FREED (Angels and Gargoyles Book 2) (6 page)

“What?” he asked when she finally reached him.

“Gargoyles.”

“Where?”

“A few miles out.”

Wyatt studied her face for a second before he nodded. “Wake them,” he said, gesturing into the room. “I’ll go see if I can distract them.”

“No, Wyatt…” she began, but he was gone before the words were even out of her mouth.

She went to Sam, shaking his shoulder as she crouched down beside him. He opened his eyes, sleep
leaving them the moment he saw her. He sat up. “What?”

“Gargoyles,” she said.

He nodded, his gaze moving around the room. “Where’s Wyatt?”

“He went out to distract them.”

Sam’s face tightened. Dylan just nodded. “Wake the rest.”

She started to stand, but he grabbed her wrist. “Be careful,” he said.

She laid her hand over his for a long second. There was so much she wanted to say to him in that moment, but she wouldn’t have known where to start. So she just squeezed his hand and pulled away.

Wyatt stood under the shadows of the doorway to the building across the street. Dylan looked up into the sky, but she couldn’t see anything. A breeze passed over her, and she found herself falling backward toward the door she had just stepped through.

Inside.

She glared into the empty air. “They’re coming for me,” she said. “I’m not going to stay in there and lure them to the others.”

There was no response, but there was also no breeze that pushed her back as she started across the street again.

Wyatt didn’t argue with her. But, again, there was no time. The moment she joined him, three gargoyles became visible in the sky above them. They were huge creatures, each resembling something like a marble statue, complete with thick, white skin and long, almost leathery, wings. Each was compact, its body huge and rounded, each with muscles that looked as though they might be capable of lifting one of the tall buildings sitting on this street. They were not the prettiest gargoyles Dylan had ever seen. Most gargoyles were grotesque in some way, their heads misshapen or their bodies disproportionate. These seemed particularly deformed in both body and facial features.

They landed in the street and turned to face Dylan and Wyatt, their wings detracting and disappearing as golden axes appeared in their hands. Wyatt straightened, pushing Dylan behind him even as his samurai sword slipped from its scabbard strapped across his back.

“No matter what happens, you have to stay back.”

“Give me your six shooter.”

“It won’t do you any good against these.”

Dylan laid her hand on his hip. “Let me have it anyway.”

Wyatt groaned, but he slipped it from its holster and handed it back to her. Dylan held it tight against her chest, wishing she had her knife. She wasn’t sure where it was. Back at camp, sitting near the wooden block she had used to cut up a chicken the night before the Redcoat attack, maybe. That was the last time she remembered having it. Stupid thing to do, to lose the only weapon she knew how to use.

“We only want the girl,” one of the gargoyles said in a voice that was ancient, like the creak of rusty metal.

“No,” Wyatt said.

“She is dangerous,” another said. “More dangerous than you and your kind.”

Wyatt’s spine stiffened a little, but he continued to stand his ground. “If you want her, you will have to come through me,” he said.

The gargoyles looked at each other, the sound of their necks moving almost like the grinding of stone on stone. The middle one, the one that had been first to speak, stepped forward and raised his weapon. As he did, Stiles appeared in front of Wyatt and Dylan.

“Hello, Henri.”

The gargoyle studied Stiles closely for a long moment. “Brother,” he said in that same rusty voice. “I heard a rumor you died in Viti.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Stiles said.

“Get out of the way.”

Stiles lifted his axe, not really in a threatening manner, but just swung it by its handle as though he did not feel threatened. “I can’t let you hurt the girl.”

The other two gargoyles growled, the sound as menacing as anything Dylan had ever heard. The first held up his hand and gestured for the others to be quiet. He stepped forward, moving within a few inches of Stiles’ face so that there could be no mistaking what he was doing. And to whom.

“We heard that you had switched sides, Brother,” he said, so close to Stiles that even Dylan, a few feet behind him, could smell the stench of his breath. “But I never would have believed it if I wasn’t looking at you right now.”

“I didn’t switch sides. I just changed my opinion of the methods we use.”

“And what is that?”

“This is the future of humanity, Henri,” Stiles said. “This girl and her kind, they are the ones who are going to survive this new world.”

“They are not human.” the one Stiles called Henri spat, the spittle flying all around the doorway where Dylan and Wyatt stood. “We were entrusted with the care and safety of humans, not hybrids.”

“How many humans are really left?” Stiles asked. “What is there left for us to protect?”

“It is not ours to question,” Henri said.

“Maybe it should be.”

Stiles pushed forward, knocking Henri back a few feet. Henri pushed back, his axe raised in front of him as his gaze rested on Stiles. “Don’t make me hurt you, Brother,” he said.

Stiles pushed again. The other two moved forward to help their companion, and the ringing of metal on metal resonated around them. Wyatt turned and pushed Dylan back into the doorway of the building behind them. She stumbled into a room that was long and wide like the room across the street where the others hid. Wyatt pushed her again, encouraging her to run into the depths of the room. There was a staircase in the far corner. Dylan took the first steps two at a time without any further urging from Wyatt.

The stairs went up four flights and ended in another large room. This one was stacked with boxes from one end to the other. Wyatt moved in front, grabbing Dylan’s hand and leading her into another corner, where the boxes made a kind of natural hiding place. They crouched down, snug together, as they had been inside the formation outside their camp.

Dylan wanted to open her mind and find out if the others were safe, but she was afraid to know the answer. They could still hear the ringing of axe on axe, knew there was still a fight taking place in the street below them. But that didn’t mean that one or two of the gargoyles hadn’t left that fight to find another somewhere else.

They listened for a few minutes without moving. The space was really narrow, smaller, maybe, than the last. Dylan was aware of every breath Wyatt took. Aware of every inch of his body where it was pressed hard against hers. He must have been uncomfortable, crouching the way he was. He finally slid onto his bottom, sitting with his legs crisscrossed in a way she never would have imagined such long legs could be folded.

His movement, however, made it more difficult for Dylan to stay hidden without knocking over one or two of the boxes that provided their cover. Wyatt seemed to realize that because he slipped an arm around her, pulling her down onto her bottom beside him. He hesitated a moment, and then he tugged her tighter against him, practically dragging her into his lap. And then his hand slipped over the length of her back. She liked the feel of his palm moving over her spine, liked the way it made her breath catch in her throat, the way it made all her nerves come alive. She particularly liked the sense of pleasure that seemed to work its way through every pore, every muscle, every particle that made up her body and soul.

She shifted, straddling his lap completely in the tightness of their hiding place. He shifted, too, pulling her hips hard against his. And then his fingers were in her hair, the danger suddenly forgotten as his lips touched hers.

She knew this was wrong, knew there was some reason why this was really bad timing. But sparkles of ecstasy began to dance along her spine as he encouraged her to open to him, as he drew her so tight against him that she was beginning to forget she was an individual, an entity that didn’t require his presence to function.

Their previous kiss had been new, exciting. This was as different from that as milk was different from water. Basically the same, but fundamentally different. And his hands hadn’t been part of the equation before. But now they seemed to be everywhere and nowhere all at once. It was as though they had a mind of their own and they were trying to memorize every curve, every inch of soft, aching skin.

Her body had a mind of its own, too. Her hips wanted to shift, to slide and grind, her belly physically hurt with some unknowable need, and her hands wanted his skin beneath them, wanted to feel the muscles of his jaw working, the silkiness of his curls between her fingers. She was so aware of him it was as if his breath was hers, as if his heartbeat was timed exactly with her own. It was as if some essential part of each of them was drawn to the other, mingling, as though they were always meant to be one but were separated by some devastating accident.

Images flew into her mind as his fingers found their way underneath the material of her t-shirt. Bodies moving together in the darkness of night. Naked women offering their bodies without shame, without self-respect. Young couples saying words to one another Dylan didn’t understand, but knew had something to do with a depth of emotion she had never truly known.

What could be.

And then Stiles’ voice was intruding, trying to get her attention.

It’s over.

It took her a few minutes to realize what it meant.

Reluctantly, she pulled her lips from Wyatt’s. His hand came to her cheek, his fingers moving into her hair to tug her back to where she had been. His eyes searched hers, searched for something she was not sure he would find. He laid his forehead against hers, his breath coming in quick gasps as he tried to gain control of his raging emotions.

“It’s over,” he said.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“We should go find the others.”

He lifted her off of his lap and began to stand. But he hesitated a moment, his eyes on his hands where they were pressed against the floor. “Dylan, we probably shouldn’t—”

He didn’t finish what he was about to say because a crash reverberated through the room.

They were no longer alone.

Wyatt jumped to his feet, his samurai sword, which had been close at hand the whole time, again in his grip. He moved to the end of the box wall and peeked around the end. Dylan stood and moved up behind him, her hand on his shoulder, sending just enough of the memory of pleasure through her that she blushed.

His sword in front of them and his free hand on her hip, Wyatt pulled Dylan forward so that they walked almost as one. She still had his six shooter stuck haphazardly in the waistband of her pants. She pulled it out and held it at her side the way she read one of the characters in his books often did.

The room was dark, even though light was beginning to appear in the high windows. The boxes towered all around them, corridors of boxes that blocked their view of the far side of the room. But whatever had come here was not being careful about covering its progress through the room. They could hear it where it was on the opposite side. Wyatt silently directed Dylan down one corridor and up another, trying to always keep at least a full wall of boxes between them and whatever stalked them.

“I can smell you,” a rusty voice suddenly called out, shattering the relative silence of the room. “You are in heat, you nasty creature.”

Dylan stiffened, fear playing its fiddle on her nervous system. Wyatt’s hand was still on her hip. He gave her a little reassuring pat, a touch meant as comfort but which, instead, just jarred her nerves that much more.

“Come here, little creature,” the voice said, “and I might spare your friend.”

Go to Hell,
Dylan thought.

I have been in Hell since the beginning of time,
came the quick reply.
Your death will assure my place in paradise.

Dylan shivered.

Wyatt turned down another corridor. The stairs were right there in front of them. Wyatt pushed her in front of him, and she quickly began her descent. Maybe she should have let him go first.

The gargoyle burst through the stairs from underneath her. It grabbed her leg and yanked, pulling her through the hole it had created. Dylan screamed. Her last vision of Wyatt was of him reaching down through the hole, trying to grab her hand. And then he was gone, grabbed from behind by the other gargoyle.

“Stiles!” she screamed.

The gargoyle laughed. “Did you really think he could save you?”

Dylan struggled as the gargoyle pulled her into another large, empty room and began to drag her across the floor. She still had the six shooter clutched in her hand. She fumbled with the controls, trying to remember everything Wyatt had told her about it. When she thought it was ready to use, she aimed and fired, but it only clicked. Safety. Wyatt had told her about something called the safety. She fiddled with it again, her back bumping and scraping over the wooden floor, splinters biting through the material of her shirt, what was left covering her back, and cutting into her flesh. She cried out, as much out of frustration as pain.