SOUL MATES (Angels and Demons Book 3)

by Brenda L. Harper

  Dylan felt carefree for the first time in a long while. She chased Gabriel through the sky, not feeling the need to talk or to even include him in her movements. He was just there and that was enough for the moment. Raphael’s man followed, as always, at a discreet distance. When they landed on the street outside of Rachel’s building, they caught the attention of the townspeople who were walking around, tending to their own business in the town square around them. Dylan could hear their thoughts and how they mostly focused on Gabriel’s beauty. It made her smile, something like pride rising in her chest for reasons she wasn’t prepared to analyze.

  Raphael was at the door before Dylan could push it open, concern etched into his handsome features.

  “Gabriel,” he said with more than surprise in his voice.

  “Hello, brother,” Gabriel said, extending a hand to the other archangel.

  “Why are you here?”

  Gabriel glanced at Dylan, a soft smile again touching his full lips. “I came to meet the savior.”

  Surprise was not even an apt description of the emotion this brought to Raphael’s eyes. He covered it quickly, but not before Dylan heard it screaming from his thoughts. He was confused. He’d spoken to Gabriel before he fell from heaven; he knew that Gabriel was outspokenly against the angels assisting the humans. Yet, here he was, insisting that he wanted nothing more than to meet Dylan. It didn’t make sense to Raphael and that set off alarm bells in Dylan’s head.

  But she chose to ignore them.

  Chapter 14

  Stiles watched Ellie observe the dark souls trapped in Wilhelm’s jail, her face expressionless. She had insisted on seeing them and said that she could tell them who each was. But she’d been watching them for nearly an hour and had yet to say a word.

  “This is a waste of time,” Stiles said.

  “Maybe,” Wilhelm agreed.

  Stiles leaned his shoulder against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest to show his annoyance. But then he lowered his mental walls, anxious to know what was going on in Ellie’s mind. He’d done this quite often over the last few weeks and she never seemed to feel him there. And that alone was odd. She should have.

  She was arguing with one of the dark souls.

  This is what must be done, the soul told her.

  But I can’t do that. I can’t allow that to happen.

  It is our purpose.

  Ellie suddenly turned, her gaze falling sharply on Stiles before she focused on Wilhelm.

  “They are just Nephilim left behind when the souls were blessed.”

  “They were human?” Wilhelm asked.

  “Yes. Each one stuck here because of unfinished business.”

  “Can you help them cross?” Stiles asked Ellie.

  She focused on him again, her eyes narrowing slightly as she did. “I could try. But I’m not sure it would work. They can sense that I was one of them.”

  “I think they more than sense it. They know who you are.”

  Ellie buried her hands in the front pockets of her pants. “You don’t trust me.”

  “Tell me why I should.”

  Again she glanced at Wilhelm, suddenly adopting the paranoid demeanor of a trapped animal. She crossed her arms over her chest, and then slid her hands back into her pockets, stepping back and then moving forward when she knocked into the steel bars of the cell doors. Stiles could hear the swirling of her thoughts, her attempts to figure out what she could say that would take the heat off of her for a moment.

  “You’re up to something,” Stiles said. “You know more than you’ve told us and you’re planning something with these souls.”

  She shook her head as tears began to slip from her eyes. “I’m not.”

  “I heard you, Ellie. You forget, now that you’re back in your human form, I can hear your thoughts.”

  “I didn’t forget. I just…I was hoping you would understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  Ellie looked over her shoulder at the dark soul she’d just spent the better part of an hour staring at. “They want me to release them. They feel a pull to the others that is almost painful. They need to be with the others.”

  “Why?”

  She shook her head, tears still falling down her slender cheeks and down over the front of the t-shirt Wilhelm had found for her.

  Stiles pushed away from the wall and turned to the stairs. “If you’re not going to tell us what we need to know, I can’t imagine why we need to keep you here. Perhaps it’s time to send you home.”

  “Wait!” she cried as Stiles’ foot hit the first tread of the stairs. He turned, allowing all the impatience he’d felt these last few weeks show on his face. “What?”

  “I want to help,” she said. “I’m just confused. I’m not sure what’s real and what isn’t. It’s all been so disorienting.”

  “I’m sure it has been,” Wilhelm said, glancing at Stiles with a bit of warning in his eyes.

  “We’re running out of time,” Stiles said. “We can’t sit around and wait for you to adjust to being back. We need to know what you know now.”

  A struggle was clearly going on inside of Ellie. Stiles could see it in the movements of her body and the expression on her face. One moment, she was consumed with grief. The next, she was almost relaxed, something like amusement dancing in her eyes. It was like watching a bizarre performance by some sort of entertainer, like the troupe who traveled through the Americas, putting on shows in exchange for a few days room and board. There was something more going on here and he was determined to know what it was.

  Ellie turned back toward the cells, crossing her arms over her chest again. “They are planning a big attack. In Europe. They’re hoping Dylan will go there, that she will be distracted long enough for them to possess someone close to her. A woman.”

  “Rachel?” Stiles asked, his voice steady even as his heart screamed in protest.

  “I don’t know. Just that it’s a woman who knows where the guardian’s orb is hidden.”

  Stiles didn’t wait to hear more. He burst into his ethereal form and rushed out, returning to Dytonia to warn Rachel.

  Chapter 15

  They were seated around the dinner table, laughter flowing like it never had before. Gabriel was regaling them with stories of his past exploits on Earth. He had, apparently, fallen to Earth about the time of ancient Roman civilization, living among noblemen who believed in the pleasure of the flesh, but who denied themselves such pleasures as a show of strength. He found it amusing how these men looked down on one another for doing the same things they did in the privacy of their own bedrooms and how they preferred to sin by indulging in infidelity rather than allowing themselves to be publicly ridiculed for enjoying the pleasures of their respective wives.

  “They were quite a confused group of people.”

  “Humans in general appear to be quite confused to me,” Raphael said, reaching over to squeeze Rachel’s hand to let her know he didn’t mean her.

  “They are a beautiful species,” Gabriel said, his eyes also falling on Rachel for a brief moment. “Very intelligent and inventive. I admire their ability to function with these crazy emotions ruling their thoughts so much of the time. I’m not sure angels would be able to function as well if we had to deal with the same collection of emotions in heaven.”

  “True,” Raphael agreed.

  “Quite worthy to be saved. But that doesn’t mean I will ever truly understand their actions and beliefs.”

  Dylan picked up her wine glass and held it up. “That, my friends, is probably one thing we all agree on. No one—not even humans—understands other humans.”

  Everyone lifted their glasses as laughter slipped from their lips.

  Raphael had been wary of Gabriel when Dylan invited him into Rachel’s building, but the more they spent time together, the more he seemed to accept his presence. There was still some hesitation. Dylan could feel it even as he laughed at Gabriel’s stories. But Rachel…she was a great judg
e of character and she seemed to think Gabriel was wonderful.

  “So…” Rachel began, clearly unsure how to ask what was on her mind.

  “You’re wondering why I’m here,” Gabriel said.

  “I am.”

  Gabriel glanced at Dylan. “Well, when Raphael decided to fall and help Dylan with the dark souls, I thought it was a crazy idea.” He lifted his glass and tilted it toward Raphael before taking a quick sip. “I told him he was wasting his time. That God had given all this power to this little girl for a reason and we should keep our noses out of it. But he disagreed and came down anyway.”

  Gabriel set his glass back down and stared at it for a long minute. “Then,” he said, “I saw what was happening down here and I met a few souls in heaven who knew Dylan, and I came to the conclusion that perhaps my apathy was wrong. I realized that humanity needs to survive and it’s our role as angels to help that happen. So I came down here to meet Dylan and to offer my help.”

  “That’s generous of you,” Rachel said, real awe in her voice.

  Gabriel shrugged. “It’s my duty. My purpose.”

  Rachel took Raphael’s hand, forcing him to look up from the floor he’d been studying the entire time Gabriel had been answering her question. He smiled a little distractedly at her, squeezing her hand before he pulled away and leaned forward.

  “You were pretty adamant the last time I saw you. You rarely change your mind that easily.”

  “I told you, I met a few souls who had a lot of good things to say about Dylan.”

  “You called her an abomination.”

  Dylan’s cheeks burned a little at that word. She’d heard it a lot when she first learned about her true nature, even used it herself a few times. But it had been years. It felt harsh.

  Gabriel seemed to sense her discomfort. He reached over and took her hand between both of his. “I’m sorry. It was—”

  “What’s going on?”

  Stiles just appeared behind Rachel, his aura shimmering around his human form for an instant. Dylan pulled her hand from Gabriel’s and sat up a little straighter.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Stiles stared at Gabriel as he answered Dylan’s question. “Ellie gave us a little information I thought you’d like to hear.”

  “Ellie?” Gabriel asked.

  “She’s an angel. She was one of the demons,” Dylan said distractedly. “What did she say?”

  Stiles shook his head. “I’d rather talk to you alone.”

  Dylan started to argue, but the way Stiles was staring at Gabriel made her worry that insisting on anything right now would just lead to a delay in his offer of the information he had come to share. She stood, dropped her napkin on her plate, and led the way to the library’s reading room.

  Stiles followed after a moment, his heavy footsteps vibrating on the wood floor under her feet. She walked to a far shelf she was quite familiar with because she visited it so often. She ran her fingers over the spines of several books she’d given to Rachel herself, the books that had begun this collection—the books Davida had hidden and left for Dylan to find after the war was over. They were books that talked about humanity and about the good parts of humans—books Davida had hoped Dylan would find and use to help her make the choice between humanity and the angels. It was proof to Dylan that Davida had never really turned on her, that her last words before she died—her insistence that she’d never cared for Dylan, Donna, or any of her other sisters in Genero—were untrue.

  There were so many lies. Was it any wonder Dylan wanted to pick and choose what to believe and what to leave behind?

  “There’s going to be a massive attack in Europe.”

  Dylan turned. “There have been a few already.”

  “Yes, well, the dark souls are planning a large attack to draw you out.”

  “Is this another attempt to get the guardian’s orb?”

  “It is. But not how you think.”

  Dylan turned and looked at Stiles, her heart doing a little bit of a flip as she studied the dark circles under his eyes and the tension in his shoulders. He was so familiar! Just looking at him felt like coming home after a long time away. She wanted to go to him and wipe the exhaustion from him. But she didn’t. She stayed where she was.

  “Why is Gabriel here?”

  Her eyebrows rose. “Why shouldn’t he be here?”

  “He’s never been very supportive of the guardian’s duties. He once told Lucifer he was a fool to remain on Earth to watch over the humans. He said that Luc would one day regret his choices. And when things began to turn sour, Gabriel was the first to tell everyone that he had predicted it.”

  “He’s changed his opinion.”

  “Opinions like that don’t change overnight.”

  Dylan shrugged. “His apparently did.” She crossed the room, approaching him, but not touching him. “How are they planning on possessing me now?”

  Stiles’ seemed confused for a second, but then he nodded, catching up to her train of thought. “They want to get you out of the house, and then they’re going to possess Rachel so that she’ll show them where it’s at.”

  “What good would it do them to possess it? It won’t work for them, will it?”

  “No,” Stiles said, side stepping her and moving to the low couch behind her. “But there is power in it that anyone can draw from. Maybe they’re hoping that the orb will make them strong enough to do whatever—possess you or whatever—so that they can control the orb.”

  “Then we move the orb to a place only you and I know about.”

  “I don’t think that’s the answer.”

  Dylan sat beside him on the couch and slouched low, suddenly exhausted. “What do you think we should do, then?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t…” Stiles leaned forward and buried his face in his hands. “I don’t like this. I don’t like Gabriel suddenly showing up and I don’t like Ellie being here. I don’t like her connection to Joanna. None of it feels right to me.”

  “Do you think Joanna is still here somehow?”

  Stiles turned to look at her, balancing his head in his open palm. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. If she was, I would feel her.”

  “But you didn’t feel her before. Maybe once her soul turned dark, your connection was broken.”

  “That’s possible. But if she were here—if she’d been here all this time—where has she been hiding?”

  Dylan rubbed the palms of her hands on her pants, washing away the sweat this conversation was depositing there. “I don’t know.”

  “There are too many things we don’t know.”

  She could only agree with that.

  “What do we do with the orb?”

  Stiles didn’t answer her immediately. But then he sighed heavily as he studied her.

  “I’ll come for it tomorrow. Right now, I have to get back to Wilhelm’s and make sure they’ve tucked Ellie in for the night.”

  “Did she have any other information?”

  He shook his head. “Not really. She was having a conversation with the dark souls, but I only caught the end of it. I’m not sure what the significance of it—if there was any—might have been.”

  “Do you think we’ll ever get anything pertinent out of her?”

  Stiles stood up. “I don’t know.” He turned toward her. “All we can do is wait and hope for something.”

  Dylan nodded as she slowly climbed to her feet, too. “Try to get some sleep. You look tired.”

  “Yeah, this body…” he dragged his fingers through his hair. “I’ll see you.”

  He was gone before she could answer him.

  Dylan slept restlessly that night. She’d been thinking about the orb and the attacks that were—or weren’t—about to happen in Europe. But when she fell asleep, her dreams were filled with anything but trouble.

  It was like a collage, all these images running through her mind. Seeing Ellie again opened a door to the past that Dylan had shut a long ti
me ago. It brought back memories of people she’d thought about in passing, but had mostly put behind her. But now they were back, haunting her dreams.

  Davida. Sam. Two people she’d loved deeper than she knew she was capable of.

  Davida was her guardian. She was a mother, a guide, and the one person who was always there for Dylan—the one who helped form her personality and made her the person she eventually became.

  Sam was her brother, a boy who wanted to be so much more, but whose kiss was more that of an amazing friend than a lover. Sam, who had betrayed her without understanding what it was he was doing, and who had loved her so much he would have hated to know the truth. He died not knowing, and she would always be grateful for that. But he died because of her and that would haunt her until she no longer existed in this realm or the next.

  The memories of that day—the day the two of them died—haunted her for a long time. But she learned to box it away and to push it to the back of her mind. But now, seeing Ellie again, refreshed those memories and made them stronger than they had been in years.

  “Love breaks you, it makes you weak.”

  Those were Davida’s final words to her. And they seemed to be underscored by what had happened next. When Dylan saw the Redcoats march first Sam, then Stiles, and finally Wyatt into that chamber—into that death room where Davida had just died by an angel’s sword—she knew what Luc had planned. He had the upper hand and he was going to make Dylan suffer. He was going to make her watch each of the men she loved the most die until she was so broken that her own death would be welcomed. And it worked, to a certain degree.

  She watched Davida die. Then she watched Sam die. And that was all she could take.

  That was the moment she’d known she would have given anything to save what she had left. That was the moment she’d revealed probably the ultimate secret of her healing abilities. That was the moment she’d agreed to heal Lily and bring her back to full strength—to make her an even larger villain in a story that was already overrun with bad guys.