Anna kissed Colin’s fingers in return and told him they may not be an island, but as long as they had each other, England could go on fighting about the power of its monarchs and parliament, and half of Europe could go on destroying itself in that seemingly endless war that the Bohemians had started. Because as long as they had each other, they had everything.
Anna sighed and rested her head in her arms as she tried to focus on a prayer instead of these painful memories with Colin. She felt a hand cover her fingers that she’d wrapped around a knee and she instinctively jerked away from it, her initial fear that Adriel had already returned quickly replaced by disbelief and a fear of an entirely different kind. She shook her head, but the apparition didn’t disappear.
“No,” Anna said, but The Angel put her other hand over Anna’s lips to keep her from speaking again.
“Don’t speak aloud, Anna. He’s not far. We don’t have much time.”
“You can’t be here!” Anna panicked. She grabbed onto The Angel’s hands and looked around her feverishly, willing some new hiding place to appear, but this wasn’t her dream. She had no control over this space.
“I can’t find Adriel in Baton Rouge. I don’t know where he’s hiding, and Colin and Luca are on their own even if they do find him. I doubt he’ll be alone, and Colin’s never used his power as a weapon before. Luca’s gift is so new. You will need to get yourself out of here, and you need to help Colin and your friends.”
Anna was torn between still panicking over The Angel’s presence in Stalingrad and wanting to know what she could possibly do to get herself out of this place.
“Can you get out of here?” Anna asked her.
The Angel eyed her, clearly not wanting to answer her, but she was an angel. She couldn’t lie. “No. Adriel will find me soon. So please, Anna, just listen.”
Anna’s eyes brimmed with tears, but she didn’t argue. The Angel had sacrificed herself for Anna; she wouldn’t let her sacrifice be wasted.
“You have to fight him, Anna. Don’t let him make you believe you are helpless. He’s targeted you for a reason. You have tremendous power within you. Use it.”
Anna shook her head again, because she didn’t understand what she was supposed to be using. She couldn’t feel any of the gifts The Angel had given her from in here. She couldn’t fight him.
The Angel smiled at her and put her arms around her. “I’m not sure you need my gifts here. Those gifts were created to help you in your world, and you’re not there.”
“Then how am I supposed to fight him?”
Anna heard him moving upstairs and she held The Angel closer.
“The same way he’s tortured you in the past. He controlled what you believed to be true. You will have to gain control and manipulate his world now.”
Anna heard his footsteps on the stairs then his voice echoing off the walls of this empty room. “Zadkiel. It was almost brave of you to show up in the Garden of the Gods, but this is just stupid.”
The Angel didn’t answer him. Anna watched with a sickening horror as he descended the spiral staircase. She tried to position herself in front of The Angel, but it was a pointless gesture.
“If you really expect me to ever help you in any way, don’t touch her,” Anna warned.
Adriel stood in front of her and smiled at her, the same smile that combined his competing interests in imprisoning her and trying to convince her to rule by his side. Anna’s fingers gripped The Angel’s arms, but she wasn’t sure if she was trying to protect The Angel or if she wanted protection herself.
“Anna, she shouldn’t have come here. It was bad enough that ghost friend of yours followed you here. At least I allowed her to survive.”
“She’s a ghost…” Anna protested, but she had been worried that these fallen angels could somehow destroy the spirits of her friends just as they could destroy an angel. And he was only confirming what she’d feared anyway.
“If you don’t want to watch this, Anna, I suggest you go upstairs,” Adriel told her, but his eyes were on The Angel now.
“No.” Anna wasn’t going to move. She wouldn’t abandon her angel.
Adriel just shrugged a shoulder at her. “Just remember, Anna. She should have stayed with Colin. He’ll have no one now.”
“Not true,” Anna hissed, “he’ll have me. He’ll always have me. Because not even Hell can keep us apart.”
Adriel’s eyes flickered to her and his smile transformed into one of amusement. “Perhaps not. But I can.”
“I love you, Anna,” The Angel told her.
Adriel moved closer to her and she could feel the cold radiating off of him. She shivered as he reached down and grabbed The Angel’s wrist, twisting her arm away from Anna’s grasp.
“You should sleep now, Anna.” Adriel’s voice had that silvery, slippery tone again and the room began to spin. The walls swirled in their monotonous color and she had to let go of The Angel to keep herself from falling over. She had only a second to register that as soon as she let go, Adriel yanked The Angel off of the bed and dragged her away.
“No,” Anna begged.
She struggled to keep her eyes open. Adriel and The Angel were only a blur of color as he pulled her toward the stairs.
“Please,” she pleaded again, but Adriel ignored her. Anna wondered if she was even speaking aloud. She’d never felt so drunk before.
Anna’s arms buckled beneath the weight of trying to keep her body upright on the mattress and she sank down onto it, catching a final glimpse of The Angel’s sunflower yellow dress as Adriel forced her up the stairs. Her eyes closed and she heard The Angel’s voice again, or maybe it was only a memory now. “I love you, Anna.”
“I love you, too,” Anna whispered.
“Your love is one of the most powerful tools you have in this fight against them. I will always believe that Hell will fail when it’s confronted with people like you.”
Anna opened her eyes, the room still spinning in those swirling nauseating patterns.
“Adriel!” she yelled, but he was gone. Anna rolled off the bed and grabbed onto the banister so she wouldn’t fall.
“Adriel!” she yelled again. The room wouldn’t stop spinning. She couldn’t tell how many steps were in front of her, but she climbed them anyway and for a moment, she wondered if she was actually climbing at all or if she was just walking in place, but as she lifted her foot onto the next step, she stumbled and had to grab onto the banister again. She was on the second floor.
“Adriel, come out now!” Anna screamed. Something fell on top of her head and she batted it away, but she couldn’t tell what it was. She was drowning in this sea of motion again.
Anna reached the first door and pushed it open. Just like last time, it was empty. She steadied herself against the white paneled walls. “Adriel, I swear to God, come out now or I will eventually find my way out of this place and I will tell Lilith it was you who betrayed her husband!”
Adriel’s laughter from the end of the hallway prevented Anna from having to open the second door. She leaned against the wall again but hated that she looked so weak in front of him.
“How are you even doing this?” he asked her. She couldn’t see his face, but she could hear the note of pleasant surprise in his voice.
“If you’ve killed her, Adriel, I will never forget this. You think at some point I’ll cave and decide I’d rather be with you than alone, but surely you’re not so stupid that you don’t realize people can hold grudges forever.” Anna concentrated on not falling down. Those were so many words. Why did she have to decide to speak so many words?
“I couldn’t let her live, Anna. I don’t even know how she found you.” He was approaching her and Anna wanted to back away from him, but she was still focusing on not collapsing to the ground.
“And you,” he reached out to touch the side of her face and Anna flinched but had nowhere to go. “This is impressive. You’re always surprising me, Anna.”
Anna turned her face aw
ay from him. She was so cold her teeth chattered. “I love her. And you and Hell will always lose in the end because you don’t understand how powerful that is.”
Adriel leaned in closer to her so that his lips were next to her ear, his breath like the gale of a blizzard. “Apparently not powerful enough.”
Anna pushed him away from her. He stumbled back into the wall and stared at her in astonishment, but Anna crossed the hallway and punched him in the jaw before he could react. Some part of her mind registered the pain in her fist, and in this groggy, drunken state, she thought she shouldn’t feel pain in dreams. She was only faintly aware that she wasn’t really dreaming.
Adriel’s hand reached for his mouth where Anna’s fist had landed and he stared at the blood on his fingers with the same astonished expression as before.
“Impossible,” he murmured.
Anna was more certain that angels shouldn’t bleed than she was about not feeling pain in a dream. But she didn’t waste time arguing with herself about why Adriel was bleeding now. She hit him again while he was still too surprised to react then kicked him and as he doubled over, he finally snapped out of his own trance and threw her back down the hallway.
“Stop this, Anna,” he ordered.
Anna had no intention of stopping. He had abducted her, forced her to believe her husband was being brutally tortured, tried to separate them so many times, murdered her angel and taken her away from her husband again, and she would never stop fighting him.
“I will kill you, Adriel. In your world or in mine, the only place you will ever be safe is Hell.” Something fell around her again, and this time, she recognized the small white pieces of the ceiling that were raining down on them.
Adriel pushed her down for the second time with the force he could still command here, but Anna wouldn’t stay down. And she was determined not to fall a third time. Maybe Adriel was right about one thing: with The Angel gone, Colin was on his own. Even having his friends with him wasn’t the same. He couldn’t lose both his wife and The Angel. And she was going back to help her husband find these bastards and put an end to this war before they could start it.
She felt him trying to hit her again, but she refused to fall. She heard the seething breath he inhaled as she glared at him and his features settled into place. “You can’t control me anymore, Adriel. So what you are going to do now?”
More pieces of the ceiling crumbled to the floor and she felt the debris dripping into her hair like raindrops. She would destroy his version of Stalingrad and everything in it to get back to Colin.
“How are you doing this?” he spit at her.
Anna noticed his lip was still bleeding, and she remembered being in this building the first time, scraping her hands on the rough texture of the chair and her palms bleeding, Jas bandaging them even though they should have healed on their own.
Perhaps Adriel had been trying to make her feel mortal and scared. She hoped he felt destructible and petrified of her. Because the second time she and Jas found themselves here, Jas had told her to use the energy gift from The Angel if she needed to. She wasn’t defenseless. And Anna believed her now.
She lashed out at him the same way she had defeated Samael, but Adriel didn’t give her the chance to savor any victory. Stalingrad dissolved around her and when Anna opened her eyes, she was in her bedroom in Baton Rouge. Colin was sitting next to her, holding her hand and he cried out when he saw she was awake.
He leaned over her and wrapped his arms around her, crying against her hair, and Anna held on just as tightly.
“Oh, Colin,” she sobbed. “She’s gone. She found me, and she died for me.”
And Colin kissed her again and again, and told her, “I know, my love. And we won’t let her death go unpunished.”
Chapter 15
Anna and Colin were left alone for over two hours after she woke up, even though no one knew what had happened and how Anna had suddenly come back to them. They spent those two hours consoling each other over the loss of The Angel. When they finally emerged from their bedroom, Anna was more than a little shocked to find Tahel in their apartment.
While the other hunters all wanted to know how Adriel had imprisoned her and how she’d escaped and where Zadkiel was, Anna was just trying to figure out why Tahel was in their apartment. And Tahel apparently caught on to that before the other hunters did.
“Would you all stop asking her questions?” Tahel ordered the hunters then turned her attention back to Anna. “I was in Houston, returned Luca’s phone call and was arguing with him for calling me a traitor, when my angel shows up and tells me I need to come to Baton Rouge right away. He didn’t tell me why. We suspect it has something to do with this war, and maybe we should expect quite a few more of us to show up soon.”
Listening to Tahel talk about her angel only made Anna think of The Angel and she couldn’t tell the hunters what had happened to her. Colin, who was still sitting next to her and holding her hand, offered to do it for her. They had not only talked about her experiences and The Angel’s sacrifice in Stalingrad, but he had seen and heard everything through her as she relived those memories for him. He assured her if she didn’t want to talk about any of it, he would do it for her. She didn’t have to relive it again. Anna rested her head against his arm and reminded him that their love was so strong, not even Hell, or any servant of Hell, could keep them apart.
Colin took a slow, deep breath because it was just as painful for him to talk about The Angel, but the others needed to know, especially Dylan. She had been his angel, too. “Zadkiel found Anna somehow. Probably much like Jas had been able to. Since she was here on Earth and not in Heaven, it was easier for her. But she knew finding Anna would mean her death because Adriel would kill her and Anna wouldn’t be able to defend her in a world Adriel controlled.”
“How did you escape?” Jeremy asked.
Ever since Anna saved him from his own imprisonment, he had watched Anna with such reverence, and his eyes were filled with that same sense of awe he always seemed to have around her now. And ever since Anna saved him, she’d experienced a different kind of friendship developing with Jeremy, one in which she found herself more and more invested in his survival and happiness. Because he had been the one to ask her, she didn’t want Colin to answer for her. She wanted to answer Jeremy herself.
“The Angel told me to manipulate Adriel’s world the same way he had been manipulating my mind. And of course it didn’t make any sense to me when she told me that, and we didn’t have much time before he came for her, but it was remembering something else she said back in Boulder that made me know I had to do something. It gave me faith in myself. She told me that love is the most powerful tool we have in this fight against Hell. And I love her, and she was in danger, and I wanted to protect her. I think she knew that’s what it would take to get me to believe I could fight back against Adriel.” Anna’s voice cracked and she closed her eyes and put her head back down on Colin’s arm. But she had to finish.
“Adriel tried to make me pass out again and dragged The Angel upstairs. I was so dizzy, but I forced myself up to the second floor and fought him, but it was too late. I hit him with this energy gift and that’s when I woke up. I have no idea what happened to him.”
“So he may be alive,” Dylan clarified.
Anna nodded.
“And,” Colin added, “she learned that Lilith may have been telling the truth, or at least hinting at it, and Jas was right. It seems Adriel does want to stage some sort of coup and rule over Hell, but he’s not powerful enough on his own. He wants Anna to help him. He wants her to…”
This time Colin couldn’t finish. He knew what Adriel had done, what he had promised her, and he hated him more for that than anything else, even killing The Angel.
“Marry him?” Jeremy guessed.
“Yes,” Anna sighed. “More or less. I don’t think he’s concerned about conventions such as marriage. But he made it clear children would be in our future.”
“Nephilim,” Luca said.
Anna shot him a don’t-even-think-about-gloating glare but Luca wasn’t even thinking about their disagreement. His mind was puzzling through something else entirely.
Tahel studied him for a few moments before asking him, “Wondering if there are any walking the Earth?”
Luca ran a hand over his tired eyes and exhaled slowly. “If so, we can rule out the Goliath version of the story. They obviously aren’t giants.”
“The offspring of angels and human women are always portrayed as wicked giants,” Tahel countered. “There can’t be any just roaming the Earth unnoticed.”
Anna sensed they were about to argue canonical and non-canonical texts so she interrupted them. “Oh, come on. We all know there’s only a little truth mixed in with a lot of bullshit anyway. Maybe their progeny become these powerful archdemons we’ve fought so many times, and that’s why Adriel wants children. He wants to build his own empire that’s completely faithful to him.”
Luca had every intention of arguing ancient texts anyway. “Could be. In the Book of Enoch, the offspring of angels and humans are still remarkable for their abilities and they’re particularly unruly and evil so God sent the flood to destroy them.”
Dylan snickered and interrupted him. “Some benevolent God. He also wiped out most of the human race to get rid of some problem hybrid kids?”
Luca shrugged. “I never believed any of this anyway. But they’re pretty much always portrayed as giants. So assuming whoever wrote all of these old texts was using imagery, what were they trying to say about these creatures?”
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