FALLEN (Angels and Gargoyles Book 3) (21 page)

It was then that Stiles’ voice sounded in her head.

Now.

She grabbed Wyatt’s hand, and they both slipped into their ethereal forms and burst into the sky, their colors mixing as they spun through the air among the other angels. It was a sight. Dylan could hear the awe and amazement that surged through the collective minds of the angels around them. They had never seen anything like it.

Dylan almost wished she could sit back and watch it herself. But there was work to do.

They paused over the battle and watched as the gargoyles inflicted more and more damage on Luc’s invincible army. Her eyes were drawn to the center of the dwindling columns. Lily, so beautiful now that she had regained her strength, stood with hands on hips, watching Dylan and Wyatt fly overhead. And then she burst into golden light.

Dylan pulled back, Wyatt moving along beside her, touching only at what would have been their hands had they been in their human form. They maneuvered through the other angels, forcing Lily to follow.

You really believe everything they say about you, don’t you? That you’re the second coming.

Why shouldn’t I?

There never was a first coming, Dylan. How could you be the second?

Dylan dipped low in the sky, leading Lily toward the still falling Administration building. Again she could hear the thoughts of those caught in the rubble. It distracted her for an instant, made her falter in her flight. But Wyatt pulled her back, leading her up high against the true center of the dome.

They waited. Lily moved in slowly shrinking circles, moving closer to them, but not close enough to allow them to pull any tricks she could not see coming.

What is your plan?

Dylan moved into Wyatt, meshing their bodies in a way that made the colors of their auras blend perfectly together, becoming a color man had yet to name. Dylan felt power rush through her, felt as though she could do anything she wanted. If she had eyes, she could have closed them, would have pictured in her mind exactly what she wanted to happen. But she didn’t have eyes. Her imagination simply overlaid what her conscious mind could not shut out: spirits, some beautiful and generous, others dark and broken, lifting out of human forms and drifting to the places where they belonged.

I’m sending you home.

Bodies fell where they stood. Angels dropped to the ground and morphed into human forms only to have those bodies fall, too. One right after the other, like a game Davida had once taught Dylan to play. Dominoes. As their spirits began to drift upward, the souls brushed against Dylan and Wyatt, thanking them for what they had done. When Stiles touched them, the love he infused into their souls was almost more than Dylan could take into her overflowing heart. His thoughts flowed freely, his gratitude for Dylan, his unwavering belief in her. She gave back as much as she could, wishing him luck on his next journey and hoping that she would, one day, see him again.

Of course,
he whispered into her mind.

And then he was gone.

All of them. The Redcoats. Lavina. The others who had helped Luc and Lily. And all the others who had come to help Dylan, Stiles, and Wyatt without question.

All except Luc and Lily.

“What have you done?” Luc demanded as he found himself standing in the middle of a field covered in burning clothing, his legion gone.

How did you do that?

Lily continued to circle below Dylan and Wyatt. She watched as they separated, floating down to the ground to stand before their army, humans once more.

“Now it’s a fair fight,” Dylan said.

Luc’s face was red, the most color Dylan imagined it had had on it in a millennium. She stepped forward toward him even as Wyatt reached for her, trying to keep her at his side. But she was no longer afraid, no longer needed to hide behind anything.

“It’s time for you to go home,” she said.

Luc tossed his head back and laughed as Lily came to stand beside him, returning to her human form as well. “Do you really think you’re strong enough to do that to me?” Luc asked.

“I think there are a lot of things about me you don’t understand. Or don’t want to understand.”

“You are not all you think you are,” Luc said.

“Probably not,” Dylan agreed. “But I am more than you.”

Luc took a step forward, stomping his foot on the ground like an angry child. “I am not afraid of you.”

“Good,” she said, stepping forward herself. “I don’t want fear. I want peace for these people.”

“The humans? Or the hybrids?”

Dylan glanced behind her, saw the gargoyles forming a line behind Wyatt as though preparing for more battle. It was time for a decision. She knew it. They knew it. And they were waiting.

It might possibly be her blood that stained those axes next.

“It’s no longer your place to worry about such things,” she said, turning back to Luc. “You had your chance to do the right thing and you allowed your own selfishness to destroy it all. Now it’s time for you to leave.”

“You can’t make the decision, can you?” He laughed again, more humor than derision in it this time. “You can’t sacrifice yourself or your boyfriend for those humans, can you?”

“Just like you couldn’t sacrifice your soul mate.”

Lily stepped forward, her sword in her hand. The gargoyles made a racket as they also moved forward, silenced only when Dylan held up a hand.

“You think you have all this power now,” Lily said. “You think that because you can do things a normal angel cannot, you can tell us what to do.”

“I’m sure you were a good woman once,” Dylan said, touching the end of Lily’s sword as though it were as harmless as a piece of cloth. “But defying God, trying to create free will where it did not exist, has driven you insane.”

Lily shook her head. “Don’t play with me, child.”

“Like this sword, for instance,” Dylan said. “I bet you think it’s a real sword. A true angel’s sword. The only weapon in existence that can bring about the death of an angel.”

“Of course it is,” Lily said, moving the sword in a swift arc over her head. But when she brought it back down, the tip once again aimed at Dylan’s chest, it was no longer a sword but a harmless piece of river debris, a thin, brittle limb from a tree. Dylan moved forward so that the stick pressed into her chest, and it shattered, breaking into half a dozen pieces as it fell to the ground.

“Your time is done,” Dylan repeated. “Go home.”

She turned and began to walk back toward Wyatt and the others. A swish of air against her back told her one of them had followed. A sword, so much like the one Lily had held that it was almost impossible to tell the difference, appeared in Dylan’s hand. She spun and thrust all in one motion. Wyatt had tried to teach her to fight with a knife, had tried to convince her that she needed to know how to defend herself. But she had failed miserably at those lessons. Now, however, the sword seemed like an extension of her hand, as though it had always been there and she had always known how to maneuver it.

But no one could teach you what it was like to feel heated blood gush over your hand. Or to watch shock and pain and betrayal flood the eyes of the woman who was more than likely your biological mother.

Luc charged without a sound the moment Lily fell to the ground. Dylan instinctively raised the sword over her head, ready to strike a second time. But he didn’t even look at her. He dropped to his knees before his soul mate, took her into his arms, and disappeared.

The world was no longer what it had been just a few days ago. Even the birds, the wildlife, seemed to sense the difference. Dylan watched an eagle fly high in the sky, crossing in front of the sun again and again as it soared, searching the ground for its next meal. The heat of the sun was no longer the oppressive weight it had been the first time she stepped outside of her domed city. In fact, she welcomed it on her face, welcomed the feel of the air as it caressed her skin, the roughness of the ground under her outstretched body, the tickle of the weeds and the tiny insects as they moved against her bare back.

“Dad says he’d like to go to the ruins of his old city and try to begin over there.”

“What do you want to do?” Dylan asked, rolling toward Wyatt to press her cheek against his bare chest.

“I wouldn’t mind going with him. After you’ve finished whatever you have left to do here.”

“Are you asking me to go with you?”

“Of course,” he said, sitting up a little to drop a kiss on the top of her head. “Where you go, I go, remember?”

“Yeah.”

She wasn’t sure how it had happened, but humans who had been hiding in ruins and wherever they could find shelter in the area had begun to come out, seeking others like themselves. It was as if they knew it was over, knew, like the wildlife, that something had changed that was deep enough that it resonated through some forgotten part of the human consciousness. Genero was now overflowing with families of all kinds, some already willing to expand and take on some of the children of Genero whose guardians had disappeared on the day of the battle.

The Genero Battle, they were calling it now.

Dylan had never gotten the chance to ask Stiles that final question. But she thought she had known the answer all along, anyway.

Why her? Why had he been so sure she was the one? And why did he kiss her?

The first was simple. He was an angel. He could sense the gifts inside of her, and he had used…whatever it was Luc had used to block her powers so that the other angels in Genero would not figure it out. He had wanted her to make the right choices, not be manipulated by those loyal to Luc and Lily. But he had underestimated Davida and Lavina, she thought. She believed in her heart that Davida would have protected her if she had known earlier. If her hands hadn’t been tied by her relationship with Jimmy.

Davida loved Jimmy. But she was aware of his fear of angels. If he had learned the truth about her…and that gave Luc power over her. Without that, Davida would not have done what she did.

Dylan believed that with all her heart.

The last question Dylan had wanted to ask Stiles was more complicated. And one she was kind of glad she hadn’t received an answer to.

It was all over now. She and Wyatt had a future to look forward to. She was looking forward to being just a seventeen-year-old girl.

But there was one question she still had not answered.

Could the humans and the hybrids coexist without bringing the world back to the brink of war? She still wasn’t sure.

But Davida had an answer for that, too.

The day after the battle, Dylan was walking alone on the outer rim of the dome. Being in Genero, sleeping in the dorm buildings again, had caused Davida to rest heavily on her mind. For that reason, she had been holding the compass Davida had given her so long ago, the one she had carried with her throughout her adventures outside of the city. It appeared to be broken, since it no longer pointed toward true north. But as she walked, Dylan realized it did seem to be pointing to one particular place. So she followed it.

It pointed toward D dorm, but when she walked up the steps, the compass did a funny thing. It seemed to tug downward, as though there was some force under the building attracting it. Dylan backtracked and slipped under the building, walking amongst the pillars, the pipes, and the debris that filled the space underneath. Something seemed to reach out and grab the compass. A long, thin, black tile stuck to the bottom of the building. Dylan tried to pry it free, but it was stuck fast. But the tile had an edge that was torn away from the concrete of the dorm’s floor.

It took her a while, more than an hour, but she finally freed the tile from the floor. Underneath was a rounded hole, clearly cut into the concrete by someone intentionally. Inside there were books, half a dozen or more, each from the previous society. History books. Religious books. Books of tolerance, of tragedy, of atrocities overcome with compassion. A lesson in love that even the councilwomen of Genero had never thought to teach.

Inside the cover of one book, Dylan recognized Davida’s handwriting written in fading ink.

Humanity is a resilient breed. But sometimes they need to remember what it is like to care about their neighbors, to have tolerance for those who are different, to love those who have hurt them. They need a strong leader, someone who can remind them of these things. Sometimes it is not enough to simply rid the world of evil. Sometimes it is necessary to hold the hands of those who were hurt and remind them that the nightmare, no matter how horrible it was, is over.

It wasn’t exactly an answer. But it was a beginning.

Now all Dylan had to do was figure out how five-year-old Rachel had arrived in their time, thirty years after her death.

~~ END ~~