The Immortals (13 page)

Max wanted to ask something else, but Anna felt the creeping, not-belonging sensation at the same time Colin did. Something was out of place here. Something had entered this space that didn’t belong in their world. Anna and Colin reached for their daggers, which alerted the other hunters a demonic presence was approaching. Only Dylan could feel it now. Max and Jeremy didn’t have their heightened awareness, but grabbed their daggers anyway.

Colin and Anna felt the tingling in their fingers, spreading upward through their hands and arms and outward from their chests. Anna thought it felt like she’d downed a hot toddy, with that same pleasant warmth emanating throughout her body. But this wasn’t the effect of brandy; the gift The Angel had given them had awakened in the presence of this demon. 

Anna couldn’t suppress this smile. “
They only thought we were badasses before. Wait until they find out what happens when they piss off Heaven.
”

Colin’s fingers twitched with anticipation. “
Forget Heaven. Wait until they find out what happens when they piss off this husband.
”

Two shapes appeared near the line of trees at the edge of the empty lot, one orange-red and smoky, the other a cadet blue opaque silhouette. The blue gray shape surged toward them and Anna swiped at the shape with her dagger. It sliced into the side of the demon, which made a low growling moaning sound, but turned on her, its amorphous shape twisting into a long gray wolverine, its lips pulled back into a snarl over pointed teeth. The gash on its side still leaked the same putrid odor the demon from the apartment had been filled with, but just like that demon, this one wasn’t slowed down by its injury. It swiped at Anna with its hideously thick curved claws, but Colin dug his dagger into the beast’s other side. A flashing popping sound escaped and it snaked its head around to bite his arm.

Anna pushed her dagger through the thick hide of its neck and although more of that noxious gas escaped, it turned on her, hissing and snapping those beige brown teeth, its jaws dripping slimy trails of yellow stench. Anna’s stomach turned. “
Back up, Colin!
”

Colin stabbed it again to distract the demon then backed away from it, but he knew why Anna had asked him to get away from the monster, and he was ready to help her. This new power within them burst forward, and they felt the energy moving all around them. They watched as the hideous impersonation of a wolverine dissipated before them, even the odors blowing away into the atmosphere of the south Louisiana sky.

But Colin and Anna both had the horrifying realization that this power wasn’t contained; it wasn’t directed just at the demon. Their fellow hunters had been behind them. They spun around but they were alone in the field.

Chapter 18

Anna’s heart started beating rapidly and the world started spinning around her. “No,” she breathed, “no, Colin, they wouldn’t do this to us. No.” She didn’t need to explain what she meant. He understood a gift that could so easily kill people was not a gift at all.

“Dylan was in the room with me at the camp. He was ok. Maybe they’re …” But people don’t just disappear.

Anna felt the panic rising within her. “Dylan!” she screamed. “Max! Jeremy!” She called their names over and over while turning in circles, scanning the grassy field around them.

The ditch by the side of the road caught her attention. “Colin, oh God, Colin.”

“I’ll go look,” he told her. Anna watched him as he approached the deep ditch and peered inside. She felt what he found before he could tell her, and she ran over to him, climbing down into the ditch, checking Dylan’s body even though he was conscious.

“Careful, Anna, you’re a married woman.” Dylan’s voice betrayed his pain, but he was still teasing her.

Anna sobbed in relief. “I thought you were
dead
!”

Dylan groaned as he sat up. “Next time, just go ahead and kill me.”

Colin had moved farther down the field where Jeremy’s body was curled inside the ditch. “
He’s conscious. He may have a broken rib though.
”

Max had been thrown farther down the field and had landed in a muddy section of the ditch. He was scraped and battered, but got to his feet and sauntered to Colin’s side to help him get Jeremy back to one of the cars. None of them wanted to go to a hospital.

“How the hell would we explain any of this?” Dylan asked. He winced as Anna lifted his arm and tried to clean some of the dirt and grass away from the laceration on his elbow.

“If you need medical attention, what difference does it make?” Colin retorted. But the hunters refused, and Dylan insisted he wasn’t even that badly hurt and could still drive. As the injured hunters leaned against the cars, Jeremy looked at Colin and exhaled, “Tell me that was at least worth it. Did it kill them?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Good,” Jeremy winced as he tried to stand up straighter, “because that orangey bastard was kicking my ass.”

Anna chastised him for trying to stand on his own and made him get in the backseat of the car with Max then she and Colin took them home and badgered them the entire time about reconsidering a doctor.

Anna waited until they were alone in her apartment again to ask Colin about this new gift. “Do you think we can learn to control it?”

“I hope so,” but he didn’t sound certain.

“If we can’t, what good will it do us? We can’t ever use it again when others are around.”

Colin nodded in agreement. They were lucky this time. Neither of them wanted to risk killing anyone. “It worked though. Maybe we should start hunting on our own.”

They’d done it often before, throughout most of their lives actually, but never with three pissed off archdemons targeting them specifically. Anna shook her head. “The Angel said we’d need help. She wants us here, with
this
group.” And then Anna realized what might be so special about this place after all. “Maybe it’s not the city, Colin. Maybe these demons
followed
us here, and The Angel told us to come here because of who we’d meet. Maybe these hunters are the reason we’re in Baton Rouge.”

Colin bit his lip, thinking about these three hunters in particular they’d almost killed earlier that day. He genuinely liked Dylan, and The Angel
had
singled him out, but Max and Jeremy? Especially
Jeremy
?

“Colin,” Anna rebuked him, “you’re going to have to get over your jealousy. Jeremy will behave now.”

Colin mumbled about how Jeremy had
better
behave now, and walked into her kitchen.

“Um,” Anna stammered, “what are you looking for?”

Colin glanced back at her. “It’s getting late. I was going to make us dinner.”

Anna tried not to giggle. “Do you like frozen burritos?”

Colin’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “Frozen what?”

The laugh she’d been trying to hold in escaped. They’d gotten used to a lot of changes over the centuries, but their home had remained a constant place of tradition and normalcy for them. Anything that came out of a plastic wrapper was not traditional or normal. “You weren’t here, my darling. I had no intention of this apartment ever feeling like home without you in it.” And Anna stepped up on her toes to kiss her husband, who was 6’4” and not always so easy to reach.

Colin pushed some of Anna’s dark hair away from her face and kissed her again, the affectionate and gentle kiss quickly transforming into one of those hungry, passionate kisses and Anna pressed her body as closely as she could to his, running her hands underneath his shirt and tracing the sinewy lines of muscle on his back. He had just pulled her t-shirt off when his phone rang. Anna told him to ignore it, and he certainly didn’t want to argue with his wife.

It rang again, so Colin sighed and grabbed the phone with one hand while holding onto Anna with the other, still hoping it was a wrong number or some telemarketer trying to get him to take some survey he had no intention of taking. But it was Dylan, so Colin had to answer it.

Anna didn’t need to wait for him to get off the phone to know they’d be leaving soon. Dylan had gone to Jeremy’s apartment to check on him, and they’d discovered something unusual on his body. Colin told them they’d be there soon and resisted the urge to slam his phone on the counter.

Anna smiled coyly at him. “It could be worse, Colin. At least you get to come home with me tonight.”

Dylan answered Jeremy’s door and led them into his bedroom where Jeremy was lying on his side, watching television. When he saw Colin and Anna, he turned it off and motioned them closer. “Ever seen anything like this?” he asked, pulling the sheet off his torso. His side was badly bruised and Anna grimaced, immediately feeling guilty again, but that’s not what Jeremy had wanted to show them. An orange-red mark like a crescent moon was stenciled into his ribcage, its lines blurred, almost smoky in appearance, much like the other demon they’d seen on the horizon in the field that day.

“
Holy shit,
” Anna thought. “
Did
we
do this? When we … destroyed those monsters?
”

Colin was biting his lip again. “
It’s possible.”

Jeremy was looking between them. “So? Have you ever seen something like this?”

He looked apologetically at Jeremy and told him, “Yes, we’ve seen it before.”

Chapter 19

Verdun, 191
6
. Colin listened as the whistling mortars crossed the air in the distance, followed by the deafening explosion, the ground shaking beneath his feet. He was far enough behind the battlefield that he wasn’t overly concerned about getting blown up, but this war was unlike any he’d witnessed before. If this was the future of warfare, then he was pretty sure all of humanity was completely and hopelessly damned.

Anna had stopped to help an elderly woman picking dandelion leaves because food was scarce. They had been in this small village southwest of the battle lines for months now, but the lines hadn’t moved. There was no point in moving on as long as the western front remained entrenched here. With so much misery all around them, evil had found plenty of opportunities to exploit and Colin and Anna had been busy.

Colin looked back at Anna and the old woman, whose basket was almost full of green leaves, bitter green leaves that Colin hated, and the woman kept wanting to kiss Anna’s cheeks, telling her a girl as beautiful as she must be an angel. Colin smiled. He’d thought the exact same thing the first time he met her. Sometimes, he still wondered if she weren’t at least
part
angel.

Anna walked the woman back to her house then ran back to Colin who was still watching her from the shadows of an abandoned church. The priest had been killed in a mortar attack closer to the French lines where he’d gone to try to help administer Last Rites. Half the village had evacuated in the past months, but Colin didn’t think the front would move much closer to them. These lines rarely seemed to move.

“If we find anything edible, we should bring it to her,” Anna said as she reached him.

Colin handed her the canteen with the last of their clean drinking water. They would have to boil more when they returned, if they could find any. The well in the village had dried up weeks ago, and they’d been collecting rainwater instead.

“What goes well with dandelion? Squirrel?”

Anna playfully pushed him. “Colin O’Conner, we’d be lucky to find enough squirrels to feed us all. So you’d better get used to eating dandelion leaves for a while.”

Colin wrinkled his nose. “I’d rather eat bark.”

They headed out into the woods where the demons that preyed on desperate souls liked to hide, especially during the day. People were braver during the day. Nighttime made demons’ work easier, and they could be so damn lazy. Occasionally on these hunting trips, they would be stopped by French soldiers, but Anna spoke perfect French by now, and she’d claim they were villagers looking for food. As long as they stayed far enough away from the rear trenches and artillery, they were always allowed to keep going.

Another mortar shell landed on the French side, and even though it was miles away, Anna was certain she could feel the vibrations in the ground. Maybe it was only their imaginations, but after listening to this salient exchange heavy bombardments for the past three months, she couldn’t remember what it was like to hear leaves rustling in the breeze or rain dripping on the roof. When the heavy guns quieted, the rat-a-tat firing of the soldiers’ rifles punctuated the brief moments of silence. And it was in that small village outside of Verdun Colin and Anna first saw the effects of chemical warfare. They were definitely both convinced the future of humanity was irretrievably screwed.

They stepped quietly through the forest just in case any errant soldiers – from either side – were around, and kept searching for the demons they’d come to hunt. Evil feasted on misery, and there was a banquet at Verdun. Colin and Anna had been hunting for these two demons for almost a week now, but they’d been unable to find them. They couldn’t wait for them at night, as they were visiting the men at the front, and Colin and Anna couldn’t get near there. Not that they’d want to anyway.

But even semi-immortal creatures of Hell needed time to rejuvenate. Besides, Colin and Anna both sensed these demons had been in these woods – they just couldn’t
find
them. So far, this trip was turning out to be much like the others had. A wasted effort. To pass the time, Anna played one of her favorite games with Colin where they took turns thinking of a city they’d been to anywhere in the world that began with each letter of the alphabet. Colin had finally gotten tired of losing every time he got the letter X and had taken Anna on a trip to Xi’an, China for no other reason than to have a city for that letter.

Anna had just gotten the letter K and was trying to decide between Karlsruhe and Kiev when they felt them. “
Kiev
,” she decided quickly, and pulled her dagger from its sheath. Colin glanced at her with an amused smile because Anna really hated losing.

“
Louisville
,” Colin added just as quickly because he didn’t like to lose either.

“
This isn’t over,
” Anna warned as she turned around to try to get a better idea of where those bastards were hiding. With two of them, they’d split up, so Colin and Anna were getting signals from all over the place. Finally, Anna spotted one of them. “
There, in the trees.”

Colin looked above them and saw the orange-red haze as it dove toward them. The other demon leaped from the bushes, a deep plum mist that took the form of a jaguar mid-leap. Demons had a thing for mimicking animals. They apparently thought it made them look really fierce or something. Anna threw herself out of the path of the dark purple cat that was trying to pounce on her. Her dagger swiped at its neck but the gash healed almost immediately.

“
Shit!
I need my knife!
” she screamed.

The orange-red smoky apparition had morphed into an eagle, and Colin wasn’t having much better luck killing it. He ducked as its talons reached for his head again then stabbed the jaguar’s hind leg to try to distract it long enough for Anna to grab her knife.

She had backed against a tree and Colin let his eyes linger on her as long as he could without risking the damn orange-red bird tearing him apart. And that was when he first noticed the body lying in the woods. The eagle made a sickening shriek as it dove at him again, but he’d pulled his knife out, too, just in case. The carbon steel blade was difficult to keep as sharp as newer stainless steel blades, but demons didn’t seem to care about those kinds of inconveniences to humans. They simply refused to allow stainless steel blades to penetrate them.

Anna had grabbed her knife just as the jaguar jumped at her throat, its jaws open, baring those monstrously long fangs. She rolled away from the tree and stabbed the purple beast in its back and a vaporous cloud escaped from the hole her knife blade left behind. The jaguar limped now, wounded and weakened and Anna was able to scramble to her feet.

Colin watched the bird circling above him, its distorted shape and color reminding him more of a Phoenix than an eagle, and as it descended toward him again, its beak unnaturally pointed and serrated, Colin flipped the knife over in his hand so that he gripped the blade tightly then threw it at the flying bird. It landed in its neck and the creature roared, a sound so completely dissonant from what he’d expected given its body. Some of the orange-red smoky mist leaked out around the knife still stuck in its neck. It settled on the ground, no longer able to fly, even its shape shifting at the edges as the demon struggled to hold onto the mirage of the eagle.

But Colin didn’t have his knife now. Anna had opened several more wounds on the plum mist that had lost its form as a jaguar. Everywhere her knife touched, the mist simply disappeared and the nothingness was spreading like ripples throughout the purple fog. Anna ran to the orange-red bird that was still sort of a bird and thrust her knife into its back, dragging it as far as she could before the plum monster was on her. But she had given Colin enough time to pull his own knife from the bird’s neck.

She turned just as the demon tried to wrap what was left of its energy around her head to suffocate her, and she cut through the miasma to find the breathable air of the French forest. Colin punctured the orange-red haze until it stopped its gruesome roaring, and the remnants of the beast fell to the forest floor like a coppery dust. Even after more than two centuries of fighting these creatures of Hell together, Colin had the same habit, the same impulsive need, to rush to Anna’s side and examine her, to make
sure
she wasn’t hurt, even though he would feel it right away if she were.

It had never stopped him before, though, and it didn’t stop him now. Colin ran his fingers over her arms looking for scrapes and Anna smiled. “Madrid.”

He sighed and nodded toward the body lying farther out in the forest. He couldn’t see a head, only bare white legs. “You think it’s one of their victims?”

Anna shuddered. She could kill demons tirelessly, but she’d never get used to seeing dead humans. “We should check for markings,” she whispered, but she wasn’t really sure why she was whispering. Dead bodies just freaked her out.

Colin took her hand and they approached the body slowly, even though they didn’t sense any other demons around them. Anna kept her eyes on the dense piles of dead leaves beneath her feet; demons didn’t bleed or have organs or anything even remotely human.
This
was most certainly human. Colin stopped walking and glanced back at her. “He’s naked. Don’t look, Anna.”

And of course that made Anna look up. “What is that?” Anna pointed to a strange symbol on the man’s side.

Colin shook his head and offered her an apologetic smile. “Sorry. For telling you not to look. Sometimes I forget what century we’re living in now.”

“Oh, Colin, forget
that
, look at his side.”

Colin let go of her hand so he could kneel by the man’s side to look at it more closely. This made Anna nervous. Colin rolled him onto his side so they could see his ribcage better, and there, etched across his side was a hazy orange-red crescent tattoo.