Devil's Thumb (7 page)

Chapter 10

Dylan finished off his Mephistopheles’ beer. After reliving that memory, Anna was reconsidering her earlier rejection of it. Max was tapping his fingers against the bottle again. He looked between Colin and Anna and inhaled slowly. “So you kind of
do
have a guardian angel.”

“Not exactly,” Colin clarified, “we have an angel who made a deal with us, and we found ourselves in an impossible situation. She got us out of it because finding hunters who are willing to commit to this job long-term is difficult. And she didn’t have to break any rules to do it. Lesser demons are naturally afraid of an angel’s presence and will run from it. If there had been greater demons in Srebrenica, she couldn’t have saved us like that.”

“What part of that experience makes you want to keep it secret?” Dylan asked.

Anna shuddered again at the memories. “Everything we saw there, Dylan. In Sarajevo, in Srebrenica, in Kosovo. You can’t even begin to imagine what kinds of things people will do to other humans.”

Dylan thought about it for a few moments then agreed with her. “I went to college. I studied history and all that, but I guess you’re right. Seeing it in pictures and seeing it in person can’t ever compare.”

“So do you think all of these dreams you’ve been having with the encounters with multiple demons have anything to do with what’s going on now?” Max asked. He got brave and took another sip from his black beer but still grimaced as it hit his taste buds.

“It does seem to be a pattern, but I don’t know what it can mean,” Colin answered. He’d already finished his beer and tossed the empty bottle into the trashcan.

Dylan eyed him playfully. “Damn Irish. You must have some sort of malt beverage gene.”

Colin smirked, “True, it’s one of our better traits.”

Anna rolled her eyes at him because she didn’t think Colin had any bad traits. Unless she counted his self-deprecating humor, which wasn’t always meant as jokes. “We were talking about those dreams right before I was abducted. This all has to be connected somehow, and if Colin was having those dreams, too, then this demon is getting inside his head as well.”

The room was quiet except for the humming of the air conditioning. Protecting their bodies in a fight was one thing; having to protect their
minds
while they were asleep scared the hell out of all of the hunters.

“There’s no way to stop them,” Max sighed. “From getting in our heads, I mean. What will it do to you? Or us if they come after us, too?”

Anna eyed the Demon’s Ale again. It was looking better and better. “When I was in that camp in the woods, it was trying to wear me down. Get me to go crazy because psychological torture can be just as brutal as physical torture. And once they’ve got you willing to do anything to get them to stop the mind games, you might just give them your soul.”

Dylan hissed a quick seething breath. “No way. No amount of nightmares are going to get me to sell my soul.”

But Colin didn’t share his conviction. “Maybe it would be better if you both went back to Baton Rouge. If they are just after Anna and me, they may leave you alone if …”

Dylan wouldn’t let him finish. “Look, we’re still a team. And Jeremy put you two in charge before he died. Or sort of died. So I’m staying in Boulder and if you go to Tijuana, I’m going to Mexico with you. We’re finding and destroying these bastards together. That’s what your angel said to do, right?”

Dylan’s dark eyes had lost much of the anger and betrayal that had been such a regular feature lately. He was a hunter, after all, and his allegiance to those who fought with him overruled his desire to hold grudges. Max nodded along with Dylan. “I’m not leaving either. This isn’t just about Jeremy, but we committed to fighting demons years ago, and
this
isn’t a battle any respectable hunter could walk away from. Besides, I like you guys.”

Anna smiled at him. “You have a wife and kids and a job. How are you going to get away with spending so much time here?”

Max shrugged a shoulder at her. “My wife is understanding, and my boss is not. I have two weeks off. We’ll see what needs to be done then.”

“I hate my job anyway,” Dylan added.

“
This is far more personal for Dylan than just avenging Jeremy’s transformation. He lost Jas, too, because of these archdemons who are after us. If he needs to do this, don’t argue with him
,” Anna cautioned. But Colin agreed with her anyway. Anna had survived, but this had still become personal. They had taken his wife from him. They had forced her to believe he was being tortured and she had spent twelve long hours believing days had passed while he was trapped in that Hell and she had prayed for death. Those demons wouldn’t escape his retribution.

But as night fell and Dylan and Max left for their own hotel, Colin and Anna found themselves fearing something they couldn’t escape. They would have to sleep sometime and they were defenseless in their dreams. Colin had spent so much of the night before lying awake next to Anna, scared that he would become disconnected from her again, so as Anna switched off the lights and began flipping through the channels on the television, he felt his eyes closing against his will. He’d wanted to stay awake for her and watch her again, but even with immortality, physical needs still won out.

And it didn’t take long for him to dream. He and Anna walked through the front door of their flat in London, but this was a different London. Factories had emerged along the waterways around the city, and steam power had transformed life here. But Colin and Anna had returned to London not because of their fascination with these new innovations, but because of the destitution their existence created.

Anna and Colin didn’t remember London as a clean or uncrowded city, but it had been nothing like this. The slums of the city were overfilled with poor tenants who had little to eat, who were overcome with epidemics from the rampant filth, whose children worked alongside them with dangerous and sometimes deadly equipment. London had become a miserable city. 

Seeing the children on the streets, shoeless and dirty and underfed, tired from being overworked and occasionally, missing a limb from the demands of their labor, was agonizing for Anna. She had begged Colin to go somewhere else, to pick another city, to find some other place where they could do their jobs without causing her quite so much pain. Colin had come so close to giving in, to packing their things and taking Anna anywhere she wanted to go. Nothing hurt Colin more than knowing Anna was unhappy. But they were often directed as to where they needed to be through the dreams they would occasionally share, and both Anna and Colin had dreamed about coming to London. They knew The Angel wanted them here.

So they stayed in the city with the children whose privations were breaking Anna’s heart. And day after day, she would load a bag full of bread and take it to the nearby slum where hundreds of families who worked at two of the nearby factories lived. She couldn’t feed them all, but they came to expect her visits, and Colin would help her as she handed out the bag full of bread, loaf by loaf to the starving children who excitedly ran home to share it with their families. And every night as they returned back to their flat, Anna would cry.

They had just gotten back from one of those trips to distribute the bread Anna had spent most of the day baking. Anna tossed her empty bag onto the table and tried to stifle her sobs because she knew it upset him, but Colin would have known she was crying even if he hadn’t heard her. He put his arms around her and hugged her tightly to his chest, kissing the top of her head and wishing he could promise her what he knew she wanted: that they could go back to that neighborhood and take every child back home with them, that none of them would go to bed hungry again. None of them would have to wake far too early to work fourteen-hour days in a factory making textiles to enrich a few men.

But that was impossible, of course, and she couldn’t cry for them all night. They still had to go hunting. Their days were long here, too. Anna gave herself a few minutes to feel the aching sorrow of those small lives being wasted on the factory floors then wiped her eyes and stood taller, just as she did every night. She wouldn’t let Colin down nor would she let The Angel down. Colin thought his wife was the strongest person he had ever known.

They waited until midnight before slipping back into the slum where they’d just handed out bread a few hours before. Demons feasted on desperation. It never took them long to find one trying to prey on someone here. This night was no exception. As they crept along the shadows in the narrow dirty streets, they saw a wolf prowling at the stairs of a flat at the end of the street. Only they were almost sure this wolf was the color of juniper and they were far more sure it reeked of rotten meat and sour mulch.

Anna recognized the flat as one a small child, not more than five or six years old, had run into earlier, his small thin hands clasping the loaf of bread she’d just handed him. “
Anna, there are probably a half dozen families in that flat alone. What would it want with a child?”

Colin was trying to reassure her, but Anna could only think of the child. “
We need to get its attention. Get it away from there. Get it to chase us.”

The wolf hadn’t sensed them yet. It was sniffing at the door like it was an actual canine. Colin’s fingers tightened around his dagger. “
It’ll sense us when we get closer. It’ll follow us.”

“Hurry then
,
”
Anna begged. Colin picked up his pace and Anna had to jog to keep up with his longer legs, but she was anxious to get the wolf away from the child she knew was inside that flat. There were probably multiple children in there, as most of these buildings were teeming with destitute families. As they neared the juniper wolf, it looked up from the doorway and saw them, snarling and revealing the unearthly fangs that protruded from its narrow mouth.

A low growl emanated from its throat but it didn’t run. It didn’t chase them. Colin and Anna stopped to study the demon that wasn’t behaving like it should. “
There’s something on the stairway. That’s what it was doing. Oh God, Colin, it must be a person.”

Colin could only agree with her. “
We kill it. Even if it’s already claimed its victim, we still have to kill it or it will only take more.”

But they hadn’t stopped because they were worried there was a dead person lying on the steps to the flat; they had stopped because the person must still be alive or the demon would have run. The person had only lost a soul. They approached it carefully and its solid black eyes watched them, vacillating between them, trying to decide which hunter to attack first. Demons normally chose Anna, thinking she was smaller and would be weaker. They had no way of knowing The Angel had made sure she was just as strong and fast as Colin.

But this demon was full of surprises. It sprang at Colin whose dagger sliced through the beast’s stomach and a dark green mist poured out. That was expected; it would die soon as its energy emptied from its body. Anna thrust her dagger into its side and more of that green mist seeped out. She stepped around the beast to check on the person lying motionless on the stairs. It was only a child. Anna’s heart beat against her ribs as she took in the frail form of the child, an older child than the one she’d met earlier, but Anna felt her limbs weakening as she studied the boy who was only dimly aware she was near him.

She didn’t have time to talk to him. Colin was beginning to panic.
“Anna! This mist it’s transforming! It’s like …
babies!”

Anna turned quickly to look at the vaporous green cloud on the sidewalk beside them. It wasn’t dissipating; they hadn’t killed this demon. The cloud was breaking apart, forming smaller demons that shifted into the shape of wolves, each the same juniper green with round glassy black eyes. Anna and Colin backed away from the wolf pack, the low rumbling in their throats echoing off the buildings in this narrow street.

Colin pulled his knife from the sheath in his belt, assuming the weapon hadn’t been the right one to kill this demon. They were picky like that. He was about to slice through the nearest wolf’s muzzle when the London street blinked and he was standing alone in a vast field, vacant except for the short yellow-green grass beneath his feet. He turned in a slow circle and called Anna’s name, but she wasn’t with him. And he couldn’t feel her.

Above him, the pale blue sky was just as empty as the field and his mind. No clouds or sun or moon yet there was light. He couldn’t tell where the light was coming from.

“Anna!” he called, even though he couldn’t see her or feel her and he
knew
she wasn’t near. He had no existence without her. She couldn’t disappear from him. They had been promised.

She didn’t respond. There was no answer. No breeze or insects or mice in the field replied because there was nothing in this world. Nothing but crisp grass that stretched on to the horizon in endless miles and in endless directions. He already knew he would find more nothingness if he walked but there was no point in standing still either. So he walked.

He couldn’t be sure how long he walked or how far. It seemed like hours or days but there were no days in this painted world that never changed. Distantly, he heard a sound, a pleasant noise that called to him, awakened his silent mind with the beautiful murmuring that something was near that he’d lost. Something was calling for him. Gradually, he realized
someone
was calling his name. Not someone.
The
one. The woman who shared his soul.