The Immortals (9 page)

Chapter 11

Anna’s tears had soaked her arm as she kept her face buried on the cot, trying to block out the sound of his cries, the tormented screams, the agony in his voice when he called for her. Nothing could block those sounds, though: not these walls, not her arms, not the passage of time or even death itself.

She had prayed for a very long time but she wasn’t sure if God or the angels could hear her prayers from Hell. It didn’t stop her from trying. Eventually, though, she ran out of ways to plead for help, to beg for an end to this nightmare. At first, she lay there with her mind so wounded and eviscerated she was certain she would never think again. All she would ever be able to hear were his tortured screams, and that was a sound that would be permanently etched in her mind.

But gradually, an image, another dream or a memory, she still wasn’t sure what was reality in this place, started shuffling through those dark corners of her own pain and personal suffering, and when she recognized him, she grabbed onto it, and held on as tightly as she could. Part of her understood it was a pattern now: a happy, comforting dream replaced by a terrifying nightmare, but he was there in her mind, so young and so healthy and so free from this suffering.

She didn’t really know him yet. When he showed up at her house after meeting her near the market where she’d gone to buy a ham hock to make soup, she was surprised he’d come after all. He was so nervous as he stood in her doorway, trying not to fidget or shuffle his feet as he asked her mother if he could visit her. Anna peeked around the door in the kitchen, holding her breath for her mother’s response. He was poor and he was
Irish
, which meant he was
Catholic
, and Anna knew those were all reasons for her mother to send him away. He was a handsome boy, with light brown hair and eyes so green they sparkled like emeralds, and even then, he was tall and strong, although he’d grow another six inches by the time he reached adulthood.

Irish or not, nobody else was coming for Anna, and her mother knew that. Nobody wanted a sickly wife. Anna listened to her mother sigh and invite Colin in, and he stepped inside her home. Anna hurried to the stove and started the fire under the teakettle. She was sixteen, and she went through long stretches of time where she was confined to her home, so she knew how to be a good hostess.

She opened the pantry and found the biscuits she’d made the day before and set them on the table. She listened as her mother asked Colin how he’d ended up in London, and if he’d come here alone. Anna already knew the answers to those questions. She’d spent as much time as she could talking to him in the market the day before.

She crept as close to the door as she dared without her mother knowing she was eavesdropping so she could listen to him anyway. She thought Colin was the most beautiful boy she’d ever met, and she loved his accent. She’d met plenty of Irishmen before, and never thought much of their speech, but from
him,
it was charming and endearing and she could have listened to him speak all afternoon.

He was explaining how he’d moved here recently after the death of his father. His father was a sharecropper and he didn’t want to follow in his footsteps. He wanted to learn a trade, to do something besides owe a landlord for the rest of his life. His two older brothers had stayed behind in Ireland and were farmers.

“And are you apprenticed?” her mother asked.

“Yes, Madam, with Mister Wrightson.”

“The printer?” her mother sounded impressed. Anna smiled. Colin was quite smart, actually. He could read and write; no one else in his family had been able to. When he was seven, his village had gotten a new priest, and he found out this one was actually literate and he’d gone to him, this small boy with vivid green eyes, and implored him to teach him to read. Colin even knew some Latin now.

But Colin would never brag. “Yes, Madam. I help him with the press and binding.”

“Well, that’s impressive, Mister O’Conner. You’re living with Madam Cooper?”

Colin acknowledged he’d rented a room from her. The teakettle started whistling and Anna rushed to the stove to move it off the fire. The door to the kitchen opened and Anna turned away from the stove to greet her mother and the young man who’d come to visit her.

“Anna,” her mother instructed, “you may use the good teacups.”

Anna thanked her and her mother left the door open as she disappeared into the front of the house. Anna smiled at Colin and he smiled shyly back at her, exhaling slowly because he’d known how audacious it had been to call on a middleclass Englishman’s daughter. But Anna had begged him to come, and he’d desperately wanted to see her again, so he’d risked the humiliation, even getting fired from his job, just to take this chance.

Anna set a teacup and saucer on the table for him and invited him to sit down, but he didn’t touch his tea. He continued to finger his hat with the same nervous and excited energy, even though her mother had obviously let him in. The worst part was over. Anna sat across from him.

“We serve the priest tea in these cups,” she whispered.

“She can’t think
that
highly of Mister Wrightson,” Colin whispered back.

Anna bit her lip, trying not to giggle, but it didn’t help. “Just be glad she didn’t ask you about your religion. She can overlook everything else.” Anna was still whispering, but she knew if they didn’t start speaking normally, her mother would come back to see why.

Colin smiled at her again, and even his eyes seemed to laugh with her. “Then I’ll convert.” And he didn’t bother whispering that part.

Anna stirred her tea, but only to give her something to do because she was embarrassed. She still didn’t know what this boy saw in her, why he was here when she had been so honest with him, probably too honest. She was forthcoming to a fault, or at least that’s what her mother told her.

She glanced at his untouched cup of tea and the fluttering in her stomach grew stronger. “Do you not like tea? Do you not drink tea in Ireland? I can make you something else.”

Colin was still smiling at her. “I like tea. I’m just really nervous and don’t want to spill it all over myself. I’m trying to make a good first impression. Or second. I guess this is really a second, isn’t it?”

Anna tried to remember the polite kinds of questions a hostess would ask her guest, but her mind was empty, and she found herself blurting out the most random details about herself or asking him the most personal questions about himself, and she’d blush and look down at her tea again, but Colin laughed and always answered her anyway. And he assured her he loved hearing everything she wanted to share about herself, and soon, the afternoon had passed and he had to leave. Anna’s mother walked him back to the parlor and she listened breathlessly as Colin asked if he could call on her again.

The dream faded, and the kitchen where she’d had tea with Colin dissolved into a desert, overbearingly hot and dry with gusty winds blowing grains of sand into her eyes and skin like sharp beads of shrapnel. Anna tried to shield her eyes from the glaring sun and the stinging wind with her forearm, but it did little good. She turned slowly in a circle, but she was surrounded by sand dunes and nothing else. The sun shone down on her in its merciless full force from the center of the bright blue sky. Another hot gust of air hit her and she stumbled backwards and fell into the scorching sand.

Anna yelped from the burning pain and tried to lift herself to her feet, but the sand kept shifting underneath her, and she slid down onto her hands and knees. She was sure she would go blind soon, either from the reflection of the sun shining in her eyes or the sand scratching her corneas. She could feel the blisters forming on the palms of her hands already from the sweltering heat of the sand. The intensity of the sun’s rays would soon burn her skin, and there was no shade anywhere around her.

Anna managed to get on her knees then kept her weight on one foot. When she’d balanced herself, she steadily rose and found she could stand again, holding her arms out for balance against those gusts of wind that kept trying to push her back into the searing sand. She couldn’t stay here. She would most certainly die if she stayed in this spot. Her only hope was to walk and pray she could find shelter and water.

Her steps dragged through the sinking sand and she kept the wind to her back. It would occasionally push her forward and she would stagger but refused to fall again. Her hands still bore the burns from the last time they touched the sand. She tried to blink the grit from her eyes but there were no tears, just dry scratches whenever her eyelids moved. She couldn’t spit the sand from her mouth because the saliva had disappeared. Her mouth was as desiccated as the desert around her.

Anna trudged through the infinite roasting desert, crossing dunes and trying not to slide down the opposite side as the sand avalanched beneath her feet, but it stretched on in endless miles. And the sun never changed its position in the sky above her, but continued to beat down on her in its merciless cruelty. She could feel her skin bubbling in agonizing blisters from the burns caused by the rays of the midday sun, but she could do nothing to prevent them. There was no shelter here. There was no water. She had no salvation.

Anna lost count of her steps, and the golden sand world around her began spinning. She was losing consciousness. She knew she was going to pass out and die here, with the blazing sun still shining brutally down on her burned and blistered body. Anna collapsed and felt the searing stinging pain of the sand as it touched her already wounded body, but she could no longer move. This was her death march. And it had come to an end.

The overpowering cold of the empty room surrounded her and reminded her where she was. There was no desert. She was not dying. But she was not in London, or with Colin either. Dreams. They had only been dreams.

She could still hear Colin’s cries, his tortured pleas, the way he called for her. Why couldn’t they die already? When would this end? She wanted to dream of him again. He had been so healthy and beautiful and perfect. A sudden shout of pain made her squeeze her eyes harder as the tears hit the vinyl beneath her.

The door opened. Anna only knew it had opened because she heard it and the sounds of the man’s footsteps as he walked into her room. She kept her face buried and hidden.

He knelt by her for the third time. She could feel the chilliness radiating off of his body, that sensation of something being slightly
off
about him that unnerved her in such an unusual way. “Anna, I gave you a chance to stop this.”

She refused to acknowledge him.

“Do you want it to stop now, Anna? Do you want his pain to stop?”

She swallowed the thick saliva in her mouth, but kept her face buried in her arms. “I want you to go away.”

“How long are you going to let this happen to him?”

Anna kept her eyes closed, and she started to pray again.

Chapter 12

Colin spun around again, shining the beam of his flashlight as he arced the forest around him. He couldn’t feel this thing so he had to rely on normal human senses to find it. Maybe his senses were the only ones that were … broken. “Dylan,” he whispered, “do you feel it?”

“Nothing, man. Are you sure it’s out here?”

Colin still felt the familiar stinging pain in his hand. Yes, he was sure. “It’s a lesser demon of some sort. Maybe one of Haborym’s. They leave a wound of fire.”

Dylan took a step closer to him. “A wound of
fire
?” His voice registered the panic anyone would have when learning something was near that could leave wounds of fire.

“It’s metaphorical. Mostly.” Colin was too busy trying to find the damn thing to engage in a demonological lesson at the moment.

“Mostly?” Jeremy persisted. If anyone was going to have a literal wound of fire, Colin hoped it would be
him
.

“Sh,” Colin insisted instead. He was trying to listen for that buzzing noise again as the thing flew past him, hopefully leaving no more stinging burning invisible sores in its wake.

The other six hunters mimicked Colin, turning in slow circles, searching for an enemy they all felt powerless against now.

“Son of a bitch!” Dylan yelled, swiping at his ear, rubbing at a spot below the lobe.

“Leave it alone, Dylan. It’ll only make it worse,” Colin cautioned. He was shining his light along the path the thing had most likely taken, but it was either too small or incredibly fast. He didn’t see anything.

“What the hell
is
that?” Dylan complained.

Colin shrugged nonchalantly. “Wound of fire.”

Jeremy yelped and swiped at the air, but Colin ignored him. “God
damn
it, that burns!”

“
That’s why they call it a wound of fire, dumbass,”
Colin thought.

Colin heard the buzzing sound this time as it flew near his head, and he ducked before it could graze his ear. But he saw it. He kept the beam of his flashlight on it as it shot upward into the dense black needles of the pine trees around them. It had taken the form of a beetle and wasn’t much bigger than one.

“Anyone have a bottle of water?” Colin asked, keeping his eyes on the spot the demon had disappeared into.

“You’re kidding,” Jeremy muttered. He was even more obnoxious when he was tired, apparently.

Colin sighed and held out his hand because he’d heard someone rustling in a backpack for a bottle of water. “It doesn’t kill it, Jeremy, it only slows it down.”

“It’s open,” Max told him. He felt the plastic bottle being placed into his hand and he closed his fingers around it, still unwilling to look away from the spot where the demon had vanished. It was most likely still there, waiting to attack them again.

“We can’t kill it,” Colin warned the others. “We need it to lead us to Anna.”

Ben started to object, but Dylan stopped him. “From now on, Colin is in charge here. Just listen.” Even Jeremy didn’t complain about being dethroned.

“Do we wound it?” Jeremy asked.

“Let me do it. This may be our only chance to find Anna.” Colin saw movement in the trees above him and tensed as he waited for the demon to fly back down. It was so damn
fast.
The fluttering motion of its body as it dove down toward them caught the reflection of his flashlight and alerted him that it was moving again. Colin held his breath. He was either about to slow it down or piss it off. He probably should have warned the others the pissing-off part was a possibility as well, but he figured it would have led to too many arguments.

It arched above him to strike at Max, and Colin turned, squeezing the plastic bottle causing a spray of water to burst out, glistening in the beams of seven flashlights like fractions of crystals. The demon-beetle got wet. And that pissed it off. It stopped flying and landed on the trunk of a tree, enlarging like a pulsing cicada, its angry chirping silencing the birds and squirrels and creatures of these woods that were meant to live here.

“Back up,” Colin warned the others. Six hunters immediately backed away from the growing beetle angrily hissing on the trunk of the tree. Truthfully, Colin didn’t want to go anywhere near it either. But he approached it slowly, his dagger in hand. It was the size of a soccer ball now. Its spindly legs scratched against the bark of the tree and Colin cringed as he inched closer to it; the clacking sound of its jaws sent shivers down his spine. He hated bugs almost as much as Anna hated snakes. If that damn thing jumped at his face, he was going to have a hard time not squealing and ducking, and
that
would most likely end his worldwide image as a badass hunter. But this demon bug just kept getting bigger.

Colin could almost reach it now, but the demon knew he was right behind it and its legs stopped scraping against the bark, its jaws stopped moving, its throbbing pulsing body stilled. Colin stiffened as well. He still held the water bottle in his hand and it wasn’t empty. He considered throwing the rest of it on the damn thing, because it
had
slowed it down, but it had also pissed it off. He really didn’t want to fight a bug the size of a goat or anything.

Not only do demons really hate dying, they also
really
hate waiting around. And this one got bored. It threw itself off the tree toward Colin’s face but he suppressed the scream he felt rising in his chest and stepped aside just as it flew past him, swiping his dagger across its legs and that piercing chirping ear-splitting screech filled the forest again. It was wounded, but it flew into the black woods.

“Follow it!” Colin ordered. He was already running after it, knowing that if he lost it now, he would lose Anna. If he lost Anna, he’d lost everything.

He heard the other hunters crashing through the woods behind him but his focus was on the mutant beetle in front of him. It was still moving faster than most humans would be able to keep up with; only Dylan was able to keep pace with Colin. The other hunters fell farther behind them, and soon, Colin could no longer hear the sounds of their footsteps on the forest floor. He and Dylan kept running.

The demon led them deeper into the woods, and somewhere along the way, Dylan dropped his flashlight. The only light they had now came from Colin, and it was getting dimmer the longer they ran. Colin had chased demons for vast distances before. He knew he wouldn’t tire until the chase was over, and then it would all catch up to him. Sometimes, these blessings really were part curse.

A narrow stream cut through their path ahead of them. The demon flew over it, but neither Colin nor Dylan had been blessed with the gift of flight. They had to slow down to jump across, and Dylan’s left foot landed in the water. He cursed and dragged his muddy boot from the stream, but the demon was getting away. Colin had to keep moving. It was getting tired, though. The injury on its legs had allowed some of its energy to seep out, and it couldn’t sustain its flight at this speed much longer. Colin and Dylan were able to catch up to it and it resumed its flight into the woods. They could hear the other hunters again, their slower pace allowing some of them to catch up.

The beetle demon flew unsteadily now, dipping and flitting drunkenly as it dodged the limbs of trees in the dark forest. It had shrunk again to the size of a cicada to conserve its energy, which made it more difficult to see, but it didn’t matter. The demon bug flew into a clearing and ahead of them was a camp, built above the ground on ten-foot stilts in case of flooding because the Amite River wasn’t far. It was dark and seemingly abandoned, quiet and foreboding. One of the windows was broken, and the hinges on the screen door no longer held it in place. Only the solid wood door behind it kept them from seeing into the interior. In the distance, he could make out the faint, distinct sounds of his fellow hunters still running to join him and Dylan, but if Anna were still in this forest, Colin
knew
he had found her.