FREED (Angels and Gargoyles Book 2)

by Brenda L. Harper

  “Something’s wrong,” Davida said.

  “Redcoats,” Dylan said, her mental wall still lowered enough that she could hear a scattering of thoughts flying toward her from those filled with panic around them.

  “Not possible,” Davida said. But she clearly heard the same thoughts. She stood and began rushing in the same direction as the others.

  Dylan began to follow, trying not to think about Stiles and her morning walk so that Davida wouldn’t know what she had done. Sam grabbed her arm before she got far.

  “What’s happening?”

  “They found something,” she said, slipping out of his grip. She ran and felt him following close behind. She could hear his thoughts, knew they were about her, and that made her blush.

  Dylan brought up her mental wall and ran faster.

  “How could a Redcoat be this far from the city?” they heard someone asking as they came up to the group huddled around a dark mass on the ground.

  “Are we sure he is a Redcoat?” someone else asked.

  “Who would disguise themselves as a Redcoat?” another responded.

  Dylan pushed her way through the growing crowd. A few people looked at her, words of irritation on their tongues until they saw who it was pushing through their ranks. Then they simply stepped back, distrust, and a little fear, dancing over their faces.

  Wyatt was standing beside his father at the front of the crowd, Davida across from them. Jimmy was crouched down, studying something on the ground. Dylan nearly screamed when she saw what it was, saw the body of the Redcoat who had chased her through the desert that morning. It wasn’t that he was dead that startled Dylan. It was the way in which he was displayed. He was staked to the ground, small, gold nails through his hands and feet as he lay spread-eagled across the dusty ground. Blood pooled beneath each appendage, as well as the larger pool that had collected under his head and shoulders. His throat had been sliced nearly in half.

  “Gargoyles,” Jimmy said.

  Wyatt glanced at Dylan. She didn’t return his gaze. She knew if she did he would realize exactly what had happened.

  She had never seen this side of Stiles.

  “Why was he all the way out here?” Sam asked. “I thought you said the Redcoats wouldn’t go outside a fifty mile radius of the city.”

  Jimmy shook his head. Dylan didn’t think he would answer, since he hadn’t answered any of the others who were repetitively asking the same question. But he surprised them all.

  “The rules have changed,” he said.

  Wyatt looked sharply at his father as Jimmy reached over and tugged at the Redcoat’s jacket. When he pulled the cloth away, he revealed a weapon tucked into the man’s belt. It looked a little like Wyatt’s six shooter, but shorter and wider. Jimmy pulled it out and inspected it, turning it this way and that before popping it open. Davida came to nudge Wyatt away so that she could touch Jimmy’s shoulder, her fingers shaking slightly.

  “You should leave that,” she said quietly.

  “It could be an important weapon,” Jimmy said.

  “But you remember what happened the last time—”

  “We take all weapons, Davida,” he said in a tone that broke no argument.

  Dylan had never seen Davida rebuffed in that way. Neither had she ever seen her back down from a fight as she did just then, moving her hand from Jimmy’s shoulder and stepping back a few paces. She seemed subordinate. No guardian was ever subordinate to anyone except the council.

  Jimmy continued to search the body. He ran his hands along the man’s ribs, ran them down along the man’s hips. He even stuck his fingers inside pockets that ran just below the man’s waist. He didn’t find anything else, something he seemed to think was unusual.

  “Why doesn’t he have orders? Or his city pass?”

  “Maybe he ditched them somewhere,” Wyatt suggested.

  Jimmy shook his head. “There’s something not right about this.” He stood and looked around the area as though searching for something. “Why didn’t we see the gargoyles?”

  Wyatt glanced at Dylan, while Davida followed Jimmy’s gaze to the skyline. Sam moved up alongside Dylan, blocking her from Wyatt.

  “Maybe it was still dark.”

  “But why would they only target this one person? There were dozens of us just yards away that might have been targets for the gargoyles,” Jimmy said, his gaze falling momentarily on Dylan before he turned in a circle, his eyes searching the landscape. “We would have been sitting ducks.”

  “There are too many of us,” Davida suggested.

  “Or they were following this one Redcoat for a reason,” Jimmy said.

  Dylan frowned. “Why would they do that?”

  Jimmy looked at her, his expression hard. Instead of answering her question, he simply turned and walked away, barking orders to some of the others to clean up the Redcoat and bury it before it attracted animals. Or something worse.

  The gawkers began to walk away as the men in the group rushed forward as one to execute Jimmy’s orders. Wyatt grabbed Dylan’s arm and yanked her out of the way. Sam started to follow, but Davida suggested he help the others. He needed experience in this sort of thing, she told him, even as she watched Wyatt and Dylan, curiosity in her eyes.

  “Was this about you?” Wyatt asked the moment they were out of earshot of the others.

  “What do you mean?”

  He stared down at her, his blue eyes almost looking through her. She felt like an open book, and he was a reader searching for the words he needed to find. And then something must have occurred to him, an unpleasant thought that made him look away for a second.

  “Stiles,” he said quietly. “That’s what I mean.”

  “Wyatt—”

  “You were out wandering around alone and now we have a dead Redcoat pinned to the ground.” He glanced at her. “It’s really not that hard to figure out.”

  “I just wanted to take a bath.”

  “How long has he been following us?”

  “The Redcoat?” Dylan shook her head. “I didn’t know he was until he began chasing me.”

  “No.” Wyatt looked at her again. “Stiles.”

  “Oh.” She ran her fingers through her hair, glancing back over to where the men were trying to remove the nails from the Redcoat’s limbs. Sam was watching them, a shovel in his hands, but he was leaning on it more than he was using it to dig or pry. “Since the beginning, I think.”

  Wyatt nodded. “Somehow, I knew that.”

  “You can’t still think he’s trouble,” Dylan said, turning back to Wyatt. “He saved us when we were caught in the city.”

  “I know that.”

  “He wants to help.”

  “But he’s a gargoyle,” Wyatt said in a tone that suggested the very idea disgusted him. “How are we supposed to trust a gargoyle?”

  “He’s a friend. Can’t you trust a friend?”

  Wyatt shook his head. “I don’t have friends.”

  Dylan stared at him, unable to believe he could say such a thing. “What about me? And Sam?” She hesitated a second. Then asked, “What about Ellie?”

  Again the blue gaze fell on her face, the intensity of it almost too much for her to bear. She wanted to turn away, wanted to escape the doubt and the pain that were all too often an element of that look. She wanted to touch his face, wanted to wipe away the hurt that had buried the little boy she often saw in visions his emotions sent to her. She moved closer to him, a part of her aware of the danger to her own emotions being so close to Wyatt could pose.

  “You have to learn to trust someone, someday.”

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  His eyes were still studying her, but something subtle had changed in them. A little of the anger, some of the steel, had left them. It was as though he really wanted an answer that he could understand.

  Dylan laid a hand lightly on his chest. “You have to take people at face value and believe that not everyone is out to get you.” />
  “I can’t,” he said, shaking his head. “And I don’t know how you can, either. After everything that’s happened—”

  “What’s happened?”

  His eyes narrowed. “You know I lied to you. How can you still trust me?”

  Wyatt didn’t like people who lied to him. He was outraged that Dylan had not told him that she knew Stiles was not from one of the cities, but a wanderer, one of a tribe of people who lived by scavenging from the ruins and helping the gargoyles. This, of course, was before they knew Stiles was a gargoyle. And then Dylan found herself a captive in the city of Viti, those there telling her that Wyatt had purposely sought her out and brought her back to them.

  That wasn’t the complete truth. Wyatt had sought her out. It was part of his scouting duties to look for people from Genero. But he was not supposed to take them to the city officials; he was to take them to his father and the resistance. That was his intention with Dylan. And Sam and Ellie.

  Yet, he still lied.

  “You saved me,” Dylan said as she stepped into him again, shortening the distance between them to less than a breath. “You may not have been honest about your intentions, but you saved me. How could I judge you for that?”

  Wyatt’s eyes softened. He stroked her jaw with the lightest of touches. “One of these days you will trust the wrong person,” he said.

  “That’s why you will always be there to save me.”

  She thought for a moment he would kiss her. The memory of their last kiss, of that day in a warm field just before he grew angry with her and walked away, filled her mind as though it were happening again. And then it melted into something dark and angry.

  “Trouble’s coming,” she whispered.

  Chapter 4

  Even though her mental wall was up, Dylan could hear the voices of strangers. With it came dark images, some familiar, some things she hoped she would never see again. It began with the room in Viti where she and Sam had been locked up by the Redcoats. It ended with a bloody room filled with instruments that looked like knives, but had subtle differences that spoke of the evil it took to brandish them.

  She grabbed Wyatt’s arm and began running. The men working to free the Redcoat from the ground stared at them, but none of them seemed overly concerned. Only Sam dropped his shovel and ran after them.

  Dylan focused on the word trouble and shot it forward, forcing it into the minds of anyone close enough to hear. She could see confusion on the faces of women they passed on their way back, women who were walking around the edges of the camp with their children, either looking for a place to do their morning evacuations or trying to get their children to run off some of the excess energy that could often get them into trouble on the long trail to nowhere they were traveling.

  “What is it?” Davida asked, rushing to meet them as they came into the camp.

  “Redcoats,” Dylan said on a quick puff of breath.

  Dylan could feel the doubt rolling off of Wyatt, but Sam moved up behind her. “What do we do?” he asked.

  Davida glanced over to where Jimmy was talking with some of the other adults, people Dylan was beginning to recognize as his council. Dylan knew that he wouldn’t believe her, that he would want proof. But once there was proof, it could be too late. She began formulating a speech in her head to convince him, when Davida grabbed her shoulders.

  “You have to go,” she said quietly.

  Dylan stared at her. “But what about—”

  “You have to go,” she repeated. “You and Sam and Wyatt. Take Ellie and Bobby and Carver, too,” she said, speaking more to Wyatt now than Dylan. “Go east as quickly as you can. I’ll catch up in a few days.”

  Wyatt didn’t say a word. He simply rushed off to find the others.

  Dylan grabbed Davida’s arm. “What if something happens to you?”

  Davida took Dylan’s face in her hands. “Then you trust your friends to keep you safe.” She kissed Dylan’s forehead lightly. “And remember everything I taught you.”

  Davida rushed away, her eyes on the distant horizon. Dylan turned to look, too, but Sam was there.

  “What’s happening?” he asked.

  “Get your stuff,” she said.

  Dylan turned to do the same thing, trying to ignore the fact that Wyatt and Ellie were standing too close, whispering too intimately to one another a few feet away. Bobby, another member of the resistance, who was about Wyatt’s age, came over. Dylan had only spoken to him once. She had no idea what his story was or why Davida would choose him to go with them. But he smiled at her, as though rushing out of camp on their own was something they normally did. She had no idea who Carver was, or where he was. She had been with this group exactly a week. She knew almost nothing about them.

  But, somehow, it felt like they all knew everything there was to know about her.

  Dylan slung her bag over her shoulder. It was a new bag, something Davida called a backpack, that was filled with new clothing Davida had found for her before they left their safe house outside Viti. She was grateful for the new clothes, grateful to be back in broken coveralls after fleeing the city in a dress that was more suited to lounging around a room like the one Luc and Lily greeted her in. Grateful, too, for the heavy boots that kept her feet safe from the cactus spines and thorns that littered this landscape, better than the bare feet that took her out of the city or the borrowed boots that got her to the safe house.

  Wyatt snatched up Ellie’s bag and slung it over his shoulder beside the bag that already rested there. She slipped her hand in his, and Dylan noted that he did not pull away. Anger built so quickly in her head that she must have sent an image to him because he stepped back and blinked, looking hard at her when he focused again. Dylan turned away, almost relieved to see Sam lumbering toward her with his familiar smile.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  Others around them were watching, wondering what was happening. Dylan felt the weight of their thoughts as though they were a physical force pushing against the wall she struggled to keep up in her mind. And they weren’t the only ones. Dylan could see Jimmy looking over at them, too.

  “We have to go,” she said.

  Wyatt must have followed her gaze because he began to lead the way out of camp.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Jimmy called, marching toward them.

  “Jimmy,” Davida said, grabbing his arm.

  Jimmy jerked his arm so hard that Davida stumbled when her grip on him broke. He reached for Wyatt as a heavy breeze washed down over Dylan, pushing her forward.

  Run, Stiles’ voice said in her head.

  Someone screamed.

  And then people were running past them, trying to flee the approaching squadron of Redcoats.

  Chapter 5

  Chaos erupted.

  Jimmy let go of Wyatt as he turned to see what was happening. In that split moment, Wyatt took off, pulling Ellie along behind him. Sam pushed Dylan forward, but he didn’t have to waste the effort. She had begun running the moment Stiles sent out his warning.

  The only problem was, there was really nowhere to go. The landscape was so flat there was nothing more than a few cactus plants decaying in the heat. None of those were tall enough to hide behind.

  Dylan made the mistake of looking back. Redcoats were everywhere, their swords out as they sliced through the innocent people whose only mistake had been to want something better for themselves and their families. Now most of them were lying on the ground, their blood nourishing the overly dry earth.

  She stumbled, her thoughts flashing to Davida.

  Go!

  Sam grabbed her arm. “Run, Dylan,” he hissed in her ear.

  She began to run again, tears rolling slowly down her cheeks.

  Dylan felt the familiar breeze that she now knew was Stiles. He had led her to safety once before, so when he pushed lightly at her shoulder, she turned.

  Wyatt cried out, but he didn’t argue with her. He simply moved into line behind
her and continued to run.

  Stiles pushed her shoulder a few more times. In a few minutes, she could see formations in the dust in front of them. She didn’t understand what they were, but they were tall and they threw significant shadows, meaning there might be a place to hide within them. She ran faster despite the exhaustion and cramps that were beginning to test her mental and physical reserves.

  Wyatt laughed when they approached the formations. He knew what they were, but there wasn’t time to explain to everyone else. The image that flashed through Dylan’s mind was vaguely like the vehicle that brought her to the desert from Genero, only these were sitting on end. He pushed Ellie inside of one, instructing her to climb high and hide in a recess toward the top. Wyatt turned to Dylan then, but she was already climbing inside another.

  “What are you doing?” he hissed into the formation.

  “They’re coming,” she said, reaching back to give him a hand up. After a moment’s hesitation, he grabbed it and climbed. The others were already hiding.

  Dylan was listening. She had dropped her mental wall so she could listen for the Redcoats. Now she was picking up thoughts not only from her companions and the Redcoats, but from those they had left behind, too.

  It was not good.

  She crouched inside the formation, vehicle, whatever it was, making as small an object of herself as she could. Wyatt was beside her, the space so tight that he had to slide an arm around her to keep from hanging halfway down into the open space below them. As they waited, Dylan could hear what was happening back at the camp. Random thoughts, most of them only half formed. But those that were fully formed...it was a nightmare. The pain, the fear that burst from the thoughts of those innocent people was overwhelming. She shivered more than once.

  And then the thoughts of the Redcoats as they drew close. They were thinking of her, just as confused about what she was as she was. Some of them were afraid of her. They had been told she had abilities they didn’t understand. Told that she had to be neutralized before they approached her. An image of the weapon Jimmy had taken off the Redcoat Stiles killed filled her mind.