FREED (Angels and Gargoyles Book 2) (16 page)

With the pain went the nausea. Dylan wiped the back of her hand over her mouth and straightened.

“How did you find us so quickly?” Wyatt asked.

Secrets. She couldn’t look at him because she had so many secrets she had to keep from him. She was afraid he would see that in her eyes, that he would wonder what it was she was hiding from him. How was she supposed to tell him that this mother was still alive? That she was part of a group who wanted to essentially rip apart everything his father had been fighting to do? That she wasn’t what he thought she was?

How could she tell him that he was the same as Dylan? That he was a hybrid, too?

“Dylan?”

He touched her face, pulled her toward him with the power of just a single finger under her chin. She stepped toward him and pressed her head to his chest. He slid his arms around her, and for a moment she felt as though she had disappeared into a cocoon. Nothing could hurt her there; nothing could change the way that touching him felt.

But it couldn’t last long. There was too much they had to do.

It hurt Dylan to look at Sam.

Wyatt guided her through the woods to the camp, his hand on the small of her back. Everyone stared as they moved into the little clearing where they had built their fire and laid out their pallets. Ellie jumped to her feet, her mouth open but no sound emerging. Carver and Bobby seemed only partially interested, as though girls simply appeared out of the woods every day.

Sam was lying on his back, staring up at the sky. He didn’t seem to realize what was going on around him, so Dylan could study the bruises that had formed along his jaw, on his cheeks, and around his nose. One eye was swollen completely shut. The other was open, but only enough to see the redness underneath.

It physically hurt to see.

“Welcome back,” Carver said with a crooked smile.

Bobby wiggled his fingers and smiled.

Sam rolled his head on the soft blanket he had balled up to use as a pillow. He stared for a long minute before a slow smile spread across his swollen lips. “Hey,” he muttered.

Dylan went to him, dropping on her knees beside him before she slowly ran her hands over his face. The bruises disappeared as she touched him, as though her fingers sucked up the color and the fluids that so distorted his handsome face. He closed his eye as she touched the bruises there, the redness disappearing like it had never been there.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Hey, don’t be.” He sat up, wincing at something Dylan had yet to find and repair. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Who did this?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Dylan tilted her head a little, a frown touching her lips. “Was it gargoyles?”

He shook his head again. “I really don’t remember,” he said, touching the side of his head. “The last thing I remember is saying goodnight.” A hint of a blush touched his cheeks as he studied her eyes for a long minute. “And then I was lying in a clearing.”

“You weren’t in that field?”

“No. Whoever it was must have moved me.”

“And then Stiles found him,” Wyatt, who had come up behind them, said.

Dylan glanced back at him. “Did Stiles say anything?”

“No. Just told me you were safe.”

Dylan’s frown deepened. How did Stiles know anything about what had happened to her that night, let alone that she was safe? He hadn’t been anywhere near them when Ichabod came for her. How did he know she hadn’t been taken by someone else, someone a little more threatening?

“When was the last time you saw Stiles?” Dylan asked.

Sam didn’t answer. Wyatt simply shrugged.

Dylan touched Sam’s shoulder, closed her eyes, and focused her healing gift on his entire body, in a hurry and not really interested in exploring him for more injuries at the moment. At least, not while Wyatt was watching. Then she pulled herself to her feet again.

“We need to talk,” she said to Wyatt.

“Whatever you have to say, you should probably say to everyone,” Ellie announced.

Dylan looked at her, unable to help her surprise at Ellie’s assertiveness. Ellie was a lot of things—a history buff, a clingy dependent, a boyfriend thief—but she was not assertive. Without Sam and Wyatt, Ellie wouldn’t even be there. Without their patience, their knowledge, their willingness to help her out, she would never have made it outside of Genero.

And she had the gall to stick up to Dylan.

“I’m not sure you want to hear what I have to say,” Dylan said.

“I think I have a right to know.”

Dylan opened her mouth to argue when Wyatt slid his hand over her shoulder. “She’s right, Dylan,” he said. “I think we all have a right to know what’s going on.”

“We don’t even know where you’ve been,” Carver said without looking up from a book he seemed deeply interested in.

Distrust swirled around Dylan so palpably that she could almost feel it. Only Bobby and Sam seemed to be on her side. And Bobby only because he rarely spoke and always had that cocky smile on his lips.

Dylan held her hands up to show she didn’t have anything to hide. “Fine,” she agreed. “What do you want to know?”

“Where were you all this time?” Ellie asked immediately. “And why did you leave Sam behind?”

It was a question, but it sure felt like an accusation to Dylan. She turned slightly and saw the same question in Wyatt’s eyes. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she saw the same thing in Sam’s eyes.

Sam, too.

It was only fair, she supposed. She had questioned her faith in them. It was only fair that they question her.

“There was an angel,” she said. “He came to our camp in the middle of the night and took me away. Said that there were gargoyles coming and he needed to take me to safety.”

“But you let him leave Sam behind?” Ellie asked.

“I didn’t have much choice.” Dylan turned to Sam. “I never would have left you alone if I had an option.”

“I know,” he said with a slight nod.

“He grabbed me before I was even fully awake. If I had realized—”

“It’s okay,” Sam said, moving to her side. “I get it.”

Dylan studied his face, looking for some sign that he was lying. She didn’t see anything. He seemed genuinely understanding, but there was something off about him. Dylan started to touch him, to just lay her hand on his arm, but stopped. She wasn’t sure why.

“Where did he take you?” Carver asked.

“Who?” Dylan responded, lost for a second.

“The angel.”

She stared at Sam for a minute longer before turning away. “To another angel,” she said. “Eventually, anyway.”

“Why?” Wyatt asked.

Dylan moved from the center of the campsite. She wanted to be able to look at them all instead of turning in circles to face each person as they spoke. She leaned back against a tree, her gaze moving slowly from face to face. Carver had put down his book and was watching her closely. Bobby was smiling, as always. Ellie stood where she had been from the moment Dylan walked into the camp, her arms crossed over her chest and her legs spread apart, as though ready to defend herself. Sam’s stance mirrored hers almost perfectly, but his shoulders were slumped, his hips rolled back slightly, his position less tense than hers.

And Wyatt.

He was watching her, his expression as unreadable as ever. But, somehow, she didn’t feel the same hostility rolling off of him as she had encountered before. He was listening.

It was a start.

“Just like the gargoyles, the angels want to use me against Luc and Lily.”

“Why?” Ellie asked.

A thought flashed through her mind, one that was not really her own. Horrible things, things she had seen when she touched Joanna as they flew in their ethereal form. She shuddered, unable to even begin to figure out how to put it all in words. So, she buried it in a nonchalant, nonthreatening statement.

“I don’t know. The same reason, I suppose.”

“Is that what they said?” Carver asked.

“Not exactly.” Dylan couldn’t help but look over at Wyatt. Her secret weighed heavily on her mind. There was so much she needed to tell him, but she didn’t even know how to begin. And she couldn’t stand the way he was looking at her. She had finally won his trust, somehow. And now she was betraying him every moment she refused to tell him the truth.

She pushed away from the tree and began to pace a little. “Look,” she finally said, her back to her friends, “this is about me, about something they all want from me. I don’t expect any of you to get involved. In fact,” she looked particularly at Ellie, but her gaze moved over all of them, “I don’t want you involved.”

“Dylan—”

It was Sam who was the first to object, but Wyatt stepped forward, too. She shook her head, heading off any discussion.

“I need to find Davida,” she said, her voice shaking a little when she said her guardian’s name. “But I don’t expect any of you to come with me.”

“You can’t go alone,” Wyatt said.

“But you can’t come with me. What if the same thing that happened to Sam happens to you?” She gestured at Sam, indicating his face that was now free from bruises, as handsome as it had been before whatever, or whoever, had attacked him. “I can’t risk that.”

“And what if they find you again? And this time they don’t want to just talk?”

Dylan ran her fingers through her hair, that old nervous habit coming back even when she tried so hard to break it. “They won’t hurt me. They need me.”

Wyatt refused to believe that. He moved toward her, held his hands up as though he wanted to touch her, but he didn’t. Instead, he stood a few feet in front of her and studied her face, as though trying to read her thoughts. That’s exactly what it felt like, as though he were probing at her with his thoughts. It caused images she didn’t ask for to dance in her mind.

Her rushing toward him after her killed a wild pig.

Confusion on her face, then the beauty of understanding blooming as he explained some concept that had been foreign to her.

Her voice in his head, bursting into his thoughts as they were growing into a panic.

Her body in his arms as they hid behind a wall of boxes.

He was thinking of her. And with those visions came emotions that were so scattered across the scale that she couldn’t decide if he cared for her or not. He wanted to, she could feel that. But his father’s voice was always at the back of his mind, warning him that girls from Genero were different. “Especially this one,” she heard Jimmy’s voice whispering. “She’s dangerous, Jonathon. She might be the only thing that can save humanity, but she is also one of them. Don’t trust her.”

He had never gone against his father before.

She wasn’t about to let him do it now.

Dylan hadn’t had a proper bath since her short stay in Viti. There had been pots of warm water in the resistance camp, but that never really seemed to get the worst of the dirt. Especially in those places that weren’t uncovered when others were around.

There was a stream not far from where Wyatt had chosen to hide their friends. Dylan wandered down to it while the others prepared a small meal. There hadn’t been a lot to talk about after Dylan announced her intentions to go find Davida on her own. Ellie had been on Dylan’s side for once, telling everyone she thought it would be best if they all stayed as far from her as possible. Carver had agreed, though his vote seemed to waver a little under Wyatt and Sam’s arguments. And argue they had, pounding their opinions against her will until she finally bent and agreed to allow one of them to travel with her. She had until morning to decide which it would be.

But she planned to be long gone by then.

She undressed and waded into the water. The stream was not very deep, less than the length of her calf. But when she sat on the slimy rocks that made up the streambed, the water came up to her waist. She leaned back and sighed. This had to be what it was like to be in paradise. The water ran over her with a steady pull that seemed to knead every knot that hid in the muscles of her arms, her back, her hips.

When had she last felt this good?

She tried not to think. She wanted to just enjoy sensation. The water on her skin, the rocks on her back. The little fish nibbling at her toes. But without something to focus on, her mind refused to forget.

The things she had seen in Joanna’s mind as they flew over the earth frightened her more than anything else she had seen since leaving Genero. It was one thing to know what Lily wanted to do to her, to know the gargoyles planned to destroy her after they used her. It was another to see exactly how someone wanted her to use her gifts.

She refused to do it. She would not be the weapon that would destroy all her friends, all her enemies, all of this world. It didn’t matter how far from goodness they had all fallen. She could not be a part of the annihilation of so many. How was that better than what Luc and Lily wanted?

Dylan shook her head, her hair floating like seaweed in the water.