Devil's Thumb

by S. M. Schmitz

  They had left Baton Rouge for a few weeks after the explosion at Anna’s apartment that had almost killed the demon that used to be Jeremy, and they still didn’t even know what had happened to the archdemon. They doubted it was dead though. They’d returned to Baton Rouge when Luca finished his job in St. Paul so he could help them investigate, but they had feared their time here would be limited. Colin had been so antisocial, he hadn’t exactly endeared himself to many of the hunters to begin with, and Anna knew it was her fault Jeremy, or the demon that used to be Jeremy, was still alive.

  Luca didn’t have much to pack and called them about half an hour later to let them know he was ready whenever they were. Anna was still trying to throw her clothes back into the suitcase she’d only recently unpacked without crying. “Anna,” Colin put his arms around her and she leaned her head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat in its steady soothing rhythm.

  “We’ve never failed before, Colin,” she sobbed.

  “We haven’t failed. We’ve got Luca with us now, and he’s worth a dozen other hunters any day.” Colin kissed the top of her head and Anna wanted to feel comforted by the truth in Colin’s words, but The Angel had sent them here. There had to be a reason.

  “If so,” Colin countered, “she needs to learn to be more specific. We can’t read her mind.”

  Anna sighed and wrapped her arms around her husband’s waist. “I liked Boulder. It’s beautiful there. And after the past four months, we deserve some place low key, at least for a little while.”

  Colin smiled. “You know pot’s legal there now. Everybody’s far too happy for there to be any work for us in Boulder.”

  Anna closed her eyes, and for the briefest of moments, allowed herself to fantasize of a life where they didn’t roam the Earth looking for the most dangerous areas in the world. “Good,” Anna teased, “maybe I’ll even try it.”

  Colin pulled back from her and pretended to scowl at her. “Anna Elizabeth O’Conner, you will not. We have to keep Luca out of trouble, after all.”

  Anna just smiled back at her husband. She didn’t think that was a task either of them were capable of. Colin called Luca as she finished packing to let him know where they’d decided to go for now, and as expected, Luca was excited by the prospect of hanging out in Boulder for a couple of months. Anna was pretty sure the only thing that would have excited him more was if they’d decided to go to Las Vegas. And she was not going to Vegas with Luca.

  Colin and Anna broke up the eighteen-hour drive by taking turns at the wheel, and Luca just kept buying more coffee and insisting he didn’t need to sleep. By the time they reached the Kansas border, Anna put her hands on her hips and eyed Luca seriously. “A car accident may not kill you, but you can still kill someone else, you know.”

  And Luca just smiled at her and told her he was going inside the gas station for more coffee. Colin raised a shoulder at her as if to say, “It’s Luca. What do you expect?”

  It was four in the morning when they pulled into Boulder and found a hotel, and Luca opened his car door and stretched lazily, smiling smugly at Anna. “Told you I’d be fine, my sweet girl.”

  And Anna thought about slapping him.

  The early afternoon sun creeping sneakily beneath the curtains of the hotel room woke Anna and she rolled onto her side to find Colin still sleeping. His golden brown hair fell loosely over his forehead and Anna tried to talk herself out of waking him up, but he was so beautiful. Sometimes, touching him was the only way to remind herself she was really still alive. Often, it was the only thing that ever made her feel alive still. She reached over to him and brushed the hair away from his forehead and his eyes opened drowsily.

  “I’d tell you good morning, but it’s probably far too late for that,” he smiled.

  “It’s almost three,” Anna moved closer to him and kissed him, and Colin’s hand slipped under her t-shirt, sending that same ripple of excitement and desire it did when they were eighteen year old newlyweds all those years ago. After the past four months, Anna thought about begging Colin to just stay in Boulder for a while where they had no reason to suspect they’d be fighting that many demons, and they could stay in bed and make love as often as they wanted, and football season was only days away. Anna liked the Broncos. Maybe they could even get tickets. And since she was thinking these things, Colin heard them, too.

  He stopped kissing her just long enough to look into Anna’s dark brown eyes and he smiled mischievously at her. “There’s a reason you’re bringing this up now, and not after we’ve had sex, isn’t there?” Anna tried to look innocent about it, even though it hadn’t been intentional. She couldn’t control random thoughts, but Colin was only teasing her. He wanted to stay in Boulder and spend his days just making love to his wife and going to football games, too.

  That evening, they met Luca at an Italian restaurant near their hotel, and before Anna sat down, she leaned over to smell their friend. He didn’t smell like he’d been smoking, but Luca knew what she was doing and just laughed at her. “No time for leisure. I found a local group here.”

  Colin and Anna both registered surprise. Neither of them had thought Boulder would be busy enough to need its own group of hunters. “Well, they work the Denver area, too,” Luca pointed out.

  “Ah, now that makes more sense. Though it’s a fifty minute drive. Why would they bother with this city?” Colin asked.

  “A couple just live here. Most live in Denver or the suburbs.”

  “How big is this group?” Anna asked.

  “Seventeen,” Luca answered, and he used such a grandiose tone of voice because he knew that would impress the hell out of them. And it did.

  “Holy shit,” Colin mumbled. “Is there some civil war or apocalypse or something in Denver we don’t know about?”

  Luca shook his head and waited to respond until the waiter who’d just dropped off their drinks left again. “They’ve got a good recruiter. They don’t need that many hunters, but hey, it gives people a break from fighting Hell all the time. That can get kind of old after a while.”

  Colin snorted. “A good recruiter? What, are they offering sign-on bonuses?”

  Luca’s smile broadened into one Colin and Anna both recognized and they didn’t need him to explain, but they knew he would anyway. “Oh, you’ve got to meet her. I’ve gotta keep my angel away from this woman, or she may tempt him into falling.”

  Anna crossed her arms and scowled at him. “That’s a myth, and you know it. Angels don’t fall over sex. They don’t even have bodies like ours. Men wrote the Bible, and men are just obsessed with sex.”

  Colin and Luca nodded in agreement. “Yeah, that’s pretty much true,” Luca said.

  “So you think she’s hot, and that’s how she’s getting so many guys to become hunters.” Anna studied Luca, because the smirk hiding behind his eyes told her he was up to something.

  “I’m pretty sure that’s what she’s doing, because she’s trying to recruit me.”

  Colin groaned. “God, Luca, what did you do?”

  “You know better than to ever ask him a question like that,” Anna warned him.

  “Not her yet, if that’s what you mean,” Luca responded.

  “See?” Anna chided.

  Colin pretended to read his menu.

  “Coward.” Anna didn’t want to be left alone in this conversation with Luca, but Colin didn’t look up.

  “I told her I was traveling with a couple of other hunters, and she wants to meet you both tomorrow,” Luca continued. “She just thinks we’re drifters. She doesn’t know anything about us, obviously. But networking is always a good idea.”

  “Colin Aedan O’Conner, you have two seconds to put that menu down and get me out of this, or I swear to God …” Anna didn’t have a chance to finish. Colin dropped his menu and told Luca using them as any part of his plan to try to sleep with this woman wasn’t going to happen.

  Luca held his hands up. “Hey, I’m serious. Networking is advanta
geous. Everyone knows that.”

  “Not when you’re immortal, Luca,” Colin grumbled. For the most part, it was true. Years had a way of flying by without them realizing how many had passed, and so often, it seemed that soon, friends they thought should still be young and healthy were old and dying.

  Luca leaned back into his booth and his eyes darted between them. “You should still meet her. If we’re going to stick around here for a while, it would be smart to get to know the local hunters so we don’t step on any toes.”

  “Now you’re using your brain,” Anna smiled.

  Luca glanced up and raised a hand. “I’m glad you think so, because I actually asked her to meet us here tonight.”

  Anna kicked him under the table and he tried to keep the pain from registering on his face as an attractive woman with chestnut hair and hazel eyes approached their table. She was wearing dark slacks and a tight salmon pink top, and Anna tried not to think it, but the thought emerged anyway. “Bet you those aren’t real.”

  Colin pressed his lips together. “We can find out from Luca soon enough.”

  She reached their table and the hunters stood to greet the leader of the Denver group. Luca introduced them. “Lacey, this is Colin and Anna.” They shook her hand and Anna still found herself thinking things she shouldn’t be thinking. She was never this catty. “Lacey? I was expecting something …”

  “Trampier?”

  “Is that a word?”

  “Sure. In ancient Gaelic.”

  “Smartass.”

  Luca was shooting them stop-being-so-weird looks, because they’d gotten quiet with their private conversation, and Anna realized they were still staring at her. “Sorry,” she fumbled. “We’re just still exhausted from the long drive.”

  Lacey offered a sympathetic smile and Luca extended an arm for her to sit on the booth beside him. “Wager. How many days before he’s in bed with her,” Colin said.

  Anna hated losing, so she was trying to consider her best bet while listening to Lacey describe the organization of the hunters in the Denver metro area. “Two days,” Anna responded.

  Colin watched them now, paying particular attention to the way Luca’s arm kept brushing against hers or the way she answered one of his questions, which he was only asking to try to ingratiate himself to her. He knew a hell of a lot more about demons than she ever would.

  “Three. And winner picks the next city.”

  Anna took a sip of her water so Lacey wouldn’t notice her smiling. She was going to have to make sure she won this bet. It was the only way she was ever going to get Colin to agree to go back to Dublin, and she loved Ireland.

  “No cheating,” Colin reminded her.

  Anna tried to focus on what Lacey was saying now. Fake breasts or not, she could totally pretend like she needed a woman to help her out in a new city, take her shopping, show her the best place to get her nails done … “Hey, I said no cheating!”

  “Sh, I’m trying to listen to our new friend here, Colin. You’re being quite rude.”

  He sighed aloud and Lacey stopped mid-sentence and raised an eyebrow at him. Luca looked like he wanted to kick Colin under the table now. For the second time already, this strange couple found itself apologizing to the lead hunter in this area. “Sorry,” Colin said, “just tired. That was terribly rude. Please, continue.”

  Anna kept her mind quiet now because she wanted to disappear from the restaurant by this point. “So,” Lacey went on, though she sounded reluctant and was maybe thinking she wanted to disappear, too, “we only regularly work about half a dozen of the hunters in our group. The others either step in if someone is sick or hurt or a few of them only do administrative work for us.”

  “Administrative work?” Anna asked. “What kind of administrative work is involved in hunting and killing demons?”

  “It can get expensive trying to track them down, hunt them, replace weapons, travel costs. We go all over Colorado, not just the Denver area. So we set up a non-profit under the guise of a non-denominational religion, and we each donate to it, but this way, when we travel or buy supplies, it can be itemized as a business expense. And someone has to keep track of all that.”

  Colin was torn between being a little impressed and wanting to laugh. But he didn’t want to embarrass Anna again. “How do you explain the need for weapons to the IRS?”

  Lacey raised a salmon pink shoulder at him. “It’s an occult religion.”

  “Oh my God, only in Boulder. I wonder if they were smoking when they came up with this idea.” Anna broke her vow to keep her head silent for the rest of the evening, because there were some things that just begged for her commentary. Like this.

  Colin just nodded. “And you’ve never been audited?”

  Lacey was getting that expression again, like she didn’t trust either of these hunters, and really, Anna couldn’t blame her. “No, one of our hunters is an accountant, and he’s an excellent financial adviser and tax expert. At hunting, not so much.”

  Luca sensed the O’Conners were less than enthusiastic about Lacey’s organizational structure for her hunters here, so he caught the waiter’s attention to place their orders. Once the waiter walked away, Anna leaned across the table and asked her, “So how often do you have problems here? In this area, not traveling all over Colorado.” Anna selfishly wanted a little time off.

  “Oh, I don’t know, every few months?” Lacey guessed.

  “Oh, thank God,” Anna breathed, and she sank back into her chair. But Lacey mistook the cause of her relief.

  “Don’t worry, Anna. If anything happens while you’re here, you can come along if you want to see how we do things here, maybe learn something from some of our more experienced hunters, but it’s not like we’d expect you to hunt, too. We’ve got things under control.”

  Colin reached under the table and grabbed Anna’s hand, squeezing it because he wanted to laugh now, but knew Anna would probably make him walk back to the hotel if he did. “Thanks, Lacey, that’s very considerate,” Anna said, and to Colin, “And you’re damn straight you’d be walking back. She’s not so bad, and we’ve hurt her feelings twice already tonight.”

  “Mrs. O’Conner, I’ve known you for almost four hundred years. You wanted to laugh, too.”

  Of course, she did. And she was also immensely relieved when their food arrived and they were able to eat, which meant talking less. She knew Lacey was just proud of the group she’d assembled here, and there’s no way she could have known she was talking to three people with over a thousand years of experience among them, but having to pretend to be such an amateur just because Luca wanted to get laid annoyed the hell out of her.

  As soon as they were finished with dinner, Colin and Anna made excuses to leave, which they’d done a pretty good job of laying the framework for considering their early missteps. Claiming they were in desperate need of sleep, they left Luca and Lacey to finish their drinks, and stepped out of the restaurant, where Anna finally erupted into giggles. Colin looked down at her and started laughing, too. “Anna,” he said, trying to sound serious, which just made Anna giggle even more, “if you’d like some pointers on how to become a better hunter, I have some services I can offer you. For a small fee.”

  Anna put one of her alabaster hands on her hip and tipped her head at him. “Yeah? What kind of fee?”

  Colin put an arm around her waist and pulled her closer to him. He was just about to kiss her when they both felt the familiar sensation of something being out of place. Something didn’t belong in this parking lot at a quaint Italian restaurant in Boulder, Colorado. It didn’t belong in this world.

  Colin and Anna let go of each other and reached into the sheaths in their boots, pulling out their daggers, turning around to try to place the demon’s presence. Cars buzzed past them on the nearby street, a few more customers left the restaurant, but the demon remained hidden.

  Anna was about to suggest they go back inside for Luca to get him to help hunt this bastard down,
when she noticed one of the couples who had just left the restaurant had a small child asleep on the father’s shoulder. Her stomach knotted. Demons almost never hurt humans for no reason, but after everything unusual about their behavior in Baton Rouge, she wouldn’t risk going back inside. She kept glancing back at the child’s sleeping blonde head as it slowly faded down the sidewalk.

  The stench of the beast reached them. It had moved closer. Colin shook his head even though it was a useless gesture. “No. It’s the same smell. They can’t be everywhere.”

  But Anna recognized it, too. It was the same potent odor, the same putrid stench the demons that had defied their centuries of knowledge had possessed in Baton Rouge. And, now, it was here in Boulder. “So much for time off.”

  Anna felt it getting closer. The sun had long since set, and there were too many shadows for it to hide in. “It’s behind the building across from us,” she realized, and she and Colin ran toward the back of the building, pausing by the corner where the stench became overpowering. They waited as they heard the snuffling snorting sounds now coming from the demon as it emerged from the darkness the building had offered it, and Anna and Colin came face to face with Jeremy.

  Chapter 3

  The hulking gray beast with bony nodules around its face and goldenrod eyes that retained their eerily human characteristics kept growling at them with the low snuffling snorting kind of snarl as it inched closer to Colin and Anna. Their grips tightened around the hilts of their daggers and they backed slowly into the yellow light of a streetlamp above them.

  “We have to kill it now,” Colin told Anna, but he already knew Anna was reluctant to kill the beast that used to be their group leader.

  “Anna, it followed us here. It had to have followed us. We have to end this now.”

  Anna agreed with him, but knowing something and being able to do it are so completely different. The demon, its reeking foul odor filling the space around them, had followed them back into the parking lot, and Colin offered to kill it himself. He knew Anna was still conflicted.