BROKEN ANGELS (Angels and Demons Book 1)

by Brenda L. Harper

  “Stiles, don’t you think you owe me this much?”

  “Owe you? I think with the number of times I saved your life, we’re pretty even.”

  “I saved your life a time or two, you know.”

  He nodded slowly as he dug through the last few drawers. “Then we’re even, right?”

  “No. You knew who my father was all these years and you never bothered to tell me. So, no, I don’t think we’re even.”

  “I’ve told you so many lies over the years that I can hardly keep them all straight,” Stiles said, finding one last notebook in the last drawer he searched. He grabbed it and headed for the door.

  Dylan grabbed his arm and pulled him around to face her. “What does that mean?”

  “It means what it sounds like.”

  Stiles pulled away again and moved into the larger room, taking a deep breath of the somewhat clean air. Dylan followed, her angry footsteps stirring up the dust.

  “Why would you lie to me?”

  “To protect you.”

  “How do lies protect me?”

  “What would you have done if I’d told you about your father back when we first met? If I’d told you that the scientists at Genero manipulated his DNA so that all they took were the remnants of his angel heritage? If I told you that they took that and mixed it with Lily’s DNA and then put it into a human ova that was completely scraped of anything remotely human. Would it have made a difference for you to know that there is a reason why you’re not like the others?”

  “Maybe it would have helped me deal with my powers a little better.”

  “Or it would have made you side with the angels before you understood what was at stake.”

  Dylan charged at him and shoved his shoulder. “You think I would have chosen the angels over Wyatt? Over Jimmy and all the others?”

  “You didn’t know Wyatt then like you do now. And you certainly didn’t know Jimmy.”

  Color burst over her cheeks, making them almost glow in the dim light of the warehouse. “You manipulated me,” she said, jabbing a finger at his chest. “Your lies manipulated me.”

  “They guided you toward the right choice.”

  “Was it the right choice? Or was it your choice?”

  His eyes narrowed. “The choice was yours, Dylan. All I did was give you the time to get to know the people whose fate you would be deciding.”

  “Yeah? And what other lies did you tell me to give me that time?”

  She crossed her arms even as she stepped into him. He studied her, watching the anger burn in her eyes. His instinct was to protect her, to take that anger away. But it was that instinct that had gotten them to this place—that had built this wall of lies that trapped him in a place he no longer wanted to exist within. So he told her.

  “I told you I was a gargoyle and that I’d been here since the beginning of time. I told you that there were still humans here on Earth even when I knew pure humans had ceased to exist long before your birth. I told you Ellie was just like you. I didn’t tell you that I brought Davida and Demetria to Genero to watch over you. I let you believe their existence in your life was a coincidence. I told you Wyatt would hurt you; that I didn’t know my son before I left him, before I left Rebecca…I told you so many things, I can hardly remember how many lies.” He ran his fingers through his hair, turning away from her so that he didn’t have to see the emotion dancing in her eyes, so that he could feel her emotion as it rolled off of her soul. “I told you the Nephilims’—the hybrids’—souls were cursed.”

  “They were.”

  “No, Dylan,” he said softly. “God blessed their souls the moment you were born.”

  She turned away. He could hear her feet slapping across the hard concrete floor as more dust flew into the air to tickle his human nose. Minutes passed and more debris tumbled across the floor. She was kicking everything in sight, taking her frustrations out on the debris instead of him.

  He almost wished she would take it out on him.

  “Why?” she finally asked.

  Stiles groaned as he turned to face her, saddened that she didn’t already know the answer to that question.

  “My entire purpose here on Earth is to protect you, to guide you.”

  “So you lied. All of these years. You lied…you lied about everything! Everything! What am I supposed to do with that?”

  “I don’t know, Dylan.”

  He studied her face; it was so familiar and yet so foreign with all that emotion dancing on her beautiful features. He’d known her since before she was born, had seen her when she was nothing more than an idea. He’d fought to make sure she was born, betrayed a friend, and left the woman he loved—everything just to make sure this woman existed. And then he watched over her, watched her grow, protected her and taught her. The moment she was free from his control, she slipped from him and allowed herself to be tethered to Wyatt. Yet he stayed by her side and continued to protect her, helping her fulfill her purpose. And he was still here, still at her side, still protecting her…why?

  He didn’t have any more answers.

  Chapter 18

  Dylan walked for a long time, wandering in the cool shade of the trees that grew along the banks of the river. She could feel Stiles—she could always feel Stiles—but she needed to be away from him for a while. As always, he respected that and stayed at the warehouse. But his thoughts were heavy on her, weighing her down as she tried to work out the reality of their changing relationship.

  She had known that some of the things he had told her were lies. Even when he spoke them, she knew they were lies. There was something about him—a change in his aura—that told her when he was doing something that deposited guilt on his consciousness. But the others…

  She couldn’t believe he had known who her father was all these years. That he’d known she and Rebecca were half-sisters in some weird, twisted sort of way. Yet, he never told her.

  He likely never told Rebecca, either.

  But, even as angry as she was with him, she could see the burden those memories caused him. As much as she’d lost not knowing, she’d gained a little, too. She’d gained a nephew, three great nephews. A family. And Stiles…he only had the burden of his guilt.

  The lie about Nephilim souls, though, was simply cruel. Every battle, every time Wyatt put himself in danger, she was scared to death he would die and his soul would just float on Earth, damned to go insane and become a demon. It had happened to his mother, it could have happened to any of them. If she had known then…would it have changed her fear? Would it have offered her any consolation? Would it have comforted her when she became pregnant with Josephine?

  She didn’t know. But she knew the lie did nothing…it just did nothing but make her afraid. What was the purpose of that?

  But it wasn’t even the lies themselves. It was the fact that someone who was such a huge part of her life had just revealed himself to be untrustworthy.

  This was Stiles.

  What was her life without Stiles?

  She walked a while longer, her thoughts continuing to go around in circles. But each time they came back to the same place. It didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. Stiles was still Stiles, he was still connected to her in ways she could never define. She had no choice but to trust him and trust that he had her best interest at heart.

  “No more lies.”

  I promise.

  ***

  “What do we do now?”

  Stiles was sitting under a tree, thumbing through the notes he salvaged from Freddie’s lab. He looked up, his eyes moving over her in that way he had, as though he was constantly checking her for wounds. Then he patted the ground beside him, inviting her to take a seat.

  “We need a scientist who will understand these equations and notations and whatever else is in here.”

  “Who? The only scientists we have are our doctors and most of them are pretty overwhelmed with the sick.”

  Stiles was quiet for a minute, still thumbing
through a book Dylan hadn’t seen before. She reached over and slid it out of his hands, flipping through the pages. There was a lot of scientific stuff she didn’t understand, but there were also notations in the margins, reminders of things the writer wanted to do with someone named Sara.

  “What is this?”

  “Wilhelm told you about the scientist I worked with to create the angel disease, right?”

  Dylan nodded, still thumbing through the book. “Matthew.”

  “Matthew. He was a friend, someone I met through a woman who helped me escape Genero.”

  “Genero?” She looked at him. “You were a prisoner at Genero?”

  “Years before you came along. I was in a battle and my wings…” He leaned forward a little, touching the spot between his shoulder blades where his wings would appear if he wanted them to. “I was injured and they took advantage of it—tied me up and conducted a few experiments. And this woman, she was something of a nurse. She helped me escape the prison and introduced me to Dill—Matthew, his wife, and a little girl.”

  Dylan looked down at the book. “Sara was his wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Rhonda…Anna?”

  “Rhonda was the nurse; Anna was her daughter.”

  “He was a scientist.”

  “He worked at Genero for a while and he knew things about what they were doing there—about the elixir. It was his idea to create the disease.”

  “You worked on it together and then you injected Lily and the others.” Dylan shrugged. “We’ve covered this. But I don’t see how it helps us now.”

  Stiles slid the book away, laying it on the ground so that he could take both of her hands.

  “We worked in a lab in Hoboken, New Jersey. We were protected by the gargoyles, but the angels got wind that we were up to something and they attacked on the day Dillon finished his work. He died there, stabbed by an angel’s sword.”

  Dylan saw the pain in Stiles’ eyes. Instinctively, she pulled one of her hands free and touched his cheek, her touch drawing a little of that darkness off of his soul. He pulled away, jumping to his feet so that she couldn’t touch him again.

  “You can go back there; you can pull him out of the past just like you did Rachel.”

  “No.”

  “Dylan…”

  She stood, too, pacing away from him. It was true she could travel in time for reasons she still didn’t fully understand. It was also true that she’d pulled Rachel out of the past and brought her into her own time. But she hadn’t been aware that she’d done it until she stumbled on the frightened five-year-old in a room at Genero the day of the battle. Her travel…she hadn’t done it in years. She wasn’t sure she could do it again, let alone control the movement of another person.

  “What if I make things worse?” she asked. “What if I change something that alters everything we did?”

  “You won’t.”

  “But it’s possible. And I can’t risk that; I can’t risk changing this reality. What if we make things worse?”

  “You won’t. Not if you arrive just as he lies dying.”

  Dylan kept pacing, her thoughts whirling. She couldn’t help but remember the last time she traveled, when Jimmy kissed her and she accidentally revealed his future to him. She couldn’t help but think that that moment was the cause of his bitterness, the same bitterness that had caused him to torment Wyatt so much during his childhood. That, if she hadn’t gone to him that night, Wyatt’s life would have been very different. That Jimmy’s life would have been different.

  She didn’t want to do anything that would alter someone else’s happiness in that way.

  “Dillon dies on the floor of that lab. And his body just lies there. It won’t change anything to bring him here, to heal his wound.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because everything has a purpose, Dylan. You brought Rachel here for a reason. You visited Jimmy all those times for a reason. You stopped me from sending Joanna home for a reason.”

  She shook her head despite the fact that she felt, deep down, that he was right.

  “We could save Rachel and all the others if we do this, Dylan.” He moved up behind her and laid his hands on her shoulders. “And you’ll be saving a dying man.”

  “And bringing him, what, sixty years into the future?”

  He turned her around and brushed her short hair back from her forehead. “He’s the only one who will understand these equations. It’s the only option we have left.”

  Dylan looked at him and got lost for a second as her fear and uncertainty swirled inside of her. But then he touched her cheek with a friendly caress of his thumb, and that familiar warmth that she once only felt with Wyatt’s touch infused itself through her body.

  “What if I just stole his notes? Or stopped him from making the disease in the first place?”

  “That would be altering the past. We can’t risk it.”

  She nodded. She knew that, but she had to put it out there just the same.

  “Hoboken?”

  Stiles inclined his head slightly, drawing her back under the tree. He sat again and pulled her down, encouraging her to lie down with her head in his lap. And then he began to tell her the story.

  “It’s in the basement of a house on a residential street that is nothing more than debris. The house is burned—a complete loss—but the basement is still accessible through a door in what used to be the backyard. Down there is a lab, outfitted with everything a virologist might need to create a new disease.

  “It was late afternoon; I had been warned by Demetria. They’d been watching over us, protecting us, without my knowledge. Without them, I wouldn’t have known they were coming until I felt the angels…”

  Dylan closed her eyes and drew the images out of his head. She could see the ruined house and the basement room. There was a pallet on the floor and an abandoned can of peas beside it. And a man, tall and blond, hunched over a piece of equipment she didn’t have a name for.

  “I went back to the lab and told Dillon we had to leave. He said he was close, that he needed a few more minutes. Just as he finished, Biel came into the lab with a couple of other angels. Dillon—“

  “Why do you call him Dylan?” she asked, opening her eyes to focus on Stiles.

  “That’s what his friends called him. It came from a character on some ancient television program, some sort of western.”

  “Matt Dillon.”

  Dylan smiled. Wyatt had a fascination with the Old West. He liked to read interesting facts to her sometimes. One of those facts was from a book about television programs set in the west. Finally, one of his useless facts had come in handy.

  She closed her eyes again.

  “Dillon filled a syringe with his newly manufactured disease and injected it into one of the guards. The man died almost instantly, a horrifying death. Almost immediately, another angel drove his sword through Dillon’s abdomen.”

  “And the other angels?”

  “Gone.”

  Stiles smoothed Dylan’s hair off her forehead again and pressed his hand to her skin. Instantly, she saw the scene play out as he offered her his memories. He pulled away as Dillon fell to the floor, but Dylan sensed more. She reached up, took his hand and pressed it back to her forehead.

  Stiles dropped to his knees, pressed his hands hard against the gaping wound in Dillon’s belly.

  “Take it,” Dillon said even as blood began to flow from his mouth. “Take it. You have to dilute it a little to make it last—”

  “Stop,” Stiles said. “We’ll worry about this later.”

  “This is what we’ve been working for, my friend.” Dillon coughed, choking on the blood flooding his lungs from the odd angle of the angel’s sword. “You have to take it. My notes…”

  “Okay.” Stiles took the vial and slid it into his pocket. “Okay. Now let me heal you.”

  “Too late,” Dillon whispered. And then he smiled. “I don’t know how you could’ve
ever left such a beautiful place…”

  “Dillon, you have to hold on…for Sara and Rhonda.”

  “Take care of them.”

  Stiles shook his head even as he pressed his hands harder against the wounds and felt his healing magic build up in his soul. Dillon lifted a hand and touched his wrist.

  “Name your first born after me.”

  “What if it’s a girl?”

  Dylan, with a y…” He laughed, more blood coming from his mouth. “Sara always thought it was stupid, but I kind of like the idea.”

  “You’re going to be okay. We’ll name the elixir after you.”

  “No.” Dillon—with the last bit of strength left in his body—pushed Stiles’ hands away from the wound in his abdomen. “I always knew I would die fighting this war. This is the way I wanted to go.”

  He blindly reached out for Stiles and took a few inches of his shirt in his hand. “Take care of them.”

  And then he was gone, his soul separating from his body so quickly that Stiles almost missed it for the shimmer of tears in his eyes.

  Dylan looked up at her friend. There were no words.

  “Go,” he said softly as he stroked her face. “Save him.”

  Dylan closed her eyes again. She concentrated on the face of a man she had never met, the man for whom she was named. After a moment, she felt her soul begin to lighten, felt this sensation that was almost like that moment between consciousness and sleep, but not quite. And then…

  She was standing in weeds, the sound of soldiers marching so close that she could feel the vibration that so many people moving at once caused in the ground. A door set into the ruins of a house was in front of her, standing open. An angel burst out, his wings taking him high into the sky as though something inside had frightened him.

  Dylan quickly ran down the steps.

  She saw Stiles first, wielding his sword against the last of half a dozen angels, slicing through the angel’s body in a rage that was like nothing she had ever seen before. Once the angel fell, he dropped his sword and it disappeared into thin air.