She shook her head. “It’s over. I’ve done my part.”
“Your part is just starting to unfold.” He moved closer, his aura swirling inches from her face. She felt studied, like a child being reprimanded by a loving parent. “You’ve made a life with Wyatt and your child, but their lives are mortal. You will continue to live many more lifetimes even after you’ve buried them, as Stiles did Rebecca. You will continue to rebuild the humanity you chose to save and they will move on to their new reality, their new roles.”
Dylan shook her head, stepping back from the man’s aura. “I won’t leave my family.”
“Angels are their own family.”
She shook her head again, vigorously. “No.”
“You are meant for bigger things, Dylan. You were allowed to be tethered to Wyatt because you needed his strength to help you end the war. But you are so much stronger now than you will ever really understand. You no longer need that connection.”
“I do, though.” Tears welled in her eyes. “I need Wyatt.”
“You need a soul mate that is equal to you. Wyatt is human, mortal.”
“He is my life.”
The aura darkened, as though struck by profound sadness. “The connection is already broken. There is nothing that can be done.”
“I won’t leave him. I don’t care about any of that. He’s still my husband—still the only man I will ever love.”
“Love is a human emotion. When you are properly tethered to your new soul mate, you will understand that there is more to this connection than love.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Dylan turned away and suddenly found herself back in her bed, tangled in the blanket. Her headache was still pounding behind her eyes, but it was almost bearable. She closed her eyes and a faded image of the garden filled her mind. She shivered, telling herself that it was just a dream.
But she couldn’t stop the sobs that slipped from between her lips.
Chapter 23
Stiles gathered the supplies Matthew asked for, delivering them to the lab within hours of their conversation with Harry. Then he settled on the floor and watched Matthew work, reminded of the time they’d spent together in Dr. Hatton’s basement.
“The least you people could do is brew some beer for a poor, tired scientist.”
Stiles smiled, remembering the perpetual beer bottle that always seemed to be in Matthew’s hand.
“I’ll work on that.”
“Maybe you could send your soul mate back in time to lift a six pack for me.”
“Not sure she’d go for that.”
Matthew shook his head. “Pull me back from the grip of death, but you can’t provide a few suds…”
He worked through the night, scribbling in his notebook as he mixed things Stiles couldn’t pronounce, and muttering under his breath each time he got a result he didn’t like. Not that Stiles could tell what those results were, because it looked to him like he was mixing one liquid with another and changing their colors, but nothing else—cursing as the night grew long.
Stiles didn’t expect this to happen overnight. It took weeks the first time. But the weight of all the dying souls sitting in the rooms over his head was like the weight of Sisyphus’ boulder. What was worse, he felt Rachel’s soul weighing on him more than the others.
She wasn’t going to last much longer. The angel blood had sent her organs into failure. He could feel death weighing on her; he could hear the clock counting down.
He started pacing sometime around dawn.
“Why don’t you go see that girlfriend of yours,” Matthew suggested. “You’re distracting me.”
Stiles began to argue, but then realized that he really did want to see Dylan.
“I’ll be back in an hour or two.”
“Take your time. And bring some food.”
Stiles burst into his ethereal form, feeling refreshed as he soared over the hospital and scanned the town. It was quieter than he remembered ever seeing it. The few who were still healthy were staying inside, hoping that would keep them healthy. The rest…they were either stuck in bed or in the hospital surrounded by family waiting to say goodbye.
He morphed back into his human form in Dylan’s kitchen, expecting her to be sitting at the table, eating breakfast with Wyatt as she normally was. But the kitchen was empty.
“Dylan?”
She didn’t answer. But he could feel her there.
He walked down the narrow hallway to the closed master bedroom door. He hesitated a second, seeking Wyatt’s unique presence. But it wasn’t there. She was, though, and her thoughts were muddled and her emotions all over the place.
Stiles pushed the door open. She was in the bed, fully dressed, moaning in her sleep. A thin stream of blood flowed from her nose, with more blood smeared across her lips and over her chin.
“Oh, hell,” he muttered as he rushed to her side. He sat on the edge of the bed and used the bottom edge of his t-shirt to wipe away the blood. Then he pressed his hands to the sides of her head, his healing power immediately centering on ruptured blood vessels deep in her brain. He closed his eyes and pictured them knitting themselves back together; he pictured the damaged tissue around them returning to their previous healthy state.
She sighed, a soft sound that reminded him of the sound a hungry babe made when offered its mother’s breast. Her eyes fluttered and then opened, slowly focusing on him.
“Hey,” she said, pulling away from his touch as she moved to sit up.
“How long have you been here like this?”
She shrugged, her eyes jumping from him to the sun shining through the windows. “I went to the hospital—”
“Dylan, you shouldn’t do that. There’s too much there.”
“I wanted to check in with Rachel. And Jimmy.”
“Where’s Wyatt?”
She glanced at the window again, clearly confused about how long she’d been asleep. She dragged her fingers through her hair, tearing through the few knots her restlessness had left there.
“North. With Josephine.”
“He should be here. When something like this is happening, he needs to be here with you.”
“I told him to go. He was restless. He needs to be busy.”
“But you…” He touched her face and grabbed her chin so that she had to look at him. “You really need to learn how to block their darkness. You can’t go to the hospital, soak up all that crap and come back here alone. You could have died.”
She shook her head. “I can’t die.” And then tears began to run down her cheeks in huge, rounded drops. “They’re going to die, but I won’t.”
“What?”
She looked down at the pillow beside her, the pillow where Wyatt normally laid his head at night. “He’s going to die. He’s going to move on to whatever comes next, and he’s going to leave me behind.”
“He is.”
She looked up at Stiles. “I don’t know if I can do that. I lost him once and it was as if someone had chopped my heart out of my chest. How am I supposed to do it again?”
Stiles ran his thumb over her bottom lip, smearing her tears into the dried blood. “That’s the price we pay for allowing ourselves to fall in love with mortals.”
“I didn’t ask to be an angel. I didn’t ask to have this destiny.”
“Nobody did. Do you think I wanted to sit there and let Rebecca die? If it was up to me, she would have lived another fifty years.”
“How did you do it?”
I had you.
He didn’t say it out loud. But her eyes widened just the same as her pulse quickened in her throat. Before she could pull away, he moved closer to her and touched his lips to hers. It wasn’t really a kiss, just a touching of skin to skin. He wasn’t even sure why he did it. She wasn’t ready for what he’d been waiting all his existence for. But then she surprised him.
Dylan moved into him, deepening the kiss with the slight parting of her lips. It
was as if a switched had been flipped, a power turned on that he had never known existed. As they kissed, their souls touched and mingled, their auras taking flight even as they remained sitting awkwardly on her marriage bed. It was…perfect.
Until she pulled away.
She climbed around him off the bed and disappeared behind the bathroom door. After a second, he heard the shower come on. She was washing him away.
Lovely.
He left, feeling more than ever like a part of him had been cut away, leaving him forever missing an essential part of his soul.
Chapter 24
Dylan went north. She needed to be with her family.
Wyatt was pleased to see her, but Josephine was distracted by the toll this disease was having on her people. She wanted to be everywhere all at once. She hardly slept and never ate. And it was starting to show on her face.
“Let me help,” Dylan said, reaching for her daughter.
Josephine pulled away and, as she did, she began to cough.
“No, Jo!”
Wyatt went to her and lead her to a chair. He found a tissue and gave it to her, pressing it to her lips. Blood spotted it in tiny little flecks, taking away any doubt that she had the disease.
Wyatt looked up at Dylan, fear and accusation dancing in his eyes.
Dylan touched her daughter’s head, her healing power immediately seeking out a cause. Just like had happened when she touched Benji, her powers seemed confused by what it was feeling. There was nothing she could do.
“You’ve worn yourself out, Jo,” she said softly, stroking her hair. “Let us take you home and take care of you for a few days.”
There were tears in Jo’s eyes when she nodded. “That would be nice, Mom.”
Not now. I’m not ready.
But that didn’t seem to matter.
***
Dylan settled Josephine in her old bedroom, treating her fever with cold rags and her cough with tea and honey. It wasn’t helping. The cough came with such frequency that Jo could barely catch her breath before the next fit began. Wyatt refused to leave her side, sitting on the bed and patting her back whenever she coughed in hopes of helping work out the mucus and blood that came up with each expulsion. Each time he looked at Dylan, there was accusation in his eyes that seemed aimed at her. But she knew it wasn’t her that he was accusing. It was Stiles.
When Dylan wasn’t in the bedroom, fussing over Josephine’s cold rags or her bedding, she was in the living room pacing. She had never felt so helpless.
She was an angel. Her child was in pain. She should be able to make it better. But she couldn’t.
She almost went to the hospital a dozen times—almost went in search of Stiles’ scientist—to insist he speed up whatever it was he was doing. She was afraid there wasn’t enough time. What if he couldn’t find the cure before everyone she loved died?
What if Wyatt got this disease, too?
She couldn’t slow her thoughts or stop her fear. Each second that passed seemed like another nail in the coffin. If Josephine didn’t make it…she didn’t know what she would do.
They passed a restless night, and then another. Josephine’s symptoms seemed to worsen quicker than those Dylan had seen in the hospital, as though she had an especially virulent version of the disease. Or was that just Dylan’s fear warping her perception?
On the third morning, Dylan walked into Josephine’s room with a fresh bowl of cold water to find both Jo and Wyatt sound asleep. Jo was sitting up in the bed, braced against a stack of pillows that Wyatt had arranged for her. Wyatt was beside her, his head resting close to hers. He looked peaceful. It reminded her for a moment of the many times she’d watched him sleep when they were young and on the run from Lily’s redcoats.
What a life they’d shared together.
She went to him and brushed a curl off his forehead. He was warm and his skin was moist under her fingers. She let herself believe it was simply the heat of Josephine’s fever making him sweat in his sleep.
She had to believe that.
Chapter 25
Stiles sat with his back against the wall, the cushion of his bedroll keeping his butt from aching after sitting too long on the cold, tile floor. He was holding a turkey sandwich, but he hadn’t taken a bite in fifteen minutes. His appetite was gone. Too much time had passed. Too many people were suffering and dying with each passing moment.
Nearly half the population of their city had died since this disease first attacked. Three-quarters would be gone if they didn’t find a cure soon.
He knew about Josephine; he could hear Dylan’s panicked thoughts. She wasn’t trying to hide them, or else she didn’t realize she wasn’t hiding them. They dropped like a rock in his mind and refused to budge. And now there was something about Wyatt.
“Have I asked lately how things are going?”
Matthew glanced over his shoulder. “About five minutes ago.”
“I don’t suppose anything has changed?”
Matthew didn’t answer.
Stiles stood up and tossed the sandwich into a trash can. “I think I’ll go stretch my legs.”
“Aw, you don’t want to do that. Then you’ll miss it.”
“Miss what?”
Matthew turned and held up a vial with a thin, red liquid inside. “The cure.”
Stiles stared at it. “It looks so innocent.”
Matthew laughed. “Can a cure really be innocent?”
Stiles shrugged. “It looks innocuous.”
“Better.” Matthew climbed off of his stool. “Who should our guinea pig be?”
The answer seemed obvious to Stiles. “Rachel.”
But Harry disagreed.
“We should try it on someone who isn’t standing on death’s door. Rachel had a bad night. Most of her organs have begun to fail. Even if your cure works, it might be too late to save her.”
“But Rachel has a purpose, and I think this is it.”
Harry looked at Stiles as if he were insane. “A purpose? She’s just another of several hundred patients who are dying of this crazy disease.”
“It needs to be her.”
“Stiles is right,” Matthew said. “Someone who is healthier might show improvement whether or not the cure works. But if Rachel begins to improve, we’ll know it was the cure and not just some valley in the progression of the disease.”
Harry picked up a couple of patient charts and handed them to Matthew. “Each of these patients is entering the end stages, but they aren’t as far along as Rachel. I think one of them would be a better choice.”
“What if we gave some to one of these, and some to Rachel?”
“It’s a waste of time. Rachel is beyond saving.”
“I don’t think that’s your place to decide,” Stiles said.
“I’m her doctor. I can tell you that she will be dead by this afternoon no matter what we do.”
“We’ll see.”
Matthew looked from father to son, and then walked away, vial and syringe in hand. Stiles followed and, after a brief hesitation, so did Harry. When they walked into Rachel’s room, Jimmy was crying at her side. He tried to hide it, wiping at his tears before he turned on them.
“What do you want? Can’t you see she’s resting?”
“We just want to give her a little medicine, Jimmy,” Harry said. “It’ll help ease her suffering.”
Jimmy’s face threatened to crumple, but he managed to keep it together. “Be easy with her,” he said. “She’s been through enough.”
“I’ll be very careful,” Matthew said as he drew the cure into the syringe. As soon as the red liquid was bubble free and ready to go, he lifted her painfully thin arm and injected it into what was left of the muscle in her upper arm. Rachel didn’t even blink.
“What now?” Harry asked.
“Now we wait.”
Stiles shook his head. “No. It’s already working. Do you see?”
Both Matthew and Harry looked at Rachel, confusion in their
eyes. Even Jimmy glanced at Stiles like he was speaking a foreign language. But there was something different about her. He could see it in her aura, in the way she was breathing. Her breaths were less shallow than they had been. The color was beginning to return to her cheeks. She was improving right before their eyes and they couldn’t see it.
Stiles moved up beside her. Jimmy grabbed his wrist, intent on sending him away. But then he let him go.
Stiles leaned close to Rachel. “You’re going to be okay,” he whispered against her cheek. Then he touched her and he felt the change inside of her, as though the cure had reconnected whatever it was that had blocked his healing power before. He could feel the brokenness inside of her, but he could also feel the disease releasing its hold on her cells. He closed his eyes and pictured her organs healing. And he could feel that, too. He could feel her body knitting itself back together.
When he stepped back, she opened her eyes.
“Rachel?”
Jimmy stood and leaned over her, peppering her face with kisses.
“I don’t believe it.”
Stiles glanced at Harry. “You have to believe in miracles a little more, son.” And then he stumbled backward and collapsed.
Chapter 26
Matthew arrived at the house late in the evening. He didn’t say anything, just held up two syringes with a pale red liquid inside. Dylan waved him in, not yet ready to embrace the relief that wanted to settle on her shoulders. She followed him to Josephine’s room—the same room he slept in his first night in their time—and watched as he carefully injected first Jo and then Wyatt. Neither woke from the slumber they’d seemed incapable of shaking these last few hours, but Dylan could see the changes in their color, in their auras, almost immediately.
That’s when she let the relief take the steel out of her knees.
Matthew caught her and carried her into the living room, depositing her on the couch.
“You and Stiles,” he said.
BROKEN ANGELS (Angels and Demons Book 1) Page 13
