Garden of the Gods (The Immortals Series Book 3)

by S. M. Schmitz

  Anna tapped her fingers nervously against her coffee cup. She had asked Amanda to call her if she had any dreams involving any of the hunters. Less than twelve hours later, she had called. But Colin remained skeptical that a dream involving any of the hunters had any significance; after all, they’d accosted the poor woman hours before she most likely went to sleep.

  Twenty minutes after ending their phone conversation, Amanda knocked on their apartment door, and Anna hurried to let her in. Amanda turned down the coffee Anna offered her, and Colin thought she looked frazzled and nervous, and more than that – sleep deprived. It was a look he knew well given how little sleep he and Anna had gotten since three fallen angels had started trying to worm their way into their brains through their dreams.

  Amanda sat on the couch and Anna sat next to her, wanting to comfort her even though she had no idea what was disturbing this woman so much. Amanda rubbed her hands together and looked between them, her lips twitching as if she were trying to find the right words to start her conversation. Anna couldn’t stand it. She reached for one of Amanda’s hands and held it in her own, even though part of her was aware this woman actually was a psychic and could probably still feel the demonic presence around her. Touching her probably wasn’t the best way to calm her down. But Amanda didn’t pull her hand away.

  “You told me to call you if I had a dream about any of you. Well, none of you were there, but this seemed to be about you. Or relevant. I don’t know. But I’ve never had a dream feel this real, and I’ve had some pretty realistic dreams.”

  Anna glanced over her shoulder at Colin who was still standing by the dinette table.

  “Ok, fine,” Colin conceded. “Maybe this is a legitimate reason to worry.”

  Amanda was watching them again, seeming to know they were having a conversation no one should have been able to hear.

  Anna finally had to ask her. “Can you understand us when we do that?”

  Amanda shook her head. “I know you’re able to talk to each other and I can tell when you’re doing it, but I can’t hear you or anything.”

  Colin was actually relieved. He didn’t want anyone besides Anna hearing his thoughts.

  “So what was this dream about?” Anna asked her gently. Amanda still hadn’t pulled her hand away, and Anna wondered how strong this demon’s presence was right now. It hadn’t invaded her dreams, and Amanda didn’t seem particularly scared of it at the moment. She allowed herself to hope it didn’t follow her around all the time.

  “Some demon. At least, that’s what I think it was. I’ve never seen one before. It was chasing me through some city I’ve never even been to. I’m pretty sure it was somewhere in Europe.”

  “What did it look like?” Colin asked. “The demon, not the city.”

  Amanda actually shuddered as she recalled the dream that hadn’t seemed like a dream at all. “It almost looked like a man, but everything about it was wrong. The color, its face, its eyes. And it smelled. I didn’t know we could smell things in our dreams. This was just a dream, right?”

  Amanda’s voice was pleading with them for reassurance, but Colin and Anna weren’t sure. The Angel had advised them to find a medium, some human with an unnatural connection to the supernatural, and they had found one. And that same night, she had experienced a dream or maybe even someone’s memory.

  “Describe the demon. Everything. We can probably tell you something about it. We’ve killed thousands of demons ourselves.” Anna was trying to console her, but she was a bit freaked out by Amanda’s experience as well.

  “It was green with a long face and orange eyes. And it had these red markings on its back.” Amanda’s fingers trembled inside Anna’s hand, but Anna was only vaguely aware she was still holding it.

  “Holy shit,” Colin muttered.

  “What?” Amanda asked, that panic returning to her voice.

  Anna took a deep breath. Colin wanted her to answer Amanda’s question, knowing she was so much better at being sensitive and considerate, and he’d probably just scare her even more.

  Anna wasn’t quite sure how to answer her without traumatizing her either, though. “Well, we killed that demon with Luca in Berlin in 1923.”

  “Ok,” Amanda said. She knew there was more.

  “And… Jas visits me in my dreams sometimes, and she delivered a message to me from Luca’s angel. He wanted us to remember this particular demon for a reason, and we think it might have something to do with Jeremy’s possession. Or figuring out how we can save him anyway.”

  Amanda coughed out a laugh. At least that’s what Anna thought it was.

  “What happened in your dream?” Colin asked. “You saw the demon. You were close enough to smell it. Then what?”

  “It attacked me,” Amanda sighed. She squeezed her eyes closed like the demon was in the room with them now.

  “Did it kill you?” Anna asked.

  Amanda shook her head again. “It… took over my body. I guess like it possessed me. But I looked down at my body, and I still looked like me. I didn’t look like that green demon at all. And for the most part, I felt like me, but I knew something wasn’t quite right. I just didn’t know what.”

  Anna finally dropped Amanda’s hand and twisted her body on the sofa so that she was facing Colin.

  “Oh my God, Colin. Maybe that’s what happened to Jeremy? He was marked. The night we checked on him, he told us he was really tired, but after the day he’d been through, we just figured who wouldn’t be? But what if he knew something didn’t feel quite right, he just didn’t know he was already possessed?”

  Colin moved away from the dinette table and sat near Amanda. “Did you ever change in your dream? Did you transform?”

  “No, I woke up after that part. I’ve been waiting for several hours for it to get late enough to call Anna. You don’t think it means I’m actually possessed, then, right?”

  Anna noticed Amanda’s fingers were still trembling. No wonder the poor woman was terrified; the dream had felt so real to her, she didn’t know if it was real, if she was about to become a demon like the friend these hunters had told her about.

  “I really don’t think so, Amanda. I think this was a dream sent to you for a reason, to help us try to figure out how to save our friend. And I’m afraid it may not be the last of these dreams for you.”

  Amanda closed her eyes again and fell back against the sofa. “Great. And how long can I expect these to keep coming?”

  “Until we’ve figured out how to save him or we’re dead,” Colin answered.

  Anna shot him a do-you-really-think-that-was-helpful? glare before turning back to Amanda.

  “Amanda, we need to get our friends over here to tell them about this. If you don’t want to stay, we understand. Is there anything else from this dream you can remember?” Anna was speaking softly again, trying to calm this woman’s frazzled nerves.

  But Amanda kept trembling and told them there was nothing else. She couldn’t even really identify what the city looked like. Just tall buildings and narrow streets, and a knowledge she was somewhere in Europe. And she didn’t want to stay to be interrogated by the other hunters. Reliving this memory-dream once had been traumatic enough. She planned on going home and finishing off her bottle off pinot noir while surrounding herself with as many religious symbols she could find.

  Colin bit his lip so he wouldn’t say anything, and he let Anna break the news that only worked in movies. If she got really desperate, she could try a church though. Demons weren’t forbidden from entering them or anything, but lesser demons especially avoided them because of the potential presence of angels.

  As soon as Amanda left, Colin called the other hunters. Everyone except Dylan was still asleep. Anna wondered why Dylan always seemed to be awake too early and as soon as he stepped into their apartment, looking far too cheerful again, she accosted him with wanting to know why the hell any normal human being would be awake and happy about it before 8:00 a.m.

  Dylan smile
d at her and asked her what had ever given her the impression he was normal anyway? He didn’t think any of the hunters would count as normal human beings actually. Andrew followed Dylan a few minutes later, still yawning and trying to smooth his blonde hair down with one hand. He hadn’t bothered changing from the pajama bottoms and t-shirt he’d slept in.

  He collapsed into a chair and Anna set a cup of coffee in front of him. He opened one of his pale blue eyes and smiled up at her. “See? You are an angel.”

  Not surprisingly, they had to wait another ten minutes before Luca showed up. Anna scowled at him from the sofa and told him to get his own coffee for making them wait. Luca waved a hand in the air as if his tardiness was more inconvenient to him than those waiting on him.

  Anna replayed the dream Amanda shared with her and Colin for their friends, and the other hunters waited until they were sure Anna had finished before trying to piece together what this could mean for Jeremy. Andrew looked more alert now, but as usual, he watched the others banter and argue about it before jumping in with his own opinions.

  “That woman in Cane Ridge you told Dylan and Max about. If she were really possessed, then we know something else about how possession works. She entered that tent and started behaving strangely. She seemed subdued after the fake exorcism, enough so that she was allowed to get up, but kept her eyes on Anna the whole time. She looked completely human though. So the behavior changes before the appearance does,” Andrew said.

  He put his empty coffee cup down, and because he’d been the only one to contribute anything even remotely useful since Anna finished her story, she immediately got up to refill it for him. When she brought it back to him, Andrew smiled up at her again and told her something in Polish.

  “What was that?” Colin asked.

  He wasn’t at all concerned Andrew was insulting his wife. Not only did Andrew seem to like everyone he met, she had just delivered him more coffee.

  “A Polish blessing,” Andrew answered.

  “We know the exorcism didn’t work on that woman in Cane Ridge,” Anna said, trying to get everyone to focus on Jeremy again. She knew Colin was about to ask him to translate it for them and right now, she was far more concerned about her demon-stalker and figuring out what the hell was going on with Jeremy. Or, more accurately, what the hell they were supposed to do about it. “What’s so significant about that green demon though? We were told to remember it and now Amanda’s having dreams about it.”

  “Maybe it has something to do with the markings?” Dylan guessed.

  Anna and Colin wondered about that, too, but since killing that demon in Berlin, they’d only encountered one other demon with similar markings and still considered those demons a rarity.

  “Luca, have you figured anything out about these demons?” Anna asked.

  Luca stared into his empty coffee cup then glanced up at Anna hopefully. She shook her head at him. “You know where the kitchen is. What century do you think we’re in now?”

  Luca offered her a crooked smile. Even in the seventeenth century, he had treated Anna like an equal; he just liked messing with her, and she just reciprocated. “I’ve seen those demons most often in southeast Europe for some reason. Just like the first one. They all have those same markings, same pattern and everything. We know they’re working for the same boss, but I’m not sure what else that tells us.”

  “That boss is most likely one of the fallen angels trying to kill us now, but yeah, unless we can figure out who it is, maybe not as helpful as we’d hoped,” Colin agreed.

  “Draw these markings for me,” Dylan said. “I haven’t seen them.”

  Colin found a pad of paper and tossed it to Luca who traced the markings down the demons’ backs, careful to keep them in the same order they appeared. Then all of the hunters gathered around Luca’s drawing and studied the sketches, which still didn’t resemble anything concrete. Andrew squinted at the drawings. Colin and Anna watched Andrew. He was suddenly far more interesting than Luca’s drawings on the notepad, because they suspected Andrew had grasped something each of them had missed.

  “Wait,” Andrew said, grabbing the notepad and turning it upside down. “They’re fairly abstract, but what if these are a locust, a scorpion’s tail, a crown, a lion’s tooth, and an iron breastplate?”

  Andrew looked up from the notepad because he knew the effect his words would have on the hunters.

  Luca looked at his sketches again then inhaled sharply.

  “Holy shit,” he muttered.

  Dylan looked between them, confused as to the sudden fear that had settled over the room. “What? Why are those things so scary?”

  Colin forced himself to look away from the drawings, not wanting to believe Andrew was right, but now that he’d pointed out the possibility, he couldn’t not see the markings for what they were.

  “Because,” Colin answered, “those are the marks of Abaddon. We may be fighting the Devil himself.”

  Chapter 9

  Ironically, none of the hunters owned a Bible and they had to go to a nearby bookstore to buy one so they could show Dylan the passage from Revelations that talked about Adaddon. They could have looked it up online, but the Immortals had lived a long time: they still didn’t trust most of what was on the Internet.

  Dylan finished reading the passage then looked up at Colin and shrugged. “This never identifies him as Satan or Lucifer or any other Devil nickname.”

  “No,” Colin agreed, “but some sects have theorized it may be the same fallen angel based on the way it’s described. In Greek myth and in Hebrew myth, this name is associated with a bottomless pit, and in Christianity, it’s an angel of destruction that opens that bottomless pit and allows misery to descend upon men who haven’t been marked by God.”

  “Of course,” Luca countered, “a few extreme Christian sects have insisted its even Jesus himself after his resurrection.”

  Dylan rolled his eyes and slammed the Bible closed. “This is why this book does more harm than good. It doesn’t even make sense.”

  “Parts of it do. We have to remember the entire thing was written by men, but we can’t discount that some of those men may have been blessed with more knowledge of the supernatural than the average person,” Colin insisted.

  Dylan sighed again. “You trying to tell me whoever wrote Revelations could see demons? Was maybe a hunter himself?”

  Anna snickered and pulled the Bible closer to her. “Whoever wrote Revelations needed to lay off the sacrificial wine.”

  Dylan laughed and told her that was the first thing that made sense to him all morning.

  Andrew was watching them as usual, and he must have sensed this conversation was about to take a turn toward the irreverent and jocular because he finally spoke up. “Whether it’s another name for Satan or a completely different fallen angel, it’s a remarkably powerful one regardless. For whatever reason, whoever wrote this passage was describing an angel that apparently exists.”

  “But it’s not an angel, it’s a demon. That’s why you’ve been fighting those demons with the red markings on their backs,” Dylan countered.

  “All demons were originally angels. Even Satan,” Andrew reminded him.

  Dylan exhaled impatiently. “You know what I mean. In Revelations, they’re described as being angels still. Part of God’s judgment at the Apocalypse.”

  But Andrew sighed just as impatiently. “You read the descriptions, and you’ve met both angels and demons. You tell me what Revelations is really describing.”

  Dylan crossed his arms stubbornly and waited for Andrew to just tell him. Andrew muttered something in Polish again, and this time, Colin was pretty sure it wasn’t a blessing.

  “It’s the final battle between Heaven and Hell fought here on Earth. There is no judgment or wrath of God. Heaven has never operated that way. Whoever wrote this was predicting what it would be like if this ongoing battle ever turned into an all-out war.”

  Dylan let his arms drop and stared at An
drew for a few seconds before turning to the other hunters, perhaps seeking confirmation that they agreed with him, but they had all spent centuries fighting this battle. They’d had a long time to come to the same conclusions.

  “The warning, then, from your angel,” Dylan asked Luca, “he was talking about Armageddon?”

  “Basically,” Luca responded. A pretty brunette walking past their table in the bookstore’s café caught his attention, and he looked away from Dylan to see where she was heading. “Self-help section. Bet I could help.”

  Anna had to grab his arm to keep him from getting up from the table.

  “Hey,” Luca protested, “I’ve lived a long time. I’ve got lots of knowledge and wisdom to share. Out of the goodness of my heart.”

  “And we’re being hunted by at least one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, so knock it off,” Anna hissed.

  “Maybe that’s why they’re hunting us,” Colin said.

  He was just thinking aloud as he did sometimes, but everyone was waiting for an explanation now and he couldn’t exactly take it back. It was already out. “If they’re trying to trigger the Apocalypse, what’s the smartest way to go about it? Take out your biggest threats first – us. Break rules to do it, which will force Heaven to respond. By the time the war starts, the Immortals are all dead and Hell doesn’t have any competition left on this planet that can really stop them. Not without Heaven figuring out how to bend rules, too.”

  Dylan groaned and put his head in his hands, and Anna wondered again if saving him had really been the right thing to do. Colin quickly assured her it had, if for no other reason than they needed all the help they could get right now.