FREED (Angels and Gargoyles Book 2) (17 page)

She needed Davida.

Davida would tell her what to do. She would know the answer. She would be able to help Dylan find a better way to save the humans and the hybrids, a way to make it possible for them all to live happily on this earth without having to destroy anything.

It was the only answer.

She closed her eyes and focused on Davida’s face. She felt herself floating in the water, felt a breeze move lazily over her bare belly. But nothing else happened. She was not taken to Davida, didn’t fly over her as she seemed to do with Wyatt. When she thought of Davida, nothing but her face, a memory of her face, floated in Dylan’s mind.

What did it mean?

When she thought Davida was dead, she saw her in her dreams. When she thought Davida had abandoned her, she heard her voice in her mind. Davida would not abandon her.

Not by choice.

Dylan opened her eyes and stared up into the sun. She didn’t want to entertain the one thought that echoed through her mind.

What if Davida had not survived the Redcoat attack?

Tears blurred her vision even as a whisper spoke inside her mind:

We need to talk.

Stiles.

Dylan took her time crawling out of the stream. She stopped to use a small bar of soap Sam had given her, scrubbing her hair twice to make sure she had gotten on the dirt and mud out of it. She scrubbed her toes, too, even though she usually resisted that thorough of a cleaning.

Made him wait while she stewed in her irritation.

She dressed, forming the words in her mind she wanted to say to him.

Like, how did you know I had been taken?

Like, are you working with the angels?

Like, how could you allow Sam to get beaten up so badly?

But then she followed the stream to the pine tree he had showed her when he asked for her company, and all those thoughts died away as quickly as they had been born.

He was sick.

“Stiles?” She dropped to her knees beside him. He was curled into a ball at the base of a tree, his legs pulled tight against his chest as he shivered despite the heat of the evening sun. She touched his shoulder and pulled back just as quickly, the heat radiating off of him almost hotter than the intensity of a campfire.

He moaned, not even strong enough to speak with the power of his mind. All she could hear were more moans, as though it was the only sound he knew to make. She climbed over him, took his face between her hands. He opened his eyes, those beautiful gray eyes, but they were out of focus.

He was dying.

There were lesions on his arms, long, thin wounds that looked almost like knife marks. There was no blood, just a foul-smelling green fluid that was sticky to the touch. She began to touch them, but Stiles grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand away.

“Don’t,” he whispered. “You can’t—”

His words were lost as he began to cough. Blood splattered in tiny, perfect dots over his hand and along the front of his white t-shirt.

“Let me help you,” Dylan said, leaning close to him as she again reached for him. He tried to pull away again, but he was too weak to do much but roll his head back against one shoulder.

“Coming,” he muttered.

“Shh,” Dylan said, running a fingertip along the bottom curve of his lip.

He tried to pull away again, but, again, he was too weak. The movement just caused him to cough again.

She didn’t know what to do. There seemed to be so much going on inside of him. The fever, the bloody cough, the lesions. She wasn’t sure where to begin. There was blood and green ooze everywhere, on his clothes, his skin, on her hands. She had to help him.

Dylan pressed both of her hands to his chest. “No,” he cried, his voice stronger for that brief second, but was lost a second later in another cough. She closed her eyes and thought of all the people, all the wounds, she had healed since she figured out she could do it. She thought of the pain that disappeared from her body when she repaired her burned skin those first few nights out in the desert, when she fixed the damage to her shoulder after her arrest in Viti. She thought about Wyatt and the way his touch broke apart and destroyed the pain that sometimes settled in her head. And then she thought of Donna, the way her touch had healed Denise’s hand that day in D dorm, that day Dylan watched her march away and realized that Genero was not as much about love as it was power. She just hadn’t had a name for it then.

She could feel a tingle build in her hands. It was warm, like she had pressed her hands to the metal prep table as Anita was kneading a ball of bread dough with her strong, always tender hands. And then that sense of floating that had filled her as she moved into her ethereal form for the first time seemed to wash through her body, leaving her a little unsteady as it passed. When she opened her eyes, her hands were glowing a soft gold, the light moving from her body to his.

When the light dimmed and she pulled away, Stiles was just as pale as he had ever been. But his eyes were bright once more, and the lesions on his arms were gone. Not just healed, but completely gone. He sat up and ran his hands over his body as though he could not believe what was perfectly obvious.

He was healed.

“Dylan,” he whispered, his hands sliding over his arms, his chest. He said nothing more, just her name. But his eyes were wide with surprise. And wonder.

“You’re going to be okay,” she said, stroking his cheek lightly with the side of her hand. “Well enough to lie to me another day, anyway.”

He didn’t rise to the taunt. He just kept staring at her as though he could not understand what he was seeing. He finally stood up and began to pace, almost angrily. “You can’t,” he finally said.

“I can’t what?”

He just shook his head as he continued to pace, his movement kicking up dirt and debris and covering her with a fine dust. She stood, brushing at her clothing in irritation. “I just took a bath, you know,” she said.

“How did you do that?” he asked.

Dylan shrugged. “The same way I always do.”

“No, Dylan, that was not the same.” He marched to her and grabbed her arms. “You don’t even know what you’ve just done.”

Something about his expression made Dylan finally hear his words, hear the seriousness behind them.

“What are you so excited about?” she asked.

He touched her face lightly. “We are in so much trouble,” he muttered.

“What do you mean? Is trouble coming?”

That seemed to make something click in his head. “Damn,” he said under his breath. “We have to get you out of here. There’s a group of Redcoats not far from here.”

“Redcoats? What are they doing this far from Viti?”

“Lucifer,” he said. “He’s been scouring the countryside for you. He nearly got you at Joanna’s.”

“How do you—”

“We have to go, Dylan. All of us.”

He didn’t wait for her to answer. He grabbed her hand and dragged her through the trees back to where the others were sitting down to their meal. “We have to go,” he said, snatching a couple of water bottles from where they were sitting on the ground.

Wyatt dropped the piece of bone he had been holding in his hand and began kicking dirt over the fire. He didn’t stop to ask. They had been here often enough that, even though he still distrusted Stiles, he didn’t question his warnings. Maybe he trusted enough in the fact that Stiles wanted to protect Dylan. Or maybe it was something else. She wasn’t sure. She wasn’t even sure why she was following Stiles.

The moment Wyatt made a move to follow Stiles, the others fell into line. Wyatt was their leader. They didn’t doubt his choices. Bags were stuffed full of clothing, books, and blankets that had been spread around the camp. Dylan missed her own bag, the one that got left behind when Ichabod stole her away without warning, without the opportunity to consider the things she left behind. Not that she had many things that really mattered to her. Just the few things in her pocket.

The moment everyone was ready, Stiles led the way through the trees. They were in a densely wooded area, which seemed likely to prove lucky as the Redcoats gained on them. But Dylan wondered how they could keep from getting lost. The moment they stepped into the trees it felt like they had stepped into a maze that would go on forever.

They wound their way through the woods for more than an hour before they came to a small hill that took them down a steep embankment. They came to a stuttering halt, the sound of their feet sliding on the ground reverberating through the trees as pebbles and sticks fell over the embankment.

“What are even running from?” Ellie suddenly asked.

It was the first word spoken since they left camp.

“Keep your voice down,” Wyatt hissed at her.

“Why?” Ellie demanded. “How do we even know anyone is following us?”

The words hadn’t fallen completely from her lips when something slammed through the trees. Another followed quickly behind. Bobby had been standing behind Dylan, peeking over her shoulder at the embankment below. He seemed curious about what lay down there. Or maybe he had simply been trying to figure out how they could get down there without someone breaking an ankle. Not that it mattered.

He fell to his knees as that something, something Dylan never saw, slammed into his back.

Ellie screamed.

Dylan turned, wanted to touch him, to help him, but Stiles grabbed her arm and pulled her down the embankment. One moment she was staring at Bobby as he knelt behind her, the next she was sliding on her bottom down the hill. She wanted to scream too, more from frustration than fear.

She didn’t want anyone to die for her.

Wyatt and Sam were running along behind her and Stiles, Ellie between them. At the bottom of the embankment, Stiles turned to the right, running so fast Dylan struggled to keep up with him. She had little choice. He still held her wrist with an iron grip. All she could concentrate on was the next breath, the pain in her calves, the heat filling her oxygen-starved muscles. She finally couldn’t do it anymore. She had to stop. She dug her heels into the ground.

“Stiles,” she groaned.

He let go of her wrist and she immediately stopped, bending over to catch her breath. She could hear someone come up behind her, but she didn’t turn to see who it was. After a few minutes, after her heart stopped pounding and her breathing slowed, she realized she had only heard one person join them.

“Where’s Ellie?” she asked, straightening. “Sam?”

Wyatt shook his head. “They couldn’t keep up.”

Dylan glanced at Stiles just as he disappeared. Wyatt was struggling to catch his breath, too. He paced around a little, his hands on his hips. “What did he tell you?” he asked.

“The Redcoats.”

Wyatt looked back over his shoulder, as though he thought he would see Sam and Ellie coming up behind them. “Bobby will be okay,” he said, but Dylan could hear the doubt in his voice.

“What was that?”

He focused on her, but didn’t speak. She remembered the weapon Jimmy had taken out of the Redcoat’s pocket, the Redcoat that had been pinned to the ground outside their camp. And she remembered hearing the thoughts of the Redcoats, how they had been told to use that weapon on her before they even approached her.

“It was for me,” she said.

Wyatt remained quiet.

She walked around a little, tried to keep her tired muscles from knotting up on her. But it wasn’t necessary. The soreness, the pain disappeared without her even having to think about it. She was healing herself without the conscious desire now. There was a tree stump a few feet away. She settled on it and closed her eyes, lowering her mental wall. She heard voices immediately. Not Wyatt, not anyone she knew. It was the Redcoats. They were so close. It was some sort of miracle that they hadn’t heard their heavy boots crashing through the undergrowth.

“We have to go,” she said as she jumped to her feet and grabbed Wyatt’s hand.

They didn’t run this time. Dylan knew they would never make it if they ran. She remembered what Joanna had told her, remembered her beautiful wings as they unfurled from her shoulder blades. Dylan shoved Wyatt in front of her and focused on her need to get them out of there. It was much easier than it had been to change into her ethereal form the first time. Everything was becoming so much easier.

That fact frightened her.

She wasn’t even sure it would work. But the moment her wings unfurled from her back, she was able to wrap her arms around Wyatt’s chest and lift them both off the ground. They soared like a bird, the same way she felt she often did when she visited Wyatt while they were apart. Gliding among the clouds as though that was where they belonged.

They had been on a little hill, their camp near the top. As Dylan glided, she found a road that led out the woods and down into a huge ruin. She had never seen anything quite like it. It seemed to spread out for miles, buildings and weed-choked roads, rubble that seemed to be stacked in purposeful piles dotting one side of a large road. There were so many buildings, some clearly damaged, others still tall and majestic. And they were some of the tallest buildings she had ever seen. They reached into the sky for miles, it seemed. Again, something she had never seen before.