FREED (Angels and Gargoyles Book 2) (18 page)

Dylan floated over one of these tall buildings and gently set Wyatt down.

“I’m going to go find the others,” she said.

“No.” He grabbed her arm, tried to hold her still. “You are the one they are after. Let Stiles protect the others.”

“Stiles might need help. Besides, how will they know where we are if I don’t go?”

Wyatt studied her face for a long minute, clearly conflicted. She moved close to him, her wings gone now. All she was was the same girl he had met weeks ago beside that lake. She touched him, caressed his cheek lightly.

“You don’t have to protect me,” she said. “Not anymore.”

“You don’t have to protect me, either.”

She smiled softly. “I know,” she agreed.

She leaned forward and kissed him gently, letting her lips linger just long enough to feel him draw in a deep, if a little shaky, breath. It was so easy to slip into her ethereal form as she stood close to him, as she touched him and felt something inside of him reach out and touch her, touch her soul.

And then she shot up into the sky like a shooting star.

Dylan found Stiles, Sam, and Ellie more than a mile back from where she and Wyatt stopped. Redcoats were everywhere, searching methodically through the woods. They were beating the underbrush with sticks, kicking at bushes with their feet. It was if they thought Dylan was naïve enough to think they wouldn’t be able to find her if she hid under a pile of twigs.

It almost offended her to be so underestimated.

She couldn’t find Sam and Ellie at first. The Redcoats were so spread out she was afraid they had already found her friends. But then she spotted them huddled halfway down another embankment, this one steeper than the first. There was a tiny recess in the wall of this embankment, nothing more than a several foot wide fissure, but big enough for the two of them to disappear inside. Ellie was shivering, tears streaming down her cheeks. It crossed Dylan’s mind that she might give away their position if she began to sob, but she trusted that Stiles had things under control. He was perched a few feet above them on a little rock ledge. He would protect them if trouble came.

She backtracked a little, flying low over the Redcoats simply because she couldn’t resist the temptation. Most of them didn’t even notice, but a few swatted at their heads as though at an annoying gnat. A few looked up, as though attempting to spot her. She moved higher into the air, deciding that it wasn’t worth the risk. She had no idea what these creatures were. She remembered the one Sam killed the day they were arrested. He had become animated again even though Sam cut his throat clean through.

These weren’t human.

There were no Redcoats at the top of the embankment where Bobby was injured. Dylan glided over the area, spotting him almost immediately. He was laying on his back now, his face pale. That smile that always seemed to be on his lips was no longer there. His face was stuck, as though frozen in place, a grimace of pain twisting his features. Carver sat beside him, holding his hand and whispering words of encouragement to him.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Carver whispered to Bobby. “Should have let them take her.”

Bobby didn’t respond, didn’t appear capable of it. But Dylan could hear his thoughts. Even if she wished she couldn’t.

Lily needs her whole.

Carver nodded, as though Bobby had spoken aloud. “I know,” he said. “But this wasn’t part of the deal.”

Dylan fell to the ground and slipped effortlessly into her human form as she walked up behind the two boys. “What is it?” she asked. “Some sort of drug?”

Carver turned. “How did you get back here?”

“Or is it some sort of angel thing?”

Carver’s eyes narrowed a little. He stood and moved between Dylan and Bobby as though he believed she meant Bobby harm. And maybe he did.

Maybe he was right.

“Who are you?” she demanded. “Why are you here with us?”

“Wyatt said Davida wanted us to come along.”

“Why?”

Carver shrugged. “Davida must have had her reasons.”

Dylan nodded slowly. Her eyes moved to Bobby. He was watching her, but he didn’t seem able to move his head, so he was watching from the corner of his eye. It was a little creepy the way his face was frozen in that grimace, but his eyes could move around. She tried to imagine what that would feel like and realized she had felt it once. The day she was driven out of Genero.

But she had been able to break the effects.

“Why didn’t the Redcoats take you away?” Dylan asked. “They were right behind us.”

Carver shrugged. “They didn’t want us.”

True. But wouldn’t they have wanted to take anyone who might be a bargaining chip with Dylan? How did they know that one of these boys wasn’t someone special to her, someone she wouldn’t want to turn herself in to save? They had taken Sam when they caught her outside of Viti. Would have taken Ellie, too, if she hadn’t gotten away. But not them.

And they knew Lilith wanted her whole.

“You work with them.”

Carver visibly stiffened. The tension in his spine made him stand taller, made him look less like a child and more like the man he was becoming. He slid his hand around his waist, carefully keeping his hand steady so that she was less likely to notice. But she noticed.

“And to think I liked you,” she muttered as she slipped into her ethereal form and disappeared.

Dylan watched for a while as the Redcoats continued to scour the area. They seemed to be on their own. There was no indication that Luc was here, too. But they were pretty determined to find her. They searched long past sundown, thrashing so loud among the bushes and underbrush that they frightened most of the wildlife away from the area. It made it a little more difficult for Sam to find a bird when it was finally safe for him and Ellie to make their way out of their little fissure.

She was afraid of frightening them. Dylan decided it was best not to reveal her abilities to Sam and Ellie. But she watched over them. And she was pretty sure Stiles had seen her. Not positive, since he never really looked right at her, but she saw his eyes widen once when she swooped down in front of him as the three of them made their way into the ruins.

It was her turn to be the guide. She touched Stiles’ shoulder a few times, guiding him to the building where she had left Wyatt the same way he had guided her to the lake that saved her life. It gave her a little satisfaction to turn the tables. When they were safely on their way, she went back to Wyatt. He had made his way into the building and was repairing a broken door outside some small, square room where he had decided they would best make their camp for the night.

The expression in his eyes was guarded when she appeared in front of him.

“They’re on their way here,” she said.

“You didn’t—”

“No.” She smiled a little too brightly, an image of Ellie’s face if she had appeared in front of her in any of her angel forms flying through her mind. “I didn’t think it was a good idea to let them know about that.”

Wyatt nodded, turning his attention back to the door. “Probably not,” he agreed.

“If you can’t handle it,” Dylan said, moving deeper into the room and grabbing a bottle of water from where Wyatt had left it sticking out of the top of his bag, “then I doubt either of them would be okay with it.”

“I didn’t say I couldn’t handle it.”

“But it freaked you out.”

“Wouldn’t it you?”

“It did, actually,” she said after taking a long drink of water. “It still does, a little.”

“How long have you known you can do that?”

Dylan thought about Joanna, about her touch on her head as the fire burned around her. “Not long,” she said.

Wyatt was watching her, a look of concentration on his face. The color suddenly drained from his cheeks, his eyes widening. It was in that moment that Dylan realized her mistake. She took a step toward him, but he backed up, his hands stretched out in front of him.

“What was that?” he asked.

“Wyatt—”

“What did I just see?”

“I wanted to tell you,” she said, aware of how insincere her words sounded as she spoke them. “I’m sorry.”

“Was that…” He stopped himself, as though afraid to give voice to what he had begun to say.

Dylan went to him. He didn’t move, didn’t even seem to notice her. She touched his forehead lightly, stroked him there. And then she closed her eyes and concentrated on all her memories of that day, of her talk with Joanna. She wanted him to see it as it unfolded, wanted him to see the emotion that overwhelmed his mother several times as they talked about him. It never occurred to her what else she was offering him. She didn’t have enough experience with her own powers to understand that he was feeling everything she felt that day, that he was not only seeing his mother’s confession, but seeing Dylan’s response to it. That he was the novice angel now. He was seeing what she had to offer because he had the same gifts that she had.

They were the same.

The idea and the reality were so different than she had expected.

When she dropped her hand, he closed his eyes and took several long, deep breaths. And then he walked away.

They started walking the next morning. Sam and Ellie. Dylan and Stiles. And Wyatt.

The old gang was all back together again.

No one asked about Bobby and Carver. They all assumed they had been caught by the Redcoats. Dylan didn’t see the need to change that opinion.

They walked west because it seemed to be their best shot of running into what was left of the resistance. Ellie continued to argue, insisting that they needed to continue east because that was what Davida had told them to do. But when Stiles suggested she could head east alone, she stopped arguing. In fact, she stopped talking altogether.

Wyatt kept to himself. He didn’t want to talk to anyone, not just Dylan. He walked far ahead of them, as alone as he could get without losing them. And when they stopped at night he made sure his pallet was on the opposite side of the fire from everyone else’s.

When they were two days from the ruin, they stopped beside another small ruin. This one had small buildings that were built close together in a long row. Dylan stood alone behind the buildings as the others made camp, her thoughts drifting over anything and everything. She didn’t really want to think about the things that had been playing at the corners of her mind since the Redcoats had run them off. And she didn’t want to know that the answers were just minutes away, if she would only use the gifts science, or God, had given to her.

“Wyatt knows about Joanna.”

Dylan turned slightly. “Someone’s been reading minds.”

“It’s a national pastime around here,” Stiles said.

“What’s a national pastime?”

“Never mind,” he said. He pushed away from the back wall of one of the buildings, where he had been standing. She vaguely wondered how long he had been there, but then decided it didn’t really matter. Long enough to understand she needed to talk. She never would have sought him out, but she was glad he was there, just the same.

He moved up beside her and picked a small section of bark off one of the trees that grew so close to the buildings that they offered a generous amount of shade during the hot months.

“Isn’t there some rule against damaging nature?” she asked.

“For gargoyles? Or in general?”

Dylan shrugged. “Either.”

“Gargoyles are here to protect humans. Trees aren’t human.”

He continued to pick at the tree, peeling off long strips of the dark brown bark as though he was removing something that offended him. By the time she touched the back of his hand and stilled its movements, he had exposed a foot-long section of raw wood.

“Talk to me about Joanna,” she said.

He leaned into the tree and looked down at her. “Is that really what you want to talk about?”

“No, but it seems the most benign thing at the moment.”

He stared into the line of trees for a long minute. Then he sighed. “She really was trying to protect them,” he said. “She thought that Luc and Lily were targeting Jimmy because of her. That they would eventually hurt him if she didn’t leave.”

“But he wouldn’t let her.”

“He had no clue, Dylan.” Stiles looked down at her, his eyes softening a little as he studied her face. “He thought he was in love with a human woman, someone he could trust. He had no clue what she really was. That was part of the problem.”

“Luc and Lily threatened to tell him.”

“Yes.” Stiles gestured back toward the camp. “You’ve heard his thoughts, right?”

“Seen them, mostly.”

“But you can see what kind of a relationship he has with his father. You know how intimidated by him he is.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s why he’s struggling with it. It’s not just that his mother is alive, but that she lied to them all those years ago. That she is not what he thought she was.”