BROKEN ANGELS (Angels and Demons Book 1) (13 page)

They both fell silent, lost in their thoughts. Rebecca was still firmly entrenched in Stiles’ heart, but even as he thought about her, even as he remembered some of the better times they’d shared, his mind drifted to Dylan. He could feel her nearby; he could feel the emotional discord he’d seen on her face early that morning when he went by to pick up Matthew. Something was bothering her…something to do with Wyatt. He wondered if Wyatt was ill, or if they’d argued. He couldn’t deny a need to know what was going on and a deep desire to stand up for Dylan in any conflict between her and Wyatt, even though he knew it was none of his business. Rebecca would tell him to let Dylan fight her own battles—something she’d said countless times during their last years together—but instinct was hard to fight.

Matthew suddenly jumped down off the counter.

“We should get to work.”

Stiles sighed as he jumped down too.

“Time to save the world. Again.”

Dylan touched Jimmy’s shoulder.

“You should get some rest.”

He looked up at her, exhaustion clear in the bags under his eyes. “I’m afraid if I leave, she won’t be here when I come back.”

“She will be. I won’t let anything happen to her.”

Jimmy lifted his sister’s hand and kissed it lightly. “When she died—when they all died—I thought…I don’t know what I thought. I just, I would have done anything to have her back. And then, when you walked into that prison with her in your arms…it was like a miracle.”

“It was.”

He glanced at Dylan. “I’m not sure I could survive losing her again.”

Dylan ran her hand slowly over his shoulder, taking some of his exhaustion from him. “Stay. Just, promise you’ll eat something.”

“I will.”

Dylan stepped out of the room and leaned against the wall, trying to control the tears that threatened to fall. Her head was pounding. The thoughts of all the people in this building were spilling over the top of her mental walls and soaking her brain in their pain, their grief and their fear. It was overwhelming—ten times worse than the couple of people who’s been at her house just two days ago. She shouldn’t have come here, but she couldn’t let her family grieve alone.

“Did you convince him to leave?”

Dylan looked up to find Martha standing in front of her. She shook her head. “He won’t leave her side.”

Useless.

Martha forced a smile, despite the anger of her thoughts. “At least you tried.”

“He promised to eat something.”

“That’s good.”

Martha brushed past her and went into the room.

Dylan wandered down the hall, her pain only growing with every doorway she passed. People were dying now, five, sometimes ten a day. She could see their confused spirits drifting around their family members and around the nurses who treated them, trying to understand what was happening. She touched one and it instantly evaporated, moving on as it was supposed to do.

She found a few more and sent them on, too. But even that simple gesture increased her pain until she was nearly blinded by the pressure in her head. She stepped out of the hospital and sat on a stone bench, her head down between her knees.

Her healing powers could cure just about any wound, could fight most disease, could even repair the damage done to her body in childbirth, but it was almost useless when it came to this kind of pain. For this, she needed her soul mate.

Unfortunately, she was no longer sure she had one.

And, even if she did, Wyatt had gone up north to help Josephine distribute the antibiotics one of the doctors up there had managed to mass-produce.

She sat there for a long while, waiting for the pain to recede. But it didn’t. She got up and went home, not really sure how she’d made it there. But she did get home and fell into bed, and fell into oblivion the moment her head hit the pillow.

She knew she was dreaming. She always knew when she was dreaming. But then something changed. She was walking in a gorgeous garden filled with the most amazing flowers and plants she had ever seen. The trees were not just brown and green, but full of so much color that they seemed like a whole new species—not a tree but something new—something too beautiful for her mind to truly comprehend.

She was standing under one of these trees, her fingers tracing the fine lines in the trunk when someone approached from behind.

“Welcome home, child.”

She turned and he was there, but he wasn’t. A man…but not a man. An aura that exuded so much love that she felt bathed in it; she felt like she would never feel that much joy ever again.

“Where am I?”

“This is the garden,” he said. “This is the gateway between heaven and Earth.”

“Why am I here? Did I die?”

Something like laughter floated through the aura in visible waves of color. “No, child. You are an angel. You are allowed to travel here at will.”

“I’m an angel.”

That thought was still a little awesome for Dylan. She’d always thought of herself as a hybrid, something that was not human, but not angel either. “Angel” had become something of a bad word during the war despite Stiles’ nature and despite the powers that their angel blood had endowed many with—those left behind after the war.

“You have always been an angel,” the man said. “An angel made with just enough of what was unique in humans to give you freewill.”

“And my other gifts?”

“A part of that human spark.”

“Was that intentional? Leaving in that spark?”

“It was. You, my dear, were the fulfillment of a promise made at the beginning of time. You were humanity’s second chance.”

“Why me?”

“Why not you?” The aura moved closer to her, touching her almost like a friend putting a hand on her shoulder. “You were destined. Everything that happened in the years—in several generations—before your birth happened because you were meant to be. Things Stiles did, things you did, and things Jimmy and Wyatt and Rebecca and Davida and Demetria did…they all added up in one column of a ledger to make sure you walked the road you are walking right now.”

“You mean to make sure I made the right choice.”

“No. The choice…that was just the beginning, Dylan. There is so much more in store for you. Your destiny is still unfolding.”

She shook her head. “It’s over. I’ve done my part.”

“Your part is just starting to unfold.” He moved closer, his aura swirling inches from her face. She felt studied, like a child being reprimanded by a loving parent. “You’ve made a life with Wyatt and your child, but their lives are mortal. You will continue to live many more lifetimes even after you’ve buried them, as Stiles did Rebecca. You will continue to rebuild the humanity you chose to save and they will move on to their new reality, their new roles.”

Dylan shook her head, stepping back from the man’s aura. “I won’t leave my family.”

“Angels are their own family.”

She shook her head again, vigorously. “No.”

“You are meant for bigger things, Dylan. You were allowed to be tethered to Wyatt because you needed his strength to help you end the war. But you are so much stronger now than you will ever really understand. You no longer need that connection.”

“I do, though.” Tears welled in her eyes. “I need Wyatt.”

“You need a soul mate that is equal to you. Wyatt is human, mortal.”

“He is my life.”

The aura darkened, as though struck by profound sadness. “The connection is already broken. There is nothing that can be done.”

“I won’t leave him. I don’t care about any of that. He’s still my husband—still the only man I will ever love.”

“Love is a human emotion. When you are properly tethered to your new soul mate, you will understand that there is more to this connection than love.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Dylan turned away and suddenly found herself back in her bed, tangled in the blanket. Her headache was still pounding behind her eyes, but it was almost bearable. She closed her eyes and a faded image of the garden filled her mind. She shivered, telling herself that it was just a dream.

But she couldn’t stop the sobs that slipped from between her lips.

Stiles gathered the supplies Matthew asked for, delivering them to the lab within hours of their conversation with Harry. Then he settled on the floor and watched Matthew work, reminded of the time they’d spent together in Dr. Hatton’s basement.

“The least you people could do is brew some beer for a poor, tired scientist.”

Stiles smiled, remembering the perpetual beer bottle that always seemed to be in Matthew’s hand.

“I’ll work on that.”

“Maybe you could send your soul mate back in time to lift a six pack for me.”

“Not sure she’d go for that.”

Matthew shook his head. “Pull me back from the grip of death, but you can’t provide a few suds…”

He worked through the night, scribbling in his notebook as he mixed things Stiles couldn’t pronounce, and muttering under his breath each time he got a result he didn’t like. Not that Stiles could tell what those results were, because it looked to him like he was mixing one liquid with another and changing their colors, but nothing else—cursing as the night grew long.

Stiles didn’t expect this to happen overnight. It took weeks the first time. But the weight of all the dying souls sitting in the rooms over his head was like the weight of Sisyphus’ boulder. What was worse, he felt Rachel’s soul weighing on him more than the others.

She wasn’t going to last much longer. The angel blood had sent her organs into failure. He could feel death weighing on her; he could hear the clock counting down.

He started pacing sometime around dawn.

“Why don’t you go see that girlfriend of yours,” Matthew suggested. “You’re distracting me.”

Stiles began to argue, but then realized that he really did want to see Dylan.

“I’ll be back in an hour or two.”

“Take your time. And bring some food.”

Stiles burst into his ethereal form, feeling refreshed as he soared over the hospital and scanned the town. It was quieter than he remembered ever seeing it. The few who were still healthy were staying inside, hoping that would keep them healthy. The rest…they were either stuck in bed or in the hospital surrounded by family waiting to say goodbye.

He morphed back into his human form in Dylan’s kitchen, expecting her to be sitting at the table, eating breakfast with Wyatt as she normally was. But the kitchen was empty.

“Dylan?”

She didn’t answer. But he could feel her there.

He walked down the narrow hallway to the closed master bedroom door. He hesitated a second, seeking Wyatt’s unique presence. But it wasn’t there. She was, though, and her thoughts were muddled and her emotions all over the place.

Stiles pushed the door open. She was in the bed, fully dressed, moaning in her sleep. A thin stream of blood flowed from her nose, with more blood smeared across her lips and over her chin.

“Oh, hell,” he muttered as he rushed to her side. He sat on the edge of the bed and used the bottom edge of his t-shirt to wipe away the blood. Then he pressed his hands to the sides of her head, his healing power immediately centering on ruptured blood vessels deep in her brain. He closed his eyes and pictured them knitting themselves back together; he pictured the damaged tissue around them returning to their previous healthy state.

She sighed, a soft sound that reminded him of the sound a hungry babe made when offered its mother’s breast. Her eyes fluttered and then opened, slowly focusing on him.

“Hey,” she said, pulling away from his touch as she moved to sit up.

“How long have you been here like this?”

She shrugged, her eyes jumping from him to the sun shining through the windows. “I went to the hospital—”

“Dylan, you shouldn’t do that. There’s too much there.”

“I wanted to check in with Rachel. And Jimmy.”

“Where’s Wyatt?”

She glanced at the window again, clearly confused about how long she’d been asleep. She dragged her fingers through her hair, tearing through the few knots her restlessness had left there.

“North. With Josephine.”

“He should be here. When something like this is happening, he needs to be here with you.”

“I told him to go. He was restless. He needs to be busy.”

“But you…” He touched her face and grabbed her chin so that she had to look at him. “You really need to learn how to block their darkness. You can’t go to the hospital, soak up all that crap and come back here alone. You could have died.”

She shook her head. “I can’t die.” And then tears began to run down her cheeks in huge, rounded drops. “They’re going to die, but I won’t.”

“What?”

She looked down at the pillow beside her, the pillow where Wyatt normally laid his head at night. “He’s going to die. He’s going to move on to whatever comes next, and he’s going to leave me behind.”

“He is.”

She looked up at Stiles. “I don’t know if I can do that. I lost him once and it was as if someone had chopped my heart out of my chest. How am I supposed to do it again?”

Stiles ran his thumb over her bottom lip, smearing her tears into the dried blood. “That’s the price we pay for allowing ourselves to fall in love with mortals.”

“I didn’t ask to be an angel. I didn’t ask to have this destiny.”

“Nobody did. Do you think I wanted to sit there and let Rebecca die? If it was up to me, she would have lived another fifty years.”

“How did you do it?”

I had you.

He didn’t say it out loud. But her eyes widened just the same as her pulse quickened in her throat. Before she could pull away, he moved closer to her and touched his lips to hers. It wasn’t really a kiss, just a touching of skin to skin. He wasn’t even sure why he did it. She wasn’t ready for what he’d been waiting all his existence for. But then she surprised him.

Dylan moved into him, deepening the kiss with the slight parting of her lips. It was as if a switched had been flipped, a power turned on that he had never known existed. As they kissed, their souls touched and mingled, their auras taking flight even as they remained sitting awkwardly on her marriage bed. It was…perfect.

Until she pulled away.

She climbed around him off the bed and disappeared behind the bathroom door. After a second, he heard the shower come on. She was washing him away.

Lovely.

He left, feeling more than ever like a part of him had been cut away, leaving him forever missing an essential part of his soul.