FREED (Angels and Gargoyles Book 2) (14 page)

“I have friends who are out there somewhere, wondering where I am.”

Joanna sat back down and took Dylan’s hands between her own. “Your friends have watched over themselves for this long. Surely they can survive a while longer.”

“That’s not the point.”

“You are something unique, Dylan,” Joanna said, studying her face with such an earnest expression that Dylan wanted to trust her. She wanted to believe that Joanna was there to help her. But she was so confused about the people she should have been able to trust and the people she thought she could, but now suspected she couldn’t. She wondered if she could really trust anyone.

Even an angel.

“People keep telling me what I can and cannot do,” Dylan said.  “They all have their own agendas. I’m not even sure what it is I want to do, let alone what I should do.”

“It must be confusing,” Joanna agreed.

“You still haven’t really explained what happened the day Wyatt saw you die.”

Joanna let go of her hands and sat back on the couch. She stared at her own hands, as though the memory played out there. Dylan almost expected her to send the memory to her, to show her how that day went down. But she didn’t. And when Dylan tried to find it on her own, she couldn’t see anything.

Finally, Joanna let loose a long, slow sigh. “It was supposed to be Jimmy,” she said.

Only then did she let Dylan in.

Twelve years ago, the cities weren’t just ruins. Not yet. People still lived in them, though they had to stay inside as much as possible to keep the angels from finding them. They had learned how to shutter their minds, how to camouflage their hiding places so that the angels could not use their supernatural abilities to find them. Some of the humans were lucky enough to have gargoyles on their side, gargoyles who used a sort of cloaking capability to hide them. That was how so many humans had managed to stay alive even after Luc and Lily ravaged whole communities with their fireballs and their control over the last of the human military.

It was in one of these cities where Jimmy and his family lived. There was a whole group of people with them, people who looked to Jimmy and Joanna as leaders. They taught them how to stay safe, how to avoid the angels and how to call for help when they found themselves in a difficult situation. Taught them how to scavenge food. How to find water, cloth, material to make tools. They were helping people live.

It was late afternoon. Joanna and Jimmy had just come back from a field, where their community was cultivating vegetables. It was several miles from the city, far enough that they hoped the angels would assume it was just seedlings sprouting from seeds blown across the countryside from distant agricultural areas. They were both tired from the long walk, the day spent in the sun. But happy in each other’s company.

“I forgot I promised to stop by Sheila’s and check on her baby boy,” Joanna said as they passed a doorway that seemed to lead into the ground. “I should go.”

Jimmy grabbed her hand as she turned toward the doorway. “Don’t be gone long,” he said, kissing her gently. It was a tender kiss, one that reminded Dylan of Sam’s soft whisper of a kiss just a few nights before. “If you are, I’ll have to come looking for you,” he told her as he reluctantly let go of her hand and watched her walk away.

Joanna looked back once, but not the second and third time she had wanted to. She was afraid he would see the grief on her face, that it would tip him off to what she was planning. Instead, she focused on the ground in front of her, walking carefully down the stone steps into a dark world that seemed so alien to Dylan, even as she watched with the sense of familiarity that came with Joanna’s memory.

A gargoyle was waiting for her in the darkness. She didn’t even hesitate as she walked toward him.

“Be quick,” she said. “I don’t want them to find you here.”

“No problem,” he said in the rough, rusty voice that Dylan was beginning to associate with gargoyles.

And then he sliced her throat open with his axe before catching her and twisting her head, breaking her neck with a quick snap.

Joanna fell to the ground, her body as lifeless as Dylan had seen it in Wyatt’s memories. It wasn’t even a full minute later when the little boy came running into the tunnel. The gargoyle was still there, against the wall, hidden only by the darkness of the tunnel. He watched as seven-year-old Wyatt fell to his knees and attempted to cradle his mother’s head in his arms. A woman, a stranger to Dylan but someone the memory recognized as Susan, came next, calling to Wyatt. Others came when Susan screamed. None of them thought to move the child away. There was some debate as to whether Jimmy should be brought to the tunnel or if her body should be moved before he saw it.

The debate was without purpose, however. Jimmy arrived moments after his son.

It had hurt Dylan to see Wyatt’s memory of his mother’s death. His emotions had been raw and intense, even all these years later.

But to see Jimmy grieve...

Joanna broke off the memory as if she couldn’t handle seeing that part, either.

“I had a kid go to our dwelling and tell him I needed him the moment Jimmy arrived. I thought he would be the first to find me.” She shook her head a little, as though trying to dislodge the memory. “Johnny was with a friend who was supposed to be in the library that day. But her assignment changed while we were gone. I didn’t know…”

Joanna brushed tears from her cheeks. “I didn’t want it to go that way.”

“You couldn’t have thought that either of them would handle your death well.”

She shook her head. “I was trying to protect them.”

“You left your son with hurt and anger that have defined the way he looks at the world.”

Joanna’s tear-filled eyes focused on Dylan. “You saw his memory,” she said with some surprise.

Again, it wasn’t a question. Joanna stared at Dylan, but she got the feeling it wasn’t really Dylan she was seeing. Joanna reached over and touched her face lightly, a stroke, a passing touch. In that instant, Joanna somehow pulled up that vision and saw the moment from Wyatt’s point of view. Her beautiful face twisted into something dark as she turned from Dylan.

“Were you aware of him grieving you?” Dylan asked.

Joanna didn’t answer.

“You must have been,” Dylan said, as though she had answered. “You have it in your memories, so you must have been aware of everything. But I don’t understand. How could you survive what that gargoyle did to you?”

Joanna leaned forward, burying her face in her hands for a long second. She shuddered, her entire body vibrating with emotion. Dylan nearly reached over and touched her shoulder, almost offered some sort of consolation. But then Joanna sat up, and her face was as serene as if they had been talking about the weather.

“Angels can only be killed by a weapon wielded by another angel. The gargoyle can leave an angel wounded, but not dead, no matter what they do.”

“But your neck broke.”

“My neck was repaired the moment Jimmy lifted me up and returned it to the proper position. And the axe wound began to knit itself about the same time.”

“But he couldn’t tell you were still alive?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Yeah.” Dylan ran her hands over her thighs. “Everything about this world seems to be. It almost makes me miss Genero.”

Joanna surprised Dylan by laughing. “I can understand that.”

Dylan turned on the couch, resting her back against the armrest and curling her feet underneath her. “Can I ask you something?”

Joanna waved her hand. “You can ask me anything.”

“What exactly does Lily want to do with me?”

“She wants to harvest you for parts.” Joanna lifted a sleeve of her blouse, revealing long, thin scars along her forearm. “The disease affects the skin, the joints, and some of the organs. I began showing symptoms about a year ago.”

Dylan touched her scars, unsure if that had been her intention in showing them to her, but curious about them. As she ran her finger along the raised edge of one, the edge began to settle down. To disappear. Dylan quickly pulled her finger away before Joanna noticed.

Had she really healed something Joanna’s body couldn’t heal on its own?

“What did you do about it?” Dylan asked in an attempt to keep Joanna distracted. Or maybe it was to distract herself.

“There was a girl, like you. She donated blood for our scientists to make a sort of vaccine with.” Joanna lifted her sleeve a little more, showing Dylan a long, thin mark on the inside of her elbow. “It was experimental, but it kept the illness from progressing much further.”

“You’re going to be okay?”

Joanna shrugged. “I guess we’ll see.”

“But it’s gone further than that with Lily.”

“Yes.” Joanna’s eyes narrowed slightly each time Dylan said Lily’s name. She pushed her hair out of her face, her eyes moving around the room as she considered what she was going to say. “She will have to return to Heaven soon.”

“If she goes to heaven—”

“The illness can be eradicated.”

Dylan frowned. “Could she return?”

Joanna shook her head. “Unlikely. Once she goes back, I’m sure the Father will have a few words for her.”

Dylan ran the fingers of both hands through the tangles of her pale hair. “But if she were to get me back somehow, she would survive?”

“Her scientists think they have a way to use you to help her eradicate the illness here, on earth.”

“How?”

Joanna looked away, but familiar images of torture devices flew through Dylan’s mind. She remembered seeing the same things in the thoughts of some of the Redcoats who had attacked the resistance camp. She shuddered, the realization of what Lily really wanted rushing through her like water rushing over a waterfall.

“I wouldn’t survive.”

“No,” Joanna agreed.

“But she called me her child. She said—”

Dylan couldn’t even finish her thought. Fear had taken up residence in her belly, running along her nerves like Wyatt’s fingers had once done along her spine. She stood and began to pace, her thoughts once again unsteady and unreadable. She had assumed Lily’s plans for her were not good. But this still had the power to unnerve her.

“What do I do now?” she wondered aloud.

“You let us teach you so that you have the knowledge you need to make the right choices.”

“Teach me what?”

Joanna’s smile touched her eyes this time. It made them dance, reminding her a little of Wyatt in the few lighthearted moments they had shared. “To be an angel,” she said.

Dylan shook her head. “I’m not an angel. I’m a freak of nature. An abomination.”

“No.” Joanna came to her, cradled her face in her hands the way Davida often did when she knew Dylan was particularly upset. “You are a child of God.”

“I was created in a lab.”

“But you were created.” Joanna stroked her cheek lightly. “Only God has the power to create. And he does not make abominations.”

Tears burned in the back of Dylan’s throat. “I don’t understand,” she whispered. “All of this is too much. How could God have created me? Why?  So that I could be caught in this tug of war?”

“So that you could make the choice that will end this war.”

“And if I make the wrong choice?”

Joanna stroked Dylan’s cheek again, the amusement gone from her eyes. She looked like a guardian scolding an adolescent for forgetting her lessons or refusing to attend to her chores.

“Make sure you don’t,” she said.

It wasn’t what Dylan had wanted to hear.

And then the building exploded into flames.

Joanna grabbed Dylan’s hand and ran for the back of the house. Dylan nearly tripped trying to keep up with her. Joanna burst into a bedroom and dove for the bed. At first Dylan thought she might be trying to hide underneath, but realized that she was looking for something. A box, she discovered as Joanna backed up and jumped to her feet.

“You have to transition into your ethereal form,” she said.

Dylan just shook her head. She had no idea what Joanna was talking about.

“Close your eyes,” Joanna said, moving her own hand over Dylan’s eyelids, encouraging them to lower. Images again exploded in her mind, images of colorful creatures moving freely through the air.

“Concentrate,” Joanna whispered. “You are an angel. Imagine yourself floating free of your human form.”

“I can’t,” Dylan said, pulling back.

Joanna dropped the box before she grabbed Dylan’s head between both her hands and squeezed slightly. “Listen to me,” she hissed. “You have to do this. Lucifer is coming.”

Dylan stared at Joanna. “How do you know?”

“I know.” She surprised Dylan by kissing her forehead lightly. “Think of John—Wyatt. Think of the last time you were together. Think of happiness.”

Dylan closed her eyes again. She could feel the pressure of Joanna’s hands on her head, but it was not an unpleasant pressure. Her thoughts were scattered. At first, all she could think about was the sound of flames cracking and popping in the next room, of the heat of it beginning to come toward her. Then she thought of Luc and Lily, of the things they had done and what they wanted to do. But as she stood there, as Joanna continued to hold her head between her hands, Dylan’s thoughts began to settle down.