sit down; he would once again come to their rescue and feed the starving couple.
Anna watched him as he disappeared into his kitchen, and for the first time in almost three weeks since Jeremy had shaken the foundations of their world, she felt like she could breathe normally again. “Did you notice that, Colin? He’s almost acting like himself again. This news about his angel coming is giving him hope.”
“His angel had just better come with the news we’re all expecting. We need Luca to have this gift now more than ever.”
“I don’t even think he’s been out hitting on any women lately. It took finding out one of his Immortals betrayed Heaven and all of us to kill his libido,” Anna added, but she was still smiling as she listened to Luca humming in the kitchen.
“To be fair, I don’t think it was just Andrew. Luca claimed he would get over his guilt about that demon forcing him to quit hunting, but this is what he’s dedicated over six centuries of his life to. What he plans on dedicating an eternity to if this battle over souls between Heaven and Hell never ends. I think Luca always believed his faith was unshakeable. I hope his angel is also coming to knock some sense into him.”
From the kitchen, Luca tossed something in a skillet that began to sizzle and smelled like bacon and he called out to Colin and Anna, “If you two are talking about me, I’m eating all of this myself!”
“My dear brother,” Anna called back, “we were only discussing how grateful we are for your continual efforts to keep us alive.”
Luca mumbled something that sounded like smartass. Colin and Anna snickered but talked aloud about the possibility of getting tickets to an LSU game now, since they’d never had the chance to go to one of CU’s. Luca poked his head out of his kitchen and looked far too serious and thoughtful, but they were talking football and the only sport Luca enjoyed more than American football was soccer. “We’ve got angelic connections and Anna killed a fallen angel. Surely that should get us entrance into one of those suites at Tiger Stadium?”
Anna was going to argue that she should get a much better “thank you” than a trip to a football game, but Colin was already agreeing with him. “Yeah, and just us hunters. Dylan and Jeremy and the three of us. Or I guess you could bring dates if you wanted, but really, it’s the least they can do. I mean, my wife did kill Samael and all.”
Anna raised an eyebrow at her husband, because he was only partly joking. Luca held a finger up to pause their conversation so he could flip over the bacon he was frying then returned to plot a way to get someone’s angel to give them football tickets. They had nothing else to do this weekend anyway.
By the time Luca had their breakfast finished, Colin and Luca had decided not any game would do. They’d checked the remaining games and Arkansas was coming to town soon; that promised to be a good game, and they wanted that one. Anna just wanted the bacon and eggs Luca had fried so she pulled the plate of bacon closer to her.
Luca was mid-offer to make more coffee when he stopped speaking and smiled at his friends. “Just like my angel. He waits for the food to be ready before getting his ass over here.”
At Luca’s announcement, Colin choked on the eggs he was eating, and Luca’s angel appeared beside him, putting a hand gently on his back. “Careful, Colin. You’re immortal, but I’d imagine asphyxiation would still hurt.”
His angel pulled a chair up to the table and sat with them and Luca hadn’t been joking – the angel grabbed a slice of bacon and started eating. Anna and Colin watched him in amazement. Since when did angels eat? Luca’s angel noticed the O’Conners gaping at him and he smiled and shrugged. “There’s no food in Heaven.”
Just like the last time, and only time, Colin and Anna had met Luca’s angel, his short toffee brown hair refused to stay neatly in place, and he’d swapped out his gray Avenger’s t-shirt for a green long sleeved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles one.
Colin stopped coughing long enough to ask about the shirt. “The Avengers I get. But this?” He pointed the bacon he was holding toward the armed turtles on the angel’s shirt.
Luca’s angel actually looked down at his shirt like he didn’t know what he was wearing. “Not the remake, of course. You remember the original cartoon, though, right?”
Colin opened his mouth to answer him, and Anna was prepared to agree with him – they remembered the cartoon, but even Heaven had to be allowed to dislike some things – but Luca interrupted them. “Jeg, you’ve better come bearing gifts.”
The angel put his bacon down and turned his sapphire eyes toward Luca, but Anna interrupted their conversation this time. “Jeg? Wait. As in Jegudiel?”
The angel nodded at Anna then looked at Luca again. “You get more and more impatient the older you get.”
“Hold up,” Colin said. “You know your angel’s name? Why is it we only learned our Angel’s name last month?”
Luca shrugged. “I just asked him his name when I first met him.”
Anna threw her bacon down on her plate. “Unbelievable. All this time, we thought it was supposed to be some great cosmic mystery.”
Jegudiel’s sapphire eyes sparkled as he watched Anna and he pointed to the bacon on her plate. “Are you going to finish that?”
“Oh for God’s sake, I’ll fry you more bacon if you just give me this energy thing already. We’ve got at least two more fallen angels and a traitorous Immortal to deal with. Does that constitute as an emergency yet?” Luca demanded.
“Yes,” Jegudiel responded as Anna pushed her plate toward him. If an angel wanted the rest of her bacon, she wasn’t going to stop him. “And sorry for sending you to Caracas to get him. We obviously had no idea Andrew had turned against us.”
“Has any Immortal ever done something like this?” Colin asked.
Jegudiel shook his head and finished Anna’s bacon. “No. His angel hasn’t exactly handled the news well either. We don’t know when Andrew turned against us, if it was before or after gifting him one of the greatest powers we have, and besides… we’re angels. We tend to get attached to our Immortals.”
“Stop sucking up and give me this power already,” Luca joked.
Colin and Anna had only a moment to register their shock at the way Luca and his angel interacted, as if they were old college buddies rather than an extremely powerful angel and a human, before Jegudiel wiped the bacon grease from his fingers and reached over to touch Luca’s hand. “Now quit complaining. And get them to help you out. Anna may make it look easy now, but it is dangerous, and you don’t want to kill anyone.”
“Not true,” Luca grumbled, “I do want to kill one person.”
Anna felt her cheeks blush. She was used to The Angel complimenting her and Colin, but to hear another angel speaking about them that way made her self-conscious and she had to look away from him. She still couldn’t understand why Heaven would think so highly of her. Colin immediately began listing reasons in that private way of theirs, but Jegudiel sensed Anna’s embarrassment.
“What is it, Anna?” he asked. He was still watching her, but she couldn’t meet his eyes again.
“Why did our Angel trust me with this much power? Why did Heaven think I should have so much power?” she asked. She fidgeted with her napkin and pulled little strips of it apart. Colin reminded her she had a tendency to do that when she was nervous, and if she kept it up, she was going to fill Luca’s table with paper debris.
Jegudiel tilted his head at her and continued to study her as she ignored Colin’s warnings about filling Luca’s table with the remnants of her paper napkin. “Zadkiel only gave you the ability. The strength you wield comes from you, Anna. Not us.”
Anna felt something new emanating from Colin other than his fixation on her nervous habit of destroying napkins, this sense of pride he felt in his wife and the knowledge he’d always had that she was so much stronger than she’d ever given herself credit for. She had survived the odds so many times as a mortal. She shouldn’t have lived long enough to become his wife, let alone to have those eight years together before tuberculosis almost killed her. He still had over a century left to convince her he’d always been right about her.
Anna looked up and met Colin’s radiant green eyes, and she smiled at him as she put her napkin down. “If that were true, then Colin should be able to do far more than I can with this energy thing,” Anna insisted.
“You’re arguing with an angel?” Colin asked her.
Anna lifted a shoulder; Jegudiel wasn’t their angel. He didn’t know them like The Angel did, and wouldn’t have known why Anna felt that way. But Jegudiel kept watching her with those luminescent sapphire eyes and Anna finally had to glance away from Colin to look at the angel she had just contradicted.
“I have a few minutes, but Andrew is on his way back and I need to leave soon. Would you like to know how we angels choose which hunters to offer immortality to in the first place?”
Even though he was still talking to Anna, Colin nodded and leaned in closer. “We’re drawn to certain hunters based on their personalities and natural traits and our own natural traits. I was drawn to Luca because I was created as an angel of leadership and responsibility, and I recognized Luca’s tremendous skills in those areas.” Jegudiel stopped talking long enough to look at his Immortal and his smile turned sly as he warned Luca, “Don’t let that go to your head. It’s big enough as it is.”
Colin snorted and Luca flipped him off. Jegudiel’s smile widened as he watched these old friends tease each other, but then he turned his attention to Anna again. “Zadkiel was created as the archangel of kindness, mercy and forgiveness. That night Colin prayed for a miracle for you got her attention because of what he was willing to sacrifice for his dying wife. And she quickly discovered this couple had an unusual capacity for love and compassion for others, those exact qualities she was created to help foster. Zadkiel was willing to die for you in the Garden of the Gods because you’re the kind of people that give all of us faith in humanity.”
Colin and Anna could think of nothing to say to that. Even their minds were silent as they stared at Jegudiel, trying to comprehend how they could really be so unusual or extraordinary that The Angel would sacrifice herself for them.
“Well,” Jegudiel stood up from the table, “thanks for the bacon, but I’ve got to get out of here before our traitor shows up. Especially since I think it’s time you talk to him.”
Colin forced off his daze and stood up as well. “Wait,” he asked Jegudiel, “please tell The Angel she shouldn’t die for us. At least if we get killed, we get to go to Heaven.”
Jegudiel laughed and shook his head. “Colin, I’ll deliver your message, but trying to convince Zadkiel not to interfere with your lives is going to be damn near impossible.”
Jegudiel put a hand on Luca’s shoulder and took a deep breath. “Be careful, my old friend. If I had anything else I could offer you, I would give it. I’m afraid this battle is in your hands.”
Luca nodded and clasped his hand over the angel’s that still rested on his shoulder. “This may be it. We were never intended to prevent Armageddon, yet here we are. If it comes down to that, you stay beside me. I’ll leave this world protecting you.”
Jegudiel offered him a weak smile, but the joviality in his eyes had vanished. Anna and Colin recognized the expression that had replaced it; The Angel had looked at them the same way when she tried to release them from their servitude. Jegudiel was just as worried about Luca’s life as The Angel was about the O’Conners’. Luca’s angel sighed then actually walked out the front door to leave his apartment.
Luca stared vacantly at the table for a few seconds before standing up to clear the plates from the table. “We’ll deal with this new gift from Jeg later. Apparently, we need to get ready to deal with Andrew first.”
Chapter 4
The Immortals couldn’t make any plans to contend with the fallen angels who were trying to trigger a war with Heaven as long as Andrew was around and under the illusion they still believed he was one of them. The hunters knew they would have to face Andrew sooner or later, but Colin and Anna hadn’t been prepared for Jegudiel’s implication that they needed to do it now. But an angel wanted them to do something; it’s not like they were going to tell him no.
Colin called Dylan to let him know Andrew was on his way to Luca’s apartment and they were going to confront him. The Immortals needed to protect Jeremy, because as soon as Andrew found out they knew about his treachery, he and the fallen angels he worked for would know Jeremy must have retained his memories after his transformation back into a human. Dylan assured them he would keep Jeremy far away from the apartment complex for now.
Colin had just gotten off the phone with Dylan when they heard footsteps outside of Luca’s apartment, then Andrew’s light rapping at his door. The last time Colin and Anna had to deal with a fallen angel in an apartment, they’d ended up nearly destroying the damn place, and they were pretty sure Andrew never traveled alone.
Luca let Andrew in and he immediately sensed everyone’s unease. He glanced at each of the Immortals, but Luca was blocking the door. “Have a seat, Andrew. We need to talk,” Luca told him.
Andrew turned around to face him but didn’t sit down. “What’s going on?” His voice retained the innocence that had fooled them for so long.
“What did we do to make you hate us so much, Andrew?” Anna asked. She had moved into his line of sight because she wanted this bastard to look her in the eyes when he explained his betrayal.
Andrew sighed and shook his head. “I don’t hate you. You’re all still alive, aren’t you?”
Luca scoffed and crossed his arms over his chest. “You think you could kill us?”
Anna shivered at the iciness in Luca’s voice. She’d never heard him speak like this.
“Me? Maybe before the O’Conners were gifted this energy power but not now. But I don’t want any of you dead. I want you to realize the truth about Heaven and Hell first, and if you still decide to fight for Heaven, then I’m afraid I will have to try to kill you eventually.”
“Why turn your back on Heaven in the first place?” Colin asked. He stood by Anna now so Andrew would have to look at all of them, but surprisingly, Andrew never tried to avert his eyes. He wasn’t ashamed of what he�
�d done.
“You wanted this, Colin. So did Luca. Most of us are never given that choice. We’re transformed into this,” Andrew paused to motion to himself like he was morphing into something inhuman before their eyes, “because someone else decided to make us an Immortal and Heaven does it to us against our will. I never wanted to be immortal, and I sure as hell never wanted to spend five hundred goddamned years fighting demons.”
Anna gasped and narrowed her eyes at him. She shouldn’t have been surprised at how often he had lied to her, but she had made this decision for Dylan in part because Andrew had assured her he had never regretted becoming an Immortal himself. “You lied to me so I’d make this decision for Dylan! If you resent Heaven so much for your life as an Immortal, why would you convince me to do it to someone else?”
“Because I was hoping Dylan would be as angry as I am about his life as an Immortal. We need more Immortals on our side,” Andrew responded, and he was so casual about it like he was explaining trigonometry instead of a disloyalty that was threatening to trigger a war that could destroy the entire planet.
“More?” Luca asked incredulously then as he thought about it he groaned, “Oh, God. Tahel.”
Andrew glanced at him but didn’t confirm Luca was right. He wasn’t going to betray Hell, too.
“What did they promise you, Andrew?” Anna asked.
Colin was seething and so enraged, Anna was worried he would try to fight him right now, and given how forthcoming Andrew was being about his disloyalty to Heaven and the Immortals, they were obviously right about his protection by a fallen angel. Battling him now would risk far too many lives in this apartment complex. But Colin realized the only reason his wife had been abducted and taken from him in the first place was because this young man standing before him had told these fallen angels who they were and how to target them, that the only way to try to turn them against The Angel and God and Heaven would be to separate them with the promise that Hell could reunite them.
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