Devil's Thumb by S. M. Schmitz Read Free Book Online Page A

every new trend for her over the centuries because she loved to dance, and Colin would have mastered the samba if it made her happy.
    Lacey stopped and looked back toward the road where their cars were parked. “I can’t see the cars from here. We should be far enough away from any passing motorists.”
    “Yeah, but what about us?” Dylan asked. He and Max had been hit by this burst of energy before, and they weren’t immortal like Luca.
    But Lacey just shrugged it off. “We’ll stand back a ways. Luca was right next to Colin last night, and he was fine.”
    Anna shot Luca a this-is-what-you-get-for-lying scowl. “I probably got lucky. We’d better give them plenty of space, just to be safe.”
    “ Next time, kick him harder.” Colin scowled at Luca, too. He was pretty sure the only reason he wasn’t telling Lacey the truth was that he figured she’d freak out and refuse to sleep with him again if she knew he was over six hundred years old.
    As the other hunters walked away from them, Colin set several plastic buckets on the ground fifty feet in front of where Anna and he would try to knock only one of them over. He spaced them ten feet apart, and as Anna watched him, she grew more and more nervous.
    “ Colin, I don’t even know how to begin. These other gifts just came naturally to us. Why is this one so much different? Maybe we can’t channel it. Maybe this is it.”
    Colin returned to her side, and squeezed her hand again. “ If so, then we must have been meant to hunt on our own from now on, and that’s not what The Angel told me. She said we’d need help and we should trust some of those hunters in Baton Rouge.”
    “Right. The one who is now a demon and the one who hates us for not killing that demon.”
    Colin chewed on his lip as he thought about that. “ Well, we still have Max. ”
    Anna wasn’t sure if that made her want to laugh or cry. In the distance, they heard Luca yelling, “Come on, get on with it!”
    “ So,” Anna thought, “ thinking of it as a whisper didn’t work. What’s your idea?”
    Colin studied the buckets in front of him. They only wanted to knock down the one in the middle. “Concentration?” he suggested.
    Anna sighed but agreed to try. It’s not like she had a better idea. They focused on the middle bucket, and the tingling warmth spread from their fingers to their chests, a pleasant buzzing inside them. They focused on the bucket for such a long time, Anna’s vision began to blur and she had to blink the white cylinder back into focus. When they released the energy they’d been holding onto, it scattered everywhere, creating a dust storm around them, sending yellow-orange clouds of sand into the air. When it settled to the ground, they were standing in a shallow crater and the buckets were gone.
    Anna and Colin spun around to check on the other hunters, but they had backed far away from them. Luca put his hands to his mouth. “Didn’t work, O’Conners.”
    “ I am so kicking him in the balls next time,” Anna growled.
    Colin turned around again to look for the buckets, but there were only fragments of yellow and white plastic scattered among the sand and dirt of this Colorado landscape. “So … holding it in makes it stronger. I guess we should be faster next time.”
    Anna threw her hands up. “Next time? Our targets are destroyed! What the hell are we going to practice on?”
    Luca had jogged over to them and clucked his tongue at Anna again. “You’re giving up too easily, my sweet girl. I’ll go check the cars for something else you can use.”
    Dylan hadn’t been far behind Luca and he shook his head at Luca’s retreating figure. “This is a waste of our time. We could be doing something to find these bastards, and instead we’re out in the middle of nowhere watching you blow up a bunch of shit.”
    Colin wanted to argue with him, but he had a terrible suspicion Dylan was right. Anna had been watching Luca, and he stopped halfway to the cars