Garden of the Gods (The Immortals Series Book 3)

by S. M. Schmitz

  “Let me guess,” Amanda said. “He hasn’t been using a credit card since he bought the ticket to Glasgow.”

  “No. And that flight landed hours ago. What the hell is he doing? Just walking around Scotland?” Anna pulled up their bank account on her phone, but he hadn’t accessed the money there either.

  Amanda shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe he’s just sitting in the airport trying to decide where to go next. Or waiting for an available flight. Keep checking recent transactions. Something has to turn up.”

  Anna didn’t think she needed a psychic along to tell her that. But she was also glad Amanda was with her if for no other reason than she was worried about Colin and didn’t want to be alone right now. Besides, The Angel had sent her. There had to be a reason.

  Anna tapped the side of her phone case nervously as the white peaks of the Denver International Airport finally appeared in the distance. She checked the flight tracker on her phone again but it hadn’t changed in the past three minutes. She just needed something to do.

  “Is Jas here?” Anna asked.

  Amanda cast a surprised glance in Anna’s direction. “I guess. There’s some kind of positive force around you, and you told me before it was Jas, so I’m going with yes.”

  “And what about the demonic presence?”

  Amanda kept her eyes on the road this time. “Yes, it’s always there, too.”

  It didn’t scare Anna the way it used to, but that was probably only because Colin had disappeared. He had left her. How could anything frighten her after this?

  “Alright, Jas, I’m sober. Got anything else for me?” Anna muttered.

  Amanda was silent for a minute then she smiled. “No, but she said you’re still being obnoxious.”

  Anna smirked. “Max should know something. Can’t she talk to Max?”

  Amanda glanced at her again and Anna wished she’d stop doing that. Amanda wasn’t immortal, and getting in a car accident wasn’t going to help anyone. “She can still hear you, Anna. You don’t have to ask me.”

  Anna bit her lip to keep the smartass comments from leaking out. She didn’t care about supernatural technicalities right now. She just wanted to find her husband.

  “And she hasn’t heard anything from Max,” Amanda continued. “You and Colin have never been this far apart. She’s not sure if that has something to do with it.”

  “Great, so even ghosts’ telepathy doesn’t work across an ocean?”

  Amanda slowed down as they neared the airport. “I don’t know how ghosts communicate either. Just because I can hear them doesn’t mean I know everything about them. I don’t expect you to know everything about demons.”

  Amanda sighed as she followed the line of cars into the parking garage. “Sorry. I know you’re really worried. And I’ve been on edge ever since you all showed up at my table and I had a nightmare about becoming possessed. Part of me keeps waiting to turn into a demon like your friend.”

  Anna wanted to assure her that wouldn’t happen, but there were three fallen angels who had singled out this group of Immortals, who had singled her and Colin out, specifically. She no longer knew what to expect. She sure as hell never thought she’d be chasing her husband halfway across the world because he’d decided to quit hunting then left her.

  As Amanda circled the garage looking for a place to park, Anna checked their credit card account again. No recent purchases had been made. She tossed her phone in her purse and cursed again.

  “His plane landed almost four hours ago! What is he doing?” Anna complained.

  Amanda found an empty spot and parked her car then turned off the ignition. “Jas wants to know how much cash he could have on him. Maybe that’s why you can’t track him now?”

  Anna shook her head. “Not that much. If he were withdrawing money, it would show up on our online statement.”

  She had a ghost and a psychic with her, and this was all the help they could offer?

  “Maybe we’ll pick something up over the Atlantic then. You know, when the ghosts aren’t separated by an entire ocean,” Amanda smiled.

  Despite herself, Anna smiled back.

  They had just gotten through security when Anna’s phone rang, but her heart dropped when she saw the number. It was Dylan. Luca and Andrew were being just as stubborn as ever, he insisted, and he really didn’t know what to do with them. Right now, he’d given up on trying to convince them of anything and had just turned on college football. It was at least keeping them quiet. Anna hadn’t even realized it was a Saturday.

  “See what you can come up with about this fallen angel from Revelations. We suspect Jeremy’s boss is Abaddon now so that may help us figure out how to save him somehow,” Anna instructed.

  Dylan was quiet on the other end and Anna expected him to argue with her – he had wanted to kill the demon that used to be Jeremy, none of this had been his idea – but Anna heard him set something down then his voice came back on the other end.

  “Ok, I looked up a theology professor at CU. I’m going to see if he’ll meet with me if you think I can trust Twiddle Dee and Twiddle Dum on their own.”

  Anna snickered and told Dylan they’d just have to hope between football and beer, neither of them would even leave the apartment.

  “I’ll have a couple of pizzas delivered. That should buy me a few hours,” Dylan said. “Anna…”

  She had reached their gate and needed to get off the phone. The plane had just started boarding. “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Anna froze and Amanda bumped into her.

  “For what?” Anna couldn’t imagine what Dylan had to apologize for.

  Dylan exhaled slowly and told her, “It seems like everyone I care about is being taken away from me lately. So just get your husband’s dumbass back here, ok?”

  Anna swallowed; her throat felt tight and raw. “Jas is right about you, Dylan.”

  Then she hung up before he could argue with her, and she hurried to the gate to get onto their flight to London.

  Amanda sat by the window so she could try to whisper discreetly to Anna if she started picking up anything she needed to share. They both figured having passengers overhearing them talk about ghosts and demons and angels probably wouldn’t end well for them. It was probably written into a TSA handbook somewhere to detain passengers who claimed they could hear ghosts or see demons.

  As soon as she was able to turn on her cellphone again, Anna dug it out of her jacket pocket and started scrolling through their bank account transactions and credit card transactions, but he still hadn’t made any purchases or withdrawals. Whatever he was doing in Glasgow, he was doing for free.

  Her email app dinged to alert her of a new email and she opened it quickly with trembling fingers, praying it was Colin who had finally reached out to her, but it was Dylan again. He had gotten the University of Colorado theology professor to agree to meet with him that day.

  Anna typed out a response asking him to keep her informed on what the professor could offer. She had no idea how Dylan was going to approach this guy to find out how to save the body of a human that had been taken over by a demon. Because sane people asked questions like that all the time.

  Their plane had just reached the Atlantic Ocean when Amanda touched Anna’s hand and she leaned closer to her to whisper in her ear. “Jas isn’t really clear what’s going on with Max either. She seems to think he’s not with Colin anymore.”

  Anna’s hand reflexively jerked away from Amanda’s. “No, Max is tied to Colin. He can’t just abandon him.”

  Amanda’s pale ice-blue eyes studied Anna for a few moments, and Anna suspected she was listening to Jas again. She was right.

  “Max doesn’t know where Colin is.”

  Anna shook her head. “That’s impossible. Why the hell did he leave him in the first place?”

  This time, Amanda was quiet far longer and she averted her eyes, staring at the back of the seat in front of her. “He didn’t want to be with him anymore.�
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  “Max has to know Colin will come back. He’ll be a hunter again. I don’t know what Adriel did, but he can’t just desert him because he’s doubting his faith! He knows Colin!”

  Anna couldn’t whisper anymore. She was far too hurt by Max’s forsaking her husband when he needed him the most.

  But Amanda lowered her eyes and focused on the backs of her own hands, folded in her lap now, and just shook her head. In a small voice, so quiet and full of the sorrow Jas was carrying, she told Anna, “Max didn’t leave because Colin thinks Heaven has been manipulating him. He left because Colin didn’t arrive in Glasgow alone, and he didn’t stay there. He went to Edinburgh and he didn’t go into the hotel alone either.”

  Anna repeated Amanda’s words but they may as well have been in Latin. None of them made any sense to her. “I don’t understand. Who is he with? Another Immortal?”

  Amanda finally lifted her gaze and forced herself to meet Anna’s dark brown eyes, so full of confusion, desperation, hopelessness. Amanda blinked away the tears that had formed and they rolled down her cheeks.

  “No,” she whispered, “he’s with a pretty young woman.”

  Anna still couldn’t register Amanda’s words at first, and she was about to ask her who this woman was and why she was important, but the realization of what Max and Jas were telling her slowly settled on her like a crushing weight, an agony of the worst kind of betrayal. She slumped down into her seat and closed her eyes. If Adriel was trying to create Hell on Earth for the O’Conners, he had succeeded.

  Chapter 16

  Colin’s plane touched down in Glasgow and Olivia caught up to him as he was walking down the jet bridge. He didn’t have any luggage to wait for, but she asked if he would mind helping her with her bags. Colin didn’t have anything else to do, so he agreed. As they waited by the carousel, Olivia asked him about more of the places he’d visited around the world, and he found that he liked the distraction of talking about traveling without all of the horrors and the stuff of hellish nightmares. He was able to replay memories that involved only the best aspects of human nature: their innovation and ingenuity, their creativity and generosity.

  Olivia revealed she’d majored in mass communications because she was hoping to be a journalist and her trip to Scotland, while it had been a graduation present, was her first overseas adventure. She was planning on blogging about her two week vacation and her experiences here. Colin didn’t understand how the two were connected, but he also didn’t really get blogs. Sometimes, he still felt like he was living in the seventeenth century.

  Olivia smiled up at him as the bags finally started to circle around on the carousel. “Keep an eye out for red luggage. One large suitcase and one medium. And if my blog gets a lot of hits, it can be helpful in promoting myself to magazines and newspapers that cover international stories. That’s what I’m hoping anyway. Lots of people use successful blogs as a platform to get into careers. There they are.”

  Olivia pointed to a set of cherry red suitcases with hard plastic shells. Colin grabbed them for her and offered to help her with them as they made their way to the bus that would take them to the train station.

  Olivia smiled at him again and thanked him. “So you never told me what you do,” she said, still smiling up at him.

  They had just gotten out of the airport and were waiting with a line of other eager tourists and travelers for the bus to arrive.

  “Um… I used to work in a press.”

  “Like a book press?”

  Colin nodded and stepped away from the curb as the bus pulled over.

  “Cool. What did you do? Acquisitions? Or like… in the factory itself.”

  Colin helped put Olivia’s bags inside the luggage compartment then boarded the bus.

  “Binding,” Colin answered.

  He had no idea how books were made now and if people even still bound books by hand. He doubted it. He hoped Olivia wouldn’t know either, but she had been a mass communications major. He probably should have just lied, but he’d never been a good liar.

  Olivia sat next to him near the back of the bus. It was packed and she had to squeeze in tightly and pressed her body against his. Colin was about to stand so she could have more room, but another couple boarded the bus and stood in front of him, grabbing the bar above them to hold on as the bus lurched forward. Olivia let her body repeatedly brush against his as the bus moved forward.

  “That’s a pretty specific job title. So what are you doing now?”

  He really wished he were a good liar. “I don’t know. Still trying to decide.”

  Olivia leaned a little closer to his ear. “Maybe I can help.”

  Colin flinched away from her, surprised by her breath in his ear, and shook his head. “No, this is something I’ve got to figure out on my own.”

  The train station was only a mile from the airport, so the trip was short and the bus rolled to a stop; passengers began filing off the bus and Colin and Olivia followed the mass of smelly tired travelers. The weather was cool in Scotland, but that didn’t seem to stop a lot of people from perspiring anyway. The bus reeked.

  They had to wait at the train station for the train to arrive, and because Colin had offered to go to Edinburgh just for Olivia, she bought his train ticket for him. She chatted happily about her college days at Notre Dame, and when Colin found out she was a huge Notre Dame football fan, he found discussing college football was a great distraction from losing his wife and their life together, too. He was pretty sure it was a Saturday, which meant he was missing out on all of the games his friends back in Boulder were probably enjoying.

  Although by now, he was too jetlagged and tired to do the math to figure out what time it would be in Colorado. Maybe the games hadn’t even started yet or maybe they were over. Maybe it was Sunday now. What difference did it make? He had always known he had no existence without Anna, and nothing seemed important anymore anyway.

  The train ride from Glasgow to Edinburgh wasn’t as bad as Colin had originally feared. Olivia’s incessant talking had actually proved to be a blessing in disguise: it drowned out the silence in his head that he was sure was going to drive him insane sooner or later.

  By the time the cab pulled up in front of Olivia’s hotel, it was quite late and Colin was hungry and exhausted. He helped her bring her luggage inside and she checked into her room, while Colin waited patiently because she still had his magazine. He wanted it back.

  Olivia tossed her purse onto the cart holding her luggage and offered Colin another sly smile. “Room service is still delivering. You can come up to my room. I’ll buy you dinner to thank you for all of your help.”

  Colin glanced behind him at the dark city street then at Olivia’s smiling face, and tossed his backpack on the luggage cart.

  “Sure. I don’t have anyplace to be anyway.”

  Chapter 17

  Anna ticked her nails against the armrests of the train as she and Amanda rode to Edinburgh. Amanda hadn’t tried to talk to her much since their last conversation on the plane, only delivering messages from Jas when Anna’s dead friend insisted on talking to her. But even Jas didn’t have much to offer now, so they sat in silence for much of the trip.

  Anna knew she wouldn’t come to her now, but more than ever, she needed The Angel. There were the practical problems she would have to address – like her promise that she and Colin would be together for the duration of their service, and didn’t his infidelity break that promise? Did this mean Anna would no longer be a hunter either? And did she want to quit?

  She couldn’t die now. She couldn’t face eternity like this. Her soul couldn’t possibly go on through an endless existence when it had been ripped apart; God knows where the other half of her was or what he was doing. But this wasn’t a tear in her spirit, a laceration that could be sewn back together. She was irrevocably broken.

  Anna couldn’t even cry. Maybe it was the shock or anger, but the part of her that still felt mortal, that had been remind
ed she was human by Colin’s touch, was dead. But she couldn’t stop loving him no matter what he had done, and she would find him in Edinburgh and convince him his life was in danger. He couldn’t ignore the war being waged against them. The fallen angels would find him no matter where he went.

  As the train pulled into the station, Anna followed Amanda to the platform and they once again waited for their luggage to be unloaded so they could go to the hotel where Max had left Colin.

  While they were waiting for their bags, Anna’s phone rang. It was Dylan calling her again, and she didn’t want to answer it. She couldn’t bring herself to talk to anyone about anything, but she also couldn’t forget what Dylan had told her: “It seems like everyone I care about is being taken away from me lately.”

  Anna answered her phone. “Anna, I got a ton of information from this professor. I had to wait to call you until Andrew was out of the apartment. Where are you now?”

  Anna had to swallow before she could speak. She was completely numb. “Edinburgh. We just got here.”

  “You sure he’s there?”

  Anna sighed and closed her eyes. “Yes.”

  “Well, find him and hurry up and get back here. Until we can get those three dimwits to snap out of it, we’re on our own, and I’m not exactly sure what to do with all of this information because if he’s right, then we were wrong. I need you here as soon as possible.”

  Anna opened her eyes and caught Amanda watching her. Amanda looked away and watched the passing travelers disembarking from the train instead. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Be careful, Dylan.”

  Anna kept her eyes on Amanda.

  “You too,” he told her.

  Anna hung up and took a deep breath. She stuffed her phone back in her pocket and grabbed Amanda’s hand, whose eyes revealed her surprise.