FALLEN (Angels and Gargoyles Book 3)

by Brenda L. Harper

  It was what they wanted, wasn’t it?

  “Too late,” Luc said, his voice deep and raw with emotion. “You waited too long.”

  The words settled in the room with a heaviness that only added to the pain in Dylan’s head. She reached up to rub her temple, but changed her mind as her eyes fell on Lily’s. Her human form was dying, her spirit weak with the burden of it. But nothing had dimmed her determination, her drive. Dylan could see it in her eyes, those pale eyes that were so like the eyes Dylan had seen in her own reflection.

  “Returning to Heaven can’t be that bad,” Dylan said.

  “Being without my soul mate is like living in Hell!” Luc cried.

  Lily reached over with one of her gnarled hands and touched his perfectly healthy appendage. “Don’t,” she hissed.

  Luc’s anger dimmed just slightly as he looked at her. “I’m sorry, my love,” he whispered, leaning over slightly to kiss the top of her head. “I’m sorry.”

  Dylan stopped a few feet in front of the raised platform where their chairs, their thrones, sat. She crossed her arms over her chest as she studied the two of them. “I’m here now,” she finally said. “You’ve got what you wanted.”

  Luc shook his head again. “Biel has said that it’s too late, that anything we might have done before would not work now. Lily only has a matter of hours to survive in this form.”

  “Then why am I here?”

  “To suffer,” Luc said.

  An honest sadness filled Lily’s eyes as the doors behind Dylan, the same doors she had just walked through, opened. A group of Redcoats began to march inside the narrow room, their tall, broad bodies blocking what was hidden behind them. Dylan watched, a weariness pressing down on her shoulders as they moved slowly in that military, disciplined way they had. She even recognized one of them, a tall, blond man. He was the same man Sam had attacked the last time they were here, the man whose throat Sam sliced through when he tried to grab Dylan. The same man who healed instantaneously before their eyes.

  An angel. A militant angel just like the rest of the Redcoats.

  I’m sorry, sister.

  The voice was Lily’s. Dylan looked back at her, caught sight of a single tear slipping slowly from her eye and down the broken skin of her jaw, her throat. When Dylan faced the Redcoats again, she found herself staring into Davida’s eyes.

  “No,” Dylan whispered.

  A Redcoat pushed Davida onto her knees. Her hands were bound in front of her, her clothing torn, her always so neatly coifed hair a rat’s nest of tangles. She was a far more desperate sight than she had been the last time Dylan saw her. She was no longer in charge of this subordinate group. Now she was the inferior one.

  “I did everything I could!” Davida cried. “I did everything you told me to do. I kept her alive. I protected her.”

  “You didn’t bring her to us when she came to the resistance.”

  “I couldn’t break my cover with the humans,” Davida insisted, rising up onto her knees by pressing her elbows into the hard stone floor. “I was instructed to keep the humans in the dark until the Redcoats came.”

  “You could have found a way,” Luc insisted. “You could have snuck her out in the middle of the night, made them think she had run away.”

  “Jimmy would have seen through that ruse, and then it would have been my head on the block.”

  “It is now, too,” Luc said.

  An unseen signal moved the Redcoat closest to Davida into action, the Redcoat Sam had attempted to murder. He pulled a sword out from under his coat and raised it high over his head.

  “No,” Dylan cried, rushing forward to fall painfully to her knees in front of Davida. “No, please,” she said, turning her eyes to Lily, aware that only Lily could stop this.

  Davida began to laugh. “You still don’t get it, do you?” she asked, her lips close to Dylan’s ear. “It was always you or me. Do you really think I gave a damn about you? Do you really think all those things I said and did had anything to do with you?”

  Dylan shook her head. “I know you, Davida,” she whispered.

  “You know nothing,” Davida grunted roughly against her ear. “You were a job, nothing more.”

  Dylan ran her hands over Davida’s face, stared into her familiar hazel eyes. Remembered long nights when she had nightmares and Davida would come to tell her stories, to take away the fear. Remembered illness during which Davida fussed over a slight fever. Remembered hugs and kisses, remembered words of advice, shared laughter. Dylan had never known a mother’s love, but Davida had given her something that was even more precious than that. Davida had given her love not out of a sense of responsibility to an infant she had grown in her belly, a child she was tasked with raising, but because it was her nature.

  Davida’s betrayal, the truth of her place in this drama that was Dylan’s reality, could not convince Dylan that her memories were based on lies, that Davida’s love for her and Donna was false.

  “I don’t care,” Dylan said as she wrapped her arms around Davida’s neck. “You loved me. You can’t fake that.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Davida groaned, her voice breaking as tears began to course down her face. “Love breaks you, it makes you weak.”

  “No,” Dylan whispered. “It makes you stronger.”

  A Redcoat grabbed Dylan by the shoulder, nearly pulling it out of socket as he yanked her to her feet. Dylan wasn’t even completely out of the way when a flash of steel marked the final second of Davida’s life. Dylan screamed as bright red blood mixed with the brightly colored fabric of her dress, matching it so perfectly that Dylan could barely tell which was Davida’s blood and what was part of the dress.

  Dylan jerked from the touch of the Redcoat and returned to Davida’s lifeless body, cradling her head, barely connected to her twitching body, into her lap. Tears came like she had never felt them before, her chest aching with pain that rivaled any physical pain she had ever felt. Nothing would heal this pain. Nothing would take away this hurt.

  “If she reacts this way to someone who betrayed her, I can only imagine how she will react when we execute someone she really cares about,” Luc said, too much glee in his voice.

  As though brought on by his words, the doors opened once more.

  As Dylan watched, the Redcoats escorted first Sam and then Stiles into the room.

  Behind them came Wyatt.

  Chapter 9

  “No!”

  The lightness Dylan associated with the move from her human form to her ethereal one flashed through her body. But just as she began to change, just as her body began to become a pillar of light, it stopped. Pain, like the flash of a blade through her skull, burst into her head, making her vision darken at the edges.

  “Don’t even try it,” Luc said. “You’ll only hurt yourself.”

  “They’ve blocked your powers,” Stiles said.

  Dylan looked up at her friend, taking in the bindings on his wrists, the bruises on his face, and guessed they had done the same thing to him. “How?” she whispered, but realized it didn’t really matter.

  “Which one first?” Luc asked Lily, watching as the Redcoats lined Wyatt, Sam, and Stiles up just a foot or two behind Davida’s still twitching body. The moment the Redcoats let him go, Sam turned away and vomited on the stone floor. The stench wafted around the room, making Luc jump from his throne.

  “Clean that mess up!”

  One of the Redcoats immediately fled the room, returning a moment later with a human woman who had with her a mop and bucket. It seemed they were all to sit back and relax while the mess was dealt with, as though the bloody corpse in Dylan’s lap was nothing but scenery.

  Dylan leaned forward and kissed Davida’s quickly cooling temple.

  I’m sorry, Lily’s voice said in Dylan’s head.

  Make him stop, Dylan responded.

  When no answer came, Dylan shifted. Luc was pacing beside Lily, his hands seemingly unable to keep from touching her in one way or
another. He ran his fingers over her wrist, touched the hem of her blouse, even ran his palm over her lesion-covered throat more than once, smearing the fluids that were dripping from the sickness. There was agony in every gesture. There was no doubt in Dylan’s mind how much Luc loved Lily.

  But did that trump all the evil they had done together, and all they planned to do?

  “Him first,” Luc said, gesturing at Sam the moment the mess had been cleared and the human woman was escorted from the room.

  “No,” Sam muttered as two Redcoats grabbed him by the arms and dragged him closer to where Dylan continued to sit.

  “What do you want from us?” Wyatt demanded.

  Luc hesitated. And then he began to laugh.

  “You dare to speak to me?” he demanded. “You lowly human, son of the rebel leader. You dare to speak to me?”

  Wyatt stepped forward, his eyes moving regretfully over Dylan as he inadvertently stepped in the edge of a pool of Davida’s blood. “What will you gain by killing us?”

  “Satisfaction,” Luc said. “Revenge.”

  “That won’t save her human form,” he said, gesturing toward Lily.

  “No,” Luc agreed. “But it will make me feel better. Besides, you,” he gestured around himself, indicating Sam, Wyatt, Stiles, and Dylan, “are all going to die anyway.”

  “So give us a fighting chance.”

  “I did,” Luc thundered, his voice ricocheting off the stone walls of the room. “I gave you more than she gave my wife,” he said, indicating Dylan. “And this is downright humane compared to how I had wanted to kill you.”

  He was done arguing after that. He turned to the Redcoats and made a gesture that could not be mistaken as anything but what it was. A death sentence.

  Dylan couldn’t stop herself. She tried to morph into her ethereal form a second time, her need to save Sam so palpable that she nearly made it. She could see the light glowing around her, could feel her body begin to move toward her friend. Even saw the hope come into his eyes as he reached for her. Sweet, innocent Sam, who had never meant to hurt anyone.

  They manipulated him. They were angels, under the orders of Luc and Lily.

  Davida. Lavina.

  The day of testing, the women of Genero knew that the miracle hybrid had been born, that she was living in Genero. There were a few guesses as to which girl it was, but no definitive proof. Davida was convinced it was Dylan, but when she failed to show her gifts during the test, she began to doubt her conviction. That was, until Lavina, the head of the Genero council, realized that someone had altered the test. By then, it was too late. Dylan had already been taken out into the desert.

  Ellie had been placed in E dorm to watch over another girl there, a girl like Donna who had shown impressive healing abilities. However, that girl proved to be just another dud. Testing showed that she could heal herself and the other humans, but her powers were useless when used with angels. So, when the truth about Dylan came out, they sent Ellie into the desert with her male companion, a boy brought to the desert from another lab city, another hybrid who had the uncanny ability to find plants that offered lifesaving moisture and nutrition. He was to keep Ellie alive while she searched for, and found, Dylan.

  And then things took a turn that no one could have foreseen.

  Dylan arrived in Viti as she was supposed to. Safely arrested and brought to Lily and Luc. But her connection to Wyatt had proven a liability. Davida had to play along, had to help plan her rescue. But it was to be a short lived rescue until the Redcoats could capture Dylan again. Davida made sure Ellie was Dylan’s constant companion, even encouraged what she saw as a budding romance between Dylan and Sam in order to always have eyes on her.

  Dylan wasn’t supposed to escape the Redcoats when they attacked the resistance camp. Davida sent her away with Wyatt and the others, but they had such a short head start that the Redcoats should have found them easily. Davida had not counted on Stiles’ interference, on him leading Dylan and the others to the buried vehicles in the desert. And she had not counted on Demetria’s interference, or Joanna’s sudden reappearance in this long, drawn out drama.

  When Dylan insisted on separating from the others, Davida once again saw an opportunity. Sam was her agent. She simply used Lavina to manipulate Sam, to encourage him to lead Dylan to Davida and a band of Redcoats. Instead, the angel Dylan had called Ichabod came and took her to Joanna. Thwarted again, Davida pressured Lavina for results. Lavina was the woman Dylan had heard speaking to Sam after they were separated, the same woman who had blocked Dylan from seeing Sam, from hearing his thoughts or feeling his presence. And it had been Lavina who had instructed Sam to make sure Dylan ended up in that amusement park where Davida and the Redcoats were waiting for her.

  Sam had never done any of it of his own free will. He was lied to and manipulated.

  He was used.

  And he paid the ultimate price.

  Chapter 10

  Pain was all that existed.

  Dylan woke on the stone floor, her body bent at an odd angle over Davida’s, her hands outstretched for Sam, who lay in a similar pool of blood just a few feet away.

  There was screaming and yelling all around her. Dylan could not focus on the voices, on what they were saying. It was just pain, white hot pain that throbbed between her temples like a living being that writhed and slithered there, pain that was only rivaled by the torment that twisted inside her chest, in that place where she once had a heart full of love for her guardian and her friend.

  Wyatt somehow broke free of the Redcoats that stood behind him, holding his shoulders, and dropped to his knees in front of her. His hands, bound at the wrist by thick, black cords, pressed themselves against her skull, wrapping around her head as though it were just a child’s toy. Instantly pleasure seeped in where the pain lived, breaking it into smaller, more manageable pieces. Tears flowed freely down her cheeks, first tears of grief and then ones of relief.

  “Get him away from her,” Luc demanded of the Redcoats.

  “No,” Stiles said, shoving one Redcoat with his hip as he turned and smacked the other in the jaw with his tied hands. “Don’t you see what he’s doing?” he cried as yet another Redcoat came up behind him and wrapped his arms around him, immobilizing him even as he continued to fight.

  Luc moved away from Lily, coming to stand just inches from Dylan’s outstretched body. As he watched, his eyes began to widen.

  “Not possible,” he said in a voice that revealed how very possible it was.

  “Luc,” Lily mumbled.

  He immediately turned back to her, gripping her outstretched hands between his own. “He’s healing her,” he whispered harshly.

  Lily only nodded.

  Luc shook his head. “Not possible. They’re hybrids. They aren’t even real angels.”

  “It is possible,” Stiles said. “She is not typical. She’s different, something new.”

  “But him…he’s Nephilim. He can’t do that.”

  “There’s something about her that makes him more,” Stiles said, his voice almost as mystified as their conversation was becoming to Dylan.

  The pain was nearly gone. She reached up and ran her hand over the back of Wyatt’s, mindless of the smear of blood she left behind on his tan skin. Wyatt leaned down and kissed the center of her forehead, making the last of the pain just dissipate, dissolving at his touch and disappearing as though it had never been there.

  The smell of blood had become so thick that Dylan felt as though she was breathing in a fog bank, as though everything would forever taste of the reality of death. She struggled to sit up, the pain gone, but a weakness she couldn’t immediately explain was weighing her down, as though the half dozen Redcoats in the room were holding her against the stone floor with just the certainty of their presence.

  “Him,” Luc suddenly said, breaking the silence that had fallen over the room. “He’s next.”

  “No.”

  Stiles was the first to object, shak
ing off his captor and stepping forward even as the Redcoats anticipated his movement. One Redcoat slammed the butt of his sword into Stiles’ gut, forcing him to bend double as the blow pushed the air from his lungs.

  Dylan thought at first that Luc had indicated Stiles. But realization sank in as another Redcoat stepped forward and grabbed Wyatt by the shoulder, ripping his shirt as he pulled him to his feet.

  “No!”

  Dylan cried out as she lunged forward and wrapped her arms around Wyatt’s legs. The dual movement, the yank at his shoulder and Dylan’s grip at his ankles, caused Wyatt to fall backward into the Redcoat. Dylan immediately moved up his body, frantically pushing at the Redcoat’s hands as he tried to get a firm hold on Wyatt and lift him to his feet again.

  “You’re only prolonging the inevitable, Dylan,” Luc said, kicking at Wyatt’s legs as he moved up close to her. “If it’s not Wyatt now, it will be in five minutes. What difference does it make?”

  “What do I have to do to make this stop?”

  Luc laughed. And then he kicked out at her, landing his foot squarely in the center of her thigh. Pain flashed through Dylan in her thigh, but also in her head as her body automatically attempted to heal the bruise forming just under her skin.

  “You had a chance to make this right,” Luc said. “You chose to run away.”

  “Then let me make it right now.”

  “Dylan,” Stiles said, his voice a warning she knew she should heed, but was somehow unable to.

  “Don’t you get it?” Luc asked, reaching down to grab Dylan by the front of her dress. The material ripped as he used it as a handle to lift her body from the tangle it had become with Wyatt’s. One moment she was just a heap on the floor, the next she was hovering above it, Luc’s shockingly strong grip holding her a full foot above the stones. He held her so that her face was just inches from his. “You were Lily’s one chance to recover from this illness, her one chance to stay here with me and rule over these weak, pathetic humans. But you spat on that, spat on Lily, on our love, on our desire to make things better in this Godforsaken world.”