She knew who that man was. And she was ready to make her choice.
Chapter 22
“Where’s Jack?” Stiles demanded for what felt like the millionth time. “What is he planning?”
You should have left well enough alone.
Stiles slammed his hand on the tabletop, frustration boiling over. If she was in a human form, he would have choked the life out of her a hundred times over by now. He needed to know what they were up to and he needed to know before Dylan could do anything stupid and throw away everything they’d fought for all these years.
He couldn’t shake the sight of her walking onto that dance floor with Gabriel. He knew. He knew Jack was inside of Gabriel; he knew he had somehow possessed the archangel in an attempt to trick Dylan into taking him as her soul mate. He just couldn’t prove it.
“Why does Jack want the orb?”
Joanna just laughed.
Wilhelm walked into the room with a clipboard in his hands. “Time to take a break, brother,” he said.
Stiles glared at him. “We ceased being brothers a very long time ago.”
Wilhelm looked hurt, but he hid it well by glancing hard at his clipboard. “Let me talk to her for a few minutes. Maybe I can get some information out of her.”
Stiles stood, but he didn’t leave. Instead, he just backed away and gestured for Wilhelm to take his place.
“Ellie is struggling to heal herself from the wounds inflicted on her body when you left it,” Wilhelm informed Joanna. “Can you tell us why her body reacted so differently to the removal of the possessing soul?”
Joanna, her soul a mass of dark, undulating smoke, simply leaned against the far wall and ignored everything they had to say. There wasn’t even any more laughter as there had been before—just the occasional threat, nothing more. She didn’t even move, really, making Stiles wonder if she was injured in some way.
“How do we stop the dark souls?”
Nothing.
“Why are they possessing the humans?”
Nothing.
“Why do they keep going after Dylan?”
She moved slightly then, the undulating of her darkness increasing just a tiny bit.
“She reacts when you mention Dylan’s name,” Stiles said. “Maybe if you push that.”
Wilhelm gave Stiles a look that told him he had the situation under control. Then he turned back to Joanna.
“Why did the possessed attack Dylan specifically in London?”
Again the dark soul twitched, but that was all she did.
“Were they trying to kill Dylan, or just trap her?”
Stiles saw a change in the soul then. Joanna didn’t like that question. But why?
“Did you know what they were planning?” he asked.
The dark soul pushed back against the wall, smoothing itself out as though it wanted to escape. Stiles began to laugh, unable to control the mirth that burst through him at the realization that someone was finally one step ahead of Joanna.
“You didn’t know.” Stiles walked over to where the soul was pressed to the wall, the laughter dying in his throat as it finally all came together in his head. “You didn’t know because he’d relegated you to a supporting role the moment he became stronger than you. You created him and he turned into a monster you couldn’t control.”
It all made so much sense to him now. That was why she’d disappeared. It wasn’t because Dylan’s choice had destroyed her. She went into hiding and then Jack had somehow pushed her aside and he took over. All of this—it wasn’t about Joanna anymore. Maybe it never really had been. She was just the catalyst that had shown them it could be done.
He shook his head. “We’re not going to get anything out of her because she doesn’t know anything.”
“She knows how she fused her soul to Ellie’s,” Wilhelm said. “That might be something we should know.”
“Ellie will know. She’ll be able to tell us.”
“Then what do we do with her?”
Stiles looked at the cringing soul and shrugged. “Put her downstairs with the others until Dylan figures out how to release them from their darkness.”
He started to walk out of the room, but she stopped him.
You can’t just walk away from me, Stiles. You’re my soul mate.
“I was,” he said, turning to face her again. “But that was forty-five years ago in human years. And that, my love, is a very long time for a man to figure out what he wants from this existence. And being tethered to something like you—that’s simply not in the cards for me anymore.”
She won’t choose you, you know that. She still loves my boy, my Jonathon.
Stiles nodded. “She does,” he said softly. “And that’s the way it should be.”
He walked away despite the fact that she began to scream.
Ellie was broken. The convulsions that had twisted her body when the energy that Stiles had somehow tapped to remove Joanna from her soul did so much damage that even the touch of other angels was doing little to help her body mend any faster. Stiles stood over her, regret and awe and a million other emotions running through his mind.
He touched her hand, his own healing abilities immediately searching for the biggest source of her pain, looking to heal it. And he did, a little. He could feel her muscles and her bones mending themselves. But the progress was so slow that he would have to hold her hand for days to make it better.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Ellie’s eyes fluttered open. She struggled to focus, her eyes jumping around the room for a moment like a frightened animal. But then she saw him and managed to calm whatever it was inside of her that couldn’t comprehend what was happening.
“Pain,” she whispered through a throat that was raw and sore.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, reaching up to smooth the sweat from her brow. “You’re not healing as quickly as you should.”
She closed her eyes for an instant. When she focused on him, she said, “Gone.”
Stiles nodded. “Joanna’s gone.”
A ghost of a smile touched her lips. “Thank you.”
He took both her hands between his and stared at them for a moment, remembering what he knew about the day Ellie had died—or they’d thought she’d died. He saw it in Dylan’s memories many times in the months and years afterward. She carried those moments like a heavy burden as guilt had refused to allow her to let it go. He helped her as best as he could, as did Wyatt, but human emotion was one of those things that was very difficult to heal. Nothing they did could ever remove the burden from her. She simply had to learn to live with it.
He saw Ellie take Joanna’s sword and tell Dylan she had to go—that she had to end the war. And she saw Ellie do one of the bravest things he could ever imagine by driving the sword that much deeper into her body to speed up her death. But it hadn’t worked, had it?
“You weren’t dead,” he said softly. “When Dylan left, she thought you were dead, but you weren’t, were you?”
Ellie shook her head.
“I saw your memories and how Joanna somehow fused her soul to yours.” He studied her face for a moment. “But that’s not what happened, is it?”
Ellie closed her eyes and she showed him the truth.
“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.
The light faded from Ellie’s eyes. Dylan cried as she pressed a kiss to Ellie’s cheek before she stoo
d and reluctantly left the auditorium. But Ellie wasn’t gone just yet. Despite the fact that her human body was no longer breathing, her soul lingered inside. And someone else in the room could feel it.
Joanna dropped down from the ceiling, her soul already swirling with darkness. Ellie didn’t understand what was happening to her—why her soul would not ascend. Ellie’s eyes opened. The tip of Joanna’s sword had missed her heart. She was losing massive amounts of blood and her healing powers were useless against the blade of an angel sword. But it wasn’t enough to send her to the place angels go when killed with an angel’s blade.
“You can heal her,” a voice said.
Joanna backed away, frightened by the vision of another dark soul. It was small, more gray than black, and the vague, almost generic, countenance of a woman was still visible in the smokiness of the soul.
“You can heal her,” the voice repeated. “If you possess her, the powers that still linger from your human form will keep her alive until her body heals naturally.”
“I don’t…I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You are a dark soul now,” the other said. “You no longer belong to this world but your manner of death will not allow you to leave. It will eventually drive you insane. It drives us all insane. But you can do something good now.”
Joanna backed further away, refusing to do anything to help Ellie. But then Ellie reached for her and begged her with a beseeching stare. “Please,” she whispered around a mouthful of blood.
“You can keep your sanity if you hold on to her humanity,” the other said. “It’s the only way.”
“Who was that?” Stiles asked.
“Sara.”
Stiles pulled back, the surprise of that name like an electric shock rushing through his body. He shook his head as he quickly climbed to his feet.
“That’s not possible.”
“She taught us,” Ellie mumbled. “She told us what we needed to know about the darkness…about that life. She showed me how to become…” Ellie shook her head. “Having Joanna’s soul wrapped around my own, it drove me over an edge I couldn’t avoid.”
“You weren’t dead. You should never have become a dark soul.”
“I wasn’t, not really. It was—”
She began to cough; the stress of her emotions coupled with the damage to her body was just too much. Stiles poured a glass of water from a pitcher on the side table and held her head as she drank. When she was calm again, he settled back on the edge of the bed beside her.
“Joanna entered your body and possessed it.”
Ellie nodded.
“And Sara taught the two of you how to be dark souls?”
Again she nodded. “She was not as insane as the others. We thought it was because she had not been dead as long.” Ellie coughed again. “I didn’t want to go along with it, but when Joanna separated from me, my body began to die. I had no choice.”
“All of that about gathering the other souls, about teaching them, was that true?”
“Yes.” She sipped from the water again, this time without Stiles’ help. She was growing stronger—he could see it—just by telling her story. “Sara had a grudge against the humans for some reason, something about killing her lover.”
“I know,” Stiles said softly.
“She encouraged Joanna and the insanity…it was coming despite her possession of my body. She began to gather humans, possessing other bodies to convince them to join her fight. She convinced them all that we were going to rise up and take the world back as our personal paradise. Wyatt. She tricked him. She took his memories and then possessed Luc to make it look as though he’d killed him.” Ellie shook her head, tears running slowly down her cheeks. “I tried to stop her.”
“How did you resist the call back to heaven? How did you stay after Dylan sent all the angels home?”
“Joanna. Having her soul inside of me disguised mine. It made me impervious to Dylan’s power.”
“And when Dylan made her choice, when Joanna disappeared?”
“I was healed. I didn’t need her anymore. I wanted to go to Dylan and tell her I was alive and ask to join her community and try to make amends for everything I’d done before. But Joanna was angry. When Dylan took Wyatt away from her again, Joanna went over the edge. She sealed herself inside of me. No matter what I did, I couldn’t rid myself of her. And it was that that turned my soul dark and made me one of them. And then Jack.”
“Jack?”
“She’d gathered all these dark souls and taught them a few of the things Sara had taught her. But he…he was stronger than any of us could have imagined. And so full of passion. He learned all he could from her and Sara, and then he pushed them aside. He took control. And he trained an army; he planned the war. And he executed it. Joanna…she was just an afterthought to him—a source of information and nothing more. And she was so weakened by her anger that she couldn’t fight him.”
Stiles nodded. “What happened to Sara?”
Ellie shook her head, her eyes beginning to droop at the edges as exhaustion overcame her broken body. “I don’t know.”
“Okay.” Stiles pressed his hand to her forehead for a moment. “Thank you.”
“Could you tell her how sorry I am?”
“She already knows,” he said as he stood. “Dylan forgave you the moment it all happened.”
That seemed to soothe something deep inside Ellie’s soul. A tear slipped down her cheek as she drifted off to sleep, and an obvious break in her ankle healed right in front of Stiles’ eyes. He knew that if he touched her, he would feel the healing process significantly speeding.
It wasn’t the toll Joanna had taken on her body that had slowed her healing abilities. It was the guilt she’d carried around for forty-five years that had done it. Now she would be all right. Whatever that meant for her future, he was unclear, but he was glad this chapter of all their lives was finally being put to rest. Maybe now they could all look forward to the future, whatever that might bring.
Chapter 23
Dylan studied this dark soul as she had countless others, noting the differences in it. The colors were unsteady, the darkness undulating like a breeze on the surface of a pond. The others, their darkness was steady, calm, and overpowering. This one, it was as though something was fighting the darkness even as it overtook everything that was once pure about the soul. Like it had been in Ellie’s soul—only more.
“Stiles told you this?”
Wilhelm nodded. “He spoke to her and she actually responded. He’s the only one she’s spoken to since she separated from the other’s body.”
“Oh, Joanna,” Dylan sighed. “Things could have been so different. They should have been different.”
The soul shifted, but that was its only response.
“He’s up there in heaven now,” she said softly. “He died of cancer. Too soon. But he’s happy up there. I’ve seen him.”
Again the soul shifted.
“And Jimmy. He’s gone now, too. For years. But he lived a good, long life. He married again and had more children. He loved them so much.”
He always wanted a houseful, she said, her voice reverberating inside Dylan’s head as it had years ago when Dylan was near her time with Josephine. He always loved children.
Dylan bit her lip to keep tears from flowing freely. “He did. He adored his granddaughter.”
The undulating colors took on a new hue, a lighter hue, as Dylan spoke.
“Jimmy was so good to me. He gave me advice that I will never forget. He talked about you sometimes. He told me once that you were one of only four women he’d ever truly loved.”
The soul moved closer to the bars of the cell where it was confined.
He loved me.
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Dylan said. “He was a man who loved with all his body and soul. Surely you knew that about him.” A soft smile touched Dylan’s lips. “Wyatt was that way, too.”
My boy, Joanna whispe
red softly. I never wanted to be a mother. But the moment I saw him…
“Wyatt was like that. He made people want to love him.”
The colors faded even more, allowing a peek of Joanna’s human face to appear. Dylan couldn’t help herself, she had to touch it. Her fingers began to glow with the colors of her ethereal form as she reached for her, their colors mingling for a moment.
“He loved you,” Dylan said. “Even after everything he knew about you—after all the lies—he still wanted to know more about you. He wanted to know where you were and that you were okay. It’ll be so nice to be able to tell him now that I know what happened to you all those years ago.”
Tell him I’m sorry, Joanna whispered.
The last of the darkness disappeared and, for an instant, Joanna stood before Dylan as a fully formed soul. She was beautiful, just as she had been in her human form, the bright light at the core of her soul shining with an intensity that should have been painful to Dylan’s human eyes, but wasn’t. And then she began to dissipate, her soul breaking up into nothingness and becoming one with the energy that existed all around them.
Tears flowed freely down Dylan’s cheeks.
“Goodbye, Joanna.”
It was a long moment before Dylan got control of herself. She turned, intent on telling Wilhelm…something. She couldn’t really remember what it was she had intended to say because she caught sight of Stiles the moment she turned, leaning ever so casually against the wall at the bottom of the stairs—in Stiles’ style. But there was a war going on behind those calm, gray eyes of his. He turned away, disappearing before he’d taken a full step.
“No, Stiles…”
She knew where he’d go. She knew him like she knew herself. She knew where he went when he was hurting and knew his favorite hideaways just as she knew she preferred bananas with her breakfast toast.
“You’ve got to stop running from me.”
He was leaning against a tree. The tree. It was the tree under which they’d kissed for the first time.
SOUL MATES (Angels and Demons Book 3) Page 13
