Garden of the Gods (The Immortals Series Book 3) (3 page)

Chapter 3

Dylan recognized him at the same time. His hand gripped his dagger, and he chanced a brief glance at Colin and Anna. “It can’t be him, right?”

Anna forced herself to look away from the young man quickly approaching them, still strikingly handsome like a young Bradley Cooper with perfectly styled auburn hair and even the perpetual five o’clock shadow Jeremy had always kept carefully groomed. There were no bony growths, no hideous fangs or goldenrod eyes. Anna even recognized the shirt Jeremy was wearing. But there was no stench either, no smell of rot and decay and death.

“No,” Anna whispered back, because he was close enough now that he might hear them. “If they were to free him from possession, they could lose him. I know this feeling though.”

Anna suddenly felt cold. She was wearing long sleeves and the warm sunshine had kept her comfortable only moments before. But she was so cold now her teeth were chattering.

Colin knew why his wife recognized these sensations and she had to physically stop him from trying to attack the fallen angel who had disguised himself as Jeremy to approach this group of hunters.

“
It may not be the same one who kidnapped me, Colin. Or maybe all three of them were there and taking turns. It doesn’t matter. You can’t fight him. He’s too powerful.”

Jeremy stopped in front of them and Anna knew all of the hunters sensed the same unnerving feelings, the same cold and inexplicable fear she had experienced while trapped inside the camp near the Amite River. They wanted to back away from him, but they didn’t want to let on how much his presence disturbed them.

“So Heaven found us,” he said. His eyes were fixed on Anna. She wouldn’t answer him.

“Apparently,” Dylan said, his voice dripping with so much animosity, Anna found herself hoping he wouldn’t do anything stupid. He had suffered more loss than any of them recently, but he had to remember what they were confronting.

“
Dylan is smart. He won’t be reckless,
” Colin assured her.

Jeremy never looked away from Anna. The expression on his face betrayed his growing frustration. He was trying to reach her mind and couldn’t. And Anna was suddenly terrified he would give up and turn on Colin. She desperately wanted him to keep his attention on her. Demons were awfully stubborn, after all. Maybe he wouldn’t give up that easily.

“Why show up like this?” she asked him. “Hoping we won’t kill you if you look like our friend you murdered?”

He tilted his head and kept his hard gaze on her, and even though he smiled, the frustration he felt was still evident in his face. “What makes you think I’m not Jeremy? That I haven’t been changed again? How can you really know?”

“Because I’ve met you before, remember? Doesn’t matter what you look like. I’d recognize you.”

The demon’s smile faltered, but he forced it back into place. “You have some new gifts, I see.”

“So what did it for you?” Anna pressed. He couldn’t reach her. And she hated this bastard more than anything she had ever hated before. She wanted to make him suffer the way she had, but it was impossible. But she
could
hope to annoy the hell out of him. “What tempted you from Heaven and made you fall?”

“Because I don’t like working for a side that can never win.” His eyes flickered to Colin and Anna’s heart threatened to jump from her chest.

“Bullshit,” Luca interrupted. “Hell has always been jealous because far more people choose it over your boss.”

Jeremy actually sighed and turned his attention to Luca. Anna used the distraction to grab onto Colin’s hand, but she had no way of letting Andrew know what this demon was trying to do.

“Of all people, you should know how hopeless your situation is. If it were as simple as people choosing sides, you’d be dead by now.”

Luca was unperturbed. “Didn’t you ask Anna this same question? About believing our side was so much stronger? I’ve got the same answer, asshole. We may not be stronger, but we are so much
better
.”

Jeremy spread his arms around him and kept that sardonic smile in place. “And yet, here we are.”

He turned his attention back to Colin, and Luca knew what he was doing, too, and tried to distract him again, but this time, Jeremy wasn’t playing along.

“And what would you be willing to sacrifice for your wife?” he asked.

Colin didn’t answer him.

This seemed to piss off the demon; they didn’t like being ignored anymore than they liked waiting around. The demon’s eyes narrowed and he took a step closer to the group, but a voice behind them made them all stop. And Colin and Anna knew that voice so well.

“Leave him alone, Adriel,” The Angel warned.

“
No,”
Anna thought. She wouldn’t let herself turn around. Colin wouldn’t turn around either even though the other hunters did. Their Angel shouldn’t have come here. She was defenseless, helpless against this demon, and her life would be far more valuable to this fallen angel than any hunter’s.

Jeremy seethed and hissed through his teeth, “Zadkiel. Of course you would sacrifice yourself for humans.”

“
Zadkiel? So Zadkiel is not a ‘he’ after all?”
Colin wondered.

Anna thought of all things to find astonishing at the moment, the gender of their angel was at the bottom of their list. “
Angels don’t have a gender, Colin. You know that. She has chosen to appear a certain way to us. And who she is shouldn’t surprise either of us.”

Colin agreed, but after three and a half centuries of not knowing
who
their angel really was, he figured Anna couldn’t really blame him for his surprise. He had never expected to find out while they were still alive.

The Angel stepped closer to Colin and Anna and they both reflexively moved in front of her, keeping their eyes on the demon before them. The Angel may be willing to die for them, but they were just as willing to die for her.

“You know I would,” she answered. “And I wish I could say I was surprised to discover it was
you
here. Your kind should have never been created.”

The ground shook beneath their feet as the demon’s anger channeled into the orange-red earth. But he wasn’t so angry that he forgot there were five hunters protecting this angel, and for some reason, he couldn’t immobilize Anna as he had in the past.

“Take that issue up with your boss,” Jeremy spit out, his teeth gritted, but The Angel was right. Even Heaven could make mistakes, and angels of death and destruction never should have been created. Most of their kind had already fallen. Once the rules governing the battle between Heaven and Hell were codified, and it was determined that angels could no longer fight, those angels whose sole existence had been to fight for Heaven had no purpose. Anna and Colin were surprised this angel had held out as long as he had.

“I didn’t make the rules, Adriel.”

Jeremy’s hands curled and uncurled into fists as he glared between the O’Conners and The Angel. Anna noticed Luca had let go of her arm and had moved to The Angel’s side and Andrew had moved to her other side. Dylan wasn’t far away from her either. This was
his
angel, too. But angels, unlike humans, didn’t have souls. There was no afterlife for them. If she were killed now, she would simply cease to exist. None of the hunters were willing to let her die for them.

Jeremy finally took a small step back from the group, just one half-step, just enough to indicate he wouldn’t fight them today.

“What is it about this couple you have worked so hard to protect, Zadkiel? That you’d be willing to die for them?”

The Angel put one of her thin, delicate hands on each of the O’Conners, but her eyes never left the demon. “It’s love, Adriel. Something you obviously never understood.”

Jeremy scoffed, unsatisfied by her answer, but Anna and Colin both knew it was true. The Angel never lied. She had come simply because she loved them and had been afraid for them, and she didn’t need any other reason.

“I suppose then, Zadkiel, we’ll be meeting again,” Jeremy hissed. And then he vanished.

Colin and Anna expected The Angel to disappear now, too, but she didn’t. She held onto their arms just as she had been, and they finally turned around to look at her. They were both glad they hadn’t turned around before. She had been frightened, and if they’d seen that expression in her eyes before, the O’Conners were certain they would have been the ones to act foolishly and recklessly.

The Angel’s pale gray eyes were studying Colin, and a small smile finally played at her lips. “How are you doing this, Colin? Protecting Anna with this gift?”

Colin shook his head. He still didn’t know how he was doing it. He’d only discovered he
could
because they’d been attacked and he’d been desperate to defend her. Since then, he’d practiced wrapping the energy that existed naturally in the world around her like a shield dozens of times to make sure he
could
, but he had no clue
how
he was doing it. It came far easier to him than using their gift as a destructive force. They were still working on controlling it as a weapon.

The Angel’s smile broadened. “I shouldn’t be surprised. If anyone could figure out how to use this power as a defense, it would be you to protect Anna.”

“He could have killed you,” Anna whispered, and she knew it was a ridiculous thing to say. The Angel obviously already knew that.

“And he could have killed Colin,” The Angel responded. Anna suspected The Angel knew Anna wouldn’t argue with her after that.

Luca finally felt convinced that the demon had, in fact, left the area and turned to look around him. “I don’t guess you know who the other two fallen angels are.”

The Angel shook her head, but her long flaxen hair wasn’t disturbed by the motion of her head or the breeze in the air. “No, I didn’t know Adriel was one of them until he showed up here.”

“But my angel wanted me to remember this particular demon in Berlin in 1923. It had a new boss, a recently fallen angel. You guys must know which angels fell and when?”

“Time is measured differently for us, Luca. I’m not sure that’s as helpful as you think. Adriel fell over five hundred years ago, but to us, that’s quite recent. And not all fallen angels decide to command legions on Earth. The demon you chased down in Berlin obviously had a new boss, but that particular angel could have fallen thousands of years ago.”

Dylan groaned. Hell had to make
everything
so complicated. “Then what’s the connection? Between Jeremy, I mean the
real
Jeremy, and that dream Luca’s angel had them remember?”

“Other than his suspicion that one of the demons commanding a new legion is one of the demons you’re fighting now, we just don’t know. But we agreed that Jeremy is being protected and you won’t be able to kill him. If there’s a way to undo his possession, it may be the only way to save him.”

“Any ideas on where we should even start looking for that kind of information?” Dylan asked.

The Angel smiled at him. “It’s
only
a guess. Remember, this world isn’t ours either. You often know it better than we do. But don’t be so ready to discount those people who claim to be able to talk to the dead. Most of them are con artists, like you’ve suspected, but if some are them telling the truth, they may be far more helpful than I can be.”

“Holy shit,” Luca muttered, “don’t tell me my ex-girlfriend really wasn’t crazy. That was three hundred years ago. A little late for an apology now.”

The Angel’s pale gray eyes sparkled as she squeezed Luca’s hand before telling the hunters she really needed to leave.

“And Luca,” she added, “I’ll deliver your apology for you.”

Then, just like Adriel before her, The Angel disappeared.

Chapter 4

That evening, the hunters gathered in Anna and Colin’s apartment in Devil’s Thumb trying to figure out how to find a medium who wasn’t crazy or just trying to make money off of the bereaved. They all agreed anyone who advertised online or in the business pages of the phone book were most likely among the latter category. But with nothing else to go on, they had drawn up a list of names anyway and had decided to test out their abilities by asking these mediums questions about Jas and Max.

Andrew was unconvinced. “So what are they going to do? Actually summon Jas or Max right there in the room with us?”

Luca shrugged and took the last slice of pizza out of the box. “Not sure if that’s possible. But if we find someone who’s a legitimate medium, then Jas or Max may be able to visit them in their dreams and I’m sure we’ll be hearing from them again.”

Colin plucked the list off the table and Googled a few names. “Some of these places are still open. We can go now.”

Anna covered her mouth as she yawned again and tipped her Demon Ale back. It was empty. She sighed as she glared at The Beast on the label like it was The Beast’s fault she was out of beer.

“Fine,” Anna agreed, “but we’re stopping on the way home for more beer.”

Dylan set his empty bottle down. “Sounds good to me. Only one more Demon Ale to go now that we’ve tried The Beast. Unless you count the White Rascal. I’m kinda curious about that one, actually.”

Anna yawned again and proposed they get them both. It probably wasn’t a good idea to drink too much when three demons were trying to invade their minds while they slept, but she figured by the time they got back, the effects of this beer would have completely worn off. And she wasn’t too worried about Colin. She was convinced there was some truth to his theory that his Irish genes predisposed him to tolerating high amounts of malt beverages.

Luca finished his pizza and announced he was ready to go, so the hunters piled into two cars and drove down to the Pearl Street Mall. They found the first woman on their list fairly easily. She was kind of hard to miss. Colin and Anna thought she must have ripped off every stereotype of both psychics and the Romani and rolled them into one character. Her bright layered skirt and layers of jangling jewelry attracted a small crowd around the table where she sat, promising to foretell futures or commune with the dead. The sign in front of her said her name was Marie. Colin and Anna didn’t think that was terribly original either.

“
We’re not off to a good start,”
Colin thought bitterly.

Anna approached the table to read the sign. “
Five dollars for a palm reading. Twenty to communicate with the dead. Hm, I’ve never had my palm read before.”

“Because there’s nothing to read.”

Anna couldn’t help smiling. “
The Angel said to keep an open mind.
”

Colin grunted aloud and Anna laughed. The other hunters stared at him then rolled their eyes and muttered something about needing to find a psychic who claimed she could read minds. They’d attract their own crowd and make a fortune. Colin didn’t think it was such a bad idea. He could use the extra money to pay for the GT4 Cayman instead of the GTS.

“
We could feed a small country on what you’re going to pay for that car,
” Anna scolded.

Colin ignored her. After all, the people who worked for Porsche needed jobs, too.

The couple who had been sitting across from Marie got up and left so the hunters approached her quickly before someone else could ask her to read their palms or connect them to their dead grandfather. She eyed the five hunters suspiciously as they crowded around her table, but Luca had already put money on her table, and after looking at each of the hunters for a few more seconds, she snatched the money off the table and turned on a forced smile. Anna noticed a pile of tarot cards at the end of her table. How could she possibly take anyone seriously who claimed tarot cards had any meaning?

“
Keep an open mind
,” Colin teased her.

Anna resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

The O’Conners sat in the chairs across from her and when Marie didn’t immediately offer information as to why these five odd people had surrounded her table, Colin finally just asked her. “You can communicate with the dead?”

Marie’s fake smile never faltered. “Of course.”

“We lost a couple of friends recently. We’d like to talk to them. Can you do that?”

Marie’s eyes flitted among the hunters again. “Communing with the departed doesn’t exactly work that way. I can try to find their soul and deliver whatever message they would like for me to give you though.”

“Her name was Jas,” Anna offered. “We left a lot of business unfinished between us. I need to know if she’s forgiven me.”

“
Really? You know she’s going to say yes.
”

“
Yeah, and if we find a real medium Jas will eventually tell that person the only unfinished business we had is who wore that red dress better.”

“You did. We don’t need to summon Jas for that,”
Colin insisted.

“Get Dylan’s vote. We’ll be back to a draw,”
Anna responded.

Colin quieted his mind not because he agreed with his wife, but because Marie was pretending to enter some trance and he watched her with an amused interest. After making sure she had drawn enough attention to herself to gather a few more shoppers to her table, Marie opened her eyes and held her hands open and announced ominously, “She’s here.”

Anna didn’t know if she should look around or not. She figured why the hell not? If Marie could make a show of it, so could she. So Anna turned around to look for her dead friend, who of course wasn’t standing in one of the walkways of the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, Colorado.

“You were angry at each other when she passed,” Marie continued.

“
Ok, let’s go,”
Colin decided. But Anna grabbed his hand.

“We were together. Was it my fault? I have to know.” Anna was just screwing with the fake medium now. The only entity they could blame was an archdemon that they’d killed shortly after it threw Jas into a canal.

Marie closed her eyes again and pretended to concentrate on some cosmic conversation she wasn’t really having. “This grudge you were both carrying – she wants you to forgive yourself.”

“
Oh for God’s sake, Anna, let’s move on. I could fake being a better medium than this.
”

Anna didn’t want to alert the other mediums here that they were shopping around, so she thanked the woman and pretended to be grateful for her communion with a soul that was most likely nowhere near this eccentric outdoor shopping center. The next two mediums they found were very much like Marie – some of them even had a similar wardrobe and apparently shared the same belief that the more cheap jewelry they piled on, the more authentic they would look.

Dylan was the first to get bored. He claimed they didn’t need five immortal hunters to verify someone was a con artist and tried to wander off to check out some of the street performers who had attracted larger crowds than the palm readers and psychics.

Colin grabbed the back of his shirt and stopped him. “You are not leaving us to suffer alone. If I have to sit through one more explanation about why Jas wants Anna to forgive herself, I won’t need a demon invading my head to lose my mind.”

Luca smirked but even he kept looking behind him to watch the fire-eater who had just come out. “Amanda something-or-other is up here. Let’s meet her. Then we can come back and see if this guy sets himself on fire.”

Dylan gave the fire-eater one more wistful glance. Colin couldn’t blame him. A guy swallowing fire was a hell of a lot more interesting than fake psychics. They found Amanda, a petite blonde without the prerequisite gaudy jewelry, in a corner booth. Her sign offered palm and tarot card readings, but didn’t offer any sort of communication with the dead. She did, however, claim to be psychic. Colin started thinking about the upgrade to his Porsche again.

Anna dragged him to the front of her table. Another young couple had been asking her questions about how tarot card readings worked, but Anna was tired and her mind was on the Demon Ale they were stopping to pick up on the way back to their apartment. She didn’t feel like waiting around. She pushed past the young couple and put a few $20 bills on Amanda’s table.

The petite blonde looked up at Anna in surprise and shook her head. “Readings are only $10 each.”

“I don’t want a reading. You’re a psychic?”

Amanda looked between Colin and Anna then glanced at the money on the table. “What is it you want? To try to uncover me as a fraud? I can’t do what you can. I don’t want your money.”

Amanda pushed the bills back across the table toward Anna. Instead of picking them up, she and Colin sat down. The other hunters gathered behind the O’Conners and Luca told the other couple to go away. That earned the hunters a few unpleasant names and the young man even flipped them off as they walked away, but Colin didn’t pay much attention to them. Amanda had sensed they were different, and she didn’t want anything to do with this group that was refusing to leave her table now.

“Thanks. You just cost me a potential client,” she hissed, and she folded her arms indignantly, glaring at Luca, who just smiled back at her.

“
She’s pretty. I’m guessing about 30. How long till he sleeps with her?”
Colin asked.

Anna watched Amanda’s face to see if she could tell Colin was talking about her. Sort of. The corners of her lips twitched, but she didn’t scowl at Colin.

“Look,” Anna told her, “we need help. And if there’s a chance you might be able to help us, won’t you at least hear us out?”

Anna could actually think of at least a dozen reasons she wouldn’t get involved if she were Amanda, and right at the top of that list were the three demons trying to kill them all.

Amanda finally looked away from Luca and turned her ice blue eyes on Anna. “There’s something strange about all of you. I don’t know what it is, but you’d better have a damn good reason for even being here. I make a living doing this, and I’ve had people with gifts try to shut me down before.”

“What? Like they claim you’re a sell out?” Colin asked.

Amanda shrugged as if to say, “What do you expect?”

Anna pushed the money back across the table. “We’re not those kind of people. What exactly are you picking up from us?”

Amanda unfolded her arms and leaned across the table, studying the O’Conners more closely then she shook her head. “I’ve never met anyone like you. I don’t have a clue what your signature means.”

“Signature?” Dylan asked. “Is that like an aura?” His voice made it clear he still thought this was all bullshit and they were wasting their time. And he probably wanted to see if the fire-eater had set himself on fire yet.

Amanda didn’t need to be psychic to pick up on his skepticism.

“Yes,” she retorted, “and you have a similar signature. But you can call it whatever you want.”

“Dude,” Dylan sighed and tapped his foot against Colin’s chair, “if we hurry, we can catch the end of that guy’s act. Maybe someone will swallow swords next.”

Colin was actually torn between wanting to see if Amanda had anything useful she could tell them and wanting to see if Dylan was right. He’d seen performers swallow swords before and still thought it was pretty damn cool.

Anna gave up. She pulled a piece of paper from her purse and wrote her cell phone number on it and put it on top of the stack of bills she’d given her.

“If you have any strange dreams involving us, would you just call me?” Anna asked.

Amanda glanced at the paper and money and picked up Anna’s phone number but left the money. She took a deep breath and pocketed the number. “Take your money. And if I don’t give you this message, I’m being threatened with haunting. Someone named Jas said you never told Dylan what she asked you to.”

Anna gasped and the hunters drew even closer to Amanda’s table. Nobody had mentioned Jas’s or Dylan’s name in front of Amanda. And Anna
had
forgotten to deliver her message after Luca’s announcement about his own dream with his angel and their sudden trip to the Garden of the Gods. Dylan kept his eyes on Amanda but he knelt by Anna’s chair.

“Is that true?” he asked softly. “Did she have another message for me?”

Anna nodded. She didn’t want to tell him now in front of everyone else, in front of this stranger who Jas
must
be communicating with somehow, but if she were really here then she sure as hell wasn’t going to defy a ghost. “She wanted me to tell you of course she’d wait for you. She’d wait forever for you.”

Dylan exhaled slowly and closed his eyes, his love for this woman who had left them all far too soon so evident now that Anna wondered how she could have missed it before. How could she have not noticed the way Dylan worshipped her friend, the way he had looked at her and studied every movement she made?

Dylan opened his eyes and focused on Amanda again. “Can she hear me?”