“But it began in humans.”
“Yes. Your amateur scientist didn’t have access to pure angel DNA so he probably used his own. That’s why it’s not touching Stiles or Dylan, but it will likely infect everyone in this town by the end of the week.”
“How could you know that?”
“Because I created it in the first place. And your amateur scientist was using notes taken from my work.”
Harry turned away. “You’re wasting my time. Whoever created this thing has been dead for generations.”
“Not exactly. More like sixty-five years. Right, Stiles? Isn’t that what you said?”
“Yeah, that’s what I said.”
Harry stopped. He turned slowly, his arms crossed over his chest. “If this is some sort of joke—”
Stiles made a gesture and the door slammed behind Harry, blocking the noise that was flooding in from the hallway.
“You need to listen to him, Harry. He knows what he’s talking about.”
Harry stepped back slightly, pretending nonchalance as he leaned against the door, but his arms tightened around his chest. “Okay,” he said slowly, “tell me what you think you know.”
Matthew walked to a white board that was hanging on the back wall of the nurse’s break room and used his hand to wipe away the schedules written on it. He quickly wrote out a scientific equation that Stiles wasn’t even going to pretend he understood. It was familiar, he’d seen it in Matthew’s notebook, but that didn’t mean he knew what it was.
Underneath the first equation, Matthew wrote another.
“This,” he said, pointing to the first, “is the basic structure of the original elixir that we used to create the angel disease. This,” he said, pointing to the second, “is the formula I used to create the disease.”
Harry pushed away from the door and approached. He touched one of the many sets of letters and numbers.
“This is impossible. I’ve never seen anything like this in all the text books I’ve studied.”
“That’s because it was never published.”
Harry ran his finger under the rest of the equation, the wheels in his mind quickly turning. “You made a lot of leaps of logic with this.”
“That’s science.”
“This shouldn’t be possible. How did you—”
“The angels.”
“You worked with the angels?”
Matthew chuckled, a dark sound that was nothing like the amusement that had flowed from him earlier. “I was employed at Genero for a time, before I realized who my bosses really were.”
“And they let you take their science when you left.”
“My science. This,” he said, jabbing at the part of the equation Harry was struggling with, “is mine. They stole it from me.”
Matthew moved back to the table and perched on the corner. “I made several breakthroughs on their elixir that they were struggling to create. When I did, and I realized what it was they were trying to do, I got out of there as quickly as I could without becoming an experiment myself. I thought I took all my notes with me, but discovered sometime later that a few got left behind. They took it and built on it.” Matthew jabbed his thumb over his shoulder at Stiles. “And then I met him and he told me what they’d been up to in my absence.”
“Stiles. You knew Stiles back then?”
“Sure,” Matthew said, winking at Stiles. “We were good friends.”
Harry glanced at Stiles, again with disbelief on his face. “How did that lead to this?”
Matthew turned to Stiles. “Haven’t you told your kid anything about the good old days?”
Stiles shrugged. “He was never really that interested.”
“I’m interested now,” Harry said. “What did the two of you do?”
Matthew made a gesture, inviting Stiles to tell the rest of the story. He hesitated, not sure he was really interested in telling Matthew a story he’d never told anyone…not even Rebecca. But he could feel the pain of the people suffering in the hospital around him and he knew the more information Harry had, the more likely he was to let Matthew help.
“Lily’s first few attempts at making an elixir that would allow the angels to have freewill were colossal failures. They made the angels horribly sick. That sparked an idea. I thought that if the angels became sick enough, they would prefer to go back to heaven voluntarily and face punishment rather than die an uncertain death and either return home involuntarily, or cease to exist. So, a friend gave me a vial of their failed elixir and I gave it to Matthew.”
“And I created the angel disease, which I’ve heard created quite a nuisance for several of the angels.”
Harry looked from Stiles to Matthew. “The two of you made this disease.”
“We made the angel disease.” Matthew jabbed his thumb in general toward the hospital. “We didn’t make this. Someone took my notes on one of the very early versions of the elixir and altered it.”
“And that became this.”
Matthew nodded. “I think the crazy fool was trying to do the opposite of Lily and her band of psychopaths. I think he was trying to bring back the powers Stiles here tells me you people once had.”
Harry turned back to the equations. He was quiet for a long few minutes as he studied them, his finger occasionally moving under the numbers and letters. Finally, he turned.
“What formula did our friend use?”
Matthew went to the board and changed the first equation, moving a few numbers around and changing one or two of the letters into something new.
Harry nodded slowly. “That makes a little more sense.”
“Yes, well, he also did this.”
Matthew scribbled a new equation over the top of the first. Again, Stiles had no idea what he was writing. He studied a great many things in heaven, but science wasn’t one of them.
But Harry knew what it was. He gasped as Matthew finished.
“Shit!”
“Yeah.” Matthew winked at Stiles. “I knew I’d like your kid.”
Stiles smiled.
“That’s why this is airborne,” Harry said, almost as though he was talking to himself. “It’s almost elegant.”
“Yes, well, it’s not so elegant now that it’s killing all your friends and neighbors. And it’s going to keep killing them until we can come up with something to fix this.”
Harry nodded slowly, his eyes never leaving the white board. “We have a lab.” He gestured toward the floor. “In the basement.”
“Why are they always in the basement?”
Stiles shrugged.
“I don’t know what all you’ll need. But we could probably…” Harry turned slowly, his eyes falling on Stiles. “You could probably get anything he needs, right?”
“Of course.”
And there it was…gratefulness. For the first time in their thirty years together, Harry actually showed a little gratefulness for his relationship with Stiles. Too bad it was more about saving all of humanity than it was about Stiles himself.
He stood up, scraping the chair back as he did.
“Let’s go check it out.”
Matthew started to leave the room, but he paused with his hand on the doorknob.
“Stop using the blood. It’s not really helping. Use antibiotics, if you have them, lots of fluids, and whatever you have to treat fever. We’ll work as fast as we can. Hopefully, we’ll be able to save the majority of them.”
Harry just nodded, exhaustion settling over his pale features.
***
The lab was small, filled mostly with equipment scavenged from the ruins of the old city that once stood where they were. Matthew touched and prodded, flipped a few switches and watched lights flicker and burn.
“Not too bad. But I’ll need a few more things.”
“Just say the word.”
Matthew turned and leaned against the counter. “Tell me about Dylan.”
Stiles shook his head. “I told you last night, this is your priorit
y. We’ll satisfy your curiosity when we’ve saved the world.”
“I’m not doing any work until you explain Dylan to me. How did you happen to give her a name? And why do I get the feeling there’s something romantic between the two of you? Is her husband aware of it? I mean, he must be if I picked up on it.”
“There’s nothing romantic. I just buried my wife of twenty-eight years less than a week ago.”
Matthew seemed dubious as he studied Stiles. “Twenty-eight years. Not Harry’s mother, then.”
“Yes, she was Harry’s mother. It’s…complicated.”
“Things tend to be around you.”
Stiles thought of all the times he had uttered that word in the past week. It did seem to be true.
“Tell me about Dylan.”
“You’re not going to let it go, are you?”
“No. So you might as well relent.”
Stiles jumped up to sit on a counter and stared at the floor for a minute. “She…she showed you the battle. You know she ended the war.”
“She ended everything with some sort of choice. She showed me that, too.”
Stiles nodded. “She was born in Genero.”
“No…”
The word was a hiss coming out of Matthew’s mouth. He stared at Stiles, his eyes wide, filled with more disbelief than Stiles had ever seen on Harry’s face. He turned from Stiles and walked to the far wall and slapped his hand against the door.
“It’s not like that.”
“I know what they were doing there, Stiles. You know what they were doing. Rhonda saved you from those quacks!”
“I know. But Dylan…God pulled a lot of strings to make sure she was born. And she changed everything.”
“But she’s not like you.”
“She’s stronger, smarter and more compassionate than any angel I have ever met.”
Matthew turned and leaned against the door with his hands flat against the steel. “You were there. You named her.”
“I have watched over her since she was conceived.”
“And you gave her my name.”
Stiles tilted his head a little. “I felt like she needed a killer name.”
Matthew laughed. “Yeah, you did that.” He came back across the room and climbed up on the counter beside Stiles. “But that’s not the feeling I get when the two of you are together. I don’t get a protector/protectee feeling.”
Stiles wiped his palms on his pant legs. “Did I ever explain soul mates to you?”
Matthew shrugged. “I don’t know. You might have.”
“My soul mate died…or something, thirty-five years ago when Dylan made her choice. I was allowed to choose a new one, but the one I chose still had one. So, the deal was that I had to wait until her connection to her soul mate is broken.”
“And your new choice was Dylan.”
“We’ve had this connection since before she was born. She gave me visions, showed me things that had an impact on my decisions. She even came to me once through time travel and stopped me from doing something that would have changed everything.”
“And the other woman? Harry’s mother?”
Stiles thought of Rebecca—of her amazing smile. He would forever remember that smile.
“She was very important to me. She made being here among these people, living this normal life, feel normal. She gave me insight into humanity that I would never have had and gave me an understanding of emotion it would have taken me several lifetimes to gain without her.”
“You loved her.”
“I did. But the connection with a soul mate is…it’s different.”
“I know.” Matthew pushed his shoulder against Stiles’. “Sara was the love of my life. I could never have imagined a life without her. But Rhonda was also a rock. If I hadn’t met Sara, who knows what would have happened with Rhonda and me.”
They both fell silent, lost in their thoughts. Rebecca was still firmly entrenched in Stiles’ heart, but even as he thought about her, even as he remembered some of the better times they’d shared, his mind drifted to Dylan. He could feel her nearby; he could feel the emotional discord he’d seen on her face early that morning when he went by to pick up Matthew. Something was bothering her…something to do with Wyatt. He wondered if Wyatt was ill, or if they’d argued. He couldn’t deny a need to know what was going on and a deep desire to stand up for Dylan in any conflict between her and Wyatt, even though he knew it was none of his business. Rebecca would tell him to let Dylan fight her own battles—something she’d said countless times during their last years together—but instinct was hard to fight.
Matthew suddenly jumped down off the counter.
“We should get to work.”
Stiles sighed as he jumped down too.
“Time to save the world. Again.”
Chapter 22
Dylan touched Jimmy’s shoulder.
“You should get some rest.”
He looked up at her, exhaustion clear in the bags under his eyes. “I’m afraid if I leave, she won’t be here when I come back.”
“She will be. I won’t let anything happen to her.”
Jimmy lifted his sister’s hand and kissed it lightly. “When she died—when they all died—I thought…I don’t know what I thought. I just, I would have done anything to have her back. And then, when you walked into that prison with her in your arms…it was like a miracle.”
“It was.”
He glanced at Dylan. “I’m not sure I could survive losing her again.”
Dylan ran her hand slowly over his shoulder, taking some of his exhaustion from him. “Stay. Just, promise you’ll eat something.”
“I will.”
Dylan stepped out of the room and leaned against the wall, trying to control the tears that threatened to fall. Her head was pounding. The thoughts of all the people in this building were spilling over the top of her mental walls and soaking her brain in their pain, their grief and their fear. It was overwhelming—ten times worse than the couple of people who’s been at her house just two days ago. She shouldn’t have come here, but she couldn’t let her family grieve alone.
“Did you convince him to leave?”
Dylan looked up to find Martha standing in front of her. She shook her head. “He won’t leave her side.”
Useless.
Martha forced a smile, despite the anger of her thoughts. “At least you tried.”
“He promised to eat something.”
“That’s good.”
Martha brushed past her and went into the room.
Dylan wandered down the hall, her pain only growing with every doorway she passed. People were dying now, five, sometimes ten a day. She could see their confused spirits drifting around their family members and around the nurses who treated them, trying to understand what was happening. She touched one and it instantly evaporated, moving on as it was supposed to do.
She found a few more and sent them on, too. But even that simple gesture increased her pain until she was nearly blinded by the pressure in her head. She stepped out of the hospital and sat on a stone bench, her head down between her knees.
Her healing powers could cure just about any wound, could fight most disease, could even repair the damage done to her body in childbirth, but it was almost useless when it came to this kind of pain. For this, she needed her soul mate.
Unfortunately, she was no longer sure she had one.
And, even if she did, Wyatt had gone up north to help Josephine distribute the antibiotics one of the doctors up there had managed to mass-produce.
She sat there for a long while, waiting for the pain to recede. But it didn’t. She got up and went home, not really sure how she’d made it there. But she did get home and fell into bed, and fell into oblivion the moment her head hit the pillow.
She knew she was dreaming. She always knew when she was dreaming. But then something changed. She was walking in a gorgeous garden filled with the most amazing flowers and plants she had ever seen. T
he trees were not just brown and green, but full of so much color that they seemed like a whole new species—not a tree but something new—something too beautiful for her mind to truly comprehend.
She was standing under one of these trees, her fingers tracing the fine lines in the trunk when someone approached from behind.
“Welcome home, child.”
She turned and he was there, but he wasn’t. A man…but not a man. An aura that exuded so much love that she felt bathed in it; she felt like she would never feel that much joy ever again.
“Where am I?”
“This is the garden,” he said. “This is the gateway between heaven and Earth.”
“Why am I here? Did I die?”
Something like laughter floated through the aura in visible waves of color. “No, child. You are an angel. You are allowed to travel here at will.”
“I’m an angel.”
That thought was still a little awesome for Dylan. She’d always thought of herself as a hybrid, something that was not human, but not angel either. “Angel” had become something of a bad word during the war despite Stiles’ nature and despite the powers that their angel blood had endowed many with—those left behind after the war.
“You have always been an angel,” the man said. “An angel made with just enough of what was unique in humans to give you freewill.”
“And my other gifts?”
“A part of that human spark.”
“Was that intentional? Leaving in that spark?”
“It was. You, my dear, were the fulfillment of a promise made at the beginning of time. You were humanity’s second chance.”
“Why me?”
“Why not you?” The aura moved closer to her, touching her almost like a friend putting a hand on her shoulder. “You were destined. Everything that happened in the years—in several generations—before your birth happened because you were meant to be. Things Stiles did, things you did, and things Jimmy and Wyatt and Rebecca and Davida and Demetria did…they all added up in one column of a ledger to make sure you walked the road you are walking right now.”
“You mean to make sure I made the right choice.”
“No. The choice…that was just the beginning, Dylan. There is so much more in store for you. Your destiny is still unfolding.”
BROKEN ANGELS (Angels and Demons Book 1) Page 12
