DARK SOULS (Angels and Demons Book 2) (15 page)

Dylan closed her eyes and pictured a dozen souls floating up to heaven, the darkness washing from their souls like dirt from a gardener’s hands. When she opened them, her vision came true as a dozen souls left the bodies they’d possessed. But others remained, laughing.

“Do you really think you have made a dent in our number?” a voice asked in her head. “We are more than you can even imagine.”

She pulled a candlestick from her arsenal and lashed out at the nearest possessed whose demon had refused to let go of its tether to this world. She struck the man on the back of the head and he fell like a ton of bricks. The body was unhurt except for a knot on the back of his head.

This was so ineffective.

A possessed woman lashed out at Dylan, its eyes flashing fire as it reached for her. Dylan could feel the anger and hatred seeping from the demon’s soul. Its darkness searched for her grief, searching to expose her with its exaggerated pain. Dylan immediately wrapped her soul in a protective barrier as Stiles had taught her, but this demon was different; it was more powerful than any she’d come up against before. She fought it as her soul sought the basic, pure ball of beauty she knew existed in the darkness somewhere. When she found it, something odd happened. She shifted out of time.

Dylan was transported from a battleground outside of a southern city in the United Alliance to an unfamiliar city.

She was standing in the middle of an unpaved street, watching a horse-drawn wagon speed toward her. She held up her hands to ward off the trampling she knew the horse was about to offer, but it went right through her like she was in her ethereal form.

Laughter sounded from a window across the way, pulling Dylan from her fright and her confusion. She knew the sound and knew it was important to her in some way. She crossed to the building and walked right through the door and into a large, open room filled with nothing in the warm summer afternoon but a few tables and a bored man behind a long bar. She went up the stairs and found herself in a bedroom where a young woman was lying in a short, heavy bed with another young woman.

“We’ll get out of here someday,” the dark-haired woman said. “We’ll take our savings and ride the train all the way to the ocean.”

“And then we’ll buy a small farm and never want again.”

“And never lay with a nasty cowboy who hasn’t washed in months.”

The blonde woman giggled. “Do you think there’s a man out there that has bathed more than three times a year?”

“Don’t care. I won’t lay with a man—any man—ever again.”

“You don’t like it?”

The dark-haired woman groaned. “What’s to like about it? If God intended for women to endure a man that way, he would have made their bodies smaller and better tasting.”

The blonde giggled. “He would have made them taste like chocolate.”

“Like my momma’s chocolate cake.”

They giggled together, moving close like small children sharing a secret. Their happiness was quickly shattered, however, as a man burst through the door.

“Where is it?” he demanded.

“What?” the dark-haired girl asked as she sat up and pulled the younger, smaller girl behind her back. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The money I hid in my boot. I had it before I came up here with you, but now it’s gone.”

“You probably drank it, you dumb fool.”

The man pulled a gun from under his heavy coat, waving it at the dark-haired girl’s head. “You give me my damn money, or I’ll kill you both.”

“And then you’ll never get your money back.”

The man didn’t even hesitate. He pulled the trigger; the noise was deafening. Dylan tried to grab his arm, but she couldn’t. Her fingers just went right through the solidity of his body. He fired again and again as screams and blood and bone jumped and flew around the room. Then he walked away, cursing under his breath as he did.

“What’s happened?” the dark-haired woman asked.

She could see Dylan, now that her soul had separated from her body.

“You’ve been killed,” Dylan answered, reaching for her.

The woman moved into Dylan’s arms, taking some measure of comfort from her closeness. And then she turned, and suddenly panicked as she remembered her friend.

“April?” She returned to the bed, but her friend was no longer there. She was floating just below the ceiling, watching the scene in confusion.

“Where am I?”

The dark-haired girl turned to her blonde friend and pulled her down into her arms.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “It’s over. We’re going somewhere else, somewhere beautiful.”

But then the blonde’s soul turned black, and the darkness of the demon soul swirled with anger and hatred. The dark-haired girl jerked away.

“You’re not my friend. You’re not April!”

“She is.” Dylan moved up beside April. “Do you see? She’s still in here. She’s just lost because her soul couldn’t go to heaven with you.”

“April?” The room around them faded and turned back into the battlefield. But the dark-haired woman’s soul was there now, calling to her friend from high above them. “Come home now, April,” she said in her gentle, sad voice. “Come home to me.”

And that’s what it took for this soul. She let go of whatever it was that kept her tethered to Earth and floated to heaven. Dylan felt the reunion as much as saw it, and she felt the happiness that overwhelmed both souls as they were reunited.

And then she was attacked by another and another, so many… She couldn’t help them all, no matter how much she wanted to.

***

“There’s got to be a better way!”

Raphael stared at the tabletop. Wilhelm looked down at his hands. Rachel moved closer to Raphael, sliding her hand into his. Demetria studied the pictures on her wall. Donna pulled her knees up to her chest. No one knew what to say. No one understood these demons any better than Dylan did.

Dylan felt sick with this overwhelming need to make things right for these hurting souls. It was her only focus anymore. When she slept and when she was awake, all she could think about was the pain she felt coming from them on the battlefield. She had to fix this. It was the only thing that kept her going—this need to find an answer.

“They’ve kicked us out of two more cities,” Demetria suddenly said.

Dylan turned from where she had been pacing beside the long conference table in Demetria’s war room.

“Who did what?”

“Josephine’s council. They’re throwing any gargoyles they recognize out of the cities. They’ve thrown a dozen of our people out of cities throughout the Americas in the last month.”

What the hell?

Stiles shook his head, his frustration palpable on his face.

“How are we supposed to know where the demons are manifesting if we don’t have gargoyles and angels in place?”

Demetria shrugged. “It’s this new law,” she said. “They’ve tossed a few humans out of the cities too, claiming they’re sympathetic to the gargoyles and could, potentially, be a danger. Pretty soon, they’ll be using this law to put people in jail cells and lock them up for their sympathies.”

“It’s turning into a repeat of the hate crimes the government claimed to be against in the time before the war,” Wilhelm said. “But then they used it to rid themselves of people they couldn’t jail any other way.”

“They’re turning on humans, too?” Rachel asked. “That seems counterproductive.”

“They’re paranoid,” Donna said. “It’s just like when the leaders of Genero banned books about humanity to discourage the children from learning about compassion and leadership. They wanted them to focus on what they could do for the angels, not about what they could do for the world as a whole.”

“They’re skewing the people’s perspective,” Demetria said.

“They’re turning us into the enemy and making it harder for us to do our job,” Wilhelm said.

“We can’t let that happen,” Dylan said.

“What option do we have?” Demetria asked. “They have us over a barrel.”

Dylan crossed her arms over her chest and let her wings unfurl behind her, so large they nearly touched each wall on either side of the room.

“We have a discussion with them. Who’s with me?”

Stiles and Raphael immediately stood. Demetria stepped up beside Stiles and Wilhelm took a spot beside Raphael. Rachel and Donna stood too, pride in the set of their shoulders. Dylan smiled, pride in her own movements as she snapped her fingers and transported the entire group to the slightly larger conference room in the capital.

It was odd, being there and not seeing Wyatt sitting at his place at the head of the table.

“What the…”

One of the male members of the council jumped from his chair the moment Dylan and her group arrived, clearly frightened by their appearance. Josephine was standing at the far end of the room with another woman—the woman Wyatt had been conspiring with to pass the law banishing the angels and gargoyles. She stepped back slightly, her hand moving protectively over her swollen belly as her eyes widened with the sight of her mother’s extended angel wings. She’d never seen Dylan in any form other than her human one. Her total experience with her mother’s angel nature was her healing powers and the unique connection she’d once shared with Wyatt. She’d never seen anything else.

“We have come to negotiate a treaty,” Dylan said in a calm, clear voice.

“There is nothing to negotiate,” the jumpy, angry councilman said.

Wilhelm, now in his gargoyle persona, growled as he stepped toward the man, forcing him to stumble back against his chair.

“What are you asking for?” Josephine asked, approaching the opposite end of the table from where Dylan and the others stood.

“We want you to stop throwing gargoyles out of the cities,” Demetria announced.

“And stop punishing humans who appear sympathetic to the gargoyles and angels.”

“There are only two angels,” the woman with Josephine said.

Raphael stepped forward. “That’s no longer true, Mellissa.”

The woman’s eyes widened. “How do you know my name?”

“I know a lot about you. Your mother was Reece and your father was John. You were born just after Dylan made her choice, the third of six children. Your husband’s name is Kurtis and…you should probably spend more time at home before he grows too accustomed to the neighbor’s apple pie.”

There was a twitter of laughter around the table. The woman, Mellissa, blushed a deep red.

“Who are you?” Josephine asked.

“I am the archangel Raphael. I’ve come to Earth to serve the savior, my descendant, Dylan.”

Surprise fluttered through Josephine’s expression. “Descendant?”

“He’s your grandfather…many, many generations removed,” Dylan said.

“I thought you didn’t know—”

“It’s complicated,” Stiles said.

Josephine touched her belly again, smoothing her palm over the curve of her womb.

“We passed a law,” the jumpy man said, returning to his seat. “We cannot revoke it so soon after it’s gone into effect. It would make us look weak.”

“We’re not asking you to revoke it. We’re asking you to ignore it.”

“Have a law that’s not enforced?” Mellissa asked. “We’d look like fools.”

“You’re inhibiting out ability to protect humanity,” Dylan said. “We need to have the gargoyles and the angels in the cities so that we know as quickly as possible when danger arrives.”

“What danger?” another man scoffed. “We haven’t seen danger since that disease was eradicated.”

“That’s because we’ve managed to keep it under control until now,” Demetria said. “But you’re cutting us off, making it impossible to make things work.”

“We’re protecting the people from the likes of you freaks.”

Wilhelm growled again, but Donna touched his huge, marble-like arm and he immediately calmed down.

“You are in danger,” Dylan said, her eyes on Josephine and no one else. “The demons are still a threat and we can only protect you from them if we have eyes on the ground, our people who can tell us where they are and what they’re doing.”

“Are these the dark souls you were ranting about months ago?” Mellissa asked. “If they’re so dangerous, how come we haven’t heard anything about them?”

“Because we’ve been keeping them in check,” Stiles said.

“At the beginning of humanity, God sent the angels to watch over his greatest creation,” Dylan said, again with her eyes only on Josephine. “And he sent the gargoyles to help them. It is their sole purpose to protect and serve the humans to the best of their ability. You are preventing them from doing that.”

“We don’t need your protection anymore,” Mellissa insisted. “We can survive on our own two feet.”

“Do you want me to prove it to you?” Dylan asked. “I can promise you, it won’t be pleasant.”

The jumpy man laughed a deep, humorless laugh. “Threats. From an angel. That’s a new one.”

With a snap of her fingers, Dylan had a lassoed demon in her hand. She intentionally set it free and watched as it circled the room. The council members watched in horror. It didn’t surprise her that it chose the jumpy man. It wrapped itself around his soul and laughed in glee, a sound that was much more sinister than the laugh the man himself had indulged moments earlier.