Devil's Thumb (11 page)

Chapter 16

That night, Anna lay awake for a long time unable to stop thinking about the demon’s intrusion into her mind, forcing her to believe her husband was being tortured again, what Colin had to do to save her from going mad. And then, finding the bodies of Lacey and Max and burying them in the wilderness of a Colorado prairie, The Angel restoring Dylan’s health and giving him immortality in exchange for his servitude, a choice Anna had made for him. Just like Anna, Dylan had woken up with the knowledge of what had transpired; he knew what Anna had done for him, and even though he insisted he had been serious about wanting to help end this battle with these demons who were breaking every rule they had always believed to be so binding, Anna couldn’t help feeling like she had condemned him instead.

After burying their friends, they had scoured seemingly endless miles of empty prairie looking for Jeremy’s body, but had been unable to find the gray beast. Either it had been too far away for Colin’s burst of energy to kill it, or the archdemon that had been attacking Anna had carried its body away. It was only a few short hours before sunrise now, and her body ached and throbbed from the punishment she’d put it through the day before and into those early morning hours, but she still couldn’t sleep. Colin kept an arm around her, pulling her as close to him as he could, and he tried to keep reassuring her they had at least been able to save Dylan. That was something to be thankful for. But Anna had loved Max, and her heart was far too broken and shattered to be consoled by any small victory.

“
We’ll do what we can to help his children, Anna. It will never be the same, but we can make sure they go to good private schools and have college funds. It’s something we can do for him.”

Anna closed her eyes and let the tears roll down the sides of her face. Colin wiped them away for her and begged her to try to sleep. He wouldn’t leave her, but if he had to, he’d ask Luca to go to the pharmacy to get her something to help her fall asleep if she needed it. She was in far too much pain, and he felt like it was killing him. Anna shook her head. “
I’ll try, Colin. I don’t need anything.”

“No more hunting with mortals. There are five of us now. We won’t put ourselves through anything like this again. Not until this war with these archdemons is over.”

Anna didn’t need to respond for Colin to know she agreed with him. She had already shown Colin everything the demon was forcing her to hear and think, and Colin knew he’d had to act to protect her. But he couldn’t imagine how either of them would make it through more than a century with the knowledge he’d killed two innocent people, one of whom was their friend.

“
We,”
Anna corrected him. “
You do nothing on your own, just as I don’t. We will always be in this together. No matter what.”

“But it was my decision.”

“You told The Angel once you would place your wife above anyone else on this Earth, and she knew that and didn’t judge you for it. She said there was nothing wrong with loving one person more than others. I would have gone crazy, Colin. I could feel it. If you hadn’t stopped that demon from creeping inside my mind like that, you would have lost me anyway.”

Colin exhaled slowly and kissed her forehead and begged her again to try to sleep. She had already told him all of this, but he wasn’t ready to even try to forgive himself for what he’d done. Anna hugged him closer and kept her eyes closed for his sake, but she was beginning to wonder if she’d ever sleep again. Colin kept his mind as quiet as he could in the hopes his wife would be granted some temporary respite from the misery all around them.

Anna thought it was a hopeless cause. But after listening to the steady humming of the apartment’s central heating for a while, she found herself standing under the shade of a massive oak tree, its thick branches offering protection from the sun overhead but the humidity was oppressive and she was dressed in far too many layers. She looked down at her clothes, the layers of petticoats adorned with a white and yellow dress. Her left hand clutched a wide brimmed hat, and her hair was pulled tightly behind her head. She could feel the hatpins still stuck in the low bun for when she was ready to put her hat back on. She sighed aloud. She knew this wardrobe, this time period, this setting. She was in the antebellum American south.

She looked around for Colin and spotted him under a different tree talking to a man in a wrinkled linen suit. The man was fanning himself with his hat. The heat and humidity here really were awful. Anna had always thought it must feel something like Hell itself. She was about to join Colin when a figure stepped out from behind the tree and Anna froze, her heart lurching into her throat, and she looked wildly around her, terrified someone might see her.

“Jas,” she hissed, “you can’t be here! Someone might see you! We’ve got to hide you.” Anna didn’t even register that Jas’s clothing was completely out of time here – her faded blue jeans and teal tank top had no place in this world. All Anna could comprehend in that split second was that her friend, her
black
friend, was walking freely around a yard in front of the house of a plantation. In the far distance, she could see the rows of slaves hacking at sugar cane stalks to bring in the harvest.

Jas just smiled at her and rolled her eyes. “Relax, Anna. No one’s coming for me. I’m dead, remember?”

Anna blinked a few times as she stared back at her friend then remembered. Jas did not live in 1853. This was not her world. And she had been murdered by an archdemon in Baton Rouge.

Anna looked nervously at the man who was still talking to Colin, fanning himself with his hat as if circulating this hot, sticky air did any good to cool them off. “Can he see you?” she asked.

Jas shrugged, unconcerned about the owner of this plantation. Anna’s eyes narrowed as she kept staring at him. She hated men like him. She had a vague memory of this incident and knew why she and Colin were here; he was trying to buy some of the children the man was selling so they could bring them north to freedom. The man kept asking Colin questions about where he’d be farming and what he was growing, apparently suspicious of Colin’s motives. Anna remembered her input and presence wouldn’t have helped and that’s why she was waiting under her own oak tree.

“Girl, you look absolutely miserable in that dress. How did you survive all these centuries having to go around like that? Men must be a bunch of sadists forcing women to wear shit like this.” Jas was smiling though, still not bothered by her possible detection or even, apparently, by the fact that she was
dead
.

Anna snickered and leaned against the tree. She
was
pretty miserable, actually. She looked longingly at the teal tank top Jas was wearing and wished she could get away with at least ripping the sleeves off of this dress. Anna finally had to look away from her. “Do you know what happened? To Jeremy and Max and Dylan?”

Jas leaned against the tree as well. “Yeah, I know. And
none
of that is your fault. Or Colin’s. You can’t beat yourself up about it forever, Anna.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Jas glanced over her shoulder at the lines of men and women and children still laboring in the fields and narrowed her eyes. “
That
is something to blame people for.”

Anna sighed and shook her head. “Just because something is an accident doesn’t mean people aren’t still to blame.”

Jas turned back around to look at Anna again. “I liked you from the day you showed up in Baton Rouge. Colin never gave me the chance to get to know him, though I’m sorry for trying to get you to convince him to go out with me. I obviously didn’t know he was your husband.”

Anna laughed, and wanted to reach out to her friend and hug her, to cry against her shoulder and let the burdens of the past couple of months wash over them, but she was talking to a ghost. She didn’t know the rules for interacting with ghosts. She was afraid Jas would disappear at any moment.

“Did you know Dylan was in love with you?” Anna asked her instead.

Jas shook her head, and the normal joviality of her expressions softened. “No, I never knew. He hardly ever even talked to me. I wish he’d asked me out or let me know he was interested. I would have said yes.”

Anna sighed, “Maybe it was supposed to work out this way. Make it easier for him if there was no way to save you.”

“Maybe,” Jas agreed. “But I don’t think Heaven knows what’s going to happen to us. Free will, you know.”

Anna just nodded.

“Regardless,” Jas continued, “you’re right. It’s easier for him now since we never even dated. It’ll be easier for him to get over me.”

“Jas, I’ve lived a long time. We never get over losing people we love. We just learn to cope eventually.”

Jas blew a frustrated breath through her lips. “I was afraid you were going to say something like that.”

Anna cast another furtive glance in the direction of the slave owner. This memory had returned to her with better clarity now; she knew Colin would be walking away from him soon having reached an agreement to purchase three children. Then they’d be leaving south Louisiana to make the long and dangerous trek northward to get them to safety.

Jas must have sensed they were running out of time. “I don’t think they can get you if I’m here,” she said. She was still eyeing the slave owner, and Anna was sure if Jas’s ghost had been armed, she’d be brandishing her weapon now. Not that Anna blamed her at all.

“What do you mean?” Anna asked.

Jas finally tore her gaze away from the sweaty man in the linen suit and moved closer to her friend. “Those demons that have been taking over your dreams. I don’t think they can reach your mind if I’m here instead. And Max can help Colin while he sleeps. It’s not fool proof. They’re stronger than we are. They’ll figure out eventually how to kick us out, but for now, when you sleep, I’ll come to you.”

Anna stood up straighter, edging away from the rough bark of the tree. “That dream in Petrograd. Were you really there?”

Jas nodded.

“But why? And why were you warning me Colin needed help? It doesn’t make any sense. We caught up to that demon and killed it.”

“I was trying to figure out how to do this. Visit you in your dreams, I mean. It ain’t easy, that’s for sure. I couldn’t stay long in Petrograd, I kept feeling something trying to suck me back out of the dream. I can still feel it. But I’ve already told Max what he needs to do, and he’s with Colin now.”

Anna’s eyes brimmed with tears again at the thought of Max’s ghost visiting Colin in his dream. Even in death, their friends were still trying to protect them. “Max …” Anna whispered, but Jas held her fingers to Anna’s lips.

“Sh, Anna. Of course Max is sad about leaving his family, but knowing he can help you all now maybe more than he ever could have alive is at least giving him a great deal of peace.”

Jas jumped at a sound or vision or something Anna couldn’t see or hear. She turned around to look for the source of whatever had frightened her, but Jas offered her a weak smile. “It’s getting too close. I’m going to have to wake you up. But, Anna…” Jas took a deep breath then hugged her tightly, and Anna sank into her friend’s arms, which felt just as real and warm and comforting as she remembered them. “Tell Dylan he was one of the best men I’ve ever known.”

Then Anna woke up. She blinked a few times before remembering she was in their apartment in Devil’s Thumb, and Colin was staring back at her. She gasped as she realized he had woken up just before her, and he already knew she’d been dreaming about Jas. And Jas had been right: Colin had fallen asleep, submerged in a different world where the French had been at war – yet again – this time with the Prussians. His memory had been just as distorted when Max had shown up beside him – out of place in 1870, both because he hadn’t
lived
then and his attire was very much of a man who had just left the casual wear department at a Macy’s, not of a French or Prussian soldier.

Colin had spent most of his dream begging Max to forgive him, and Max had spent most of the dream telling Colin to stop begging him for forgiveness he didn’t need to give. He had to save Anna, and if it had been his wife, if he had been the one with the power to save her, even knowing others might get hurt, he would have done the same thing. When Max finally got Colin to shut up, he told him what Jas had told Anna, about their theory that they may be able to help protect them while they slept, at least for a little while, and when they felt themselves being pulled from these dreams, they could wake them. These archdemons would eventually figure out how to work around them, they always did, but for now, Jas and Max had found meaning in their deaths and were eager and excited to help their friends.

“Did you hear her?” Anna asked Colin. “The last thing she told me?” Colin had been awake already, so of course he had, but Anna wasn’t sure how she was supposed to deliver this news to Dylan.

Colin brushed the stray strands of her hair away from her damp cheeks and smiled at her. “I heard her. And I think you just tell him exactly the way Jas told you to. It’s what she wants him to know.”

“It’ll only make it harder for him, don’t you think? Knowing if he’d had the courage to ask her out, how different their lives might have been?”