Jeremy was still sitting on the ground and looked up at Tahel curiously. That wasn’t exactly an experience he wanted to relive. “We showed up to an empty field and waited. Didn’t take long for a couple of demons to find us.”
“Sounds good.” Tahel was already heading toward the door and Luca looked like he was about to leave with her. The other hunters stared at each other helplessly.
“Are they serious?” Jeremy asked.
Dylan watched Luca leave the apartment after Tahel. “Apparently,” he mumbled. “And Luca apparently forgot what happened when we just showed up in the Garden of the Gods on a whim and got attacked by a huge-ass demon army.”
Jeremy flinched at the memory because, as a demon, he had stood atop a cliff watching that demon army descend upon his friends.
Dylan immediately caught on and apologized, but Jeremy wouldn’t listen. “What are you sorry for? I was there. I was watching. I was hoping they’d kill you.”
Jeremy shook his head and stood up and mumbled something about Tahel’s idea not being so bad after all and followed them out of the O’Conners’ apartment. Dylan closed his eyes and cursed under his breath.
“Hey,” Anna said gently, “Jeremy has to come to terms with his past. You can’t do that for him.”
Dylan exhaled slowly. “Yeah, but I don’t need to remind him about it, especially the times that involved trying to kill us.”
“You think he doesn’t obsess about it already?” Colin asked.
“I know he does.” Dylan focused on retying the laces on his boot but they looked perfectly tight already to Anna. “He killed people, you know.”
Colin and Anna stopped watching Dylan retie his shoelaces and stared at him. They hadn’t known that. Dylan yanked on one of the strings and Anna grimaced as she waited for it to snap off.
“He was a demon,” Dylan said. “That’s what they do. Take souls. Murder when they feel like it. And Samael had no intention of waiting around for the souls he claimed. His demons always murdered the person once they got their soul.”
“Oh, God,” Anna breathed, “poor Jeremy.”
Dylan finished retying his boot without breaking the shoelaces and finally looked up at her. “He doesn’t think he can be forgiven. Or that he should be. And he didn’t want me to tell you because he’s convinced you’re more than an Immortal but… I don’t know.”
“An angel?” Colin guessed. Jeremy wasn’t the first person who had thought that about his wife.
Dylan lifted a shoulder, but Colin took that as a yes.
“But he wasn’t him,” Anna protested. “He was trapped in something else’s body and mind, but none of what that demon did was Jeremy. One day, he’ll realize that, right?”
Dylan was still staring at his boot. “Doesn’t make those memories disappear, though. They’re still in Jeremy’s brain, no matter what he was when they occurred.”
Luca opened the door and stuck his head back in. “Are the rest of you coming? I’d kind of like Anna and Colin’s help if I run into these bastards wherever we’re going, and Dylan, you and Tahel need to protect Jeremy. He’s still mortal, you know.”
“Luca is really obnoxious when he’s pissed off,” Colin told Anna.
Anna took her husband’s hand and pulled him off the floor. “Luca just learned that two of his Immortals are traitors. Cut him some slack, Colin. This is personal for him, too.”
Colin kissed the side of Anna’s head and wrapped his arms tightly around her one last time before leaving to join their friends. “My love, it’s personal for all of us now. I don’t know how yet for Tahel, but I’m willing to bet she’s here for a reason. Dylan lost Jas, Jeremy’s life was stolen and permanently changed, you and I have endured far too many separations, and we’ve always known the Immortals are Luca’s family.”
Dylan rolled his eyes at the O’Conners and left their apartment, telling them to finish their private conversation on the way down the stairs. Anna was about to follow him when Tahel’s presence here suddenly made sense to her. “It’s the angels, Colin. The fallen angels who tormented her as a child. They’re here now. This is her chance for her own vengeance. Or to at least see vengeance being dealt out to those who harassed her.”
“Holy shit,” Colin uttered aloud. “Do you think we should tell her?”
Anna opened her apartment door and glanced down at the group of hunters waiting by the cars. She had never understood Tahel’s aloof nature, but The Angel had trusted her, and that was enough for Anna. “Yes, my love. I think we have to. She deserves the chance to get even in her own way, whatever that is, or to at least know those responsible for troubling her throughout her childhood are destroyed.”
Tahel glanced up at them and waved for them to come down stairs. She was smiling and even laughed as Jeremy told her something, and Anna’s heart thumped wildly. Tahel actually seemed happy for once, and she was going to have to deliver news that could potentially ruin that.
“I’ll tell her,” Colin offered. He didn’t share his wife’s reticence about ruining Tahel’s good mood. He still wasn’t even sure he completely trusted her.
“You drive. I’ll talk,” Anna told him. Colin was a little too eager to deliver this news to Tahel.
As they approached the other hunters, Anna suggested Jeremy and Tahel ride with them and even though they both gave her a strange look, they didn’t argue. They sat in the backseat and as soon as Colin pulled out of the parking lot, Anna turned around to face Tahel.
“Colin and I think we know why Gabriel sent you here,” Anna told her.
Tahel’s eyes registered her surprise, but she just asked her what they’d come up with. She’d been trying to figure it out since Gabriel had shown up in her apartment in Houston.
“I mean,” Tahel continued, “I get needing help, but it sounds like the only way to kill these fallen angels is with a power I don’t have. I don’t even know how much help I’ll be here.”
“True, and it would have been helpful if Gabriel had gifted you this power as well, especially if I’m right about this. But I think he sent you here because some of the fallen angels who are part of this impending war are the same fallen angels who used to harass you as a child.”
Tahel’s eyes narrowed and she turned her hard gaze toward the window. They drove in silence for over five miles before Tahel finally sighed, “I don’t even know who they were. Or if there was only one who just changed his or her appearance over time. And even if I did know, what could I do? I can’t fight them.”
Anna looked in the backseat again and was trying to think of something to say to console her, but her mouth froze as she watched Jeremy reach for Tahel’s hand. She waited for Tahel to jerk away from him, to hit him, to yell at him, but she let him hold her hand and offered him a grateful smile. Anna turned around again and stared out the front window instead.
“This is a friendly thing, right?” Colin asked.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s a none of our business thing, Colin.”
Colin glanced at his wife but didn’t argue with her.
“Besides,” Anna added, “of course it’s possible for men and women to be friends. Luca never hits on any of the female Immortals, and if he can control his libido around women, then anyone can.”
Colin snorted and followed Luca’s car off the interstate. He still had no idea where they were going, but they were heading toward Central. Anna risked looking in the backseat again to ask Jeremy a question. Neither he nor Tahel had moved. “Have any clue where we might be going? We haven’t lived here that long and never really came out this way.”
“Don’t know, honestly. Dylan must be leading Luca somewhere, but the only thing I can think of is we came across a small group of demons out here near Howard Park a couple of years ago.”
“That was long before this battle with us Immortals started though,” Anna said. “Wouldn’t it have made more sense to go back to White Oaks?”
Jeremy just shrugged. It’s not like he could read Dylan’s mind.
But Luca didn’t head into Central. Anna turned around to shoot him another what-the-hell-are-they-doing? look, but Jeremy just smiled at her. “Still don’t know, Anna.”
Anna let her eyes quickly trail down to the middle of the seat where Tahel’s and Jeremy’s hands were still joined, then she turned around again and thought about how after everything she’d had to go through in the past twenty-four hours, fighting demons didn’t seem so bad at all.
Luca turned onto Frenchtown Road and they followed him into a densely forested conservation area nestled between the Comite and Amite Rivers. Colin parked behind Luca’s car and Anna immediately accosted Dylan.
“What the hell are we doing out here?” She didn’t want to admit that being in another forest near the Amite River made her incredibly nervous, even if Dylan’s idea wasn’t so stupid after all.
Dylan motioned around him. “Well, these assholes seem to like forests and rivers, so this seemed like a good place to start looking for them.”
Colin laced his fingers through Anna’s, and she felt the energy he was able to manipulate from the world around them surrounding her.
“None of them will touch you, Anna. Besides, I am more convinced than ever there is nothing you can’t do.”
Anna squeezed his hand but refused to let go. None of them were touching her husband either. Luca pulled one of his daggers from its sheath and stared into the thick growth of trees at the edge of the small, dirt clearing. “Alright, my friends. Let’s go see if we can find these bastards.”
Anna chanced one more glance behind her at Jeremy. Dylan and Tahel stood protectively by his sides as they followed the rest of the Immortals into the forest to look for the demons who used to be their colleagues, the fallen angels who wanted their servitude, and an angry demoness who wanted revenge.
Chapter 18
The hunters spent the first hour of their trek into the woods heading toward the Amite River mostly in silence. The incessant buzzing of mosquitoes and snapping of twigs beneath their feet were the only sounds in the forest. This time, Colin and Anna held onto each other, and behind them, Tahel and Dylan kept Jeremy between them. As they closed in on the second hour of their hike through the Frenchtown Road Conservation Area, Anna allowed herself to hope there was nothing among these trees and rivers that didn’t belong here.
They had almost reached the river when they felt the unmistakable sensation of something being out of place in their world, and all of the hunters froze. If they could feel it, then it was a demon, which meant their knives or daggers should kill it. Luca was the first to realize whatever had come for them hadn’t come alone.
“There are several of them at least,” he said quietly. “Coming at us from the river.”
Colin and Anna felt them, too, and Colin reluctantly let go of Anna’s hand to prepare to fight these demons. But he kept the shield around her. The overwhelming stench of these demons, so unusually potent in Baton Rouge, reached them before they could see any of the demons that were coming for them. A rustling in the dead leaves covering the ground of the forest floor alerted the hunters that the demons were near and a hulking absinthe green form emerged from between the gray-brown trunks of the trees. It was quickly followed by four other beasts, each sharing a similar shape to a large coyote, and Anna stepped back from them.
“There are five of them. Oh God, Colin, it’s the hunters.”
The demons had stopped and were waiting for some signal to attack. Colin’s eyes scanned each one of the demons facing them, and like Anna, he couldn’t help wondering which of these monsters was Ben, and while he was still mostly at peace with hunting the demon that used to be Adriàn, he didn’t want Tara or Eddie or… or that other guy whose name he couldn’t remember… “Brandon,” Anna offered. Or Brandon dead.
And of course Anna wanted to save them all. He reminded Anna they were demons now, and these demons had come to kill the hunters.
Jeremy let out a fast, hissing breath. “It’s our friends. Of course these assholes sent our friends to fight us.”
Colin and Anna heard Dylan move behind them but whatever he had planned on doing was interrupted when the pack of grotesquely deformed coyotes attacked them. The absinthe green coyote that led the pack sprang toward Anna, and she ran her dagger through its thick hide. A slow, whistling leak escaped but the gash quickly reformed.
“Shit! Try your knife, Colin!” she warned him.
The blood orange coyote that had attacked him knocked him to the ground when his dagger didn’t slow this monster down either. Anna focused her own gift from The Angel on the absinthe green demon and as it disintegrated in a powdery dust and scattered in the force she’d commanded, she reached into the hilt in her boot where she kept her knife and stabbed the monster on top of her husband. It turned an angry, snarling face toward her, and that pungent odor escaping from its mouth left a visible vaporous cloud.
Colin rolled out from beneath the demon and they tried to get it away from the other hunters, especially Jeremy, so Anna could kill it the same way she’d killed the leader of this pack, but the remaining four demons refused to be isolated. They stayed tightly bunched together, and kept attacking the hunters, refusing to slow down or die and whatever wounds the hunters inflicted stubbornly healed almost instantly, no matter what blade the hunters used.
“Anna!” Luca shouted at her. He stabbed the opal demon he’d been fighting again and tried to put some distance between them, but the demon pounced on him again. “You need to kill them!”
Anna wanted to tell him she couldn’t endanger their lives like that – after all, if this force could kill angels, it could certainly kill four Immortals and one mortal human, but Tahel yelled, “Dylan, help me cover Jeremy! Do it now, Anna!”
In her peripheral vision, she saw Dylan and Tahel throw their bodies over Jeremy to protect him and Luca and Colin both dropped to the ground. Anna didn’t have time to wrestle with her conscience. She hit the remaining demons with the same force that had killed their leader and a powdery rainbow stuck to the tree trunks and leaves of the forest beyond where the demons had stood.
Anna immediately dropped to the ground by her husband and started checking for a pulse and a heartbeat and his breaths, and he lowered his arms and smiled at her. “Seriously, Anna, that is so much easier than fighting them the old-fashioned way.”
Anna sighed and sat back from him. Tahel and Dylan helped Jeremy sit up and Anna resisted the urge to do the same thing to Jeremy she’d just done to her husband. Instead, she asked him, “Are you alright?”
Jeremy grimaced but nodded. “Sore, but I’m fine. But that’s probably more from being thrown to the ground than what you did, Anna.”
But the hunters didn’t have time to appreciate their victory. A man walked out from among the rainbow hued debris, a small smile playing at his lips, and his golden brown eyes were fixed on Anna. More movement behind him distracted Anna from studying the stranger any longer. Armand was with him. Colin quickly reached out and grabbed Luca’s arm to keep him from attacking Armand. The look on Luca’s face told them he didn’t appreciate his old friend’s restraint.
“Gadreel,” Anna guessed.
The man spread his arms but looked at her curiously now. “How do you know my name?” he asked her.
“Adriel told me.”
Gadreel’s eyes flashed with anger and Anna heard herself speaking; she was pretty sure taunting a pissed off fallen angel wasn’t a good idea, but the words came out anyway. “Doesn’t feel so great to be betrayed, does it?”
“Why should I believe you?” Gadreel asked her.
“How else would I know about you? Even our angels haven’t known who’s behind this attempt to trigger a war with Heaven. He betrayed Samael so I would destroy him, and he betrayed you in the hopes I would destroy you as well. I’m guessing you were the one who stayed behind in Baton Rouge while you sent Samael and Adriel to Boulder after us? You are the one who’s supposed to be in charge here? And that’s why he wants you d
ead so badly?”
Gadreel scowled at her but wouldn’t confirm or deny what she’d said. But Anna also knew the easiest way out of this battle for all the hunters would be to convince Gadreel of Adriel’s treachery and turn them against each other. With their alliance broken, perhaps the war they had hoped to trigger with Heaven could be averted altogether.
“Adriel never had any intention of fighting Armageddon with you. He wants to topple you and whoever else is in his way to rule over Hell, and he wants my help to do it. That will never happen. So you’re on your own now, Gadreel, with Adriel trying to eliminate you and a group of Immortals who will never let you walk this Earth. Either return to Hell, preferably with Adriel, or you’ll be fighting two enemies instead of just one,” Anna continued.
She watched Gadreel carefully and his golden brown eyes flashed orange and red before settling back into a normal, human shade. Anna remembered Samael’s eyes doing the same thing in that cave in the Garden of the Gods when she had hurt him and angered him. She wanted to back away from Gadreel but wouldn’t let him know she was afraid.
“He thinks,” Gadreel hissed, “he is more powerful than me?”
Anna shook her head. “No, that’s why he needs me to help him, and I won’t. But I can’t let you trigger this war with Heaven either. If you want vengeance now, then find Adriel and get off of our planet.”
Gadreel’s hands balled into fists and he turned his head slightly to speak over his shoulder to his own Immortal. “Find Andrew.”
Anna’s stomach turned sour. Despite his betrayals, despite what he’d done to all of the Immortals and the hell she had survived because of him, Andrew was still human. And her life had been dedicated to protecting humans. “You won’t lure Adriel out with Andrew, if Adriel is even still alive. I escaped from him and he may be dead. And he certainly doesn’t care about Andrew, who has served his purpose.”
Gadreel’s fearsome expression softened slightly as he almost smiled at Anna again. “I don’t expect him to try to rescue Andrew. I expect Andrew to tell us where we might be able to find Adriel.”
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