FOUND (Angels and Gargoyles Book 1)

by Brenda L. Harper

  He looked up at her, his face pale and covered in moisture. He didn’t focus on her, but on Wyatt where he had come to stand behind her, his sword still clutched in his hand. “Thank you,” he whispered.

  Wyatt inclined his head just slightly, tension in every inch of his body as he watched over Dylan.

  “Lay him down,” Dylan said to Ellie as she moved at an angle to Sam’s leg. His pants were torn at the ankle, his foot twisted at an odd slant in his boot. When she touched the boot, Sam grunted. She glanced back at Wyatt. “We need some water.”

  He shook his head. “We shouldn’t waste it,” he said in a quiet hiss.

  “Please,” she said.

  Wyatt looked over the field, his eyes scanning the horizon. “Where’s Stiles?” he asked.

  Dylan’s eyes followed his, searching the area where she had seen Stiles disappear during all the excitement. The sun was full in the sky now. There were no shadows for someone, or something, to hide in. Stiles should have been close, should have found them already. A tiny drip of fear slipped through her chest. “Do you think he was hurt?”

  Wyatt didn’t respond, but continued to study the area around them.

  Dylan refocused on Sam. “I need to take off your boot,” she said.

  He gave a single nod of his head, but what little color had been left in his face disappeared.

  Dylan began to unlace the boot, noticing for the first time that it was very similar to the boots she was wearing, to the boots given to the children of Genero. She glanced at Ellie, but the poor girl was so shell-shocked that she could barely move, let alone offer any assistance for her friend. Her eyes were glued to the decapitated javelina still lying in the grass a few feet from them.

  Sam screamed as Dylan eased the boot off his foot as gently as she could. She apologized over and over, but did not slow in her movements. With the boot off, she had to peel away his sock and pick the remnants of his pants leg out of the wound. It was bad. She had never seen such a wound before, but even she knew it was bad. Blood gushed from a cut along his lower calf while two more wounds on the front of his leg had bone fragments stuck in them.

  Dylan glanced at Wyatt again. She needed him to move, to stop staring down at Sam. His eyes were wide as he studied the wound. He met Dylan’s eye and shook his head just slightly.

  “Hey!”

  They turned as one, she and Wyatt. Stiles was walking toward them from their back side, both Dylan and Wyatt’s bags in his hands. “Thought I would get our stuff.”

  “Where were you?” Wyatt demanded.

  “I chased the javelina this way and then went back to camp.” Stiles studied Wyatt’s angry face for a long minute. “Should I have done something else?”

  “You should have been here to help,” Wyatt said. “You don’t abandon your companions in a moment of danger.”

  “I didn’t. I saw you kill the pig. I thought the danger had passed.”

  “You don’t—”

  “Stop.” Dylan moved up behind Wyatt, laying a calming hand on his arm. “We can’t start fighting now.”

  Wyatt looked at Dylan for a long second, the anger bubbling just beneath the surface. But then he pulled away, grabbing his bag from Stiles’ hand before marching over to the javelina. As she watched, he knelt beside the animal and began the process of butchering it.

  Stiles came up alongside Dylan. His eyes dropped to Sam, who had fallen unconscious in the grass. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I need water,” she said, holding out her hand for her own bag. “And her…you need to get her away from here for a few minutes.”

  Stiles nodded. He handed her the bag and moved to Ellie, whispering quietly in her ear as he gently pulled her to her feet and drew her away from both Sam and Wyatt.

  Dylan pulled a water bottle from her bag and crouched back down in front of Sam. She poured some water over the wound, but more blood bubbled up, taking the place of what little she had been able to wash away. She hesitated, glancing over at Wyatt. He was concentrating on the javelina. She needed to do something or Sam would die. But if she healed him and Wyatt saw…she didn’t want to do anything that would make Wyatt distrust her.

  She didn’t know what to do.

  Sam started to moan. She touched his ankle, more out of instinct that anything else. Almost immediately the bone began to shift away from the flesh of his wound and knit itself back together. She watched the bleeding slow and the edges of the wound come together. She pulled away before the invisible needles began to do their work, leaving the wound still seeping, but repaired to a degree that would keep Sam from dying.

  “How bad is it?”

  A shadow came over Dylan and Sam. She glanced behind her as Wyatt knelt at her side.

  “Bad. But I think he’ll live.”

  Wyatt slipped the water bottle out of her hand and poured a little over the wounds. Blood washed away, but very little took its place. He studied it for a long minute. “I could probably sew it up if we can find something to use as thread.”

  “Have you done it before?”

  He nodded. “Too many times. It’s one of the first things we learn in my city.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  Wyatt glanced at her, a softness coming into his eyes as he studied her face. “We’re alive and we have our health,” he said in a tone that suggested it was something he had said, or heard, many times before. “All the rest is extra.”

  She leaned into him for a second, laying her head gently on his shoulder. He slid his hand over her back, his hand caressing the curve of her hip before he pulled away. “I better go find another source of water,” he said. “I guess we’ll have to stay here for a few days.”

  Chapter 23

  The javelina turned out to be a feral pig, the meat similar to the heavy roast Cook made on special occasions. They began to cook it in huge chunks, planning to eat their fill and dry the rest in thin strips to carry with them in their bags. Wyatt showed Dylan and Stiles how to cut and prepare the meat so that they could help keep the supply coming.

  Ellie slept most of the day. It was shock, Stiles told them. Sam slept as well, his color slowly coming back as the day progressed. Wyatt found some kind of plant that was fibrous and provided the thread to close his wounds. He used one of the long, slender thorns from the low, green plants—cactus, he told her—as a needle. It only took Wyatt a few minutes to make the repair. He would have done well working in the laundry at the dorms.

  Late in the afternoon, Wyatt came to Dylan where she was sitting beside Sam and held his hand out to her. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said.

  Her eyebrows rose. “We haven’t walked enough this past week?”

  He smiled, a crooked smile that she decided she really liked. “Come on.”

  She took his hand and let him lift her to her feet. He gestured to Stiles, who nodded, though the frown that marred his features suggested he didn’t like the idea of half the healthy part of their party walking away.

  “What do you know about this girl?” Wyatt asked as soon as they were out of earshot of the camp.

  “She’s from Genero, like me,” she said, stooping to pick up a blade of grass so she could chew on it. She had discovered the grass had a lovely herbal taste to it that helped calm her desire for water. “She wasn’t in my dorm, though, so I didn’t know her well.”

  “And the guy?”

  Dylan shook her head. “I’ve never seen him.”

  Wyatt took a few dozen steps without saying anything else. Dylan reached for him as his strides began to grow longer, pulling him farther from her. He felt her finger snag his sleeve and he stopped, holding out his hand to her. She took it gratefully, entwining her fingers with his as though they touched in this way all the time.

  “I’ve never seen people from Genero make it this far.”

  “He isn’t from Genero. Maybe he had some skills that helped them. Like you and me.”

  Wyatt glanced at her. “Did you see his clo
thes? His boots?” He gestured vaguely toward their camp. “He’s from Genero.”

  “There are no men in Genero.”

  Wyatt shook his head. “There is so much you don’t know,” he said in such a low tone that she almost missed the words.

  She stopped, forcing him to stop and face her. “What do you mean?”

  He looked at her, his eyes moving everywhere but over her face. “Have you ever wondered why your dorms are only lettered through half the alphabet?”

  “How do you know—“

  “Or why you are not allowed to leave your dorm compound?”

  She reached up to touch his face, but he grabbed her other hand with his free one.

  “There are a lot of secrets in Genero,” he said simply.

  “If there were boys there, why wouldn’t they tell us?”

  Wyatt finally met her gaze, his eyes moving slowly from her eyes to her lips to her rounded breasts moving a little too quickly because of the hitch in her breath from the intensity of his stare. “They don’t want what happens naturally between boys and girls to happen.”

  “I don’t—”

  He kissed her, his lips soft and moist against hers. She moved into him, pushing against his grip on her hands to rise up on her toes so that she could close the small gap that continued to exist between them, between their bodies. He groaned deep in his chest as he deepened the kiss, tasting her with the same slow enthusiasm that was burning through her body, that made her want to force him to release her hands so she could touch the heat of his skin, feel the gentleness of his touch on hers.

  After a moment he pulled back, groaning again as he pressed his forehead to hers. “This is what I mean,” he whispered, his breath brushing like a tender touch across her skin.

  “Why wouldn’t they want this to happen?” she asked.

  “They have plans for most of the girls in Genero,” he said. “Some of the boys, too.”

  She pulled back and looked at him. “How do you know so much about Genero?”

  “My father.” He smoothed a piece of hair away from her face. “He’ll explain it all to you when we get there.”

  Dylan nodded. “So we go to your city.”

  “Yes.” He kissed the top of her head lightly. “But I don’t know if we can take the rest of them.”

  It was like stepping into a cold shower. Dylan moved back, pulling her hands from his. “We can’t leave them.”

  “But how can we know we can trust them?”

  “How do you know you can trust me?”

  Wyatt reddened slightly. “Dylan, you don’t understand. The fact that I’m out here, the things that I do, it could get me and my father in a lot of trouble.”

  “Then why do you do it?”

  “I have to.” He dragged his fingers through his hair as he stepped back, moving in a slow circle. “My city is not like yours. We are treated like dogs, forced to work until we simply cannot work anymore. There isn’t enough, not enough food, not enough tools to go around, not enough of anything. Someone has to go get things.”

  “Like books?” Dylan swung her arm in the air. “That’s all I’ve seen you get.”

  “I’m just the scout,” he said. “Others will come and collect things where I tell them to go.”

  He turned toward the direction from which they had just come, as though he could still see Stiles and Ellie and Sam. “There are people out here looking for me, trying to prove that I’m doing things I am not supposed to do. If one of them—“

  “I told you, Ellie’s from Genero, just like me.”

  “But what about Stiles?”

  Dylan shook her head. “You haven’t trusted him from the first day.”

  “Because he’s a liar!” Wyatt turned toward her, his eyes flashing in the sunlight. “There are no cities east of here, Dylan.”

  “I know.”

  His gaze fell hard on her face. “What do you mean, you know?”

  “I don’t know where all the cities are,” she corrected herself. “But I know Stiles isn’t from a city east of here.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “He told me.”

  Wyatt made a face that twisted his handsome features, making them something close to hateful. “He told you?”

  “He was afraid if he told you the truth, you wouldn’t let him travel with us.”

  “He’s damn right I wouldn’t.” Wyatt slapped his hand against his hip. “Where is he from?”

  “He called himself a wanderer. Said all his people had died and he was hiding in the ruins.”

  Wyatt bit his lip, chewing it like it was a piece of grass. “And you didn’t tell me?”

  She knew as the words fell from his lips that she had made a mistake. She wasn’t sure if the mistake was in not telling him immediately, or if it was in telling him now, but she knew it was a mistake. She took a step forward, reached for the front of his shirt, but he stepped back out of her reach, holding up his hands as though to ward her off.

  “If there is one thing I hate more than anything else,” he said slowly, “it’s a liar.”

  “I didn’t lie,” Dylan said.

  “You didn’t tell the truth. Isn’t that the same thing?”

  “Wyatt—”

  “No,” he stepped back even farther. “I thought I could trust you,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “But you kept something from me. That’s not trust.”

  “He only told me last night.”

  “And how many times have we been alone since then?” He shook his head again. “He’s not going back with us. If you don’t like it, you can stay here with him.”

  He walked away.

  Chapter 24

  Sam woke as the sun began to drift down over the horizon. Dylan held his head up off the ground and poured a little water down his throat. He groaned as it gurgled down to his stomach.

  “Ellie?”

  “She’s asleep.”

  He closed his eyes. “Hasn’t slept much.”

  Dylan remembered her first night outside of the dome and nodded in sympathy. “How long have you been here?”

  “Since test day,” he whispered. And then he began to cough, the little bit of water he had taken coming back up. Dylan pulled him up to a nearly sitting position and smacked his back the way Davida used to do for her. After a moment he calmed down, the coughing subsiding. She lay him back down and ran a hand slowly over his forehead.

  “He lost a lot of blood,” Stiles said as he came to kneel behind Dylan.

  Dylan nodded. “I don’t know what to do to help him.”

  “Just what you’ve already done,” Stiles said, touching her arm lightly.

  Dylan glanced across the camp to where Wyatt was sitting by the fire tending the last of the feral pig. He moved just as her eyes met his, looking away as though pretending he hadn’t been watching her. It felt as though someone squeezed something vital inside of her as she watched him, almost like it had felt when she realized there was nothing she could do to save Donna.

  “He’s angry.”

  “He doesn’t trust you,” Dylan said. “Me, either, I suppose.”

  “Why?”

  She wiped a layer of sweat from Sam’s forehead with the back of her hand and watched to be sure his breathing was normal before she sat back on her bottom, pulling her legs into a pretzel in front of her. She pressed her hands into the space between her thighs, closing her eyes for a second as she waited for the emotions to die down inside her chest.

  “Because we lied to him.”

  Stiles settled down beside her. “He doesn’t appreciate that?”

  Dylan chuckled, but it was humorless. “He’s used to being on his own.”

  Stiles looked out into the darkness, not really looking in Wyatt’s direction, or Ellie’s, but at something far away. “I can understand that.”

  “He’s so angry,” she said. “I don’t know what to do about it.”

  “Be patient. He has to work it out for himself.”

>   “Maybe.” Dylan began picking at the grass growing beside her. She pulled up big handfuls and let it fall slowly from between her fingers. “He saved my life. If he hadn’t come along—”

  “How did he do that?”

  Dylan shrugged. “I was alone. I found water, but if I didn’t have a new source of food in a few days, I would have slowly starved to death.”

  “But if you found water…”

  She shook her head. “I was alone. No one can survive completely alone. Not here, not like this.”

  Stiles looked away, his gaze again moving to that distant point. “I suppose.”

  Sam moaned in his sleep. Dylan touched his hand, and he wrapped his fingers around hers, as though reaching for someone who existed only in his dream. She picked up his hand and held it tight between both of her own. “We need each other,” she said to no one in particular.

  Ellie cried out in her sleep. Stiles began to stand, but then he stopped. Dylan looked over to where Ellie had been sleeping and watched Wyatt kneel beside her. He whispered something to her, taking her hand between his, similar to the way Dylan held Sam’s hand. In a moment she settled down, rolling onto her side toward Wyatt. He smoothed the hair from her brow and whispered to her a second time.

  “He’s a good man,” Dylan whispered.

  “That remains to be seen,” Stiles said.

  She looked at him, staring at him for a long minute as though seeing him for the first time. Something about what he had just said sounded familiar to her for reasons she didn’t understand. But then he slipped Sam’s hand from hers.

  “Go rest,” he suggested. “It’s going to be a long few days. We should all get as much rest as possible.”

  “Okay.” She touched Sam’s forehead one more time before she got up, patting Stiles on the shoulder. “Thank you.”

  Dylan scooped her bag up off the ground where it was sitting at Sam’s feet, forgotten after the excitement that morning. She walked over to where Wyatt still sat with Ellie.

  “Go watch the meat,” she said. “Stiles is going to watch Sam so I can sleep. I’ll lay over here with her.”

  Wyatt nodded, but he didn’t look at her, didn’t say a word.