immortals - complete series

by S. M. Schmitz

  “Then why can’t I talk to him? Even if I were dreaming, if I reached out to him, he’d find me. He’d come to me. It’s always worked that way, Jas.”

  Jas gripped Anna’s hand and pulled her closer to the building to try to get out of the gusts of wind. The snow was swirling in angrier patterns and Anna was convinced it had gotten much colder out suddenly. “I heard what Lilith told you about Adriel. I think he’s the one who keeps sending us here, Anna.”

  Anna shook her head. She remembered the conversation with Lilith so easily, but remembering the previous dreams from Stalingrad that Jas had just told her about still eluded her. “No, you said we found Jeremy here. Why would he bring Jeremy into my dream? I remember finding him. I killed Samael.”

  Jas nodded and jumped at a sound or a movement or something Anna could neither see nor hear. Jas looked around her and Anna did, too, but the streets were just as empty except for more snow piling in small drifts on the ground around them.

  “They’re fallen angels, Anna. They betrayed Heaven and God, what makes you think they wouldn’t betray each other to get what they want? And Adriel wants you. You’re powerful. Somehow, he knew that about you, and he came after you.”

  Anna scoffed at the idea that she would ever rule Hell at the side of any fallen angel.

  “You wouldn’t,” Jas agreed, “Except you would do anything for Colin, and Adriel knows that, and I think that’s why we’re here. He’s tried to separate you from each other twice, because the only way he’ll get your power to help him overthrow whoever is currently ruling Hell will be if you have to save your husband.”

  Jas jumped again and this time, a terrified scream escaped her lips. She clamped her free hand over her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut, and Anna threw her arms around her protectively, but she didn’t know what she was protecting her from. “Jas, what can I do? What’s scaring you? Let me help!” Anna cried.

  She felt Jas’s head shaking against her shoulder; there was nothing Anna could do to help her. “I can’t wake you up. Oh God, Anna, I can’t wake you up! You have to wake up now!”

  Jas pushed her away from her but Anna didn’t want her to let go. Jas was terrified and her friend needed her, and she didn’t know how to wake herself up from a dream she didn’t even know she was dreaming. This all felt far too real. Jas’s tears rolled down her cheeks as she pleaded with Anna again to wake up, but Anna still didn’t understand. She just wanted to protect Jas.

  She tried to pull her closer again, but Jas pushed her away. “No! Goddamn it, Anna, wake up or he’ll take over and no one can save you then!”

  “Who?” Anna asked, and she felt like she should know the answer, but it evaded her just like the memories of the prior dreams of being in Stalingrad. Jas opened her mouth and shouted something at her but Anna heard nothing.

  “Jas?” she asked. She reached for her again but as she tried to grab her hand, she was rewarded with nothing but a fistful of snow and air. Jas covered her mouth again as her body heaved in an aching sob then she disappeared from the snowy sidewalk of Stalingrad.

  Anna panicked. “Jas?” she screamed.

  She turned in circles as if Jas would appear somewhere else on the sidewalk around her, but there was nothing, not even her footprints in the snow. And her mind was still as deafeningly quiet as before. Colin couldn’t hear her either.

  Behind her, she heard the door to the building open and she turned slowly as she felt the warm gust of air rushing out from inside. And Adriel stood in the doorway, smiling at the woman whose power he needed for his own revolution and whose mind he had finally won.

  Chapter 7

  Max handed Colin a full beer and Colin didn’t know if he should thank him or ask him where the hell he’d just pulled a beer from. They were sitting in Tiger Stadium watching LSU play the Florida Gators. For some reason, Colin had a feeling this was going to be a momentous game that people in Baton Rouge would talk about for years. Max smiled and nodded toward the beer.

  “Don’t spill that. You think it’s easy to make alcohol magically appear in your dreams?”

  Colin smiled back at him. “I don’t think we’re supposed to even have this in here. Think we can get kicked out of Death Valley in my dream?”

  Max laughed and turned his attention to the field. “We’re in the fourth quarter now. This is going to be good.”

  “I wasn’t here for this game. You must be creating this.” Colin took a sip of his beer. It wasn’t some watered down American version of beer, but a good strong stout.

  “Is this a Guinness?” Colin felt certain if he weren’t dreaming, he would know what beer he was drinking, but this was only a dream, and Max was controlling parts of it. He must not have remembered exactly how this particular beer tasted.

  Max shook his head. “I only know of two Irish beers. Guinness and Murphy’s, so I went with Murphy’s.”

  Colin took another sip and nodded. “Good choice.”

  “Watch this pass, Colin. Donaldson’s going to intercept.”

  Colin turned his attention back to the field, and just as Max had predicted – or remembered – Donaldson intercepted Florida’s ball and ran it in for a touchdown. The stadium erupted into a deafening roar. LSU had just gained the lead against the number one team in the country.

  Colin had to lean next to Max’s ear now for him to hear over the noise of the crowd. “Like I said. You were here for this game, I’m assuming?”

  Max’s eyes were still on the field but he leaned over to Colin to answer him. “Yeah, I was in college here at the time. One of the best memories from my undergraduate years.”

  Colin thought back to when Max must have been an undergraduate and finally placed the time period. “Ah, the DiNardo years. That explains the reaction of this crowd.”

  Max laughed again and told him he’d already graduated by the time LSU became a national force again. That’s why this game had been nothing short of a miracle to die-hard fans like him.

  Colin was about to take another drink from his Irish beer when Max tapped his arm. “Don’t miss this. We’re moving down the field.”

  And, truthfully, Colin didn’t want to miss any of this game. He’d heard about it often enough once he moved to Baton Rouge – many years later – but getting to experience it through Max’s memory was almost as exciting as being there himself in 1997.

  LSU had moved into the red zone at Florida’s end of the field, and Max was excited again, which told Colin LSU was about to score, when someone else pulled on his other arm and grabbed his attention away from the game. Jas was in Death Valley. But Jas shouldn’t be in Death Valley, Colin thought, because Anna wasn’t here. He looked behind him just in case Anna had come along, too, but she wasn’t with Jas.

  Jas grabbed Colin’s hands, and she was crying but it didn’t make any sense to him. Jas shouldn’t even be here. And why was she crying? He looked helplessly at Max, but Max had the same panic-stricken expression on his face now, too. The roar of the crowd in the stadium muted and the only sounds in Tiger Stadium were Jas’s strangled cries and Max’s terrified breaths.

  “Colin,” Max breathed. “Wake up now. Adriel’s captured Anna.”

  Colin opened his eyes, the darkness of their bedroom in Baton Rouge still surrounding him. Max’s warning echoed in his mind and he reached over to Anna’s side of the bed and felt her warm body sleeping peacefully, and Colin remembered to breathe. But something didn’t feel right. He could feel her, but he couldn’t hear her. Her dreams, her thoughts, were completely quiet and lost to him.

  “Anna?” he spoke her name softly and shook her gently. “Anna, my love, wake up. You’re scaring me.”

  Anna continued to sleep soundly. Colin spoke her name louder and tried shaking her again, but she didn’t stir. Her mind remained disconnected.

  “No,” Colin moaned, “no, this can’t be happening. Anna, please. God, Anna, wake up!” But he already knew she couldn’t wake up.

  Colin threw the blankets off of
him and grabbed his phone, his trembling fingers finding Luca’s name in his contact list to call his cell phone and he turned the light on in their bedroom, but Anna still slept. There was nothing he could do to wake her up.

  Colin heard Luca’s groggy voice asking him what was wrong, but Colin had lost his own voice. He ran a hand through his hair and stared helplessly at his wife, and Luca’s voice came back through the phone, transforming from a sleepy concern to horror as he realized something had gone catastrophically wrong.

  “Colin, unlock your door, or I’m blowing the goddamn thing down. I’m on my way.”

  Colin backed out of his bedroom, still clutching the phone in his hand, and unlocked the door and when Luca barreled into his apartment, he still couldn’t find his voice. He had to be trapped in some nightmare of his own. This night couldn’t be real. He looked in the direction of his bedroom and Luca ran inside and Colin listened as Luca called her name, over and over, imploring her to wake up, but she didn’t respond to him either.

  Colin’s legs carried him back inside that room where his wife lay sleeping, where she would continue to sleep for over a hundred years because her body was immortal, but her mind was gone. And Colin had no idea how to get her back.

  Chapter 8

  Adriel motioned Anna inside the building. “Come on, Anna. It’s warm in here and it’s about to get colder outside.”

  Even as he spoke, Anna could feel the temperature dropping, and she shivered and pulled her arms tighter around her. She glanced inside the building and thought about taking her chances on the snowy street of this illusionary Stalingrad, but some part of her realized this was all Adriel’s creation. It didn’t matter where she went; she was in his world now.

  Anna stepped around him and entered the building. It was warm and the snow on her coat immediately began to melt into little puddles at her feet. Adriel closed the door and stepped closer to her, holding his hands out, and Anna backed away from him. “I was just going to take your coat, Anna. You don’t need it in here.”

  Anna remembered this man so well; this fallen angel who had abducted her and held her captive in a camp near the Amite River and forced her to believe her husband was being tortured. She had captured the briefest glimpse of him during one of his short visits when she somehow willed the room to stop spinning around her and saw a handsome man with jet-black hair and pale blue eyes. He hadn’t changed at all. Even the sweater and dark pants seemed to be the same.

  And she remembered him from the Garden of the Gods when he started the doubts that had driven Colin away from her. He may not have been the one to take over his mind, but it had been his idea; Ahriman had acted under his leadership.

  Anna backed away from him again until she bumped into the wall, and Adriel smiled at her. “Suit yourself, Anna. But tell me: how is Colin going to save you now?”

  Anna slowly shook her head and told him she didn’t know if Colin could save her, but Adriel hadn’t exactly won either. He only had her mind. He couldn’t force her to help him in whatever he was planning with only her mind as a prisoner.

  “True. But eventually it will be enough. Because you won’t let him suffer forever, and if I never let you go, even death won’t free you. And you’ll never be with him again. Everyone has a price, Anna. And he is yours.”

  Anna’s throat constricted and burned with the pain of trying to hold back the cries that were desperate for release. But she couldn’t acknowledge he was right. She wouldn’t let him know yet he had won after all.

  “You wanted Samael dead. You helped lead me to him, didn’t you?”

  Adriel shrugged and sat on the bottom step of the spiral staircase. Anna had the strangest feeling that she should know where those stairs led but she couldn’t quite remember.

  “What about Lilith? You’re the one who told her I killed Samael? But why?”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to take your coat off, Anna? It’s so warm in here.”

  Anna shook her head again even though she was getting quite warm. She knew what she was wearing underneath, and this sleeveless burgundy gown wasn’t one she’d ever owned before.

  “Answer my question,” Anna demanded. “What is it going to hurt, if you’ve got me trapped in your fake city forever?”

  “Yes, I told Lilith, because you can destroy her, too. She was never supposed to be here, but when she found out about Samael, no one could keep her off this planet. She wants vengeance, and she’s always been a bit unpredictable and uncontrollable.”

  Adriel’s pale blue eyes kept studying Anna in a way that made her wish she’d stayed outside. She wasn’t sure if it was lasciviousness or just the knowledge of what Anna was capable of doing to his enemies, or maybe both, but she wrapped her coat around her tighter despite the oppressive heat in the room. Adriel smiled at her again.

  “Did you turn the other hunters into demons, too?”

  Adriel looked like he was getting bored with her questions. He finally pulled his pale blue eyes away from her and stared out the thick hazy windows. Anna wondered if it were only her imagination or if she could actually hear the wind picking up outside. “I’ve got what I want, Anna. I don’t need those hunters. That wasn’t my doing.”

  Anna scoffed and asked him, “Then whose was it?”

  Adriel just looked at her again and smiled. He had no intention of answering this question.

  Anna sighed angrily. “And you want to rule Hell. You really think I’m going to help you accomplish that?”

  She tried not to imagine Colin crying by her body, lifeless in its permanent sleep. How long could she let him live like that? She already knew Adriel would force her to see it; he would torture her with Colin’s lonely existence without her.

  “Of course, Anna,” he said her name in that silvery, honeyed voice and the room began to spin. She leaned against the wall to keep herself from falling down. “Because I can give you what you’ve always wanted. You help me and rule by my side, and I can bless you with what you’ve wanted most but could never have.”

  He didn’t need to say what he was offering her, because he and Anna both knew what he was claiming he could give her, and she slipped down to the floor and buried her face in her hands and cried. But what she wanted most wasn’t children; what she had always wanted most was to have a child with Colin. Adriel still couldn’t understand what love meant and why it would never be the same with anyone else.

  Anna never heard him move, but Adriel was suddenly kneeling by her side and Anna shivered even though it had become so hot in this room. “I can give you everything you want, Anna. Together, we can be invincible.”

  Anna kept her face hidden from him but shook her head. “I only want Colin. Forever. I will never even forgive you for this.”

  Adriel laughed and leaned in closer and his breath touched her ear, an icy ribbon as he exhaled, “I’m not in the business of seeking forgiveness.”

  Adriel reached over to her and for the first time since meeting this fallen angel, he touched her. Anna tried to jerk her hand away, but he was far stronger; his skin felt as warm and alive as any man’s and she wasn’t sure if that unnerved her even more or not. He pulled her hand away from her face so she couldn’t hide from him.

  “You’re lucky that I’ve been so patient with you, Anna. It won’t last. Get some sleep. You don’t look well.” He let go of her hand and motioned toward a bed near the back wall. Anna had never noticed it before, but that was probably because it had never been in this building in Stalingrad before.

  Anna wanted to argue with him, tell him she was already asleep and dreaming and that’s why she was here in the first place, but she did feel tired now and was having such a difficult time keeping her eyes open. Instead of arguing with her captor, she stumbled to the bed in the back of the building, her new prison, and collapsed on top of it and immediately fell asleep.

  Chapter 9

  Luca sat on the floor in the O’Conners living room with Dylan and Jeremy, strategizing and trying to de
cide how to draw out these fallen angels because it was the only way they could think of to try to free Anna. But Colin couldn’t leave her side. He sat beside her and brushed her hair away from her face and held her hand and watched her sleeping, wondering what nightmares she was tormented with now.

  And, of course, he prayed. He knew The Angel would have to come to him sooner or later, and she had promised to try to find her if this ever happened, but Colin’s faith had always been so strong, so complete, that he never actually thought it would happen to either of them. Max had told him Adriel captured Anna, and then Amanda had called with a message from Jas about her theory that Adriel wanted Anna’s help for his own revolution. Colin felt sick and entirely hopeless.

  Luca promised to leave him alone for the rest of the night as he struggled with his grief, but Colin couldn’t imagine ever leaving her side. Luca had patiently explained that he would have to: Colin had the only other gift besides his that could possibly defeat these fallen angels, so Dylan had immediately offered to stay with her when Colin couldn’t be here.

  Colin knew his friend was trying to help, but how could they not know it wasn’t the same? That he no longer cared about this war or the traitorous Immortals, because his wife was essentially dead to him? And what if Adriel had hauled some part of her, the part that made Anna her, off to Hell already? Defeating any number of demons or fallen angels would do nothing to bring her back.

  As the night wore on, Colin remembered talking to her in the camp, pulling her back to him with a happy memory, and he knew it was silly and wouldn’t work, not this time, but he had to try something. His mind rewound through so many years until it reached their mortal lives, or at least close to their mortal lives, and the first memory that came to him was one of the last times they’d seen Anna’s parents. He lifted her soft, thin hand and brought it to his lips, and asked her if she remembered the last dinner they’d had with her mother and father. Of course, Anna didn’t answer.