FALLEN (Angels and Gargoyles Book 3) (18 page)

“I was trying to find the one…you,” Lavina said.

“And you’ve found me. But that’s all over now. The only important thing now is stopping Luc.”

Lavina’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You know about Davida?”

“I know more than I ever wanted to,” Dylan acknowledged. “But it doesn’t matter now. All that matters is what Luc did and the fact that he needs to be punished.”

Lavina nodded even as Jimmy moved up behind Dylan and grabbed her shoulder a little too roughly. “What are you talking about?” he demanded. “Where is Davida?”

Grief washed over Dylan like river water over a diver. She met Lavina’s eyes and saw the same emotion there. Dylan turned to Jimmy, moving into his personal space so that they were nearly nose to nose.

“There is so much you deserve to know,” she said. “But there isn’t time right now. Just trust me when I say that this will all be over very soon.”

He touched her arm, but this time his grip was gentle, almost affectionate. “Just tell me she’s not gone.”

She shook her head slowly. “I’m sorry, Jimmy,” she whispered.

His eyes widened, but then they became hard, his jaw set and his lips pressed together. “Was it Luc?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He nodded slowly. “Where should I go?” he asked.

Dylan gestured to the lower staircase. “There will be someone waiting for you in the main lobby. Do whatever they say.” She touched his shoulder lightly. “Please, whatever they tell you.”

He studied her face for a long moment before he finally inclined his head slightly. Dylan laid a hand on his forearm and squeezed lightly before leaning forward to lay a kiss on Rachel’s temple. Then, with one last look at them, she began the quick jog up the stairs.

Dylan had been running a fever off and on since she healed Lily. There was also an injury on the back of her head that had failed to heal despite everything she had done to get it better. As she ran up the stairs, her energy suddenly began to wane, and she could feel the blood pulsing through her injury. She paused half a flight from the door that would take her into the prison section of the building, bent double to try to relieve the dizziness that threatened to overwhelm her.

She didn’t understand. She had felt perfectly healthy this morning. Throughout the first parts of their plan, she had felt well. Maybe it was the adrenaline that came with breaking into this place, that came with getting the better of the people who had once held her fate in their hands. Or maybe it had been the fact that Wyatt had been by her side all morning, never moving more than a few feet away. Until an hour ago, she and Wyatt had been inseparable and her health had been perfect. But now…

She had to pull herself together. She had to end this.

Dylan took the rest of the steps one at a time. Her head pounded, and when she reached up to lift the hair off the back of her neck, her fingers came away sticky with blood. Her wound had opened again.

Wyatt?

The door above her opened almost immediately and he was there, back in his familiar human form, his hands on her face. “You’re burning up,” he whispered.

“Are they ready?” she asked.

“Everything’s going exactly as you said it would.”

Relief took some of the steel from her spine. She moved into him, laying her head on his chest for a long second. He slid his hand over the back of her head and hissed under his breath when his hand came away as sticky as hers had. He pressed both hands over the spot, and she could feel the pleasure of his healing gift soaking into her skull. The pain began to dissipate, but the fever and the sense of weakness both lingered.

“What’s the matter?”

Wyatt’s body grew rigid under hers, and he didn’t answer the speaker immediately. He was still conflicted. Joanna was his mother, but she lied to him. She faked her death and forced his five-year-old self to grieve over her bloody, broken body for reasons he was struggling to find, let alone understand.

Joanna came down into the stairwell and touched Dylan’s shoulder lightly. Dylan could feel Joanna searching her thoughts and she let down the wall, allowed her to see everything that had happened in the past week or so. Compassion flowed from Joanna’s touch, compassion and grief and understanding. And so much more. Gratitude seemed to be the prevailing emotion as Joanna watched what Dylan had done to save Wyatt from Luc’s sword.

Then there was Jimmy.

She pulled back as Dylan turned her head, pressing her temple to Wyatt’s chest as she studied Joanna’s face. Joanna, dressed now in simple jeans and a shirt, settled on the steps just above them.

“You have to get rid of it before it eats you up,” she said.

“I know,” Dylan said. “I just don’t know how.”

“You will,” Joanna assured her. “When the time comes, you will know what to do.”

Wyatt didn’t say a thing through the exchange. He just held Dylan, his head turned from his mother as though he could pretend she wasn’t there if he didn’t look at her. Dylan pulled back a little, looking up into his face. His expression was hard until he realized she was watching. Then he turned, his eyes softening to that lovely sky blue she so loved. He kissed the tip of her nose. Pleasure burst through her with such an intensity that she shivered as it ran up and down the length of her spine.

“Is he coming?” Stiles asked from the doorway.

Dylan sighed, reluctant to move from Wyatt’s arms but drawn once more back to the real world. “Should be arriving as we speak,” she said.

“You better come address your troops, then,” Stiles said.

Dylan reached up and kissed Wyatt gently before she stepped back, grabbed his hand, and led the way upstairs.

They were lined up like the youths in the dorms, their lines perfectly straight despite the narrow space in which they had to stand. The corridor was dark, dingy. Dylan recognized it as the same corridor where Joanna had been sitting when she helped Wyatt search for his father. She knew that farther down the hall would be a door leading into the room where the human captors had been held, including many of those standing in front of her. Abused and starved, they were still willing to lay down their lives for Dylan and her fight against Luc.

It made a lump rise in her throat.

They began to cheer when she walked into the room. Stiles held up a hand, and they instantly fell silent. Then Stiles and Joanna turned to her. Wyatt gave her a little push, encouraging her to move in front of the assembled makeshift soldiers.

Dylan had no idea what to say.

Her eyes wandered over their faces. Her mental wall was still down. She could hear their thoughts and was embarrassed by some of them. Others were frightened, and that gave her some hope that they would have success. Somebody about to go into battle who was not afraid was bound to make a mistake and get themselves killed. She needed them to be frightened.

“Most of you know by now why we’re here,” she began. The room grew so quiet that she could hear her own heart pounding in her chest. “We’re here because it is time that Luc and Lily return to where they came from. We’re here because it is time that this war ends. We’re here because we want what you want…we want to destroy places like this,” she said, gesturing around herself. “We want to be able to live our lives without the fear that some vengeful angel will come and drag us away from our families, or make us work in mines for nothing more than a single hot meal a day and a home that can be ripped away the moment we can no longer work.”

A cheer went up among the humans and a few of the gargoyles. The angels lined up with the crowd looked around themselves, a peaceful look on their faces as they watched comradery rush through the crowd.

Dylan held up her hand. “I can’t guarantee we will have success today,” she said. “Luc is strong, and he often seems to be a step ahead of everyone else.” She looked around the room, looked at the variety of ages in this crowd, at the young and the very old, at the ones who remembered a world without angels and gargoyles, at those who didn’t. Her heart ached as she realized that some of these people, gargoyles, angels, and humans, some would not live to see the end of the day. “If anyone here would like to leave now, there will be no judgment.”

She stepped back into Wyatt and watched the assembled crowd. A few people, mostly the humans, looked at each other, but no one left. After a full minute, Stiles stepped forward and began assigning positions, directing each part of the group into smaller ones.

Wyatt led Dylan to one side of the corridor and touched her forehead. “You can’t fight,” he said.

She brushed his hand away. “I’m fine.”

“You are not fine, Dylan.”

“I just need to rest for a few minutes,” she said. “It’s been a long morning.”

Doubts filled every angle of his face, making her wish she could kiss each one away. She ran her hand slowly over his chest, letting her fingers rest just below the pulse jumping in the hollow below his Adam’s apple. He sighed, showing how much he knew her and how pointless it was to try to talk her out of something once she set her mind on it. He leaned in and kissed her, his lips doing more to heal the heat threatening to consume her health than the longest rest might have done.

“I love you,” he whispered in her ear, saying the words aloud for the first time. “Don’t get dead.”

“You, too.”

He studied her eyes for a long minute, sighed again, and pushed away from her to join Stiles and the makeshift soldiers.

Dylan slid down on her bottom and leaned back against the wall, closing her eyes. The exhaustion that had come over her was so complete that it only took a second before she drifted off. But it wasn’t a restful sleep. Not even a true sleep, really. Instead, the moment her consciousness moved into the background, she found herself in a room that was as familiar as it was frightening. She had been here before.

The floor was slick, like stone. But she couldn’t see the entire room. It wasn’t dark, it just didn’t seem to have any sense of perspective. She couldn’t tell where the walls were, where the room began and where it ended. But she knew this place.

“Where are you?” she called as she turned in circles. “Why have you brought me here?”

“Because you are about to attack the man I love.”

Lily stepped out of the obscurity of the room, dressed so beautifully in a long, golden dress made of some sort of material that shimmered in the light. Her blonde hair, so much like Dylan’s, was pulled back in a low ponytail, her face unmarred and shining bright with renewed health. She smiled softly, an expression that belied the anger and fear in her eyes.

“If you think you can stop me, why aren’t you here?” Dylan asked.

“What makes you think I’m not?”

Dylan stepped back as Lily approached her, but like the last time Lily had pulled her into this place, no matter how hard or how quickly Dylan tried to move, she never seemed to go anywhere. Lily grabbed her by the throat and squeezed. Dylan reached up and clawed at her wrists, panic moving through her as she began to struggle to catch a breath. All her fight was used up in just a couple of seconds as her weakened body succumbed quickly to a lack of oxygen.

“You’re not as strong as you think you are,” Lily hissed in her ear. “And you are not as smart as you think you are. Remember that on the battlefield.” She let go, shoving Dylan so hard that she began to fall backward and woke with a start on the floor of the prison corridor.

“We have to go,” she cried, her voice hoarse. “They know we’re here.”

Dylan changed into a pair of jeans and a loose-fitting t-shirt, relieved to be out of those scratchy coveralls. Once she had known nothing but the coveralls, but now they seemed so cumbersome. Joanna came into the small room where Dylan was and tossed her a soft, sleek jacket.

“To protect your arms,” she said.

“Thanks.”

Joanna leaned against the wall and watched Dylan as she finished dressing. She came to her as she stood in front of a broken mirror, trying to use a piece of cord to tie her hair out of the way. Joanna slipped the cord from her fingers, used her own fingers as a comb, and quickly tied her hair up tightly in a nice ponytail that Dylan never could have achieved.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“For what?” Dylan asked.

Joanna studied her face in the mirror, her hands on Dylan’s shoulders. “For rescuing me from these people. For bringing Stiles to me. For saving Jimmy and taking care of him.” She paused a second. “For loving my son.”

Dylan met her eyes in the mirror and found herself wondering how she would feel in that moment if she was Joanna. She couldn’t even imagine it. She pulled away from Joanna’s touch and snatched up the jacket. As she slid her arms through the sleeves, she said, “He’ll come around. Eventually.”

“I’m not sure we have the kind of time it will take him.”

Dylan heard the fatality in that statement, the same surrender she had heard in Joanna’s voice once before. For some reason, it rubbed her the wrong way.

“He just now found you and now you want to run away again?”

“I might not have a choice.”

“Everyone has a choice.”