“Most of you know by now why we’re here,” she began. The room grew so quiet that she could hear her own heart pounding in her chest. “We’re here because it is time that Luc and Lily return to where they came from. We’re here because it is time that this war ends. We’re here because we want what you want…we want to destroy places like this,” she said, gesturing around herself. “We want to be able to live our lives without the fear that some vengeful angel will come and drag us away from our families, or make us work in mines for nothing more than a single hot meal a day and a home that can be ripped away the moment we can no longer work.”
A cheer went up among the humans and a few of the gargoyles. The angels lined up with the crowd looked around themselves, a peaceful look on their faces as they watched comradery rush through the crowd.
Dylan held up her hand. “I can’t guarantee we will have success today,” she said. “Luc is strong, and he often seems to be a step ahead of everyone else.” She looked around the room, looked at the variety of ages in this crowd, at the young and the very old, at the ones who remembered a world without angels and gargoyles, at those who didn’t. Her heart ached as she realized that some of these people, gargoyles, angels, and humans, some would not live to see the end of the day. “If anyone here would like to leave now, there will be no judgment.”
She stepped back into Wyatt and watched the assembled crowd. A few people, mostly the humans, looked at each other, but no one left. After a full minute, Stiles stepped forward and began assigning positions, directing each part of the group into smaller ones.
Wyatt led Dylan to one side of the corridor and touched her forehead. “You can’t fight,” he said.
She brushed his hand away. “I’m fine.”
“You are not fine, Dylan.”
“I just need to rest for a few minutes,” she said. “It’s been a long morning.”
Doubts filled every angle of his face, making her wish she could kiss each one away. She ran her hand slowly over his chest, letting her fingers rest just below the pulse jumping in the hollow below his Adam’s apple. He sighed, showing how much he knew her and how pointless it was to try to talk her out of something once she set her mind on it. He leaned in and kissed her, his lips doing more to heal the heat threatening to consume her health than the longest rest might have done.
“I love you,” he whispered in her ear, saying the words aloud for the first time. “Don’t get dead.”
“You, too.”
He studied her eyes for a long minute, sighed again, and pushed away from her to join Stiles and the makeshift soldiers.
Dylan slid down on her bottom and leaned back against the wall, closing her eyes. The exhaustion that had come over her was so complete that it only took a second before she drifted off. But it wasn’t a restful sleep. Not even a true sleep, really. Instead, the moment her consciousness moved into the background, she found herself in a room that was as familiar as it was frightening. She had been here before.
The floor was slick, like stone. But she couldn’t see the entire room. It wasn’t dark, it just didn’t seem to have any sense of perspective. She couldn’t tell where the walls were, where the room began and where it ended. But she knew this place.
“Where are you?” she called as she turned in circles. “Why have you brought me here?”
“Because you are about to attack the man I love.”
Lily stepped out of the obscurity of the room, dressed so beautifully in a long, golden dress made of some sort of material that shimmered in the light. Her blonde hair, so much like Dylan’s, was pulled back in a low ponytail, her face unmarred and shining bright with renewed health. She smiled softly, an expression that belied the anger and fear in her eyes.
“If you think you can stop me, why aren’t you here?” Dylan asked.
“What makes you think I’m not?”
Dylan stepped back as Lily approached her, but like the last time Lily had pulled her into this place, no matter how hard or how quickly Dylan tried to move, she never seemed to go anywhere. Lily grabbed her by the throat and squeezed. Dylan reached up and clawed at her wrists, panic moving through her as she began to struggle to catch a breath. All her fight was used up in just a couple of seconds as her weakened body succumbed quickly to a lack of oxygen.
“You’re not as strong as you think you are,” Lily hissed in her ear. “And you are not as smart as you think you are. Remember that on the battlefield.” She let go, shoving Dylan so hard that she began to fall backward and woke with a start on the floor of the prison corridor.
“We have to go,” she cried, her voice hoarse. “They know we’re here.”
Chapter 29
Dylan changed into a pair of jeans and a loose-fitting t-shirt, relieved to be out of those scratchy coveralls. Once she had known nothing but the coveralls, but now they seemed so cumbersome. Joanna came into the small room where Dylan was and tossed her a soft, sleek jacket.
“To protect your arms,” she said.
“Thanks.”
Joanna leaned against the wall and watched Dylan as she finished dressing. She came to her as she stood in front of a broken mirror, trying to use a piece of cord to tie her hair out of the way. Joanna slipped the cord from her fingers, used her own fingers as a comb, and quickly tied her hair up tightly in a nice ponytail that Dylan never could have achieved.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
“For what?” Dylan asked.
Joanna studied her face in the mirror, her hands on Dylan’s shoulders. “For rescuing me from these people. For bringing Stiles to me. For saving Jimmy and taking care of him.” She paused a second. “For loving my son.”
Dylan met her eyes in the mirror and found herself wondering how she would feel in that moment if she was Joanna. She couldn’t even imagine it. She pulled away from Joanna’s touch and snatched up the jacket. As she slid her arms through the sleeves, she said, “He’ll come around. Eventually.”
“I’m not sure we have the kind of time it will take him.”
Dylan heard the fatality in that statement, the same surrender she had heard in Joanna’s voice once before. For some reason, it rubbed her the wrong way.
“He just now found you and now you want to run away again?”
“I might not have a choice.”
“Everyone has a choice.”
“Not angels. You know that.”
Dylan looked at her for a long second. “Then you had better make things right with your son before you leave.”
Joanna looked down at the floor, defeat in the slump of her shoulders. “I made so many mistakes…”
“You did it for the humans. And to protect him. He knows that.”
“Is that why?” she asked.
Dylan glanced toward the door, wondering if Stiles and Wyatt had begun to lead the others downstairs yet. She wondered if she could just walk away, leave Joanna to her own regrets. But she knew she couldn’t. Slowly, her feet dragging just a little, she moved back to Joanna’s side.
“This war has made everyone it has touched do things they are not proud of.”
“Did they all ask their soul mate to pretend to be a gargoyle and fake their death?”
“Stiles?” Dylan asked, her mind immediately searching the memory Joanna had shared with her, her memory of the gargoyle standing in the shadows as Wyatt grieved over his presumably dead mother. There was a significant difference between that gargoyle and the one Stiles had pretended to be when they first met. And she couldn’t see the eyes. That was the one thing Stiles could not change when he morphed from one form to another. Those beautiful, mournful eyes.
“Yes,” she whispered as tears began to flood her eyes. “I thought I was protecting them. But what if I was just trying to hurt them before they could hurt me? I was so afraid Jimmy would find out who, what I really was. Leaving seemed to be the only way to escape that inevitability.”
“Joanna—”
“I’ve loved two men in my life.
And I’ve destroyed them both with my selfishness.”
“Three,” Dylan said, touching her face lightly. “And now all three are counting on you to fight beside them, to stop Luc and Lily from destroying everything that ever mattered.”
Joanna nodded. “I know,” she whispered. She reached up and rubbed at her eyes, wiping away her tears. “This is why I’m here, why I’ve been here for so long.”
“And it’s why we can’t give up.”
Joanna nodded again. “Do you think—” she began to say, but then stopped as the door opened and Stiles stuck his head inside.
“We’re headed down,” he said, his eyes moving from Joanna to Dylan, concern making him step into the room and shut the door behind him. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” Dylan said, taking Joanna’s hand firmly in her own. “Right?”
“Right,” Joanna said, forcing a smile.
“This is it,” Stiles said, walking toward them. “Today decides the fate of a world.”
“So dramatic,” Wyatt said as he, too, came into the room. He joined their little circle, breaking the link between Dylan and Joanna as he took Dylan’s hand in his own. He hesitated only a second before he also took Joanna’s hand and pulled both against his sides.
“This is it,” Stiles said again, stepping into the circle, Dylan and Joanna’s hands tucked into his. “We’ve made it this far together.”
“Today we live or die together,” Dylan said.
“Again, a little too dramatic,” Wyatt said.
“Then what do you think we should say?” Dylan asked, elbowing him in the ribs.
Wyatt looked up at the ceiling, clicking his tongue like a child struggling to come up with the perfect answer. Then his head came down and he smiled as he said, “Let’s go send Luc back to Hell.”
“Technically, he came from Heave—” Stiles began to say, but Wyatt kicked him in the shin.
Joanna lifted her hands, pulling both Stiles’ and Wyatt’s hands up with hers. “To Hell,” she said.
“To Hell,” the rest of them said together, their voices rising and reverberating around the low ceiling.
And then they moved inward and bowed their heads, taking comfort from the closeness of one another.
Chapter 30
Dylan stood beside Joanna, her eyes closed as she concentrated. Her mind jumped from the thoughts of one person after another until, finally, she found what she was looking for. She opened her eyes and held up two fingers to Joanna. Joanna nodded, her hand on the door knob of the door they were pressed against. Slowly, Dylan dropped one finger, then the second. Joanna quickly opened the door, morphed into her ethereal form, and slid into the room beyond.
Dylan pushed the door closed and waited. It didn’t take long. At the signal, she pulled the door open and walked in, her thick, oddly graceful gargoyle form moving quicker than she had expected. She grabbed the back of a Redcoat’s jacket and pulled him backward, slamming her axe into his head as he fell so that the blow would leave him unconscious. A second Redcoat tried to knock her feet out from under her, but she turned just in time and knocked him over with the butt of her axe. He fell hard, a scream slipping from his slips. But it was cut off when Joanna appeared over him and slammed her angel’s sword against his throat.
They quickly made their way out of the room, letting themselves into the auditorium where Dylan attended her final council meeting as an adolescent. Voices made Dylan stop in her tracks as she pulled back, blocking Joanna from moving past a dark alcove that proved to be the only place that offered them even the smallest suggestion of cover.
The door at the far end of the stage, where the councilwomen always entered, opened. Dylan watched as Lavina escorted the other councilwomen and a few others through the door. Luc, Dylan was relieved to see, was not among them.
But Ellie was.
“We’ll bring them in here,” Lavina was saying. “This is the most secure place in the building.”
“Do you really think a group of malnourished prisoners can harm Luc and Lily?” one of the other councilwomen asked.
“I think a human who is desperate enough can do anything they set their mind to.”
Lavina walked to the center of the stage and looked out at the tiers of seats where the students normally sat. It was eerily similar to how she stood when she was about to give a speech. But, this time, there was more than fear in Lavina. There was sadness. She was saying goodbye.
“I’ll arrange for guards on the doors. Supplies have been arranged. And the students have been confined to their dorms.” She turned and looked at the others. “This attack should not last long. Then everything will return to normal.”
“Of course,” the councilwoman who had caught Wyatt and Dylan outside the medical rooms said. “This is what the Redcoats do.”
Lavina nodded. She glanced out at the seats one last time before gesturing for the women to follow her through a second door that forced them to pass just a few feet from where Dylan and Joanna were hiding. Dylan found herself trying to hear their thoughts as they passed, but most of them were angles and capable of hiding theirs.
And then Ellie walked past. Her thoughts were open and clear.
We will find you.
The moment she heard the door close, Dylan stepped out of the alcove. She moved into the room as silently as she could and searched for any unexpected danger. There was no surveillance equipment in Genero. There was no need when most of the councilwomen were angels. But there was the odd alarm here and there, like the one Dylan set off in the corridor when she morphed into her ethereal form. There were none of those in this part of the building, however, because there were no hybrids trying to escape here.
Dylan had moved as far as the center of the stage when she realized they were not alone. She gestured to Joanna to stay put, then climbed onto the stage.
“Hello, Ellie,” she said.
“You don’t look very good, Dylan. Have you been ill?”
Ellie stepped out from behind a lectern at the far side of the stage, her arms crossed over her chest as she studied Dylan with narrowed eyes. Dylan just waited, allowing Ellie to feel as though she were in charge of the situation.
“Where’s Wyatt?” Ellie asked.
“I’m sure you would love to know,” Dylan responded.
A soft smile widened on Ellie’s lips. “You were so jealous,” she said. “It was the perfect distraction.”
“Don’t you think Wyatt was smart enough to know you were playing him?”
“No,” Ellie said, shaking her head slowly. “He always had his head stuck in those old world books, always watching you get yourself into trouble over and over again. He was too distracted by you to see what I was up to.”
“But you didn’t get very far.”
“Neither did you. And that was the point.”
“Why?”
Ellie moved around Dylan as she paced the length of the stage and turned back around, her eyes darting to all the places someone might be able to hide.
“I saw how you connected with him so easily. When we were running from the Redcoats? You hadn’t even developed half of your gifts, but you could send your consciousness to him with no effort at all.” Ellie turned back to Dylan, her eyes moving slowly over her face, her body, as though she could see her gifts displayed somewhere. “Only a soul mate could inspire that kind of boost.”
“You were flirting with him before that.”
“Just flirting. It was a game. It wasn’t until later that I put any effort into it.”
“And Sam? Was that a game, too?”
“That wasn’t my idea,” she said, beginning to pace again, her eyes scanning the tiers of chairs in front of them as she did. “I told them I could do it on my own, but they insisted I have company.”
“Then you left him behind intentionally.”
“I had no reason to help him. His service was finished. It was someone else’s job to take care of what came next.”
“Luc
did,” Dylan said, anger thrumming through her body as she said. “Sam’s dead, Ellie.”
That caused her to pause in her movements. She spun on her heel so that she was facing Dylan. Her eyes moved slowly over her face, again searching in that odd way Ellie had always seemed to have. “You’re lying,” her voice low, dangerously quiet.
“No.” Dylan held out a hand to her. “Come, see for yourself.”
She hadn’t really expected Ellie to take her up on the offer, but she surprised them both by stepping forward and grabbing Dylan’s hand roughly. After a long second, they both closed their eyes. Dylan concentrated on the memory of Davida and Sam’s death. After a second, she felt a warmth as the memory moved from her consciousness to Ellie’s.
“No,” Ellie whispered as she watched them both die. Dylan could feel the emotion move through her. “He promised he wouldn’t do that.”
“He did.”
“Because of you,” Ellie said as she suddenly jerked away, the movement pulling Dylan off balance for a brief second. “You did this! You refused to fix Lily, you refused to cooperate with everyone. If you had just done what you were supposed to—”
“We would all be dead by now. Don’t you see that, Ellie?” Dylan charged forward a few steps, waving her hand in a big, broad gesture. “He wants this place for himself and a few slaves who will remain alive to serve him. There is nothing more.”
She shook her head as she backed up. She didn’t realize how far she had gone, how close to the edge of the stage she was. She took one step too many. Her arms spun in a pinwheel as she fell backward.
Right into Joanna’s arms.
Ellie jerked away as soon as she realized who had caught her. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said, her voice rising with something like hysteria. “You trust her?” Ellie jerked her thumb at Joanna as she turned to face Dylan again, her eyes moving quickly between the two women. “Do you have any idea what she did?”
“Joanna is Wyatt’s mother.”
FALLEN (Angels and Gargoyles Book 3) Page 14
