Devil's Thumb (3 page)

Lacey raised a salmon pink shoulder at him. “It’s an occult religion.”

“
Oh my God, only in Boulder. I wonder if they were smoking when they came up with this idea.”
Anna broke her vow to keep her head silent for the rest of the evening, because there were some things that just begged for her commentary. Like this.

Colin just nodded. “And you’ve never been audited?”

Lacey was getting that expression again, like she didn’t trust either of these hunters, and really, Anna couldn’t blame her. “No, one of our hunters is an accountant, and he’s an excellent financial adviser and tax expert. At hunting, not so much.”

Luca sensed the O’Conners were less than enthusiastic about Lacey’s organizational structure for her hunters here, so he caught the waiter’s attention to place their orders. Once the waiter walked away, Anna leaned across the table and asked her, “So how often do you have problems here? In this area, not traveling all over Colorado.” Anna selfishly wanted a little time off.

“Oh, I don’t know, every few months?” Lacey guessed.

“Oh, thank God,” Anna breathed, and she sank back into her chair. But Lacey mistook the cause of her relief.

“Don’t worry, Anna. If anything happens while you’re here, you can come along if you want to see how we do things here, maybe learn something from some of our more experienced hunters, but it’s not like we’d expect you to hunt, too. We’ve got things under control.”

Colin reached under the table and grabbed Anna’s hand, squeezing it because he
wanted
to laugh now, but knew Anna would probably make him walk back to the hotel if he did. “Thanks, Lacey, that’s very considerate,” Anna said, and to Colin, “
And you’re damn straight you’d be walking back. She’s not so bad, and we’ve hurt her feelings twice already tonight.”

“
Mrs. O’Conner, I’ve known you for almost four hundred years. You wanted to laugh, too.”

Of course, she did. And she was also immensely relieved when their food arrived and they were able to eat, which meant talking less. She knew Lacey was just proud of the group she’d assembled here, and there’s no way she could have known she was talking to three people with over a thousand years of experience among them, but having to pretend to be such an amateur just because Luca wanted to get laid annoyed the hell out of her.

As soon as they were finished with dinner, Colin and Anna made excuses to leave, which they’d done a pretty good job of laying the framework for considering their early missteps. Claiming they were in desperate need of sleep, they left Luca and Lacey to finish their drinks, and stepped out of the restaurant, where Anna finally erupted into giggles. Colin looked down at her and started laughing, too. “Anna,” he said, trying to sound serious, which just made Anna giggle even more, “if you’d like some pointers on how to become a better hunter, I have some services I can offer you. For a small fee.”

Anna put one of her alabaster hands on her hip and tipped her head at him. “Yeah? What kind of fee?”

Colin put an arm around her waist and pulled her closer to him. He was just about to kiss her when they both felt the familiar sensation of something being out of place. Something didn’t belong in this parking lot at a quaint Italian restaurant in Boulder, Colorado. It didn’t belong in this world.

Colin and Anna let go of each other and reached into the sheaths in their boots, pulling out their daggers, turning around to try to place the demon’s presence. Cars buzzed past them on the nearby street, a few more customers left the restaurant, but the demon remained hidden.

Anna was about to suggest they go back inside for Luca to get him to help hunt this bastard down, when she noticed one of the couples who had just left the restaurant had a small child asleep on the father’s shoulder. Her stomach knotted. Demons almost never hurt humans for no reason, but after everything unusual about their behavior in Baton Rouge, she wouldn’t risk going back inside. She kept glancing back at the child’s sleeping blonde head as it slowly faded down the sidewalk.

The stench of the beast reached them. It had moved closer. Colin shook his head even though it was a useless gesture. “
No. It’s the same smell. They can’t be everywhere.
”

But Anna recognized it, too. It was the same potent odor, the same putrid stench the demons that had defied their centuries of knowledge had possessed in Baton Rouge. And, now, it was here in Boulder. “
So much for time off.”

Anna felt it getting closer. The sun had long since set, and there were too many shadows for it to hide in. “
It’s behind the building across from us,”
she realized, and she and Colin ran toward the back of the building, pausing by the corner where the stench became overpowering. They waited as they heard the snuffling snorting sounds now coming from the demon as it emerged from the darkness the building had offered it, and Anna and Colin came face to face with Jeremy.

Chapter 3

The hulking gray beast with bony nodules around its face and goldenrod eyes that retained their eerily human characteristics kept growling at them with the low snuffling snorting kind of snarl as it inched closer to Colin and Anna. Their grips tightened around the hilts of their daggers and they backed slowly into the yellow light of a streetlamp above them.

“
We have to kill it now
,” Colin told Anna, but he already knew Anna was reluctant to kill the beast that used to be their group leader.

“
Anna, it followed us here. It had to have followed us. We have to end this now.”

Anna agreed with him, but knowing something and being able to do it are so completely different. The demon, its reeking foul odor filling the space around them, had followed them back into the parking lot, and Colin offered to kill it himself. He knew Anna was still conflicted.

“
I’ll never let you do this alone. I’ll help you,
” Anna told him. Goosebumps broke out over her arms causing the hair to stand up as she stared back at the demon that had taken over Jeremy’s body and had morphed it into something hideous and evil.

“
It may not be here alone. It must have some of Jeremy’s memories if it led the archdemon to your apartment before, so it will know it can’t take us both on its own,
” Colin pointed out.

Anna had been worried about that, too. But those archdemons were somehow able to disguise themselves and they had no way of being able to sense them like they should have been able to. So far, the only thing that got rid of them was using their telekinesis, which was far too destructive in a parking lot sandwiched between two buildings. And it only seemed to provide a temporary reprieve; it wasn’t killing these archdemons anyway.

The Jeremy-beast lunged at them, and Colin stabbed his dagger into its thick hide and tried to open a gash, but the dagger was stuck. Anna attempted to distract it by thrusting her dagger into its opposite side and the beast turned its head and snapped at her with its pointed granite teeth. The stench from the demon’s mouth left a vaporous cloud around Anna, and as she held onto the dagger still stuck in its side, she kicked it in the jaw to get it to turn away from her.

Her dagger came loose and she stumbled backward, bumping into someone, and her panic was quickly replaced with relief when she realized it was Luca. He steadied Anna then attacked the demon with Colin. Anna had only a moment to register Lacey had been with him when Colin and Luca were sent flying across the parking lot. The invisible archdemon had decided to show up.

“Lacey, get back in the restaurant!” Anna shouted at her.

Lacey protested but Anna shut her up by pushing her toward the building. “Now!”

Colin and Luca scrambled back to their feet and were contending with a force they could neither see nor feel. But something knocked Colin down again and was strangling him. Luca stood over him, desperately trying to move Colin away from the archdemon, but he was powerless. Anna was the only one who wasn’t. And her
husband
was pinned to the ground, choking, unable to breathe; for once, Anna had no reservations about using this new power The Angel had given them. The anger and fear in her made it stronger, more uncontrollable and destructive than ever before, and as cars rolled through the parking lot like tumbleweeds and windows blew inward from the impact of the energy she commanded, Colin gasped and sat up. The archdemon was gone for now, and so was Jeremy.

Anna ran to Colin’s side and threw her arms around him, which almost knocked him down again. “Oh my God, Colin, are you alright?”

He hugged her back and when he spoke, Anna could hear the smile in his voice. “Damn, Anna, I should let you do that on your own from now on.”

Luca had been thrown across the parking lot, too, but he wasn’t injured. He may be sore, and he’d complain about it, but as he grunted and pulled himself to his feet, he just shot Anna one of those looks that told her he was mostly impressed and grateful, but maybe a little bit jealous, too. Colin and Anna thought he needed to take it up with his own angel, because they needed all the help they could get with these pissed off archdemons.

“We need to get out of here,” Colin said, surveying the damage from Anna’s rescue. Anna and Luca helped Colin to his feet, and only then did she remember Lacey had been outside with her. She doubted she’d actually gone back inside the restaurant.

Colin sighed, “Luca, go find Lacey. She was probably still outside. She may need to go to a hospital.”

Luca ran back toward the restaurant as they heard the sirens in the distance. Their car had been among the tumbleweeds that had been propelled across the street. Anna and Colin were going to have to find another way back to their hotel. And quickly. They stayed in the shadows as much as they could, only running when they were out of sight from the spectators who had come out to gawk at the mysterious explosion. They passed several bus stops before finding one with a bus picking up passengers.

It took several connecting buses to get back to their hotel, and by the time they reached their room, they really were exhausted. Anna collapsed on the bed and Colin lay down next to her. “I should call Luca, see if Lacey is ok,” he said.

Anna mumbled something about that being a good idea. Colin yawned and pulled out his cell phone. His call went to Luca’s voice mail. “He would have called if something were wrong,” Colin insisted as he leaned over to switch off the lamp. Anna’s eyes were already closed. Fighting semi-immortal creatures of Hell could be so damn tiring.

A rapping at their door woke them. Colin peeked at the clock on the hotel nightstand. It was morning already. The knocking continued and he rolled off the bed while Anna muttered about Luca’s insensitivity to people who didn’t appreciate getting up before sunrise. Colin reminded her the sun had already risen; Anna ignored him and pulled the blankets over her head.

Anna tossed the blankets back down as soon as Colin looked through the peephole in their door though. Luca wasn’t the one knocking.

“
What the hell is Dylan doing here?”
Anna asked, even though Colin had no way of knowing that anymore than she did.

Colin opened the door, but he wasn’t sure if he should invite Dylan in or not. Dylan had made it pretty clear in Baton Rouge he didn’t want to work with them or be friends with him, so why
was
he here?

Dylan stared at Colin for a few seconds before asking, “Is Anna not dressed or something?”

Colin stared back at him, feeling like he must have a stupid expression on his face. “What?”

“You just gonna let me stand out here in the hallway?” Dylan sounded exasperated, but Colin was just confused.

“Depends. Why are you here?”

Dylan glanced down the hallway to make sure no one was around. “Because I followed it here. And it must have followed you and Anna. I want to know if you’ve killed it yet.”

Colin sighed and finally backed away from the doorway so Dylan could enter their room. He mumbled something at Anna that may have been “Good morning,” but Anna couldn’t really hear him. He sat at the table near the window and looked between Colin and Anna, waiting for them to speak.

“It found us last night at a restaurant. But you must have known that if you’ve turned the news on at all,” Colin told him.

Dylan nodded. “That’s what I thought. And is it dead?”

“We don’t know,” Anna answered. “We were fighting it in the back of the parking lot between the buildings when one of those invisible archdemons threw Luca and Colin across the lot. It was strangling Colin so I blew it out, but I didn’t see what happened to Jeremy.”

“It’s not Jeremy,” Dylan reminded her.

Colin sat on the edge of the bed next to Anna, sorry that their friendship with Dylan had ended like this, but he had no purpose here now. If these archdemons were following Colin and Anna, then staying in Boulder would only lead to Dylan getting hurt. “Luca’s staying with us until we figure out what’s going on with these archdemons, and it’s obvious now we’re the ones they want. Go back to Baton Rouge. Jeremy won’t escape from us again. Not intentionally anyway.”

Dylan’s eyes narrowed as he kept his gaze on Colin. “I trusted you to take care of it in Baton Rouge, and you didn’t. I’m not leaving Boulder until I know it’s dead. And neither is Max.”

“Max is here, too?” Anna asked, the edge in her voice warning Dylan how incredibly stupid she thought they were being.

“Of course,” Dylan shrugged. “Apparently, O’Conner’s forgotten everything we did to help get you back after you were abducted. What loyalty means.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Colin interrupted him, “we explained why we let it live. You want to hold grudges for the rest of your life, then do it, but from someone who’s lived a hell of a lot longer than you ever will, I’m just telling you, it’s not worth it. You’ll be miserable, and neither Anna nor I regret the choice we made. We were hoping Luca could help us find more information on if it would be possible to undo what’s happened to Jeremy, but we haven’t come up with anything. So it’s done. Hate us or forgive us, but I won’t listen to you insulting my wife or me anymore.”

Anna recognized Colin’s tone, that chilling undercurrent. She would have known Colin was through with Dylan even if they weren’t telepathic. And Dylan sensed it, too. He seemed torn between wanting to storm out and wanting to stay, because he knew he would never meet anyone else as well informed as the O’Conners and Luca. He bit his lip as he glanced at Anna again, then sighed and fell back into the chair.

“Alright. I won’t bring it up again. Max and I obviously need your help, but we’re not leaving. We owe this to Jeremy.”

“
Remember how much he’s lost recently, Colin. Between Jas and Jeremy, that’s a lot for any man. Let him help.”

“I’m not sure how much hunting is up to us, actually,” Colin told him, “there’s a large, organized group here. You should meet the leader and let her know what was going on in Baton Rouge and why you’re here.”

Dylan arched an eyebrow at him. “Ok, how do I find her? And what do I tell her about you two?”

Colin and Anna looked at each other because they still didn’t know what had happened to Lacey, and they
really
weren’t looking forward to having to explain last night to her. Maybe Dylan could save them the trouble. Colin grabbed his phone to call Luca again, and this time, he actually answered.

“What the hell?” Colin snapped. “We’ve been trying to find out if Lacey’s alive, and you haven’t even been answering your damn phone.”

“I’ve been busy,” Luca retorted, and Anna could tell by his flippant attitude that not only was Lacey fine, she had most likely won their bet.

“God, Luca,” Colin groaned, “I’m guessing she’s fine then.”

“Oh, she’s better than fine.”

“
Ha! We’re going to Dublin, O’Conner!”
Anna thought winning bets was an even better way to wake up than drinking coffee. And she was entirely too giddy about dragging Colin back to Ireland. He tried to scowl at her, but she was too adorable when she glowed like that because she’d gotten her way.

“Dylan and Max are here. They should meet her. They want to help hunt down this demon that possessed Jeremy,” Colin explained, still pretending to scowl at Anna who was still genuinely gloating.

“Meet us at her apartment in an hour,” Luca told him, and he gave him the address. Colin hung up and shook his head at Anna. “The least you can do if you’re really dragging me to Dublin is bring back your London accent.”

“You have a London accent?” Dylan asked. He knew their history, but Anna had an affinity for languages and had mastered American English.

Anna smiled at him, the first smile she’d been able to offer him in over a month. “I used to. We haven’t lived in England in centuries.”

“Then why do you still have an Irish accent?” he asked Colin.

Colin turned his scowl toward Dylan. “Because the universe thinks it’s funny, apparently.”

“
Oh, Colin, you need to get over this. Women love Irish accents, you know. Combine it with a gorgeous man like yourself, and it’s a good thing you’re already married to me, or I’d be quite jealous of all the attention you get.”

But Colin had only ever cared about one woman, and his ancestry, his homeland and ethnicity had made him an outcast and, in many of her family’s friends’ eyes, not worthy of her affection. He would spend his five hundred ten years on this planet since meeting Anna feeling like he’d never been good enough for the woman who had inexplicably agreed to marry him. And she’d spend those same years remonstrating him for feeling that way.

“So we’ve got an hour to kill,” Dylan exhaled impatiently, “and I’m guessing you don’t have any other experiences that could shed some light on how to track down this Jeremy beast and separate it from the archdemon that’s obviously protecting it.”

Anna chewed nervously on her lip and Colin asked her to stop before Dylan noticed, but Dylan was smart and observant. He noticed. And he knew Anna and Colin were keeping something from him.

“What?” he asked, but it sounded like a demand.

“It’s so silly, Dylan. I don’t even know if it’s useful,” Anna protested.