FOUND (Angels and Gargoyles Book 1)

by Brenda L. Harper

  No one else in D dorm had eyes like Dylan’s. She always felt like an oddity, always admired the brighter colors of Davida and Donna’s amazing eyes.

  But envy was wrong. So she hid her feelings.

  She hid so many things.

  She swam for a few minutes, drinking her fill before she climbed out of the water in search of food. She still had the full box of carbs, crackers that provided her energy and vitamins, if not flavor. She chewed a few, making a face as she did. Spoiled by Cook, she knew. Milk was a special treat, especially with honey added to it. Cook let Dylan have a glass every night after they did the dishes. It was a flavor that Dylan’s tongue nearly ached to taste.

  And potatoes cooked so tender that they melted in the mouth.

  And chocolate cake that disappeared the moment it landed on a fork.

  And strawberry pie and blueberry muffins and vanilla mini-cakes…

  So many treats.

  Dylan had to force herself to stop thinking about them.

  She filled her water bottles, drinking one down completely in seconds to wash away the graininess of the carb crackers. She knelt beside the river to fill the bottle again when her odd, but familiar, breeze suddenly washed over her. She looked up, searching the blue sky for some sign of her invisible friend. Still she couldn’t see anything, couldn’t prove to her rested mind that it was real.

  Last night was such a blur. She remembered so little of it. Only the gratefulness when she found this place, the thought that some being had brought her here. The lack of concern about the safety of the water, despite everything they had learned in history lessons about the radiation that destroyed the prior society. Remembered thinking it would not have brought her here if it were dangerous.

  She hesitated a moment with the bottle in the water, wondering if she had poisoned herself. Exchanged one death for another.

  The breeze came again. It pushed her, roughly, making her fall back on her haunches as she continued to kneel beside the river.

  “What are you doing?” she cried as the bottle slipped from her fingers and spilled into the dry sand.

  She picked up the bottle and dipped it again into the water. She needed water. Poison or not, she needed it. The bubbles had just begun to appear at the narrow mouth of the bottle when the breeze came again, knocking her flat on her back this time. She cried out in surprise, picking up a rock and tossing it into the sky as though she had a chance of actually hitting something.

  “Stop it!” she demanded.

  “Stop what?”

  Dylan jumped to her feet, searching the ground for her knife, her heart pounding at the sound of another voice, a deep, unfamiliar, human voice. Too far away. Her knife lay shining in the sunlight, close to the branches that still held her drying clothes. And behind that, closer to the weapon than she, stood an odd-looking stranger.

  “Who are you?” she demanded, her eyes flicking once again to the knife.

  The stranger followed her gaze, a slow smile slipping over full lips.

  “I could ask you the same question.” Blue eyes, as deep and clear as the sky, slipped over the length of her bare body. “Not wise to walk around naked in this place.”

  “Why not?”

  A dark eyebrow cocked, rising high on a deep bronze forehead. “Because someone like me might come along.”

  Dylan shrugged, allowing her eyes to move over the stranger as those blue eyes had moved over her. The first thing she noticed, next to the alluring blue eyes, the strong, heavy jaw, and the long weapon strapped over a breastless chest, was a lack of curves, of the rounded hips that marked most girls of her age. The stranger’s hips were straight, thick, a belt that held yet another weapon lying there without the tight cinch of a waist. The stranger had to be her age, or maybe a year or two older, if height told her anything. But there were none of the signs of maturity that marked a high-level adolescent’s body.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Dylan asked, real curiosity in her voice.

  The stranger stepped forward and reached toward the knife. Dylan stepped back slightly, her heels sinking into the moisture of the sand at the water’s edge. She had nothing with which to defend herself, nothing to keep the stranger from using her own knife to end her life. Her heart began to pound, and she felt the odd breeze settle over her again, stirring the heavy, wet strands of her hair. Together, Dylan and her invisible friend waited to see what the stranger would do. Instead of touching her knife, the stranger picked up her clothing and tossed it to her. “Get dressed,” the stranger said as he moved back toward the trees, “and we’ll talk, Genero.”

  “How do you know I’m from Genero?” she asked.

  “Because…” He turned and gazed at her for a moment longer, his eyes lingering on her hips, her breasts. “You’ve never seen a man before.”

  Chapter 12

  “What is a man?” she called as he disappeared into the trees.

  “Get dressed,” he called back.

  Dylan stared at the trees for a long time, confused. A man. She tried the word out on her lips again, tasted it in a way that turned it into something exotic, something so foreign that it felt awkward in her mouth.

  “Man.”

  A memory niggled at the corner of her mind. Don’t let them take him. Is this what that woman, the one in the Administration building with the grossly swollen belly, had been talking about?

  The breeze had not left Dylan. She could feel it over her head, could feel the soft disturbance of the air in her hair, on her skin. “Do you know what that is?” she asked it as she slowly began to pull on her clothes.

  Don’t trust him.

  The words simply appeared in her head. She looked up, staring at the empty air above her head. “Why not?” she asked.

  Men cannot be trusted.

  “Does it always take you this long to dress?” the stranger called from the trees.

  “Are you always this impatient?” she called back.

  A chuckle was her only answer.

  Dylan pulled the top of her broken coveralls over her head and slipped her arms into the final piece of clothing as she crossed the sand and snatched her knife off the ground. As she struggled to shove it into one of the strange loops around her waist, the stranger came out of the trees.

  “You shouldn’t put it there,” he said.

  Dylan looked over at him. “What do you know about it?”

  “I know that it would take you a full minute to pull it free if it takes you that long to put it in there. And, when faced by a wild animal or…” He hesitated over his words as he watched her, as though afraid of revealing something important to her. “You just might need it faster than that would allow.”

  “Then where do you suggest I keep it?”

  He walked toward her, his strides long and confident. He pulled the knife from her hand. Dylan stepped back, fear slicing through her. But instead of using it against her, he turned it slightly and shoved it, blade first, down the edge of the waistband of her broken coveralls so that the coolness of the blade rested against her hip.

  “Pull it out,” he said, stepping back slightly. “See how much faster you can get access to it.”

  Dylan laid her hand on the handle, but she didn’t move the knife. “What if it cuts me?”

  “Twist it slightly,” he said. He held up his fist, as though he were holding a knife, and turned it. “Keep the sharpened edge away from you.”

  Dylan did as he said. The first time, the blade snagged on her broken coveralls. But the second and third time, the knife slid out without any resistance at all.

  “Better,” she said.

  He shrugged, turning slightly to survey her camp. “I don’t know how you girls ever make it out here alone,” he said with scorn, and maybe a little pity, in his voice.

  “You’ve seen others?”

  He shrugged. “Not usually this far west.”

  A thought slipped through Dylan’s mind, more image than thought. Memory that was not her own. Bod
ies curled into the fetal position, their lips cracked and bleeding, their tongues so swollen they no longer fit inside their mouths. Blonde girls, brunettes, redheads. Girls of all shapes and sizes. Each alone. Each dead.

  Tears came to Dylan’s eyes.

  “They die,” she said quietly.

  The stranger’s head came up slightly, his intense gaze moving slowly over her face. “All of them.”

  “Why?”

  He shook his head. “They weren’t what the council of Genero wanted.”

  “And what’s that?” she asked.

  His eyes moved to the ground. “You should come with me,” he said after a moment, that hesitation in his voice, his movements. “You won’t make it out here on your own.”

  “How do I know I can trust you?”

  He gestured widely around himself. “Do you have other options?”

  That gentle breeze fell down over Dylan again, ruffling her hair so suddenly that the stranger’s eyes widened slightly. Words again appeared in Dylan’s mind.

  Don’t trust him.

  Dylan studied the stranger, studied the weapons strapped to his body, the muscles that rippled under the thin, unmended clothing that hugged his body. Something about the intensity of his gaze, about the angle of his jaw and the power that seemed to hum just under the surface of his skin, made something funny happen to the steady rhythm of her heartbeat. She wanted him to stop looking at her. At the same time, she wanted him to stare at her, and only her, for the rest of her life.

  It was a conflicting emotion that made the ache in her muscles seem like nothing more than the annoying buzz of a chattery girl in comparison. It made her belly ache, made her breathing less automatic and more of something she had to remember to do.

  What was wrong with her?

  “I’m Wyatt,” he said, holding out a hand as he moved close to her again.

  “Dylan,” she said. She had no idea what he wanted her to do with that hand. He watched her a moment, confusion darkening the already deep blue of his eyes before he simply dropped the hand.

  “We should get moving,” he said, glancing up into the sky. “It’s nearly noon already.”

  “Where will we go?”

  He gestured to her left. “There are some ruins that way that I need to check out. Then we’ll make the journey back to my home.”

  “Your home?”

  “Brennan. It’s about fifty miles that way,” he said, gesturing toward the trees.

  As he spoke, Dylan again saw a flash of images in her mind. A dark place where people with dirty faces gathered around a small fire. They were exhausted, but happy. Laughter filled her mind as the image faded. The laughter of strangers.

  No, Dylan. Not safe.

  The words floated through her mind, as though an afterthought to some other statement. Dylan glanced into the air above her head, but the breeze was gone.

  “We have to go,” Wyatt repeated. “Grab your stuff if you’re coming.” With that, he marched off into the trees, leaving Dylan to her own decision.

  She looked at the river, watching the sun reflect off the cool liquid, warming it with its touch. A part of her wanted to stay, wanted to bathe in those depths for the rest of her life. The memory of her intense thirst was still strong in her mind. But the idea of being alone, of being stuck here when her food ran out, frightened her almost as much as the uncertainty of a future without Genero, without all her friends, without the guardians. Of a world filled with men like Wyatt.

  But what choice did she really have?

  “I have to survive,” she whispered. And she knew, like it or not, Wyatt was likely her best chance.

  She grabbed her bag and followed him into the trees, crossing terrain she had not crossed before. Her bag was heavy on her shoulders, her muscles sore, but her skin less so than the night before. She slid out of her outer clothing as they moved out into the sunlight again, not surprised to see that her skin was just as creamy as it had been before she left Genero, despite the artificial redness it had been when she stripped out of her clothes the night before.

  They walked in silence. Dylan found herself walking a step behind Wyatt, watching the movement in his back, his legs, as he navigated the terrain as though it was something he did every day. For all she knew, it was something he did every day.

  “How did you find me?” she asked.

  He glanced back at her. “You left quite a trail. I wanted to see if…” Again, he did that hesitating thing, that thing where he stopped himself from saying something he thought she could not handle. But the image that came into her mind said everything his words never could have. Human bodies, ripped to pieces. Faces unrecognizable, arms and legs torn away. It was horrifying.

  Dylan stopped moving. She bent low, wrapping her arms around her belly. He knelt down in front of her.

  “How long have you been here?” he asked.

  “Two days,” she muttered.

  “Your body is adjusting to the water you drank this morning.” He touched her shoulder lightly. “Try not to vomit.”

  “Vomit?” she asked, glancing up at him through the veil of her still damp hair.

  “Throw up.” He touched her arm where it was pressed against her belly. “Don’t let the water come back up. It won’t do you much good if it isn’t inside of you.”

  “Oh.” She stood again. “Evacuate,” she said, using the word they had taught her in the dorms. “You don’t want me to evacuate my stomach.”

  “Yes.”

  She shook her head. “I wasn’t. I just had a cramp,” she lied, saying the first thing that came to mind.

  He half nodded. “Try to keep up,” he said before he brushed past her and began walking again.

  He set a pace that almost forced Dylan into a slow jog. She managed to keep up, trying to pay attention to the terrain in case they got separated and she had to make her way back to the river. The thing was, however, that much of the terrain looked exactly the same. There was little to differentiate each tree, low, thorny bush, and blade of grass from the one before it.

  I hope you’re paying attention, she thought to her invisible friend.

  She was rewarded with just the slightest breath of air against the back of her neck.

  “Can we slow down?” she asked Wyatt roughly an hour later as her lungs began to burn in her chest.

  Wyatt turned to her. “Sorry,” he muttered, slowing his pace to a slow trot.

  “What is a ruin?” Dylan asked a moment later.

  “It’s a place that was once a city in the old society.”

  “They had cities like Genero?”

  He glanced at her. “They didn’t have domes.”

  “But they were cities?”

  He ran his fingers through his dark hair, making curls separate and multiply where they bounced over the crown of his skull. “They had great metropolises that were filled with tall buildings, single family homes, and shops where people could buy all the things they needed to survive.”

  “What are ‘families’?”

  Wyatt stopped, a slow chuckle falling from his lips. “I forgot. You don’t have those in Genero.”

  “You have one?”

  “Everyone has one.” He studied her face for a long second. “Until someone takes it away from you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shook his head and began walking again. “You’ll find out someday.”

  “The people you live with…” Dylan felt the flash of image more than really saw it as it moved from his thoughts to hers. “That’s family?”

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  “And everyone has one?”

  “Yes.”

  Dylan lifted the hair from her neck and tied it into a knot at the back of her neck. She had to rush to keep up with him because he had picked up his pace again. She felt anger rolling off of him, could feel it coming from his movements, his thoughts. But she couldn’t read him the way she always had the girls in D dorm. His thoughts came to her ran
domly, in images, but the words, the statements most people made to themselves in the privacy of their own heads, she could not hear those.

  He’s different from you, from your friends.

  Again the words just formed on their own inside her mind. Dylan glanced up in the sky, but was so used to not seeing anything, she didn’t look for long.

  How is he different? she asked.

  He does not come from Genero. He is made differently.

  Dylan allowed her eyes to move over Wyatt’s back, to admire his form. She had never seen anything quite so perfect. His muscles were thicker, harder than any of the girls’ Dylan had ever known. They moved so perfectly, moved in a way that made her think he could fight off any danger that might find them in this isolated terrain. It made her feel safe in a strange sort of way.

  A little like the sense of security that flooded her when the image of his family floated through her mind.

  Why don’t I have a family?

  Her invisible friend did not answer.

  Chapter 13

  They stopped just before sundown, making camp in a small copse of trees. Wyatt disappeared for a long stretch of time, leaving Dylan alone to start a small fire. She drank one of her bottles of water in three gulps, but left the other bottle for the following day, trying to tamp down the voice in the back of head that wanted to remind her of the pain that came with dehydration. She closed her eyes and imagined herself in the water again, calming her thirst along with the pain that had begun again in her skin, the achiness in her muscles. In seconds it all began to disappear, leaving her feeling almost refreshed.

  “What are you doing?”

  Dylan opened her eyes. Wyatt was looking down at her from just a few feet away, a skinned animal hanging from each of his hands. She cried out, scooting back just slightly on her bottom as one of the animals began to jerk and tremble in his hand.