Free Garden of the Gods (The Immortals Series Book 3) by S.M. Schmitz Page A

significant about that green demon though? We were told to remember it and now Amanda’s having dreams about it.”
    “Maybe it has something to do with the markings?” Dylan guessed.
    Anna and Colin wondered about that, too, but since killing that demon in Berlin, they’d only encountered one other demon with similar markings and still considered those demons a rarity.
    “Luca, have you figured anything out about these demons?” Anna asked.
    Luca stared into his empty coffee cup then glanced up at Anna hopefully. She shook her head at him. “You know where the kitchen is. What century do you think we’re in now?”
    Luca offered her a crooked smile. Even in the seventeenth century, he had treated Anna like an equal; he just liked messing with her, and she just reciprocated. “I’ve seen those demons most often in southeast Europe for some reason. Just like the first one. They all have those same markings, same pattern and everything. We know they’re working for the same boss, but I’m not sure what else that tells us.”
    “That boss is most likely one of the fallen angels trying to kill us now, but yeah, unless we can figure out who it is, maybe not as helpful as we’d hoped,” Colin agreed.
    “Draw these markings for me,” Dylan said. “I haven’t seen them.”
    Colin found a pad of paper and tossed it to Luca who traced the markings down the demons’ backs, careful to keep them in the same order they appeared. Then all of the hunters gathered around Luca’s drawing and studied the sketches, which still didn’t resemble anything concrete. Andrew squinted at the drawings. Colin and Anna watched Andrew. He was suddenly far more interesting than Luca’s drawings on the notepad, because they suspected Andrew had grasped something each of them had missed.
    “Wait,” Andrew said, grabbing the notepad and turning it upside down. “They’re fairly abstract, but what if these are a locust, a scorpion’s tail, a crown, a lion’s tooth, and an iron breastplate?”
    Andrew looked up from the notepad because he knew the effect his words would have on the hunters.
    Luca looked at his sketches again then inhaled sharply.
    “Holy shit,” he muttered.
    Dylan looked between them, confused as to the sudden fear that had settled over the room. “What? Why are those things so scary?”
    Colin forced himself to look away from the drawings, not wanting to believe Andrew was right, but now that he’d pointed out the possibility, he couldn’t not see the markings for what they were.
    “Because,” Colin answered, “those are the marks of Abaddon. We may be fighting the Devil himself.”

Chapter 9
     
     
    Ironically, none of the hunters owned a Bible and they had to go to a nearby bookstore to buy one so they could show Dylan the passage from Revelations that talked about Adaddon. They could have looked it up online, but the Immortals had lived a long time: they still didn’t trust most of what was on the Internet.
    Dylan finished reading the passage then looked up at Colin and shrugged. “This never identifies him as Satan or Lucifer or any other Devil nickname.”
    “No,” Colin agreed, “but some sects have theorized it may be the same fallen angel based on the way it’s described. In Greek myth and in Hebrew myth, this name is associated with a bottomless pit, and in Christianity, it’s an angel of destruction that opens that bottomless pit and allows misery to descend upon men who haven’t been marked by God.”
    “Of course,” Luca countered, “a few extreme Christian sects have insisted its even Jesus himself after his resurrection.”
    Dylan rolled his eyes and slammed the Bible closed. “This is why this book does more harm than good. It doesn’t even make sense.”
    “Parts of it do. We have to remember the entire thing was written by men, but we can’t discount that some of those men may have been blessed with more knowledge of the supernatural than the average person,” Colin