Saw her offer a kiss.
And then Dylan realized what she was seeing weren’t her memories.
“Did you love her?” she asked.
The images in her mind changed. She saw Ellie walking alone with Wyatt in a grove of trees, her hand tucked in his. Dylan didn’t recognize the area. Must have been the place where Wyatt had taken Ellie and the others when they separated. Ellie leaned against a tree and drew Wyatt to her.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you the other day,” she said. “It was stupid.”
She could feel him shrug as though his shoulders were hers. When he spoke, his voice sounded different. She realized she must have been hearing him the way he heard himself.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said those things about Genero.”
She ran her hand slowly up his chest. “You were probably right. I just can’t get used to how many lies they told us.”
“It must suck, realizing your whole life was a lie.”
Her eyes fell to the ground. “It does. But it makes it easier knowing that it brought me to you.” And then she looked up, stared into his eyes as though she could see his soul there. Dylan could feel how it made Wyatt tense a little, how it made him feel pleasure and discomfort both at the same time.
Wyatt wanted to kiss Ellie.
Dylan wanted the memory to vanish. She didn’t want to know what had happened between the two of them. But it was there without her asking, unfolding in her mind. His thoughts of Ellie revealed without a buffer, just as she had shown him her interaction with Joanna.
He liked Ellie. He was intrigued by her simple, dark beauty. And the lack of drama that existed around her.
But when she reached up, when their lips touched, he knew there was something missing.
It wasn’t the same, his voice whispered into Dylan’s mind as the memories faded.
Why?
He didn’t have to answer. His arms tightened around Dylan, his fingers playing with the tender skin of her wrist.
It was Dylan’s turn to feel uncomfortable. She understood what he meant when he said it wasn’t the same. That was how she felt when Sam kissed her. It was like kissing Davida back when Davida was just her guardian. Like kissing someone she loved, but not someone who had the capacity to make her heart pound and her breath come in short, strangled gasps.
Something missing.
But then there was Stiles.
Stiles had saved her life. Stiles had lied to her, but he saved her life too. And when he kissed her behind that old motel last night, it was like nothing she had ever felt before.
So why was she lying here with Wyatt? Why did she care if he had kissed Ellie?
Why did she feel secure and protected for the first time…ever?
Chapter 6
Dylan woke with a start the following morning. She had slept without a single dream, something that hadn’t happened in a long time. Exhaustion. There couldn’t be any other explanation.
At least no one had come into her dreams.
She rolled onto her back, a little saddened to realize Wyatt hadn’t stayed with her the entire night. She sat up and ran her fingers through her hair, again fighting with the tangles gathered there. It seemed she had twice as many this morning, as though they were reproducing as she slept.
She could hear voices outside the room where she lay. She climbed to her feet and pulled on boots she didn’t remember taking off. The voices grew louder as she approached the door. She recognized them, would have known them almost anywhere. Wyatt. Stiles. Sam. The three boys who were the first she had ever met, the first she could call friends. She only hoped that when everything was said and done, she could still call them that.
“We lost them just outside the ruins,” Stiles was saying.
“You’re sure you lost them?”
“Yeah.”
Dylan slipped around the door frame, her eyes falling almost immediately on Sam. He was standing with his back against the wall on the old, disused staircase, as though attempting to keep escape close. His eyes were on the ground, his face a multitude of colors. Sam had always had a face that was easy to read. Dylan could read it now, but she wasn’t sure she could trust what she saw. And she wasn’t the only one. Wyatt was looking him up and down, as though he could see on his face, or in the slump of his shoulders, proof that he hadn’t betrayed them all by helping Ellie.
Without a word, Dylan moved past both Wyatt and Stiles to approach Sam. He looked up as she stepped close to him, tears making his blue eyes lighter than they normally were.
“Dylan,” Wyatt said, grabbing her hand just as she began to move out of reach.
She gripped Wyatt’s hand hard and squeezed, trying to reassure him. When she let go, he didn’t. He held on for a second longer, as though he thought she would turn around and stay as far from Sam as possible. But Wyatt knew her better than that.
“Dylan,” Sam said quietly, “I didn’t know—”
“Who told you to help Ellie?”
Sam’s eyes fell to the floor. “I don’t know who she was. A woman, but she never told me her name.”
“What did she say to you?”
His eyes came up slowly, moved over her face. It was like he couldn’t believe that she was even taking the time to ask questions. “I’m not sure I know what you want.”
Dylan returned his stare as she let down her mental wall, opened herself up to hear his thoughts. She had been able to hear them before, but only in bits and pieces. Now it was as though a flood gate had opened. Within seconds, she understood everything that had happened to Sam. Why things had gone the way they had. What had motivated the deception, what had caused Sam to behave the way he did. She understood it all.
It changed things.
“We have to go,” she said.
“Where?” Wyatt asked.
Stiles didn’t say anything. He simply bent over and retrieved the bag of supplies he had abandoned at the top of the stairs when Wyatt greeted them. Dylan brushed past Wyatt, went back into the room where she had spent the night, and began gathering her things. Wyatt followed, snatching up his own bag from where it rested against the far wall.
“What’s the plan?” he asked.
“We go to Genero.”
“Dylan, you can’t—”
“That’s where it all is, Wyatt. That’s where it all started and that’s where it has to end.”
He grabbed her arm and turned her around, forcing her back against the wall. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about this war, about the future.”
“How is going to Genero going to do anything about all of that?”
“Don’t you see?” she asked. “They’re all connected.”
“Dylan—”
“I came from Genero,” she said. “Genero is Lily and Luc’s laboratory, the only thing they have built with any real purpose at all. And that’s where they have your parents, where they are trying to replicate whatever it was they did with me. It’s where Ellie is from, where Davida watched over me, where she wanted to take me. It all leads back to Genero.”
“But they know that too, Dylan. Don’t you think that you going there will be us walking into a trap?”
“We have to go,” she repeated.
They were outside. She could hear them. If they could get out through the back door…maybe they had a chance.
She tried to pull away from Wyatt, but he was holding her, his body pressing her hard against the wall.
“I won’t let you walk into a trap,” he said.
“I might be too late,” she said quietly.
She watched the wheels turn in his head, saw him reluctantly touch that side of himself he had been trying so hard to ignore for so long. He was just like her, had most of the same gifts she had. He could hear their thoughts just as well as she. Especially in moments like this. Especially in moments when they wanted them to know they were close.
Wyatt r
ushed across the room and tore a sheet of wood off of one of the many windows there. She heard glass shatter as he leaned forward and stuck half his torso through the opening. She slipped into her ethereal form without thinking about it, slipping her body around him to protect him from the discharge of a weapon from one of the Redcoats far below him. Wyatt jerked back, shaking her off as he fell back against the far wall.
She stood in front of him, back in her human form as she studied his face. “That was stupid,” she said.
“Thanks,” he said, wiping his forearm across his eyes.
“You have to start thinking things out before you get yourself killed,” Dylan told him. “I need you to stay alive.”
He nodded. “I think that’s going to be much easier said than done.”
“Are we ready?” Stiles asked as he came into the room.
Wyatt pushed away from the wall and walked over to him, just as calmly as if he was about to pat him on the back or offer him a good morning. Without so much as a sound, Wyatt reached back and unsheathed his samurai sword. He drove it into Stiles’ gut with a quick movement of his wrist.
Dylan cried out, running across the room to Stiles, reaching him just as he fell to the ground.
“What did you do that for?” she demanded as she gathered Stiles into her arms.
“To slow him down,” Wyatt said.
Dylan touched Stiles’ wound, watched as the edges began to knit themselves together under her fingers. Wyatt grabbed her hand and pulled her away, jerking her to her feet.
“He betrayed us, Dylan,” he hissed into her ear. “Can’t you see that?”
“No,” she insisted. “They were following him. He thought he’d lost them—”
“He is a gargoyle, Dylan,” Wyatt said. “He can hear them miles away. He knew they were still there.”
“He’s an angel,” Dylan said. “Not a gargoyle.”
Wyatt’s eyes widened a little as his gaze moved from Dylan’s face to their injured comrade. But then they narrowed again. “But don’t you see, Dylan?” he asked. “He should have known. Angels can sense their own. He knew the Redcoats were close. He brought them here.”
“Dylan,” Stiles groaned, a thin line of blood dripping like a thread of saliva from his mouth, “I didn’t know.”
There was too much. Too many voices, too many things to concentrate on. Dylan closed her eyes, tried to raise her mental wall to stop the sound from overwhelming her. But, even as she did, she could hear Stiles’ thoughts. They were no longer guarded, no longer controlling what she could hear and what she couldn’t. Angels could do that. She had learned it with Joanna. Angels could control what other angels heard from their thoughts, what they saw of their memories. Stiles was weak. That control was sluggish. She could see what he didn’t want her to see.
And what she saw was too much.
Dylan’s knees went weak and her vision dark.
Chapter 7
Dylan woke in a familiar place. She was lying in a warm, silky bed in a room that was bright and luxurious, tables along the side of the room piled high with fluids to make her skin soft and supple, a wardrobe that she knew was filled with glorious dresses and other garments, and a bathtub in the center of the room from which a warm, floral scent emanated.
“Miss Dylan?”
Ruby, a human servant, stood at the end of the bed. She was wringing her hands, as though afraid of how Dylan might respond when she spoke.
“How long have I been here?” she asked, surprised by the raspiness of her own voice.
“A full day.”
Dylan sat up too quickly. Her head began to pound. She reached up and took it between both her hands, squeezing in the hopes that the pressure would ease the pain. Ruby watched, her expression weary, as if she expected Dylan to explode, either verbally or literally.
“My friends?” Dylan muttered.
“Downstairs.”
Dylan knew what that meant.
She had been here once before. That time, it had only been Sam down in the dungeon room with the steel boxes. Wyatt had rescued her that time. She suspected he wouldn’t be able to do the same this time.
“You need to take a bath,” Ruby said quietly. “They want to see you.”
“Why bother with a bath?” Dylan asked. “I don’t suppose it matters how clean my body is when they butcher it.”
Ruby’s eyes widened with something like horror. Dylan simply shook her head, aware that Ruby and the others like her who populated this town, this place designed to serve only one purpose, were unaware of the atrocities going on around them.
Dylan was in Viti. And she was about to be given an audience with the enemy.
Without a word, Dylan climbed off the bed and began to disrobe. She was still clad in the dirty jeans and t-shirt she had been wearing for several days. The material of her jeans was so caked in mud that they practically stood up on their own when she took them off. They must have dragged her at some point, she realized. Besides the excessive dirtiness of her jeans, her shirt was torn in places it hadn’t been before. But her body was spotless.
There were some benefits to being a hybrid angel.
She climbed into the bath, allowing Ruby to help her control her balance. The pain in her head had not vanished. It lingered like the memory of a wound. She settled in the water, enjoying the feel of the liquid warmth as it settled over her body in a way that she was almost ashamed of. She shouldn’t enjoy it so much, shouldn’t accept the luxuries of the enemy. But, at the back of her mind, she knew she could get used to this. She missed these things that she had so taken for granted when she was growing up in Genero. Missed them more than she had ever expected to.
Maybe when it was all said and done…
Ruby helped Dylan wash, rubbing a scented soap into every inch of her skin and scrubbing her hair with some sort of fruit-scented shampoo. When she was clean once more, she stepped out of the tub into a huge towel that wrapped around her body like a hug. She dried off quickly, not thinking about what would happen when she was dressed, about what was currently happening to her friends downstairs. She tried not to think of anything at all.
Thoughts were no longer her own. She had to be careful who might be listening in.
The pain in her head actually helped at this point. The pain was becoming more intense the longer she stood upright. It made it nearly impossible for her to think about anything except how much she wished Wyatt was there to run his hands over her skull. Only his hands seemed capable of healing this kind of pain.
Ruby helped her into a bright red dress that clung to her chest, her abdomen, but then fell into a soft, easy skirt that seemed to swish around her legs each time she took a step. Her hair was twisted into a braid and the touch of a brush wiped color into her cheeks, removing the paleness that seemed to be more prevalent today than during her past visit.
“Do you know what they want?” Dylan finally asked.
Ruby shook her head. “I am not told things like that. I simply do as I am asked.”
Dylan picked up the hairbrush Ruby had used on her hair and thought about the other servant who had taken on some of these chores during her last visit. “Where is Becky?” she asked.
Ruby’s eyes fell to the floor, but not before Dylan saw the hint of a tear in the mirror in front of her. “She was punished.”
“For what?”
Ruby’s eyes came up, a new defiance in them that Dylan had never seen before. “For your escape,” she said.
“But Becky had nothing to do with it,” Dylan said. “She wasn’t even here when I left.”
“She was punished because the Redcoats cannot be,” Ruby said.
Dylan turned and took her hand. “Where is she? Is she all right?”
“No.” Ruby pulled away. “We should go.”
Instead of moving toward the door, however, Ruby slipped something from her pocket and pressed it into Dylan’s hand. It was a relic Davida had called a compass. Dylan had carried it in her pocket sin
ce she left Genero, but she had no idea what it was or what it could do. But with just a touch, Ruby showed her with the thoughts swirling through her mind. Not only that, but she showed Dylan how to use the compass to find Becky.
Dylan met her gaze, trying to wrap all the information Ruby had just given her into a nice little compartment and store it away for future use. She slipped the compass into a pocket of her dress and stood, running her hands over the material that covered her hips, her thighs, straightening it so that she would look her best as they walked down the long corridors to the chamber where Luc and Lily waited. Ruby dipped her chin slightly.
It was time.
Chapter 8
Ruby stepped up to the double doors and laid her hands on the handles that would allow them to open. She hesitated a moment, but she did not turn to look at Dylan. It was as though she was waiting for some other signal. Dylan took a deep breath to settle her pounding heartbeat, the pain in her head overwhelming for just a moment. But then it began to recede as she stepped forward, a hand on Ruby’s shoulder enough to tell her it was okay, that she could open the doors now.
It was surreal, how much like the last time this moment was. They were sitting in their chairs as they had been before, Luc on the left, Lily on the right. But there was no joy on Luc’s handsome face, only pain. His skin was paler than before, making his black beard and hair seem darker than before. And his eyes. Like pools of darkness, they stared at Dylan with accusation written on every microcosm of space.
Lily was slouched, her broken human form no longer capable of the basic energy required to keep her head balanced between her shoulders. Her fingers were curled into claws, lesions weeping all along the bare skin of her arms, her neck. Her skin was like paper, the veins and muscles underneath ropy and visible, reddened in places where lesions were trying to pop out but had yet to make an appearance.
She was unrecognizable.
Dylan walked slowly down the narrow room, her eyes taking in everything around her as she made her way to a spot of sublimation, to that place where she expected to be taken away and butchered to help ease Lily’s suffering.
FALLEN (Angels and Gargoyles Book 3) Page 4
