The Immortals: The Immortals Series, #1

By S. M. Schmitz

When demons refuse to play by the rules, all Hell will break loose.

Colin and Anna are sent to Baton Rouge by the Angel with only one directive: keep their past a secret, including their relationship. Believing their new mission would be short-lived, Colin agrees, but as the months pass and the demons they've grown accustomed to fighting defy every rule of war between Heaven and Hell, it seems more and more likely that the city has nothing to do with the unusual behavior of these demons and everything to do with this couple.

Connected by a gift from the Angel, Colin and Anna have long shared a bond she promised was unbreakable, but when Anna disappears from him, Colin will discover that the demons he'd agreed to fight on behalf of Heaven are far from the most terrifying creatures to walk the Earth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: S. M. Schmitz
• Release date: Oct 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536522181

Book preview

Prologue

Colin turned the key to open his apartment door and froze when he saw her sitting on the sofa, her pale hands folded neatly in her lap. She lifted her eyes and smiled weakly at him, but instead of hurrying in to greet her, he remained frozen in the open doorway.

Behind him, Anna asked, What is it?

The Angel… he breathed.

She’s here? Anna stepped around him then froze, too.

Angel, she whispered. What…?

But neither of them could ask her what was so wrong.

Please, she said, lifting one of her delicate hands to gesture toward the other end of the sofa. I need to ask you to do something for me.

The spell broke over Anna first. She hurried inside and sat next to The Angel, clasping her hands over the celestial creature they’d known for so long. Anything, she promised.

But this… The Angel paused and blinked at Colin. "This is so close to breaking our deal. I would never ask this of you if it weren’t necessary."

You won’t separate us, Colin insisted. "You did promise."

Yes, The Angel agreed. I did. And you’ll still be together. Sort of. But for the duration of your next mission, you have to pretend like you don’t know each other.

Anna shook her head as if The Angel were playing some sort of prank on them. But they both knew better. She never lied, and she never played games.

Why? Anna asked.

The Angel caressed Anna’s cheek and smiled at her. My Anna, when I can tell you, I will. For now, have faith in me.

Always, she whispered.

Colin, The Angel sighed. Please don’t be angry with me.

I’m not, he insisted then he sighed, too. Of course we trust you. And we’ll go wherever you tell us.

Hopefully, it won’t be long, The Angel promised them. I need you in Baton Rouge. Leave tonight. I’ll come to you when it’s time for you to move on.

Colin and Anna glanced at one another before turning back to The Angel to tell her they would do exactly as she asked, but she was already gone.

Chapter 1

Three Months Later

Black heat flew past Anna’s head, and she jerked away from it before it could touch her. She turned to watch it. The black mist had dispersed but it was regrouping, pulling itself together, tumbling in on itself and it wouldn’t be long before it was ready to come for her again. She swallowed the bile that had risen in her throat and tried to search for him. He was nearby. What was taking him so long? The black mass shot forward, and she resisted the urge to scream. It didn’t matter how many times she found herself in a situation like this: demons scared the hell out of her.

Anna felt him getting closer and as the black light neared her, so close she could feel the heat from its body again, Colin stepped into its path, his dagger drawn, and sliced through the black, pulsing form. It let out a wailing shriek, the kind of noise that always made the hair on her arms stand up. But she scrambled across the forest floor to find the dagger it had knocked out of her hand.

It was hurt, but demons were too stubborn to die easily, and they always had to be such a pain in the ass about it. They also couldn’t be killed the same way, which meant hunters like Anna and Colin had to carry all sorts of weapons around with them. Hell probably thought it was funny.

Anna found her dagger by the roots of a tree and hurried back to Colin. The demon had retreated a safe distance, licking its wounds—it may have literally tried if it’d had a tongue.

"Where are the others?" Anna asked Colin.

"Coming. Don’t move yet. It’ll try to run," he answered.

If the other hunters had been around them, they wouldn’t have heard their conversation though. A unique gift from The Angel, their telepathy had bound them to each other’s thoughts and emotions for so long that sometimes, Anna could no longer tell what thoughts were hers and which had been Colin’s.

And Anna didn’t want to let this demon go. It had come so close to hurting her earlier—it had made her drop her weapon. Few things could be more dangerous than losing the blade that could kill a pissed off demon.

"It’s hurt. If it runs, we’ll chase it down. You don’t know how close it got to me."

Colin was quiet for a few seconds as he forced his anger to recede. "Then I guess it needs to die."

Anna and Colin ran toward the demon, trying to flank the pulsing black beast back toward the group of other hunters. But Anna was able to reach it first and thrust her dagger into its body. It hadn’t looked particularly solid, but she knew better. Some of these bastards were like trying to spear a tortoise. The edge of her dagger found a weak spot and the demon made that same grating, squealing sound.

Colin’s dagger pushed into its other side and the hot black haze settled lower to the ground, hissing, snake-like, writhing in its death throes. Anna and Colin stabbed at it again and again. It was on the ground now, but demons really don’t like to die. Anna could feel the heat evaporating off of its body though—it wouldn’t be long.

"One more," she told Colin.

He gripped his dagger and plunged it into the motionless mass.

Anna sat back from it, panting, resting her head between her knees. She’d been chasing after this demon for over an hour, and she was sore and exhausted and really needed a drink. They could hear the others now, trying to walk as noiselessly through the dense forest as possible. They weren’t far so Colin and Anna started speaking aloud.

You all right? he asked her, just the faintest hint of an Irish accent still lingering in his speech, no matter how hard he tried to get rid of it altogether. Anna actually missed the way he used to speak.

She nodded but kept her head down. He knew she was ok, but he always asked her anyway. A faint rustling in the dead leaves on the ground snapped Anna’s head up. It was human: she knew that because she could feel that too, but after today, her nerves were shot. One of their fellow hunters stepped out from the shadows.

Holy shit, what the hell happened here? Jeremy asked.

Colin shot him a God-you’re-such-an-idiot glare, but Anna pretended not to notice. She thought Jeremy looked a bit like a young Bradley Cooper with auburn hair and a persistent five o’clock shadow that she suspected he actually kept carefully groomed. He was an attractive young man who’d never hidden his own attraction to her.

She glanced over at Colin who was still scowling at Jeremy. Even now, tired and angry and still unable to get over that lingering fear that this demon had come so close to her, Anna thought he was beautiful. His light brown hair bore the signs of having chased a sort-of immortal creature through an overgrown forest, with pieces of leaves still sticking stubbornly to those soft, silky strands. His emerald green eyes—those eyes that had once captivated her when she was a girl, so impossibly luminescent—were unlike anything she had ever seen. His long body was folded much like hers in that breathless, exhausted kind of way. And he knew she was watching him now.

Anna looked away and finally answered Jeremy. This beast just came out of nowhere. We were at the rear with the rest of the group going after that smaller demon when it separated us from the rest of you. What happened with the other one?

Jeremy knelt down and examined what was left of the throbbing black blob that was so terrifyingly fast and hot, menacing and evil only moments ago. "We got the other one, but this… I’ve never seen anything like this. What is it?"

Colin exhaled and Anna couldn’t help herself. She examined his soft pink lips against his smooth, pale, Irish complexion. Why did he always have to be so beautiful?

They manifest in all sorts of ways, Jeremy. This one’s just harder to kill. Less tangible, he said. He was tired and his head was starting to hurt. Anna could feel all that, too. The accent he hated so much was always harder to hide when he got this exhausted. But everyone knew better than to mention it.

Jeremy found a stick lying nearby and poked at the demon’s body. Anna flinched, half expecting it to come back to life, to swarm around her head again, to feel that sickening suffocating heat and stench of decay and death.

Colin stood up. Come on, Anna. You need some rest.

Hey, wait a minute, what am I supposed to do with this thing? Jeremy protested.

Colin stepped over it and helped Anna stand. When he touched her hand, she could still feel the tingling tickling sensation as it shot through her skin, just as it did when she was a girl.

You’re the boss here, Colin shot back. I’m sure you’ll figure something out. And he led Anna out of the forest and back to civilization.

Colin was quiet for so long in the car, Anna almost fell asleep. It was night now, and passing the streetlights and electric signs from the buildings as they drove toward her apartment was hypnotic. She closed her eyes.

What were you doing back there? Colin asked, his voice so sweet, so melodic, so normal around her.

Anna forced herself to open her eyes. When? she asked, but she knew exactly what he was talking about.

Anna… Her name was just a breath.

Anna yawned and cut him off. Take me home, Colin. She didn’t want to have this argument again. She wanted a bath and a pizza and a beer and her bed. Except her bed would be empty. Ok, maybe not her bed.

"Don’t be mad at me. We have to be careful…"

I know, Colin, Anna snapped. She felt bad about snapping at him, but neither of them had expected to be in Baton Rouge this long. Three months of pretending they’d only just met; three months of pretending they were anything other than colleagues. And they were both painfully aware that The Angel’s secrecy over their presence here might mean it could continue for quite some time.

Colin found a parking spot in front of her building and offered to walk her up to her apartment, but Anna shook her head. She didn’t want to take her anger out on him again. It was no more his fault than it was hers. But the only one they could take their anger out on was nowhere around, and they couldn’t hunt her down.

Anna offered a sheepish apology then told Colin to go home. She stomped up the stairs—and probably pissed off quite a few neighbors—then slammed her door behind her and when she couldn’t possibly think of anything else to stomp on or slam, she finally just let herself cry.

Chapter 2

Colin drove home alone, still fully aware of the heartbreak tormenting Anna, the pain and longing and loneliness. He hated himself for that even though they’d both agreed to come here. But she was hurting, and he’d dedicated his life to her: to her happiness, to her safety, to her and her alone. His apartment was only six blocks away, but he didn’t bother stomping up the stairs or slamming his door. He despised this apartment and everything in it and couldn’t wait to leave this city and this job. It had been the longest three months of his life, too.

As soon as he got home, he grabbed his tablet and dropped onto his couch to update his notes. The demon from the woods had been a little unusual, just like everything else about this city. There had been nothing odd about it while it had been trying to kill Anna and him. It was what was left of the demon on the forest floor that troubled him. Usually, demons dissipated or crumbled into a fine powdery dust. They rarely left something so tangible behind.

After describing their hunt, the death of the monster, its bulbous body that should have evaporated, Colin tried to look up information on it but found nothing. That always seemed to happen here. Whatever was going on in Baton Rouge, Louisiana had apparently never occurred anywhere else. He and Anna both suspected that was why The Angel had asked them to come here, but why were these demons so different?

It’s not like she was returning any time soon to answer that question for him, so he switched off his tablet and went to bed. Alone. Again.

The next morning, he drove downtown to a nondescript, boring brown brick building that housed the headquarters for the hunters. Aside from him and Anna, there were nine others here, nine men and women who lived in this city and seemed just as perplexed by the number of demons suddenly congregating in this city.

The interior of the building was just as unassuming as the exterior. Jeremy, as the leader of the group, had his own office, but everyone else had to share a common room that had an oblong table on one side and two vending machines for snacks and sodas on the other. An old grass green sofa lined the wall opposite the vending machines, and a few equally old armchairs completed the ancient doctor’s office waiting room look.

Since most hunters had day jobs, the building was usually either empty or only Jeremy would be here, digging through notes and files in the same confused, frenzied haste to determine what was going on in his city as the rest of them.

And recruiting help was out of the question: very few people could hunt nearly immortal creatures of Hell. Some humans had the ability to see them, and if they could see them, they could kill them. But convincing a person to get involved in tracking down and killing demons for the sake of humans everywhere was even more difficult than finding those rare people in the first place.

He knocked on Jeremy’s door even though Jeremy was usually the last person he ever wanted to talk to. The guy wasn’t a bad guy but he was irritating and arrogant… oh, hell, Colin hated him because he was always hitting on Anna.

You got anything new? Colin asked as Jeremy glanced up from the computer on his desk.

Unfortunately. Jeremy turned his laptop around to face Colin so he sat down to read the screen. It was the front page of The Advocate and the headline was describing a body that had been found recently. The woman bore the signature marks of being murdered by a demon.

By the description, it’s one of Alastor’s. They leave those scratch marks near the ribs, Colin observed. He’d been doing this a long time, and he was quick to catch those little things that others like Jeremy often missed.

Huh, yeah, that’s what I was thinking, Jeremy agreed.

Colin knew he was full of shit.

We can draw it out. We should go tonight, Colin suggested.

Demons usually killed after tempting a person into giving them their soul, but to kill a hunter was just a prize for them, one that Colin had long suspected earned them quite a few rounds at the beer hall in one of those circles of Hell. Assuming they had beer in Hell. It was probably hot beer. Or Zima.

You trying to get my job, O’Conner? Jeremy was joking, but Colin didn’t think he was funny. He didn’t think Jeremy was ever funny.

Why not? He’d be good at it, she said.

That voice. It always sent ripples down his spine. She thought her voice was a little too high pitched, but she had always been too critical of herself. Her voice, like everything else about her, was angelic, heavenly, perfection. The first time he saw her, a poor sixteen-year-old Irish immigrant, he thought she was an angel. He always worried that sooner or later, one of the hunters would see through him,