He wanted her to run.
She would have. If not for Wyatt.
“Ellie.”
Chapter 11
Dylan’s cheeks burned as she rushed into the building where Wilhelm’s jail was hidden; Raphael and several members of his legion followed closely behind. Stiles was waiting, leaning casually against the wall, as though what he had told her that made her rush out of Rachel’s home before dawn was just a casual comment about the weather.
“Where is she?”
Stiles gestured to a door at the end of the hallway where he stood. “We moved her so that you could speak to her alone.”
“How is this possible?”
Stiles looked at Raphael, as though he expected the archangel to have an answer he didn’t.
“We do not know where angel souls go when they are killed by an angel’s sword,” Raphael said softly. “But we’ve never encountered anything like this.”
“It was always believed that when angels are killed, their souls are reabsorbed as energy and they become a part of the energy that sustains life here on Earth,” Stiles said. “The fact that no angel soul has ever communicated in any way after their death supported this idea.”
“But Ellie’s here.”
“It might not be your Ellie,” Raphael said.
“It’s her.”
Dylan looked from one angel to the other, her eyes settling on Stiles. “You knew her—if you’re sure.”
Stiles met her eye with a steady gaze, his clear gray eyes unclouded by emotion. “I’m sure.”
Dylan nodded. “Then I want to talk to her.”
She started down the hall, but Raphael grabbed her arm. “I don’t think you should go in there alone. This could be a trick.”
“You really think I’d send her in there if I thought she was in trouble?” Stiles asked, still leaning against the wall, but tension clear in the set of his shoulders and the steel in his eyes.
Raphael ignored him. “After what happened earlier…”
“I’m fine,” Dylan said. “I can handle this.”
“What happened earlier?” Stiles asked.
This time it was Dylan who ignored Stiles. She pulled away from Raphael and headed down the hall. Stiles came up behind her and snagged her arm just as Raphael had done. She spun on her heel, a little annoyed at being manhandled.
“What happened earlier?”
“It doesn’t matter. I handled it.”
“Good for you. Now tell me what’s going on. Were you attacked?”
Dylan could see the concern in Stiles’ eyes that went beyond his role as her guardian. There was so much emotion in his eyes—why had she never noticed it before? She had never seen that kind of emotion before, the strength behind it that promised it would never dim, it would never fade. And that frightened her a little. It was too intense.
“What did she say to you?” she asked, trying to keep the moment focused on Ellie.
Stiles hesitated, clearly not ready to let go of the other issue. But he backed down, physically stepping back as he gestured toward the door.
“She didn’t speak much. Just a few words. But she was able to share a memory with me.”
“A memory?”
“The day she walked you into that amusement park.”
Dylan glanced at the closed door. The only people still alive who were there that day were standing in that hallway. Others had known, but they were also dead or banished to heaven for several millennia for their role in the war. Jack James couldn’t have known about it. He was a lost soul by that time, trapped on the Earth in confusion and anger. He wouldn’t have known to watch over her and wouldn’t have been sane enough to gather information and use it against her.
There was no way any of the demons could know about that day unless it really was Ellie.
Dylan had thought Ellie was just another girl from Genero, like she was. When they met, it was at a gathering in Genero to celebrate the end of their time as students there. They’d met again in the desert. Wyatt had saved Ellie and Sam, her male companion, from a wild pig. And then Ellie and Wyatt had had something of a flirtation that caused a great deal of angst between Dylan and Ellie. Dylan didn’t trust her, she hadn’t from the beginning. That proved to be wise when she learned that Ellie was a fallen angel who had been placed in Dylan’s path by her former guardian, Davida, to lead Dylan to Lily’s army when the time was right. Ellie did just as she was supposed to do. Then she died by Joanna’s sword.
Dylan tried to save her.
“You have to go,” Ellie said as blood began to drip from the corner of her mouth.
“I can heal you,” Dylan said as she tugged at the sword still embedded in Ellie’s chest.
“No.” Ellie laid a hand over Dylan’s. “You have to go. You can’t face them alone.”
“I’m not alone.”
“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 in deeper and up to the left, finishing what Joanna had started.
It was a guilty moment that Dylan would never be free of. Ellie died protecting Dylan from Joanna. Even though Dylan had stopped Joanna by inflicting her with the angel disease she had recently taken from Lily, it wasn’t quick enough to help Ellie. And Ellie had proven herself to be just another victim in a game in which they were all just pawns being moved around on a chessboard they couldn’t even see. It wasn’t right. And now…how was Ellie here?
Dylan stole one last look at Stiles, and then she approached the closed door and hesitated only an instant.
“Ellie?”
The soul was pressed against the far wall, the darkness swirling and undulating like images in this kaleidoscope toy Wyatt had made for Josephine when she was a child. Dylan had never seen anything quite like it. The darkness moved sometimes in other demons, but not like this.
“You showed Stiles a memory,” Dylan said softly. “I know it’s you.”
The demon moved, approaching Dylan slowly, as though afraid to come too close. The restraint was still around what would have been its neck if it had had one, so it couldn’t go anywhere and it couldn’t attempt to possess Dylan’s soul. But it could still hurt her—she’d learned that much from her encounters with Jack James and the brief possession Stiles had experienced. Despite that knowledge, Dylan wasn’t afraid.
“You loved Wyatt,” Dylan said. “You wanted him more than I probably did at the time. You understood better what it meant to love another person—to want to be with a man. I was so confused by everything I was learning and by the fact that there was another gender in the world besides female…”
The demon backed up slightly.
“He cared for you, too. We talked about you sometimes, over the years. He always talked about you with affection. He swore your relationship would have always been a friendship, but sometimes I wondered. If you had lived, would he and I have been soul mates? Would we have been married all those years? Would we have had our Josephine?”
The mention of Dylan’s child caused the demon to back up, to hit itself against the wall as though it was a true barrier to its wispy, smoky form.
“I understand why you turned us over to Davida. You were doing what you thought was right. But when Joanna turned on me, you tried to show me the truth, you tried to help me. You gave your life to do the right thing.”
The darkness that was roiling in the demon began to lighten, to turn more gray than black. Dylan approached it and pressed her hand into its smoky form and infused her healing powers into the fading light in its center. As she did, she could see the light begin to burn bright as the darkness seeped away.
And then Ellie was standing before her.
“How?” was all Dylan could say.
She was weak; exhaustion such as nothing Dylan had ever experienced was pressing down on her. But she wanted to talk and to help
them understand what had happened to her—what was happening to the Nephilim souls that were attacking the humans.
Stiles sat beside her, pushing a glass of water and a bowl of oats toward her. But Ellie wasn’t interested.
“The last thing I remember clearly is your touching Joanna and her falling. There was pain, horrible pain. You wanted to heal me, I remember that. But there wasn’t time.”
Dylan moved closer to Ellie and took her hand, infusing her with more of her healing powers, pleased when some color came into Ellie’s pale cheeks.
“Then you were gone. And Joanna…”
“She was dead,” Dylan said. “I saw her die.”
“Not her. Her soul. It was lingering, like it couldn’t move on.”
Dylan exchanged a glance with Stiles. “She became a dark soul because of the angel disease,” Dylan said.
Ellie inclined her head slightly, and then stared at the top of the table where they sat. Raphael shifted, causing her to look up again. She seemed intimidated by his presence. It occurred to Dylan to ask him to leave, but she wanted him there in case something went wrong. They had no idea what had happened to Ellie, or why she was still alive. If she suddenly tried to hurt someone…
“What did Joanna do?” Stiles asked, his voice gentler than Dylan thought she’d ever heard it.
Ellie dragged her fingers through her fine, blond hair. “She healed me. And then she did…something. I don’t know what she did, but I was suddenly so filled with pain and so filled with anger that I couldn’t see anything but my hurts and my grievances. Then she said that I would be the first general in her army. She said that she was going to make you pay for what you’d done to her.”
That sounded familiar. Joanna had blown up Genero and had hidden people they’d all thought were dead in the rubble in order to begin her army. Wyatt was one of those, hidden there after Joanna had made it appear that Luc had stabbed and killed him.
“Joanna’s gone. She’s been gone for years.”
Ellie nodded. “I know. I saw her go. I thought that I would go, too, but I didn’t.”
“Tell us about Jack James,” Raphael said. “How does he figure in to all of this?”
Ellie glanced at him and fear swirled in her eyes. But, much to her credit, she nodded, her eyes falling back to the table top.
“Joanna sensed the Nephilim souls after she was changed. After she became one of them, a trapped soul lost in darkness. She began gathering them together, showing them that we all had a common purpose. Most of them were so insane that she couldn’t get them to see the logic in what she was planning. But Jack James…he was a different story. He was more human than the other souls. He was still holding on to everything he’d left behind. And when Joanna realized he was connected to Stiles, he became her pet project.”
Stiles nodded heavily, his guilt a weight on his slumped shoulders.
“She told him about the guardian orb, about the power it held within it. She told him that you,” Ellie indicated Dylan, “were meant to be its owner. You and your future soul mate. She told him if he could possess you, or your soul mate, that he could take on that power and rule the humans for eternity. She convinced him if he did that, if he ruled the world, he could get his revenge on Stiles for destroying his daughter’s life.”
“But Rebecca had a good life.”
Ellie leaned back in her chair, a heavy sigh slipping from between her lips. “Reality is distorted when your soul is trapped like that,” she explained. “Joanna was able to make even the most benign things look sinister. She took Jack to Rebecca and showed him the pain she suffered in childbirth, and convinced him it was Stiles’ fault. She showed him how she suffered when Stiles left her and told him it was avoidable, that Stiles did it out of indifference, not because he had no freewill. She showed him Rebecca making her way to the settlement in the south and convinced him that her life would be ultimately harder there because Stiles was there and he would only hurt her again and again. It didn’t take long before Jack saw suffering in every smile and every moment of pleasure that touched Rebecca’s life. She skewed his perception of human life and turned everything upside down until he couldn’t see truth when it was right in front of him.”
Again, Dylan shared a glance with Stiles. It made sense. That was why Jack wouldn’t believe Dylan when she showed him memories of Rebecca and Stiles together, memories of happy times. Perhaps she’d have more luck if she’d shown him those few memories in which Rebecca and Stiles had been at odds. But, somehow, she didn’t think that would help, either.
“Joanna twisted them all,” Ellie said. “These souls that were already so lost that they didn’t ascend when they could have, she used what kept them here to recruit them for her purposes.”
“What do you mean?” Dylan asked. “What kept them here?”
Ellie glanced at Stiles. “She doesn’t know?”
“We’re all a little confused.”
Ellie focused on Dylan again. “When you were born, the Nephilim souls were blessed so that your soul would be blessed.”
Dylan’s eyebrows rose slightly. She’d never heard it put quite like that, but it made sense to her. “And?”
“And that allowed most of the Nephilim who’d died before that to rise to heaven. But a lot of them were confused, lost in the darkness, and they couldn’t find their way home. The angels were supposed to help them, but many of them were too bogged down in the war. And then you sent all the angels home again.”
Dylan bit her lip as she again looked at Stiles. He had his arms crossed over his chest as he listened to Ellie, a dark cloud settling in his eyes as he worked out what she was saying in his own mind.
“Those that are left, they’re all here because they have some sort of unfinished business?”
Ellie shrugged. “Or they were just too lost to understand that they could let go of the darkness and go home.” She rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands. “I don’t know. I just know that they were still here and Joanna took full advantage of it. She was building an army, one soul at a time. And, with every soul she converted to her side, she grew stronger. She was the one who learned how to possess humans, how to infuse the humans with the anger and the darkness that we carried around. She learned all these things that the dark souls were capable of doing and she taught it to Jack. Then, one day, she just disappeared.”
“When I made my choice.”
Confusion darkened Ellie’s eyes. “Choice?”
Dylan took Ellie’s hand. “You’ve had enough,” she said kindly. “Why don’t you get some rest and we’ll talk again later.”
Ellie stood and started to walk toward the door with Stiles’ arm under hers to help her stay on her unsteady feet. But then Ellie paused, and her gaze fell on Dylan again.
“When I was like that,” she said, gesturing vaguely, “time seemed to stand still. It’s…it’s hard to explain, but it feels like no time has passed. But it has, hasn’t it?”
Dylan stood and took both Ellie’s hands in her own. “It’s been nearly forty-five years since the day you died.”
Ellie’s eyes widened with surprise, but then her head rolled forward and, for a minute, Dylan thought she might collapse. But she was stronger than that. She focused on Dylan again, tears clouding her eyes.
“Wyatt?”
“He lived a good life, Ellie. A long, fulfilling life.”
Her tears spilled over the corner of her eye and she simply nodded before she turned and accepted Stiles’ help again. Dylan watched as they walked to the door, as Stiles handed her off to one of the gargoyles who was waiting to escort her to a proper bedroom down the hall. The moment she was secured, Stiles turned and shut the door.
“She just confirmed everything we pretty much knew already,” Stiles said.
“It makes a lot of sense,” Dylan agreed. “Joanna…she was so angry when she died.”
“Her soul was trapped because of the angel disease,” Raphael said. “But she retained enough of
herself to use the darkness to her benefit.”
“Leave Joanna to do something like that,” Stiles grumbled as he fell into a chair. “She was building an army, planning to come after us again. But then your choice stopped her.”
“And she disappeared. But Jack James didn’t.”
“He’s the key to it all,” Raphael said. “He’s the one fueling this; he’s the one leading the army now.”
“And he’s the one we have to take down.”
“But how?” Dylan smacked her hands on the top of the table, frustration boiling over in her chest. “We’re just back to square one.”
“But now we have a new question to answer,” Raphael pointed out.
“How many other angels are there trapped as dark souls?”
Chapter 12
Dylan thought it would be best to remain at Wilhelm’s little research building until Ellie was strong enough to travel. They took turns sitting with her as she rested, unaware of their presence, as her body fought to regain her strength. It was Stiles’ turn now. He sat forward in his uncomfortable chair, staring at his hands as he listened to her steady breathing.
Dylan was down the hall, resting in another of the small, poorly furnished rooms. She wasn’t asleep. He could hear her thoughts more strongly now than he ever had before. Despite her hesitation in accepting him as her soul mate, their connection continued to grow with every passing hour.
She was worried about finding a way to stop Jack James before he could do any more harm than he already had. Stiles had the same fear. He knew that this was his fault, that it was the act of turning Jack over to the Redcoats that had allowed him to remain stuck and so full of anger in this place even after Dylan’s birth freed him to return to heaven. And it was that that had made him such a target for Joanna.
SOUL MATES (Angels and Demons Book 3) Page 7
