DARK SOULS (Angels and Demons Book 2)

by Brenda L. Harper

  “She is.” Dylan moved up beside April. “Do you see? She’s still in here. She’s just lost because her soul couldn’t go to heaven with you.”

  “April?” The room around them faded and turned back into the battlefield. But the dark-haired woman’s soul was there now, calling to her friend from high above them. “Come home now, April,” she said in her gentle, sad voice. “Come home to me.”

  And that’s what it took for this soul. She let go of whatever it was that kept her tethered to Earth and floated to heaven. Dylan felt the reunion as much as saw it, and she felt the happiness that overwhelmed both souls as they were reunited.

  And then she was attacked by another and another, so many… She couldn’t help them all, no matter how much she wanted to.

  ***

  “There’s got to be a better way!”

  Raphael stared at the tabletop. Wilhelm looked down at his hands. Rachel moved closer to Raphael, sliding her hand into his. Demetria studied the pictures on her wall. Donna pulled her knees up to her chest. No one knew what to say. No one understood these demons any better than Dylan did.

  Dylan felt sick with this overwhelming need to make things right for these hurting souls. It was her only focus anymore. When she slept and when she was awake, all she could think about was the pain she felt coming from them on the battlefield. She had to fix this. It was the only thing that kept her going—this need to find an answer.

  “They’ve kicked us out of two more cities,” Demetria suddenly said.

  Dylan turned from where she had been pacing beside the long conference table in Demetria’s war room.

  “Who did what?”

  “Josephine’s council. They’re throwing any gargoyles they recognize out of the cities. They’ve thrown a dozen of our people out of cities throughout the Americas in the last month.”

  What the hell?

  Stiles shook his head, his frustration palpable on his face.

  “How are we supposed to know where the demons are manifesting if we don’t have gargoyles and angels in place?”

  Demetria shrugged. “It’s this new law,” she said. “They’ve tossed a few humans out of the cities too, claiming they’re sympathetic to the gargoyles and could, potentially, be a danger. Pretty soon, they’ll be using this law to put people in jail cells and lock them up for their sympathies.”

  “It’s turning into a repeat of the hate crimes the government claimed to be against in the time before the war,” Wilhelm said. “But then they used it to rid themselves of people they couldn’t jail any other way.”

  “They’re turning on humans, too?” Rachel asked. “That seems counterproductive.”

  “They’re paranoid,” Donna said. “It’s just like when the leaders of Genero banned books about humanity to discourage the children from learning about compassion and leadership. They wanted them to focus on what they could do for the angels, not about what they could do for the world as a whole.”

  “They’re skewing the people’s perspective,” Demetria said.

  “They’re turning us into the enemy and making it harder for us to do our job,” Wilhelm said.

  “We can’t let that happen,” Dylan said.

  “What option do we have?” Demetria asked. “They have us over a barrel.”

  Dylan crossed her arms over her chest and let her wings unfurl behind her, so large they nearly touched each wall on either side of the room.

  “We have a discussion with them. Who’s with me?”

  Stiles and Raphael immediately stood. Demetria stepped up beside Stiles and Wilhelm took a spot beside Raphael. Rachel and Donna stood too, pride in the set of their shoulders. Dylan smiled, pride in her own movements as she snapped her fingers and transported the entire group to the slightly larger conference room in the capital.

  It was odd, being there and not seeing Wyatt sitting at his place at the head of the table.

  “What the…”

  One of the male members of the council jumped from his chair the moment Dylan and her group arrived, clearly frightened by their appearance. Josephine was standing at the far end of the room with another woman—the woman Wyatt had been conspiring with to pass the law banishing the angels and gargoyles. She stepped back slightly, her hand moving protectively over her swollen belly as her eyes widened with the sight of her mother’s extended angel wings. She’d never seen Dylan in any form other than her human one. Her total experience with her mother’s angel nature was her healing powers and the unique connection she’d once shared with Wyatt. She’d never seen anything else.

  “We have come to negotiate a treaty,” Dylan said in a calm, clear voice.

  “There is nothing to negotiate,” the jumpy, angry councilman said.

  Wilhelm, now in his gargoyle persona, growled as he stepped toward the man, forcing him to stumble back against his chair.

  “What are you asking for?” Josephine asked, approaching the opposite end of the table from where Dylan and the others stood.

  “We want you to stop throwing gargoyles out of the cities,” Demetria announced.

  “And stop punishing humans who appear sympathetic to the gargoyles and angels.”

  “There are only two angels,” the woman with Josephine said.

  Raphael stepped forward. “That’s no longer true, Mellissa.”

  The woman’s eyes widened. “How do you know my name?”

  “I know a lot about you. Your mother was Reece and your father was John. You were born just after Dylan made her choice, the third of six children. Your husband’s name is Kurtis and…you should probably spend more time at home before he grows too accustomed to the neighbor’s apple pie.”

  There was a twitter of laughter around the table. The woman, Mellissa, blushed a deep red.

  “Who are you?” Josephine asked.

  “I am the archangel Raphael. I’ve come to Earth to serve the savior, my descendant, Dylan.”

  Surprise fluttered through Josephine’s expression. “Descendant?”

  “He’s your grandfather…many, many generations removed,” Dylan said.

  “I thought you didn’t know—”

  “It’s complicated,” Stiles said.

  Josephine touched her belly again, smoothing her palm over the curve of her womb.

  “We passed a law,” the jumpy man said, returning to his seat. “We cannot revoke it so soon after it’s gone into effect. It would make us look weak.”

  “We’re not asking you to revoke it. We’re asking you to ignore it.”

  “Have a law that’s not enforced?” Mellissa asked. “We’d look like fools.”

  “You’re inhibiting out ability to protect humanity,” Dylan said. “We need to have the gargoyles and the angels in the cities so that we know as quickly as possible when danger arrives.”

  “What danger?” another man scoffed. “We haven’t seen danger since that disease was eradicated.”

  “That’s because we’ve managed to keep it under control until now,” Demetria said. “But you’re cutting us off, making it impossible to make things work.”

  “We’re protecting the people from the likes of you freaks.”

  Wilhelm growled again, but Donna touched his huge, marble-like arm and he immediately calmed down.

  “You are in danger,” Dylan said, her eyes on Josephine and no one else. “The demons are still a threat and we can only protect you from them if we have eyes on the ground, our people who can tell us where they are and what they’re doing.”

  “Are these the dark souls you were ranting about months ago?” Mellissa asked. “If they’re so dangerous, how come we haven’t heard anything about them?”

  “Because we’ve been keeping them in check,” Stiles said.

  “At the beginning of humanity, God sent the angels to watch over his greatest creation,” Dylan said, again with her eyes only on Josephine. “And he sent the gargoyles to help them. It is their sole purpose to protect and serve the humans to the best of their abili
ty. You are preventing them from doing that.”

  “We don’t need your protection anymore,” Mellissa insisted. “We can survive on our own two feet.”

  “Do you want me to prove it to you?” Dylan asked. “I can promise you, it won’t be pleasant.”

  The jumpy man laughed a deep, humorless laugh. “Threats. From an angel. That’s a new one.”

  With a snap of her fingers, Dylan had a lassoed demon in her hand. She intentionally set it free and watched as it circled the room. The council members watched in horror. It didn’t surprise her that it chose the jumpy man. It wrapped itself around his soul and laughed in glee, a sound that was much more sinister than the laugh the man himself had indulged moments earlier.

  The man stood, his eyes moving slowly around the room. Dylan’s heart skipped a beat when his eyes lingered on Josephine for a moment. But then they turned to the man beside him. He hit him, a hard slap across the face with the back of his hand. Then again, as the man stumbled out of his chair and held up his hands in an attempt at self-defense. The possessed grabbed the man by his shirtfront and began to choke him, spitting out obscenities that Dylan wouldn’t repeat in the worst of company.

  With a flick of her wrist, Dylan tethered the demon again, jerking it from the man’s body.

  “This is what we’ve been fighting,” she said into the heavy silence of the room. “This is what you are keeping us from stopping.”

  The silence lingered as the jumpy man fell into his chair, staring at his hands in disbelief. He knew what he’d done—Dylan hadn’t let the demon stay inside him long enough to take his memories. He knew what he’d done and he was deeply ashamed. And the lingering darkness…he must have felt like taking a long, hot shower.

  Dylan stepped forward, dragging the demon close to her, but purposely keeping it there so that they could see it, so they could feel the hatred seeping from it.

  “We will make every effort to keep ourselves concealed. We won’t fly around with our wings visible, we won’t heal people, throw fireballs, or do anything else to distinguish ourselves in public if you agree that we can remain in the cities, and that those humans loyal to us will not be unreasonably punished. And we are not, in any way, forced to identify ourselves.”

  “In exchange for what?” Josephine asked.

  “There will be a committee—one committee that has members from all of the governments from around the world. We will meet every two years. I will keep the committee updated on unseen dangers,” she jerked the lasso on the demon as she said it, “and anything else I feel they need to know. This committee will be the only humans that must, and will, know of our existence.”

  “Why?” Mellissa asked. “How is that different from how we’re doing things now?”

  “Because you will be allowing us to exist. And the humans will continue to know of our existence, even if it is only a very small group of humans. That, my friends, is one mistake your predecessors made. They stopped believing in God, in angels and gargoyles. And that led to their demise.”

  “You want to co-exist?” Josephine asked.

  “I want to live up to my purpose. And the only way I can do that is if you, if humans, allow me to protect them. We cannot be enemies.”

  “We aren’t enemies,” Mellissa scoffed. “We simply don’t want you to become our enemy.”

  “We only want to protect you,” Dylan said again.

  Josephine studied Dylan, her thoughts spinning like a tire on a car. “Okay,” she said.

  “Wait a minute,” Mellissa began, but Josephine held up a hand to silence her.

  “I am the president and I have veto power. I’m using it now. The law is amended to allow for this committee. Cities will immediately stop throwing gargoyles and angels out of their borders as long as they have not made their presence known in unusual ways. And a committee will be formed within the next two months.”

  “One other thing,” Dylan said.

  Josephine looked up with that expression Wyatt used to get on his face when he knew Dylan was about to argue with something he’d said. She looked so much like him it hurt. But it was also a comfort.

  “The head of the committee will be my daughter and her descendants.”

  Josephine’s expression softened. “That can be arranged.”

  Dylan nodded, pleased to see acceptance in her daughter’s eyes. This way, at least, she would always have a small part of Wyatt in her life.

  Chapter 30

  Stiles was walking in the woods. He knew he was dreaming, but it felt different from a normal dream. It felt real.

  And then there was a building, a warehouse he immediately recognized. This was the cannery where he’d arranged to turn Jack over to the redcoats. The scene played itself out in front of him: Jack’s anger, the Redcoats, and the moment of betrayal. He watched himself apologize over and again like watching a badly acted play.

  “Where are you?”

  Jack materialized out from behind a shelf of canned peaches.

  “Do you remember?”

  “Vividly.”

  “Me, too. I relive it nearly every moment of every day. The moment the man I trusted with my daughter stabbed me in the back.”

  “I did it to save the world.”

  “You did it for your own selfish reasons. I know. She told me.”

  “She?”

  Jack smiled. “You aren’t the only one with secrets, my friend.”

  “When did you know her? Did you know her in life?”

  Jack turned and watched as his past self was dragged out of the warehouse by the Redcoats. “I was happy when Rebecca found you. It made it easier for me to be with Patricia because I knew Rebecca wouldn’t feel left out. But then you took me away from them both.”

  “How did you know Joanna?”

  Jack turned back to him. “She came to me. She found me floating alone and frightened above Europe. When you’re Nephilim, and your soul is stuck on Earth, there’s not much to do but float around and feel the pain of being so far from heaven. She found me and told me she could change everything for me.”

  “How?”

  “She taught me how to harness this anger and pain, and how to use it against the humans. And I taught the others.”

  “What is it you want, Jack? What are you looking for?”

  Another smile. “I loved my daughter and you used her to get to me.”

  “I loved her, too. We had a good life, Jack. She had three children and a dozen grandchildren. Your blood lives on.”

  “But it’s tainted with your blood.”

  “Please, Jack…you have to let go of the hatred and the pain. You have to fight it. Rebecca is waiting for you in heaven.”

  Jack shook his head. “I can have it all right here. I can defeat you and rule all of humanity. What a world that would be.”

  There was such glee in his words that they practically dripped with it. Stiles was beginning to feel desperate. He approached Jack, wary that the same thing that had happened on the streets when he’d tried to protect Dylan from the small girl would happen again, but he had to do something.

  He grabbed Jack’s arm and there was a flash, a dark flash of anger that built inside of Stiles’ chest. But there were also images. He saw a box…a familiar box.

  “It’s still here.”

  “It’s mine,” Jack said. “And with it, I’ll rule the world.”

  ***

  Stiles woke with a suddenness…a clarity that was not normal. But he knew. He knew.

  He rushed down the hall and burst into Dylan’s room.

  “I know. I know what their purpose is.”

  She rolled over and focused on him through blurry eyes. “What are you talking about?”

  “I know what they want.”

  She sat up, dragging her fingers through her hair. “What?”

  “The object Joanna brought down from heaven. It’s still here. He’s looking for it.”

  “How does he know about it?”

  �
�Joanna found him; she spoke to him. It must have been while she was building her army to use against you. She must have told him.”

  “Then why doesn’t he know where it is?”

  “He’s insane. But now we know. Now we know how to stop them.”

  “We take their purpose.”

  ~ END of Book 2 ~

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