immortals - complete series

by S. M. Schmitz

  They had heard of something similar happening in Cuba and the Philippines, but they hadn’t seen it themselves. Walking past the rows of tents and makeshift huts with emaciated corpses dying from outbreaks of typhus and measles, Anna and Colin forgot why they had come to South Africa in the first place. The Angel had told them a vicious war was being fought here and Hell was taking over.

  They sensed demons around them, but neither would draw their weapons or search for them. There were far too many children lying on cots, their bodies bloated from starvation, their skin bearing the obvious signs of disease and impending death. Anna had stolen a nurse’s uniform and Colin had stolen one from a British solider, and no one questioned them as they walked among the crowded aisles to offer what help they could.

  As night fell, they could no longer ignore the demons lurking around the camp and they were forced to abandon the children they could do nothing to save. The evidence of the camps’ conditions hadn’t reached England yet; the outrage that would erupt over these people’s neglect would eventually change what was happening here, but Anna and Colin had no way of knowing that at the time. And Colin and Anna had channeled their anger and disgust into hunting every demon that prowled on those abandoned souls. It was a busy night for them.

  Somewhere in this memory, Colin had reached into Anna’s mind just long enough to suggest they try again. As they both remembered pursuing a slate blue lion around the perimeter of the camp, they targeted the orange plastic buckets in the distance. They splintered apart and Anna immediately dropped the memory and kicked a rock in her frustration.

  But Andrew was unperturbed. “Hey, it’s fewer pieces than last time. That’s progress.”

  Colin watched him as he ran back to the line of destroyed orange buckets and sighed as soon as he was out of earshot. “Perhaps a memory that doesn’t piss us off would have been better.”

  “I’ll come up with the next one,” Anna suggested. She didn’t think it was the memory itself that had caused them to fail – again – but the difficult nature of trying to channel the energy that was all around them.

  Andrew trotted back to them, smiling and encouraging them to try the same thing. He seemed to think the pieces were definitely larger which meant they were getting closer to being able to knock the buckets over without obliterating them, and once they could do that, they could move on to keeping the energy they were wielding in a single direction rather than arcing out around them.

  Colin grinned at Anna as she tried to think of a memory that didn’t involve them seeing humans being hurt, killed or mistreated. She finally decided to skip their immortal lives. There weren’t many memories in those three and a half centuries that didn’t involve human misery. Instead, she held onto the first memory that crept into her mind from their mortal lives, the Christmas she gave him the St. Augustine medallion he still wore around his neck.

  They had just gotten back from her parent’s house where they’d had dinner on Christmas. Her father had a few too many glasses of brandy and they’d listened as quietly and patiently as they could to him ranting about the Stuarts and how they would be the downfall of England, and the Scottish crown should have never been combined with the English one anyway.

  Colin fidgeted with his brandy glass but hardly touched the drink. He’d heard this rant from his father-in-law often enough before and agreed the Scots should have remained separate, but he was Irish and he wanted them both out of his country. No Englishman was going to agree with him on that though, and he would never argue with Anna’s father.

  By the time they got home, they were both tired and the cold damp London air was making Anna’s breathing difficult and painful. She was prone to bouts of pleurisy and felt the inflammation creeping up on her again on the heels of the illness she had recently gotten over, but she was trying not to show Colin that she was hurting. He worried too much about her. But Colin always watched her so carefully; he knew anyway, and led her into their bedroom where he started a fire and made her sit down in front of it then he covered her in blankets and wouldn’t listen to her protests. Anna wanted to get up because she had one more gift to give him.

  The concern on Colin’s face as he disappeared into the kitchen to make her some tea almost made Anna stay in the chair as he’d asked her. But the little square box she’d carefully wrapped and hidden under the pile of sewing she would get to one of these days was waiting for her. She tossed the blankets aside and stepped silently across their bedroom floor to the table in the corner and reached under the pile of clothes, her fingers grasping the box, and she pulled it out just as she heard Colin coming back.

  She wouldn’t make it back to the chair by the fireplace and underneath the blankets in time; he caught her standing near the bed and she put her hands behind her back and smiled at him slyly. He smiled back at her, but he still looked worried.

  “Anna,” he began, but she stopped him.

  “I had to. I have one more present for you.”

  “I could have gotten it,” he told her.

  He’d walked back to the chair and straightened the blankets, waiting for her to sit back down. Anna wouldn’t comply until she’d given him the gift she’d looked all over London for. She shook her head at him, still offering him the same smile that told him she was secretly proud of herself for something. Colin gave up.

  “You sit,” she commanded. Colin sat down on the edge of the bed.

  She sat next to him and handed him the box and watched him with the excited anticipation of knowing she’d found some small way to remind her husband that she loved him just as he was, just as he’d always been. He’d never have to change for her.

  Colin pulled the medallion out of the box and flipped it over, reading the Latin inscription on the back. “Rome has spoken; the case is finished.”

  Colin looked up at his wife. They both knew Augustine had never actually said it, but it didn’t matter. It was a statement of support for the papacy. A support of Catholicism at a time when being Catholic in England was tantamount to treason.

  “How did you find this?” Colin asked her.

  Anna’s smile broadened and she tilted her head at him. “I can have my secrets.”

  “Secrets that could get you accused of being Catholic?”

  Anna just shrugged. “I married one.”

  Colin’s eyes danced from the way Anna was teasing him now; God, he loved her so much. “I converted, remember?”

  “For my parents. Not for me. You’ll never have to change anything for me, Colin Aedan O’Conner.”

  Colin hid that medallion for many years before Anna convinced him they were immortal now; he should wear it without fear. He had worn it ever since.

  Colin had been so caught up in remembering this Christmas from so long ago that he’d forgotten about the orange buckets in the distance. He could feel the medallion against his chest as Anna pulled him through this Christmas and the pride he’d felt that his wife had found this symbol of her acceptance of him.

  Even though he always wore the St. Augustine medallion now, he rarely thought of that Christmas anymore. There had been so many since then. But remembering it with Anna now made it seem like they were both in their London flat, his concern about the chest pain he knew was bothering her again temporarily dissolving as she rested her head against his shoulder and he put his arms around her, telling her it was the most thoughtful gift anyone had ever given him.

  Anna waited until that moment, right before he insisted she sit in the chair by the fire again as the teakettle began whistling on the stove, to remind Colin about the buckets. She didn’t give him much time to react; there was no countdown or strategizing this time, and Anna closed her eyes as the buckets once again blew apart.

  Andrew didn’t hesitate. He ran over to the line of orange debris and Colin reached for Anna’s hand, bringing it to his lips.

  “Don’t give up so easily. How long did it take you to find this medallion anyway?”

  Anna sighed and opened h
er eyes. It had been so long ago, she wasn’t even sure anymore. “A few months. I finally met a couple who had just moved to London from Avignon, and I bought it from the wife. Before that, I’d been asking some Catholics in the city but no one wanted to try to track one down for me no matter how much money I offered them.”

  Being Catholic wasn’t actually illegal in England, but there was so much anti-Catholicism, men feared they could lose their jobs and reputations if they were practicing Catholicism in secret. French immigrants were less likely to have the same kind of reservations, since everyone expected them to be loyal to the papacy anyway.

  “Three months to track down one gift for me. So when did you become so impatient, Mrs. O’Conner?”

  Anna smiled up at Colin. “About the same time I realized I could microwave frozen burritos.”

  Andrew had reached the remnants of the buckets and held a chunk of bright orange up for them to see. “Hey!” he called to them. “Definitely bigger!”

  “See? It’s working. But we’re still not buying any frozen burritos,” Colin told her.

  “Coward.”

  She’d never even gotten Colin to try one. She thought she may have better luck going back to France and scavenging for dandelion leaves than getting Colin to eat anything that came out of the freezer in a plastic wrapper.

  Andrew was about to set out another row of the same kind of bright orange plastic buckets when his phone rang. Colin and Anna watched him as he listened, then exchanged some sort of animated conversation before looking over his shoulder at Colin and Anna. He picked up the new buckets and walked back to them instead.

  “Apparently, we’re done for the day. That was Luca. He just heard from one of the hunters Lacey used to work with, and there’s a demon prowling the streets in Gunbarrel. We need to get back to Boulder.”

  “A hunter called to tell Luca that? Why the hell didn’t he just kill it?” Colin asked.

  Andrew shifted his weight nervously and told him, “Because the way he described it, this isn’t just any demon. Jeremy’s still alive.”

  Chapter 19

  All of the hunters who used to work for Lacey knew about the gray demon with bony nodules along its face and goldenrod eyes. And they also knew it never traveled alone. Luca had warned them because it was too dangerous for mortal hunters to try to kill Jeremy. But Colin and Anna didn’t want to see it again. Every time they encountered Jeremy, they encountered the same powerful archdemon that was capable of throwing them across rooms and parking lots, of strangling them without anyone being able to touch it, of invading their minds and threatening their sanity. They couldn’t let mortals near it either though. They would never survive.

  Anna fidgeted nervously with a piece of one of the orange plastic buckets Andrew had brought back from their last attempt to knock them over without breaking them. It was certainly a larger piece of plastic, but they weren’t even close to being able to wield the control they needed in order to use this power in a residential neighborhood. And after yesterday, hunting Jeremy almost guaranteed they were going to need it.

  Colin wanted to say something to reassure her, to calm her down, but truthfully, he was just as nervous as his wife. And it’s not like Anna didn’t know that anyway. Somehow, this archdemon seemed to know that targeting Anna was the easiest way to get to Colin, too. If it could kill her, it would kill them both.

  Colin plucked the piece of orange plastic from Anna’s hands and she held onto his fingers instead. Anna kept her eyes on the road in front of them but squeezed his hand so tightly her fingers ached, and she had to take deep breaths to relax her grip. Colin didn’t complain.

  Luca, of course, had offered to go with Andrew alone. But the O’Conners wouldn’t allow it. He called Colin as soon as they reached their cars, and for the first five miles on the drive back to Boulder, Luca argued with Colin about just taking Anna back home and letting him and Andrew head out to Gunbarrel. After all, he was the most badass hunter alive. He could handle one human-turned-demon and one cheating archdemon who was apparently trying to provoke a war with its oldest rival.

  “First of all,” Colin countered, “you might be a legend, but we’re chasing your title. Give us another fifty years and you won’t be able to call yourself the most badass hunter alive anymore. And secondly, you’re only assuming there’s one archdemon. There could be several of them and they’re all taking turns coming at us.”

  Luca was silent on the other end for a few seconds. His car wasn’t far behind them and when Anna turned in her seat, she could even see him considering what Colin had just said. He smiled and waved at her. Anna shook her head at him and turned back around.

  “Ok, in fifty years you may catch up. But you’ll be dead in another sixty, and I won’t, so it’s irrelevant. And if all of those demons from Baton Rouge followed us here, then why aren’t they all attacking us at once? Why just one at a time like this?”

  Colin rolled his eyes at the first part of Luca’s retort, but he also wasn’t about to give up a title he and Anna had worked so hard for. “Our legend will live on long after we’re dead. It’s not irrelevant. If I were you, I’d keep an eye on Dylan. He’s got a lot of natural talent.”

  “Yeah, I noticed.” But Luca wasn’t really jealous about training hunters who may one day be as good as he was; he wanted them to be. He didn’t really want to live forever.

  “And I don’t know why they wouldn’t attack us all at once. So far, they’ve just been targeting Anna and me, but it could be that they know we’re immortal. Perhaps they don’t know about you and Andrew yet, and Dylan’s far too new.”

  “But they stood a better chance of killing you or Anna if they worked together.”

  Anna’s fingers tightened around Colin’s hand again. She was trying not to think about the images the demon had forced into her mind the day before, but knowing it could happen again soon made it impossible for her not to dwell on it.

  Colin sighed and Luca heard him through the phone. He had known the O’Conners since 1648. He didn’t need to be told what was troubling Colin now. He provided his own answer to his question.

  “Maybe they’re trying to figure out how strong we are. If only one of those bastards is killed, it’s not a big loss. If they all come at us at once, and they all get killed, game’s over.”

  Anna cringed as she tried to imagine several of these bastards attacking her mind at once.

  Colin pulled the phone away from his face and risked taking his eyes off the road to glance at his wife long enough to tell her, “That won’t happen to you again. I’ll destroy the whole damn city if I have to.”

  On the other end of the phone, Colin and Anna heard Luca mutter, “Be helpful if my own angel would get back here and give me this power.”

  Anna couldn’t help but smile a little now. “Bet’s still on. How badly do you want that Porsche, Mr. O’Conner?”

  “I’m getting that car, even if I have to bribe that angel myself.”

  As they reached the Gunbarrel area northeast of Boulder, Colin and Anna pulled over on Indian Peaks Trail and parked their car. Luca, Dylan and Andrew parked behind them. The country club golf course stretched out in its vast greenness beside them, but the hunter who had called Luca wasn’t sure where Jeremy had been heading. The demon had sauntered off in the direction of the clubhouse so the hunters walked toward the building hoping to pick up some sense that something was here that didn’t belong in this world.

  It was still early enough in the day that the course was dotted with golfers who watched the hunters curiously as they edged past the roughs, careful to keep an eye on the sky above them for errant golf balls. Anna thought she’d much prefer getting hit in the head with a golf ball than having to deal with the demon inside her mind again, and Colin stepped closer to her, reminding her as long as he was living, she wouldn’t suffer like that again.

  By the time they reached the clubhouse, they still hadn’t picked up any demonic markings, any signs that an unwelcomed sc
ourge had crept into this space.

  Colin turned around to face Luca and asked him, “Should we keep going? It may be long gone by now. That other hunter should have at least followed it.”

  Luca nodded but wasn’t ready to call off the hunt. He suggested they finish walking the length of the golf course, then double back on the other side, just in case it was hiding amid the trees along the edge. If it were anywhere on this course, though, it wasn’t alone, because the hunters should have been able to sense it. If Jeremy was still here, then his archdemon was still with him and hiding his presence.

  They resumed their search, but they hadn’t been walking long when a golf cart buzzed behind them and slowed down. Colin had a feeling he was about to be incredibly irritated; Anna tried not to laugh at him.

  Luca and Andrew had stopped walking so Colin and Anna turned around to watch the exchange with the golf course marshal. He wanted to know why the five strangers were walking around the golf course, and really, Anna couldn’t blame him. Luca was offering what she thought was a pretty lame excuse about searching for a lost dog. Dylan was getting bored and wandered off toward the trees. The man in the embroidered golf shirt didn’t sound convinced by Luca’s explanation and was trying to explain patiently that they were on private property.

  “We could get around faster if we steal that golf court,” Colin suggested.

  Anna smiled as she estimated the number of people who would fit on it. “I don’t think it would hold us all. This one’s too small. They don’t seem to go very fast anyway.”

  “No, but I’ve always wanted to drive one.”

  “Why? They’re terribly slow.”

  Colin shrugged. “Never driven one. It’s like a toy car.”