FALLEN (Angels and Gargoyles Book 3) (19 page)

“Not angels. You know that.”

Dylan looked at her for a long second. “Then you had better make things right with your son before you leave.”

Joanna looked down at the floor, defeat in the slump of her shoulders. “I made so many mistakes…”

“You did it for the humans. And to protect him. He knows that.”

“Is that why?” she asked.

Dylan glanced toward the door, wondering if Stiles and Wyatt had begun to lead the others downstairs yet. She wondered if she could just walk away, leave Joanna to her own regrets. But she knew she couldn’t. Slowly, her feet dragging just a little, she moved back to Joanna’s side.

“This war has made everyone it has touched do things they are not proud of.”

“Did they all ask their soul mate to pretend to be a gargoyle and fake their death?”

“Stiles?” Dylan asked, her mind immediately searching the memory Joanna had shared with her, her memory of the gargoyle standing in the shadows as Wyatt grieved over his presumably dead mother. There was a significant difference between that gargoyle and the one Stiles had pretended to be when they first met. And she couldn’t see the eyes. That was the one thing Stiles could not change when he morphed from one form to another. Those beautiful, mournful eyes.

“Yes,” she whispered as tears began to flood her eyes. “I thought I was protecting them. But what if I was just trying to hurt them before they could hurt me? I was so afraid Jimmy would find out who, what I really was. Leaving seemed to be the only way to escape that inevitability.”

“Joanna—”

“I’ve loved two men in my life. And I’ve destroyed them both with my selfishness.”

“Three,” Dylan said, touching her face lightly. “And now all three are counting on you to fight beside them, to stop Luc and Lily from destroying everything that ever mattered.”

Joanna nodded. “I know,” she whispered. She reached up and rubbed at her eyes, wiping away her tears. “This is why I’m here, why I’ve been here for so long.”

“And it’s why we can’t give up.”

Joanna nodded again. “Do you think—” she began to say, but then stopped as the door opened and Stiles stuck his head inside.

“We’re headed down,” he said, his eyes moving from Joanna to Dylan, concern making him step into the room and shut the door behind him. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” Dylan said, taking Joanna’s hand firmly in her own. “Right?”

“Right,” Joanna said, forcing a smile.

“This is it,” Stiles said, walking toward them. “Today decides the fate of a world.”

“So dramatic,” Wyatt said as he, too, came into the room. He joined their little circle, breaking the link between Dylan and Joanna as he took Dylan’s hand in his own. He hesitated only a second before he also took Joanna’s hand and pulled both against his sides.

“This is it,” Stiles said again, stepping into the circle, Dylan and Joanna’s hands tucked into his. “We’ve made it this far together.”

“Today we live or die together,” Dylan said.

“Again, a little too dramatic,” Wyatt said.

“Then what do you think we should say?” Dylan asked, elbowing him in the ribs.

Wyatt looked up at the ceiling, clicking his tongue like a child struggling to come up with the perfect answer. Then his head came down and he smiled as he said, “Let’s go send Luc back to Hell.”

“Technically, he came from Heave—” Stiles began to say, but Wyatt kicked him in the shin.

Joanna lifted her hands, pulling both Stiles’ and Wyatt’s hands up with hers. “To Hell,” she said.

“To Hell,” the rest of them said together, their voices rising and reverberating around the low ceiling.

And then they moved inward and bowed their heads, taking comfort from the closeness of one another.

Dylan stood beside Joanna, her eyes closed as she concentrated. Her mind jumped from the thoughts of one person after another until, finally, she found what she was looking for. She opened her eyes and held up two fingers to Joanna. Joanna nodded, her hand on the door knob of the door they were pressed against. Slowly, Dylan dropped one finger, then the second. Joanna quickly opened the door, morphed into her ethereal form, and slid into the room beyond.

Dylan pushed the door closed and waited. It didn’t take long. At the signal, she pulled the door open and walked in, her thick, oddly graceful gargoyle form moving quicker than she had expected. She grabbed the back of a Redcoat’s jacket and pulled him backward, slamming her axe into his head as he fell so that the blow would leave him unconscious. A second Redcoat tried to knock her feet out from under her, but she turned just in time and knocked him over with the butt of her axe. He fell hard, a scream slipping from his slips. But it was cut off when Joanna appeared over him and slammed her angel’s sword against his throat.

They quickly made their way out of the room, letting themselves into the auditorium where Dylan attended her final council meeting as an adolescent. Voices made Dylan stop in her tracks as she pulled back, blocking Joanna from moving past a dark alcove that proved to be the only place that offered them even the smallest suggestion of cover.

The door at the far end of the stage, where the councilwomen always entered, opened. Dylan watched as Lavina escorted the other councilwomen and a few others through the door. Luc, Dylan was relieved to see, was not among them.

But Ellie was.

“We’ll bring them in here,” Lavina was saying. “This is the most secure place in the building.”

“Do you really think a group of malnourished prisoners can harm Luc and Lily?” one of the other councilwomen asked.

“I think a human who is desperate enough can do anything they set their mind to.”

Lavina walked to the center of the stage and looked out at the tiers of seats where the students normally sat. It was eerily similar to how she stood when she was about to give a speech. But, this time, there was more than fear in Lavina. There was sadness. She was saying goodbye.

“I’ll arrange for guards on the doors. Supplies have been arranged. And the students have been confined to their dorms.” She turned and looked at the others. “This attack should not last long. Then everything will return to normal.”

“Of course,” the councilwoman who had caught Wyatt and Dylan outside the medical rooms said. “This is what the Redcoats do.”

Lavina nodded. She glanced out at the seats one last time before gesturing for the women to follow her through a second door that forced them to pass just a few feet from where Dylan and Joanna were hiding. Dylan found herself trying to hear their thoughts as they passed, but most of them were angles and capable of hiding theirs.

And then Ellie walked past. Her thoughts were open and clear.

We will find you.

The moment she heard the door close, Dylan stepped out of the alcove. She moved into the room as silently as she could and searched for any unexpected danger. There was no surveillance equipment in Genero. There was no need when most of the councilwomen were angels. But there was the odd alarm here and there, like the one Dylan set off in the corridor when she morphed into her ethereal form. There were none of those in this part of the building, however, because there were no hybrids trying to escape here.

Dylan had moved as far as the center of the stage when she realized they were not alone. She gestured to Joanna to stay put, then climbed onto the stage.

“Hello, Ellie,” she said.

“You don’t look very good, Dylan. Have you been ill?”

Ellie stepped out from behind a lectern at the far side of the stage, her arms crossed over her chest as she studied Dylan with narrowed eyes. Dylan just waited, allowing Ellie to feel as though she were in charge of the situation.

“Where’s Wyatt?” Ellie asked.

“I’m sure you would love to know,” Dylan responded.

A soft smile widened on Ellie’s lips. “You were so jealous,” she said. “It was the perfect distraction.”

“Don’t you think Wyatt was smart enough to know you were playing him?”

“No,” Ellie said, shaking her head slowly. “He always had his head stuck in those old world books, always watching you get yourself into trouble over and over again. He was too distracted by you to see what I was up to.”

“But you didn’t get very far.”

“Neither did you. And that was the point.”

“Why?”

Ellie moved around Dylan as she paced the length of the stage and turned back around, her eyes darting to all the places someone might be able to hide.

“I saw how you connected with him so easily. When we were running from the Redcoats? You hadn’t even developed half of your gifts, but you could send your consciousness to him with no effort at all.” Ellie turned back to Dylan, her eyes moving slowly over her face, her body, as though she could see her gifts displayed somewhere. “Only a soul mate could inspire that kind of boost.”

“You were flirting with him before that.”

“Just flirting. It was a game. It wasn’t until later that I put any effort into it.”

“And Sam? Was that a game, too?”

“That wasn’t my idea,” she said, beginning to pace again, her eyes scanning the tiers of chairs in front of them as she did. “I told them I could do it on my own, but they insisted I have company.”

“Then you left him behind intentionally.”

“I had no reason to help him. His service was finished. It was someone else’s job to take care of what came next.”

“Luc did,” Dylan said, anger thrumming through her body as she said. “Sam’s dead, Ellie.”

That caused her to pause in her movements. She spun on her heel so that she was facing Dylan. Her eyes moved slowly over her face, again searching in that odd way Ellie had always seemed to have. “You’re lying,” her voice low, dangerously quiet.

“No.” Dylan held out a hand to her. “Come, see for yourself.”

She hadn’t really expected Ellie to take her up on the offer, but she surprised them both by stepping forward and grabbing Dylan’s hand roughly. After a long second, they both closed their eyes. Dylan concentrated on the memory of Davida and Sam’s death. After a second, she felt a warmth as the memory moved from her consciousness to Ellie’s.

“No,” Ellie whispered as she watched them both die. Dylan could feel the emotion move through her. “He promised he wouldn’t do that.”

“He did.”

“Because of you,” Ellie said as she suddenly jerked away, the movement pulling Dylan off balance for a brief second. “You did this! You refused to fix Lily, you refused to cooperate with everyone. If you had just done what you were supposed to—”

“We would all be dead by now. Don’t you see that, Ellie?” Dylan charged forward a few steps, waving her hand in a big, broad gesture. “He wants this place for himself and a few slaves who will remain alive to serve him. There is nothing more.”

She shook her head as she backed up. She didn’t realize how far she had gone, how close to the edge of the stage she was. She took one step too many. Her arms spun in a pinwheel as she fell backward.

Right into Joanna’s arms.

Ellie jerked away as soon as she realized who had caught her. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said, her voice rising with something like hysteria. “You trust her?” Ellie jerked her thumb at Joanna as she turned to face Dylan again, her eyes moving quickly between the two women. “Do you have any idea what she did?”

“Joanna is Wyatt’s mother.”

“I know that,” Ellie said, the tone of her voice suggesting she thought Dylan was unintelligent if she really thought she hadn’t known. “But do you know anything else about her? What she’s done?”

“I think she’s more concerned with what you’ve done, Ellie,” Joanna said quietly.

Ellie thrust her hand as though she wanted to hit Joanna, but missed. Her hands were suddenly shaking, and Dylan could see the faint glow of her ethereal light beginning to appear around her. And her thoughts…Dylan could hear them, and they weren’t what she had expected.

“She’s a criminal,” Ellie cried. “She faked her own death so she could—”

Before Ellie could get the words completely out of her mouth, Joanna grabbed her by the throat and pushed her back against the stage. Ellie’s face turned a bright red as she lay there, her eyes searching frantically for Dylan, for help against Joanna’s attack.

“You handed my son over to the Redcoats. You were going to stand there and watch them take him away, to imprison him and kill him. How is that worse than anything I could have done?”

“Stop,” Dylan said, stooping to touch Joanna’s shoulder from her position on the stage, hoping to calm her down. Instead, Joanna shrugged her off.

“She tried to deliver you to Lily and Luc,” Joanna cried, looking up at Dylan. “How could you possibly feel any compassion for her?”

“I don’t,” Dylan admitted. “But I need to know why.”

“You know why,” Joanna said, pressing harder on Ellie’s throat.

“Stop!” Dylan cried again. “You can’t do this. You have to let me talk to her.”

Joanna didn’t even look up.

A dozen things were flying through Dylan’s mind all at once. Images Ellie was frantically sending her, truths about Joanna she had never wanted to know mixed with her frantic need to get them out of there before the Redcoats showed up with Luc and Lily. Almost without realizing she was going to do it, Dylan slipped into her ethereal form and between Joanna and Ellie. With just the force of her thoughts, Dylan focused on Joanna and pushed. The older woman suddenly burst across the room, landing roughly against the farthest row of seats in the back of the auditorium.