“I know that,” Ellie said, the tone of her voice suggesting she thought Dylan was unintelligent if she really thought she hadn’t known. “But do you know anything else about her? What she’s done?”
“I think she’s more concerned with what you’ve done, Ellie,” Joanna said quietly.
Ellie thrust her hand as though she wanted to hit Joanna, but missed. Her hands were suddenly shaking, and Dylan could see the faint glow of her ethereal light beginning to appear around her. And her thoughts…Dylan could hear them, and they weren’t what she had expected.
“She’s a criminal,” Ellie cried. “She faked her own death so she could—”
Before Ellie could get the words completely out of her mouth, Joanna grabbed her by the throat and pushed her back against the stage. Ellie’s face turned a bright red as she lay there, her eyes searching frantically for Dylan, for help against Joanna’s attack.
“You handed my son over to the Redcoats. You were going to stand there and watch them take him away, to imprison him and kill him. How is that worse than anything I could have done?”
“Stop,” Dylan said, stooping to touch Joanna’s shoulder from her position on the stage, hoping to calm her down. Instead, Joanna shrugged her off.
“She tried to deliver you to Lily and Luc,” Joanna cried, looking up at Dylan. “How could you possibly feel any compassion for her?”
“I don’t,” Dylan admitted. “But I need to know why.”
“You know why,” Joanna said, pressing harder on Ellie’s throat.
“Stop!” Dylan cried again. “You can’t do this. You have to let me talk to her.”
Joanna didn’t even look up.
A dozen things were flying through Dylan’s mind all at once. Images Ellie was frantically sending her, truths about Joanna she had never wanted to know mixed with her frantic need to get them out of there before the Redcoats showed up with Luc and Lily. Almost without realizing she was going to do it, Dylan slipped into her ethereal form and between Joanna and Ellie. With just the force of her thoughts, Dylan focused on Joanna and pushed. The older woman suddenly burst across the room, landing roughly against the farthest row of seats in the back of the auditorium.
Ellie slid to the floor, clutching her throat. Dylan, who was once again in her human form, touched her, offering some of her own healing ability to repair the broken hyoid bone that was still causing Ellie trouble. Just as normal color was returning to Ellie’s face, Joanna grabbed Dylan’s shoulder and yanked her off her feet, tossing her like a ragdoll against the first row of seats.
“Why did you do that?” she demanded.
“Like it or not, we need her.”
“No, we don’t. She’s a traitor.”
“So are you,” Ellie said.
“You implied you came here with the second wave of angels,” Dylan said as she slowly crawled over the seats and stood behind the first row. “You said you came to help the humans.”
“I never said that. I simply told you how the angels got involved.”
“But you let me think—”
“You wanted to think I was good, that I was misunderstood, that everything I did, I did for the right reasons.”
“Did she help you morph into your ethereal form the first time?” Ellie asked.
Dylan thought back on that moment, the fire that was raging in Joanna’s living room, the threat that loomed over them. Joanna said that Luc was coming, that she needed to concentrate, she needed to focus. She touched her forehead and something seemed to happen, but now that Dylan thought about it, she realized she couldn’t really say that Joanna had helped. Not with the actual change.
She looked at Ellie.
“Those who defied God’s orders lost some of their gifts.”
“The Redcoats,” Dylan said on a breath. “Wyatt said they were changed, that they were demons.”
Joanna shook her head. “Who told him that? Was it Stiles?”
“He’s your soul mate.”
Joanna laughed. “Some soul mate,” she said as her golden sword suddenly appeared in her hand. “He wanted to send me back to Heaven. He thought the best way to do it was to kill my human form, but he didn’t know that my healing abilities were still working. And then he thought exposing me to the angel disease would do it, but he only managed to infect himself.”
“You did that to him?” Dylan asked, shuddering as she remembered Stiles lying on the ground, fever wreaking havoc on his body. “You let him suffer?”
“He wanted me to suffer.”
Ellie had climbed to her feet behind Joanna and was moving slowly toward her. Joanna had her sword casually at her side, letting it swing a little as she spoke to Dylan, her eyes watching her every movement with more attention than her casual stance suggested. Ellie’s own sword was in her hand.
Dylan tried not to look at Ellie, tried not to think about what was about to happen. There was darkness in Joanna, darkness Dylan had noticed once before but thought was an effect of the illness she battled or the pain that she had suffered. But now she knew better. The things Ellie had shown her proved there was so much Dylan had turned a blind eye to.
“Stiles deserves better than you,” Dylan said.
“Stiles was just jealous that I married a human,” Joanna said, kicking her foot against the edge of the carpet. “He didn’t want me to come here in the first place. Refused to come with me. And when he finally did come, all self-righteous and convinced he knew exactly how things should end, he didn’t understand why I didn’t see things the way he did.”
“Maybe because he hadn’t gone insane.”
Joanna laughed, the sound like that of an animal on the hunt. And then she spun around so quickly Dylan didn’t at first realize what she was doing. Joanna’s sword was buried in Ellie’s chest, Ellie’s eyes wide with shock, before Dylan could even react. When she did, it was on instinct, just as it had been moments before when she tried to save Ellie from Joanna’s touch.
Heat built inside of Dylan, beginning in the center of her chest and spreading out until it filled her from the tip of her toes to the very bottom of her each strand of hair on her head. She could feel it, feel the light gathering where her soul lay. She pressed her hands to her chest, almost like one of the religious people Stiles had told her about, people who prayed to God in moments of desperation or jubilation. Then she pushed out, thrusting her arms so hard that she could feel it through her shoulders and into her spine.
Joanna screamed. Again it was like an animal, but this time it was more like the prey than the predator. She fell to the ground, her body instantly covered in the same lesions that had wept on Lily’s body, her brain convulsing with the same fever that had burned not only Lily’s body, but Dylan’s, too.
She only suffered for a moment. Joanna wasn’t as strong as Lily, her body not as resilient. She succumbed to the illness within minutes, one last convulsion shattering the bones in her hands, her feet, as her muscles contracted with the seizure. It was only as she took her last breath that Dylan realized there were people close by. They were coming.
She rushed to Ellie’s side, touching her forehead gently.
“You have to go,” she said as blood began to drip from the corner of her mouth.
“I can heal you,” she said as she began to tug at the sword still imbedded in Ellie’s chest.
“No,” Ellie said, laying a hand over Dylan’s. “You have to go. You can’t face them alone.”
“I’m not alone,” she said, as tears began to course down her face.
“She’s right,” Ellie said, her voice becoming something like a gurgle. “I betrayed you. I betrayed Wyatt. I don’t deserve your compassion.” She caressed Dylan’s hand lightly one last time. “Just promise me you will end this.”
And then she shoved the sword as hard as she could, pushing it deeper and up to the left, finishing what Joanna had started.
Dylan had to look away, a heaviness settling on her shoulders that she knew she would never be
able to outrun. A moment passed, and then another, Dylan’s tears falling in small cascades onto Ellie’s body, mixing with the blood that continued to pool there.
“I promise,” she finally said, bending low to kiss Ellie’s check. “I promise.”
Chapter 31
Just as the door on the far side of the stage opened, Dylan slipped out the way she and Joanna had come. An alarm went up almost immediately, but she didn’t have time to worry about it. She ran straight past half a dozen Redcoats in the lobby and out the main doors. One managed to grab her, but he only got the back of her jacket and she was able to slip it off without missing a beat.
They were waiting for her in the adolescent courtyard, right in front of D dorm. It seemed poetic. This was where it had all began. This was where it should end.
Donna was there among the gargoyles, angels, and humans who had managed to make it out of the building after completing their various assignments. Jimmy, too, was standing among the others, Rachel in his arms and Wyatt at his side.
“Where’s Joanna?”
Dylan took Stiles’ hands, found it difficult to look him in the eye. But she let him have the memory. She waited, afraid of what his reaction would be. She expected anger. Maybe some hurt, a sense of betrayal. Maybe even hatred. But what she got was relief.
“Thank you,” he whispered as he roughly pulled her into his arms. “You saved her,” he sighed into her ear. “The only thing that could bring her back, bring back the angel I knew, is going back to Heaven. And that’s the one thing she feared more than anything else.”
Dylan pulled back a little. “Can I ask you something?”
A slow smile touched his familiar features. “Anything, you know that.” But then he turned her, made her look at the Administration building. “I think, however, we have more important things to do right now.”
At that moment an explosion rocked the top floors of the building.
They were far enough back that the falling debris was not a danger, but close enough to see the panic that spread through the bottom floors of the building. Another explosion took out the center floors, glass and stone falling closer to their chosen battlefield. But they stood their ground, waiting for what they knew would come next.
And, sure enough, here it came.
A flock of Redcoats marched out the main doors of the Administration building. Dylan didn’t have to concentrate to feel Luc and Lily in the center of that flock. Lavina was there too, as well as the other councilwomen and various other angels who had made Genero their home.
Dylan gestured toward Demetria. Her gargoyles immediately moved forward, their axes in their hands as they formed a line in front of the more vulnerable humans behind them. Dylan made another gesture and a dozen or more angels soared into the sky, verifying what Dylan had already known.
It was time.
Dylan walked over to Wyatt. He was watching her with an intensity that made her heart skip a beat or two. He patted his dad’s shoulder before coming to her, smoothing her hair as he took her face in his hands.
“Are you sure?” he asked quietly.
“Yes.” She moved closer to him, loved the feel of him as he wrapped himself around her for a long minute. She could imagine how amazing it would be to live there in his arms, to never have to wonder if this would be the last time, if she would ever see him again, if she would ever be able to touch him again.
Soon.
She slipped into her ethereal form, but lingered for a few seconds there against his body, drawing strength from him, from his love for her. It took a lot of determination to force herself away from him. But away she went, soaring high into the sky.
Other angels were moving around her. She could feel their consciousness, could hear some of their thoughts. The building was still crumbling. All the humans had gotten out; Stiles and Wyatt made sure of that. A few angels were trapped. She could feel their consciousness, too. They were suffering, trying to heal their injuries, but the pressure of the debris weighing down their bodies made it impossible. It was worse than any fate one could wish on an angel except death. Or the angel illness.
She dipped low over the Redcoats and counted, noting the way they were configured. She sent the information to both Stiles and Wyatt through her thoughts before she soared into their center and began to touch the angels with them, the ones who were still whole and still had the ability to make their own decisions.
Fight and die. Or return to Heaven. You have five minutes to decide.
She watched them react, almost amused by the way they looked up into the sky, as though searching for the source of the thought. Most of them knew. Most understood exactly what was happening. Some were afraid. Others so deeply believed in what Luc and Lily were doing, they wouldn’t have let God himself change their minds.
Most were going to fight.
Dylan slipped back onto the ground and morphed into her gargoyle form. An axe appeared in her hand immediately.
The Redcoats continued to march in their direction, moving as calmly and slowly as though this were simply a training maneuver rather than a life or death battle. That was how arrogant Luc was. He really believed they had all the advantages.
He strongly underestimated the human spirit.
Chapter 32
Five Redcoats fell immediately as their line met the gargoyle line. As axe met sword, the sound ringing through the open corridor, Wyatt directed those not directly involved in the fight into D dorm, including his father and Rachel. The dorm was filled with students. Dylan could see them out of the corner of her eye, standing at the window and watching the battle unfold below them. Not something she had wanted them to see, but it might make it easier when this was all over and they would have to be told the truth about the world they had been born into.
Dylan worked her way forward, striking the odd Redcoat as they approached her position, but her attention rested on the angels overhead. When the eighth, ninth, tenth Redcoat fell to the three gargoyles who had fallen, Dylan sent up a signal.
Fireballs began to crash against the ground, one right after another, until she could no longer tell one from the other. The grass caught fire and the blaze built quickly, rushing across the courtyard until nearly everything except for the concrete pillars on which the dorms stood was ablaze. Angels began to scream as their human forms burned and they continued to move with the Redcoats.
Wyatt appeared at Dylan’s side, also in his gargoyle form. Taller than her, he toward over her in this form, his marble skin smooth and filled with tiny blue lines that crisscrossed his arms and legs in beautiful patterns. A work of art that could murder without a second thought. He moved in front of her and took out three Redcoats that were coming their way.
When they had made their way through half the column, Dylan could feel the growing desperation of the angels in the center. Their thoughts were roughly the same: confusion and fear. Luc had promised they would never have to fight in this way. They had no idea what to do without their angel swords, swords that were often useless against gargoyles, especially this many gargoyles. The Redcoats were falling by the dozens. Although many were getting up, their bodies still able to heal in many cases, many others weren’t. The loss of gifts was uneven, unpredictable. These fallen could not count on the assumption that a gargoyle axe was ineffective against them.
And if they couldn’t depend on that fact, could those in the middle? Those who had chosen to side with the fallen?
It was then that Stiles’ voice sounded in her head.
Now.
She grabbed Wyatt’s hand, and they both slipped into their ethereal forms and burst into the sky, their colors mixing as they spun through the air among the other angels. It was a sight. Dylan could hear the awe and amazement that surged through the collective minds of the angels around them. They had never seen anything like it.
Dylan almost wished she could sit back and watch it herself. But there was work to do.
They paused over the battle and wat
ched as the gargoyles inflicted more and more damage on Luc’s invincible army. Her eyes were drawn to the center of the dwindling columns. Lily, so beautiful now that she had regained her strength, stood with hands on hips, watching Dylan and Wyatt fly overhead. And then she burst into golden light.
Dylan pulled back, Wyatt moving along beside her, touching only at what would have been their hands had they been in their human form. They maneuvered through the other angels, forcing Lily to follow.
You really believe everything they say about you, don’t you? That you’re the second coming.
Why shouldn’t I?
There never was a first coming, Dylan. How could you be the second?
Dylan dipped low in the sky, leading Lily toward the still falling Administration building. Again she could hear the thoughts of those caught in the rubble. It distracted her for an instant, made her falter in her flight. But Wyatt pulled her back, leading her up high against the true center of the dome.
They waited. Lily moved in slowly shrinking circles, moving closer to them, but not close enough to allow them to pull any tricks she could not see coming.
What is your plan?
Dylan moved into Wyatt, meshing their bodies in a way that made the colors of their auras blend perfectly together, becoming a color man had yet to name. Dylan felt power rush through her, felt as though she could do anything she wanted. If she had eyes, she could have closed them, would have pictured in her mind exactly what she wanted to happen. But she didn’t have eyes. Her imagination simply overlaid what her conscious mind could not shut out: spirits, some beautiful and generous, others dark and broken, lifting out of human forms and drifting to the places where they belonged.
I’m sending you home.
Bodies fell where they stood. Angels dropped to the ground and morphed into human forms only to have those bodies fall, too. One right after the other, like a game Davida had once taught Dylan to play. Dominoes. As their spirits began to drift upward, the souls brushed against Dylan and Wyatt, thanking them for what they had done. When Stiles touched them, the love he infused into their souls was almost more than Dylan could take into her overflowing heart. His thoughts flowed freely, his gratitude for Dylan, his unwavering belief in her. She gave back as much as she could, wishing him luck on his next journey and hoping that she would, one day, see him again.
FALLEN (Angels and Gargoyles Book 3) Page 15
