The Immortals (14 page)

Chapter 20

“Whoa,” Jeremy interrupted, “I’m not dead though. At least I’d better not be because I’m pretty sure this isn’t Heaven, and after everything I’ve done for those guys, I’m going to be seriously pissed off if I end up somewhere else.”

Colin snickered. “There’s only one way to lose your soul, and that’s to give it up willingly. You’re not dead, but that demon was killing you. You’ve been marked by it.”

“Holy shit,” Dylan mumbled.

Jeremy sat up, grimacing from the pain, but the worry in his features was so profound even Colin felt sorry for him. “What do you mean I’m
marked
?”

Colin and Anna looked at each other because they didn’t really know. They’d never met someone who’d come so close to being killed by a demon but survived. They had to tell him the truth.

“The guy we saw in France, he was killed. But it was the same marking. What exactly was this demon doing right before you got thrown into the ditch?” Colin asked.

“I don’t know. Trying to
kill
me. Isn’t that what they all do?”

“
Go easy on him, Colin. He’s been marked by a demon. You’d be freaking out, too.”

“But how was it trying to kill you?” Colin pressed, trying to be patient more for Anna’s sake than Jeremy’s.

Jeremy lowered himself back on his bed and closed his eyes. “I don’t really remember. It all happened so fast between the time it was on me and the time I went flying into the ditch. I just remember feeling this burning pain everywhere, not just here,” he pointed to the crescent mark on his side, “but everywhere. My whole body. And none of my weapons were working on it.”

“So,” Dylan said slowly, “that … telekinesis thing you guys did. You saved his life.”

Anna swallowed the nausea bubbling up in her stomach again. “
This doesn’t make it ok to keep doing it around others. We learn to control it or don’t use it.
”

Colin knew better than to argue with his wife.

Jeremy opened his eyes again and nervously touched the strange marking on his side. “I’ve tried scrubbing it off already. It won’t come off. Do you think it’ll fade over time?”

His voice was pleading for an affirmative answer, but Colin and Anna didn’t think it would ever leave him. “I don’t think it will hurt you, Jeremy. We’ve never really understood why some demons mark their victims. We’ve always assumed it’s a sign of conquest, like a trophy to show off to others, but … I mean, you didn’t make any deals or anything, did you?” Anna knew people could make stupid decisions when they were frightened, but Jeremy was an experienced hunter. Surely, he hadn’t done something reckless?

He quickly put her mind at ease by rolling his eyes and sighing. “God, Anna, no, I didn’t bargain my soul. They kill hunters for bragging rights, you know that.”

“
Well, at least he’s back to being a jackass
,” Colin complained.

Given the circumstances, Anna thought his attitude was easily forgivable for once. “Get some rest, Jeremy,” she said, “we’ll come back in the morning. Maybe we can find out something tonight about markings.”

Dylan looked at Colin hopefully. “Any chance that angel would show up again if we went back to the church?”

“Doubt it. Anna’s abduction threatened our agreement. She
had
to show up.”

Jeremy rubbed uneasily at the orange-red crescent on his side again and admitted he was pretty tired, so Colin and Anna left, promising to research markings for him as soon as they got home. But as they thought, they were unable to find anything about
living
people with demonic markings – not anything credible, anyway.

Anna turned off her tablet and tossed it on the bed. “We know a couple of other hunters who’ve lived a long time. We should call them and see if they know anything about this.”

Colin pointed at the clock on his laptop. “It’s almost midnight here, Anna, and we have no idea where they are right now. Maybe I should send them an email instead.”

Anna shrugged and fell back onto her pillows, yawning.

“Hey,” Colin teased, “cut that out. You promised.”

“Hurry up and send the damn email then,” Anna smiled. Colin typed it as quickly as he could. There were some things that never got old, even after several centuries, and making love to his wife was definitely at the top of that list.

In the morning, Colin read the response from one of the hunters. He didn’t know of anyone who had ever come so close to death by a demon and survived. The other two hunters he’d emailed hadn’t responded yet. “Well, that’s helpful,” Anna muttered. She set a cup of coffee in front of Colin then grabbed her phone to check on Jeremy. It went to his voicemail.

“He’s probably still sleeping,” Colin said, glancing at the clock. It was only eight in the morning.

“Let’s bring him breakfast,” Anna suggested. She still felt guilty about what had happened to all of them the day before, but Max had a family at home to take care of him, and Dylan hadn’t been badly hurt. Colin sighed and reluctantly agreed to shower so they could go, then added the whole process could be sped up if she joined him.

Anna crossed her arms and smirked, “That is the exact opposite of speeding up your shower so we can leave.”

“Incentive then. To be nice to Jeremy. Or something like that.”

By the time they left for Jeremy’s apartment, it was far past breakfast time, but he still wasn’t answering his phone. Anna called Dylan instead, who told her he hadn’t been able to reach him either and was about to go over to his apartment as well. Colin and Anna met Dylan in the parking lot of the complex and they listened at Jeremy’s door for any sounds from within. It was quiet and all of the lights were still off. Anna was getting nervous. “
He can’t be dead.
”

Colin bit his lip. Jeremy hadn’t seemed that badly injured the night before, but what if they’d missed something? What if there was internal bleeding? Or some major concussion they didn’t know about? Dylan was still knocking, but nothing was stirring inside.

Dylan’s features transformed from concern to panic. “I don’t have a key. Tell me in all those years you’ve been running around kicking demonic ass, you learned how to pick a lock.”

Colin stopped biting his lip and looked back at Dylan, puzzled. “I’m a hunter, not a burglar.”

Anna rolled her eyes. “
We could knock the door down, Colin. Maybe if we concentrate, it won’t destroy the whole building.
”

Now it was Anna’s turn to get the surprised and puzzled look from Colin. “
That’s awfully risky. We don’t know how to do that.
”

“
What if he’s still alive? What if he still has time
?”

Colin knew they had few options. They could call the cops, but between explaining why they were concerned and waiting for them to show up and hoping they actually opened the door, they could waste too much time. Colin slowly inhaled and turned to Dylan. “Stay back.”

Dylan remembered what happened
both
times he’d seen this power used. He walked away from Anna and Colin and waited on the stairs.

Colin’s fingers found Anna’s and she gripped his hand tightly, apprehensive about the collateral damage they were surely about to cause and who might get hurt. “
There must be a way to use just a little of this power,
” she guessed.

If so, Colin didn’t know how to limit it either. But
thinking
about it made that tingling rippling sensation flow again, and they felt it, spreading like that feeling of stepping into warm sunshine from a cold room. “
Think about it like whispering instead of yelling,”
Anna suggested, and Colin didn’t have a better idea, so he focused on trying to whisper this power instead of yelling it.

“
On the count of three?
” Colin asked. Anna was ready, so Colin counted.

They tried to restrain this gift but the power was too strong; it burst from them once more, blowing out the windows, the door, knocking Jeremy’s pictures off his walls. Some of the neighbors’ windows were destroyed as well, and their doors hung crookedly on their hinges. Dylan ran back up the stairs and into Jeremy’s apartment. “We need to hurry before the cops show up,” he said.

Colin and Anna followed him inside, stepping over broken glass and knocked over lamps and picture frames. They walked around the upturned chairs and headed toward Jeremy’s bedroom. Dylan stopped suddenly in the doorway and Colin and Anna almost walked into him. A strange snoring snuffling sound made them all hold their breath and listen, straining their eyes in the darkness to see inside Jeremy’s bedroom. They could only see the dark gray shape of his body lying in the bed.

“
Should we turn the light on?
” Anna asked.

Colin reached around Dylan to find the light switch on the wall. His fingers brushed against it, and the light flickered on. The snoring snuffling sound stopped. From the doorway, they could only see the back of Jeremy’s head; his body was covered in thick blankets, which seemed odd to Colin and Anna considering how warm it was in his apartment. But then Jeremy threw the blankets off of him and sat up, facing them,
glaring
at them.

Anna screamed and backed away, but Colin and Dylan stood transfixed in the doorway. Jeremy’s face had broken out in grotesque bony nodules running along his jaw and forehead, his lips curled back over pointed teeth that glistened with the odiferous stench they’d encountered so many times lately, and his eyes settled on them, no longer his eyes at all, but two orbs of goldenrod that burned bright with a loathing for
them
. Jeremy, their former group leader, was possessed.

Chapter 21

The hunters backed out of Jeremy’s doorway slowly, and he watched them, eyeing each one with those golden eyes, but knowing he couldn’t take on all three. But it was
Jeremy
. However the demons were masking their presence here, Jeremy was no exception, because no one had felt him. And none of the hunters could bring themselves to drawing their daggers and killing him now. Maybe they should have. Maybe it would have been the humane thing to do, what a good friend would have done for someone they cared about, but none of them could forget that just last night, they had sat with Jeremy on this same bed and tried to calm his fears and offer him the reassurance that he would be fine.

Anna really needed out of this apartment. She felt nauseated and lightheaded and was certain she’d never be able to close her eyes again without seeing Jeremy’s deformed face, those almost human eyes studying her with so much deadly malice. They reached the doorway to his apartment where a crowd of neighbors had gathered to investigate the explosion, and Colin and Anna frantically thought of a convincing reason to get them away from this place.

“Gas leak,” Anna gasped. “The whole building needs to be evacuated. Now!”

Most of the people hesitated for a moment before deciding to get the hell out of there. From inside the apartment, they could hear Jeremy moving. “We need to leave, too,” Dylan said quietly. Dylan had known Jeremy a long time. Anna couldn’t even begin to imagine the kind of shock he must have been in.

“Meet us at Anna’s apartment,” Colin told him. “We’ll call Max and we’ll need to let the others know.”

Dylan just nodded and climbed into his car. Anna watched him as he drove away. On their way home, she called Max and tried to explain what had happened to Jeremy but she had to keep stopping to steady her voice, to calm herself down, to force herself not to cry. Max insisted on meeting them at their apartment as well, and even though Anna knew he’d been pretty beat up from getting thrown into the ditch, she didn’t argue. She wasn’t ready to call the other hunters, yet, though. They would all need to be warned because if Jeremy retained any of his human memories, he would know exactly who to look for, but someone else could make those calls for her. She didn’t think she could have this conversation over and over again.

Dylan had beaten them to Anna’s apartment and was waiting by her door, his face stoic and unreadable. They sat in the living room in silence waiting for Max to show up. He wasn’t far behind them. But even with Max there, no one seemed to know what to say. Anna’s trembling fingers wrapped around Colin’s hand and he gently held onto her, but he didn’t have any thoughts he could comfort her with.

Finally, Dylan looked up from the spot on the floor he had been staring at absentmindedly and asked, “Which one of us is going to kill him?”

Startled, Anna shot back angrily, “What?”

Dylan fixed her with his dark eyes. “Exorcisms only work in the movies. There isn’t a goddamn thing we can do for him.” He let his gaze fall back to the spot on the floor.

Max exhaled a weary breath. “How exactly did this happen? I’ve never heard of people actually becoming possessed. I thought
that
was something that only happened in the movies.”

Colin shook his head. “It’s incredibly rare. It can happen voluntarily by talking a person into it, but demons don’t usually need a human’s body. Most can mimic a human. To be honest, I’m not sure how else it happens. We know Jeremy didn’t allow it to happen, so something else …” he trailed off as a horrible thought occurred to him, and of course, that meant it occurred to Anna, too.

“
Oh, God, Colin, you think we did this to him?”

“
I don’t know. But we killed that demon just as it was killing Jeremy. What if we … fused them or some crazy shit like that?
”

Anna’s nausea grew worse. “Excuse me,” she muttered and she stumbled into the bathroom to throw up.

Max and Dylan looked at Colin, concern for Anna now piled on top of all of the other chaos in their lives. “She ok? She’s not pregnant or anything, is she?” Dylan asked.

Colin flinched. Dylan couldn’t have known how badly those words hurt him, or worse, how badly they would hurt Anna. Even before they became hunters, Anna couldn’t have children, and the painful aching longing in her eyes every time they passed a mother and her child on the street hurt Colin just as deeply as Anna’s knowledge she would never be a mother. Even now, it was still physically impossible. Immortal servants of Heaven didn’t have children, and it was still the one thing Anna wanted most and could never have.

“No,” Colin answered softly, “she’s not. We’re just afraid what we did in the field may have caused this somehow.”

“Y’all had no way of knowing that. And that demon
was
kicking all of our asses. He was dead either way,” Max replied.

Anna stood in the doorway of the bathroom watching him, and Max blushed and looked down at his hands. He obviously hadn’t realized she was listening.

“I would much rather be dead than turn into one of those monsters,” Anna said. “And I would much rather die than have to kill
someone I once considered a friend.”

Colin thought she may be exaggerating a bit by calling him a friend, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to correct her.

“I’ll do it,” Dylan said suddenly, still staring at the mysterious spot on the carpet underneath Anna’s coffee table.

Max took a quick, shaky breath. “I’ll help you.”

“What is wrong
with you? This is Jeremy!” Anna shouted.

“Not anymore,” Dylan reminded her. But Anna didn’t want to listen to him. She didn’t want to hear them discussing Jeremy’s murder.

“What other choice do we have, Anna?” Dylan asked, not quite yelling, but he was just as frustrated. “He’s not
Jeremy. Jeremy is dead.”

“So you’re just going to
kill
him?” Anna yelled back.

“If it were you or Colin, what would you want us to do?” Dylan asked, lowering his voice.

Anna stared back at him, but he was right. They couldn’t let innocent people get hurt because of what Jeremy had become, and they owed it to Jeremy to stop whatever he was now.

Max lifted his head from his hands where he’d buried it and looked at Colin and Anna hopefully. “Is there any way out of this for him? Have you ever met someone who’d been possessed before?”

Anna sank onto the sofa by Colin and took his hand again. “Once,” she sighed. “Only once, and we had to kill him.”