“I think it’s better than sitting around doing nothing. And, if it gets my dad out of there alive, all the better.”
It was the first time Wyatt had admitted out loud that he wanted to rescue his dad. He had been the first to bring up the desire to find Jimmy, but he seemed to give up when he realized his father was in Genero and that would mean placing Dylan in danger. It had seemed more important to Wyatt to honor his promise to his father than it was to save him. But Dylan had known it wasn’t the complete truth.
In a way, his acknowledgement made her feel better about tomorrow.
He kissed the top of her head. “Do you think he’s still alive?” he asked quietly.
“Yes.”
A tension that had begun to build in his body gave way and he relaxed around her, wrapping his arms tight around her shoulders. He moved to kiss the top of her head again, but she leaned back so that he could find her lips. It felt like Heaven to be in his arms again, or what she thought Heaven must feel like. And when she tasted him, felt him tasting her, it pushed her into a place she was sure no one else’s touch could ever take her.
After a minute, Wyatt pulled away. “We should go back to camp,” he said.
“Not yet,” she said.
She ran her hand slowly up the angles of his throat, her fingers grazing over the rough patches of hair on his chin, along the edge of his jaw. She wanted to memorize everything about him, wanted to remember this moment just in case.
She didn’t want to admit to herself what that really meant, didn’t want to think about what might happen in the morning. She just wanted to stand there in that moment and remember everything about Wyatt.
“Me, too,” he whispered against her lips as he leaned in to kiss her again, responding to something she hadn’t said, but with which her thoughts had been obsessing all day. Dylan sighed as she opened herself to him once more, their touch lingering until long into the dawn, morning finding them wrapped in each other’s arms on that small rise of land, reluctant to separate.
Chapter 22
They walked up to the back side of the dome as though they belonged there, each in their human forms wearing the simple coveralls that were the uniform of Genero. A group of farmers watched them as they passed not far from the dome wall, their curiosity tempered with fear. Most pretended they did not see them, just kept their eyes down on the ground in front of them, their hoes working quickly against the poor weeds that dared to grow among the corn and melon plants they were carefully cultivating.
“This is never going to work,” Demetria hissed under her breath as she slowed her step and moved back next to Dylan. “They’re never going to let us in.”
“It only has to get us close.”
“Not working,” Demetria said again.
Dylan didn’t respond. She just kept walking, struggling to get used to the longer gait of the adult female form she had taken for this part of the plan. She was taller, her legs stronger, leaving her struggling with the length of her stride. Wyatt had joked that she was getting him back for all the times he had forced her to keep with him when they were first together.
He moved up behind her and tugged at the back of her coveralls. “We’re almost there,” he said.
She reached back and squeezed his hand before moving forward, taking up a position at the front of the line.
They were headed for the same door Demetria had had Donna snuck out of the day she was supposed to send her to the Administration building. It was beside the tall, rolling doors that hid the cavernous room at the bottom of the Administration building that held the vehicles adolescents who showed no promise on their tests were taken into the desert in. Dylan had left the domed city by this means, though she had no memory of these doors or the immediate terrain outside of the city because her vehicle had no windows in the back.
She laid her hand on the handle of the door and closed her eyes, imagining it unlocked. After only a few seconds, she felt the handle pop under her hand. She twisted it open and motioned for her companions to walk through.
Step one begun.
Wyatt, hidden in the façade of a woman roughly Davida’s age, touched her hand as he moved past her. Demetria rolled her eyes when she saw it, shaking her head a little at Dylan as though she was still the head guardian of Dylan’s dorm. As though she still had control over Dylan’s behavior. But she also saw amusement, and maybe a little envy, in her eyes.
The moment they were through the door, Demetria and her team turned toward the left, toward the farmers who had spotted them walking along the dome. Dylan slipped through the door and joined Wyatt and Stiles, who was wearing the façade of a young girl, where they waited against the wall of the Administration building. Stiles led the way, directing them through another door that led into a corner of the vehicle room.
The smell hit Dylan with a power that was like a slap in the face. She remembered this smell, remembered the vague fear that came when the strangers in this room injected her with something she didn’t understand, knocking her out and causing her body to be unresponsive when she finally woke. She hadn’t been frightened up to that moment, had simply assumed this place was just another test on a day when everything was a test.
How wrong she had been.
The memory, however, made her wonder what had happened to all the other girls she had been escorted down the corridors with. Each had been taken to a different door, each escorted to a different fate. How many had survived? And how many had been driven into the desert like Dylan? How many of the girls she had grown up with were no longer alive?
It was a sobering question.
“This way,” Stiles hissed in his normal voice, a voice that seemed so odd in the face of an angelic little girl. It had been a reason to giggle earlier. Not now.
They followed Stiles through the cavernous room to the door that opened onto the corridor. Stiles led them farther down the corridor, to a place Dylan had not seen. There were more doors, each with a big window in it so that they could see into the rooms. Some were too dark to see anything, but others were well lit. Some of the things Dylan saw beyond those windows made her stomach turn and acidic bile rise in her throat.
She had seen them before. Rooms filled with rows of beds. Each bed had been empty then, but there were trays of instruments beside each. Dylan had assumed at the time that they were part of the test, rooms where girls were watched and tested. But it had never occurred to her to wonder what those tests consisted of.
Now she saw.
Wyatt ran a steadying hand over the top of her head. “Try not to look,” he said.
She glanced at him, biting her lip so hard she could taste her own blood. She knew what she was thinking, and she knew he agreed. She didn’t have to read his mind to see it. It was written all over his face.
This ends today.
They rounded another corner, the third since they left the vehicle room. This corridor was longer, the light a little dimmer. “Just ahead,” Stiles whispered, giving Dylan a look that asked whether she was really prepared for this.
“Let’s go,” she said.
As they took their first steps into this corridor, Dylan lowered her mental wall. Immediately her mind was filled with whispers, some close, some a distance away. After a second she was able to isolate the ones she wanted.
“They’re in the third room on the left,” she said.
Stiles didn’t acknowledge her words, but his pace immediately picked up speed. He wasn’t quite running, but he was moving quickly. Dylan was afraid he would wrench the door open the moment they reached it, but he held back, moving to the left side of it with his back against the wall. He had a sword in his hands, a golden sword that looked an awful lot like the axe he had wielded more than a few times since Dylan met him. She stood against the right side of the door, Wyatt pressed against the door at her side.
Dylan had considered arming herself for this part of the plan, but decided she was more likely to hurt herself than anyone else. Wyatt h
ad trained her with a knife, but her skills were dangerous to say the least. She had cut herself more often than the melons Wyatt had set up as targets. Besides, Wyatt had more than enough talent and weapons to protect them both.
She caught Stiles’ eyes and began to count off in her head. When she reached three, she laid her hand on the doorknob and imagined it unlocked. It popped under her hand when she reached five. On ten, she twisted it open and jumped through the doorway, moving quickly to her right to allow Wyatt and Stiles to move up in front of her.
She had expected chaos, but the room was quiet. Three men stood beside a bed, studying something that one of them held in a slender tube. On the bed in front of them lay a dark-haired woman, her head moving slowly from side to side, sweat beading her forehead as she tried to form words. But something wasn’t working. Her mouth moved, but no sound came out. Dylan had heard her thoughts a few times while they were in the hall, but they were jumbled, confused.
Joanna was clearly drugged.
Stiles marched forward and grabbed one of the men by his shoulder, spinning him around. Stiles buried his sword in the man’s gut without warning, blood gushing onto the floor and all over the man’s white coat.
The other two men jumped backward. The one with the slender tube dropped it and watched in horror as the contents spilled across the tiled floor. “You fool!” he cried, as though the lost tube was more important that the disembowelment of his friend.
“What did you do to her?” Stiles demanded as he pulled his sword free of the first man and turned to the others.
“Nothing,” the third man said, holding up his hands as he backed up so quickly he stumbled back into one of the many trays of instruments strewn around the room.
“You destroyed it,” the second man said, still staring at the broken tube on the floor. “Do you realize what Luc will do to you when he learns about this?”
Stiles didn’t care. He sliced his sword through the air, sending the man’s head flying across the room. The other man screamed like a girl, his voice high and strained. He continued to back up, tripping twice over the spilled instruments until he finally stopped flat on his bottom on the floor. Stiles stood over him for a long minute, but then seemed to realize there was no point in killing this man. He was not a threat. At the moment.
Dylan had rushed to Joanna the moment Stiles attacked the first man and was struggling to release the restraints that held her wrists and ankles to the frame of the bed. Wyatt was on the other side, struggling with the restraints there. He wouldn’t look at Joanna, wouldn’t allow himself to acknowledge her relationship to him. Dylan couldn’t blame him. Joanna’s death had been traumatic enough for five-year-old Wyatt. Seeing her now, knowing what she had done, how she had left him willingly, couldn’t have been an easy thing for him to deal with even if he did have warning.
As Dylan worked at the restraints, she tried to get through the drug cloud that was wrapped around Joanna’s mind. But she couldn’t find a way in. Joanna’s eyes kept slipping closed even as her mouth continued to work in that obsessive way that suggested she had something important to say to someone.
And then Stiles was beside her, running his hands slowly, gently, along the curves of her skull like Wyatt sometimes did to Dylan. It was instantaneous, the effect it had on Joanna. Her eyes opened, and they were bright, aware. She stared up at Stiles and seemed to see him despite his outward façade. She reached up and touched the dimple that had appeared in his chin, smiled as her finger moved slowly up to his bottom lip.
“Stiles,” she whispered.
“I’m here,” he said.
Wyatt was standing across from Dylan, working on Joanna’s right ankle as she finally got the straps released on her left. His head came up when his mother spoke, his eyes falling over Dylan. It wasn’t surprise she saw in his eyes, though. It was something darker, something sadder.
You knew, she whispered into his mind.
I heard him talking that day…
Dylan moved over to Wyatt’s side of the table and finished unfastening the strap for him. Then she lifted Joanna’s foot from the little support where it rested and pulled the sheet that covered her naked body down over her bare legs. Then she took Wyatt’s hand and led him out the door.
“We should stay,” he whispered.
“Give them a minute.”
He glanced back into the room before allowing Dylan to lead him out into the corridor. She looked from one side to the other, listening with her mind to make sure they weren’t about to be surprised by a group of Redcoats or some other scientists. There was a little alcove a few feet farther down the corridor. She led Wyatt there, thinking it would be a good place to wait until Stiles and Joanna were ready to move on. Wyatt had other ideas.
He pushed her back against the wall and pressed his lips to hers. She sighed and moved closer to him, amused that now she was the taller one, she was able to maneuver in a way she hadn’t yet experienced. Just like everything else about Wyatt’s touch, it was new and exciting.
She ran her hand down his back, and her mind rebelled a little as she felt muscle and bone that wasn’t where it was supposed to be. His female form was petite, the muscle definition under his skin less than what she was quickly growing accustomed to feeling. But his taste was the same, his touch so familiar it made her heart ache. She was so into the feel of him that she didn’t hear them coming, didn’t realize that the voices in her head were not just an echo but actually a group of women walking toward them down the corridor.
“What is this?” a woman’s voice demanded.
Wyatt turned and immediately pushed Dylan back behind him as he often did. But Dylan towered over him and could clearly see the looks of disgust on the faces of the women standing just outside their alcove.
“Explain yourself, guardian,” the first woman demanded.
Dylan stepped forward. “I apologize, councilwoman,” she said, moving into the appropriate half curtsey that she had seen Davida and other guardians offer the councilwomen too many times to count. “I was escorting this guardian to the testing rooms.”
The bald woman stepped forward and studied Wyatt. “Why is she being tested?”
“Abhorrent behaviors,” Dylan said immediately.
The councilwoman turned to look sharply at Dylan. “It seems she is not the only one,” she said, her voice thick with an accent Dylan could not immediately place. “Perhaps you should turn yourself in for testing as well.”
Dylan tried to look ashamed as she dropped her gaze to the floor. “Yes, councilwoman,” she said.
“This is why things need to change around here,” the councilwoman said as she turned back to her companions and led the way down the corridor.
Dylan felt a puff of wind against her neck. She turned and found Wyatt struggling to keep a bad case of the giggles under control. Dylan wrapped her arms around him, pulling his face hard against her chest as she buried her face in his hair and let go with her own uncontrollable laughter.
This was how Stiles and Joanna, clumsily dressed in one of the doctor’s white coats, found them a moment later.
“Stop it,” Stiles said, slapping a hand against Dylan’s shoulder. “She could have had you marched into a cell upstairs.”
“That’s where we’re going anyway,” she said.
“Yes, well, it might be better if we go of our own volition.”
Dylan wiped away tears with both hands, trying not to look at Wyatt because each glance at him made her want to laugh again. She took a few deep breaths and then nodded.
“All right, let’s get moving,” she said.
Wyatt took her hand and led her out of the alcove, stepping cautiously as he checked each of the corridors before leading her back the way they had come.
“This is our hope for the future,” Dylan heard Stiles say behind her.
“Yeah,” Joanna agreed. “Isn’t it great?”
Chapter 23
They walked quickly back down the corridor toward
the assembly room where Dylan’s group first entered this part of the Administration building. There were more people moving around here, so Dylan had to pay attention to the voices she could hear in her head. She had gotten so used to funneling them out that it took some concentration. It also didn’t help that Wyatt was holding her hand and it was…distracting, to say the least.
They laughter and frivolous thoughts began to fall apart, however, when they came into a shorter corridor, one Dylan did not recognize. The voice began low and quiet in the back of her mind, but it grew in volume until it was the only thing she could hear. She bent her knees, moving into a squat against the wall as Joanna and Stiles rushed on ahead of them. Wyatt squatted in front of her and took her head in his hands, but she could barely feel him.
Don’t let them, the voice said.
The same three words, over and over again, a scream inside Dylan’s mind that reverberated and returned, the words chasing one another around inside her skull until that was all she could hear, all she could concentrate on, all she was aware of.
“Dylan,” Wyatt whispered, his lips close to her ear. “What’s happening?”
She shuddered, unable to even pull herself out of her own head long enough to explain it to him.
She felt his touch disappear, felt him more than saw him disappear down into the next corridor. Pain began to spread from the top of her head down her neck to follow her spine all the way to the bottom of her tail bone. Tears were running over her hands where they were pressed to her head, to her face. She wanted it to stop, but she didn’t know how to do it.
Don’t let them.
Don’t let them what? she finally thought to ask back.
Almost immediately, the voice stopped. The pain stayed, but the voice was gone, the echoes of it slowly receding. And then it was back, but quieter.
Who’s there?
A friend.
The voice became quiet again. Wyatt was back, his hands on her head, her neck, making the pain break up and disappear again. She opened her eyes and looked up at him, saw Stiles and Joanna watching cautiously from behind him.
FALLEN (Angels and Gargoyles Book 3) Page 11
