SOUL MATES (Angels and Demons Book 3) (12 page)

Dylan moved into Gabriel’s arms, a sigh on her lips as they began to move to the third dance they’d shared that evening. People were beginning to whisper about them, but Dylan didn’t care. She was tired of keeping up appearances and worrying about what people thought of her. The only person whose opinion had ever mattered to her was dead. The second most important person in her life thought she was some sort of abomination, or a glory seeker, neither of which was a flattering representation. So what difference did it make if she had a little fun on the night her friends got married?

“Do you ever think about love?”

Dylan laughed. “Doesn’t everyone?”

Gabriel shrugged. “I never involved myself in that sort of thing when I was on Earth before. But now, today, I find myself watching Raphael and Rachel and thinking that it might not be such a bad thing to have a companion while I’m here.”

“What about your soul mate?”

He shrugged. “My soul mate is here. She’s a part of Raphael’s legion.”

“Is that right?”

“I don’t think she would notice if I got involved with a human. We’ve never had that kind of connection.”

“It was like that for Stiles and his first soul mate. I wonder…is that the way it is for most soul mates?”

“I don’t know.” Gabriel slid his hand up the length of Dylan’s back before pressing it to that space just above her butt again. “I heard that Lucifer and his soul mate were very close.”

“They were. I think he would have done just about anything to help her survive the angel disease.”

“That’s true love.”

“Isn’t that what is supposed to exist between soul mates?”

“Soul mates are meant to complement one another. They’re supposed to make up for the other’s insufficiencies.”

“That sounds very practical.”

“Angels are surprisingly practical,” he said, a soft smile on his lips. “Despite humans’ opinions, there isn’t as much of this idea of romance in heaven. Heaven is about enlightenment, not love.”

“No wonder so many angels fall in love with humans when they fall to Earth.”

“Yes, I suppose the argument could be made for that.”

“Have you ever thought about it?”

Gabriel studied Dylan for a moment. “Whenever I am near you, I find myself thinking about it.”

Dylan blushed. “You think about love when you’re around me?”

“I do. I think you would make a sensible partner.”

She laughed, unable to ignore the lack of romance in that statement. Gabriel was a lot of things: he was wonderful to look at, he was a strong warrior on the battlefield, and he was intelligent and easy to talk to. But romantic, he was not.

On a whim, she reached up and kissed him gently on the lips. He pulled back and stared at her, shock registering in his eyes. But then curiosity overtook the shock and he came back, hesitantly, to kiss her again. His lips tasted like sunshine, like the sweet fruit juice they were serving to wedding guests.

She pulled away and studied his expression. “What did you think of that?”

“It was…nice.”

Dylan laughed again, pulling back and executing a little curtsey before turning just in time to watch Josephine march away from the party in a huff. She chased after her, calling her name three times before Josephine showed any sign of hearing her. But she only paused in her step very briefly, and then continued marching away.

“Josephine, please wait up.”

“I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Okay. But I want to talk to you.”

Josephine didn’t stop. She kept walking until they were standing in the middle of the town square several blocks from Rachel’s building. Dylan caught up to her daughter and grabbed her arm, pulling her around to face her.

“You have no right to be angry at me for moving on with my life.”

“Daddy’s only been dead for a few months!”

“Four months, three weeks, and five days.” Dylan’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you think I know that? Don’t you think I miss him every single second of my day?”

“It didn’t look like it back there.”

“Yeah, well, your father was the one who told me to move on. Your father told me I had to let go of the past and embrace the future. That was all I was trying to do.”

“Daddy wouldn’t say that.”

“I love you, Jo,” Dylan said, beginning to wonder why she’d pushed this conversation. What did she care what Josephine thought of her? But, the problem was, she did care. “I don’t think you ever really understood the relationship between your father and me. I think you were always something of an outsider to our relationship and that drove you to frustration more often than not.”

“You were never there for me,” Josephine said. “Daddy was the one who took care of me, who helped me get ready in the mornings, who made sure I had dinner and a bath every night. He was the one who read me bedtime stories. You were always off meeting the Outlanders or with Stiles, helping with whatever thing he was working on at the time. It wasn’t until Rebecca took him back—not until he had something else to occupy his time—that you were finally there for me. And by then, I didn’t need you anymore.”

“I’m sorry,” Dylan said. “I didn’t realize you felt that way.”

“You weren’t there for Daddy, either. He always made excuses for you, but I could see that he was hurt by your absence, that he missed you and wished that you would just settle down and be a normal wife like Grandma Martha. I never understood your relationship, that’s true. I never understood why he put up with you for so long.”

Dylan stared at the ground. Pain was churning in her chest that she thought had been healed long before this. She chewed on her lip, the taste of Gabriel’s kiss a reminder of how things had so drastically changed in Dylan’s life these last few months.

“I was a lucky woman,” she said softly. “I had the chance to love a good man for more than forty years. And I was loved by a good man.” She looked at Josephine. “I know you don’t understand, and I know you will likely never understand, but I am not a typical wife or mother. My life will never be like yours. And now, I am embracing my purpose, because we all have a purpose. You got to choose yours. I didn’t. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t want it or that I don’t understand how important it is.”

“You’re talking in riddles. What does any of this have to do with Daddy? With your kissing that man just now?”

“Everything.” Dylan stepped toward her daughter and raised her hand to touch her cheek, but Josephine stepped back. Dylan let her hand fall to her side as tears welled in her eyes and blurred her vision. “It has everything to do with it. Your father...” Dylan choked a little on the word. “Your father was my soul mate,” she said after clearing her throat. “He wasn’t just my lover, my companion, and my husband. He was connected to my soul in a way that allowed us to end the war and allowed us to fulfill each other in a way that no one else could have done. But that connection was severed before your father died.”

Josephine shook her head. “You’re talking in riddles.”

Dylan grabbed Josephine’s hands. “Listen to me,” she said, tugging at her hands, forcing Josephine to look her in the eye. “Angels have to have soul mates. They complete each other…support each other. They share their powers and make each other stronger. Your father, he was that for me when we were young. But now, now things have changed. Now I have to tether my soul to an angel who can help me do what I need to do.”

Josephine shook her head, tears rolling slowly down her cheeks. “If Daddy was that for you, how could you choose someone else?”

“I thought that my connection to your father ended because he was sick, because he was going to die. But now I know it was because I’m the one who’s changed. I’m no longer that scared little girl who needed someone to focus on or needed someone to convince me that being Nephilim was not the end of the world. Your father was that for me. He was someone strong enough to support me, but uncertain enough in his own powers—in his own nature—to offer me that distraction. He helped me focus. And that was good for that moment in my life.”

Dylan squeezed her daughter’s hands. “Your father made me who I was then. But now…I’m not the same. I need someone different, someone with a different set of strengths. I need someone who complements who I am now. Do you understand?”

“Then this soul mate thing will just change every time you change?”

Dylan smiled softly. “No, baby, it won’t. Because I won’t change again. I am the person I was always meant to be.”

“And that guy is your new soul mate?”

Gabriel. She meant Gabriel. And as Dylan realized that, an image of him filled her mind and that funny tightening that always happened in the pit of her stomach when she thought of that perfect body rushed through her. Gabriel was definitely a fine specimen. And she had the right to choose whomever she wanted as her soul mate. It wasn’t a given that any particular angel—or man—was to be hers, despite Stiles’ conviction that he was her only option.

Her entire life was full of connections. Everything had happened for a reason, even this conversation with Josephine. It was all leading her to the most important choice she would ever make, a choice that was even more important than choosing between humanity and the angels. It was time for her to choose her soul mate, the man—or angel—who would remain at her side for the rest of eternity, the man who would help her guard the humans, protect them from whatever evil the universe planned to throw at them over the next few millennia, and keep them on the path of righteousness.

She knew who that man was. And she was ready to make her choice.

“Where’s Jack?” Stiles demanded for what felt like the millionth time. “What is he planning?”

You should have left well enough alone.

Stiles slammed his hand on the tabletop, frustration boiling over. If she was in a human form, he would have choked the life out of her a hundred times over by now. He needed to know what they were up to and he needed to know before Dylan could do anything stupid and throw away everything they’d fought for all these years.

He couldn’t shake the sight of her walking onto that dance floor with Gabriel. He knew. He knew Jack was inside of Gabriel; he knew he had somehow possessed the archangel in an attempt to trick Dylan into taking him as her soul mate. He just couldn’t prove it.

“Why does Jack want the orb?”

Joanna just laughed.

Wilhelm walked into the room with a clipboard in his hands. “Time to take a break, brother,” he said.

Stiles glared at him. “We ceased being brothers a very long time ago.”

Wilhelm looked hurt, but he hid it well by glancing hard at his clipboard. “Let me talk to her for a few minutes. Maybe I can get some information out of her.”

Stiles stood, but he didn’t leave. Instead, he just backed away and gestured for Wilhelm to take his place.

“Ellie is struggling to heal herself from the wounds inflicted on her body when you left it,” Wilhelm informed Joanna. “Can you tell us why her body reacted so differently to the removal of the possessing soul?”

Joanna, her soul a mass of dark, undulating smoke, simply leaned against the far wall and ignored everything they had to say. There wasn’t even any more laughter as there had been before—just the occasional threat, nothing more. She didn’t even move, really, making Stiles wonder if she was injured in some way.

“How do we stop the dark souls?”

Nothing.

“Why are they possessing the humans?”

Nothing.

“Why do they keep going after Dylan?”

She moved slightly then, the undulating of her darkness increasing just a tiny bit.

“She reacts when you mention Dylan’s name,” Stiles said. “Maybe if you push that.”

Wilhelm gave Stiles a look that told him he had the situation under control. Then he turned back to Joanna.

“Why did the possessed attack Dylan specifically in London?”

Again the dark soul twitched, but that was all she did.

“Were they trying to kill Dylan, or just trap her?”

Stiles saw a change in the soul then. Joanna didn’t like that question. But why?

“Did you know what they were planning?” he asked.

The dark soul pushed back against the wall, smoothing itself out as though it wanted to escape. Stiles began to laugh, unable to control the mirth that burst through him at the realization that someone was finally one step ahead of Joanna.

“You didn’t know.” Stiles walked over to where the soul was pressed to the wall, the laughter dying in his throat as it finally all came together in his head. “You didn’t know because he’d relegated you to a supporting role the moment he became stronger than you. You created him and he turned into a monster you couldn’t control.”

It all made so much sense to him now. That was why she’d disappeared. It wasn’t because Dylan’s choice had destroyed her. She went into hiding and then Jack had somehow pushed her aside and he took over. All of this—it wasn’t about Joanna anymore. Maybe it never really had been. She was just the catalyst that had shown them it could be done.

He shook his head. “We’re not going to get anything out of her because she doesn’t know anything.”

“She knows how she fused her soul to Ellie’s,” Wilhelm said. “That might be something we should know.”

“Ellie will know. She’ll be able to tell us.”

“Then what do we do with her?”

Stiles looked at the cringing soul and shrugged. “Put her downstairs with the others until Dylan figures out how to release them from their darkness.”

He started to walk out of the room, but she stopped him.

You can’t just walk away from me, Stiles. You’re my soul mate.

“I was,” he said, turning to face her again. “But that was forty-five years ago in human years. And that, my love, is a very long time for a man to figure out what he wants from this existence. And being tethered to something like you—that’s simply not in the cards for me anymore.”

She won’t choose you, you know that. She still loves my boy, my Jonathon.

Stiles nodded. “She does,” he said softly. “And that’s the way it should be.”

He walked away despite the fact that she began to scream.

Ellie was broken. The convulsions that had twisted her body when the energy that Stiles had somehow tapped to remove Joanna from her soul did so much damage that even the touch of other angels was doing little to help her body mend any faster. Stiles stood over her, regret and awe and a million other emotions running through his mind.

He touched her hand, his own healing abilities immediately searching for the biggest source of her pain, looking to heal it. And he did, a little. He could feel her muscles and her bones mending themselves. But the progress was so slow that he would have to hold her hand for days to make it better.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Ellie’s eyes fluttered open. She struggled to focus, her eyes jumping around the room for a moment like a frightened animal. But then she saw him and managed to calm whatever it was inside of her that couldn’t comprehend what was happening.

“Pain,” she whispered through a throat that was raw and sore.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, reaching up to smooth the sweat from her brow. “You’re not healing as quickly as you should.”

She closed her eyes for an instant. When she focused on him, she said, “Gone.”

Stiles nodded. “Joanna’s gone.”

A ghost of a smile touched her lips. “Thank you.”

He took both her hands between his and stared at them for a moment, remembering what he knew about the day Ellie had died—or they’d thought she’d died. He saw it in Dylan’s memories many times in the months and years afterward. She carried those moments like a heavy burden as guilt had refused to allow her to let it go. He helped her as best as he could, as did Wyatt, but human emotion was one of those things that was very difficult to heal. Nothing they did could ever remove the burden from her. She simply had to learn to live with it.

He saw Ellie take Joanna’s sword and tell Dylan she had to go—that she had to end the war. And she saw Ellie do one of the bravest things he could ever imagine by driving the sword that much deeper into her body to speed up her death. But it hadn’t worked, had it?

“You weren’t dead,” he said softly. “When Dylan left, she thought you were dead, but you weren’t, were you?”

Ellie shook her head.

“I saw your memories and how Joanna somehow fused her soul to yours.” He studied her face for a moment. “But that’s not what happened, is it?”

Ellie closed her eyes and she showed him the truth.

“You have to go,” Ellie said as blood began to drip from the corner of her mouth.

“I can heal you,” Dylan said as she tugged at the sword still embedded in Ellie’s chest.

“No.” Ellie laid a hand over Dylan’s. “You have to go. You can’t face them alone.”

“I’m not alone.”

“I betrayed you. I betrayed Wyatt. I don’t deserve your compassion.” She caressed Dylan’s hand lightly one last time. “Just promise me you will end this.”

And then she shoved the sword as hard as she could, pushing it in deeper and up to the left, finishing what Joanna had started.

The light faded from Ellie’s eyes. Dylan cried as she pressed a kiss to Ellie’s cheek before she stood and reluctantly left the auditorium. But Ellie wasn’t gone just yet. Despite the fact that her human body was no longer breathing, her soul lingered inside. And someone else in the room could feel it.

Joanna dropped down from the ceiling, her soul already swirling with darkness. Ellie didn’t understand what was happening to her—why her soul would not ascend. Ellie’s eyes opened. The tip of Joanna’s sword had missed her heart. She was losing massive amounts of blood and her healing powers were useless against the blade of an angel sword. But it wasn’t enough to send her to the place angels go when killed with an angel’s blade.

“You can heal her,” a voice said.

Joanna backed away, frightened by the vision of another dark soul. It was small, more gray than black, and the vague, almost generic, countenance of a woman was still visible in the smokiness of the soul.

“You can heal her,” the voice repeated. “If you possess her, the powers that still linger from your human form will keep her alive until her body heals naturally.”

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

“You are a dark soul now,” the other said. “You no longer belong to this world but your manner of death will not allow you to leave. It will eventually drive you insane. It drives us all insane. But you can do something good now.”

Joanna backed further away, refusing to do anything to help Ellie. But then Ellie reached for her and begged her with a beseeching stare. “Please,” she whispered around a mouthful of blood.

“You can keep your sanity if you hold on to her humanity,” the other said. “It’s the only way.”

“Who was that?” Stiles asked.

“Sara.”

Stiles pulled back, the surprise of that name like an electric shock rushing through his body. He shook his head as he quickly climbed to his feet.

“That’s not possible.”

“She taught us,” Ellie mumbled. “She told us what we needed to know about the darkness…about that life. She showed me how to become…” Ellie shook her head. “Having Joanna’s soul wrapped around my own, it drove me over an edge I couldn’t avoid.”

“You weren’t dead. You should never have become a dark soul.”

“I wasn’t, not really. It was—”

She began to cough; the stress of her emotions coupled with the damage to her body was just too much. Stiles poured a glass of water from a pitcher on the side table and held her head as she drank. When she was calm again, he settled back on the edge of the bed beside her.

“Joanna entered your body and possessed it.”

Ellie nodded.

“And Sara taught the two of you how to be dark souls?”

Again she nodded. “She was not as insane as the others. We thought it was because she had not been dead as long.” Ellie coughed again. “I didn’t want to go along with it, but when Joanna separated from me, my body began to die. I had no choice.”

“All of that about gathering the other souls, about teaching them, was that true?”

“Yes.” She sipped from the water again, this time without Stiles’ help. She was growing stronger—he could see it—just by telling her story. “Sara had a grudge against the humans for some reason, something about killing her lover.”

“I know,” Stiles said softly.

“She encouraged Joanna and the insanity…it was coming despite her possession of my body. She began to gather humans, possessing other bodies to convince them to join her fight. She convinced them all that we were going to rise up and take the world back as our personal paradise. Wyatt. She tricked him. She took his memories and then possessed Luc to make it look as though he’d killed him.” Ellie shook her head, tears running slowly down her cheeks. “I tried to stop her.”

“How did you resist the call back to heaven? How did you stay after Dylan sent all the angels home?”

“Joanna. Having her soul inside of me disguised mine. It made me impervious to Dylan’s power.”

“And when Dylan made her choice, when Joanna disappeared?”

“I was healed. I didn’t need her anymore. I wanted to go to Dylan and tell her I was alive and ask to join her community and try to make amends for everything I’d done before. But Joanna was angry. When Dylan took Wyatt away from her again, Joanna went over the edge. She sealed herself inside of me. No matter what I did, I couldn’t rid myself of her. And it was that that turned my soul dark and made me one of them. And then Jack.”

“Jack?”

“She’d gathered all these dark souls and taught them a few of the things Sara had taught her. But he…he was stronger than any of us could have imagined. And so full of passion. He learned all he could from her and Sara, and then he pushed them aside. He took control. And he trained an army; he planned the war. And he executed it. Joanna…she was just an afterthought to him—a source of information and nothing more. And she was so weakened by her anger that she couldn’t fight him.”

Stiles nodded. “What happened to Sara?”

Ellie shook her head, her eyes beginning to droop at the edges as exhaustion overcame her broken body. “I don’t know.”

“Okay.” Stiles pressed his hand to her forehead for a moment. “Thank you.”

“Could you tell her how sorry I am?”

“She already knows,” he said as he stood. “Dylan forgave you the moment it all happened.”