FALLEN (Angels and Gargoyles Book 3) (10 page)

It was a choice Dylan didn’t want to make.

But she was the only one who could make it.

The sun felt good on her face.

Dylan tilted her head up, her eyes closed, and just let the sun play on her skin.

“You don’t have to hide in the shadows,” she said without opening her eyes.

“I didn’t want to bother you.”

“It’s not a bother,” she said.

Stiles’ heavy footsteps made the wooden steps creak as he joined her on the porch. She opened her eyes when he settled onto the swing beside her.

“Thank you,” she said quietly as she laid a hand on his thigh.

“I don’t know why you would thank me,” he said.

“You brought us here. You’ve watched over me and Wyatt for days. You’ve been watching the activity at Genero—”

“I let you down, Dylan.”

She shook her head slowly. “Everyone thinks they know what the right thing to do is. You thought you were doing the right thing for me, for the humans, and for this place in general.”

“I was conceited enough to think I was doing God’s bidding.”

“You led them to us,” she said.

Shame burned in the sudden color that came to his cheeks. “Davida promised they wouldn’t hurt you.”

Dylan looked down over the green grass that was growing from the edge of the front porch to the dirt road that sprung up about a couple of hundred yards in front of them. She could hear the insects playing there, though she could not see them. She tried to imagine what it would be like to sit here without a care in the world, to simply commune with the many creatures that lived in this place. But she couldn’t.

“How much did you tell her about our plan?”

She felt him shrug beside her. “Not a lot. She knew you wanted to go to Genero.”

“Then they know, too.”

“Maybe,” he agreed.

“And the rest?”

“She didn’t see the point in discussing it. She thought you would be dead by the end of the day.”

Dylan could see the logic in that. It didn’t stop the pain that sliced through her chest at the idea of Davida accepting so easily her death sentence, but it was a logical assumption.

“If I ask you something, will you answer me honestly?”

“Of course,” Stiles said immediately.

Dylan stood and walked the few steps to the front door, looking through the open living room to where Wyatt was washing up the last of their breakfast dishes in the kitchen. He turned and looked, as though he could sense her watching him. She lifted a single hand, a gesture that she hoped said so much more than it felt like it did. A soft smile touched his lips before he returned the gesture with a slight nod.

“You’ve been watching over me for a long time,” she said to Stiles even though she was still watching Wyatt.

“Since you were a toddler.”

“Why?”

Stiles hesitated in his answer. She heard the squeak of the swing, knew he was moving it on its long chains. She pulled her gaze from Wyatt and leaned against the front wall of the building, her energy still ebbing in the aftermath of her confrontation with Luc and Lily.

“Lavina had identified five girls she thought might be the one Lily was waiting for. She assigned angels to watch over them in one capacity or another. Davida was assigned to you.”

“And Ellie to the girl in E dorm and Demetria to Donna…”

“I was told by a reliable source that you were the one to watch. So I befriended Lavina and Davida, convinced them I was of the same mind as them.”

“They allowed you to watch over me.”

“They were unaware of my role as Anita.”

Dylan studied his face, watching him stare at his shoes as he gently pushed the swing with the tips of his toes. He looked like a child, a teenager, not an angel who had been on this earth for a millennium or more.

“I don’t believe that.”

He looked up. “Angels have a way of blocking themselves from one another if they want to,” he said. “You’ve already discovered that.”

“The same way they block others’ gifts.”

“Yes,” he said, his eyes falling back to his shoes. “It was exhausting, but I did it. I wanted to watch over you, to make sure you were well protected. I didn’t realize that even Davida didn’t know the extent of your powers until Lavina made the decision to take her out of Genero.”

“Why did she do that?” Dylan asked, flashing back on the moment Demetria had come for Davida, the moment she had told her that they wanted her in the Administration building. Davida had asked Demetria to watch over Dylan and Donna, as though she knew she would never see them again.

“Demetria,” he said immediately. “She felt having Davida there was too obvious, that someone might figure out what they were up to.”

“Demetria was working with Davida and Lavina at the time.”

“Demetria thought she was helping keep you from Luc and Lily. She had no idea that Lavina and Davida worked for Luc.”

“But Genero is Luc’s…”

“And it is populated with his people. Why would he need to place special guardians in the dorms to watch over special girls?”

Dylan nodded slowly. “The gargoyles thought Davida and Lavina were on their side.”

“Until you disappeared and everyone began to realize what a mistake they had made.”

“And how did they—?”

He sat back, his eyes coming back up to hers again. “Wyatt.” Stiles glanced toward the front of the house, even though there were no windows through which he could possibly see Wyatt. “When the two of you found each other, there was an instant energy.” He shook his head, looking for a way to explain it but finding it difficult. “I felt it before he happened to find you by that lake. Just the fact that he was within a few miles of you made your body snap to life, allowed your gifts to strengthen. And then when you were together…even when you didn’t touch there was something, some energy that played off of your gifts and seemed to send out this wave—”

He stopped and ran his fingers through his hair. “I told myself it was just because you were the same, you were both hybrids. But I knew better.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, pushing away from the wall to join him again on the long, low swing.

“I mean, I knew the two of you were soul mates, but I tried to keep you apart because I was afraid what would happen when Luc figured it out.”

“Wyatt and I—”

“—are two halves of the same whole.”

“So our gifts are stronger when we’re together.”

“And you can heal each other’s souls.”

“Do all angels have a soul mate?”

He nodded slowly. “Luc and Lily are soul mates. Davida’s soul mate was an angel named Nathaniel. He was one called back to Heaven at the beginning of this war.”

“And you?”

He shrugged. “My soul mate chose to marry a human man.”

An image of Joanna popped into Dylan’s mind. She didn’t want to believe it at first, but then she began to remember moments in which Stiles said and did things that should have made her wonder. Especially his response to learning Dylan has seen her in Genero.

“But Nephilim don’t have soul mates.”

She was still thinking about Joanna, so it took Dylan a moment to understand what Stiles had said. “Nephilim? Isn’t that what Luc called Wyatt?”

Stiles nodded. “Nephilim are children of angels and humans.”

“Like Joanna and Jimmy.”

Stiles’ already pale face lost a little more color. “Like Wyatt.”

“And me.”

“No,” Stiles said, shaking his head slowly as he reached for her hand, but pulled back at the last second. “In all logic, you should be Nephilim. But you’re not. Nephilim don’t have souls. They don’t have some of the gifts angels have. They are oddities, creatures that often grow too large and wreak havoc on those around them. But you…” He shook his head again. “I can’t readily explain it, and neither can anyone else who has met you.”

“When they created me in Genero—”

“The scientists manipulate the genetic codes of the children they create there, trying to extract only the genes they think will fight this illness and not others that could impede any healing abilities. That is why most of the children in Genero and the other laboratory cities look like humans or angels in their human forms.”

“But Wyatt—”

“Something changed.” Stiles reached for her hand again. This time he took it. “You changed things. Nephilim disappeared when you were born. Angels were sent home. And those who stayed, they could sense the change, but no one knew what it was.” He squeezed her hand lightly. “When Joanna became pregnant with Wyatt, she was frightened about what it would mean for him. His birth was a difficult one. We weren’t sure she would survive. He was a big baby, big and he had this ferocious appetite. It seemed like all Joanna’s fears were confirmed. And then…” He shook his head. “It all changed.”

“You were with her.”

“She was my soul mate. I couldn’t let her go through that without some support.”

“But Jimmy—”

“Thought I was a gargoyle who was there to protect her.”

Dylan stared out into the yard again. All those insects, buzzing and jumping in the long, green grass. What would happen if she walked over there and began stomping on them with her feet? What kind of chaos would erupt in their tiny world? And if one of them had to choose, which would win out? The crickets? The spiders? The beetles? And what would that world be with all but one set of insects annihilated? Would it be the same? Would it be better? Worse?

Who had the right to make that choice?

“You think humans and hybrids can live together.”

Stiles squeezed her hand. “I think they would be stronger together.”

“What if you had seen the future and it showed that humans and hybrids would simply continue fighting, just like the angels and humans are now?”

He thought about it for a long minute. “I think there would be some animosity. I think they would have to fight to find a way to coexist. But I think they would eventually learn to get along.”

“Even if the humans could not differentiate between the hybrids and the angels who are oppressing them now?”

“There is a difference,” Stiles said as he again squeezed her hand. “Even the oppressed will see it eventually.”

“Even if the hybrids cannot have children of their own?”

Stiles stiffened a little in the seat beside her. “Who told you that?”

She shook her head, pulling her eyes from the grass and turning to study his familiar gray eyes. “Do you think they could still coexist?”

“There is no way to predict what might and might not happen, Dylan. Humans have surprised us before. And the hybrids? They are still such a huge unknown that we cannot even begin to guess where they might lead humanity. For all we know, they are the answer to everything humans, angels, and gargoyles have been asking for millennia.”

“A group of Nephilim created in a lab?”

“Stranger things have happened,” he said, pressing his shoulder hard into hers for a long second.

She nodded, a smile slipping across her lips for the first time in what felt like forever when Wyatt came out the door, wiping his hands on a dish towel he had tucked into the front of his jeans.

“So, what’s the verdict?” he asked.

“About what?” Stiles asked back.

“Weren’t you two talking about the next adventure you plan to drag me into?”

Dylan let go of Stiles’ hand and stood, her head spinning a little as she steadied herself with a hand on the low railing.

“I think we need to wait until she’s fully healed before we go anywhere,” Stiles said, concern in his voice.

Dylan’s head injury had failed to heal with her own ability to heal herself. And it had not, thus far, responded to Wyatt’s healing touch. She suspected it had something to do with the light she had drawn into herself when she healed Lily. She had never felt so weak, so mortal, in all her life. But she knew time was growing short.

She began to express that very idea when Stiles said, “We were talking about my betrayal of the two of you.”

Wyatt’s eyebrows rose. “Then you admit you brought the Redcoats to us.”

Stiles stood, moving his back against the front of the building as though he suspected Wyatt might attempt to injure him again. “I did,” he said in a strong, clear voice.

“Why?” Wyatt growled, tension moving through his shoulders almost in a visible wave.

“For Joanna,” Dylan guessed.

Wyatt glanced at Dylan even as he tried to keep his eyes on Stiles. “What do you mean, Joanna?”

Stiles met Dylan’s gaze, gratefulness almost palpable there. “Davida promised Luc would release Joanna from the prison at Genero if I delivered Dylan to him. She said he simply wanted to talk to her. But he lied to all of us.”

“Davida paid the ultimate price,” Dylan said quietly.

“And Joanna is still a prisoner,” Stiles confirmed.