Anna kept reminding Colin that Hell had tried twice, and both times, they’d failed. Their love was far too strong for any number of fallen angels to tear them apart. But Colin still wanted to kill Andrew and this fallen angel who was protecting him now.
Andrew actually smiled at Anna and told her, “What I’ve always wanted. Retribution.”
Luca finally moved away from the door and grabbed Andrew’s shirt, pulling him close to his face, and hissed, “You son of a bitch.”
Anna was the only one who wasn’t ready to kill Andrew and she felt something shift around them. Andrew’s real angel was about to defend him. “Luca, let him go.”
When Luca didn’t respond right away, Anna shouted, “Now!”
Luca released Andrew from his grip but didn’t back away. Andrew addressed Anna but wouldn’t take his eyes off his former leader.
“I hope I’m not the one who has to try to kill you, Anna. I mean it. That night I met you and Colin in Barcelona, I was convinced you were part angel yourself, and that’s why they tried to get Colin to turn against Heaven first in order to find you when you were held in that camp. I’ve always suspected no matter the truth, you’ll never abandon Heaven simply because you love too much.”
Anna shook her head. “There’s no such thing as loving too much, Andrew.”
He smiled again but wouldn’t look at her. Luca hadn’t moved, and Andrew wouldn’t be the first to back down. “There is when your love is misdirected toward a false god.”
Anna gasped again and Luca’s hands balled into fists. “Get out,” Luca ordered him.
Andrew finally risked one last look in Anna’s direction. “If you won’t listen to the truth from me, you should hear Adriel out next time he shows up. No demons or fallen angels trying to trick your minds this time. I promise. Just make up your own minds before you pick a side when this war starts.”
Luca opened the door to indicate Andrew needed to leave now, or this war was going to start a hell of a lot sooner than anyone anticipated. But Andrew didn’t have anything else to say, and he left without argument or even looking at Luca as he stepped past him. Luca slammed the door closed and muttered something in his Italian dialect. Neither Colin nor Anna needed to be able to speak his language to guess what he was saying.
Colin leaned against the back of the sofa and exhaled bitterly. “So we’ve actually got at least two traitors amongst us. How many Immortals do you think they’ve conscripted?”
Luca was still glaring at his apartment door as if Andrew was going to reappear so he could finally fight him. “If Tahel is a traitor, it doesn’t make any sense that she would have been made an Immortal in the first place. She’d made it clear to both of you in Tel Aviv she didn’t even want to be immortal.”
“You’re the one who trained her,” Colin said. “Did she seem pissed off about being turned into an Immortal?”
Luca stopped glaring at his door and turned to his friends, his murderous expression softening as he remembered who was in his apartment with him. “No, but I’ve never thought to ask anyone if they felt jaded by Heaven’s gift of immortality. I stupidly assumed everyone believed it was a blessing and was as honored as I am to do this for our God.”
“You can’t blame yourself for not knowing how someone would eventually feel about their immortality, Luca,” Anna told him. “At first, most people are probably just grateful to be alive. I think the bitterness must come later, long after you’ve trained them and they realize just how long five hundred years is.”
Luca shrugged. “I can’t stop Heaven from making anyone they want an Immortal, but Tahel shouldn’t be one of us. She never wanted to be, and Heaven must have known that if she even told you two.”
“I’d suggest you call her up and ask her, but something tells me you’re not going to get an answer from her. She wasn’t exactly sociable before she felt cheated,” Colin said.
Luca smirked but took his phone out anyway.
“Holy shit, you’re really going to just call her and ask her?” Colin asked.
“Sure, why not?” Luca responded. Anna and Colin watched him with what they were pretty sure were dumbstruck expressions as he sifted through his list of contacts then held his phone to his ear. His call must have gone to her voicemail, and they listened with the same dumbstruck expressions on their faces as he left a message asking her to call him back – he needed to know if she had teamed up with Andrew to try to bring down the Immortals and defeat Heaven.
“Well, if that doesn’t get her to call you back…” Anna mumbled.
Luca just smiled at her. “At least she knows we’re on to her. So, how are you two going to teach me to use this new gift? I hope you’re a hell of a lot better teachers than Andrew.”
“It’s an instrument, Luca,” Colin told him solemnly. “Just concentrate on fine tuning it.”
Luca snickered and didn’t hold back the sexual innuendos like Colin had. Anna rolled her eyes and thanked her husband for starting this, because there was no way Luca wasn’t running with this analogy now.
“Oh, for God’s sake, let’s just go out to West Baton Rouge and blow something up in someone’s field,” Anna complained.
“That can’t be good for sugar cane. And I like my sugar,” Luca said gravely.
“They’ve already brought in this year’s harvest, Luca. We’ll be fine.”
Luca’s joking turned serious. “Why on Earth do you know when farmers harvest sugar cane?”
“We’ve been on sugar cane plantations a couple of times,” Colin told him. “The process is a lot faster now, but it’s harvested in the early fall.”
“Alright, O’Conners. I don’t think Jeg’s coming back for any more bacon, so let’s get out there.” Luca held the door open for them, and as Anna passed him, she eyed him suspiciously.
“How often does your angel show up to eat with you?”
Luca grinned and told her she’d be surprised at what he’d been able to talk Jegudiel into trying during his short visits to Earth.
Anna stopped walking and grabbed Luca’s arm. “I swear, if you tell me you hooked up an angel with a woman…”
But Luca’s laughter cut her off, and Anna let go of his arm. He’d just been messing with her, because Anna had always been quick to defend her belief that angels were above human nature.
Colin shook his head but kept walking, too. “Really, Anna. You make it sound like there’s something wrong with sex.”
“There’s not, if you’re human,” she countered.
Luca kept grinning and Anna knew it was her fault for even letting him lead her right into this conversation. “You know, even the Bible talks about Nephilim.”
“And you know,” Anna retorted, still kicking herself for saying anything in the first place, “that the translation of who supposedly fathered those Nephilim is vague and a lot of theologians don’t think Genesis is referring to fallen angels at all. Now knock it off.”
“Ah, my Anna. ‘Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterwards, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them.’ Starts at Genesis 6:1. Look it up, my sweet girl.” Luca waited by the car door for Colin to unlock it and his mischievous grin just made Anna want to kick him in the shin again.
Instead, she cocked an eyebrow at him, opened her own door, and told him, “You forgot the last line. ‘Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.’ It’s referring to a particular group of people, now stop being an asshole.”
Anna climbed in the car and Luca chuckled. Colin sighed heavily because he had a horrible premonition he was going to be listening to them argue about this all the way across the river and into West Baton Rouge. And he was right.
By the time he pulled onto a dirt road leading them
into an empty sugar cane field where the mechanical harvesters had left behind fragments of sugar cane stalks, Colin was convinced they’d recited half of Genesis and Numbers and still disagreed on whether or not fallen angels had ever fathered children with human women. Colin thought the whole argument was ridiculous because they all knew much of what was written in the Bible was myth anyway. And he really didn’t care if angels ever had sex while taking on a human form.
He turned off the ignition and turned around in his seat to face Luca. “Stop harassing my wife. You’ve both read the Book of Enoch, and you both know it talks about two hundred fallen angels led by Semjaza who came to Earth to have children with human wives. Their children were referred to as the Nephilim, and all but ten percent of their children were killed by a vengeful God and those ten percent were allowed to survive as demons to tempt humans into damning their souls. And I’m pretty sure that’s not where demons came from, so let’s go blow some shit up.”
Anna turned around in her own seat to grin at Luca. “Or they were referring to the children of Seth.”
Then she opened her door and followed Colin before Luca could argue with her again.
Colin and Anna walked out into the field but Luca called out to them, “Wait! Where are the buckets?”
He was still standing by the car, waiting for plastic buckets to miraculously materialize. Anna bit her lip to suppress the giggles threatening to break out. Colin told him to move his old ass and come meet them already. Luca jogged over to them but still looked like he was waiting on the inexplicable appearance of buckets.
“It wasn’t working for us, and we think Andrew knew that and only pretended it would eventually work,” Colin said. “Granted, he’s obviously learned how to control this better than we can, but we doubt he really mastered it with bottles, and we don’t think any of us are ever going to get anywhere with plastic buckets.”
Luca looked really disappointed. “So I finally get this cool superpower, and I don’t even get to blow anything up?”
“Sure. You get to try to blow us up,” Colin told him as he walked away.
Anna followed him and Luca’s snicker cut off when he realized the O’Conners were serious.
“What the hell? Have you got another demon in your head, Colin?” Luca yelled after him, but Colin waved him off and kept walking.
“We really should have warned him we were going to do this, Colin. Poor Luca.” Anna’s sympathy for him was mixed with her amusement over Luca’s growing frustration though. He was still yelling at them and telling them they must both be out of their minds now.
“But it’s so much more fun this way. And God forbid I distracted you two from arguing about angels procreating.”
“You could have helped with that.”
“I did.”
Anna sighed aloud. “Before you parked the car, Colin. That was a thirty minute drive.”
Colin looked over his shoulder and decided they’d gone far enough. Luca hadn’t followed them, but he stood with his arms folded defiantly as if to tell them he wasn’t even going to attempt their stupid idea. And he was going back to Baton Rouge for plastic buckets.
“Are you sure this is even going to work?” Anna asked.
It hadn’t seemed like such a bad idea when they left Luca’s apartment, but facing him now, she realized they had no idea how powerful his gift was. Even these angels didn’t seem to know until a person tried to use it.
“If not, then it probably won’t kill us. Dylan and I survived the cave-in.”
“You both survived a cave-in, not being hit by this energy thing that killed a fallen angel.”
“And we both learned to use our gift because we were in a desperate situation. Luca won’t feel that same sense of urgency if he targets plastic buckets. He’d do anything to protect his friends, and we’re trying to get him to hit us with a power that could potentially kill us. He’ll learn faster this way. It’ll work.”
Anna was too far away from Luca for him to see her rolling her eyes at her husband’s lame attempt to rationalize what she was pretty sure was an absurd plan now that she was out in a recently harvested sugar cane field facing her old friend who had a new gift he’d never even tried to use before. But Colin shouted at Luca anyway to countdown from twenty then hit them.
“Get ready to defend yourself,” Colin told her, as if she’d suddenly forgotten where she was and why.
The warm tickling sensation filled her though and she took a deep breath and imagined pulling the world in around her; she couldn’t feel it like when Colin put some sort of barrier around her to protect her, and she just had to hope it would work. Colin held her hand and assured her she was far too powerful for it not to work. Anna still thought this whole idea was incredibly stupid, and Luca agreed with her. He’d been yelling back at them that he wasn’t even going to try it, but Colin told him to shut up and just do it. They weren’t standing out here all day for no reason.
Anna had been counting down and twenty seconds had long since passed as Luca and Colin argued, but Luca finally relented and began counting aloud. She couldn’t see his features clearly but when he got to three, she saw him close his eyes. As soon as he finished counting, she felt the energy he had thrown at them hit the shield she’d erected around herself. She and Colin stumbled backwards but didn’t fall, and more importantly, didn’t die.
Colin smiled down at her with a smug expression on his face. “Told you it would work.”
Anna sighed. “Smartass.”
Aloud, she yelled at Luca, “Open your eyes, Luca, we’re still alive!”
Luca opened his eyes and mumbled something, but they were too far away to hear. Knowing Luca, though, it was probably something like, “Holy shit.”
“Not bad, old man. Do it again,” Colin called out to him.
They spent the rest of the morning in that cane field, stepping closer and closer to Luca as he got better at directing this new gift from his angel, and every time the O’Conners stepped closer to him, Luca got nervous again, which made him more determined to control the energy his friends kept insisting he throw at them. A couple of times, he knocked them over and both times, he rushed to them to ensure he hadn’t just killed his oldest friends. But Colin and Anna assured him they were fine – a little sore but definitely not dead – and that he needed to keep practicing. Andrew wielded the same power, and there were at least two fallen angels in the city preparing to wage a war against them.
By lunchtime, they were all exhausted and hungry, and as they made plans to stop somewhere to eat on their way back to their apartments, Colin’s phone rang. It was Jeremy, which everyone thought was unusual since Dylan rarely left Jeremy’s side now. But Andrew couldn’t have known where Dylan and Jeremy were, so Colin quickly assured Anna that Dylan had to be alive before he answered his phone.
Jeremy’s voice just as quickly assured Colin and Anna that everything was not ok though, and he sounded like he may have been crying. Anna fell against the side of their Camry as she waited for the latest devastating news from these assholes who weren’t wasting any time in letting the Immortals know this war was coming.
“The other hunters,” Jeremy sighed. “We can’t find them. No one has heard from them since yesterday. They’re all gone, Colin.”
Colin’s mouth went dry as he watched his wife, her shock and disbelief that all of the mortal hunters left in Baton Rouge had disappeared combining with the horrible premonition of what Jeremy was about to tell Colin. She felt nauseated and dizzy and no longer hungry at all.
“And you don’t think they’re dead,” Colin confirmed.
Jeremy was quiet for so long on the other end that Anna had to open her car door to sit down. Her legs didn’t want to allow her to stand anymore.
“No,” Jeremy’s voice cracked on the word as he tried to hold back his tears, “not technically. But I can guarantee you they’re each praying for death.”
Chapter 5
Dylan and Jeremy sat quietly in Luca
’s apartment, picking at the Chinese food they’d had delivered but no one really felt like eating. With the death of Jas and Max, Dylan’s immortality, and Jeremy’s recent retransformation, only five hunters had been left in Baton Rouge, and they were all demons now. And one of them had been a good friend of Dylan and Jeremy’s. Anna and Colin hadn’t known Ben well, but they knew he’d been the one to help Dylan through his initial grief over losing Jas and having their former leader transformed into a demon.
Since none of the hunters gathered in Luca’s apartment had been around to witness these transformations, they had no way of knowing what their former fellow hunters looked like. Every time they had to fight a demon in Baton Rouge now, they would be wondering if it used to be one of their friends or colleagues.
Colin didn’t mind the thought of killing the demon that used to be Adrián, but having to kill the others was almost as difficult as having to confront Jeremy all those times and knowing who he used to be and should be still. And, of course, Anna wanted to save them all.
Even Jeremy insisted it would be impossible, and they had to concentrate on defeating these fallen angels and preventing a catastrophic war from breaking out between Heaven and Hell. Anna nodded along, but Colin knew she wasn’t really convinced she couldn’t save them.
Luca threw his chopsticks into his container of lo mein noodles and pushed them across the table. “We’re going to have to figure out how to find these bastards, and soon, before half of Baton Rouge has been turned into an army of demons for them,” Luca insisted.
Dylan dropped what was left of his egg roll onto his plate and asked how the hell they were supposed to find fallen angels if they didn’t want to be found.
“We found them in Colorado,” Colin pointed out.
“Because Luca’s angel helped us. As far as I know, he hasn’t been dropping hints where we should go looking now,” Dylan countered.
Even Jeremy had no idea where in Baton Rouge this fallen angel was hiding because Samael had never revealed that information to him.
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