DARK SOULS (Angels and Demons Book 2) (12 page)

Dylan stood in the park. It was the middle of the night and most of the town was sleeping. It seemed like the ideal time to practice these new powers that seemed to be manifesting after her trip to heaven. It wasn’t just this heightened vision and awareness, or the new weapons that had appeared in her hand with just a simple thought. There was more to it than that.

She could feel this new confidence inside of herself—a new awareness. She couldn’t quite explain it, but she felt like she could do anything she put her mind to. She just had to focus.

But focusing was the problem. Her thoughts were so full of home and Wyatt, of Stiles and Rebecca and what she knew their future held. And the demons. Now she knew she could send most of them home, but there were still the ones that had been here so long they were too confused and too angry to accept the truth. What was she going to do about them?

Wilhelm thought he was making a breakthrough, but he didn’t want to say anything until he was sure. She wanted to go see him, to force him to explain himself. But, if there was one thing she’d learned about the gargoyles, it was best not to push them.

And then there were the voices.

Dylan could hear the thoughts of the people in this town as clearly as if she were standing in the middle of a room full of chatting neighbors. But it wasn’t just the people here. She could hear the voices of people from all over the world. It was as if their thoughts filtered through her before they went on to whatever oblivion they experienced after leaving their owner’s heads. Most of the thoughts were mundane—wondering what the weather will be today, if they should focus on reading or math in class today, how many potatoes were left—every day thoughts that had little meaning. But then there were calls of distress. Some woman in England had just lost her baby in a miscarriage. A man in the capital was overcome with pain from an accident in the building of a new Outlander registration office. These were people who needed help.

But it wasn’t just the people. She could hear the voices in heaven, too. Every once in a while a voice would come through so strongly that it captured all her attention. They were usually talking about the demons, but sometimes it was about things Dylan didn’t understand. There was confusion in heaven about Earth. They felt like something was out of alignment, that something that should have happened hadn’t, and that was causing a lack of balance. She thought maybe they were talking about her, but she wasn’t sure.

It was just too much. She couldn’t put up her mental walls as she once could. She couldn’t block it all out. It was as though she’d become hyperaware and she needed to find a way to categorize it all, to shift it around and make it make sense. She had to learn to tune out the things that weren’t important.

So she sat in the middle of the park with her hands on her knees and her eyes closed. She was trying to feel this newness inside of her. It was like the beautiful balls of light she saw deep in the souls of the possessed. She could feel it—could feel the power of it. It was there that all her abilities lived, where the secret of winning this war with the demons sat. But, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get any closer than just a sense that it was there.

Dylan slipped into her ethereal form. She hoped that maybe she could find that center easier in the form angels were meant to live in. But that just seemed to pull her further away. She stood, and built that strange white light on her fingers. She watched it grow and become something more than it had been before. Then, with a quick movement of her fingers, she made it disappear. She held up her hands, palms up, and created another ball. This one, however, was neither light nor fire. This one was solid gold, a beautiful thing that was as solid as it was weightless. She ran her hands over it, fascinated by the intense cold that emanated from it. She had no idea what it could do, but she was confident that when the moment came that she would have to use it, its purpose would show itself.

She made it disappear and then began to make something else when a sound behind her startled her. She turned, aware in the seconds before she saw him that it was Stiles.

“You shouldn’t sneak up on me.”

“I wasn’t sneaking. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t making any more impromptu trips to heaven.”

“No. Just trying to figure out what’s going on with my body.”

Stiles walked up to her and took her face in his hands, caressing her cheek with his thumbs as he drew her close enough to study her eyes.

“You mingled with souls up in heaven. Sometimes that causes a greater awareness of your own soul.”

“I spoke with Rebecca.”

“I know.”

Dylan’s eyebrows rose. “You’ve been reading my thoughts again?”

“You haven’t been hiding them as well lately.”

“Neither have you.”

He inclined his head slightly. “It’s our connection, Dylan. Our souls are meant to be tethered and they’re trying to link themselves together.”

“Why?”

His thumbs ran over her cheeks once more, and then he dropped his hands and buried them in the front pockets of his pants.

“I don’t know,” he finally said. “When Joanna died the first time, and I went back to heaven with the other angels, I had a conversation with the Father. He told me that each soul has a perfect counterpart. He said that he had chosen Joanna for me for a specific reason, but my fate had changed and I was destined to be soul mates with someone else and it would be a more perfect union. And when I came back, when I found you in your dreams, I just knew it was you.”

“You chose me.”

“No, Dylan, I don’t think I did.” He cocked his head as he studied her. “I thought I had. For a long time, I thought it was my choice. But now…I don’t think I chose you. I think you chose me.”

She shook her head as she turned away from him. “Raphael said you used to be a lesser angel, but when you fell to Earth, you altered something. That Joanna was destined to stop Lucifer and change everything, but when you fell, her intentions changed.”

“I don’t know what Raphael’s talking about.”

“He said that Joanna had an object…”

Again, a flash of memory burst through Dylan’s mind, a box Joanna pulled out from under a bed. But that was all it was, a flash of memory.

“You have to remember that Raphael has been watching all his from heaven. He hasn’t been down here living it.”

“And we have.”

“Yes.”

“How did I choose you?”

“You came to me. You asked me not to kill Joanna.”

Dylan remembered it like it was yesterday instead of more than forty years ago. She thought Wyatt was dead and she was expecting his child. She’d been able to travel in time for a while, but she was unaware that that was what she was doing. Then, something pulled her back into the time just after the human war had ended and the war with the angels was surging. She found herself in the camp Jimmy had begun building for what would become the main arm of the resistance. Stiles was there, a dagger in hand, intent on killing Joanna’s human form so that she would go back to heaven and could no longer harm Rebecca or the other humans he’d come to love.

“She is your soul mate. And you have every reason to do what you want to her. But she is also the future mother of my soul mate.”

“I didn’t go to you. I was called by Jimmy.”

Stiles looked up, a little surprise in his eyes. “Is that what you think?”

“It’s what I know. I visited him half a dozen times in the past because he called me to him.”

“Maybe the second and third times, and all the other times, but not that first time.”

“You think I was there just to stop you from seeking revenge against Joanna?”

“Yes. It was prophesized, Dylan. The Trinity told me years before it happened that you would come to me.”

“And that’s how I chose you?”

He inclined his head just slightly, not enough to take his eyes from her face, but enough to make it clear that that was what he believed. Dylan shook her head again, even though she’d already suspected this and she had already discussed it before. But it still seemed surreal. How could she have chosen him to be her soul mate when she was grieving the loss she felt when she thought Wyatt had died by Lucifer’s sword? How could she have chosen a new soul mate when what she thought she was doing was preserving Wyatt’s life? How could she have chosen Stiles when she already knew the role he would play in her life? When she already had the privilege of his companionship and the security of his love?

Was it really ever her choice?

And if it wasn’t her choice, could she reverse it? Could she make a different choice? Could she, somehow, make Wyatt immortal and make him spend eternity with her?

Even as she thought it, she knew it wasn’t right. And that knowledge, the guarantee of it, made her heart break.

Wyatt had never really been her soul mate. He was what she needed when she needed him, just as Stiles had been what she needed him to be since before her birth.

“Can I ask you something?”

Stiles shrugged. “Can’t promise I’ll have the answer you want.”

“Do you love me? I mean, beyond the soul mate connection. Do you love me like you did Rebecca?”

She heard a dozen things flash through his mind as he listened to her questions. Emotion danced in his soul even as he successfully kept it from his expression. She could read him in a way she couldn’t read anyone else. She heard thoughts, felt emotions, but none as strongly as his right now. Not strangers, not the people she wanted to help, not Rachel or Josephine—not even Wyatt. It was almost as though the thoughts he thought, the emotions he felt, were her thoughts and her emotions.

“From the moment I saw you that day, I knew there was something special about you. It frightened me, to be perfectly honest. And I resented you for a long time because you were the reason I’d had to hurt Jack and that I’d had to leave Rebecca. But, as I watched you grow up, I knew you were remarkable. And when you were banished from Genero and I followed you in the desert, I admired your strength and your desire to survive. You were impressive.”

Dylan crossed her arms over her chest, waiting for him to get to the point.

“I knew Wyatt posed a problem, that’s why I manifested into my human form days after he showed up. I couldn’t have you distracted from the goal at hand, and I couldn’t allow him to hurt you.”

“You told me men couldn’t be trusted. You insisted over and over that Wyatt couldn’t be trusted.”

“And then he touched you and the first manifestations of your connection made themselves known.”

Dylan smiled despite herself, remembering the sense of pleasure that had washed through her when Wyatt had accidentally brushed his fingers against hers. It had been overwhelming to her and it had frightened him.

“I saw you becoming emotionally attached. And that felt wrong.”

“Was it then when you knew we were connected?”

“I knew before then, Dylan.”

“How?”

“Things happened when I was near you. When you were still in your mother’s belly, I would touch her and I would see flashes of the future, or feel things…and then, when you were born, it would happen at odd times, these flashes. Even when we weren’t together, you would give me glimpses of the future. I once saw you in the cells below Viti and saw myself break you out. That’s how I knew when and where to go when you and Wyatt were trying to rescue Sam the first time you were taken to Viti. And I saw myself lie to you about Harry and about Rebecca. I didn’t know why then, but I know now that I was trying to protect you from the knowledge of what I gave up for you. I didn’t want to add to your guilt. You do things to me that others never have, not even Joanna.”

“But that doesn’t answer my question.”

Stiles stared at her for a long moment, his soul screaming so loudly that it was the only thing she could hear for a minute. But then something else drowned it out.

Mom, help, please. We need you.

Josephine.

In a flash, Dylan was gone.

Stiles heard the call as strongly as Dylan had. He followed, careful not to manifest into his human form where she could see him. He knew Dylan didn’t like him around when a crisis involving her family needed her attention. But he wasn’t about to let her face something as urgent as this sounded by herself.

She’d gone to Wyatt, back in the city in the bedroom they shared. Stiles, standing back in a corner of the room, using a gargoyle trick to remain invisible, watched as she rushed to his side. He was lying in their bed, turned on his side as he vomited bile into a small bowl.

Dylan pressed her hand to Wyatt’s chest, but he grabbed her wrist and pulled it away.

“No,” he mumbled.

“Daddy, let her heal you.”

But Wyatt didn’t hear his daughter. He didn’t even seem to be aware of the others in the room—of Josephine, Matthew, and Harry. He was focused only on Dylan.

“Not this time.”

“Wyatt…” Dylan took his face in her hands much like Stiles had done to her just moments ago. “Please don’t give up on me.”

He shook his head even as he began to cough, as more of the thick bile tinged with blood flowed from between his lips. Dylan pressed her palm against his forehead and closed her eyes. Stiles could feel her searching his thoughts, ignoring what was right there in front of her and searching deeper. He felt her desperation and it reminded him of Rebecca’s final moments. Even though he’d known she would one day have to face this reality, he had hoped he would somehow be able to soften the blow for her. But now he could see that had never been a possibility.

After a minute, Dylan let her hand slide slowly down the side of Wyatt’s face, resting it along his jaw. She pressed her forehead to his and whispered something no one but Wyatt—and Stiles—could hear. She said, “Okay.”

After a long second, a second that allowed Josephine to believe her mother was going to heal her father, she turned her head just enough to see her daughter’s face. Josephine might not have seen it, but Stiles knew Dylan. He saw the grief in every line of her face, and would have felt it even if their souls weren’t connected.

“Leave,” she said softly.

“You’re going to fix this, right?” Josephine asked, tears streaming down her cheeks. “You’re going to make him better?”

Pain sliced across Dylan’s face. Matthew recognized it. He took Josephine’s arms and pulled her back against his chest.

“Let’s go, sweetheart,” he said close to her ear. “Let’s give them some time.”

“No,” Josephine said, trying to wrench free from her husband’s touch. “I won’t leave. Not until she promises to fix him.”

“Jo…”

Harry stepped in front of Josephine and blocked her view of the bed. “You need to calm down, Josephine,” he said. “You have the baby to think about.”

“My baby needs a grandfather. Momma, please…”

Tears began to roll slowly down Dylan’s face. But she didn’t move to help her daughter. She knew Matthew could do better than she could. She stared into Wyatt’s eyes, her hands slowly, methodically, stroking the side of his face.

“Come on, Jo,” Matthew said, drawing his wife toward the door. She was sobbing, tears rolling down her cheeks in huge drops. But she let him lead her away this time. Harry hesitated, turning to watch Dylan and Wyatt for a moment. He opened his mouth to say something, but clearly thought better of it. He just nodded slightly, and then turned and followed Matthew and Josephine out the door.

Dylan’s body jerked as the door closed. She pulled back as Wyatt began to choke again, carefully guiding him to the bowl that was already nearly overflowing with bile. Then she glanced over her shoulder at the exact spot where Stiles was watching her, wishing he could do something…anything to make this easier.

“You, too. Please leave us alone.”

I won’t go far.

I know.

Stiles slid through the door and moved into his human form. The others were in the living room, still trying to calm Josephine.

“He’s dying,” she said between sobs. “And she’s not doing anything. What’s the point of having an angel in the family if she won’t even heal the man she supposedly loves?”

“Don’t do that,” Stiles said, his voice was like steel. “You don’t know what she’s going through in there.”

“She can fix this!” Josephine cried, pointing a finger at Stiles. “The two of you, playing God all the time. You can’t choose who to heal and who to allow to die. It’s not right!”

“And you’re being selfish.”

The color drained from Josephine’s face as she jumped off the couch and stormed toward Stiles, her finger jabbing into the center of his chest.

“I’m selfish? What about her? She won’t heal him because she wants to be with you!”

“If you believe that, then you know absolutely nothing about your mother. You have no idea what she has done for you, for all of humanity. Or how much she loves Wyatt.”

“Just because she made some sort of stupid choice—”

“It wasn’t just a choice, Josephine. She saved humanity. She ensured that you and your children and grandchildren will always have a place here. And now—”

“All I care about is my dad. I can’t…” Josephine began to crumple, her knees growing weak as she started to fall. Matthew caught her and Stiles pressed a hand to her forehead, instantly sending her into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Matthew swung her up into his arms. “She’s just grieving,” he said to Stiles.

Stiles inclined his head slightly as he watched Matthew take Josephine to her childhood bedroom.

The silence was heavy as Stiles tried not to overhear Dylan’s grief—her desperation.

“Is this what it was like?” Harry asked, moving up behind Stiles. Stiles turned, almost too overcome to look his son in the eyes. He nodded. “She loved you,” Harry said.

Stiles studied his son for a minute. He could see a need in him despite his insistence that he’d forgiven Stiles for letting Rebecca die. He touched Harry. He pressed two fingers to his temple and gave him a memory Stiles had never imagined he would share with anyone.

“You are the love of my life,” Rebecca said softly. “There is nothing you can say now that could change that, no secret that I haven’t already suspected or figured out. There is nothing you can truly hide from me.”

Stiles ran his hand along the side of her head, smoothing her hair—once such a deep shade of black, but now a startling white—back away from her face.

“I never wanted to hurt you.”

“Have I ever told you how proud I have always been to be your wife?” She ran her hand slowly over his chest. “Even when you were gone and I shared my bed with Mark, I knew we would be together again. I knew you’d gone to protect me, and to protect our son. I still believe that. I don’t need to know exactly what happened in that time to know you would have stayed with me if you could have.”

“I never forgot about you.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t want to leave. I don’t want you to leave now. Please let me heal you.”

She moved closer to him and sighed softly. “I’m seventy years old, Stiles. I’ve lived a long, mostly happy life. And we’ve had nearly thirty years together. That’s almost a lifetime.”

“Not in my reality.”

She smiled. “But you forget…I’m not an angel. I’m a humble human.”

“I love you, Rebecca,” he whispered against her temple. “I don’t know how to exist without you.”

“You existed long before me. You will exist for millennia after me.” She groaned, the pain becoming intense. “And I believe we will see each other again.”

“I love you,” she whispered. “I’ve always loved you.”

It didn’t hurt as much as it had, but Stiles still felt an ache deep in his soul as he watched the memory unfurl itself in his son’s mind. Harry jerked away, stumbling backward. He hit his legs on the back of the couch and fell into a sitting position. Stiles watched him, too conscious of the drama playing out in the next room to offer much in the way of consolation. As much as it hurt to lose Rebecca, the knowledge that Dylan was in such intense pain was worse.

“I’m sorry,” Harry said, his voice suddenly hoarse. “I imagined those moments much differently.”

“You loved her, too.”

“I did. I never imagined I would lose her. She was always just there. And then, she wasn’t.”

“It’s the circle of life, Harry. As much as Dylan and I want to save all of humanity, as much as we want to save the people we love, it’s just not possible.”

Harry nodded. “I know. And I’m sure, deep down, Josephine knows, too.”

Stiles glanced toward the hall where Matthew and Josephine had disappeared. “Josephine has always been closer to her father than her mother. She was always more like Wyatt. But, I think she’s an intelligent young woman who will handle this with the same grace and confidence she’s always handled everything.”

Harry stood again, and dragged his hands through red hair that was still so much like Stiles’ except for the white streaks that seemed to increase with every passing year.

“What she said about you and Dylan…”

Stiles crossed his arms over his chest. “Dylan loves Wyatt. I don’t know how anyone who has seen them together could doubt that.”

“No, I know.” Harry tilted his head slightly. “But there is something. Even Mom seemed to know it. Something about your angel nature.”

Stiles glanced over his shoulder, wanting so desperately to go into that bedroom and be with Dylan that he almost couldn’t stand still.

“Dad…”

“All angels have soul mates,” he said, not even looking at Harry. “Mine died after the war and I was given the opportunity to choose another.”

“Dylan?”

“It wasn’t my choice. I’m not even convinced it was hers. It might have been, but I don’t know. There is still so much about all of this I don’t understand. Dylan changed things—her nature, her birth—it changed all the rules of heaven that I thought I’d understood.”

“Then you won’t be alone.”

Stiles turned to Harry, drawn by the sudden relief in his son’s voice. “What?”

“You won’t be alone. When I die, when my kids die, you won’t be alone.”

“No. Dylan and I will always be together.”

“Good.”

Stiles tilted his head slightly. “Good? You practically accused me of having an affair with her after Rebecca died. And now you’re happy?”

“I don’t like the idea that you would be alone, without anyone who cares about you. I know I said some things about Dylan I shouldn’t have, I like her. I always have. And I’m glad you’re going to be okay.”

Stiles smiled softly. “You realize that the father is supposed to worry about the son, not the other way around.”

Harry shrugged. “I don’t see why we can’t look out for each other.”

Stiles just nodded. His attention moved back to the wall separating them from Dylan and Wyatt. He could feel her pain like a palpable thing pressing against the plaster.

“Will we see you again? After this?”

Stiles glanced at Harry. “Why wouldn’t you?”

“The council. They voted to banish you.”

“You really think that would keep me from you and my grandkids?” Stiles shook his head. “You’ll see me again.”

And then he closed his eyes and whispered, “Goodbye, my friend.”