FREED (Angels and Gargoyles Book 2) (19 page)

“He’s never going to forgive her.” He looked at Dylan, again his expression softening a little. “And he’s never going to accept himself for what he is. Or you for what you are.”

Dylan shook her head. “I don’t believe that.”

“It’s true.”

“Wyatt is more than just his father’s opinions.”

“Wyatt is caught up in this war. Everyone is taking sides, deciding who gets to live and who needs to die.” Stiles touched her arm lightly. “Do you really think he’s any different from the gargoyles or the angels? Or that he can break free of the hatred he has grown up with?”

“He’s a good man.”

“A good man with broken values.”

Dylan pulled away from his touch. She moved deeper into the line of trees, running her fingers over the roughness of the bark. She felt a splinter slice through one finger almost at the same moment she felt it begin to heal. There wasn’t even time for a single drop of blood to fall.

“He’s saved me.”

“He saved you because his father ordered him to.”

“Why?” She turned slightly, looked back at Stiles. “Why would Jimmy do that?”

“Because he doesn’t want you to fall into Lily’s hands.”

“Is that the only reason?”

Stiles buried his fingers in his jeans pockets, a shrug barely visible as he hunched forward. “He knows the gargoyles and the angels think you could be a weapon. That idea both frightens and excites him.”

“He wants to use me, too.”

Stiles inclined his head slightly before raising his gaze back to her face. “Everyone knows that you are something more than an angel. They just haven’t guessed yet how much more.”

“But you have.”

A little tension came into his shoulders, took the roundness out of them. He studied her face once more, his eyes a little narrowed. “I’ve been watching you a long time.”

“Since I was an infant, I would guess. Though I don’t really remember anything before the adolescent dorms.”

His eyes narrowed even more. “What do you mean?”

“Can I ask something about gargoyles?”

He shrugged, the movement less graceful this time. “Ask me anything you want.”

“Can they take on any human form they want?”

“Dylan—”

“I know it was you, Stiles,” she said, turning away again. “You can change the way you look, even your gender. But you can’t change your eyes.”

“I was watching over you.”

“You were working with Demetria.”

“No.” He charged forward a little. She could hear his footsteps as they crunched over the leaves and twigs on the ground. But then he stopped. “I wasn’t working with Demetria,” he said after a moment of silence. “I was trying to keep you from her.”

“Were you?”

“I didn’t want her to recognize your gifts before I could get you out of Genero.”

“You and Davida.”

He didn’t say anything to that. He stood quietly behind her as though waiting for what might come out of her mouth next. But she wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.

“Why were you so surprised when I healed you back there by the stream? It’s not like it’s the first time I’ve done it.”

“The other times were small cuts.”

“Small cuts?” She turned and looked at him, a smile on her lips. “If those are small cuts, I hate to see what you consider serious wounds.”

He smiled too, briefly. “You know what I mean,” he said.

“You were sick.”

“My body was not going to survive,” he said.

“Gargoyles can die of illness?”

“Everything can die, Dylan. It just depends on how death comes for them.”

“But I healed you.”

Stiles closed his eyes, as though listening for something. He took a long few minutes, breathing slowly as he stood there. When he opened his eyes, he walked slowly toward her, as though he had all day to reach her.

“This is something that you shouldn’t talk about out loud.”

“Why?”

He touched the side of her head. Immediately Dylan saw an image of Lily in the long, narrow room where she had met her. That day, Lily had been sitting in a throne-like chair, as though she were a queen and Dylan her subject. This time she lay in a bed, curled into a ball much like Stiles had been when she found him under the pine tree. And her cheeks were bright red even though she was shivering, as though suffering a terrible fever. There were also those lesions along her arms.

She seemed to have all the same symptoms that Stiles had.

Dylan jerked back.

“You’re not a gargoyle.”

Dylan pushed past him and headed back to the buildings, back to the safety of the others. But Stiles grabbed her arm and pushed her hard against a tree.

“Don’t,” he said, grabbing her jaw hard in his hand. “Don’t walk away without allowing me to explain.”

“What is there to explain?”

“Everything.”

His fingers bit into her jaw, forming bruises even as they healed. She tried to jerk free, but that only made him grip her harder.

“You lied to me.”

“I was protecting you.”

She pushed at his ribs, tried to move him away from her even as he stared her in the eye, as though daring her to give it her best shot. She finally gave up, suddenly too tired to care anymore.

“Everyone’s lied to me,” she said as she dropped her hands to her sides. “Why should this surprise me?”

“It wasn’t really a lie,” he said, releasing her jaw but still holding her against the tree with his other hand. “I just didn’t know how else to protect you without Jimmy and the others coming after me. A gargoyle alone is less threatening than an angel.”

“How did you do it, though? How did you make yourself look like that?”

“Angels can appear to humans in whatever form they chose. It’s a gift, a way for angels to protect humans without scaring them off.”

“Why would an angel scare a human?”

Stiles touched her jaw lightly. “Humans stopped believing in angels. And then after the war began we came down in swarms. All these big, bright angels coming to save the world when some had already turned on them? Few humans trust us anymore.”

“Could I do that?”

“Yes,” he said, a soft smile caressing his full lips. “You can do anything I can. Plus a few other things.”

“How?”

“There’s so much you need to learn, Dylan,” he said. He touched the curve of her jaw with a single finger. “So many things I wanted to teach you. But things got out of hand much too fast.”

“You mean when they sent me out of the dome.”

“I had planned to come to you that morning. But Wyatt found you first.”

“What would you have said?”

His smile widened. “I was still figuring it out. That’s why I didn’t come to you sooner. I didn’t want to frighten you.”

“Oh, well,” she giggled as she spoke, “I think walking up to a girl and saying, ‘Hey, I’m an angel and I want to teach you a few things. By the way, you’re an angel too,’ might have been a little forward.”

“You think?” he asked, chuckling along with her. “It might have been.”

She couldn’t help herself. She burst with laughter. It felt good to really laugh. It seemed like the first time in a lifetime. Hearing Stiles’ voice joining hers was nice, too. Laughter wasn’t as much fun when there was no one to share it with.

And then the laughter died. It happened as if on cue, the moment his eyes met hers, laughter dancing in them. She was so used to the sadness that often filled his eyes that she didn’t recognize them with so much merriment in them. It made her feel light, made her feel like she was floating in the light in his eyes.

Then his lips touched hers and it was like her heart shuddered to a stop.

Dylan’s head was still spinning an hour later. She curled up on her pallet, not really interested in the rabbit Ellie and Sam were busy roasting over an open flame. Wyatt was inside one of the buildings. She could see him through a broken window, reading one of those books he always seemed to have. He never looked up, not even when Sam called to let him know the meat was ready.

Stiles sat on the other side of the fire. He wouldn’t look at her. He continuously sent her apologies through that telepathic way in which angels could communicate. She tried to block him out, but discovered that her mental wall did not work with him. Not when he was determined to get through to her. She finally asked him to shut the goodness up. One last apology and then he stopped.

Sam came over with a thick piece of meat on a piece of cloth. He settled beside her and nudged her arm lightly. “You need to eat.”

“You’re always telling me that,” she said.

“Because it’s always true.”

She looked over at Ellie, watched her settle on her blankets with her own piece of meat in her hands. “You should go eat with her.”

“She needs to be on her own sometimes,” Sam said. “It helps her learn to be a little stronger.”

“Or it makes her more resentful.”

Sam inclined his head slightly. “She’s frightened.”

“Aren’t we all?”

He leaned into her. “If I go sit with her, will you go to Wyatt?”

Dylan bit her lip, sucking on it a little as she thought about the meaning behind his words. She tilted her head slightly. “I’m not sure he wants me to.”

“I think he does,” Sam said.

She slipped the meat out of his grasp as she carefully stood without the benefit of her hands. She was a little unstable when she finally gained her feet, but she managed to catch herself and not drop the meat, thanks to Sam’s hands on her shoulders. “Thanks,” she muttered, not sure if she was talking about his help or his advice.

Wyatt continued to stare at his book as she walked through the large, broken window into his building. The room looked as though some sort of storm had turned it all upside down. What furniture was left behind from before the war was jumbled and upturned. He had straightened a single chair and a table. He sat with his feet propped on the table, his book resting on his knees as he continued to stare at the pages.

“I brought you something to eat.”

He didn’t look up, didn’t move. He just kept staring at that book.

Dylan set the meat down on the table beside his leg, where he couldn’t help but see it. “You can’t keep ignoring me,” she said quietly. “I didn’t do it to hurt you.”

He turned the book over, but that was all. He didn’t look up, didn’t put his legs down on the floor. He made no movement that invited her to stay. But he also didn’t ask her to leave. He just sat there.

“I don’t think she meant to hurt you, either.”

“And you would be the expert?” he asked.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m still learning all of this,” she said. “Every time I turn around I meet someone who thinks he knows everything about me. They all think I am some sort of weapon, someone who can end this war. A war I didn’t even know was still raging until a week ago.”

He tilted his head back, his gaze meeting hers through eyes that were so perfectly narrowed that she wasn’t even sure he was focusing on her. “You and I are nothing alike.”

“We are exactly alike. Don’t you see that?”

“I see that you are a freak,” he said, climbing out of the chair and pushing past her to move deeper into the room. “You are some abomination that was created in a place designed to make things like you.”

“And what are you?”

“I am my father’s son.”

“You have that right,” she said. She began to leave, but he spoke to her again.

“What do you mean by that?”

His voice was so low, so deep that she didn’t recognize him. It wasn’t the Wyatt she knew, the man who was so kind and quiet, the man who had saved her life over and over again. This was a dangerous man, a man who threatened to destroy everything that had grown between them.

“It doesn’t have to be this way, Wyatt,” she said. “You don’t have to believe everything he taught you.”

“You never had a father. You don’t know what it’s like.”

“True,” she said quietly. “There’s a lot I don’t know. But I do know that this is who we are. We didn’t make these choices, but we have to decide how we’re going to use our gifts.”

“Gifts? These aren’t gifts.” He slammed his hand against the wall, the material splintering under his hand. “This is a curse.”

“So what?” she asked. “Is that it? You just give up?”

“What is there to give up?”

“Everything!” she cried. “Don’t you see what’s happening here? We’re in the middle of a war. And you and I are pawns.”

“Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t keep comparing me to you.”

“How are you different?”

“I wasn’t born in a factory,” he said. “I’m not like you.”

“I hate to break it to you…” She turned and climbed through the window again. She paused just outside the window and looked back in at him. “…You are exactly like me.”