Amanda set her shaking hands on top of the table. She’d apparently decided she didn’t care if the hunters knew she was scared by the stories they were telling her. Who wouldn’t be? “What do you need my help for then? I’m mortal. I’ve never been visited by an angel, and I’m almost positive I can’t sense demons. Ghosts, yeah, but they’re all benevolent. And I can’t actually see them. I just hear their voices in my mind.”
“We’re not entirely sure either, honestly,” Anna answered. “Our Angel suggested we find a real medium because you may be able to help us figure out how to… well, exorcize a demon.”
Amanda laughed then stared at Anna as she realized she wasn’t joking. “Um, I’ve never owned a Ouija Board. I’ve never even seen The Exorcist! And, whoa, I don’t want to get possessed. I’d like to help you, really, but this is…”
“I’ve fought demons for over six centuries, and The Exorcist is a hell of a lot scarier,” Luca interjected.
Andrew agreed. “That’s true. But that’s probably because we never actually see people possessed by demons. Well, until now.”
“And I still don’t think it’s something they can do easily. We’re not exactly sure how Jeremy became possessed. We’ve only encountered it once in Nanjing, and Luca’s only ever seen it once before, too,” Colin added.
Dylan finally looked away from the crack in the pavement. “Maybe twice, Colin. If that woman in Cane Ridge actually was possessed and not just crazy.”
“Oh, right. Ok, so three times in over six centuries. And we’ve killed tens of thousands of demons. So the odds aren’t that bad, really.”
Amanda shook her head again. “If I had any information to help you, I would. But this is out of my league. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
Anna felt sorry for the only person out here that didn’t seem to be a total fraud. I mean, she knew tarot cards and palm readings were all a bunch of bullshit, but she probably used whatever gifts she possessed to make pretty accurate guesses about people’s lives. And that just made Anna want to try it out again. She nodded toward the stack of bills still on the table then held out her palm.
“I’ve never had my palm read. Will you just look at mine and pretend I’m a normal customer?”
Amanda raised an eyebrow at her and waited to see if Anna were joking. When Anna didn’t withdraw her hand, she smirked and leaned across the table, taking Anna’s hand in hers. “You know all that stuff in those palm reading books is garbage, right?”
Anna smiled and nodded. “But you know things about people. You get a certain feeling from them. Don’t you use that when you’re working?”
Amanda pulled Anna’s palm closer to her and offered a half-shrug. “Depends. If they’re a good person who’s going to like what I have to say, then sure. If they’re the kind of person who would sellout their own mother for the right price, then I recite the same shit they’d hear from any of these other palm readers.”
Anna motioned toward her extended hand. “I loved my mother. Go ahead and be honest with me.”
Amanda smiled then studied Anna’s hand, but her smile quickly faded. Her eyebrows knitted in bewilderment and she held Anna’s open hand closer to her face. Colin didn’t like any of this. He was about to tell Amanda to forget it so they could get the hell out of here – he’d even lost interest in the guy swallowing fire – but Anna asked him not to speak. She could handle whatever Amanda was going to tell her.
“You can. I’m sure of it. I’m the one who can’t handle whatever it is that’s causing her to look like that,” Colin replied.
Amanda glanced up at him, and Anna wondered again if she could tell they were talking about her, if maybe she could even hear them the way she heard the voices of the dead. Amanda turned her attention back to Anna.
“The lines on a person’s hands don’t really mean anything,” Amanda explained. “It’s what I can tell about a person when I touch their hand that can make me a legitimate palm reader rather than one of those swindlers down there.”
Colin couldn’t take this anymore. Whatever this woman thought she could tell about Anna simply by touching her hand, she was obviously wrong if it made her look so worried and concerned. Anna was the closest thing to an angel living on this miserable planet and he wasn’t going to let anyone tell her otherwise.
“If you’re really not a charlatan yourself, then you should look honored to be in Anna’s presence,” Colin said. He could feel Anna’s annoyance with him, but he’d actually held back. There was a lot more he wanted to say to this woman.
Anna was about to apologize but Amanda’s eyes were on Colin and she looked more confused than ever. “You think I’m about to tell her she’s the kind of person who would secretly kill you in your sleep for the right price?”
Colin was still scowling at her, but this time, Anna jumped in before he could say anything more. “She would know that’s not true about me, Colin. Let her tell us what she’s picking up. Even if you don’t want to hear it, we have no idea what may end up being useful to us anymore. Remember: we were told to keep an open mind.”
Colin seethed but kept his mouth shut. He didn’t even argue with Anna silently.
“It’s ok,” Amanda assured Anna. “I’ve never actually met a couple whose love was as strong as yours. And given everything you’ve told me tonight, I can’t blame him for being freaked out by anything unexpected.”
Colin seethed a little less.
“It’s just …” Amanda looked down at Anna’s hand again even though she’d already admitted those lines there told her nothing. Amanda took a deep breath then forced her eyes upward to meet Anna’s. “You’re not alone, Anna. I don’t know how to explain it. There’s something so bright and beautiful surrounding you. But there’s something else, too. Something dark and sinister. And it’s almost like they’re competing for you.”
Chapter 7
Anna made Colin stop on the drive back to their apartment in Devil’s Thumb for the beer she wanted now more than ever. The other hunters gathered in the O’Conners’ apartment and drank through the three six-packs they’d picked up. After Amanda’s announcement, each hunter had insisted she check their palms – or hands or whatever it was she did – to see if they were being physically stalked by a demon and an angel as well, but ultimately, it had only been Anna.
Anna had promised Colin she could handle whatever Amanda was going to tell her, but she hadn’t been expecting this. She wouldn’t talk about it until she reached the bottom of her first bottle of Samael beer.
“I think I like this one the best,” Anna said, holding the empty beer bottle away from her for the others to see like it was a trophy. She’d been the first to finish her drink.
“Anna,” Colin sighed.
She couldn’t ignore what Amanda had told them all night. Colin had been threatening to haul her off to a church to find a priest who was actually willing to give an old-fashioned exorcism a shot. Anna had reminded him, repeatedly, she wasn’t possessed. She was just… well, she didn’t know what she was.
Andrew set his beer on the coffee table. He’d hardly touched it. “This can’t be how they’re getting into your dreams or Colin would have the same… stalkers. Maybe it has something to do with what happened to you in that prairie?”
“If that’s true, then who is this angel? And how is Colin able to protect me with that energy thing he does if they’ve already attached themselves to me somehow?”
Luca looked almost as uncomfortable with all of this as Colin. Of course, he’d also thought finding a priest to perform an exorcism wasn’t a terrible idea, so Anna wasn’t putting much stock in anything Luca had to say right now.
“Amanda didn’t actually say they were attached to you though. Just around you. Like you’re being followed all the time.”
Colin put his own beer bottle down with a little more force than Andrew had. His was also empty. “Then I’ll keep that shield thing around you permanently.”
Anna smiled at her husband, but they bot
h knew he couldn’t do it all the time; he would eventually fall asleep.
Luca shook his head and tipped his beer bottle back, finishing what was left in the bottle. “We’ve known they were coming after you first for a while. They want you both dead, but somehow, they seem to know how protective Colin is of you, and that attacking you and only you will make him weaker and it’s easier for them to target just one of you. How the hell did they figure any of this out to begin with? They shouldn’t have known anything about us.”
Luca slammed his beer bottle down and Anna jumped. She tried to remember if she’d ever seen Luca this angry before. Colin told her they hadn’t. The Immortals were Luca’s responsibility, his family, and they were under an attack he didn’t even understand. Everything that was happening to them should have been impossible. They had each been promised there were rules, certain laws that governed the way this battle worked, and without those rules, the Immortals were lost in a world where they were outnumbered and overpowered.
Colin closed his eyes and sank back into the sofa, gripping Anna’s hand tighter because her abduction had scarred him. Listening to her terrified and pained screams in that empty field outside of Boulder had nearly killed him. Luca was right. He didn’t know how much longer he could do this. And he was regretting not accepting The Angel’s offer to let them out of their servitude when she realized how desperate their situation had become.
“Oh, Colin,” Anna breathed.
She rested her head against his shoulder but how could she possibly comfort him? If these demons had targeted him first to try to break her, she was sure she would have broken already.
“You’re right, Anna,” Dylan said, plucking another bottle out of the paper bag on the floor. “This one’s the best.”
Colin wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh at him or kick him out.
“By the way,” Dylan added, “Amanda never said it was an angel following you around. She just said it was a bright and beautiful presence. I’d bet you the next round from any microbrewery around here that’s no angel. Not in the technical sense. Your guardian angel is actually Jas.”
Anna lifted her head and gaped at Dylan. How could she have been so stupid? She had just assumed it must be The Angel following her, trying to protect her soul from this demon, but Jas had told her that’s how she’d been protecting her in her dreams. She was connected to her somehow, and she would be as long as this demon kept trying to kill her in her sleep.
Anna looked up at Colin then back at Dylan. “What about Max then? Why couldn’t Amanda sense him? He’s connected to Colin.”
Dylan shrugged and popped the cap off the beer bottle then handed it to Anna. “Maybe she couldn’t tell because he doesn’t have the demon stalker. And Max’s nature may have kind of blended in with Colin’s. I think we all kind of threw her off. But you were just obvious because you were the only one with the whole evil and sinister attachment.”
“Oh my God,” Colin groaned. “How long has this bastard been stalking you? That must be how they cut us off in the woods when you were abducted. Jas wasn’t with you yet, she was still trying to figure out how to do all this stuff she’s doing now, and without her around, it was able to cut you off from me.”
Anna took a long drink from her beer. How she’d been abducted in the first place had been bothering her for over two months. But she had assumed it was something quick, this powerful demon stumbling across her in the woods and seizing an opportunity to kidnap an Immortal. She most certainly hadn’t expected to discover she had been the victim of a demonic stalker for… how long? Hell and Heaven didn’t measure time the way humans did. They had no way of knowing how long they’d been planning this attack on the Immortals, starting with her.
Dylan had opened another beer for himself, but he was watching Anna instead of drinking it. She recognized the concern on his face, but there was something else there, and she finally just asked him why he was staring at her like that.
He offered her an apologetic smile. “Imagine what she must be doing to keep that from happening to you again. Next time you dream about her, she’s going to yell at me for this, but I told you that woman was far too good for me.”
Anna rolled her eyes and told him he was right. She was definitely going to tell him he was an idiot again. Dylan just kept smiling at her. But even Colin was amazed by the power Jas must have to be protecting Anna like this.
Luca held his hand out for another beer as well, but he was watching Anna, too. Anna didn’t like everyone staring at her like this. She felt like she was about to sprout devil horns at any minute or something.
“So you don’t remember anything from the time you and Colin were talking in the woods to the time you woke up alone in that room?” Luca asked.
Anna shook her head. She’d gone over this story so many times, but they were all freaked out so she humored him. “I was teasing him for thinking about me in… well, we’d been separated for three months. It wasn’t entirely innocent.”
“It wasn’t innocent at all,” Colin interrupted.
Anna smiled because at least he was joking around again. She thought it might be the beer so she motioned for Dylan to get him another one. “And we were trying to keep up the illusion we didn’t even know each other. Letting on that we were attracted to each other could have ruined our cover story.”
“To be fair,” Dylan interrupted this time, “we all knew Colin was attracted to you. We just figured he was too antisocial to know how to ask you out.”
Anna sighed. “Would you all shut up and let me finish? So I was walking through the woods, telling Colin he’d better knock it off even though I didn’t really mean it, and the next thing I know, I’m in this room that won’t stop spinning. Or it’s more like my head wouldn’t stop spinning, like that feeling when you’re really drunk. I never sensed any demon, I don’t remember being carried off or brought into that camp. It’s like they’d actually gotten inside my head and taken over…”
Anna stopped talking. Her mouth felt dry even though she was still holding onto a beer bottle that was nearly full. And because the thought or realization had hit Anna, it came to Colin, too.
“Holy shit,” he muttered.
Anna’s fingers trembled as she brought the beer bottle to her lips. The other hunters got tired of waiting for the O’Conners to explain what the hell they were silently talking about. Except Anna wasn’t really talking about anything. But she was sure there was only one way she could have ended up in that camp. She had gone there on her own.
“Wait, what do you mean?” Dylan asked. “You didn’t even know where you were. I was right there by Colin when you woke up. You thought you were in some other building.”
But Anna just shook her head again. “It did it. That demon. It took over my mind, separated me from Colin and forced me to run away from the rest of you. The only reason it let go of me and didn’t kill me is because it wanted Colin, too. We thought it wanted my soul, but it doesn’t care about our souls. It was figuring out how blessed we are, and then it knew Colin would come for me, but it hadn’t been planning on this new gift.”
Luca’s dark eyes shifted between Colin and Anna. Of all the Immortals, he had the most difficult time making sense of any of this, because he knew how demons behaved better than anyone. And this wasn’t like them to let Anna live.
“It could have killed you. It should have. Colin was cut off, so he didn’t know if you were alive or not. Letting you live doesn’t make any sense unless it was trying to get your soul. And even you said it was playing those mind games and offering to end it in exchange for your soul.”
“No,” Colin interjected. “That demon never actually said that’s what it wanted. What it told her was she knew there was a way to end her suffering. It wanted some deal, and we’ve been assuming it was her soul because that’s what demons always want but not these three. They’ve declared war on the Immortals, and they had one and she lived. It wanted something else.”
“Like
what?” Andrew asked.
He looked skeptical and Colin couldn’t blame him. Demons always chased after souls. After all, that’s what the entire battle between Heaven and Hell was about.
But Colin was convinced he was right about this, in which case it could be far worse for them and the rest of mankind in the end if those demons were ever successful. “It wanted her servitude.”
Chapter 8
Colin awoke to the sound of Anna’s phone ringing from their living room. After a panicked moment of making sure Anna was just sleeping and her dreams were only hers, he slid out of bed to find her phone. They’d both been asleep for over six hours, which was a longer stretch of sleep than they’d gotten in weeks. Colin tried to rub the bleariness from his eyes, but it didn’t work. Mostly, he just wanted to go back to bed, but as soon as her phone quit ringing, it started up again.
He found her cell phone buried in the couch cushions and freed it, but he didn’t recognize the number. It was a Boulder area code though, so he answered it while deciding he’d brave the mechanics of the coffee maker. It wasn’t the coffee maker itself that concerned him; he didn’t seem to have the same affinity Anna had for getting that perfect ratio of coffee grounds to water, and he inevitably made the coffee stronger than he cared to drink it. Anna never complained though. At some point, she’d even given up tea because of her fondness for coffee.
The woman at the other end of the phone conversation had to repeat her name twice before Colin remembered who she was. From the bedroom, he could tell his surprise had woken Anna. She was trying to force the sleep away from her groggy brain because she desperately wanted her phone to find out why Amanda was calling her. Colin brought her the phone, but now that he remembered Anna giving Amanda her phone number the night before, he was eager to find out why she’d called as well.
Amanda didn’t waste time. As soon as she heard Anna’s voice, she asked her if they could meet somewhere. She’d even be willing to drive out to Devil’s Thumb to come to their apartment. And she asked if she could meet with them alone, without the other hunters. Colin and Anna waited anxiously for Amanda to arrive. Anna brewed the coffee and spared Colin from what she was still convinced was a deliberate attempt on his part to always mess it up. They dressed and sat at the small round dinette table near the balcony doors.
Garden of the Gods (The Immortals Series Book 3) Page 5