Devil's Thumb (14 page)

“
Three months to track down one gift for me. So when did you become so impatient Mrs. O’Conner?”

Anna smiled up at Colin. “About the same time I realized I could microwave frozen burritos.”

Andrew had reached the remnants of the buckets and held a chunk of bright orange up for them to see. “Hey!” he called to them. “Definitely bigger!”

“
See? It’s working. But we’re still not buying any frozen burritos.”

“
Coward.
”

She’d never even gotten Colin to try one. She thought she may have better luck going back to France and scavenging for dandelion leaves than getting Colin to eat anything that came out of the freezer in a plastic wrapper.

Andrew was about to set out another row of the same kind of bright orange plastic buckets when his phone rang. Colin and Anna watched him as he listened, then exchanged some sort of animated conversation before looking over his shoulder at Colin and Anna. He picked up the new buckets and walked back to them instead. “Apparently, we’re done for the day. That was Luca. He just heard from one of the hunters Lacey used to work with, and there’s a demon prowling the streets in Gunbarrel. We need to get back to Boulder.”

“A
hunter
called to tell Luca that? Why the hell didn’t he just kill it?” Colin asked.

Andrew shifted his weight nervously and told him, “Because the way he described it, this isn’t just any demon. Jeremy’s still alive.”

Chapter 19

All of the hunters who used to work for Lacey knew about the gray demon with bony nodules along its face and goldenrod eyes. And they also knew it never traveled alone. Luca had warned them because it was too dangerous for mortal hunters to try to kill Jeremy. But Colin and Anna didn’t want to see it again. Every time they encountered Jeremy, they encountered the same powerful archdemon that was capable of throwing them across rooms and parking lots, of strangling them without anyone being able to touch it, of invading their minds and threatening their sanity. They couldn’t let mortals near it either though. They would never survive.

Anna fidgeted nervously with a piece of one of the orange plastic buckets Andrew had brought back from their last attempt to knock them over without breaking them. It was certainly a larger piece of plastic, but they weren’t even close to being able to wield the control they needed in order to use this power in a residential neighborhood. And after yesterday, hunting Jeremy almost guaranteed they were going to need it.

Colin wanted to say something to reassure her, to calm her down, but truthfully, he was just as nervous as his wife. And it’s not like Anna didn’t know that anyway. Somehow, this archdemon seemed to know that targeting Anna was the easiest way to get to Colin, too. If it could kill her, it would kill them both.

Colin plucked the piece of orange plastic from Anna’s hands and she held onto his fingers instead. Anna kept her eyes on the road in front of them but squeezed his hand so tightly her fingers ached, and she had to take deep breaths to relax her grip. Colin didn’t complain.

Luca, of course, had offered to go with Andrew alone. But the O’Conners wouldn’t allow it. He called Colin as soon as they reached their cars, and for the first five miles on the drive back to Boulder, Luca argued with Colin about just taking Anna back home and letting him and Andrew head out to Gunbarrel. After all, he was the most badass hunter alive. He could handle one human-turned-demon and one cheating archdemon who was apparently trying to provoke a war with its oldest rival.

“First of all,” Colin countered, “you might be a legend, but we’re chasing your title. Give us another fifty years and you won’t be able to call yourself the most badass hunter alive anymore. And secondly, you’re only assuming there’s one archdemon. There could be several of them and they’re all taking turns coming at us.”

Luca was silent on the other end for a few seconds. His car wasn’t far behind them and when Anna turned in her seat, she could even see him considering what Colin had just said. He smiled and waved at her. Anna shook her head at him and turned back around. “Ok, in fifty years you may catch up. But you’ll be dead in another sixty, and I won’t, so it’s irrelevant. And if all of those demons from Baton Rouge followed us here, then why aren’t they all attacking us at once? Why just one at a time like this?”

Colin rolled his eyes at the first part of Luca’s retort, but he also wasn’t about to give up a title he and Anna had worked so hard for. “Our legend will live on long after we’re dead. It’s not irrelevant. If I were you, I’d keep an eye on Dylan. He’s got a lot of natural talent.”

“Yeah, I noticed.” But Luca wasn’t really jealous about training hunters who may one day be as good as he was; he wanted them to be. He didn’t really want to live forever.

“And I don’t know why they wouldn’t attack us all at once. So far, they’ve just been targeting Anna and me, but it could be that they know we’re immortal. Perhaps they don’t know about you and Andrew yet, and Dylan’s far too new.”

“But they stood a better chance of killing you or Anna if they worked together.”

Anna’s fingers tightened around Colin’s hand again. She was trying not to think about the images the demon had forced into her mind the day before, but knowing it could happen again soon made it impossible for her not to dwell on it.

Colin sighed and Luca heard him through the phone. He had known the O’Conners since 1648. He didn’t need to be told what was troubling Colin now. He provided his own answer to his question. “Maybe they’re trying to figure out how strong we are. If only one of those bastards is killed, it’s not a big loss. If they all come at us at once, and they all get killed, game’s over.”

Anna cringed as she tried to imagine several of these bastards attacking her mind at once. Colin pulled the phone away from his face and risked taking his eyes off the road to glance at his wife long enough to tell her, “That won’t happen to you again. I’ll destroy the whole damn city if I have to.”

On the other end of the phone, Colin and Anna heard Luca mutter, “Be helpful if my own angel would get back here and give me this power.”

Anna couldn’t help but smile a little now. “
Bet’s still on. How badly do you want that Porsche, Mr. O’Conner?”

“
I’m getting that car, even if I have to bribe that angel myself.”

As they reached the Gunbarrel area northeast of Boulder, Colin and Anna pulled over on Indian Peaks Trail and parked their car. Luca, Dylan and Andrew parked behind them. The country club golf course stretched out in its vast greenness beside them, but the hunter who had called Luca wasn’t sure where Jeremy had been heading. The demon had sauntered off in the direction of the clubhouse so the hunters walked toward the building hoping to pick up some sense that something was here that didn’t belong in this world.

It was still early enough in the day that the course was dotted with golfers who watched the hunters curiously as they edged past the roughs, careful to keep an eye on the sky above them for errant golf balls. Anna thought she’d much prefer getting hit in the head with a golf ball than having to deal with the demon inside her mind again, and Colin stepped closer to her, reminding her as long as he was living, she wouldn’t suffer like that again.

By the time they reached the clubhouse, they still hadn’t picked up any demonic markings, any signs that an unwelcomed scourge had crept into this space. Colin turned around to face Luca and asked him, “Should we keep going? It may be long gone by now. That other hunter should have at least followed it.”

Luca nodded but wasn’t ready to call off the hunt. He suggested they finish walking the length of the golf course, then double back on the other side, just in case it was hiding amid the trees along the edge. If it were anywhere on this course, though, it wasn’t alone, because the hunters should have been able to sense it. If Jeremy was still here, then his archdemon was still with him and hiding his presence.

They resumed their search, but they hadn’t been walking long when a golf cart buzzed behind them and slowed down. Colin had a feeling he was about to be incredibly irritated; Anna tried not to laugh at him.

Luca and Andrew had stopped walking so Colin and Anna turned around to watch the exchange with the golf course marshal. He wanted to know why the five strangers were walking around the golf course, and really, Anna couldn’t blame him. Luca was offering what she thought was a pretty lame excuse about searching for a lost dog. Dylan was getting bored and wandered off toward the trees. The man in the embroidered golf shirt didn’t sound convinced by Luca’s explanation and was trying to explain patiently that they were on private property.

“
We could get around faster if we steal that golf court,”
Colin suggested.

Anna smiled as she estimated the number of people who would fit on it. “
I don’t think it would hold us all. This one’s too small. They don’t seem to go very fast anyway.”

“No, but I’ve always wanted to drive one.”

“Why? They’re terribly slow.”

Colin shrugged. “
Never driven one. It’s like a toy car.”

Anna gave stealing the golf cart some serious thought. It probably would be a hell of a lot more fun than walking around the perimeter of the course hoping to pick up some invisible aura or waiting to get attacked by something they could neither see nor feel. But Dylan interrupted them before Anna could decide if it would be worth trying to escape the cops once they did it. “Hey, O’Conners, snap out of it. I think our dog is out there in those trees.” Dylan pointed to a patch of trees ahead of them.

None of them could
feel
it, but Dylan had seen something moving and he was certain it was the “dog” they were looking for. Luca looked away from the golf course marshal he’d been arguing with and studied the patch of trees. “We’ll be out of here in a few minutes. This dog is a biter. You don’t want him around your club members anyway.”

He didn’t wait for the employee to answer. He and Andrew walked away from him and they headed toward the trees in the distance where Dylan had seen the hulking gray beast they had come to hunt. Apparently, the employee didn’t want to risk getting bitten by their imaginary dog. He watched them as they disappeared into the line of trees but didn’t stop them.

Colin and Anna stayed between Dylan and Luca as they stepped over branches and dodged pocked white balls that had been hit way out of bounds. Anna was about to stop to pick one up simply because someone had stenciled his or her initials onto the side with a black marker and she thought it would make a good memento of their time in Boulder when a sudden rushing wind behind them made them all stop. They spun around just as Andrew was thrown into a tree in a vortex of leaves and twigs and his body crumbled to the ground.

Anna heard herself screaming his name, at least she thought it was her voice, but the fear and panic and concern that had overwhelmed her made it impossible for actual sounds in the woods around her to register in her brain. She felt something creeping around her, surrounding her, enveloping her, but she didn’t fight it: this presence was not demonic. She slowly realized it was Colin. She had no idea how he was doing it, but he was pulling the energy around her like a shield. But it left him defenseless. Anna had just recognized Colin was powerless now when he was thrown into the thick growth of trees as well. Anna twisted on her heels to watch his body as it flew through the air. He didn’t collide with the trunk of a tree but hit one of the lower branches and fell.

She ran to his side but she knew he was still conscious; she could still feel his thoughts and, somehow, he’d kept this force around her. She was dimly aware that she had left Luca and Dylan alone now, but
Colin
was on the ground. He was hurting even though he was immortal. Neither a tree nor a fall could kill him. But this demon could. She had almost reached him when it attacked him again and his body skidded across the ground into the base of a tree. Behind her, she heard Luca shouting. Andrew had been attacked again as well. This time, these archdemons hadn’t come alone.

Colin groaned as he tried to sit up but the demon wouldn’t let him; it was suffocating him again, just as it had in the parking lot outside of the restaurant. Anna didn’t have a chance to warn Luca or Dylan to get down. Her fear and anger welled up within her and burst forward, and like the gusts of a hurricane, the thinner trees snapped under the force of the winds that burst from her. She could see the edge of the fairway from where she was standing and it was littered with the debris of the woods. Anna reached Colin’s side and helped him sit up. She had the same impulsive habit he did: even though she knew every thought in his mind, she knelt by him anyway and ran her fingers over his arms and behind his neck, and when she’d satisfied herself that he wasn’t mortally wounded there, she tried lifting his shirt but he stopped her. “Anna, we’re not alone, and I’m ok.”

“You’re not ok, you’re in pain. Let me see your back.”

Colin smiled at her but shook his head. “When we get home. How’s Andrew?”

Anna only then realized he hadn’t dropped this shield he’d been holding around her. “How are you doing that?”

Colin shrugged one shoulder and Anna resisted the urge to pull his shirt off to see what was wrong with the other one. “Desperate times and all that.”

Anna stood up and helped him to his feet then they found Luca and Dylan still kneeling by Andrew’s body. “Oh God,” Anna breathed.

Luca looked back at her. “Don’t worry, my sweet girl, he’s not dead. He’s too tough to let these bastards kill him
that
easily. Just hurt. He’ll be fine by tomorrow.” Luca looked Colin over quickly. “You fared better.”

“I have a pretty badass wife.”

Luca nodded, looking far too serious about it. Anna sat on the ground by Andrew’s head and his pale blue-gray eyes watched her. “It never touched you. After yesterday, I expected these demons to target you first.”

Anna glanced up at her husband who still wouldn’t let down this shield he’d erected around her. “I don’t know how he’s doing it. Neither does he actually. He’s using this … telekinesis thing to move the energy around me so they can’t touch me.”

Andrew’s eyes widened and he winced as he tried to sit up. Luca and Dylan helped him. “
I should definitely go steal that golf cart now so we can get Andrew out of here,”
Anna thought.

Colin just nodded sagely, but if anyone else had heard their conversation, they wouldn’t have been able to take Colin so seriously. “
I still get to drive it.”

Andrew was sitting now and he fixed those pale blue–gray eyes on Colin. “I’ve never even heard of that. What made you think to try something like it?”

Colin raised an eyebrow at him. “My wife was in danger.”