FREED (Angels and Gargoyles Book 2) (10 page)

Late in the afternoon they came to another ruin. It was not as big as the one Wyatt took Dylan to, but larger than the one where they stopped the night before.

“I didn’t realize they came in so many different sizes,” Dylan said as she walked among the small buildings that marked the beginning of this ruin.

Sam walked up to a different sort of road that ended at the beginning of one of the buildings. “What do you suppose this was for?”

Dylan moved up behind him, studying the façade of the building. They had never seen one quite like this. It had smaller windows than most of the squat buildings they had seen, windows that were covered with clothing, like the windows in the apartment she and Wyatt were attacked by that gargoyle. It was painted bright colors and had grass all the way to the front, something they had never really seen before. It was pretty, the way it looked down on the road as though it were some kind of guardian.

“People must have lived here,” she guessed.

And then the vision came, as though it was waiting for her to make the connection.

A family, a man in the strange clothing others she had seen often wore, a box with a handle in his hand, getting out of one of those strange vehicles, not unlike the ones they had hidden in when the Redcoats attacked. A woman, the mother Dylan guessed, rushing out of the building with her arms wide open, two children following close behind.

“So happy you’re home,” the woman said. “I can’t believe they made you go on this trip.”

“It came with a promotion,” the man said.

The woman’s face brightened, if that was possible. She laughed. “That’s wonderful,” she said.

He kissed the tip of her nose lightly. “That means we can finally take that vacation you’ve been wanting for so long.”

“Dylan?”

She stumbled back a few paces. “Sorry,” she mumbled as he grabbed her arms and steadied her.

“You okay?”

She nodded. “We should keep moving.”

He seemed uncertain for a moment, but he followed her. The road took them deeper into the ruin, into a place where the buildings had crumpled and huge, empty holes pockmarked the road. They had to leave that road and follow another, making their way carefully through debris that was piled in their way and small mounds of dirt that seemed out of place and…sad, somehow.

Once away from the ruin, they made their way back around to what they thought was the right road. But Dylan was not sure it was the right one.

She ran her thumb over the stone a friend had once given her. For luck, the friend had said. It was one of only three things she had taken from Genero when her time to be tested came. There was a wrist bangle, too, and an artifact from one of these ruins, a thing Davida gave her called a compass. Davida said it had been given to her by another guardian, and given to that woman from someone before her. Dylan wondered now if that was really true.

Where had Davida gotten such an artifact? Did people really leave the dome without the council being aware? Or was Davida part of the resistance even then? Had Jimmy given her the compass? If so, why had she given it to Dylan? What did it mean?

There were so many questions that remained unanswered.

Another ruin could be seen in the distance when the sun began to settle in the horizon. They decided to camp in a field covered in soft grass that had turned an almost pretty brown in the heat of the sun. Once again, Sam managed to kill a bird just before they stopped, so all they had to do was build a fire to enjoy their evening meal.

“Where are we going?” Sam asked.

Dylan picked at the small amount of meat left on her half of the bird. “Away from the others.”

“You don’t have a destination in mind?” Sam asked.

“No,” she said as she licked the grease from her fingers and tossed the bones into the fire. “Just away.”

“Then why south? Why not north?”

Dylan smiled. “I don’t even know what that means,” she said. “They didn’t teach us directions in Genero.”

Sam dipped his head a little so that the shadows covered his expression. He finished his part of the bird and tossed the bones in the fire, too. “Wyatt didn’t teach them to you?”

Dylan shook her head. “He always just said, ‘Follow me.’”

“Sounds like him,” Sam said with laughter in his tone.

Silence fell between them for a few minutes. They both seemed preoccupied with the fire. Dylan saw Wyatt’s face in the flames, saw his rare smile, his dark blue eyes.

“What was it like?” she asked as Wyatt’s image grew a little stronger, the doubt in his eyes an ever-present thing as he constantly questioned everything about the people around them.

“What?” Sam asked.

“Living in Genero? Was it different for the boys?”

Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t really know what it was like for the girls.”

“I know you had dorms, like ours. Did you have guardians, too?”

Sam picked up a stick and poked at the fire a little. “We did. One male adult to every three boys.”

“And lessons?”

“Yes,” he agreed. “In a big, round library where there were enough computers for every boy in the dorm.”

“And you learned about botany.”

Sam looked up, confusion clouding his eyes for a minute. “Oh,” he finally said, “yeah. We had a choice of the sciences we could take. I chose to learn about plants.”

“Lucky you did,” Dylan said. “It saved your life in the desert.”

Sam didn’t say anything. Any other boy might have bragged about how he came across a dying girl and saved her life by showing her how to get water from cactus. Sam didn’t brag. In fact, he never seemed to want to talk about his time alone with Ellie. He didn’t seem to want to talk about it now, either. He stood up and stretched, moving his long, lithe limbs over his head until his spine curved into a perfect c.

“We should go to bed,” he said.

“Do you love her?” she asked without moving.

“Who?” Sam turned from the pallet he had made for himself earlier.

“Ellie.”

He cocked his head slightly. “I feel responsible for her,” he said.

Dylan climbed to her feet, also stretching a little. Sitting on the ground for so long had left her back a little sore. She touched her toes, then walked over to her own blanket and settled down without bothering to straighten it.

“Do you think Wyatt loves her?” she asked.

“I don’t think Wyatt knows her,” Sam immediately responded. “He sees her as a weak creature that needs his protection.”

“You don’t see her that way?”

Sam settled on the ground. “I see Ellie as a girl who was ripped from the only home she had ever known, from the only world she had known, and dumped into a foreign land where nothing is familiar and she is no longer the know-it-all who knows exactly where her life was headed. She’s confused and scared and—”

“And just as angry as the rest of us.”

“Yes,” Sam agreed.

Dylan reached over and took his hand, interlocking her fingers with his. “A part of me wishes every night that when I wake in the morning, I will be back in my room in D dorm. That everything will be as familiar and orderly as it had always been before.”

“Me, too,” Sam sighed. “I never imagined that taking the final test would lead to this.”

“But we survived.”

“We did,” he agreed.

He squeezed her hand before letting go. She thought he would roll over and go to sleep, but instead he moved closer to her. She felt his heat before she felt his hand move over her hip. She felt his breath on her cheek, felt his heart pounding as he moved against her body. Dylan remembered the night before everything had gone wrong, how she and Sam, Wyatt and Ellie, walked to that little stream and skipped rocks over the surface of the water. How carefree they had been for those few moments, how normal their lives had felt again for that short time. And she remembered how Sam had held her hand as they walked back to camp.

It happened again. The little tremble that ran through her chest that made her heart feel as though it was skipping beats, even though she was pretty sure it wasn’t. He studied her face, stared into her eyes here under the stars with no one else around, no one to interfere, no danger to end whatever might happen between them.

His kiss was soft, gentle. So different from the way Wyatt kissed her, but, somehow, just as exciting. He pulled back just as she was beginning to respond, his hand brushing gently against her cheek.

“Sorry,” he whispered. “But I’ve wanted to do that for a long time.”

“It’s okay,” she said over the lump that had formed in her throat.

She wasn’t sure how she felt about his touch, his kiss. Sam made her heart flutter, made her want to know what it would feel like if he kissed her again. But it also made her feel uncomfortable, as if she was doing something that wasn’t quite right.

Sam was kind. When they were locked in the bowels of Viti together, he had been there for her, tried to protect her even though he was as vulnerable as she was. She felt like she owed him something for that. And she liked his touch. She liked the feel of his hand in hers, the feel of his lips on hers.

So why couldn’t she stop thinking about Wyatt?

When Sam slid up beside her that night by the stream, she had seen the hurt flash in Wyatt’s eyes. But Ellie draped over his shoulders at the time. She didn’t understand this thing between boys and girls, didn’t understand why it was so complicated. Why did Wyatt kiss her and then spend all his time with Ellie? Why did he touch her and then tell her he couldn’t trust her because of one little lie of omission? Didn’t he understand that she was doing what she thought was right? Wasn’t that what he had done when he lied about why he wanted to take her to his dad?

“Do you love him?”

Dylan bit her lip, worried for a second that Sam had heard her thoughts. He touched her chin, tugged her lip out of her mouth.

“Wyatt,” he said. “You asked me about Ellie, so I figure it’s only fair that I ask about Wyatt.”

“I don’t know,” Dylan said, honestly. “I didn’t even know what a man was until two weeks ago. All of this,” she gestured between them, “is all new and so confusing to me.”

Sam ran his finger along her chin, tracing the curve of her jaw as his finger moved up to just below her ear and back again. “I just want you to know,” he said quietly, “that I care about you. But I can be patient.”

“Sam—”

He touched her lips with two fingers. “Take time to figure things out,” he said. “I’ll be here when you do.”

Then he moved his fingers and replaced them with his lips. Again his kiss was soft, gentle. There was nothing invasive about it. It was almost like the tender kiss of a guardian or a sister. Well, maybe not. But it was less, somehow, than what she had known before, but at the same time, something so much more.

Then he rolled over. His breathing settled almost immediately, telling Dylan he had fallen asleep. A restful one this time, she thought.

Too bad she couldn’t sleep.

Dylan couldn’t have been asleep for longer than an hour. Her dreams hadn’t even begun to really take hold yet. When she first felt something grab her arm, she thought it was part of those vague images that usually became something more solid. It wasn’t until her body was forced into a sitting position that she snapped back to consciousness and realized that something wasn’t right.

“Sam?” she mumbled.

“No,” a voice said in her ear.

And then the world became this fuzzy thing that she couldn’t really understand.

They were flying. At least, she thought they were. Moving faster than her brain could really comprehend, anyway. It was like being in some crazy pre-dream images, like being in the center of something surreal.

She couldn’t speak. When she tried, no sound came out. Her mouth just filled with air. And the occasional bug.

Fear drove little spikes through Dylan’s chest. She tried to pull her arms away from whoever, or whatever, was holding her, but the grip was like steel. Whoever it was held her so tightly that she could almost feel the bruises forming under the skin. There was nothing she could do but go for the ride.

It seemed like hours, but she knew that in all logic it was likely only ten or fifteen minutes. Not that time seemed to matter anymore. Her life was all about when the sun was up and when it went down. The world was all about before the war and after the war. What difference did time make anymore?

The thoughts that ran through her mind when she was frightened.

They landed hard on the ground. Whoever had been holding her let go, and she rolled, smashing into a tree. Not a great way to break a fall.

She didn’t move right away. She closed her eyes and took inventory of her body. The bruises stopped aching, and the bone in her right arm seemed to knit itself so quickly that she could almost feel the repair working under the skin. When she sat up, she ran her hand over the place where the bone had snapped, a part of her still unable to believe that she had been able to repair something with just a thought.