Free The Immortals by S. M. Schmitz Page A

and manners, but Colin couldn’t care less about his bad behavior. Anna had disappeared. She had disappeared from him .
    Dylan didn’t expect Colin to talk on the drive to the church; Colin wasn’t sure he had much more to say right now anyway. As expected, the parking lot was completely empty and the church was dark. It was almost 10:00 p.m. on a weeknight. Why would anyone be here? Dylan parked near the front doors and Colin walked to the handles, tugging on them, but they were locked as he’d anticipated. It didn’t matter. He’d wait.
    Dylan caught up to him and stuffed his hands in his pockets, leaning against the dark bricks of the church’s exterior. “Waiting on divine intervention to unlock these doors for you?”
    Colin glanced at him then leaned against the wall himself. “Something like that.” He could hear the accent in his voice growing thicker. He was too tired and too scared to try to fight it tonight.
    “You don’t have to wait, Dylan. You can go back home. I’ll be alright.”
    Dylan raised an eyebrow at him again, as if to ask him if he’d lost his mind after the shock of losing Anna today, and he didn’t move. Colin just shrugged. “Suit yourself then. But this could take a while. Angels work on their own schedules, not ours.”
    Dylan stood up straighter and studied Colin carefully, perhaps evaluating him to see if he were, in fact, crazy. “You’re waiting on an … angel.”
    Colin studied him just as carefully. “You kill demons. How can you believe in one and not the other?”
    “Because I’ve seen one and not the other. If angels exist, where the hell are they and why aren’t they helping us not get our asses kicked? Or killed?” Dylan was still pissed off about Jas’s death. Colin couldn’t blame him. He was pretty damn pissed off himself right now.
    “It doesn’t work that way. It never has. Angels can’t kill, not even something evil. It would cause them to fall and that’s the last thing we need, more of these bastards. And fallen angels become the hardest demons to kill, worse than these archdemons who are after us now.”
    “Yeah,” Dylan interrupted, “I’ve heard all of this Biblical nonsense. But it doesn’t explain why they can’t help us .”
    “What makes you think they aren’t?” Colin asked, and this time, he wasn’t being a smartass. It was a genuine question.
    “Well, I’m not telepathic,” Dylan grumbled.
    “You think angels or Heaven owe us something? We’re not selected, you know. Our ability to see demons and kill them is random. We can choose to fight them or not. Those of us who do fight them do it because we want to protect even those humans who are stupid enough to be suckered into bartering their souls. But look around you. How many churches did we drive by on our way to this one? Salvation is everywhere. Hell’s the one with the cards stacked against them.”
    Dylan crossed his arms and kept eyeing Colin, who sighed and put his head back against the bricks. He knew Dylan was about to try to have a theological debate and he was far too exhausted and stressed for it tonight. “But you asked me to take you to a Catholic Church. Are you saying that’s the right religion?”
    Colin snickered. “There’s no such thing. I’m Irish. I was raised Catholic, that’s all.”
    “Bullshit. They can’t all be right. Some of them flat out contradict each other.”
    Colin shrugged and wished this angel would hurry the hell up. “Most religions have contradictions within themselves. So what? Religions were made by men, not God.”
    “Well, does it have to be a Christian faith?” Dylan asked.
    Colin shrugged again. He’d never been told one way or the other. There were some things he just chose to accept still on faith.
    Dylan wasn’t satisfied by Colin’s noncommittal answers and kept pressing for more specific information, but Colin had grown tired of this conversation. Actually, he was getting tired of standing, too. He sat down and