immortals - complete series

by S. M. Schmitz

  He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply and called out to her, “Anna, my love, it’s gone now.”

  She shook her head and her fears and panic and pain tumbled through his mind, too. “They’re all gone, Colin. They’re all gone now.”

  Chapter 15

  It took them over an hour to find Lacey’s body. It had been thrown almost two miles and was lying broken at the base of a tall rock. Anna closed her eyes, both overwhelmed by the grief that they had caused this death and because of the eerie similarity to Jas’s death that had started this war with these archdemons. Or at least they had thought that’s what started it, but if they’d been followed to Baton Rouge in the first place, then Jas’s murder was their fault, too.

  Colin squeezed her hand and told her she had to stop thinking that way. But he was trying to assure himself of the same thing as well. Luca was still limping and took a while to catch up to them. He stared down at Lacey’s body and sighed.

  “They knew it was dangerous to come out here, Colin. Not just because of what you and Andrew are practicing, but with everything that’s going on, they knew if they continued to help us, it could be…”

  Colin interrupted him. “I know you’re trying to help, Luca, but please just shut up.”

  Luca nodded and took off the backpack he was carrying to remove the tarp. They covered her body and as Anna gently rolled the corners underneath the dead woman’s shoes to keep it from blowing away as the evening breeze picked up, she looked at her companions and asked them, “Pray with me?”

  Luca and Colin each took one of the hands Anna had extended and prayed with her. Luca took a ragged breath and offered another prayer in Latin that Anna didn’t recognize, but she kept her eyes closed and listened through Colin, who knew Latin, too. It wasn’t a prayer but Luca was reciting the 23rd Psalm. Anna was crying again, but Colin didn’t try to get her to stop this time.

  Luca had almost reached the end of the Psalm when his phone rang. He let go of Anna’s hand to answer it.

  “Oh my God,” he mumbled. “We’re on our way.”

  Luca put his phone back in his pocket and grabbed his backpack. “That was Andrew. He found Max’s body. He’s about a mile west of here.”

  Anna fell back on her heels and sobbed louder. Colin still couldn’t try to comfort his wife, because he was crying now, too. Max had not only been one of the kindest souls they’d met in many years, but he had three kids at home. And Colin had killed him.

  Colin helped Anna stand and they walked mostly in silence, but occasionally, Anna’s cries would break through the rapidly darkening night. Luca flicked on his flashlight. A coyote howled somewhere far away.

  Finally, Andrew’s figure lit up in the beam of Luca’s flashlight. He looked just as tired and emotionally exhausted as Luca and still had the slightest limp from his own quickly healing injuries. Andrew reached out toward Anna and she creased her forehead at him in confusion, wondering if there was something even more horrific he could possibly want to forewarn her about. But she extended her hand anyway.

  Andrew gently turned it over and placed a small silver medallion in it then motioned to Luca. “This way.”

  Colin turned on his flashlight to shine the beam on the medallion Andrew had just given her.

  “What is it?” she asked him.

  “St. Casimir. He’s the patron saint of Poland. I’m guessing Andrew’s carried that medallion since his days as a mortal.”

  Anna closed her fingers around the small metal circle in her hand and brought it to her lips.

  “Pray for us,” she whispered.

  “He is.”

  Colin and Anna jumped at the sound of her voice and spun around to see The Angel standing behind them. She was wearing the same lavender dress from the church but had covered her bare arms with an ivory sweater. The air had gotten chilly but neither Anna nor Colin thought it bothered her. And they must have been right, because she unbuttoned it and took it off, draping it over Anna’s shoulders.

  “We didn’t feel you,” Anna stammered. She’d never snuck up on them before. After the day they’d endured, it was one more unusual supernatural aspect that just unnerved them both.

  The Angel lifted Anna’s hand with the medallion of St. Casimir in it and looked down on it. “I came very quickly. You didn’t have a chance to sense me this time. You should wear this.”

  The Angel unfastened a thin chain necklace from around her own neck and put it in Anna’s hand with the medallion; Anna was certain she hadn’t been wearing a necklace before.

  Colin looked behind him where Luca and Andrew had descended a shallow embankment to retrieve Max’s body.

  “Why are you here?” he breathed wearily. The heartache in his voice made Anna’s hands tremble as she tried to slide the medallion onto the necklace.

  “To help you,” The Angel answered.

  Anna wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh or cry.

  “Help us? Where were you an hour ago then? Before that demon invaded my head and we killed our friends?”

  “I was praying for you.”

  This time, Anna did laugh. And cry. At the same time. “A lot of good that did.”

  “Come on. We don’t have a lot of time.” The Angel started walking toward Luca and Andrew, and Colin and Anna stared at her back, at the long flaxen hair that stayed smooth and neat even in the breeze of the encroaching night.

  Colin took the necklace from Anna and fastened it around her neck. “I guess we should follow her.”

  “Unless she has some kind of Lazarus magic up her angel sleeves, I don’t know why.”

  “She’s not wearing any sleeves.”

  Anna sighed aloud. “It was a metaphor, smartass.”

  Colin almost smiled. Anna grabbed his hand again and they followed The Angel, who had stopped to wait for them before descending the slope.

  She smiled at Colin when they reached her. “I can’t bring people back from the dead. I told you that the night we met, but if you’d like me to wear some sleeves, I can change.”

  Colin raised an eyebrow at her and pointed to the motionless body of their friend as Luca and Andrew struggled against the wind with the tarp. “If it won’t make any difference, then why bother?”

  The Angel began making her way toward the other Immortals who looked up at her in surprise. “I’m not here for him. I can’t help him, as much as I wish I could. But you have one more friend you haven’t found.”

  Anna had been watching her feet so that she wouldn’t slip down the embankment but she stopped and looked up at The Angel, gasping, “Dylan’s still alive?”

  The Angel turned her soft gray eyes toward her and encouraged her to keep walking.

  “Barely,” she answered.

  Luca and Andrew dropped the tarp and Andrew muttered something that sounded like an apology. They were trying to keep the animals from preying on their friends’ bodies before they could either bury them or get them out of this wasteland. But Luca and Andrew had heard The Angel, too.

  “Where is he?” Luca asked eagerly. His limp was almost gone now.

  “About a quarter of a mile from us. Near the bank of the lake.”

  The hunters ran. Colin and Anna had no idea if The Angel was running with them or if she’d done some sort of angel trick and disappeared, but they could feel her still. They knew she hadn’t abandoned them yet. In the bobbing beams of their flashlights, they saw the lip of the lake ahead of them and started scanning the ground for a body. As they slowed down near the lake, The Angel appeared beside them again.

  “Over there.” She pointed, and they directed the beams of their lights where she’d indicated. There, on the ground, the motionless body of their last friend lay, still and silent and inert.

  Anna dropped the flashlight she’d been carrying and ran the last few hundred feet to his side, dropping onto the sandy bank beside him. She didn’t know if she should touch him or move him, but perhaps it didn’t matter. He wasn’t breathing. Maybe The Angel had been
wrong or they had been too late.

  She knelt beside Anna and placed one of her thin, delicate porcelain hands on Dylan’s neck. Anna choked out a sobbing laugh again. She was sitting in sandy mud next to an angel who was feeling a body for a pulse. The absurdity of the situation was the perfect exclamation mark for a perfectly absurd day. But The Angel didn’t even look over at Anna.

  “Don’t worry, Anna. We’re not too late. But you must make a decision for him.”

  And she knew what The Angel was going to ask her. “No. No, no I can’t do that, I can’t make that kind of choice.”

  “Somebody made it for you,” The Angel reminded her.

  Anna shook her head and dark ringlets of her hair fell around her alabaster face. “That’s different. He’s my husband. My death was killing him. I can’t decide Dylan’s fate!”

  “Neither can I,” The Angel told her.

  Colin sat on the muddy ground by his wife and Dylan’s immobile body and he rested his head in his hands. Anna knew what choice he would make. But The Angel wasn’t asking him.

  Andrew lowered himself next to Anna so she could see his face, and he looked at her seriously, thoughtfully. “A stranger had to make this decision for me, Anna. Another Immortal who’s no longer around. I had just met this hunter and didn’t know anything about Immortals, but offered to help him hunt down a couple of demons who were terrorizing a village not far from where I grew up. And one of them almost killed me. Five hundred years, just like you. And I’ve never regretted what he did.”

  “Dylan said he’d willingly make this decision, Anna.”

  “But what if I say yes and it’s only because of our guilt? What if it’s not what’s really best for Dylan? Like he accused me of with Jeremy?”

  “That’s different, Anna,” The Angel interjected. “You believed you had a chance to save Jeremy.”

  “Great, even The Angel is trying to convince me to seal his servitude for him.”

  The Angel shook her head. “I’m not trying to convince you of anything. It wouldn’t be fair of me. But he is running out of time. Either way, I need an answer.”

  Anna swallowed the stomach acid that had risen in her throat and placed her hand on Dylan’s. His body was cold and she wondered if The Angel could possibly be right. There didn’t seem to be any life left in him at all.

  “You’re worried about him being alone,” Luca said suddenly.

  He was still standing behind her and the sound of his voice startled her. Anna jumped but didn’t turn around. She just nodded in acknowledgment. The solitude could easily become unbearable.

  “I’m not going anywhere, my sweet Anna. I won’t abandon him,” Luca promised.

  Anna closed her eyes and the tears that had pooled in the corners spilled down her cheeks.

  One breath. One shaky, quivering breath, and she sealed Dylan’s fate. “Save him then.”

  Chapter 16

  That night, Anna lay awake for a long time unable to stop thinking about the demon’s intrusion into her mind, forcing her to believe her husband was being tortured again, what Colin had to do to save her from going mad. And then, finding the bodies of Lacey and Max and burying them in the wilderness of a Colorado prairie, The Angel restoring Dylan’s health and giving him immortality in exchange for his servitude, a choice Anna had made for him.

  Just like Anna, Dylan had woken up with the knowledge of what had transpired; he knew what Anna had done for him, and even though he insisted he had been serious about wanting to help end this battle with these demons who were breaking every rule they had always believed to be so binding, Anna couldn’t help feeling like she had condemned him instead.

  After burying their friends, they had scoured seemingly endless miles of empty prairie looking for Jeremy’s body, but had been unable to find the gray beast. Either it had been too far away for Colin’s burst of energy to kill it, or the archdemon that had been attacking Anna had carried its body away.

  It was only a few short hours before sunrise now, and her body ached and throbbed from the punishment she’d put it through the day before and into those early morning hours, but she still couldn’t sleep. Colin kept an arm around her, pulling her as close to him as he could, and he tried to keep reassuring her they had at least been able to save Dylan. That was something to be thankful for. But Anna had loved Max, and her heart was far too broken and shattered to be consoled by any small victory.

  “We’ll do what we can to help his children, Anna. It will never be the same, but we can make sure they go to good private schools and have college funds. It’s something we can do for him.”

  Anna closed her eyes and let the tears roll down the sides of her face. Colin wiped them away for her and begged her to try to sleep. He wouldn’t leave her, but if he had to, he’d ask Luca to go to the pharmacy to get her something to help her fall asleep if she needed it. She was in far too much pain, and he felt like it was killing him.

  Anna shook her head. “I’ll try, Colin. I don’t need anything.”

  “No more hunting with mortals. There are five of us now. We won’t put ourselves through anything like this again. Not until this war with these archdemons is over.”

  Anna didn’t need to respond for Colin to know she agreed with him. She had already shown Colin everything the demon was forcing her to hear and think, and Colin knew he’d had to act to protect her. But he couldn’t imagine how either of them would make it through more than a century with the knowledge he’d killed two innocent people, one of whom was their friend.

  “We,” Anna corrected him. “You do nothing on your own, just as I don’t. We will always be in this together. No matter what.”

  “But it was my decision.”

  “You told The Angel once you would place your wife above anyone else on this Earth, and she knew that and didn’t judge you for it. She said there was nothing wrong with loving one person more than others. I would have gone crazy, Colin. I could feel it. If you hadn’t stopped that demon from creeping inside my mind like that, you would have lost me anyway.”

  Colin exhaled slowly and kissed her forehead and begged her again to try to sleep. She had already told him all of this, but he wasn’t ready to even try to forgive himself for what he’d done. Anna hugged him closer and kept her eyes closed for his sake, but she was beginning to wonder if she’d ever sleep again. Colin kept his mind as quiet as he could in the hopes his wife would be granted some temporary respite from the misery all around them.

  Anna thought it was a hopeless cause. But after listening to the steady humming of the apartment’s central heating for a while, she found herself standing under the shade of a massive oak tree, its thick branches offering protection from the sun overhead but the humidity was oppressive and she was dressed in far too many layers. She looked down at her clothes, the layers of petticoats adorned with a white and yellow dress. Her left hand clutched a wide brimmed hat, and her hair was pulled tightly behind her head. She could feel the hatpins still stuck in the low bun for when she was ready to put her hat back on. She sighed aloud. She knew this wardrobe, this time period, this setting. She was in the antebellum American south.

  She looked around for Colin and spotted him under a different tree talking to a man in a wrinkled linen suit. The man was fanning himself with his hat. The heat and humidity here really were awful. Anna had always thought it must feel something like Hell itself. She was about to join Colin when a figure stepped out from behind the tree and Anna froze, her heart lurching into her throat, and she looked wildly around her, terrified someone might see her.

  “Jas,” she hissed, “you can’t be here! Someone might see you! We’ve got to hide you.”

  Anna didn’t even register that Jas’s clothing was completely out of time here – her faded blue jeans and teal tank top had no place in this world. All Anna could comprehend in that split second was that her friend, her black friend, was walking freely around a yard in front of the house of a plantation. In the far distance, she could see t
he rows of slaves hacking at sugar cane stalks to bring in the harvest.

  Jas just smiled at her and rolled her eyes. “Relax, Anna. No one’s coming for me. I’m dead, remember?”

  Anna blinked a few times as she stared back at her friend then remembered. Jas did not live in 1853. This was not her world. And she had been murdered by an archdemon in Baton Rouge.

  Anna looked nervously at the man who was still talking to Colin, fanning himself with his hat as if circulating this hot, sticky air did any good to cool them off.

  “Can he see you?” she asked.

  Jas shrugged, unconcerned about the owner of this plantation. Anna’s eyes narrowed as she kept staring at him. She hated men like him. She had a vague memory of this incident and knew why she and Colin were here; he was trying to buy some of the children the man was selling so they could bring them north to freedom. The man kept asking Colin questions about where he’d be farming and what he was growing, apparently suspicious of Colin’s motives. Anna remembered her input and presence wouldn’t have helped and that’s why she was waiting under her own oak tree.

  “Girl, you look absolutely miserable in that dress. How did you survive all these centuries having to go around like that? Men must be a bunch of sadists forcing women to wear shit like this.” Jas was smiling though, still not bothered by her possible detection or even, apparently, by the fact that she was dead.

  Anna snickered and leaned against the tree. She was pretty miserable, actually. She looked longingly at the teal tank top Jas was wearing and wished she could get away with at least ripping the sleeves off of this dress. Anna finally had to look away from her.

  “Do you know what happened? To Jeremy and Max and Dylan?”

  Jas leaned against the tree as well. “Yeah, I know. And none of that is your fault. Or Colin’s. You can’t beat yourself up about it forever, Anna.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  Jas glanced over her shoulder at the lines of men and women and children still laboring in the fields and narrowed her eyes. “That is something to blame people for.”