Garden of the Gods (The Immortals Series Book 3) (17 page)

“Can you find out from Ahriman who these other demons are?” Dylan asked.

Colin shook his head slowly. “He’s only here with Samael and Adriel. Somebody else is summoning them and they come when they’re called.”

Dylan shot him a sharp, surprised look.

“Who the hell is summoning them? I swear to God, if you tell me it’s Satan, I’m going back to Baton Rouge.”

Colin tried to smile but it was a poor effort.

“No, but I can’t get that from him either. Just as I was able to retain some control over my own thoughts, he’s still able to block me from some of his.”

Dylan put his hands on the boards in front of him and looked over his shoulder at Anna.

“You ready? If Jeremy’s in there, one way or another, it’s time to save him.”

Chapter 21

Anna wasn’t ready. She was pretty sure she’d never been more terrified in her life, actually. But Colin stepped up to the boards beside Jeremy and helped him pull the first one off.

“
We’ll break through the seal. You be prepared to attack whatever tries to kill us when we do.”

Anna’s hands trembled with the fear and doubts that were flooding through her again, but Colin and Dylan kept pulling those boards down. She could see the top of the cave through the slats in the second layer of the seal.

“
Remember, my love,”
Colin told her. “
The Angel chose you. She gave you this gift for a reason, because she has that much faith in you. And so do I.”

Anna took a deep breath as they broke through the first layer of the seal and began prying apart the boards that blocked their entrance into the cave now. Dylan used his knife to pull the nails from one of the boards then it came free with a screeching shriek of rusted metal against old wood. It fell to the ground and now the Immortals could step over the lower boards and enter the cave.

Anna stepped around them to go in first. Dylan and Colin had no weapons that would be of any use to them in here. Moisture dripped from the top of the cave onto the muddy ground beneath their feet and Colin and Dylan switched on the pocket flashlights they’d brought with them. The cave was fairly small and they aimed their beams in the corners and along the walls as they made their way farther into the heart of the cavern.

The beams of the light suddenly became erratic then settled onto an opposing wall and Anna spun around in time to see Dylan and Colin’s bodies being thrown through the cave. They hit a wall and crumpled to the ground just as Anna heard the snuffling snorting sound coming toward her. Jeremy’s deformed gray body emerged in the beams of the fallen flashlights.

Anna heard movement from behind her again. Colin had been lifted from the ground, but he wouldn’t drop the shield he kept around her.

“Samael!” Anna shouted.

Colin’s body hung in the air, but Anna didn’t know where the damn fallen angel was. And Jeremy was coming at her.

“Call him off!” she shouted again. “Or I swear to God, I’ll destroy us all!”

Anna wasn’t bluffing. She had no other options.

Jeremy stopped approaching her but his goldenrod eyes were fixed on her, just waiting for the signal from his boss to attack her. Anna’s eyes never left Colin. Dylan had stumbled to his feet, but Colin couldn’t move; he was suspended in the air and was choking again. Anna
had
to find Samael or Colin would die.

Her mind raced with everything she knew about demons, searching for anything she could possibly tempt this one with in order to get it to leave her husband alone. How easy it would be for Samael to kill Colin now; Anna needed to appeal to it, and she needed to act quickly.

“Showdown,” she proposed. “You and me, Samael. Colin will drop his shield and it’ll just be us. He won’t interfere, and you make sure Jeremy stays out of it, too.”

Colin’s body wavered in the air for the longest second of Anna’s life before falling into the muddy ground of the cavern.

“No,” he coughed. “Anna,
no.
”

But Anna was already moving away from her husband and friend to put as much distance between herself and them as possible.

“Show yourself, Samael. Then Colin will drop the shield.”

“No!” Colin yelled.

But the cavern filled with a murky yellow light and a man appeared before her, leaning against the cave wall across from Anna, an air of superiority and self-satisfaction so evident in his features. Samael knew Anna had never learned to use this gift Heaven had given her, and he had three Immortals in his reach.

Anna had only a moment to take in this appearance he’d chosen. The muddled yellow light he’d filled the cave with made it difficult to make out colors but like Adriel, he was a handsome man, but hadn’t gone overboard trying to sculpt his features into a living Adonis.

“You could have been such an asset, Anna. For what it’s worth, I’m not looking forward to killing you. I wanted you at my side,” Samael told her.

Anna scoffed and wouldn’t let herself look at Colin. She was silently begging him to stay quiet and to drop this barrier he’d refused to release. She’d made the bargain. He had to uphold it.

“
Remember, Colin. You told me you had faith in me. The Angel had faith in me. Let me do this.”

She felt it slowly receding around her, but this was not the way Colin had envisioned fighting Samael. He was here to
protect
her. It was easier to have such complete faith in their mission in the Garden of the Gods when he knew his wife at least would survive.

“I would have never worked for you, Samael. I’m a hunter. An Immortal. What makes you think I’d ever work for
you
?”

Samael smiled and glanced in Colin’s direction. “For him.”

Anna inhaled and narrowed her eyes at Samael, clenching her fists even though she wouldn’t be fighting this angel with her body.

“And you thought we were so weak we wouldn’t be able to save each other?”

Samael’s smile never faltered. “I know neither of you are weak, which is why I want you both. You’re apparently far more powerful than I realized, considering Colin is even here right now. Adriel was right, you know. We’re not so different, Anna. Heaven and us. But you’ve made your choice.”

Anna gritted her teeth, but she
had
to know before one of them died. “How did you think taking my husband away from me was going to send me running to you?”

Samael moved away from the wall and Anna tried to recoil from him, but her back was already against the opposite wall of the cave.

“To get him back, of course. If it were the only way to get him back, wouldn’t you?”

Anna wouldn’t look at Colin. She shook her head at Samael and told him, “I’d go to Hell itself to save him. But I’d never become one of you.”

Samael lashed out at her with the same force that had thrown Colin and Dylan across the cave. Anna was pinned to the wall; she heard Colin shouting her name but she pleaded with him to stay where he was and not interfere. This was her battle. This was her retribution.

The tingling sensation rippled through her as this gift from The Angel begged to be released. She couldn’t breathe. She felt the weight of this force on her chest, like a vise around her ribs and the murky yellow light of the cave threatened to dim into blackness. She closed her eyes.

Anna didn’t have time to think about how to fight back, how to save herself or her husband or Dylan. She was dying and Colin would be next. She only wanted Samael dead.

She felt the energy from the world around her concentrate and gather together as it always did before being released into a destructive weapon, but this time, it didn’t scatter throughout the cave. Anna fell to her knees in the muddy ground and gasped for air and looked in Samael’s direction. He had been thrown against the cave wall and was struggling to get back on his feet.

He scowled at her and his orange-red eyes, Anna was certain they’d been brown before, fixed her with a fierce hatred. This obviously hadn’t been part of his plan. Anna lifted herself from the slimy floor of the cavern and didn’t wait for him to act again. She threw him back into the wall and for the second time, the force of the impact shook the cavern but Anna didn’t have time to worry about being buried in an avalanche of rocks and mud.

Samael’s human body slumped to the ground again and for a moment, it blurred and became hazy. He was struggling to hold onto this shape, which meant he was getting weaker. And that gave Anna a greater confidence than she’d had since entering this cavern to find Jeremy and this fallen angel who had stolen him.

She approached him slowly, hoping if she got closer she could direct even more power against him. Her proximity to him made Colin nervous, but he stayed silent, watching his wife with a new reverence and awe. Anna hit Samael again, and the angel was no longer able to hold onto his human form. He shifted into his original body, and for the first time, the Immortals witnessed what angels really looked like.

With Samael no longer wasting his own energy to try to look human, he found renewed strength and raised himself from the mud of the bottom of the cave. A blinding white light replaced the murky yellowness that had illuminated the space around them, and Anna had to back away from him, but she couldn’t look away. He was all the colors her eyes could see and none of them; he had two arms or a thousand and stood on two legs or a hundred. Anna felt Colin’s same sense of confusion, but he was still holding Ahriman prisoner, and it was the demon inside of him that told him the truth. They couldn’t see Samael now as he really was because humans were never meant to look upon angels.

Anna’s shock had also distracted her. Samael threw her again, this time with a greater force and when she hit the wall behind her, she felt the rocks crack beneath the impact of her body. Pain surged throughout her as she fell back into the muck of the floor of the cave, and she heard Colin screaming again, both aloud and in her head. And Anna remembered if she failed them now, there would be no one left to set Jeremy’s soul free.

Samael was virtually on top of her, but Anna threw him up into the ceiling of the cave. It shook again and rocks and pebbles rained down around them. She wouldn’t let him fall though. He was stronger than her now, and if she gave him another chance to attack her, she would die. She
knew
that as much as she knew that if they died in this cave, Jeremy would be trapped in his own Hell forever, Luca and Andrew would never return to hunting because those demons would never leave them, and may even drive both of them, even
Luca
, to the other side.

Samael was fighting back, struggling against Anna’s ability to keep him pinned to the ceiling of the cave, and she was running out of time. It wouldn’t be long before he overpowered her and was on top of her again.

Anna took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “
St. Casimir, pray for us.
”

Anna channeled all of the energy she could into one final burst and the ceiling caved in around them. She instinctively threw her arms over her head and curled into a ball as rocks fell on top of her, burying her in a hailstorm of sandstone and dirt. Anna lay motionless as she listened to the final dripping ticking sounds of the remnants of the explosion as they settled around her, then she opened her eyes. It was completely dark. She was buried under the cave-in she’d created. She could
feel
Colin and knew he was alive, but he was buried as well, already digging his way out to try to get to her.

Anna pushed rocks off of her until she saw the thin sliver of light from the opening of the cave. She heard Colin’s footsteps as he hurried to her side and started throwing the rest of the debris off her body. Anna hurt everywhere, but she smiled up at him anyway. Ahriman was gone.

He gently pulled her from the rubble and wrapped his arms around her and kissed the sides of her face over and over, and Anna held onto him as if the cave would open up beneath them and swallow them, taking them down into Hell now in vengeance for Samael’s death. Anna heard Dylan groaning as he pushed his way out of his sandstone grave.

“Holy shit, Anna,” he moaned. “Remind me never to piss you off.”

Anna laughed even though it only made her chest and head hurt even more. Dylan was a little slower making his way toward her and he looked up at the ceiling of the cave where Samael used to be.

“He’s not trying to kill us, so I’m pretty sure that means he’s dead, right?”

Anna and Colin nodded. Samael may have fallen, but he was still an angel, and angels could be killed.

Dylan sighed and turned his attention toward the back of the cave. “We need to unbury Jeremy’s body then. Make sure it’s really dead and his soul is finally free.”

Anna let Colin help her to her feet and blinked back the tears that wanted to form. She reminded herself that Jeremy had begged for death, that The Angel had promised she’d be waiting for him herself. Little light reached the back of the cave where Jeremy had stood waiting for a signal from Samael to attack the hunters, and their flashlights had been buried in the avalanche of rocks and debris.

They each started digging in a different section where they thought Jeremy’s body might be. Dylan was the first to find nothing but empty ground. 

“Not here,” he sighed sadly.

He moved farther down to dig through a different section. Colin found nothing but a mud covered floor as well.

“He
has
to be here,” Anna muttered. “The only way out of this cave is the opening behind us, and no one saw him leave, right?”

Colin glanced at her but kept digging through the debris. “I was a little distracted by the fallen angel trying to kill my wife.”

Dylan cursed under his breath because he hadn’t found him under the pile of sandstone he’d been digging in. He moved to another section of the cave.

“He
can’t
have escaped,” Anna protested. “It wasn’t supposed to end this way. We were supposed to save him.”