BROKEN ANGELS (Angels and Demons Book 1) (6 page)

“We’ve been hearing things, but we weren’t convinced that it was as serious as this.”

Dylan leaned forward, bracing her arms on her knees. “We have three dead in our city. We don’t know about the other cities, but I wouldn’t be surprised if more follow.”

“Three does not make an epidemic,” Wilhelm said.

Donna took Wilhelm’s hand, shooting him a look that made him sit back and stare up at the ceiling for a moment.

“Our doctors don’t know how to treat it,” Dylan continued. “And we’re pretty sure we recognize the symptoms.”

Demetria’s eyebrows rose. “From what? Something before the war?”

“During the war, actually.” Stiles was studying his hands—hands that were shaking just slightly. “I think someone or something has modified the angel disease.”

Silence fell over the room. Everyone seemed to be looking at the floor except for Dylan and Donna. And then Wilhelm laughed.

“Brilliant,” he said. “You’ve struck again, Stiles.”

Dylan felt the anger and shame rush through Stiles. For a moment, she was afraid he might charge Wilhelm again. But he stayed seated there on the couch beside her, still staring at his hands.

“We all agreed that creating the illness was the best thing at the time.”

“Yes, well, no one imagined it would be such a colossal failure.”

“What are you talking about?” Donna asked.

Demetria shook her head. “There’s no point in dredging up the past.”

“Oh, why not?” Wilhelm asked. “He had no problem with it a few minutes ago.”

Dylan felt like she’d been dropped into the plot of a bad romance novel. She studied Stiles face and could see that he was hiding something. But no matter how hard she poked, she couldn’t find a crack in his mental walls that hid his thoughts from everyone around him.

“Maybe we should just get this out of the way.”

Demetria shook her head, but Wilhelm seemed thrilled to be the one to reveal one of Stiles’ many secrets.

“Stiles met some scientist from Genero—Matthew something—who told him that the elixir Lily and her friends were trying to make to give them freewill had interesting side effects from time to time. It would make the angels sick; it’d cause them to die quick, but horrifying deaths. So he thought it would be a brilliant way to make the angels go home voluntarily.” Wilhelm shook his head. “He had his scientist perfect a version of the elixir that caused the worst of these side effects, to create a disease that would only effect angels. And then he injected them with it.”

Dylan stared at Stiles. “You did that?”

“It was early in the war. We were trying to stop the angels from annihilating the human race.”

“You injected Lily?”

Stiles’ eyes finally met her own. There were so many emotions in those eyes…so much emotion rolling off of him in waves that it threatened to drown her. Pride, anger, grief, pain, shame…so many that she couldn’t even begin to understand them all.

“What about Joanna? You?”

Wilhelm laughed again. “You mean the idiot caught his own disease? Brilliant, Stiles.”

But Stiles didn’t seem to hear him. He was focused on Dylan and nothing else.

“I didn’t inject Joanna.”

“Then how?”

“The elixir the angels took to give themselves freewill…it changed their powers. Some lost the ability to move into their ethereal form, some couldn’t hear other’s thoughts, and some were unable to heal themselves.” Stiles studied Dylan for a minute. “I’m not sure how Joanna got it…if she really had it. She might have just been playing on your sympathies to try to get you to agree to help Lily.”

Dylan nodded slowly, remembering the conversation she’d had with Joanna when that angel—Ichabod, she’d called him, because he looked like the character from an old book she used to read—took Dylan to Wyatt’s mother, back when Joanna had thought she could manipulate Dylan into making the choice the angels wanted her to make. It would make sense that the scars and lesions Joanna had shown her were something else. She certainly hadn’t appeared all that ill at the time.

“But you,” Dylan said, touching Stiles’ hand. “You had it. You can’t convince me that was a trick.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

That overwhelming sadness that Dylan had always associated with Stiles filled his eyes. But that was before Rebecca. She hadn’t seen it there for so long that she had almost forgotten what it looked like. Seeing it now took Dylan back to a place she had thought they’d put behind them long ago.

She didn’t push him. She suddenly wasn’t sure she wanted to know the truth.

“How could it have been modified?”

It was Demetria’s question, but it was one that was on all of their minds. Dylan turned to look at the gargoyle.

“The most logical conclusion would be Genero. But Genero was leveled in the explosion thirty-five years ago. And the ruins were excavated for materials years ago. There’s nothing left there.”

“There were other places where Lily and her scientists conducted experiments.” Wilhelm stood, pulling away from Donna’s arms. “I’m surprised he hasn’t mentioned that to you.”

Dylan looked at Stiles again. “Is that true?”

He nodded. “There were several, but none were as active as Genero.”

“But if the scientists left behind notes, or records of their work, anyone with a scientific background could have found it and done this.”

“I don’t think that’s possible.”

“Why not?” Demetria asked.

Stiles stood; he was just as restless as Wilhelm was. But he didn’t begin to pace as Wilhelm was doing. He just stood there in front of the couch, his hands on his hips.

“Because I know where the notes Matthew made are. And I know that most of the other facilities were leveled in the war.”

“But not all of them,” Demetria said.

“Not all.”

Demetria sat back in her chair, flopping like a teenager. It was funny because she still looked the same as she had when Dylan was a ward in the dormitory where Demetria was the headmistress. She still had the same dark hair and the same frown lines on either side of her mouth. She still looked like she was a woman in her mid-thirties even though she had to be at least seventy, maybe even much older than that. The gargoyles, apparently, didn’t age, either.

Donna was the only one in the room that showed signs of time passing. But even she was still as pretty as she had been at seventeen.

“It had to have been modified by a human. If a gargoyle had done it, I would know about it. And if there were angels hanging around,” she gestured toward Stiles and Dylan, “I’m sure the two of you would be aware of it, right?”

Stiles nodded right away, but Dylan wasn’t sure that was true. She had many of the powers angels had, but hers were different, stronger in some ways. But she didn’t hear other angels the way she suspected Stiles did sometimes.

Maybe her radio to heaven was broken.

“And,” Demetria continued, “I doubt that some force of nature altered it. If that was the case, it would have cropped up years ago. The angel disease was pretty much eradicated when Miss Dylan sent the angels all back to heaven nearly forty years ago.”

“So, we’re looking for notes or equipment that someone might have taken from one of these facilities.”

“Not we.” Stiles stepped in front of Dylan. “You should go back home and keep an eye on things.”

She shook her head. “No, I won’t. I won’t just sit there and watch people die. I need to do something.”

“Dylan…” Stiles glanced at Donna, clearly concerned that the others in the room might overhear something he didn’t want them to hear.

We don’t know who might be out there, what their intentions might be. And it is still my mission to make sure you’re safe.

Then you’ll have to come along.

Stiles groaned. “You’re so stubborn.”

Dylan stood up, pushing him back slightly with the movement of her body. “I wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t.” she moved around him and stood in front of Demetria. “Do we know where these places are?”

Demetria shrugged. “I have a vague idea.”

“I know who would know,” Wilhelm said.

Dylan glanced at him, waving her hand to encourage him to speak.

“The head of the resistance.”

Jimmy.

Stiles took Dylan’s hand after all the arrangements were made and they were soon back on the park bench where they had started. Stiles started to pull away, but Dylan drew his hand into her lap and held on.

“Tell me.”

He didn’t ask what she was talking about because he knew exactly what she wanted to know. And he knew that if he resisted her, she would not let it go. Dylan could be like a dog with a bone…she was relentless when she wanted something.

“I was here for a long time before you came along, Dylan. I did a lot of things I am not proud of.”

“It was a war. We all did things we weren’t proud of.”

“Yes, well, I hurt people. I told lies. I killed.”

Dylan was quiet for a moment. But she didn’t pull away and he didn’t sense anger or hurt in her. In fact, after a moment, she began to run her hand over the back of his.

“I know bad things happened before we met,” she said softly. “I always sensed something in you, something dark that you buried deep inside. I always kind of thought it had to do with Rebecca and the time you spent with her before you had to come to me.”

“It did—some of it.”

“And when you and Rebecca were reunited, I saw that darkness lessen.”

Stiles couldn’t stop his thoughts from going there, from going to Rebecca and the peace that her presence infused in his soul. He missed her. But even he had to admit that being with Rebecca had been something of a band-aid. It didn’t make the darkness go away. It just covered it up with the belief that he could be normal, he could be a husband and a lover, and that he could have the same happiness he saw growing and changing in the humans around him.

It made him feel like he could be human, too.

But he would never stop being who he was. And he was an angel of God, a servant of heaven. He would always have to do what was expected of him. He would never know mortality, and he would never be able to grow old with the woman he loved. He would never be allowed the freewill to choose his path in life.

And he would never be able to avoid hurting those he loved if they had the misfortune of standing in the way of God’s plan.

“You don’t want to know all the things I’ve done. You don’t want to know the darkness I’ve seen.”

“But you can’t keep carrying it around. It’s wearing on you.”

He squeezed her hand. “I appreciate that you care.”

“Of course I care. After everything we’ve been through together, I can’t help it.”

They sat there in silence for a long while. People were walking on the street not far from them and a few children were playing there in the park. But there weren’t as many people as there had been before the illness struck. People were beginning to shun public places, afraid of catching the disease. It seemed like just another reminder of this whole fiasco.

“Is there more?”

Stiles glanced at Dylan. “More what?”

“The disease. Wilhelm said you injected it. That means there was a physical supply at one point.”

Stiles nodded. “There was. I diluted it and put it in several different syringes. Then I injected a bunch of guards, Lily, and a couple of other angels.”

“Did it ever become airborne?”

“I don’t think so.”

Stiles could almost feel the syringes in his hands now, could almost remember how it felt to inject those angels, the power he’d felt as he did it. He’d been so sure that the moment the angels became ill they would be so frightened that they would immediately return to heaven. Some did. Most didn’t. Maybe he had diluted it too much…maybe he had simply under estimated his brethren’s commitment to Lucifer. Or maybe he had underestimated God’s desire to bring them all home. An existence without freewill was a funny thing.

“It was an accident,” he said softly. “I was going to inject Joanna. When she sent Mammon for you, she revealed her location. I hadn’t been able to find her, but I suspected she was up to no good again. I intended to follow and inject her with the last of the disease. Ironic, I suppose, since at the same moment she was trying to convince you she already had it.”

Dylan was quiet for a moment, considering what he had said. He knew she was remembering that day, the day she met Joanna for the first time. Dylan would have seen her die in Wyatt’s memories of his mother. It must have been quite a shock for her to realize that there were lies swirling, not just around her, but around everyone she knew.

“Why?” she finally asked. “Why inject her then? You had the chance once before. When you helped her make Jimmy and Wyatt believe she was dead, you had the chance to send her back to heaven then. Why didn’t you?”

Oh, how he wished he had. So many things would have been avoided…

“I owed her.”

“You owed Joanna? You came to Earth to stop Joanna. You were all set to send her back to heaven before she met Jimmy, before Wyatt was born. What changed?”

Stiles pulled Dylan’s hand into his lap, wrapping both his hands around hers. “There was a battle outside of the mine in Philadelphia where Rebecca and I and our group had ended up just before I had to leave them.” He closed his eyes, the memory of it so vivid it nearly took his breath away. His confrontation with Mammon, Luc’s threat against Rebecca and Harry, and the promise Stiles somehow secured from him. It was as if it had happened just yesterday. “In the chaos of the fight, Wilhelm and his gargoyles gathered a group of humans they thought were Nephilim. They made a deal with Luc, something about security when everything was said and done.”

“That’s what you meant back there when you said he turned on the humans.”

Stiles nodded. “I had friends among those they took. And even if I hadn’t, I couldn’t have left them. Luc wanted to turn them into slaves and work them to death. I had to do something.” He rubbed his hand against hers, aware of the warmth of her healing powers slipping from her flesh into his. But even that couldn’t touch the regrets that continued to burn inside of him. “They knew I would come and they were waiting for me. I was arrested right away, but another angel managed to get to the people and get them home for me.”

“They took you to Viti.”

Stiles nodded. “Ironically enough, I had a vision of you there. When they held you there the first time you met Luc and Lily.”

“You did?”

“Yeah.”

“You saved me.”

“Wyatt would have gotten you out of there. I just distracted the guards.”

She shook her head. “We would have all three been caught if it weren’t for you.” She leaned close and kissed his cheek lightly. “I don’t think I’ve ever thanked you for that.”

Stiles cleared his throat. He never knew what to do when people thanked him for doing what God had told him to do. But Dylan never seemed to require a response.

A couple of kids ran past them, laughing as they did. Stiles watched them for a minute. What a different world this was from the one he lived in back then, a world so dangerous that children weren’t allowed to run free or do the things that kids naturally do. Small children learned to play quietly then, to go without, and to run and hide whenever an adult made a certain gesture.

He hoped that reality would remain a bad memory.

“Luc was going to execute me,” Stiles continued. “But he wanted Joanna there; he wanted her to watch her soul mate die. Instead, Joanna turned on Lily. She helped me escape.”

Dylan made a soft sound of disbelief. “I can’t imagine Joanna doing that.”

“She did it for Wyatt.” Stiles squeezed Dylan’s hand. “She did it because Lily was talking about the Nephilim, about their unblessed souls.”

“Joanna was…complicated.”

Stiles laughed because that was an understatement. Joanna was more than complicated. She was an angel who wanted Earth to become a paradise for angels, but she married a human and had a child with an unblessed soul. She wanted Luc to succeed in his goals, but she worked against him to allow Stiles to live. She wanted to save Wyatt’s soul, but by attempting to influence Dylan to choose for the angels, she was dooming his soul.

Complicated was definitely an understatement.

“That’s why I helped her appear dead for Jimmy and Wyatt, and then healed her. But my debt was paid that day.”

“And she disappeared.”

He nodded. “When Mammon—”

“Mammon?”

“Tall, thin, didn’t talk much.”

Dylan thought about it for a second. “Ichabod.”

Stiles laughed. “That’s a good name for him.”

“No one ever said his name when I was around. And it never occurred to me to ask.”

“He was Davida’s soul mate.”

Dylan’s mouth opened, but then snapped shut again. “It never occurred to me she had a soul mate. I mean, once I realized she was an angel, I should have wondered. But I never did.”

“Their relationship was…complicated.”

“I think we all have complicated relationships with the people we love the most.”

She laid her head on Stiles’ shoulder. He let go of her hand and slid his arm around her. “I suppose we do.”

The sun was going down. The colors of the sunset bathed them in reds and purples, the colors of violence and death. But tonight it felt more like a renewal, a restart. Like this moment was the beginning of something new.

“So, Mammon stole me away from Sam and took me to Joanna.”

“I was watching you. I saw where he took you…I knew the place. It was the same place where I found Joanna after I first fell.”

“You were supposed to be watching Wyatt.” Dylan lifted her head a little. “You promised me.”

“You and your safety have always been my only mission, Dylan. I couldn’t have stayed with Wyatt even if I had wanted to.”

She lay her head back down. “And then?”

“I retrieved the last of the disease and went after you. But Mammon caught me sneaking up to the house. We fought—”

“He knew why you were there?”

“Mammon and I had history. He betrayed me, I betrayed him. I castrated him…”

Dylan gasped. “You what?”

“He’d made the mistake of telling me he could no longer heal his human form. And I wasn’t feeling very generous at the moment. I didn’t want to send him home, but I also didn’t want to kill him. I wanted to send a message.”

Dylan grunted. “Remind me not to get on your bad side.”

“I had the syringe in my hand when Mammon caught me. I tried to inject him, but he was stronger than I had imagined he would be. He managed to inject me without realizing what he had done. And then he took me to some ruin and chained me up—”

“I saw that.” Dylan sat up. “It was a dream; I thought…I saw that.”

He touched her face lightly. “There was nothing you could have done. Besides, Mammon was never the smartest of angels. He thought he was frightening me by leaving me hanging there, but he forgot that I hadn’t drunk that stupid elixir the rest of them drank, that I still had all my angel powers intact. I simply slipped into my ethereal form the moment he left the room. I found Sam, took him to Wyatt, made sure Wyatt was okay—since I knew you would ask—and then went back for you. But by then you were running from Luc.”

“Yes, Joanna used the supposed threat of Luc coming for us to teach me how to move into my ethereal form.”

“And they tracked you.”

“That’s why you came to me, but you were already sick—”

“The last of the disease wasn’t as diluted as it should have been. If you hadn’t healed me…”

Dylan reached up and kissed Stiles’ cheek lightly. “I’m glad I could.”

“Yeah, well, it all worked out for the best.”

She rested her head on his shoulder again for a moment. “Do you think…” she began to ask, but then she sat up, her spine as straight and stiff as it could possibly get.

“Something’s wrong,” she said as she jumped to her feet and began to run toward her home.

Stiles followed—as always.