immortals - complete series

by S. M. Schmitz

  “I’ll follow you, Adriel.” There was no way she wanted Adriel behind her.

  Adriel just shrugged and walked back into the camp and paused by the second bedroom door, the same room where he’d held her prisoner what seemed like eons ago. She tried to steady her trembling fingers and quivering breaths, but this place horrified her. She expected the walls to transform into a monochromatic gray and swirl in colorless patterns, but the camp never changed.

  Adriel pushed the door open and stepped aside for Anna to enter the room. Anna reminded herself how beautiful and happy Jas had been just moments before she’d been pulled from her dream in her old apartment and forced herself to enter the doorway to the room where she’d once been held captive and forced to believe her husband was being brutally tortured.

  And there, huddled in the corner, looking so small and childlike and frightened, was The Angel.

  Anna forgot about her own nightmares of this room and this camp and rushed into the room, falling by The Angel’s side, scared to touch her in case she was only another of Adriel’s mind tricks and wasn’t real. But The Angel lifted one of her thin delicate hands and touched the side of Anna’s face, and Anna knew she was real because only The Angel had ever made her feel this way: so safe and loved and full of hope. Anna wrapped her in her arms and held her closely and cried into her long, silky flaxen hair and The Angel soothed her and spoke her name softly.

  “My Anna,” she said quietly, “you must not stay here. Don’t listen to him. No matter what he says.”

  Adriel snickered again and folded his arms, leaning against the brown paneled wall that still held the single crooked picture of ducks flying over a pond. “No matter what? You mean a chance to save your angel and you’re going to ignore me and just walk out of here?”

  “Yes, Anna. That’s exactly what I want you to do. Please, don’t let him convince you to do anything.”

  Anna held onto The Angel but watched Adriel carefully. “What is it you want, Adriel? You already know I’ll never leave Colin.”

  Adriel shook his head. “One thing at a time, Anna. Right now, we need to clean up the mess you’ve made. You have to destroy Gadreel and Lilith then let the hunters take care of Andrew and Armand if you don’t want to kill them. But they all need to die. Then I’ll let your angel go.”

  “Anna, don’t believe him!”

  “Shut up, Zadkiel,” Adriel warned her, his voice as cold as the air around him.

  The Angel grimaced and moaned and slumped into Anna’s arms, and Anna turned her fury on Adriel. “You’re hurting her! Stop, or I swear to God, I’ll kill you now!”

  Adriel smiled at her and clicked his tongue. “Destroy me, and you destroy your angel. She’s in my world, Anna. Unless I let her go, we’re inextricable.”

  “Ok, I’ll do it,” Anna cried, “just please, don’t hurt her.”

  “Oh, Anna …”

  But Adriel had heard what he wanted. He reached for Anna’s hand and Anna turned to The Angel whose pale gray eyes were so full of sorrow, and Anna kissed her forehead.

  “I’m sorry. I love you,” she told The Angel.

  Then she lifted her hand into Adriel’s, and he pulled her from the floor and smiled at her once again. “And now you’ll see, Anna, how invincible we are.”

  Chapter 21

  For the second night in a row, Jas interrupted Colin’s dream. He and Max weren’t at Tiger Stadium this time, but were standing in front of a television watching Walter Cronkite inform a shocked and disbelieving nation that their young president had died from the gunshot wounds that had previously been reported as serious injuries. Max had just turned to Colin to ask him how he and Anna had responded and if they’d gone to Dallas to see if there were more demons in the city after the assassination of the president, when Jas was beside Colin again, pulling on his arm and begging him to wake up.

  Colin looked down at Jas, still wearing the red dress and silver and black drop pendant necklace, and his eyebrows knitted in confusion. “Wake up? Jas, what are you doing here?”

  It was always difficult to make sense of anything unexpected in these dreams, and just like last time, Max had to act for Colin. “Anna’s been pulled from Jas, again, Colin. Time to wake up.”

  Colin woke up expecting to see his wife’s comatose body lying next to him, but instead, he found her side of the bed empty.

  “Anna?” he called. But she didn’t answer him. And for the second night in a row, he woke Luca with the news that something had happened to Anna.

  Luca woke the other hunters and they gathered in Colin’s apartment, trying to figure out how Anna could have just disappeared, but they all knew how she’d been abducted the first time.

  “But Anna figured out how to regain control when Adriel takes over her mind. He shouldn’t have been able to do this again,” Dylan argued.

  Luca shook his head sadly. “These fallen angels are powerful and extremely cunning. He could have just come up with a different way to manipulate her.”

  “I don’t care how he did it,” Colin interrupted. “Adriel has my wife again and we need to figure out where she is. So start brainstorming how we’re going to find her.”

  Dylan and Luca both began talking over each other with ideas that seemed more desperate than feasible, but Colin was watching Tahel and Jeremy. For all of his teasing about whatever may or may not be going on between them, they were sitting together on the floor by one of the walls of the living room, quietly discussing something, and Colin was far more interested in their conversation than Dylan and Luca’s.

  Colin moved away from his louder friends and sat next to Tahel and Jeremy. “I can’t keep losing her. This must be what kills Immortals besides demons. If you’ve got an idea that you think might stand a chance of working, then let me know.”

  Tahel glanced at Jeremy and nodded. She wanted him to tell Colin since he knew him better. “You’re going to think we’re crazy, but Colin, you know how badly I want to help Anna, too, right?”

  “Of course. Besides, it’s just an idea. We don’t have to go with it.”

  Jeremy took a deep breath and Tahel slid her hand inside his. “I think we should call Andrew.”

  Luca and Dylan fell silent on the other side of the living room and stared at the group of hunters huddled on the floor.

  “Did I just hear you say we should call Andrew?” Luca asked. The tone in his voice already told the other hunters what a ridiculous idea he thought this was.

  But Jeremy nodded and continued. “Yes, because Anna made a deal with Lilith, and we can get in touch with Lilith through Andrew. Maybe Lilith is hoping Anna will be the one to have to contend with Adriel, and if so, she may be willing to help us find her so Anna can fight him.”

  “This is absurd,” Luca muttered. “I think you need more sleep, Jeremy.”

  “Lilith is like a demoness or something,” Dylan agreed. “She’s not going to take pity on us and agree to anything else. She’ll probably just figure she can kill them both and be extra happy about it since they were each responsible for her husband’s death.”

  Tahel finally joined in. “I’m not expecting her to feel sorry for us. But even fallen angels and whatever Lilith is usually abide by the agreements they make, which is why Samael and Gadreel weren’t expecting Adriel to betray them. They swear oaths, too. And for the most part, Hell has abided by the agreement it made with Heaven millennia ago to prevent Armageddon on Earth.”

  “No,” Luca insisted, “we can’t lead Lilith to Anna. We need to find her on our own.”

  “Hey,” Colin interrupted, “she’s my wife. And we don’t have any other plan. Lilith is out there looking for Adriel anyway, so we may as well try this one. I’m calling Andrew.”

  Everyone in the room watched Colin in stunned silence as he scrolled through his contacts and called Andrew’s number. It was only four a.m. and Andrew was most likely sleeping, but Colin would keep calling until he answered. He only had to call twice.

  Colin exp
lained Anna’s disappearance and their suspicions that Adriel had somehow figured out how to control her again, and asked him if he’d be willing to get Lilith to help hunt Adriel down. Everyone knew Anna had the greatest power of them all: if Lilith wanted Adriel dead, Anna was her best chance of making it happen.

  Andrew listened quietly then promised Colin he’d call him back with Lilith’s answer. The hunters gathered around Colin’s phone and stared at it like it was going to offer them answers or morph into Lilith herself. As the minutes ticked by, Dylan grew tired of staring at a cell phone and offered to make coffee. He had just flipped the switch on the coffeemaker, when the door to the apartment opened and Lilith entered.

  “Holy shit,” Dylan mumbled from the kitchen.

  Lilith put her hands on her hips and glared at Luca.

  “What did I do?” Luca asked.

  “You want to kill Andrew. And I want him to live. If you want my help now, then it’s only on the condition that you leave Andrew alone.”

  Luca let out an exasperated and angry breath. “He betrayed us, and will do it again.”

  “No,” Lilith interrupted. “He’s out of the service of Heaven, obviously. And he works for me now. He has no interest in you Immortals anymore because I have no interest in any of you.”

  Colin touched Luca’s arm. “Luca, please. It’s Anna.”

  Luca closed his eyes and acquiesced. “Fine. But this is assuming he never attempts to hurt or betray any of my Immortals again.”

  Lilith just shrugged. The Immortals had never held any interest to her. They had been part of her husband’s plan, and she had other goals that she certainly wasn’t about to divulge to these hunters now.

  Lilith turned her attention to Colin. “I know where Adriel lives. He hasn’t been there because he must know Gadreel and I are looking for him, but there can’t be many places he can hide a woman if he actually has her body this time, too.”

  Colin stood up and grabbed his car keys from the hook on the wall. “Then let’s start there. I’m not as powerful as Anna, Lilith, but I promise you, this son of a bitch is going to die today.”

  Chapter 22

  When Anna woke up, she knew where she had to go, even though she’d never been to this part of Baton Rouge. She’d slipped out of bed as quietly and gently as possible so she wouldn’t wake Colin then called a taxi to take her to the address Adriel had told her to go to. While she was waiting, she kept checking on her husband to make sure he was still sleeping, and for some reason, he and Max were in November 1963.

  Anna remembered this event, this day that would have otherwise been such an ordinary day and would have been lost among the thousands and thousands of other ordinary days of their long lives. But in the early afternoon, one of the brightest and potentially greatest presidents this country had elected in a long time had been assassinated. Sometimes, Anna still mourned for him.

  The cab dropped her off outside the Acadian style house with white siding and a long front porch that ran the length of the house. It was only six a.m. and still too dark to see well, but the house looked well kept and the lawn was freshly mown. She approached the door and deliberated whether she should ring the doorbell or just try to open the door. She decided to see if it was unlocked.

  The door swung open, and she was standing in a strange room she’d never been in, except it seemed familiar. The off-white carpet and ivory sofa, the cleanness and starkness of the living room, all reminded her she should know this place. Adriel emerged from the kitchen and Anna watched him suspiciously, but he didn’t approach her. An empty bedroom to her right finally triggered the familiarity of this space, the nightmare of this home.

  “Oh, God,” she breathed. She was in the home where Colin had insisted they had a daughter and her daughter was hungry and crying, and Anna had refused to acknowledge it. Another trick of Adriel’s when she was imprisoned in that camp, the worst nightmare he had inflicted upon her.

  “I’ve told you,” Adriel cooed, “I can give you everything you’ve ever wanted.”

  Anna’s legs felt weak and she gripped the back of the sofa. “I told you I would help you kill Gadreel and Lilith in exchange for The Angel’s life. That was our deal, Adriel. That’s it.”

  Adriel closed the space between them and lifted her hand from the sofa. There was no deception or mind tricks or games here. Without him wielding his own power, he appeared simply as a man and there was no cold radiating from his body, nothing evil or sinister that made Anna know this man wasn’t really a man. His fingers lifted her hand to his lips, but he didn’t kiss her.

  “That was our deal, Anna. But when you see what we can do together, you will come to me on your own.”

  Anna pulled her hand away from him and narrowed her eyes. “I will always belong to Colin, and he will always belong to me. Nothing will ever change that.”

  Adriel lifted an eyebrow at her and waved a hand toward the empty bedroom, which was no longer empty. An infant’s crying broke through the silence of the house and Anna’s stomach turned to stone. She knew what she would find in there, what Adriel had shown her in that horrifying dream. It had never been Colin’s baby.

  “No,” Anna whispered. “Stop it, Adriel. It’s just an hallucination.”

  She could feel the air around them getting colder.

  “Don’t you want to see her?” he asked.

  Anna shook her head. “She’s not even real.”

  “She could be.”

  Anna closed her eyes and felt the tears rolling down her cheeks. She hated herself for looking so weak in front of him.

  “Please,” she whispered again, “just stop. Make it go away.”

  Adriel stepped closer to her again, and put an arm around her waist to pull her to him. Anna wanted to stop him; she wanted to push him away or hit him again, but she felt eviscerated and hollow. She couldn’t resist him when she had nothing left inside of her.

  “Go see her, Anna. She’s your daughter. She’s crying for you.”

  Anna shivered and tried to back away from him, but he wouldn’t let her go. “She’s so beautiful, Anna. Come see for yourself.”

  He took her hand and pulled her toward the bedroom with the crying infant and Anna felt her legs moving even though she didn’t want them to take her anywhere near this room or this crying child. She already knew what this baby looked like. She knew this cry and how her big, dark brown eyes would be filled with tears and how her chubby little arms would reach for her as soon as she saw Anna enter the room. She’d lived this nightmare before.

  “No,” she pleaded again, but Adriel pulled her into the child’s bedroom anyway. The baby was sitting up in her crib and she stopped crying as soon as Anna came into her room, those small arms rising above her head, begging Anna to pick her up. Anna studied this infant again, but this time, she recognized this child’s features, so much like her own, but now she understood why the baby had seemed so foreign in Colin’s arms. He was nowhere in this child; this was Adriel’s daughter.

  Anna closed her eyes again and turned around. “Stop. She isn’t real, and we have more important issues to deal with right now, like the pissed off demons who want you dead.”

  Adriel laughed and put his hands on Anna’s shoulders and turned her around again. He leaned down so that his breath was in her ear and whispered, “Just hold her, Anna, then I’ll make all this go away. But she can be your future. She can be our future.”

  The baby was crying again because Anna had taken too long; she wanted her mother and her mother was ignoring her. Whatever defenses Anna had managed to hold onto crumbled, and she stepped quickly to the crib and lifted the crying baby into her arms. The infant immediately stopped crying and rested her head against Anna’s chest, finding her thumb to suck on and closed her eyes as Anna swayed her back and forth.

  She stroked the girl’s soft, smooth head and smelled the sweet scent that only babies carry, and sang gently to her until the baby fell asleep. She allowed herself a few precious moments
to watch this sleeping child whose face looked so much like her own, so sweet and innocent and peaceful in her sleep, and she kissed her head delicately, tenderly, careful not to wake the girl who had just fallen asleep.

  Anna leaned over the edge of the crib and laid the sleeping child down, then turned to Adriel and pushed him out of the room.

  “Get rid of this illusion now,” Anna insisted. “I played your game. And she is not my child.”

  “Anna,” Adriel sighed, but Anna wouldn’t let him finish.

  “You have nothing you can offer me. Neither you nor Hell can tear Colin and me apart. She will never be my child because she isn’t Colin’s. Now make this disappear.”

  Anna couldn’t destroy this home because she wasn’t in a dream world. This house was real. She was here in her own body in her own world, and the only weapon she had against Adriel was her ability to destroy him. But if she killed him, she would kill The Angel, and he knew he had her cornered.

  Adriel smiled at her again and lifted her chin toward him. “She tried to warn you, Anna,” he taunted. And this time, he kissed her, and unlike her imprisonment in Stalingrad, Anna knew this was real; this was her reality, her world, her body.

  She pushed him away from her and felt the tingling sensation of The Angel’s gift throughout her, begging to be released. It would be so easy for her to kill him now; this angel who had tortured her again and again in such misguided attempts to convince her to abandon Heaven, to abandon her husband, because he couldn’t imagine anyone not wanting power as much as he did. He certainly couldn’t imagine the loyalty and devotion she had for Colin, this love that couldn’t be broken with any promises or gifts.

  And as much as Anna loved The Angel and as desperately as she wanted to save her, it wouldn’t come at the expense of hurting the only man she had ever loved, the only person she had lived for since the day she met him in a market on a busy, crowded street in London in 1637.