She dropped her bag in the place where Wyatt had been sitting, forcing herself not to turn and watch his progress back to the fire. There was no reason, she told herself. He was angry, but surely he would get over it. Wouldn’t he?
She lay down, imagining that the warmth seeping from the ground into her body was the residue of Wyatt’s body heat, not the heat of the excruciatingly hot sun. She looked over at Stiles and Sam, reassuring herself that Stiles would do as he had promised, before she closed her eyes and tried to let the tension of the day roll off her shoulders. It took a few minutes, but exhaustion slowly began to settle behind her eyes.
As sleep settled over her, words began to appear in her mind.
You can’t trust Wyatt. You have to leave him.
Dylan opened her eyes, expecting that odd breeze that seemed to follow her around, only her, to fall over her. But it didn’t. Nothing happened. She looked over toward Sam and saw Stiles still sitting beside him, still holding his hand. Wyatt was by the fire, turning the meat as it dripped its fat into the heat.
There was nothing unusual.
But the words came again.
Don’t trust him.
Chapter 25
Ellie woke with a nightmare a little before dawn. Dylan sat up and pulled the girl into her arms, rocking her as though she were a small child instead of an adolescent taller than Dylan herself.
“It’s okay,” Dylan whispered over and over again. “Everything’s okay now.”
Ellie sobbed for a long time, but the sound slowly began to abate as she relaxed and allowed Dylan to hold her. Finally, she stopped altogether.
“Dylan?” she asked.
“Yes, I’m here.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.” Dylan ran her hand slowly over the side of Ellie’s face. “I don’t know,” she repeated.
Wyatt was asleep near the fire, the lump of his body clear in the slowly rising sunlight. Stiles was still beside Sam, curled into something like the fetal position in the grass beside Sam’s prone body. Dylan couldn’t see either man well, but she could see their outlines, enough to reassure her that they were all there, safe, where they should be.
She continued to stroke Ellie’s face until she reached up and stilled her hand, slipping out from under it to sit up. “Do you have water?”
Dylan pulled a water bottle from her bag and handed it to her. Ellie drank quickly, emptying the bottle in just a few swallows. “They only gave me two bottles,” she said. “Just two bottles of water to last three days.”
“Me too.”
“Why?” She looked at Dylan as though she believed she really had the answers. “Why would they do that?”
Dylan slipped the bottle out of Ellie’s hand and pushed it back into her bag to join the other empty bottle. “How did you survive this long?” she asked.
Ellie shook her head. “I almost didn’t. But Sam found me. He has this trick with the spiny bushes. If you break them open just right, you can find water inside.”
“The cactus?”
“Is that what it’s called?”
Dylan nodded somewhat absently. “How did Sam know that?”
“Science lessons,” Ellie said. She looked around herself. “Where is he?”
“There.” Dylan pointed to where Sam lay. Ellie only nodded without looking in the direction Dylan pointed. Clearly all she wanted was to know he existed. She didn’t want to actually see him.
“Where’s he from?” Dylan asked. “Sam?”
“Genero,” Ellie said as though the answer were obvious. “Where else?”
“There are different cities,” Dylan said.
Ellie shook her head, as though attempting to deny what her ears were telling her Dylan had said. “No, there aren’t. They would have told us.”
“They didn’t tell us there were men in Genero.”
“For our protection,” Ellie said. “Sam told me that they knew about us, but we didn’t know about them because it could have caused problems.”
“What kind of problems?”
Ellie shrugged. “I don’t know. I asked Sam, but he didn’t seem to understand it, either.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Ellie’s thoughts were all over the place; Dylan could hear them without trying. She was thinking about Sam, about wanting to be sure he was okay, but was afraid to be told he was dead. She was also thinking about Genero, about the day of the test. Thinking about how easy the test on the computer had been and how confused she was that she was one of the few who had been separated from the others and made to come here, to do this awful thing in this awful place. And then her thoughts shifted to Wyatt.
To how amazing it had been that he saved her life. Like a knight in shining armor from some books she read years ago.
Lancelot, she kept thinking.
Then her thoughts disappeared under a veil of pain.
Sam was awake.
Dylan stood and moved across the grass, kneeling on the far side of Sam so that she would not disturb Stiles. His eyes were open, and he was staring up into the fading stars. “Water,” he muttered when he saw Dylan staring down at him.
“I’m out,” she said apologetically.
He closed his eyes, and again that red veil of pain seeped through Dylan’s thoughts. She laid a hand on his forehead, felt the heat that had already gathered there even though the day was cool. Fever. He struggled under her touch, tried to sit up. She gently pushed him back down.
“You have to lay still. You were hurt pretty badly.”
“Javelina,” he choked.
“Yes.”
He opened his eyes and focused on her. “Bacteria in the saliva,” he muttered.
Dylan didn’t know what he was saying, but his thoughts explained it with one word. Infection.
She crawled to his ankle and moved the thin piece of cloth Wyatt had laid over his injuries after they were sewn. The skin around the perfect, thin stitches was red and puffy. And a thin secretion of something that looked creamy in the dim light seeped from the wounds. Everything she had done, and he was going to die anyway.
Dylan couldn’t let that happen.
She wrapped her hand around his calf just above the wounds. She closed her eyes and imagined his ankle with just the thinnest line of injury marking the three places where the javelina had cut open the flesh. Her fingers tingled as she imagined it. Heat poured through her body and left it, as though using her as a conduit to the next plane of existence. When she opened her eyes, the wounds looked just as she had imagined them.
“Looks better.”
Dylan jumped, letting go of Sam with a quick, nervous gesture.
Stiles was at her side, a soft smile creasing his face until a dimple appeared just to the left of his thick bottom lip. “That’s a good sign,” he said, nodding toward Sam’s leg.
“Hopefully he’ll recover.”
Stiles nodded. “Hopefully.”
“Do you have any more water?” she asked. “I gave the last of mine to Ellie.”
“Yeah.” He stood and walked over to where he had been sleeping, scooping a heavy, green bottle off the ground. “It’s only about half full.”
“It’s for Sam,” she said, climbing to her feet.
“We need to find a water source.”
Dylan gestured toward Wyatt. “He was going to look.”
“Maybe I should go. Let him rest,” Stiles said. “It might help win his confidence.”
She nodded. “I hope so.”
Stiles touched her arm lightly. “We’ll be okay, Dylan. We just have to find a way to survive.”
She walked over to where Ellie still sat, watching the shadows receding around her. Dylan scooped up her bag and took it to Stiles. He didn’t have a bag, hadn’t had anything when they first met. She slipped the strap over his shoulder. “Don’t lose your way. And if it gets to be midday and you still haven’t found anything, come back.”
“I will.” He kissed her cheek lightly.
Dylan watched him walk into the distance until Sam began to cough, bringing her attention back to him. She sat at his head, lifting it onto her lap before she began to slowly feed him the water from Sam’s bottle.
It was then that the gargoyle attacked.
Chapter 26
Ellie screamed as it swooped low out of the sky and skimmed the air just above her head. Wyatt was immediately on his feet, his sword in his hand. The gargoyle laughed, flying through the air on gigantic wings, the breeze rustling the grass all around them as it lunged in Wyatt’s direction. He took a hard swing at it, but the creature was too fast. It was out of the way before Wyatt even finished his swing.
“Ellie!” Dylan called, gesturing for her to move closer to her and Sam.
Ellie huddled into herself, turning her body into a ball where she sat, more than three yards from anyone with a weapon. Sam pulled himself up on his side, waving his arms wildly. “Ellie, come over here,” he said in a loud whisper.
“Ellie,” Dylan said too, hoping both their voices would break through her fear. But she stayed where she was, rocking slowly in the grass.
“We have to go to her,” Sam said.
The breeze of the gargoyle’s wings washed over Dylan, running up and down her spine like an emotional shiver. She looked up and was sorry she did. The creature was watching her with a smirk on its broken features.
“Run,” it said in its dusty, creaky voice.
Dylan slid her arm under Sam’s and pulled him to his feet. They began to run, Sam picking up the pace when he realized his ankle was going to hold him better than he had suspected. Just as they approached, Ellie she looked up and began to scream hysterically.
“Dylan!” Wyatt cried.
Dylan looked behind her and watched as the gargoyle came toward her with its arms outstretched, its deformed hands stretched to their full length. She pushed Sam to the ground, where he landed hard just beside Ellie. She dove to the other side of Ellie just as the creature snagged the back of her shirt. She felt the material rip again, the tear on her side from the last gargoyle attack leaving it vulnerable to shredding.
Wyatt had somehow crossed the few yards between them in seconds. He threw himself over Dylan, shoving her hard into the grass before rolling and raising his sword toward the creature. But it was gone.
“Where?” Wyatt asked, his breath coming in quick puffs.
Dylan climbed up on hands and knees, her eyes glued to the sky. “I don’t know,” she muttered as she kept looking, moving away from the low bushes that framed the edge of their campsite. And then it came again from behind, knocking Ellie onto her belly before making a quick grab for Dylan. It had her wrist before she realized what was happening. Sam grabbed her ankle, yanking back hard enough that the gargoyle lost its grip. And Wyatt, on his feet even before the gargoyle knocked Ellie over, took a hard swing at the back of the gargoyle’s neck.
Almost instantly the creature turned into a bright flash of light and disappeared.
Dylan fell to the ground, the impact knocking the air out of her lungs. Sam was immediately at her side, lifting her off the ground so that she could swallow as much sweet air as possible. She leaned back against him, her head spinning with the memory of what had just happened flying into her head from both Sam and Ellie. And then sweet relief, pouring from Ellie’s mind as Wyatt slid his hands under her arms and helped her into a sitting position.
“You okay?” he asked.
Pleasure blossomed in her thoughts as she nodded. “Thanks to you.”
Wyatt shrugged as he turned and came to kneel beside Dylan. He touched her face, and her breathing instantly eased. “Are you hurt?” he asked, gently taking her wrist between his hands.
She shook her head.
He rubbed his hands over her wrist, building enough friction that her skin began to burn with the touch. After a minute, she touched his hand and stopped the movement. “I’m okay,” she said.
His dark blue eyes studied her face for a long minute. He seemed to hesitate, as though there was something he wanted to say. But then he nodded and stood.
“Where’s Stiles?”
“He went to look for water,” Dylan said, smiling at Sam as she pulled away from him, sitting up under her own power.
“When?”
“I don’t know,” she said, struggling to her feet to stand beside Wyatt. “Maybe five minutes before that thing—”
“Convenient,” Wyatt said.
“What?”
He glanced at her. “You ever notice how he disappears when these things happen?”
“That’s not fair. How was he supposed to know a gargoyle was on its way?”
Wyatt shrugged, but he didn’t seem convinced.
“What was that thing?” Sam asked, coming to stand beside Dylan.
“A gargoyle,” Wyatt said, his voice still filled with anger.
“What did it want?” Sam asked.
Wyatt looked at Dylan, his eyes filled with questions that neither of them could answer. “I don’t know,” he finally said. His eyes moved to Sam, taking in the weight he was putting on his injured ankle. “Can you walk? It might be wise for us to move on.”
Sam nodded as Dylan objected. “We can’t go without Stiles.”
“We can’t stay here,” Wyatt said, moving closer to her and picking up her wrist. “Another one could be in the area. What if we’re not as lucky next time?”
“But Stiles…”
“Which way did he go?”
Dylan pointed. Wyatt turned slightly before surveying their scattered camp, his eyes falling slowly over Ellie and Sam before settling on Dylan again. “We need to go that way anyway. If we run into him on the way…”
Dylan began to object, but Wyatt still held her wrist, a wrist that was still aching with the touch of the gargoyle. She slowly nodded, even though the movement left a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.
They gathered all the meat and water bottles they had left. Sam and Ellie both had bags, but only one had survived their rush from their previous campsite. With Wyatt’s that made only two bags to carry all the meat and the few other supplies they had between them. Sam insisted on carrying the other bag while Wyatt shouldered the heavier one. As they set out, Ellie was determined to walk beside Wyatt, her continuing thoughts of Lancelot flooding her mind in a way that made Dylan wish she was the one standing at his side.
Sam had a slight limp, and, from time to time, Dylan became aware of a flash of pain bursting through his thoughts. Despite all of that, he kept up with them without complaint. They walked for several hours, none of them really talking. Sam would point out an interesting plant here or there. It was information Dylan could have used in her first days outside the dome, so she paid close attention. But Wyatt seemed more interested in crossing as much terrain as they could as quickly as possible. They had been walking for nearly three hours when a voice called out to them from a stand of trees.
“Hey, what are you doing here?”
Stiles stepped out, several water bottles in his hands, waving them like a peace flag. Wyatt glanced at Dylan as a smile broke out on her face and she began to jog toward Stiles.
“Where have you been?”
He gestured behind him. “There’s a little river down there at the base of this hill.” He held up a bottle of water that she gratefully snatched from his hand. The water was so good on her parched tongue. “Where are you headed?”
Wyatt had come up behind her, so it was he who answered Stiles’ question.
“We were attacked a few minutes after you left.”
“Attacked?”
“Gargoyle,” Dylan spit out between quick gulps of water.
Stiles’ eyes narrowed. “Out here?”
Wyatt stepped forward, moving between Stiles and Dylan. “You wouldn’t know anything about it, would you?”
“Why would he—” Dylan began to say, even as Stiles’ eyes narrowed further.
“Let him answer,” Wyatt said.
“Seems odd it happened just as you walked away.”
“Yeah,” Stiles agreed. “But that doesn’t mean I know anything about it.”
“You’re a wanderer.” Wyatt said the word like it tasted foul on his tongue. “Don’t wanderers spend time with gargoyles? Don’t they work for them, sometimes?”
Stiles shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do.” Wyatt shoved a finger into Stiles’ chest. “This isn’t my first experience with gargoyles.”
“Good for you,” Stiles said, dropping the water bottles as he stepped into Wyatt.
“And I know about you, about people like you. Working for the gargoyles, spying on people so that the gargoyles can find them easier.” He shoved his finger so hard into Stiles’ chest that he grunted a little. “It was someone like you who led the gargoyles to my mother.”
“Then your mother wasn’t human,” Stiles spat out at Wyatt.
Wyatt swung, but Stiles ducked and missed his blow even as he landed one of his own in Wyatt’s gut. Wyatt didn’t even react to the blow as he swung again, catching Stiles on the corner of his jaw.
“Stop!” Dylan cried, shoving an arm between the two men. Stiles immediately stepped back, throwing his hands up in the air, but Wyatt moved forward, his fist still raised in a threat. Dylan moved in front of him, laying her hands on his chest and pushing him backward. “Stop it,” she demanded. “This is stupid!”
“He brought that gargoyle to us,” Wyatt insisted.
“You don’t know that,” Dylan said, taking his face between her hands, forcing him to focus on her. “Besides, doing this isn’t going to solve anything, one way or the other.”
Wyatt focused on her, the tension slowly easing from his fists. “I won’t take him to my city.”
Sam had come over and was standing off to one side, Ellie slightly behind him. “You can’t leave him out here alone,” he said quietly. “Not when he knows which way we’re going.”
Tension came back into Wyatt’s arms, his fists clutching him again. He studied Dylan’s face. “What if it happens again? What if he brings the gargoyles on us again?”
FOUND (Angels and Gargoyles Book 1) Page 11