SOUL MATES (Angels and Demons Book 3) (11 page)

Stiles tried to stay as far from her as he could. But, somehow, she still managed to get to him.

He was lying in a sparsely furnished room on the other side of the building, two floors above the room where Ellie lay, yet he could still feel her presence. It was as if she was mocking him, teasing him for thinking about her, for not telling Dylan what he suspected was going on inside of her. He was beginning to question his own perceptions. Had he really seen Ellie smile after he attacked her? Had he really sensed Joanna inside of her? Did he really feel Joanna’s thoughts heavy in his own mind every time he walked into this building?

It had been more than forty years since Joanna disappeared. They were convinced she was dead. Or gone. They had thought she’d become part of the energy of the world, the same way Luc did when Dylan had stabbed him with her angel’s sword, just like Lily did two years before that. But now…was it possible she’d remained hidden all these years, that she’d been patient enough to allow Dylan to raise a child and for Stiles to make a life with Rebecca, before she came back to begin raining havoc on them all again?

It wasn’t like Joanna to be patient. But it was like Joanna to be vengeful.

He got out of bed and began to pace, thinking about the attack on Dylan during the battle in London. He’d seen it coming, but he stayed back and watched. He wanted to see how they behaved; he wanted to see what Gabriel would do.

There was something about Gabriel…if he told Dylan now, she would never believe him. But if he could prove it to her…that was a different story.

And he did just what Stiles had expected. He waited until she was injured, until she called for help. Then he swooped in and saved the day, trying to prove to her that he was some sort of knight in shining armor. But he didn’t know Stiles was watching him. He didn’t know that Stiles saw him waiting for just the right moment.

He didn’t know that Stiles saw through the light in his soul and saw the darkness hiding behind there.

“Oh, Joanna, what are you up to?”

He could almost hear her laughing at him.

“We’re making progress,” Dylan said quietly.

“What kind of progress?”

Josephine’s voice was just as quiet, but she was clearly unsatisfied with the report Dylan had just given on the demons. There were two more attacks over the last week, none on the same scale as the London attack, but big enough to catch the attention of the humans in the area. And they were frightened and calling for answers. Settlers were beginning to arm themselves and were turning on friends, lovers, and their children without warning. They were hurting one another—killing one another in some cases—out of fear of what might happen. Things were quickly getting out of hand and Dylan felt helpless to do anything about it.

“We have researchers studying these demons. We have groups of angels fighting them wherever they appear. We think we might know what they’re after, but we’re not quite sure how to derail them.”

Josephine made a soft sound as she looked away, her eyes moving over her fellow council members. They had all listened in silence. These people were hand chosen by Josephine to form a special committee that was the only government group that would know about, and meet with, the angels from this point forward. None of them seemed terribly pleased with what Dylan had to say.

“We need something more concrete,” a woman from Africa said. “Our government is gathering weapons from the ruins. They want to round up these possessed and execute them.”

“That won’t help,” Dylan said. “All they’ll be killing are the human hosts. The demons will simply disengage themselves and move on to someone else.”

“I understand that,” the woman said, “but my government does not. They only see the possessed; they do not see what possesses them.”

Dylan was unsure how to respond to that. In fact, she didn’t know how to answer any of their questions. What could she tell them when she didn’t understand any of this herself?

Her eyes fell on Josephine. There was so much she wanted to say to her, but she couldn’t do it here, in front of these strangers. Josephine glanced at her and seemed to understand. She looked around the room one last time.

“I don’t see that there is anything else to discuss here,” she said. “So, we will adjourn this meeting with the right to call it to order again at some future date.”

Josephine stood and rubbed the small of her back as she headed for the door. Dylan followed, pleased to see that Rhonda was tucked into a tiny cradle in Josephine’s office outside the conference room.

“She’s getting so big.”

Josephine glanced over her shoulder at Dylan. “She is. I almost miss the midnight feedings when she was so tiny.”

Dylan smiled. “I always loved those moments alone with you.”

Josephine stood over her baby for a moment, her shoulders relaxing from the tension the meeting had brought. “Did you and Daddy ever think about having more children?”

“Sometimes. But we were pretty content with our little family.”

“Matthew wants to have more, but Harry says that I probably won’t be able to carry another child. He says my age is a problem.”

“I’m sorry.”

Josephine shrugged. “We were lucky to have Rhonda.” She turned and looked at Dylan. “You’re still…” She hesitated. “You have never aged.”

Dylan glanced down at herself, almost embarrassed by her tight muscles and firm skin that seemed so youthful beside Josephine’s middle-aged wrinkles and loosened muscles.

“A side effect of my conception and birth, I suppose.”

“Genetics.” Josephine snickered. “I wish I’d gotten a little more of your DNA, then.”

“Jo…”

“How’s Aunt Rachel?”

“She’s good. In fact, she’s getting married this weekend.”

Josephine’s jaw dropped. “You’re not serious!”

“I am. She’s marrying Raphael in a little ceremony at her place. I promised I would invite you and Matthew and Miss Rhonda here.”

Josephine laughed again. “That’s wonderful. Daddy always worried that Rachel would end up alone because of her books. He’d be happy to know she’s found someone.” She motioned for Dylan to come into her office as she pulled a couple of chairs around and settled in one herself. “Tell me about the guy. Raphael?”

Dylan nodded, sliding the door closed before she joined her. “He’s very dapper, the kind of guy who knows how to treat a lady like a lady.”

“Is he a local of Dytonia? I thought I knew most everyone there.”

Dylan shifted a little in her chair. “He’s an archangel, Jo.”

The color drained from Josephine’s face. “No,” she said, jumping to her feet and turning on Dylan. “You can’t let Rachel marry an angel!”

“Why not?”

“Because…”

“I don’t think you get it, Jo,” Dylan said, standing to confront her only child. “I am an archangel. I was created in a lab, but I am the same as Raphael. In fact, he is my distant relative, thanks to his marriage to a human woman back in the days when God was still something people believed in and angels lived openly among the humans. Back before humans started believing in false prophets and forgot the kindness of their father.”

“It’s not natural, what you are,” Josephine said. “You are not like us. You are not like Daddy and grandpa, and everyone else.”

“I’m not,” Dylan agreed. “But that doesn’t make me an abomination.” She studied her child as she said those words—as she allowed herself to actually accept that statement as fact for the first time in her long life. “I am not an abomination. I was created by God for a reason.”

“For what? To make some choice that anyone could have made?” Jo asked. “I grew up hearing about what you did—about the choice you made that ended the war. But anyone could have done that; anyone could have stood up to the angels and told them that humanity had a right to survive.”

“You think so?” Dylan inclined her head slightly as she crossed her arms over her chest. “Maybe. Maybe anyone could have made that choice. But God asked me to do it. And by doing it, I saved thousands, maybe millions, of people from the pain of another war. Because another war was brewing and it would have been the last straw. People were weak and worn thin by the angel war. They needed space. They needed time to recover. And now that they’ve had it, it’s time to fight again. And again God has chosen me to lead them. You might not understand that, or even appreciate it, but it’s the truth. And I have had to make some decisions that have been incredibly difficult for me. You…” Tears filled Dylan’s eyes as she watched the defiance that was so like Wyatt’s wash over her daughter’s face. “I hope you never have to face the difficult choices I have. I hope you always have Matthew at your side and Rhonda at your knee. But if you ever find yourself in a place where they are gone, I hope the most difficult decision you have to make is where to lay their grave stones.”

Dylan brushed past her daughter, pausing with her hand on the door. “With everything that’s going on now, deciding whether or not to support your aunt in her decision to marry the man she loves was a no-brainer.”

“Mom,” Jo said as Dylan walked back into the conference room. But that was all she said.

“I should have worn a different color,” Rachel said, looking at herself in the full-length mirror in her bedroom.

“No. That’s perfect,” Dylan said, moving up behind her.

“You think so?”

“Yes.”

Rachel studied her light pink dress in the mirror, smoothing her hands over the curves of her hips to brush the material flat against her body. “I read that women used to wear white to signify their purity.”

“I wore a pair of pants and a green t-shirt when Wyatt and I spoke our vows.”

Rachel met Dylan’s eyes in the mirror. “I bet it was beautiful.”

“It was,” Dylan said with a soft smile. “Just he and I and the river rushing behind us. I couldn’t imagine anything more perfect.”

“Is it silly to insist on a proper wedding like they did before the war?”

“Of course not. It’s what people are choosing now.”

“I just…I keep imagining that this was probably something my parents did when they were married.”

“I’m sure it is. And it’s what Jimmy did when he married Martha.”

Tears glistened in Rachel’s eyes, but they didn’t spill. “I wish he was here.”

“I do, too. But he’s probably watching from heaven.”

Rachel turned and gave Dylan a hard hug. “Thanks for being here.”

“I can’t imagine anywhere else I would want to be.”

Gabriel tapped on the door and stuck his head inside. “They’re ready downstairs.”

Rachel groaned. “I don’t know if I’m ready. I mean, I’ve been waiting for this for so long. But now that it’s here…”

“You’re fine,” Dylan said, stroking her cheek gently. “But we shouldn’t leave him waiting too long. He might come up here and demand to know what’s going on. Then he’ll see you in that dress and everything will be ruined.”

Rachel nodded, blinking quickly to rid her eyes of those tears. “Okay,” she said, her voice stronger than it had been a moment ago.

Dylan slid Rachel’s arm through her own and nodded to Gabriel. He stepped back, making room for them to slip out into the hallway.

There was absolute silence as they descended the stairs. Gabriel rushed to his place in the audience, sitting among Raphael’s legion of soldiers. They were standing along the far side of the room, each dressed in what could only be described as angelic robes, the material so clean and smooth that it seemed to be lit with its own internal light. Beside them were rows of chairs filled with townspeople, visitors from the city where Rachel grew up—where Dylan had lived and loved for most of the past forty-five years—friends from all sections of the Americas. At the front of the room, Raphael stood with a beatific smile on his face that made even Dylan feel her heart skip a little beat. Behind him stood Stiles dressed, for once, in something other than his customary denim pants and t-shirt. He wore another of those bright robes, but his was cut differently, with pants that fit his muscular legs in such a way that Dylan found herself thinking things about her dear friend that she shouldn’t. Sometimes she forgot that he was an angel and that he was as much a symbol of perfection as his brethren.

And then the guests stood and Dylan caught sight of Josephine, Matthew, and little Rhonda sitting toward the front of the room. Josephine caught her eye and inclined her head just slightly, conceding this one point to her mother.

If this was all she and Josephine agreed on, then it would be enough for Dylan.

It must have been a beautiful ceremony. But all Stiles could see was Dylan.

She wore a soft green dress that brought out the multitude of colors in her blue eyes. All these years and he’d only seen her in a dress a few times. One of those times was a dark, terrifying day he preferred not to recall. But others…he remembered the dress she’d worn when Josephine was elected president of the United Alliance of the Americas. There was also the dress she’d worn when Josephine got married. That one was blue and it seemed to make her skin glow with its complimentary tones. But this one…it was by far the best.

She caught his eye once, as the official explained to Rachel and Raphael what it meant to sign their names to the town record as husband and wife. A blush touched her cheeks as she did, even as a soft smile slipped across those perfect lips. It made his heart flutter a little. That hadn’t happened to him in a very long time.

He had thought his heart would be overrun with thoughts of Rebecca on this day. And she was there, at the back of his mind. How could he not remember the words they’d spoken to one another on the back porch of that house they’d commandeered for the winter, the pleasure and the naivety swimming in her eyes as she promised to always be faithful, to be obedient…

…to a certain extent—and to always, always love you.” Rebecca giggled a little, a blush burning on her cheeks. “Until death do…well, I guess we can skip that part.”

Stiles didn’t know what to say. He stared into her eyes and felt her thoughts as much as he heard them…as he heard the words she wanted him to say to her.

“I promise to always be faithful,” he said somberly, making a promise he had already made the first night she lay with him in his tent. “I promise to stand by you in sickness and in health and to always be there when you need me, no matter where the future takes us.”

He didn’t keep that last promise as faithfully as he had intended. But she always understood.

How had they found such happiness in the middle of such a chaotic time? Was it a once in a lifetime thing? Or could it happen again?

As he watched Dylan, he found himself hoping that lightning could strike twice.

The ceremony ended and the party moved outside to the city park. Stiles lost track of Dylan, but she wasn’t hiding her thoughts from him. Her walls—at least where he was concerned—had been coming down a little bit at a time over the last year. Today they were completely gone. She was thinking about Josephine and an argument they’d had. The thing was, though, she wasn’t totally upset about it, not like she might have been in the past. It made Stiles wonder what had changed.

“Thanks for standing with me,” Raphael said, pulling Stiles to one side as Rachel rushed around playing hostess.

“Of course. We’re brothers.”

“We are. But I also understand that you didn’t initially approve of my relationship with Rachel.”

Stiles nodded, seeing no point in denying the obvious. “I was concerned. I care deeply for Rachel. But so do you.”

“I do.” Raphael looked over at his new wife. “She is everything I admired in my first human wife. But she’s so much more than that, too.”

“Rachel is a unique creature,” Stiles agreed. “Make sure you make her happy.”

Music began playing and couples began migrating toward the dance floor. Stiles watched for Dylan, aware that she was somewhere nearby, watching the festivities with thoughts of the past on her mind. She was remembering Josephine’s wedding when she danced with Wyatt, remembering how nice it had felt to be in his arms again. Stiles wondered if she remembered that she danced with him that night, too.

And then she was walking past him as Gabriel led her by the hand to the dance floor. She laughed after he whispered something in her ear, something about his hope that he wouldn’t step on her toes. Then he was pulling her a little too close to his body and the thoughts that burst through her mind were more vivid than anything Stiles could ever have wanted to hear from anyone. It was bad enough hearing her thoughts about Wyatt. But to hear this…it threatened to kill his soul.

He didn’t even pause to tell anyone goodbye.

Ellie was walking alone in the clearing outside the jailhouse when Stiles arrived. He stayed off to one side, watching her while she thought she was alone. But she must have sensed him because she turned to the very tree he was hiding behind and smiled.

“I thought you would be gone all day.”

Stiles stepped around the tree and approached her. “The party just wasn’t my thing.”

“I thought anything Dylan attended was your thing.”

He chose to ignore that particular comment. Instead, he brushed a piece of hair out of her face and asked, “What are you doing out here?”

“I needed some fresh air and my guards didn’t seem to think there was any harm in it.”

Stiles could see why they didn’t think there was any harm in it. There was a golden lasso wrapped around her throat, hidden beneath the collar of her shirt as if it were some sort of necklace instead of a restraint. She reached up to touch it at the same moment he noticed it, running her fingers slowly over it.

“I understand she created this,” she said.

“Why are you so curious about Dylan?”

Ellie shrugged. “She was my purpose before all of this,” she said, gesturing at her surroundings. “I guess some habits die hard.”

“Where do the dark souls get their power?”

She groaned as she turned away. “What is this, twenty questions? I answer one and you ask another?”

“There is a war going on, Ellie. We have to stop these things before it gets any worse.”

“So go tell your girlfriend to choose her soul mate.”

Her words caused something inside of Stiles to click into place. “Her soul mate?”

“Yes. Doesn’t she need a soul mate to make the guardian orb work?”

Stiles nodded slowly, little things popping into place in his mind as it worked with what she was saying. That was the point of the guardian orb being here. It was to be given to the chosen archangel. And that archangel already had a soul mate. Together they absorbed the power of the orb and they took their position as guardians. Joanna was supposed to give it to an archangel who was a part of Lucifer’s legion, an archangel who would have already been tethered to someone. If Stiles was right, if Joanna had intended to give the orb to Jophiel, then Lucifer’s orb would have died out and he and Lily would have been free to return to heaven, to resume whatever role they’d held before they were given their orb. And Jophiel and his soul mate—whoever that was—would have become the guardians of humanity in their place. But Joanna didn’t do that. Her purpose was altered. And the orb now belonged to Dylan. But Dylan, unlike other angels, was not instantly tethered to her soul mate. She had freewill. And she hadn’t chosen a soul mate yet.

“Is that why Joanna didn’t give it to her all those years ago? Is that why Joanna left it in that house?”

Ellie shrugged. “You’d have to ask Joanna.”

Stiles moved closer to Ellie, searching her eyes with an intensity that made her flinch. “I know she’s there. I know you’re there, Joanna.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Do you remember the day you left me for dead, Joanna? Do you remember what it felt like to run that sword through my side? I still have the scars, you know. They still mark my body where you did your best to make me disappear. But I’m still here.”

“Stiles,” Ellie said, backing away from him, “I wish you would stop. You’re scaring me.”

“I will never forget that moment, Joanna. The way it felt when you stabbed me, and the realization that you were going to walk away and leave me lying there. I can still see Jophiel take your hand, the way the two of you moved into your ethereal forms, and the way your colors mingled.”

Ellie shook her head, tears running down her cheeks. But there was something different about her eyes. Stiles could see it; he saw amusement dancing around just as it had in Joanna’s eyes before she’d stabbed him.

“Do you remember it as well as I do? Do you remember what you were doing when you ran that sword into my flesh?”

Ellie made a gurgled sort of sound and then laughter slipped past her lips.

“Of course I do,” she said, but the voice was different. Deeper. Huskier. “I kissed you.”

“You did. You nibbled on my bottom lip and it was so good—this body had never felt anything quite like that before—that I didn’t feel the pain at first.”

She smiled a beautiful, wide smile. “That was the plan.”

Stiles slipped up in front of her and buried his fingers in Ellie’s hair. But it wasn’t Ellie who was talking to him now; it wasn’t Ellie who pressed herself up against the length of his body and pressed her thin, shapely lips against his.

Stiles kissed her like a man starving for attention. He kissed her with all the pent up anger and lust he’d pushed down and tried to ignore since the day he fell to Earth. This was Joanna. This was his first soul mate, the woman who’d turned his world upside down and had set him on a purpose that he’d never desired and never truly understood until this moment. He kissed her because he had to respect her methods, if not her motivations.

He pushed her back and trapped her against a tree. Her hands moved under the hem of his robe, her fingers finding flesh that hadn’t felt the touch of a feminine hand in almost a decade. He touched her, too, his hands aware that the fantasy and the reality were two very different things. Joanna’s human form had been tall, slender, and built like the models that had appeared on billboards and the sides of buses in the days before the war raged out of control. Ellie was smaller, rounder, her body as different from Joanna’s as his was from a gargoyles’.

He’d watched Dylan force the dark souls out of the bodies they possessed dozens of times, but he still had no idea how she did it. And, even if he could do it, he wasn’t sure that whatever Joanna had done to Ellie’s soul would allow for such a separation. What if separating the two of them killed Ellie? Could he live with that knowledge?

But he had to try. He would only get this one chance.

Stiles thought of Dylan and let an image of her fill his mind to the point that she was all he saw, all he could think about. It wasn’t hard. Dylan was often all he thought about. Even as Ellie’s body pressed against his, her hand slid over the small of his back, and her lips did things to him that Rebecca would never have imagined, let alone attempted, he thought of Dylan.

And he felt something he’d never felt before. It was a power that was outside of him, a surge of energy that he could never fully explain. It was as though he had plugged himself into something. Whatever it was, it surged through him and bore into Ellie. It began with a little moan, but then it quickly turned into a scream. He pulled back and watched pure agony wash over her face as her back straightened and her limbs kicked out. As she suffered from some unseen attack, an otherworldly scream burst from her lips with no apparent end in sight.

The angel that Raphael had sent to watch over her burst through the trees and pushed Stiles out of the way. But there was nothing he could do. Ellie began to convulse, her body moving this way and that as her muscles flexed and relaxed in odd, irregular patterns. And then she fell to the ground, her neck at an unnatural angle.

It was only then that the first tendrils of darkness escaped her flesh. Stiles almost missed it; he’d been so torn apart by the sight of Ellie’s broken body. But he saw them as they tried to escape downward, down into the earth instead of the sky above them. Stiles snatched a golden lasso from his angel’s arsenal and snagged just a tiny corner of the darkness, just enough that the lasso was able to do its job and suck the rest of the dark soul into its circle of containment.

“What is that?” the angel asked as he stared in awe at the soul. It was fighting the lasso in a way none of the others had ever done, pushing at its invisible barriers and screaming with a frustration that might have shattered glass if there had been any nearby.

“That,” Stiles said, “is my soul mate.”