FREED (Angels and Gargoyles Book 2)
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Authors: Brenda L. Harper
BRENDA LEE HARPER
FREED
Brenda L. Harper
Copyright © 2014
Published by: Rascal Hearts
All Rights Reserved
. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
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Dylan ran.
She could hear something rushing after her, could hear its feet pounding on the ground behind her, could hear its breathing. She didn’t turn to see what it was or who it was. She just ran.
The terrain was rough, clustered with rocks and low plants that wanted to reach out and grab her ankles. Dylan searched frantically for somewhere she could go, somewhere that might offer more coverage than this open field. But there was nothing. Just more cactus and dirt.
And then she felt a breeze on the back of her neck.
Stiles.
Go left.
Dylan did what he said, cutting left so quickly that she nearly turned her ankle. She risked a glance behind her and saw a flash of red. A Redcoat. What were they doing out here? They were supposed to be in the city.
This wasn’t good.
Dylan picked up her pace even as she heard fighting behind her, metal on metal. A sword against an ax. The camp was here, just a few yards to her right. She didn’t want to lead anything there. There were women and children there, people who could not protect themselves the way Wyatt had begun to teach Dylan to protect herself. If she had her knife with her when the noise broke the silence of the morning, she might have turned to fight. But she left it at camp.
Not smart.
Wyatt would be angry when she told him.
If she told him.
Her lungs were beginning to burn in her chest. She tried to concentrate on her breaths, tried to keep the pain at bay, but she was still so filled with fear that she couldn’t do it. It wasn’t until a tall, redheaded boy appeared in front of her, seemingly appearing out of nothing, that she finally stopped running.
He grabbed her arms as she stumbled into him.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she uttered on the end of another shallow breath.
He ran his hand over the top of her head. She was sweaty, between the run and the heat of the day that was already beginning to build in the air around them even though the sun had just begun to push the moon out of the sky. She leaned forward a little, concentrated on catching her breath.
“What were you doing all alone?” Stiles asked once she reached that point where she could speak.
“I wanted to take a bath.” She gestured behind her. “There’s a stream we found last night.”
“You were going the wrong way,” he said. “It’s north of here.”
Dylan just shook her head. It didn’t surprise her that he knew the stream she was talking about. She simply didn’t understand what north meant. She had grown up in a secluded city, a city trapped under a dome where the girls weren’t even aware that there were boys on the other side of the city. Dylan didn’t even know what a man was until she met Wyatt. And then Stiles and Sam and all the men who were part of the group Wyatt’s father, Jimmy, called the resistance.
The group to whom she had likely just led trouble.
“Was it a Redcoat?” she asked Stiles. “What was he doing out here?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I have never seen one this far from Viti.”
Dylan stepped back from Stiles’ touch and looked toward the camp. Most of the people were still asleep, but a few silhouettes were moving in the dim light of the dying fire and the rising sun.
“I should get back,” she said. “They’ll wonder where I am.”
“Wait.” Stiles touched her arm again, drawing her attention back to his pale face.
Stiles had red hair that was so deep and bright that it seemed almost unnatural. His skin was intensely pale, even after spending long days in the sunlight. But he had the gentlest gray eyes she had ever seen, eyes she would recognize anywhere, even in the face of a gargoyle.
She had recognized them.
A week ago, Dylan had been arrested by a group of Redcoats outside of the city of Viti, a walled city where Wyatt once lived with his father. She was special, she was told, but no one had ever really explained why. Everyone wanted her. Including Wyatt’s father, Jimmy, the leader of the resistance. Wyatt came to rescue her from the city, and Stiles had rescued him when they became trapped in the room where the Redcoats were holding their friend Sam. He was a gargoyle, a beautiful, living, breathing, marble statue with amazing gray eyes.
He saved them.
“Come back to camp with me,” Dylan suggested, not for the first time.
Stiles shook his head. “You know that Jimmy won’t allow it,” he said. “They don’t trust gargoyles.”
“But you saved us.”
“I saved you. You are the only one that matters.”
“Why?”
She had asked this question before, too, and, for some reason, expected him to give her a proper answer each time she asked. But he just took her hands between both of his and bowed his head over them, like a servant might do to his queen.
When he straightened again, his eyes again fell on her face. He seemed to study her, as though searching for something important in her expression. She felt like he had something he needed to tell her, but he seemed to talk himself out of it.
“You have to be more careful, Dylan,” he said instead. “Don’t go wandering off anymore.”
“What about the—”
“I’ll put him where they will be sure to see him. That way they’ll get the warning without having to know he saw you.”
“Thanks.” She kissed his cheek lightly. “Are you okay? Do you need anything?”
“I’m good,” he said. “I’ll be around.”
Dylan just smiled. She knew he was around. Without revealing himself, he often flew low over her, the breeze of his movement brushing against her head, her shoulders, each time he passed. He was like her own personal guardian angel.
She watched as he disappeared.
“’Bye,” she whispered before she walked back to the camp.
Wyatt was sitting alone under the only tree in the desert landscape, a weak-looking sapling that must have had amazingly strong roots to survive here. He had one of his ever-present books in his hands, over which he was watching as Dylan approached him.
“Where have you been?” he asked, his tone somewhat guarded.
Dylan dropped to the ground beside him. “Walking,” she said.
He looked at her, his eyes hard and searching for a moment. Dylan was glad he couldn’t read her mind. Almost wished she couldn’t read his.
An image flashed through her mind. Ellie lying on the ground inside a pile of blankets, one of which Dylan recognized as Wyatt’s. The image was dark, a memory from the night before. But Dylan only had to turn a few inches to see Ellie as she was now, still snuggled under those same blankets.
“You shouldn’t go out alone,” Wyatt said.
“Why do you care?” she couldn’t help but ask.
Wyatt’s expression tightened, but he didn’t drop his eyes as anyone else might have done. He continued to meet her gaze through narrowed eyes. “Because you could be the difference between life and death for the rest of us,” he said, repeating something they had both heard his father say.
Dylan nodded. “Yeah, it’s about the good of the people,” she said. “I keep forgetting.” She began to stand, but Wyatt reached forward and grabbed her arm.
“It’s about more than that.”
Again they stared at each other for a long few seconds. Dylan wanted to trust Wyatt. She wanted to believe that he and his father had the right intentions for these people who had chosen to give up their lives in the city in order to follow them to wherever they were going. Life in Viti wasn’t the best. It had meant backbreaking work and misery, but it also meant a clean place to sleep and a guarantee of minimal safety. These people had none of that now. Yet, they continued to follow Jimmy anyway.
It was hope, Dylan knew. Jimmy offered hope to these people. He offered hope of a better future for their children, a world where they didn’t have to live underground and work in the mines for the right only to do it again the next day. A home that didn’t belong to the city and couldn’t be taken away the moment they could no longer work.
Dylan thought she could understand that. What she didn’t understand was Jimmy’s insistence that she was the key to it all.
How could she be? She was just a seventeen-year-old girl who didn’t know anything about the world, this world, until only a few weeks ago.
“Jonathon!”
Wyatt obediently stood, moving around her with his head held high as he responded to the sound of his father’s voice. Another thing Dylan hadn’t known. Wyatt wasn’t really his name. It was a name he had chosen from one of the many books he was always reading. Wyatt Earp, he had told her a few days before. Earp had been a brave lawman during a time period in America called the Old West. Dylan had no idea what any of that was, but she agreed that the name fit him better than Jonathon.
Dylan slid over into the spot Wyatt had abandoned and picked up the book he had left behind. She scanned the page he was on, curious about what it was in these cowboy and Indian books that kept his interest so completely. He’d only just begun this one. It seemed to be about a group of people traveling across a country in something called a covered wagon. Dylan tried to imagine what that was like, moving in some sort of contraption dragged over the grass and cactus by animals. She could imagine it was easier on the feet, but it seemed slow and inconvenient, especially since the gargoyles could see something like that from miles away.
She put the book down and watched the others beginning to stir. There were a lot of people in their camp, most of them young adults like Dylan’s guardian, Davida. And many of them had small children. Few in their group were adolescents like Dylan and Wyatt. Only Sam and Ellie, two others from the city where Dylan was raised, plus a few more. It made things difficult because it felt like they were always in the way. From time to time, Davida would allow them to go off on their own, even though Jimmy’s rules dictated that they weren’t allowed to go where an adult wasn’t within sight. That’s how they’d found the stream.
Wyatt had gathered stones and showed them how to toss them across the water, making them skip over the water’s surface. He and Sam had a bet over who could make their stone skip the most times. Sam won. It was a huge victory, since Wyatt was often better at…well, everything.
Ellie rushed to Wyatt’s side when the contest was over, wrapping her arms around his broad shoulders. “That’s okay,” she had said loudly. “You’ll kick his butt next time.”
Dylan stepped back. She had begun to go to Wyatt, had something similar ready to slip from her lips. She suddenly felt stupid. She thought there was something between her and Wyatt. They had shared several kisses and a lot of long looks, but she was beginning to wonder if she had misread him. It wasn’t like she had a lot of experience with boy-girl relationships. And he spent a lot of time with Ellie.