“Hold her,” the doctor ordered as she grabbed Dylan’s injured arm and lifted it high and quick in front of her, rolling the joint this way and that before she suddenly gave it a hard yank. Dylan screamed as pain shot through her shoulder. It was the most excruciating pain she had ever felt, but when it subsided, the ache in her shoulder was less than it had been before. And she could move her arm in the proper rotation.
“Don’t use it too much at first,” the doctor said. “It could slip back out of socket if you do.”
Dylan nodded, a blush burning her cheeks as all three women climbed off the bed and left her alone.
Ruby and Becky walked the doctor to the door, leaving Dylan to her humiliation for a few minutes. She touched her shoulder, her fingers beginning to tingle as she did. In seconds the residual pain began to fade, as did the various bruises and soreness that plagued other parts of her body. With the absence of the intense pain, her ability to heal was coming back.
She closed her eyes, wondering if some of her other abilities were coming back too. When she did, she immediately felt Wyatt, felt his anger and fear, felt him somewhere nearby.
But she didn’t want to feel him.
She opened her eyes and climbed wearily off the bed. Ruby came to her, the dress held out before her. She was gathering the material of the skirt in preparation of helping Dylan into it when her eyes suddenly widened.
“You’re healed!”
Dylan followed Ruby’s gaze and looked down at her shoulder. The large and colorful array of bruises that had marred the pale skin there were gone, as was the vague line of redness from yesterday’s sun, and a scattering of scratches that had marked her skin from their rush through the brush and trees.
Dylan ran her hand over her own shoulder. “That silky fluid is amazing,” she said.
Ruby cocked her head slightly, clearly not following Dylan’s line of logic. But she let it go, raising the dress above Dylan’s head as she slipped it onto her. Dylan stood, allowing her towel to fall as the dress fell down over her body. It was like the finest of caresses, the touch of the material on Dylan’s bare skin. It made her think of small children, of hugs, of Davida’s touch late in the night. Of Wyatt.
And Sam.
As Becky pushed Dylan into a chair—Dylan was quickly learning not to deny these girls the things they wanted—she thought about Sam alone in those iron boxes. The first chance she got, she was determined to find her way back down there to his side. He saved her from that Redcoat and tried to save her from capture. She owed it to him.
“Beautiful,” Becky said in her quiet, timid way as she let strands of hair fall over her fingers.
“Thank you,” Dylan said, looking into the mirror to watch Becky quickly and proficiently twist her hair into one neat, thick braid. And then she focused on her own, somewhat unfamiliar, gaze. She rarely took advantage of the mirrors that hung in the community bathroom back at D dorm because they were often crowded as sixty girls rushed to get dressed before the breakfast bell. Not only that, but her own reflection next to all those dark-haired, green and brown-eyed girls had always made her feel like something of an outsider. But now…she gazed into pale blue eyes, studied her long, thick eyelashes, her eyebrows that were just enough darker than the hair on her head to give her face some definition. Her rounded jaw that ended in a subtle point at her chin, a thin, straight nose that kept the line of her forehead proportionate to the rest of her face.
She guessed now, as she studied herself, that she was not as unattractive as she had always thought.
Just a little different, Davida had once told her.
Different.
She had never wanted to be different. Now different was taking her someplace she didn’t understand, someplace she was not sure she would survive.
Someplace that frightened her almost as much as it intrigued her.
Chapter 32
“It’s time.”
Dylan stood, the soft shifting of the skirt around her legs a little disconcerting as she took her first few steps toward the door. It opened, as though the person on the other side had sensed their movement, a tall man in that familiar red coat studying her without candor as she walked toward him, Becky and Ruby on either side of her.
The man stepped aside as they approached, but Dylan could still feel his eyes on her as Ruby directed her into the hallway and to her left, following the path they had begun to take on their original journey through this maze.
The Redcoat remained where he was. It was only Ruby and Becky who accompanied Dylan through the corridors, until they came to a set of double doors that were as tall as the corridor was wide.
“Go inside,” Ruby said with a soft touch on Dylan’s arm. “They’re waiting for you.”
“Who?”
Ruby smiled, a smile full of exultation. “The masters.”
Ruby and Becky backed away then, leaving Dylan alone in the corridor. She wondered briefly what would happen if she ran back down the corridor and searched for a way out of this maze of stone. But she knew it would not be long before one of the many Redcoats found her. There were too many of them and too few of her.
And Stiles had her knife.
She closed her eyes, her thoughts aimed at Stiles, at Ellie, at Davida. At anyone who could offer her some encouragement, even if it were only a part of Dylan’s imagination. Immediately Wyatt filled her mind, not him exactly, but the feel of him. She could feel his confusion, his anger and hurt, as though he were out there somewhere searching for her, too.
It made her chest ache.
And then Sam filled her thoughts. Sam, alone in the iron boxes, sitting with his back against the wall that shared a side with the box she had been in. He was thinking of her, hoping she was safe and well. It filled her with a warm feeling, the idea that kind, gentle Sam was thinking of her in his time of uncertainty. She drew a kind of strength from it that helped her open her eyes and face the double doors standing before her.
She touched the huge, round handles, and immediately her hands turned cold, as though the handles themselves were frozen, or filled with a darkness that didn’t absorb the heat around them. She pulled back for a moment, her strength ebbing for a second. And then she took a deep breath, grabbed them again, and pushed them open.
The doors flew back from her touch, almost of their own power, but did not slam against the walls on either side. Instead, they stopped just as suddenly as they had moved, shivering as though the vibration of power had nowhere to go but down into the floor beneath her feet.
“Welcome!”
Dylan looked into the room. It was a long, narrow room that held only two pieces of furniture. At the far end of the room were two large chairs. Both were occupied. The one to Dylan’s left held a man of average height, even a little on the small side. He had broad shoulders and a smallish head that made his body look too large. His features were obscured by a thin mustache and an equally thin beard, the long hairs unusually curly as they lay in clumps along his jaw, leaving whole spaces uncovered where pink, baby-like skin peeked through.
His hair was dark, so much so that the color around him seemed dulled. His eyes were rounded, too round for his narrow face, little disks that were like pools of nothing. He was wearing a long jacket not unlike the kind the Redcoats wore, but this one was a snowy white, a color that was so bright in contrast to his features that it almost hurt the eyes to look at him. And when he smiled, the flash of teeth beneath made Dylan wonder if it was his intention to fade away into a smudge of white and black.
In the chair to her right was a woman. Where her companion was colorless and slight, she was tall and bright. Her hair was blond, a paleness that was very similar to Dylan’s own hair color. And her skin was a bronze that would give Wyatt’s a run for its money. She was dressed in a flowing gown that hugged perfectly rounded breasts and then fell into a flowy, feminine cascade of silks and lace. She smiled too, but there was a sadness in her face that made Dylan wonder at the loss that seemed t
o speak just behind the surface.
“Come, child,” the man said, waving a hand toward himself.
Dylan hesitated, her eyes moving back to the woman. She was struck by this woman, by something that seemed familiar about her. Dylan was not sure what that thing could be. She had never seen a woman like this before. But there was something…something she could not name. But she knew this woman was important to her.
And it wasn’t just the pale blue of her eyes that was so eerily like the color of Dylan’s own eyes.
It was curiosity more than anything else that made Dylan put one foot in front of the other. She walked through the narrow room, walking what felt like yards and yards before she was close enough to speak politely to this couple without either of them having to yell across the expanse of the room. She held her hands in front of her, feeling suddenly as though she had been brought in front of Demetria for some transgression at D dorm.
“Don’t be nervous,” the man said, reading her posture perfectly. “We do not mean you harm.”
“Why have I been brought here?” Dylan asked.
The man smiled. He glanced at his companion. “Isn’t she perfect, Lily?”
The woman nodded, but her smile had fled as she allowed her eyes to move slowly from the tip of Dylan’s naked toes to the roots of her pale hair.
“You’ve been brought here,” the man said, “because this is where you belong.”
Dylan shook her head. “I should be in Genero, taking care of a group of young ones, or working in the Administration.”
“Is that all you think your life is good for?” the man asked with real curiosity in his voice. “To administer to others?”
“Isn’t that what we are meant to do?”
He threw back his head and laughed. “My, my,” he said, again glancing at his companion. “They really believe that crap they teach them in Genero.”
The woman frowned. Dylan stepped back slightly, feeling suddenly as though she had disappointed, somehow.
“Let her be.”
The woman reached over to touch the man’s arm before she slowly climbed from her chair. Her body moved slowly, each joint maneuvering as though the very act of standing was more than it could handle. The man immediately moved to her side, offering support in the form of his arm around her slender hips.
“I want to touch her.”
The voice was soft, quiet. She shuffled her feet, sliding across the stones to come to stand in front of Dylan. Dylan could not help but simply watch, compassion flooding that place where fear had so recently been the dominant occupant. When the woman raised her hand, Dylan could see that her joints were swollen, her fingers gnarled from whatever had caused the affliction. It did not scare Dylan, although the sight brought to mind that of the gargoyle’s deformed hands. Her skin was like silk when she touched Dylan, running her fingers first along the curve of her jaw and then down along the angle of her throat.
“So beautiful,” the woman hissed.
Dylan inclined her head in recognition of the compliment.
“Perfect,” the man agreed, repeating his earlier assessment.
The woman stared into Dylan’s eyes for a long minute. And then, like a flash of lightening, words appeared inside of Dylan’s mind, as though someone had yelled into her ear from the distance of less than an inch.
My child, my legacy.
Dylan reached up to touch her temple as the noise brought with it a quick stab of pain. The woman stepped back. She would have lost her balance if the man had not been there, if he had not lain his hand between her shoulder blades and caught her.
“She heard me.”
“Are you sure?” the man asked.
“Look at her, Luc,” she said. “You can see it.”
The man nodded slowly, his eyes even rounder than before as he studied Dylan with a new sense of wonder. “It’s worked even better than Biel had said it would.”
“Who’s Biel?” Dylan asked.
“He came to see you earlier,” the man said. “In your cell.” He turned to help the woman back to his chair. “I do apologize about that,” he said over his shoulder. “You were not meant to be taken to the dungeons. The one who put you there has paid for the mistake.”
“What does Biel do?”
After the woman was settled, the man glanced at her before returning to his own seat. “He is what you might call a scientist. He works with the people in Genero to help us…” he hesitated, his eyes moving to the woman before he waved his hand in the air, his eyes coming back to Dylan. “He helps us find solutions to problems.”
The woman inclined her head slightly. “He helped bring you to us.”
“Why me?”
The man laughed again, the sound so filled with merriment that Dylan wondered for a moment if she had missed the joke. The woman reached over and touched his hand lightly. “Stop, Luc,” she said quietly. “You’re confusing the poor child.”
She focused on Dylan, her eyes softening as she again took in Dylan’s own rounded features, her peach-colored skin and thin, petite stature. “You are an answer to a hope,” the woman said. “A unique creature among the mundane.” She reached up and wiped a few beads of sweat from her upper lip. “A child we have waited many years to meet.”
Her words were filled with affection, with gratitude. It confused Dylan as she remembered the urgency in Davida’s words when she warned Dylan not to trust anyone. Was it possible her own imagination, her own fear, was creating a confusion where none existed?
After all, Davida was only a figment of her imagination.
And yet, something still did not feel right about all this. There was something about this man, something dark that seemed to simmer just below the surface.
But the woman…
“You go back to your rooms now,” the woman said, her voice losing vitality with each word she spoke. “We will explain everything later.”
Dylan bowed slightly, the awkwardness of the movement not taking from it the sense that it was the right thing to do.
The man began to laugh again as she walked from the room.
Chapter 33
Ruby and Becky were waiting out in the corridor when Dylan left the room, as though they knew she would be coming out at that moment. They led the way to the same room Dylan had occupied previously. She was grateful when the two girls stopped outside the door and allowed her to go inside alone.
She walked around the room for a few minutes, restless as she let the events of the day flow through her mind uninterrupted. There seemed to be so many things missing, so many pieces of the puzzle that would help her understand better what her future held for her.
The woman—Lily, he had called her—seemed so kind, so frail. Dylan’s heart ached for her. There was clearly something wrong with her health, some ailment Dylan hoped their doctors would be able to cure.
But the man—Luc—frightened Dylan. There was something sinister about him, about his constant glee. What was there to be so happy about?
And why had they said that Dylan was the future?
Isn’t that what Biel had said, too?
Dylan touched her temples, rubbing them with the tips of her fingers. The lingering effects of the pain that Lily’s words had left there still ached in a vague, headachy sort of way. She closed her eyes and heard those words flash through her mind again.
My child, my legacy.
What did that mean?
And how did they know so much about Genero?
What was this place?
Too much. It was just all too much.
Dylan tried the latches on the glass doors at the far side of the room and was surprised when they opened with almost no effort at all. Heat poured into the room, but it came with fresh air scented with something sweet and earthy. She stepped outside onto a rounded, stone platform that seemed to hang out over empty space. Down below was a huge expanse of grass that was dotted with flowering plants of all colors, shapes, and sizes. She closed her eyes and too
k a deep breath, so happy to feel the sun on her face despite the intense heat that came with it.
Sweat began almost immediately to trickle down the angles of her face. She could feel it pooling in unlikely places under her dress and had the fleeting thought that she hoped it did not damage the lovely material. But all of that was an afterthought.
She looked down into the expanse of space below her, wondering how badly she would be injured if she jumped from such a height. But as the thought moved through her mind and she began to turn it, twist it, looking for cracks in the logic, she saw a pair of Redcoats walking side by side along the outer perimeter. Once her eye caught them, she saw two other pairs, one on the farthest side from where she looked down at them, and another on the far right side of the expanse.
No way she could get down there, repair any damage done to her body, and outrun so many guards.
Disappointment sat heavy in the center of her chest.
She moved back into the bedroom at a slow, meandering pace. She pulled the doors closed behind her, just as pleased with the coolness of the air in the bedroom as she had been with the freshness of the heated breeze outside. She was still alone, still left to her own devices. She wondered if that was because the masters and their guards trusted her, or if it was because they knew she had limited options at this point in the game.
She hoped for the former—because those who trust too much often allow for mistakes—but assumed the latter.
She threw herself onto the bed, her dress billowing out around her in a way she found mildly amusing. And then she closed her eyes.
Wyatt.
He was arguing with someone, the intensity of his emotions making the image he sent to her almost too vivid for her brain to process. At first, all she saw was a flash of bright colors. Reds and blues and purples. And then it began to focus. Wyatt was in a small room filled with small, crude furnishings. There were several people in his line of vision, a man Dylan recognized from other visions, the man whose words were the cause of Wyatt’s anger. His father. Beside him was a woman, but she was turned, her head down as she studied her own fingers where they were splayed on the top of an age-worn table. Behind them was yet another woman, another woman with the same dark hair as all the others, her back to the room as though she had no intention of joining this argument.
FOUND (Angels and Gargoyles Book 1) Page 14
