“Because the disease was based on a failed elixir formula.”
Wyatt stared at Stiles. “How do you know that?”
“It’s complicated,” Dylan said, taking Wyatt’s arm and pulling him aside, forcing him to focus on her. “We have to go to these places; we have to find the person who’s doing this.”
“You really think someone created this illness?”
“Yes.”
“And it was a human? How do you know it wasn’t the angels or the gargoyles?” Wyatt’s eyes snapped with anger. “How do we know that they aren’t trying to start the war all over again?”
“Because the angels have been restricted to heaven for millennia, at least the ones who were loyal to Luc,” Stiles said. “And we asked the gargoyles.”
“You asked?” Wyatt rolled his eyes. “Now I feel so much better.”
“Wyatt…”
He shook his head. “This is insane. All of this crap was supposed to be over when you made your choice.”
“I know.”
Dylan tried to take Wyatt’s hand, but he pulled away. He walked to the end of the porch and braced his hands on the railing as a groan slipped from between his lips. She wanted to go to him, but she knew him well enough to know he needed to reconcile all of this in his head before he could accept her consolation.
“Mom?”
Dylan turned and a weight descended on her shoulders as she found herself looking at her daughter.
“Hey, Jo,” she said softly.
“What’s going on?”
Dylan went to her and took her hands. She could hear Josephine’s thoughts and could feel her fear. She wanted to take it away, but she knew that no matter how much healing power she infused in her child, that the fear would never truly disappear. She also knew that this fear was good, and that Josephine could use it as a tool to help her get through this unfolding crisis. So she resisted her instincts.
“Stiles and I are going to search for the source of this disease.”
“What? What do you mean?”
Dylan inclined her head slightly. “We think this is manmade.”
Josephine shook her head. “That’s not possible. That’s something from the old world, not this one.”
“There are a lot of relics from the old world still lying around,” Stiles said, “just sitting there, waiting for people to pick up and use.”
“And you think someone intentionally created an illness to kill people?” Josephine’s eyes widened with horror. “Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know, baby,” Dylan said, stroking her thumbs over Josephine’s hands. “But we’re going to do everything we can to figure this out and to find some sort of treatment.”
“But you have to keep this to yourself, Josephine,” Stiles said. “We don’t want to panic people more than they already are.”
She nodded. “There’s a doctor in one of the northern cities who has developed an antibiotic that Harry thinks he can duplicate here. He should be able to try it in a few days. And we’ve made sure that doctors in other cities are aware of it.”
“Good,” Stiles said.
“When do you leave?”
“Immediately,” Wyatt said, moving up behind Dylan. “We just need to talk to your grandfather first.”
“You’re going too?” Josephine asked, concern dripping from her words.
“We’re a team,” Wyatt said, taking Dylan’s hand. “Where she goes, I go.”
Chapter 13
Stiles watched Dylan. He could see the pain in her face. The thoughts of the people gathered in her house was overwhelming her—their fear, anger, and grief filling her with darkness despite the fact that she wasn’t actively trying to make them feel better. It was just her nature to draw darkness from people despite the fact that it took a toll on her health, both physically and emotionally.
Wyatt didn’t seem to be aware of it. He was too busy interrogating his father, demanding to know where all the labs were located, apparently convinced the old man was holding out on them for some reason.
“Are you sure there are only four locations?” Wyatt asked for the third time.
“Of course,” Jimmy said. “New York, Chicago, Houston, and Midland. That was it.”
“This is really important,” Wyatt said.
“I realize that. I was the leader of the resistance once, Jonathon; I remember what it was like to need to protect my people.”
Wyatt’s face tightened a little at the use of his Christian name. After all these years, Jimmy still refused to call Wyatt by his chosen name. Stiles suspected it had more to do with Jimmy’s connection to Joanna than with his relationship with Wyatt, but Wyatt would never see that.
The things parents and children did to one another without realizing it fascinated him sometimes.
“We need to go,” Stiles said, reaching for Dylan’s hand. He wanted to take some of the building darkness from her, but Wyatt stood between them, blocking him.
“I remember overhearing a conversation about a place in Georgia,” Wyatt said. “Are you sure that isn’t one of the labs they used?”
“For goodness’ sake!”
Stiles strode over to Jimmy, laying his hands on either side of the old man’s head. He searched his memories, sifting through layers and layers, until he found what he was looking for. As he was backing off, Stiles stumbled over a memory that he and the old man shared. A barbecue turned bloody…a child orphaned and left alone to fend for himself.
But Jimmy’s memory wasn’t right. It was twisted by a five-year-old’s perceptions, a five-year-old’s understanding of the world around him.
Jimmy thought Luc had killed his mother.
Stiles stared at him, his hands still on the sides of his head, but cradling now rather than pressing. More lies. More misunderstandings. Luc had done many things during his crusade against the humans. But killing Jimmy’s mother wasn’t one of his many sins.
That was Stiles’ sin.
Stiles closed his eyes, the memory so close to the surface, as it often was.
Stiles led the charge, morphing into a form that made him look like a generic angel with red wings unfurling behind him. As others around him began throwing fireballs onto the ground, most of them never coming close to the humans and angels standing on the well-manicured lawns, Stiles drew his angel sword out of that realm between this world and the next.
At first, the humans—and the angels disguised as humans—just watched as the angels soared toward them. They should have been frightened. Enough attacks had taken place over the last few months that they should have known to run for cover. But they just watched.
And then a woman screamed.
Panic unfolded as people ran from one side of the street to the other. Stiles concentrated on the barbecue as his eyes focused on a man who looked nothing like Lucifer, but who Stiles knew was a fake façade for the angel. He raised his sword, ready to strike, when Lucifer suddenly burst into the sky in full angel persona, his wings an awesome, glowing color that was hard to define. He rushed at Stiles for a brief moment before turning and sending a fireball into the center of a group of children playing on the grass.
“No!” Stiles cried as he watched the children’s bodies evaporate, their spirits dissipating as though they had never had a vessel, as though they had never belonged to this world.
Lucifer threw back his head and laughed a deep hearty laugh that resonated deep in Stiles’ soul. He rushed after him, his sword raised, but then Lucifer disappeared in a puff of smoke less definable than the color of his aura.
“Forget Lucifer,” Demetria said, moving up beside Stiles, the golden glow of her fake angel persona almost blinding. “Get Jophiel.”
Stiles hesitated a moment. He stared down at the scene unfolding below him and watched as Jophiel’s wife grabbed her son’s arm and pulled him toward a low bunker that lay hidden under a low bush. He remembered the way Jophiel had wrapped that woman in his arms, the sense of intimacy that he could
feel even from across the street. This woman was someone who mattered to Jophiel.
Stiles didn’t even think about it. The fireball filled his hand and was sailing toward the woman’s back before he realized what he had done.
Jophiel had taken Joanna away from Stiles, had encouraged her to betray him, and to leave him for dead. Stiles would take his mate from him, too.
He instantly regretted it, but it was too late.
Jophiel cried out—the woman’s name was on the tip of his tongue, but never really given the benefit of sound. And then he wrapped his arms around her as the fire burned through her human flesh and scorched his own. The child—Jimmy—stood just inside the door of the bunker and watched his mother’s agonizing screams. And then the child was pulled backward and the door slammed shut.
Stiles dropped to the ground behind Jophiel.
“You had to have known it would come to this.”
Jophiel didn’t look up. He didn’t even acknowledge Stiles. He continued to hold the woman against his chest as tears dripped from his face onto hers, and the agony of their pain—hers physical, his emotional—mingled for a moment before the heat of the flames caused them to evaporate.
“Just do it.”
Again, Jophiel did not look up. But he bent his head, baring the back of his neck to Stiles’ sword.
Stiles didn’t hesitate.
When Stiles opened his eyes, Jimmy was staring at him through eyes filled with disbelief. He jerked away, charging to his feet so quickly that the chair where he had been sitting toppled over, taking the one beside it with it. He grabbed Stiles’ throat and shoved him up against one of the posts that held up the roof of his back porch.
“You killed them!”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Stiles shook his head as tears filled his eyes. “My reasons don’t really matter, do they?”
Jimmy stared at him, anger burning in his eyes. But then it was just gone, like a flame that burned itself out. He stepped back and his knees went weak. Wyatt caught him, wrapping his arms around his chest in an awkward embrace. Dylan righted a chair and helped Wyatt sit him there. Dylan glanced at Stiles with unanswered questions dancing in her eyes. Stiles walked away, not sure he had done the right thing. Not sure if anything he had done since falling to Earth had been the right thing.
He had wanted to offer comfort. But he was afraid that all he had done was rip open an old wound.
Stiles waited in front of Dylan’s house, leaning against her car. He could feel the turmoil inside the house, and he could feel the concern raging in Wyatt despite his difficult relationship with his father. He was no longer sure he should leave right now. But he was more concerned about leaving Dylan alone with Stiles than he was leaving his father. And he could feel the emotions roiling through Jimmy. Grief was his primary emotion, but there were others, some not surprising, but others…he seemed focused on Luc, on Stiles’ memory of Luc bursting into the sky out of a human form that was not the one he usually took. And of Luc tossing a fireball at that group of children.
Rachel.
He heard Rachel’s name repeat over and over in Jimmy’s mind. Luc had killed his sister, Rachel, the same sister that Dylan had somehow brought out of the past, the same sister that Jimmy had found himself raising in the aftermath of the war.
It would take Jimmy a while to process all Stiles had shown him. And when he did…
“What are you doing out here?”
Harry, dark circles under his eyes, was standing in front of Stiles with his arms crossed over his chest.
“Waiting for Dylan and Wyatt.”
“Why? Are the three of you planning some sort of dinner date or something?”
Stiles began to answer, but something about Harry’s stance told him it would fall on deaf ears.
“You’re angry with me.”
“Your angel powers tell you that?”
“No. My father powers did.”
Harry laughed a humorless sound that fell flat as it left his lips. “Now you want to be a father.”
“I’ll always be your father. Nothing will ever change that.”
“No,” Harry shook his head. “Mark was more of a father to me than you ever will be.”
Stiles inclined his head slightly. “That’s not what you said last year, or the year before that. What’s changed, Harry? Why are you suddenly so angry with me?”
“I’ve always been angry with you. I hid it for Mom’s sake. But now she’s gone.”
Stiles looked away. “You’re angry I didn’t save her.”
“You just lay there and let her heart fail. You didn’t even call me; you didn’t do anything to help her.”
“Because she didn’t want me to.”
“And I’m supposed to believe that?”
Stiles straightened, moving to face his son toe to toe. They were about the same height and had the same hair color and the same build. Anyone who didn’t know them might have known with a glance that they were father and son, but they would have assumed Harry was the father and Stiles the son. But Harry was very much Stiles’ son, an angry young man who was constantly struggling with his father’s air of mystery.
“Do you think I didn’t love her?” Stiles asked softly. “Do you think I spent all those years with her just so I could watch her die in pain? So that I could watch your archaic human tradition of putting her body in the ground?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you’re the most patient sadist God ever created.”
“Maybe.”
Stiles was suddenly tired. He didn’t want to argue with Harry, he didn’t want to think about Rebecca, and he didn’t want to dwell on the past anymore. He wanted a break.
But he wasn’t going to get one here.
Dylan and Wyatt came around the side of the house. Wyatt looked as though he was ready to punch someone, but Dylan had her hand on his arm. Stiles could see her trying to calm his emotions; he could see the darkness moving slowly from one to the other. But he could also see the pain in her eyes as that darkness mixed with all she had already gathered and made her head ache with the weight of it all.
“We have to go,” Stiles said to Harry. “We can finish this when this crisis is over.”
Harry glanced over at Dylan and Wyatt.
“It’s always about her, isn’t it?” Harry asked. “Maybe you aren’t a sadist. Maybe you were just wasting time with my mother until Dylan was ready to give up Wyatt. Maybe you let my mother die because you know that your time is approaching.”
Stiles followed his gaze, a physical pain gripping his heart as he studied the pain in Dylan’s eyes.
“Maybe.”
Chapter 14
There wasn’t time to take a car or use the QuikTunnels to get to all four locations before anyone else died from the disease. They traveled in their ethereal forms, Dylan pulling Wyatt along. He didn’t like to travel that way, but he didn’t complain.
Unfortunately, the effort really took a lot out of Dylan.
She felt physically ill as they landed outside the ruined city of New York. She fell to her knees and a headache like ones she used to get before she learned to control her powers was pounding in her head. She leaned forward, worried that the last meal she’d eaten might come up any second.
“She needs to be healed,” she heard Stiles say to Wyatt. “She was taking in too much of the darkness back there at the house.”
Wyatt knelt down beside her and ran a hand slowly up her back. It felt nice, but the warmth of their shared healing wasn’t there.
“Is it your head?” Wyatt asked. “Like before? Did they overwhelm you?”
She nodded, regretting the movement almost immediately. Pain sliced through her, settling in her neck. She was afraid to move again, afraid that the pain would just continue to multiply.
Wyatt ran his hand over the top of her head. There was a little warmth…but not like before. And it did little to fix the pain.
“We should stay here till
morning,” Stiles suggested. “Let us catch our breath. And a little sunlight wouldn’t hurt when we start hunting around in the ruins.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” Wyatt touched Dylan’s head again, his fingers disrupting her hair, but doing little else. “We’ll sleep under the trees. It’ll be just like the old days.”
Dylan forced a smile. “Too bad we lost your old bed roll.”
He smiled too. “The damn thing was worn out anyway.” He kissed the side of her head. “I’ll go find some firewood.”
Dylan thought she caught Wyatt shooting a glance at Stiles, but wasn’t sure. The pounding in her head made it nearly impossible for her to really concentrate on much of anything. But the moment Wyatt was out of sight, Stiles was kneeling beside her in the same place Wyatt had just vacated.
“You’ve got to learn to shut it out, kiddo,” he said softly as he laid his hand on the top of her head. Instantly, the pain began to recede, almost as though his hand was a magnet and the pain was a collection of metal filings. She closed her eyes and sighed as it all floated away, even the nausea that had settled like a hot ball in her belly.
She sat up, a sigh slipping from between her lips.
“Thanks.”
“Anytime.”
Stiles set his hand on her shoulder for a long moment, and then he turned away, bursting into his ethereal form and rushing out over the ruins.
By the time Wyatt came back, Dylan had found a soft, lushly green grassy area that would make a suitable bed for the night. She gathered some moss that would make a decent pillow and slipped out of the long over shirt she’d been wearing to use as a blanket.
“Feeling better?”
“Your touch is like magic,” she said, gesturing to the ring of rocks she’d built for him to build the fire inside of. “Just like always.”
Wyatt dropped the wood and began building the fire without saying a word. She watched, feeling a slight sense of déjà vu. How many times had she watched him do that when they’d first met? The first night, she hadn’t even understood what it was he was trying to do. But, then again, she hadn’t understood a lot back then.
She couldn’t imagine what her life would have been like without Wyatt.
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