FALLEN (Angels and Gargoyles Book 3)

by Brenda L. Harper

  Dylan laughed. “You’re asking me to trust you now? After all the lies you told me?” She turned away, moved closer to the road, and began to dig in the soft dirt with the toe of her boot. She chewed on her lip, thinking about Genero, about Ellie and everything that happened in the past few days. Ellie was another girl from Genero. Dylan had thought she could trust her because she knew Ellie before and Ellie had survived almost the same way she had. The only difference was, Wyatt found Dylan. Ellie teamed up with Sam, a boy from the other side of Genero, from the part of Genero the girls were kept in the dark about.

  But that was a lie, too.

  Dylan closed her eyes, thinking about the voice she had heard last night telling someone to bring her to the amusement park. She hadn’t known who the message was meant for, but suspected it might be Sam. The voice that had spoken those few words in the night…it was from the same person she had heard speaking to Sam when they were separated days before, the person who somehow blocked her from watching Sam in that way she had.

  Sam was working with Ellie, protecting her from detection until she could act.

  The same Sam who had kissed Dylan and told her he could wait for her to decide what it was she really wanted.

  She could sense him now, not far from here. He was overwhelmed with regret, remorse, and more than a little confusion. It made her heart ache.

  “We go together,” she finally said.

  “No,” Wyatt began to argue, but stopped when she turned to face him. Maybe it was something about the look on her face. Or maybe he just finally realized there was no point arguing with her.

  Dylan looked at Stiles. “Is Sam like us?” she asked.

  “No.” He dragged his fingers through his hair, making it look like thin, red spikes. “He’s mostly human.”

  “But he’s not from Genero.”

  “He’s from another city like Genero. There’s a few out there.”

  Dylan nodded. “Go get him.”

  “Dylan, we don’t know that we can trust Sam,” Wyatt said.

  “I know we can,” she said, trying to infuse her voice with as much confidence as she could. The truth was, she really didn’t know. But she was hoping.

  “You tell her, Stiles,” Wyatt said, turning as an ally to the same angel he had just attempted to beat up. “Tell her we can’t do this, that she cannot go to Genero and we cannot trust Sam.”

  Stiles studied Wyatt for a long minute and then turned to Dylan. “Tell me your plan.”

  Wyatt slapped his own hip in frustration and stormed off, back toward the field where they had been sitting earlier. Dylan watched him, wishing there was some other way. But she knew there wasn’t. They had to have Jimmy on their side, had to have someone who knew the things they didn’t so that they could figure out how to stop Luc and Lily without resorting to any of the drastic measures the gargoyles and the angels wanted to use.

  Without the end of the war equating to the end of Dylan and Wyatt and others like them.

  I’m doing this for you, she whispered into his mind.

  He didn’t respond.

  Stiles moved up beside her. He seemed to want to take her hand, or touch her in some other way. She could see it in the way he lifted his hand between their bodies, the way he studied her face with an intensity that seemed even more penetrating than usual. She stepped back. She needed to think, needed to figure things out.

  “Tell me about this prison,” she said.

  Stiles gestured for her to sit on the edge of the road. She did, pulling her knees up to her chest and resting her chin on them. She watched Wyatt move through the long grass, headed toward the stream on the other side of the trees at the far side of the field. She could see his thoughts, knew he was thinking about his dad. But they were not affectionate thoughts, not thoughts filled with longing or desire. They were memories filled with fear. He was desperately afraid of letting his father down. The only thing Jimmy had ever asked of Wyatt was to keep Dylan alive. He was afraid he was about to fail.

  Chapter 5

  They hiked north and found a small river flowing below a large ruin. They found clothes and other supplies in the ruin, a few blankets and bags to carry it all in. And water bottles.

  They decided to spend the night in one of the buildings, since it was too late to start the long walk to Genero. Dylan sat alone in the back of the room, a soft blanket under her, but unable to even think about sleep. Wyatt was sitting in the doorway at the other end of the room, his six shooter, back in his possession after she’d borrowed it days ago, sitting carefully across his lap. She wasn’t sure what he expected to kill with that thing. It could barely injure a gargoyle, and nothing based in the human world could harm an angel.

  Except for this weird illness.

  Stiles had suffered from the angel illness. She had no clue until he showed up, his body covered in lesions, a fever leaving him too weak to speak to her, to warn her that the Redcoats had found them. It was the same thing that was killing Lily. The same thing that Lily needed Dylan to vanquish for her. Dylan had seen a vision of the horrible implements the angels planned to use to tear her body into pieces to save Lily. But she was able to heal Stiles with a touch.

  She wondered what would happen if Lily learned it was that easy.

  At the same time, she found herself wondering why Lily’s illness seemed to be progressing so slowly. Joanna had the same illness, but some sort of vaccine created using the blood of a girl like Dylan had stopped its progress. Was Lily doing something like that? Was she using the blood—or something more—of innocent children to slow the progression of her illness? If so, why had it stopped working? And she knew it must have. Stiles had shown him Lily as she was now, the illness destroying what little was left of her human form. And Lily herself had told her she only had two days to decide what to do. Her two days would be up in the morning.

  Dylan lay back, using her hands as a pillow. She closed her eyes and tried to focus on Davida. It wasn’t something she wanted to do, and she had been putting it off for hours. But she needed to know where Davida was. The last thing they needed now was another confrontation, another unexpected turn of events.

  Stiles would be back with Sam soon. She had to do this now.

  That sense of floating overtook her almost immediately. Like most of her gifts, once she had used them a few times, it became easier and easier to begin the process. She didn’t even have to think about healing herself now. She didn’t have to think very hard to move into her ethereal form. And now…she only had to think about the person she wanted to find and her mind immediately went there.

  Davida.

  She was still in the amusement park. A group of Redcoats surrounded her. Her and Ellie. Ellie was standing beside her, a look of anger on her pretty face. But the Redcoats weren’t hostile. They weren’t holding them. Davida was clearly in charge.

  “You should have found her by now,” Davida was saying. “They couldn’t have gone far.”

  “The other one went back for the boy. Do you want us to follow him?”

  Davida rolled her eyes. “No, there’s no way in the world he would lead you back to them, is there?” She shoved a finger into the offending Redcoat’s chest. “Of course you should follow him. How else are you going to find her?”

  And then, as though referring to Dylan, even in that vague sort of way, made Davida more aware of her, she turned toward the place where Dylan’s consciousness watched.

  Where are you?

  The words blasted so loudly through Dylan’s mind that she fell roughly back into her own body. She sat up, grabbed the sides of her head, and fought back a scream. She didn’t think she had made a noise, but Wyatt must have heard something. He was immediately at her side, his hands on the side of her head. Immediately that sense of pleasure that often accompanied Wyatt’s touch began to seep into her skull. She closed her eyes and sighed as she felt the pain break up and ease away. She reached up and ran her hands over his.

  “Thanks.” />
  “What happened?”

  She dropped her hands into her lap. “I needed to find Davida, to know where she is.”

  “You did that thing—”

  “She has Redcoats watching Stiles and Sam.”

  “Great.” Wyatt started to stand up, but Dylan grabbed his wrist.

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “We can warn them.”

  “What if it’s already too late?”

  “Close your eyes,” she said, touching his face lightly. “Think about Stiles.”

  Wyatt moved back from her touch. “I don’t have any pleasant memories of Stiles.”

  “It doesn’t necessarily have to be pleasant,” Dylan said. “It just has to be strong.”

  Wyatt’s eyebrow rose. “That I have.”

  Dylan couldn’t help the smile that touched her lips. “You do realize that punching him isn’t going to get you anywhere, right? He heals faster than you can throw your next punch.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “But it sure felt good at the time.”

  Dylan picked up his hand and ran her fingers over his knuckles. There had been bruises there, but they were gone now. Healed by her touch or by his own, she didn’t know. Not that it mattered much. Just the fact that he had healed was enough knowledge.

  “Close your eyes,” she said again.

  Wyatt sighed, but he did what she told him to do. After a moment, Dylan could feel him letting go. It was such an odd sensation. It wasn’t the floating that she felt, but something different. He was still physically sitting in front of her, but she knew his consciousness had gone in search of Stiles.

  She found herself watching him as he sat there, his body nothing more than a shell now. For the first time since she met him, Dylan was able to study him in a way she had not done before. He was the first man she had ever seen. She had not known there were men in the world. She had assumed that females were the only humans that existed. She lived with girls, her guardians were girls, the Genero council was all girls. So, the first time she saw Wyatt, she thought he was a girl with health problems, someone who had failed to mature as the girls in Genero did. She tried not to stare at him then, tried not to stare later when he explained the difference in their sexes. And then it became something of a habit.

  But now…

  She ran her palm slowly over the curve of his jaw. He had a square jaw, one that seemed to make his face a little too wide, but it fit his features in a way that her own thin, rounded jaw made her features look squished. At least, that’s what she thought the first time she saw her reflection in a mirror. There was hair sprinkled over his, rough against the sensitive skin of her palm. His bottom lip was so full it stuck out a little from his perfectly square teeth. It made her want to touch it, to run her fingertip along the length of it. And his top lip, not to leave it out, was perfectly shaped, a little indention at the top that moved perfectly up to his long, thin nose.

  His face was so perfectly proportioned, he looked like one of the less scary gargoyles, as though he were chiseled out of stone by someone whose goal it was to find beauty, not create fear. His eyes were long and curved slightly, the blue so expressive, especially when he was annoyed with her. And his hair, the way the curls so often fell down onto his forehead, just begged to be touched. She reached up now and tugged at a single curl, wanting to do more but afraid of pulling him out of his travels.

  It was so hard to remember that they were in the center of a war when she looked at him like this. Hard, too, to remember how angry he was with her just a day ago, to remember how much he resented the truths she had shown him.

  A little easier to forget her kiss with Stiles, a kiss that still made her lips tingle when she thought about it.

  She was trying not to think about it.

  She didn’t understand this attraction to another person. She was never taught about relationships between boys and girls because she was never meant to know one. She was meant to live in an all-female society until her death, which, for her, was supposed to come a few weeks ago when it appeared that she had failed to manifest any gifts. If not for Stiles…

  And Wyatt.

  She touched his face again, let her palm cup the curve of his jaw for a long second. She felt an overwhelming sadness with the touch and wasn’t sure why. But, again, she did know. She knew it was unlikely that when everything was said and done that she would be allowed to know the kind of love Joanna had shown her from her memories, memories of a love shared with Jimmy so many years ago. It was unlikely Dylan would have a child, or know the happiness of a shared life with someone.

  It was unlikely she would survive what was to come.

  She dropped her hand from his face, tears threatening to fall. She wasn’t as strong as they needed her to be. She wished she was, she tried to be, but she was afraid she was failing. Badly.

  Images rushed through her mind, things she had seen, realities she had discovered. She was frightened of what the future held for her. Her choices seemed limited. What she had to lose seemed infinite.

  She stared down at her hands, the images chasing each other so quickly she couldn’t catch them. She took a deep breath, and then Wyatt’s hands were on her face, lifting her chin.

  He was back.

  “Stiles?” she asked.

  He seemed to hesitate a moment. Then his hand came up to her temple and her mind was again filled with images. This time it was Stiles, walking beside a tired, defeated Sam. They were talking about Ellie. Dylan heard Sam say something about how she had found him after he was dropped into the desert by a vehicle from his own city. Before he could say more, Stiles became aware of Wyatt’s consciousness almost the same way in which Davida had Dylan’s a while before.

  The Redcoats are following you, Wyatt told him.

  I know. I’ll lose them.

  Don’t lead them to Dylan. They’re working for Davida.

  The image faded.

  “They’ll meet up with us in the morning,” Wyatt told Dylan. He dropped his hand, but his eyes remained on her face for a long moment. “He cares about you,” he said.

  Dylan ran her fingers through her hair, catching them on tangles here and there. When had she stopped caring about hygiene? When did it become less important to comb her hair and brush her teeth? When did baths becomes something of a luxury rather than a daily habit? It just seemed to add to the burden that was already weighing her down. She was once a girl who prided herself, not in her looks exactly, but in her cleanliness. She was almost embarrassed to be sitting so close to Wyatt.

  “I don’t know why,” she said quietly.

  “I do,” Wyatt said. He took hold of her hand, stopping her attempts to straighten her dirty, tangled hair. “There are lots of reasons to care about you.”

  Dylan shook her head. “Not any I can think of.”

  He made a sound that was something like a chuckle, but there was little humor in it. His eyes softened as he studied the tears forming in the corners of her eyes. He cupped her chin in his hand, lifted her face so that she was forced to look at him. “What’s going on?” he asked, his voice filled with such tenderness it nearly made the tears fall.

  She laid her hand on his chest, felt the pounding of his heart under the thin material of his shirt. It felt so solid. She took comfort from it, from the familiarity of his closeness.

  “What if I make the wrong choices? What if the best way to save humanity is to allow the gargoyles to use me? Or to go along with Joanna’s plan? What if by refusing to help them, I’m just making things worse?”

  “Both those plans end with you dying,” Wyatt said. “Obviously they are the wrong choices.”

  “But how do we know that? How do we know that by the simple act of living I’m not causing the perpetuation of the war?”

  “I know,” he said. “This war was going on for a long time before you were even born. And the fact that so many people think you are important to the end of it proves that you were meant to end this.”

  “But wh
at if—”

  “Dylan,” he said, drawing her closer to him, his lips brushing the top of her head as he pulled her against his shoulder, “you can’t possibly know everything. No one expects you to.”

  She sighed against his shoulder, the heat of her own breath bathing her face as it came back from the soft cotton of his shirt. It felt good to have his arms around her. To be able to rest against him, to allow his strength to hold her up for a few minutes. It was an illusion of safety that eased her doubts a little.

  “You should get some sleep,” he said against the top of her head.

  “Don’t go,” she whispered.

  He didn’t move for a minute. His hand moved slowly down the length of her back. And then he gently laid her down, but he came with her, snuggling against her as she reluctantly settled down on her soft blanket. Their bodies seemed to know what to do, knew how to fit together. His arm made a perfect pillow, his shoulder a wonderful backrest. His hips fit just right against the small of her back, his knees a perfect fit behind the curve of her own legs, her knees and thighs. It almost felt as though his body was made to support hers.

  Tension slowly slipped from her muscles as she closed her eyes and tried to make her thoughts disappear. But it was never really possible to stop thinking completely, was it? She hadn’t slept in two days, except for a few, short hours that morning. She should have been exhausted, but her head couldn’t let go of the events of the past few days. Of Davida and Joanna and Demetria. Of the powerful women in her life who had made such an impact and then turned everything up on its head. Of Lily and her illness, of her desperate need to find a cure.

  And then her thoughts changed.

  She found herself remembering Ellie. She saw Ellie as she had been when they first found her in the desert, disheveled and frightened by the wild pig, a javelina, that had chased her and Sam from the safety of their camp. Saw her lying in the dust and dirt, her hair full of twigs and dirt, sleeping despite the heat of the day. Saw her cower as a gargoyle attacked. Saw her smile when offered a bottle of water.