DARK SOULS (Angels and Demons Book 2)

by Brenda L. Harper

  The gargoyles made their way into the trees, their bulky, stone-like forms moving silently despite their appearance. Stiles stayed toward the middle of the pack, encouraging Dylan to stay close to him. They broke into two groups, each taking a separate corner of the building. But these things, these dark souls, knew they were coming. They were prepared, waiting to ambush the gargoyles as they came around the corner.

  It was a complicated fight. The gargoyles were not allowed to hurt humans, but these things weren’t completely human. The dark souls made them something else, but the souls inside of them were temporary. Fighting the soul without hurting the human was proving to be tricky.

  Stiles drew his sword out of that sacred place where it waited, hefting it in his hand to adjust to its weight. He reached back for Dylan, but she was no longer beside him. He turned and found her walking among the battling groups, an almost peaceful look on her face as she raised her hands. And then, with a movement that was so quick he almost didn’t see it, she drew the dark souls from the human bodies. The men instantly fell to the ground, those that were not already there because of the gargoyle attack, almost as if they had been hit with some sort of sedative all at the same time. The air above them filled with darkness as the souls lingered for a moment, as though they were confused about what had just happened.

  “How did you…?”

  Stiles rushed to Dylan, catching her just as she also collapsed, her soul exhausted by what she had just done.

  “Bring her inside,” Donna called from the front door.

  Stiles worked his way around the fallen bodies even as the gargoyles moved among them, checking for wounds and healing the ones that were injured. Donna directed him to the couch where he carefully laid Dylan down, his hand moving over her brow to wipe away sweat that had gathered there.

  “Is she breathing?” Donna asked.

  “She just needs rest,” Stiles said.

  But he wasn’t sure that was completely true. He touched her forehead again, his healing powers infusing her with as much strength as he could offer her, but it felt as though there was something blocking him, something stopping him from taking the weakness from her. He’d never felt anything like it. He needed to heal her, needed to make this okay, but he was afraid that without that connection, without the tether between their souls, his powers were limited.

  She needed her soul mate, but her connection to Wyatt was broken and she hadn’t made the commitment to a new soul mate.

  He did what he could, vaguely aware of chatter around him and the voices of the gargoyles, and of the confusion of the human men beginning to wake in an unfamiliar place. And then another voice began to make itself known—a voice that was familiar, and yet, not—a voice that was one of only a very small number of things that could pull Stiles’ attention away from Dylan in this moment.

  Jack.

  He turned toward the back of the building and laughter seemed to engulf him, burying him in the bitterness of the sound.

  “Stay with her,” he said to Donna, not pausing to see if she obeyed.

  He followed the same path he’d taken just moments ago with Dylan, crossing the large living room to the door tucked in behind the stairwell that led to a small section of the backyard. As he stepped out among the trees, he felt a presence even though he couldn’t quite see anything.

  “I’m here,” he called. “What do you want?”

  “I want you to pay for every crime you ever committed.”

  A figure appeared a few feet in front of Stiles—the vague outline of a man. It was almost like an angel in its ethereal form, but not quite. It was shimmery and transparent—the form of a man with no substance. A shadow. There was darkness around it, a smoky line where an aura would normally appear. But it had features, an appearance Stiles recognized.

  “Jack James.”

  The figure grimaced. “Stiles,” it said, the voice familiar, but changed in some undefinable way.

  “Why are you here? What are you doing to these innocent humans?”

  “Innocent? Nothing is innocent anymore.”

  “You didn’t believe that before.”

  “That was before I was trapped in this place—before I was forced to watch the world destroy itself.”

  “Things have changed, Jack. The war ended and we’ve known peace for a long time now. Rebecca saw peace.”

  The figure darkened, with that smokiness on its edges moving inward, inking out the image of hands and arms, legs and feet.

  “You don’t speak her name,” it said, moving closer to Stiles. “You caused this. You caused me to become trapped like this, for all of us to be trapped.”

  “I didn’t. You were Nephilim, your souls unblessed.”

  “It was you, you angel freak. If you hadn’t given me to those other angels—”

  “You forgave me for that.”

  The darkness spread even more, touching the center of the figure’s chest. “You and that girl are responsible for our pain. And we will make it end.”

  “How?”

  “We have to kill you.”

  “You don’t understand,” Stiles said, reaching out for the figure. But it was just so much smoke in his hand. “We can help you. That girl—she’s your child; she’s a very special angel made of your DNA. If you give us time, we will figure out how to free you from this world.”

  The darkness began to creep up his throat. “I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s true. We can help you.”

  “I have one child, my sweet Rebecca. And you took her from me.”

  “Rebecca had a good life, Jack. She knew love. She had children and a good man. She died a good death.”

  “She’s gone? She’s here, with us?”

  “No, her soul was blessed.”

  The blackness covered his face and blotted out everything that made this figure look like Jack James. “That’s not possible,” it said, the voice completely changed, a voice out of a nightmare.

  “It is. You were among the last of the unblessed souls. Dylan—that girl in there—her birth ended this. You helped create the girl who saved all those like you. She saved Rebecca from this fate.”

  “I don’t believe you. You lie.”

  “I did. But not now.”

  The dark soul shimmered, as though it was trying to comprehend what Stiles had said. And then it moved close to Stiles, so close that his face burned from its proximity.

  “This is the only warning you will get,” it said. “We are coming for you and we will take out as many of these weak, pathetic humans as necessary to get to you and that little girl in there. So run, Stiles, run as far as you can. But only returning to heaven will save you.”

  When it stopped speaking, it moved forward, brushing through Stiles’ body as though there was no substance to it. The pain, hurt and the anger and the darkness that filled Stiles’ soul in the second that it was in contact with Jack’s soul took from him something essential, something about the essence of him that left him weak when it was gone.

  He fell backward and landed hard on his ass, his muscles no longer able to hold him up.

  For the first time since he’d fallen to Earth more than seventy years ago, he was lost. He turned his head toward heaven and whispered a quick prayer:

  “Please. We need help.”

  Chapter 9

  Dylan woke with a start. She sat up and wrapped her arms around herself as she waited for Wyatt’s familiar form to move up behind her, for his arms to wrap around hers. But he wasn’t there.

  It was dark. She was still wearing the t-shirt and pants she’d had on before, but her shoes and her jacket were gone. There were sheets; she was in a bed. But it was dark. She couldn’t tell how big it was or how big the room around it was.

  She didn’t know where she was.

  She dropped her mental walls just enough to identify the people in the house around her. She felt Demetria, Donna, and a dozen gargoyles. And Stiles. But there was something wrong with Stiles. He wa
s hurt.

  She climbed off the bed and went in search of him, their mental connection drawing her to him almost immediately. He was in a room just down the hall from hers. She didn’t feel anyone else in there—no one was watching over him. That bothered her. There should have been someone with him.

  He was lying on a bed covered in white sheets, the color doing nothing to make his pale skin look any healthier. His hair was like a splash of paint against the pillows, the red such a deep, unique color that she couldn’t imagine it on anyone else’s head. His chest was bare, his shirt had been removed for reasons she didn’t know, and his jeans just peeked out above the carefully folded top edge of the sheet covering his legs. His hands—those big, comforting hands—were balled up at his sides, as though he was still fighting danger even in his sleep.

  There were so many differences between him and Wyatt. They were both tall, both handsome. But that was where the similarities ended. Wyatt was dark, with the exception of his deep, blue eyes. Wyatt’s shoulders were wider, his hips narrower. Wyatt was masculine in a way that Dylan had always admired about him. He made her feel safe with the simplicity of his nearness.

  But Stiles was lanky, goofy, and less confident. But he had his own sort of masculinity. Dylan didn’t just feel safe when Stiles was around. She felt encompassed in something bigger than herself. She felt surrounded by a greater sense of purpose; she felt connected to something that was more. Just more.

  She crossed the room to him and sat on the very edge of the bed, careful not to move it too much. She didn’t want to wake him. She studied him for a minute, the fine layer of freckles on his face that she knew better than the spattering of freckles on the back of her hand. There was a growth of hair on his chin, something she had never seen before. She’d come to the conclusion that he didn’t grow facial hair—that nothing about his body changed like it did on a human—because of his nature, but she could see now that her assumptions weren’t entirely true. You’d think that after four or five decades, she would have bothered to learn more about angels. But she hadn’t. She preferred to forget that she was different—that Stiles was different.

  She ran her fingernails over his jaw, allowing them to just skim the tips of those tiny, stiff hairs. It used to annoy her when Wyatt grew a few days’ worth of beard, but this fascinated her. This was…intimate.

  She got lost for a minute in the sight of his sleeping form, in the feel of those hairs against her fingernails. She found herself thinking thoughts that were entirely inappropriate for a woman who’d been married for four decades, a woman who still desperately loved her husband. But there was something about Stiles that made her act in ways that she shouldn’t.

  Dylan pulled her hand away, sighing as she forced herself to focus on the reason she came to him in the first place. She laid a hand against his chest and closed her eyes. There was something not right about his soul, almost as though it had been melted and warped. She concentrated on the dark edges and imagined them returning to the way they had been before. And they did, they unfolded themselves and became the perfectly shaped soul she knew so well.

  When it was done, she touched his face one last time, and a sadness she didn’t understand washed over her as she did. Then she stood, but before she could walk away, he grabbed her arm.

  “Hey,” he mumbled, rolling toward her without fully opening his eyes.

  “You should rest,” she said, settling back down on the bed.

  “Stay with me.”

  He slid over and touched the mattress beside him, watching her from hooded eyes. Dylan hesitated, but not for long. She curled up beside him and let him wrap his arms around her, his naked chest pressed to her back. He sighed and his breath washed through her hair, tickling the sensitive skin at the base of her neck.

  “What was it like?”

  “What?” he asked.

  “Living in heaven. Being tethered to Joanna.”

  He didn’t answer at first. He just tugged her closer to him, wrapping her so tightly in his arms that it reminded her of the times she’d held Josephine after she’d had a nightmare.

  “It was different from this. We didn’t have human forms, we didn’t have human emotions. We lived as one, watching the humans from a distance, influencing their lives with little touches here and there, with acts that could be completed without ever coming close enough to know a name, to see their emotion, or realize what the impact of our interference would do.”

  “Were you happy there?”

  Stiles groaned. “Happy is not a word angels in heaven understand. We were content. We had a purpose and every moment was devoted to that purpose.”

  “And yours was to learn.”

  “Mine was to study the humans, to understand their history and their existence. It was to assist God in guiding them to the future they should have had.”

  “You didn’t do a good job.”

  Stiles chuckled warmly against her ear. “I don’t suppose so.”

  “And Joanna?”

  Again, he was quiet for a long time. Dylan waited as her thoughts swirled around everything she knew about his relationship with Wyatt’s mother. They were soul mates, meant to be tethered to one another for all of eternity. But Joanna destroyed their connection when she fell to Earth to join Lucifer’s army.

  “She was always there. From my first moments of consciousness until the moment she fell, she was always with me—a part of my being like the arms of my human form. It never crossed my mind to wonder if she was the right one to be my other half; it never crossed my mind to wish for something different.”

  “And when she fell?”

  “It was like someone tore an essential part of my being away. I was still learning about humans. I was still working to fulfill my purpose. I didn’t understand how she could want something different.” He ran his hand slowly over the length of Dylan’s arm. “When God sent me down to bring her back, I was so unsure about being that close to humans. I was not meant to ever fall to Earth. My existence was meant for heaven only. But Joanna changed something when she left. It was the beginning of something that God had not predicted.”

  “She didn’t have freewill.”

  “No. But God allowed free access to Earth for the angels. He saw no reason for them not to have access to the very beings they were meant to protect. Angels were constantly coming and going, acting as guardians to those whose fates needed a little push. There was nothing stopping her from falling. But something about it changed things. It changed the nature of soul mates and changed the tide of the war. I don’t know what it was, exactly, but it changed everything when I failed to take her back.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  Stiles ran his hand over her arm again, his fingers lingering on her wrist. “I was supposed to bring her home, but I let her talk me into waiting. And then she and Jophiel tricked me, they attacked me and left me for dead.”

  Dylan rolled toward him, her fingers moving to scars she’d seen many times, but had never asked him about. She touched one, a short, thick scar on his side. When she did, she saw it happen, saw Joanna kiss him as she drove her sword into his side.

  “She did this,” she whispered.

  “She did.”

  “Why?”

  “I was in her way,” Stiles said, taking Dylan’s hand and pulling it from the scar. “She was determined to help Lucifer succeed. She thought—they all thought—that God had sent me down here to stop them. So, they thought they’d stop me first.”

  “How could your soul mate do that to you?”

  Stiles tugged her hands up over his chest and held them in his hand. She could feel his heart beating just below his breast and could feel the comforting warmth of his flesh. But she could feel more than that. She could feel the virtuous glow of his aura. She could feel the innocence of his soul.

  “Before that, I would have insisted that it wasn’t possible. But…something had changed. And, I think, it was that change that made it possible for you to e
xist.”

  “Me?”

  “This is just speculation, of course. But the first time I learned about you, about the potential of you, was just after that moment. The Trinity came to me and told me there would be a woman who would come to me and tell me what my purpose would be. Until then, I was to wait.”

  “A woman.”

  “You. It was you—that day I arrived at Jimmy’s camp to kill Joanna. The day you told me a child would be born in Genero and I would watch over her.”

  Dylan pulled away from him and sat up so that she could clear her thoughts—it was growing very hard to think as she lay so close to Stiles.

  “How could they have known I would travel back in time? No one knew I would be able to do that until I did it.”

  “It’s the Trinity, Dylan.”

  She bit her lip. “I still—”

  “Everything you’ve done, everything I’ve done, everything we will do, it was all meant to happen—it’s leading us to our fate.”

  “Jimmy said something like that, too. Something about how we sometimes do things we don’t understand for reasons we will never know, but that it was all meant to be.”

  “Jimmy was a very smart man.”

  “He was.”

  Dylan settled back down on the bed beside Stiles, resting her head on his shoulder despite the fact that she had intended to keep a little distance between them. It felt natural, lying with him in that way. She closed her eyes and felt the peace of his touch settle over her.

  “We should head back. Wyatt’s probably wondering what’s going on.”

  “We will. In the morning.”