BROKEN ANGELS (Angels and Demons Book 1) (5 page)

Days passed and more people became ill. Dylan’s class dwindled from twelve students to eight, then six, and then none. She visited the homes of her ill pupils and saw the fear and anger on their parents’ faces. And then they began to die.

The first was a young mother whose skin had broken out in lesions. Harry said she had gotten a staph infection, and it was that secondary infection that killed her.

The second was an elderly woman. Harry insisted it was her advanced age that contributed to her death.

The third was Benji, the small student in Dylan’s class. Again, Harry insisted it was his age and his immature immune system that had contributed to his death.

Dylan had a hard time believing that.

“It’s happening in all the cities,” Josephine told them. “None of the doctors have ever seen anything like it before.”

“What about Rachel?” Wyatt asked.

Everyone glanced at him. Rachel, Jimmy’s sister, lived in another of the cities—a place called Dytonia—where she acted as something of an historian. She collected the books salvaged from the ruins, repaired them, and catalogued them so that people looking for information from the past—such as doctors studying human anatomy and disease—could go to her and access her wealth of information.

Josephine shrugged. “She can’t seem to find anything about this, either. She says there are illnesses with similarities, but none that match it exactly.”

As she spoke, Stiles stood against the wall with that perpetually bored look on his face. But Dylan knew him. And she could see the tension in his shoulders. How many times had she seen him like that in the past only to discover he knew something that could shed light on exactly what they were struggling to figure out?

What do you know?

He glanced at her, just the slightest shake of his head was her only answer.

I know you know something. If you can help these people—

He straightened and walked from the room.

Dylan started to follow, but Wyatt grabbed her hand.

“Where are you going?”

She turned into him, her lips parting to explain, but he was focused on Josephine, who was still explaining what the council was doing to fight this illness.

“…several of the doctors believe that they can slow the progression of the disease with something called an antibiotic,” Josephine continued. “They’ve found record of their use and they believe they can replicate it fairly easily.”

Dylan pulled her hand from Wyatt’s. “If you’ll excuse me…”

“Mom, we really need your input on this,” Josephine said.

She paused at the doorway. “It sounds to me like you’re doing all you can.”

“Yes, but you and Stiles—”

“And we will do what we can.”

She turned and left before Josephine or Wyatt could say anything else.

***

Dylan found Stiles in the city park, a lovely strip of grass and trees between the uniform city buildings. It reminded her, sometimes, of the grove of trees behind an old motel where she and Stiles had once met. They were hiding from Wyatt so they could discuss freely the people Wyatt believed to be their allies, but whom Stiles knew were not. More than that had happened in the park…particularly a moment Dylan should have long put behind her, but which, somehow, still cropped up in her thoughts more often than she would like to admit.

“What do you know?”

Stiles glanced at her. “There’s the Dylan I know. Always blunt with no filter.”

“We don’t have time for this, Stiles. Tell me what’s going on.”

He turned from her, facing the direction of the hospital. The lights were ablaze in the building, all of them, something that Dylan couldn’t remember ever happening before. The hospital had a dozen rooms, but only two or three had ever been occupied at one time before. Now, they were struggling to find space for the most critical of the ill. It was so bad that they had to send home patients with bags of medications and overworked nurses stopping by every few days to check in.

“I think I have an idea of what this disease is.”

Dylan stared at him. “What do you mean, you know what it is? Even the doctors have no clue.”

“That’s because most of them have never seen it. But I have. And you.”

“Me?”

He glanced at her and suddenly her mind was flooded with memories. Lily, sitting on her throne with lesions on her body, so weak she could hardly sit up straight. Stiles himself, lying on the ground, covered in lesions and coughing, with bloody foam slipping from between his lips. Joanna…the horrifying sight of Joanna dying from the infusion of darkness that Dylan herself had given her.

She pushed the images away, shivering in the warm evening air as she wrapped her arms around her chest.

“That’s not possible.”

“The lesions, the cough, the weakness, the joint pain. It’s all the same, Dylan.”

“But it’s not possible. That was an angel disease that only affected the angels. The humans were immune.”

“It’s been altered.”

“How?”

Stiles shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Then how do you…”

But then she realized there was no reason to argue. She could see it, probably had seen it from the beginning. She just didn’t want to believe it.

She walked over to a bench and sat down. She felt like curling up into the fetal position and comforting herself by rocking like a baby. She had thought they were past all of this nonsense. The end of the war—the choice made—that was supposed to be the end of it all. Luc and Lily were dead, Joanna was…well, they hadn’t heard from her in thirty-seven years, so she assumed that she was gone. The people were becoming human again, the world was rebuilding itself. They were living their second chance.

And now this.

“Could it be the gargoyles?”

Stiles shrugged. “I don’t know, but I doubt it. It’s their purpose to protect humans, not harm them.”

“You said some turned on them—”

“They turned on the Nephilim. Not the humans. And now…even though they’re all Nephilim, their souls are blessed and they’ve lost their powers, so, technically, they’re human again. And that puts them back under the protection of the gargoyles.”

“Are you sure?”

Stiles came over and sat heavily on the bench beside her. “I’m never completely sure of anything. But I’m pretty certain.”

“We should talk to Donna.”

Stiles hesitated. Neither of them had seen a gargoyle in years. Demetria, one of the gargoyle leaders, used to come by every couple of years, just to check in, but she stopped five, maybe seven years ago. Donna, Dylan’s sister—they shared a guardian in the dorms at Genero—was their only contact with the gargoyles, now. But the last time they saw Donna was over a year ago.

Dylan slid her hand over Stiles’. He wrapped his fingers around hers, squeezing her hand. And then, in a blink, they were standing in a bright, airy room Dylan didn’t recognize. But she recognized the pretty, blonde woman sitting on a couch across from where Dylan and Stiles appeared.

“Dylan!”

She jumped up and ran to Dylan, throwing her arms around her and almost knocking them both off their feet. But Dylan was just as happy to see her, burying her face in Donna’s hair and breathing in the familiar scent of her.

“I can’t believe you’re here. Demetria thought…but I wasn’t sure.”

“What?” Dylan pushed Donna’s face back so she could read her expression. “Demetria thought…what?”

“She thought the two of you might show up. We’ve been hearing about this illness that’s affecting the humans.”

Dylan wished she didn’t have to confirm what they had heard because she could feel the fear that seemed to ebb and flow inside of her sister like the waves of an ocean. It was Donna’s nature, more than it had ever been Dylan’s, to protect those around her.

“A hundred in our community, so far,” she said. “And there are more in the other communities. Some have as many as three or four hundred patients.”

Donna’s pretty eyes clouded over. “I had hoped it was just a reemergence of some flu, or something.”

“Where’s Demetria?” Stiles asked, moving behind Dylan.

“She’s in the conference room with some of the others.” Donna studied Dylan for a long minute, her eyes shifting briefly to Stiles. “This way.”

They followed her up a set of stairs that ended at a tall, wooden door. They could hear voices coming from behind it. Dylan recognized Demetria’s, but none of the others. But Stiles must have heard something, but he suddenly stepped in front of Dylan and guided her behind him.

“Stiles?”

And then Donna opened the door and revealed a room full of gargoyles in their natural, stone-like forms.

One in particular stood, a deep growl coming from somewhere deep in his chest.

“Wilhelm.”

Stiles burst across the room and grabbed Wilhelm around the neck, slamming him against the far wall.

“Hello, brother,” Wilhelm said with laughter in his voice despite the restriction of Stiles’ hold.

Stiles slammed him to the wall again, only vaguely aware of the plaster and dust raining down around them.

“What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same question. Why haven’t you gone back to where you came from?”

“I didn’t betray my Father.”

Wilhelm laughed. “No. You just betrayed everyone else.”

“Cut it out!” Demetria came up behind Stiles, pulling at his arm. “Wilhelm has made amends, Stiles.”

Stiles shook his head. “He delivered humans to the angels.”

“They weren’t all human,” Wilhelm said. “And you knew it.”

“They were
my
people. And you sent them to become slaves for Luc and Lily.”

Wilhelm shrugged. “We all make mistakes.”

Stiles shoved him against the wall a third time, the wooden studs that formed the frame snapping with a loud pop.

“Your mistake caused good people to suffer. And it derailed my mission. You almost made it impossible for me to do what I was here to do. If you hadn’t—”

“But it all worked out for the best.”

Anger burned inside of Stiles. If Wilhelm hadn’t been stealing humans from a battle he was supposed to be helping the humans fight, and if he hadn’t stolen Tyler’s lover, Philip, Stiles would have had a few more days with Rebecca and his unborn son. He wouldn’t have had to work with Joanna to escape Luc and Lily. He wouldn’t have had to risk another angel, possibly exposing her identity to the community where she had found acceptance.

Wilhelm was his ally once. But now, when Stiles looked at him, all he saw was that conference room in Philadelphia…

He felt the movement of air that indicated Wilhelm had come back for another round. Stiles sidestepped him, moving up behind Nick and placing both hands on either side of his head. In an instant Nick’s mental walls fell and Stiles heard the quiet thoughts that Nick thought he was concealing:

We’re almost home free. Just let us get past this and Luc will give us the freedom he promised. A house, silence, and no more of this ridiculous war with these insane humans…

And then he saw it all. The agreement between Nick and Luc, the story he’d told Wilhelm. The way he chose his victims, assuming they were all humans with angel DNA somewhere in their ancestry. He was wrong on that, but he knew Luc wouldn’t bother to verify it. They needed slaves, warm bodies to take the place of the captives Stiles had released from that little farmhouse just over two years before…Rhonda and Anna and all the others he’d freed the day he infected Lily with the angel disease…

Stiles’ angel sword appeared in his hand, welcomed by the horrified gasps of those around him. Wilhelm’s eyes widened.

“You won’t do it. We’re brothers.”

“You stopped being my brother when you turned on the humans.”

“It wasn’t me. It was Nick and Dina—”

“They would never do anything without your permission.”

“Stiles…”

Dylan came up behind him and pressed her hand to the center of his back. He could feel a slow infusion of peace. It was like climbing into a warm bath of bubbles at the end of a long day. It calmed the tension in his shoulders, eased the ache in his chest. But it didn’t completely destroy the anger that was still simmering just below the surface.

He pressed the sword to Wilhelm’s stone throat. A few drops of the gargoyle’s grayish-red blood ran over the smooth, silver blade.

“This is not what we came for.” Dylan wrapped her hand over Stiles’ sword hand, her fingers pressed into the spaces between his. “We came here for the people, not for decades-old revenge.”

But it didn’t feel decades old. It felt as new as it had been when it first played out. He’d let Wilhelm go then. He wasn’t sure he could live with himself if he did it again.

Stiles, this is not who you are.

Dylan’s voice echoed in his mind and turned into Rebecca’s soft, soothing tones. And that tore the scab off of a wound that was so slow to heal.

He stepped back, opening his hand as the sword simply disappeared.

“You will pay for your sins.” Stiles pointed at Wilhelm as he pulled out of the ruin of the wall and shrank into his human form. “One day, you will pay.”

“We all will, brother.”

Stiles inclined his head slightly, acknowledging the truth. One day, Stiles would also pay for the things he had done all those years ago. But there was a difference between sacrificing a friend for the larger good and making a deal with the devil.

Donna rushed around Stiles and Dylan to touch Wilhelm’s face, checking him for injuries. They shared a kiss that clearly showed an intimacy beyond friendship. It disgusted Stiles. He turned and stormed from the room, weary in a way that was new…different.

“I don’t think I can do this anymore,” he whispered under his breath. “I don’t think I can do whatever it is you want from me, Father.”

And then Dylan was there, her hand on his shoulder taking some of the weariness away. He studied her familiar features, a face he had known since before she was even born, and he felt a spark of hope that continued to burn deep in his soul.

He’d told her once that he was a patient man. But he was afraid his patience was beginning to run thin.