SOUL MATES (Angels and Demons Book 3)

by Brenda L. Harper

  He didn’t even pause to tell anyone goodbye.

  Ellie was walking alone in the clearing outside the jailhouse when Stiles arrived. He stayed off to one side, watching her while she thought she was alone. But she must have sensed him because she turned to the very tree he was hiding behind and smiled.

  “I thought you would be gone all day.”

  Stiles stepped around the tree and approached her. “The party just wasn’t my thing.”

  “I thought anything Dylan attended was your thing.”

  He chose to ignore that particular comment. Instead, he brushed a piece of hair out of her face and asked, “What are you doing out here?”

  “I needed some fresh air and my guards didn’t seem to think there was any harm in it.”

  Stiles could see why they didn’t think there was any harm in it. There was a golden lasso wrapped around her throat, hidden beneath the collar of her shirt as if it were some sort of necklace instead of a restraint. She reached up to touch it at the same moment he noticed it, running her fingers slowly over it.

  “I understand she created this,” she said.

  “Why are you so curious about Dylan?”

  Ellie shrugged. “She was my purpose before all of this,” she said, gesturing at her surroundings. “I guess some habits die hard.”

  “Where do the dark souls get their power?”

  She groaned as she turned away. “What is this, twenty questions? I answer one and you ask another?”

  “There is a war going on, Ellie. We have to stop these things before it gets any worse.”

  “So go tell your girlfriend to choose her soul mate.”

  Her words caused something inside of Stiles to click into place. “Her soul mate?”

  “Yes. Doesn’t she need a soul mate to make the guardian orb work?”

  Stiles nodded slowly, little things popping into place in his mind as it worked with what she was saying. That was the point of the guardian orb being here. It was to be given to the chosen archangel. And that archangel already had a soul mate. Together they absorbed the power of the orb and they took their position as guardians. Joanna was supposed to give it to an archangel who was a part of Lucifer’s legion, an archangel who would have already been tethered to someone. If Stiles was right, if Joanna had intended to give the orb to Jophiel, then Lucifer’s orb would have died out and he and Lily would have been free to return to heaven, to resume whatever role they’d held before they were given their orb. And Jophiel and his soul mate—whoever that was—would have become the guardians of humanity in their place. But Joanna didn’t do that. Her purpose was altered. And the orb now belonged to Dylan. But Dylan, unlike other angels, was not instantly tethered to her soul mate. She had freewill. And she hadn’t chosen a soul mate yet.

  “Is that why Joanna didn’t give it to her all those years ago? Is that why Joanna left it in that house?”

  Ellie shrugged. “You’d have to ask Joanna.”

  Stiles moved closer to Ellie, searching her eyes with an intensity that made her flinch. “I know she’s there. I know you’re there, Joanna.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Do you remember the day you left me for dead, Joanna? Do you remember what it felt like to run that sword through my side? I still have the scars, you know. They still mark my body where you did your best to make me disappear. But I’m still here.”

  “Stiles,” Ellie said, backing away from him, “I wish you would stop. You’re scaring me.”

  “I will never forget that moment, Joanna. The way it felt when you stabbed me, and the realization that you were going to walk away and leave me lying there. I can still see Jophiel take your hand, the way the two of you moved into your ethereal forms, and the way your colors mingled.”

  Ellie shook her head, tears running down her cheeks. But there was something different about her eyes. Stiles could see it; he saw amusement dancing around just as it had in Joanna’s eyes before she’d stabbed him.

  “Do you remember it as well as I do? Do you remember what you were doing when you ran that sword into my flesh?”

  Ellie made a gurgled sort of sound and then laughter slipped past her lips.

  “Of course I do,” she said, but the voice was different. Deeper. Huskier. “I kissed you.”

  “You did. You nibbled on my bottom lip and it was so good—this body had never felt anything quite like that before—that I didn’t feel the pain at first.”

  She smiled a beautiful, wide smile. “That was the plan.”

  Stiles slipped up in front of her and buried his fingers in Ellie’s hair. But it wasn’t Ellie who was talking to him now; it wasn’t Ellie who pressed herself up against the length of his body and pressed her thin, shapely lips against his.

  Stiles kissed her like a man starving for attention. He kissed her with all the pent up anger and lust he’d pushed down and tried to ignore since the day he fell to Earth. This was Joanna. This was his first soul mate, the woman who’d turned his world upside down and had set him on a purpose that he’d never desired and never truly understood until this moment. He kissed her because he had to respect her methods, if not her motivations.

  He pushed her back and trapped her against a tree. Her hands moved under the hem of his robe, her fingers finding flesh that hadn’t felt the touch of a feminine hand in almost a decade. He touched her, too, his hands aware that the fantasy and the reality were two very different things. Joanna’s human form had been tall, slender, and built like the models that had appeared on billboards and the sides of buses in the days before the war raged out of control. Ellie was smaller, rounder, her body as different from Joanna’s as his was from a gargoyles’.

  He’d watched Dylan force the dark souls out of the bodies they possessed dozens of times, but he still had no idea how she did it. And, even if he could do it, he wasn’t sure that whatever Joanna had done to Ellie’s soul would allow for such a separation. What if separating the two of them killed Ellie? Could he live with that knowledge?

  But he had to try. He would only get this one chance.

  Stiles thought of Dylan and let an image of her fill his mind to the point that she was all he saw, all he could think about. It wasn’t hard. Dylan was often all he thought about. Even as Ellie’s body pressed against his, her hand slid over the small of his back, and her lips did things to him that Rebecca would never have imagined, let alone attempted, he thought of Dylan.

  And he felt something he’d never felt before. It was a power that was outside of him, a surge of energy that he could never fully explain. It was as though he had plugged himself into something. Whatever it was, it surged through him and bore into Ellie. It began with a little moan, but then it quickly turned into a scream. He pulled back and watched pure agony wash over her face as her back straightened and her limbs kicked out. As she suffered from some unseen attack, an otherworldly scream burst from her lips with no apparent end in sight.

  The angel that Raphael had sent to watch over her burst through the trees and pushed Stiles out of the way. But there was nothing he could do. Ellie began to convulse, her body moving this way and that as her muscles flexed and relaxed in odd, irregular patterns. And then she fell to the ground, her neck at an unnatural angle.

  It was only then that the first tendrils of darkness escaped her flesh. Stiles almost missed it; he’d been so torn apart by the sight of Ellie’s broken body. But he saw them as they tried to escape downward, down into the earth instead of the sky above them. Stiles snatched a golden lasso from his angel’s arsenal and snagged just a tiny corner of the darkness, just enough that the lasso was able to do its job and suck the rest of the dark soul into its circle of containment.

  “What is that?” the angel asked as he stared in awe at the soul. It was fighting the lasso in a way none of the others had ever done, pushing at its invisible barriers and screaming with a frustration that might have shattered glass if there had been any nearby.

  “Th
at,” Stiles said, “is my soul mate.”

  Chapter 21

  Dylan moved into Gabriel’s arms, a sigh on her lips as they began to move to the third dance they’d shared that evening. People were beginning to whisper about them, but Dylan didn’t care. She was tired of keeping up appearances and worrying about what people thought of her. The only person whose opinion had ever mattered to her was dead. The second most important person in her life thought she was some sort of abomination, or a glory seeker, neither of which was a flattering representation. So what difference did it make if she had a little fun on the night her friends got married?

  “Do you ever think about love?”

  Dylan laughed. “Doesn’t everyone?”

  Gabriel shrugged. “I never involved myself in that sort of thing when I was on Earth before. But now, today, I find myself watching Raphael and Rachel and thinking that it might not be such a bad thing to have a companion while I’m here.”

  “What about your soul mate?”

  He shrugged. “My soul mate is here. She’s a part of Raphael’s legion.”

  “Is that right?”

  “I don’t think she would notice if I got involved with a human. We’ve never had that kind of connection.”

  “It was like that for Stiles and his first soul mate. I wonder…is that the way it is for most soul mates?”

  “I don’t know.” Gabriel slid his hand up the length of Dylan’s back before pressing it to that space just above her butt again. “I heard that Lucifer and his soul mate were very close.”

  “They were. I think he would have done just about anything to help her survive the angel disease.”

  “That’s true love.”

  “Isn’t that what is supposed to exist between soul mates?”

  “Soul mates are meant to complement one another. They’re supposed to make up for the other’s insufficiencies.”

  “That sounds very practical.”

  “Angels are surprisingly practical,” he said, a soft smile on his lips. “Despite humans’ opinions, there isn’t as much of this idea of romance in heaven. Heaven is about enlightenment, not love.”

  “No wonder so many angels fall in love with humans when they fall to Earth.”

  “Yes, I suppose the argument could be made for that.”

  “Have you ever thought about it?”

  Gabriel studied Dylan for a moment. “Whenever I am near you, I find myself thinking about it.”

  Dylan blushed. “You think about love when you’re around me?”

  “I do. I think you would make a sensible partner.”

  She laughed, unable to ignore the lack of romance in that statement. Gabriel was a lot of things: he was wonderful to look at, he was a strong warrior on the battlefield, and he was intelligent and easy to talk to. But romantic, he was not.

  On a whim, she reached up and kissed him gently on the lips. He pulled back and stared at her, shock registering in his eyes. But then curiosity overtook the shock and he came back, hesitantly, to kiss her again. His lips tasted like sunshine, like the sweet fruit juice they were serving to wedding guests.

  She pulled away and studied his expression. “What did you think of that?”

  “It was…nice.”

  Dylan laughed again, pulling back and executing a little curtsey before turning just in time to watch Josephine march away from the party in a huff. She chased after her, calling her name three times before Josephine showed any sign of hearing her. But she only paused in her step very briefly, and then continued marching away.

  “Josephine, please wait up.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Okay. But I want to talk to you.”

  Josephine didn’t stop. She kept walking until they were standing in the middle of the town square several blocks from Rachel’s building. Dylan caught up to her daughter and grabbed her arm, pulling her around to face her.

  “You have no right to be angry at me for moving on with my life.”

  “Daddy’s only been dead for a few months!”

  “Four months, three weeks, and five days.” Dylan’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you think I know that? Don’t you think I miss him every single second of my day?”

  “It didn’t look like it back there.”

  “Yeah, well, your father was the one who told me to move on. Your father told me I had to let go of the past and embrace the future. That was all I was trying to do.”

  “Daddy wouldn’t say that.”

  “I love you, Jo,” Dylan said, beginning to wonder why she’d pushed this conversation. What did she care what Josephine thought of her? But, the problem was, she did care. “I don’t think you ever really understood the relationship between your father and me. I think you were always something of an outsider to our relationship and that drove you to frustration more often than not.”

  “You were never there for me,” Josephine said. “Daddy was the one who took care of me, who helped me get ready in the mornings, who made sure I had dinner and a bath every night. He was the one who read me bedtime stories. You were always off meeting the Outlanders or with Stiles, helping with whatever thing he was working on at the time. It wasn’t until Rebecca took him back—not until he had something else to occupy his time—that you were finally there for me. And by then, I didn’t need you anymore.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dylan said. “I didn’t realize you felt that way.”

  “You weren’t there for Daddy, either. He always made excuses for you, but I could see that he was hurt by your absence, that he missed you and wished that you would just settle down and be a normal wife like Grandma Martha. I never understood your relationship, that’s true. I never understood why he put up with you for so long.”

  Dylan stared at the ground. Pain was churning in her chest that she thought had been healed long before this. She chewed on her lip, the taste of Gabriel’s kiss a reminder of how things had so drastically changed in Dylan’s life these last few months.

  “I was a lucky woman,” she said softly. “I had the chance to love a good man for more than forty years. And I was loved by a good man.” She looked at Josephine. “I know you don’t understand, and I know you will likely never understand, but I am not a typical wife or mother. My life will never be like yours. And now, I am embracing my purpose, because we all have a purpose. You got to choose yours. I didn’t. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t want it or that I don’t understand how important it is.”

  “You’re talking in riddles. What does any of this have to do with Daddy? With your kissing that man just now?”

  “Everything.” Dylan stepped toward her daughter and raised her hand to touch her cheek, but Josephine stepped back. Dylan let her hand fall to her side as tears welled in her eyes and blurred her vision. “It has everything to do with it. Your father...” Dylan choked a little on the word. “Your father was my soul mate,” she said after clearing her throat. “He wasn’t just my lover, my companion, and my husband. He was connected to my soul in a way that allowed us to end the war and allowed us to fulfill each other in a way that no one else could have done. But that connection was severed before your father died.”

  Josephine shook her head. “You’re talking in riddles.”

  Dylan grabbed Josephine’s hands. “Listen to me,” she said, tugging at her hands, forcing Josephine to look her in the eye. “Angels have to have soul mates. They complete each other…support each other. They share their powers and make each other stronger. Your father, he was that for me when we were young. But now, now things have changed. Now I have to tether my soul to an angel who can help me do what I need to do.”

  Josephine shook her head, tears rolling slowly down her cheeks. “If Daddy was that for you, how could you choose someone else?”

  “I thought that my connection to your father ended because he was sick, because he was going to die. But now I know it was because I’m the one who’s changed. I’m no longer that scared little girl who needed someone to f
ocus on or needed someone to convince me that being Nephilim was not the end of the world. Your father was that for me. He was someone strong enough to support me, but uncertain enough in his own powers—in his own nature—to offer me that distraction. He helped me focus. And that was good for that moment in my life.”

  Dylan squeezed her daughter’s hands. “Your father made me who I was then. But now…I’m not the same. I need someone different, someone with a different set of strengths. I need someone who complements who I am now. Do you understand?”

  “Then this soul mate thing will just change every time you change?”

  Dylan smiled softly. “No, baby, it won’t. Because I won’t change again. I am the person I was always meant to be.”

  “And that guy is your new soul mate?”

  Gabriel. She meant Gabriel. And as Dylan realized that, an image of him filled her mind and that funny tightening that always happened in the pit of her stomach when she thought of that perfect body rushed through her. Gabriel was definitely a fine specimen. And she had the right to choose whomever she wanted as her soul mate. It wasn’t a given that any particular angel—or man—was to be hers, despite Stiles’ conviction that he was her only option.

  Her entire life was full of connections. Everything had happened for a reason, even this conversation with Josephine. It was all leading her to the most important choice she would ever make, a choice that was even more important than choosing between humanity and the angels. It was time for her to choose her soul mate, the man—or angel—who would remain at her side for the rest of eternity, the man who would help her guard the humans, protect them from whatever evil the universe planned to throw at them over the next few millennia, and keep them on the path of righteousness.