FREED (Angels and Gargoyles Book 2)

by Brenda L. Harper

  FREED

  Angels and Gargoyles, Book 2

  BRENDA LEE HARPER

  FREED

  Brenda L. Harper

  Copyright © 2014

  Published by: Rascal Hearts

  All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  For questions and comments about this book, please contact us at Info@RascalHearts.com

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 1

  Dylan ran.

  She could hear something rushing after her, could hear its feet pounding on the ground behind her, could hear its breathing. She didn’t turn to see what it was or who it was. She just ran.

  The terrain was rough, clustered with rocks and low plants that wanted to reach out and grab her ankles. Dylan searched frantically for somewhere she could go, somewhere that might offer more coverage than this open field. But there was nothing. Just more cactus and dirt.

  And then she felt a breeze on the back of her neck.

  Stiles.

  Go left.

  Dylan did what he said, cutting left so quickly that she nearly turned her ankle. She risked a glance behind her and saw a flash of red. A Redcoat. What were they doing out here? They were supposed to be in the city.

  This wasn’t good.

  Dylan picked up her pace even as she heard fighting behind her, metal on metal. A sword against an ax. The camp was here, just a few yards to her right. She didn’t want to lead anything there. There were women and children there, people who could not protect themselves the way Wyatt had begun to teach Dylan to protect herself. If she had her knife with her when the noise broke the silence of the morning, she might have turned to fight. But she left it at camp.

  Not smart.

  Wyatt would be angry when she told him.

  If she told him.

  Her lungs were beginning to burn in her chest. She tried to concentrate on her breaths, tried to keep the pain at bay, but she was still so filled with fear that she couldn’t do it. It wasn’t until a tall, redheaded boy appeared in front of her, seemingly appearing out of nothing, that she finally stopped running.

  He grabbed her arms as she stumbled into him.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she uttered on the end of another shallow breath.

  He ran his hand over the top of her head. She was sweaty, between the run and the heat of the day that was already beginning to build in the air around them even though the sun had just begun to push the moon out of the sky. She leaned forward a little, concentrated on catching her breath.

  “What were you doing all alone?” Stiles asked once she reached that point where she could speak.

  “I wanted to take a bath.” She gestured behind her. “There’s a stream we found last night.”

  “You were going the wrong way,” he said. “It’s north of here.”

  Dylan just shook her head. It didn’t surprise her that he knew the stream she was talking about. She simply didn’t understand what north meant. She had grown up in a secluded city, a city trapped under a dome where the girls weren’t even aware that there were boys on the other side of the city. Dylan didn’t even know what a man was until she met Wyatt. And then Stiles and Sam and all the men who were part of the group Wyatt’s father, Jimmy, called the resistance.

  The group to whom she had likely just led trouble.

  “Was it a Redcoat?” she asked Stiles. “What was he doing out here?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I have never seen one this far from Viti.”

  Dylan stepped back from Stiles’ touch and looked toward the camp. Most of the people were still asleep, but a few silhouettes were moving in the dim light of the dying fire and the rising sun.

  “I should get back,” she said. “They’ll wonder where I am.”

  “Wait.” Stiles touched her arm again, drawing her attention back to his pale face.

  Stiles had red hair that was so deep and bright that it seemed almost unnatural. His skin was intensely pale, even after spending long days in the sunlight. But he had the gentlest gray eyes she had ever seen, eyes she would recognize anywhere, even in the face of a gargoyle.

  She had recognized them.

  A week ago, Dylan had been arrested by a group of Redcoats outside of the city of Viti, a walled city where Wyatt once lived with his father. She was special, she was told, but no one had ever really explained why. Everyone wanted her. Including Wyatt’s father, Jimmy, the leader of the resistance. Wyatt came to rescue her from the city, and Stiles had rescued him when they became trapped in the room where the Redcoats were holding their friend Sam. He was a gargoyle, a beautiful, living, breathing, marble statue with amazing gray eyes.

  He saved them.

  “Come back to camp with me,” Dylan suggested, not for the first time.

  Stiles shook his head. “You know that Jimmy won’t allow it,” he said. “They don’t trust gargoyles.”

  “But you saved us.”

  “I saved you. You are the only one that matters.”

  “Why?”

  She had asked this question before, too, and, for some reason, expected him to give her a proper answer each time she asked. But he just took her hands between both of his and bowed his head over them, like a servant might do to his queen.

  When he straightened again, his eyes again fell on her face. He seemed to study her, as though searching for something important in her expression. She felt like he had something he needed to tell her, but he seemed to talk himself out of it.

  “You have to be more careful, Dylan,” he said instead. “Don’t go wandering off anymore.”

  “What about the—”

  “I’ll put him where they will be sure to see him. That way they’ll get the warning without having to know he saw you.”

  “Thanks.” She kissed his cheek lightly. “Are you okay? Do you need anything?”

  “I’m good,” he said. “I’ll be around.”

  Dylan just smiled. She knew he was around. Without revealing himself, he often flew low over her, the breeze of his movement brushing against her head, her shoulders, each time he passed. He was like her own personal guardian angel.

  She watched as he disappeared.

  “’Bye,” she whispered before she walked back to the camp.

  Chapter 2

  Wyatt was sitting alone under the only tr
ee in the desert landscape, a weak-looking sapling that must have had amazingly strong roots to survive here. He had one of his ever-present books in his hands, over which he was watching as Dylan approached him.

  “Where have you been?” he asked, his tone somewhat guarded.

  Dylan dropped to the ground beside him. “Walking,” she said.

  He looked at her, his eyes hard and searching for a moment. Dylan was glad he couldn’t read her mind. Almost wished she couldn’t read his.

  An image flashed through her mind. Ellie lying on the ground inside a pile of blankets, one of which Dylan recognized as Wyatt’s. The image was dark, a memory from the night before. But Dylan only had to turn a few inches to see Ellie as she was now, still snuggled under those same blankets.

  “You shouldn’t go out alone,” Wyatt said.

  “Why do you care?” she couldn’t help but ask.

  Wyatt’s expression tightened, but he didn’t drop his eyes as anyone else might have done. He continued to meet her gaze through narrowed eyes. “Because you could be the difference between life and death for the rest of us,” he said, repeating something they had both heard his father say.

  Dylan nodded. “Yeah, it’s about the good of the people,” she said. “I keep forgetting.” She began to stand, but Wyatt reached forward and grabbed her arm.

  “It’s about more than that.”

  Again they stared at each other for a long few seconds. Dylan wanted to trust Wyatt. She wanted to believe that he and his father had the right intentions for these people who had chosen to give up their lives in the city in order to follow them to wherever they were going. Life in Viti wasn’t the best. It had meant backbreaking work and misery, but it also meant a clean place to sleep and a guarantee of minimal safety. These people had none of that now. Yet, they continued to follow Jimmy anyway.

  It was hope, Dylan knew. Jimmy offered hope to these people. He offered hope of a better future for their children, a world where they didn’t have to live underground and work in the mines for the right only to do it again the next day. A home that didn’t belong to the city and couldn’t be taken away the moment they could no longer work.

  Dylan thought she could understand that. What she didn’t understand was Jimmy’s insistence that she was the key to it all.

  How could she be? She was just a seventeen-year-old girl who didn’t know anything about the world, this world, until only a few weeks ago.

  “Jonathon!”

  Wyatt obediently stood, moving around her with his head held high as he responded to the sound of his father’s voice. Another thing Dylan hadn’t known. Wyatt wasn’t really his name. It was a name he had chosen from one of the many books he was always reading. Wyatt Earp, he had told her a few days before. Earp had been a brave lawman during a time period in America called the Old West. Dylan had no idea what any of that was, but she agreed that the name fit him better than Jonathon.

  Dylan slid over into the spot Wyatt had abandoned and picked up the book he had left behind. She scanned the page he was on, curious about what it was in these cowboy and Indian books that kept his interest so completely. He’d only just begun this one. It seemed to be about a group of people traveling across a country in something called a covered wagon. Dylan tried to imagine what that was like, moving in some sort of contraption dragged over the grass and cactus by animals. She could imagine it was easier on the feet, but it seemed slow and inconvenient, especially since the gargoyles could see something like that from miles away.

  She put the book down and watched the others beginning to stir. There were a lot of people in their camp, most of them young adults like Dylan’s guardian, Davida. And many of them had small children. Few in their group were adolescents like Dylan and Wyatt. Only Sam and Ellie, two others from the city where Dylan was raised, plus a few more. It made things difficult because it felt like they were always in the way. From time to time, Davida would allow them to go off on their own, even though Jimmy’s rules dictated that they weren’t allowed to go where an adult wasn’t within sight. That’s how they’d found the stream.

  Wyatt had gathered stones and showed them how to toss them across the water, making them skip over the water’s surface. He and Sam had a bet over who could make their stone skip the most times. Sam won. It was a huge victory, since Wyatt was often better at…well, everything.

  Ellie rushed to Wyatt’s side when the contest was over, wrapping her arms around his broad shoulders. “That’s okay,” she had said loudly. “You’ll kick his butt next time.”

  Dylan stepped back. She had begun to go to Wyatt, had something similar ready to slip from her lips. She suddenly felt stupid. She thought there was something between her and Wyatt. They had shared several kisses and a lot of long looks, but she was beginning to wonder if she had misread him. It wasn’t like she had a lot of experience with boy-girl relationships. And he spent a lot of time with Ellie.

  “You’re welcome to a rematch anytime,” Sam said, moving around Wyatt and Ellie to Dylan’s side. “Maybe it was just a fluke.”

  “You won fair and square,” Wyatt said, shaking Sam’s hand politely. His warm, blue gaze fell on Dylan’s face for a long second, then he turned and headed back toward camp. Ellie skipped along behind him, grabbing his hand as she reached his side.

  Maybe that was why Dylan didn’t pull away when Sam took her hand.

  She rubbed her hand now, remembering the feel of the heat of his skin against hers. It was different from the few times Wyatt had held her hand. There was none of that sense of pleasure that often burst through her when Wyatt touched her. But it was still nice. Which confused her even more.

  She looked up and saw Davida headed her way. She smiled, sliding over slightly so that Davida could sit beside her.

  “How are you?” Davida asked, taking Dylan’s hand in her own.

  Dylan immediately laid her head in Davida’s lap as she used to do when she was young. “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Today, we walk to some ruins.”

  “And tomorrow?”

  Davida didn’t answer. Dylan closed her eyes, lowering the mental wall she had learned to use as a small child to block out the voices that sometimes threatened to overwhelm her. She wanted to probe Davida’s mind for answers. But Davida was stronger than her, knew how to control her gifts better. Gifts Dylan hadn’t even realized Davida had until recently.

  “Just ask,” Davida said quietly as she began to stroke Dylan’s hair.

  “I just don’t understand what’s happening,” she said.

  “I know,” Davida answered. “What do you want to know?”

  “Where are we going? Why are we going? Why am I so important—”

  “Whoa,” Davida laughed, her hand stilling on the back of Dylan’s head. “One question at a time.”

  Dylan rolled over so that she could look up at Davida. “What does it mean when Jimmy thinks about Joanna?”

  Davida’s eyes darkened slightly. “You shouldn’t read his mind, Dylan.”

  “Sometimes I can’t help it. His thoughts are too strong.”

  Pain flashed across Davida’s face. She bit her lip, her gaze moving over the people on the other side of the camp. Dylan followed her gaze and watched as Jimmy spoke closely to Wyatt. Wyatt, as he usually did when alone with his father, looked uncomfortable. Like a leader forced under the thumb of someone bigger, someone stronger. Which, Dylan supposed, was exactly what he was.

  “Joanna was his wife,” Davida said, her voice filled with false indifference. “She was killed years ago, when Wyatt was just a boy.”

  Dylan remembered an image she had read from Wyatt’s mind once. A little boy sitting beside a broken woman. “A gargoyle killed her.”

  “Yes,” Davida agreed.

  “Why?”

  Davida ran her hand slowly over Dylan’s head again, smoothing the hair away from her face. “The gargoyle thought she was different.”

  “How?”

  “Like u
s,” Davida said.

  Dylan looked up at Davida again. “Why are we different?”

  “That, my love,” she said with a soft smile, “is a story too difficult to go into now.”

  “Is it about this war?”

  “Yes.” Davida sighed softly. “Many of the things you have been taught are not as accurate as the council of Genero would like you to believe.”

  “Like?”

  “Like the fact that the sisters founded Genero after a devastating war.”

  Dylan sat up and studied Davida’s face. “They didn’t?”

  “No,” Davida said softly. “Genero was created by Luc and Lily as a laboratory.”

  “To do what?”

  Affection flooded Davida’s face as she stroked a thumb over Dylan’s chin. “To create you.”

  Chapter 3

  Dylan turned from Davida, didn’t want to look her in the eye. A part of her felt ashamed for some reason. She really didn’t understand it, didn’t understand why thoughts of Donna suddenly filled her mind. Donna was the closest thing Dylan would ever have to a sibling. Donna and Dylan had shared Davida as their guardian while living in D dorm in Genero. Donna had gifts, too—an ability to heal others—but she wasn’t as careful as Dylan, and, clearly, Davida. She used her gift to heal another of their dorm sisters, and the girl had told. Donna was taken away for testing. Dylan suspected she had been killed until Davida told her they didn’t kill the gifted, they used them to figure out something about genetic code…whatever that was.

  “Don’t think like that,” Davida said, touching her head lightly. “It’s not your fault what happened to Donna.”

  “Isn’t it? If I had let someone know what I could do—”

  “They would have you and all would be lost.”

  Davida moved forward a little, pulling Dylan’s head against her shoulder. “You did everything I told you to do. You were strong and smart and you might just save the rest of us.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  Before Davida could respond, someone screamed. Dylan sat up, her eyes automatically moving to where Wyatt and his father had been standing. They were no longer there, but running toward the open desert a few yards away.