DARK SOULS (Angels and Demons Book 2) (3 page)

Chapter 5

Stiles lay on the bed he once shared with Rebecca, his thoughts dancing in his head. He could hear the quiet thoughts of the people around him, could even hear the thoughts of people thousands of miles away. It was like background music, the hopes and fears of humanity. He could hear the mumble of angel thoughts, too. It had been a long time since he’d heard the voices of his brethren—since Luc’s army had taken Lily’s elixir and God had called all the others back to heaven. Even when a few were allowed to return, he couldn’t hear them. But six years ago, he began to hear little bits here and there and it had grown stronger over the last few months.

He closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to hear a full conversation rather than bits and pieces that didn’t make much sense on their own. He wondered if Dylan could hear them, too. He wasn’t sure she would tell him if she did. Despite all this time, all the things they’d all gone through, she was still wary of her own abilities.

But, as hard as he concentrated, he could only catch a few bits here and there.

…broken souls…

…stuck in darkness…

…unblessed…

None of it made sense.

He opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. He’d stared at this ceiling for twenty-eight years with Rebecca lying beside him, but he rarely ever saw it. What he saw instead was the dark, tiny room they’d shared in Pennsylvania. He saw a concrete ceiling stained by many, many years of use. He saw a dirty curtain pulled closed to offer them a modicum of privacy. He saw Rebecca, young and nubile, curled up on a narrow cot with her pregnant belly protruding out in front of her.

That was how he’d remembered her all those long, lonely years he’d lived in Genero. Wondering how she was, wondering if the child was safe and healthy. He got information from time to time, but there were few he could trust, few he could ask to check in on her specifically. So he lived in darkness, hoping she was well but unable to go to her, unable to think of her too often in fear that someone would figure out what she meant to him and hurt her to get to him or to get to Dylan. Luc knew, but he made a promise. And Luc wasn’t the only danger out there.

All the women in his life: Joanna, Rebecca, and Dylan. They all had special meaning; they’d all impacted the direction of his life in ways he still probably didn’t fully appreciate. Joanna had brought him to Rebecca and Rebecca had brought him to Dylan. If not for one, he would never have met the others. No matter how much he wished parts of his life had been different, he wouldn't change any of it.

He just wished Dylan would see what he could so clearly see. They were on the cusp. Their lives were changing once again. It was time to let go of this reality and move on to the next. They had a shared purpose, a reason for being here. It was time to embrace that.

Stiles?

He sat up as her voice called out in his head.

Stiles? I need you.

He moved immediately into his ethereal form and burst out of the house and rushed to her side. She was asleep, calling to him unconsciously. Not just asleep, but curled up, naked, in Wyatt’s arms. It gave him pause, seeing her this way. He understood they were married and that they loved each other, but with all the things that had changed recently, a part of him had assumed that part of their relationship was over.

Or hoped.

She jerked and her body tensed; her hands turned into fists and her face twisted with anxiety. She was having a nightmare.

He moved closer to her, touching the side of her face with his aura. For a second, he saw a flash of images—a woman screaming as men with dark souls tore at her flesh—before it disappeared. Dylan sat up, a silent scream on her lips. Wyatt sat up too, his arms sliding around her.

“You okay?”

Dylan looked up at Stiles’ ethereal form, confusion in her eyes before the dream completely receded and she realized what was happening.

She leaned back into Wyatt and touched the side of his face.

“Fine. Just a bad dream.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.” She touched him again and then slid forward, pulling away from him. “Go back to sleep. I’m going to go get something to eat. I forgot to have breakfast this morning.”

“Okay.” Wyatt snuggled back into the sheets and his breathing slowed before he was even completely settled.

Dylan made a motion to Stiles, directing him out of the room as she pulled the sheets tighter against her naked breasts. Stiles did as asked, sliding out of the room and slipping back into his human form. He went into the kitchen to wait for her. He sat in a chair and then decided he needed to move. He needed to focus on something other than that scene he’d just witnessed.

“What are you doing here?”

“You called me.”

“I did?” Dylan touched her chest, as though she thought he was talking about someone else. “I was asleep.”

“You must have been having a nightmare.”

Her eyes darkened. She brushed past him and went to the cabinets, grabbing a container of dried fruit. Stiles watched her, trying to get past her walls, but was unable to break through her control. She was so much stronger than he was—she didn’t even realize how strong she was.

“What was the dream about?”

She shook her head as she took a bite of a dried apricot. “I don’t remember.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Oh. So now you’re the expert on my thoughts and dreams?”

“You called me. Why would you do that if you weren’t having a nightmare?”

She leaned against the counter and took a few more bites of dried fruit, not really ignoring him, but clearly trying to figure out how to get herself out of this corner she had painted herself into.

“Why would I call you? Why not Wyatt, or someone else?”

“It’s probably because I’m the only one who can hear your thoughts.”

“What about the gargoyles? Why don’t I call out to Demetria?”

“Maybe you did. But I got here first.”

“I’ve been trying not to call you.”

Stiles reached over and took a piece of fruit from her container. “Then this isn’t the first nightmare you’ve had?”

“They’ve been happening since not long after Jimmy’s funeral.”

“That’s months, Dylan.”

She nodded, holding the container out to him so he could take some more before she put the lid back on and stored it back in the cabinet.

“I thought they were just dreams.”

“But they’re not?”

“I don’t know. I thought so, at first. But then we went to see Demetria this morning.”

Stiles knew something was bothering her this morning, he just didn’t know what. Now he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

But he asked anyway.

“What did you see?”

Dylan ran her hands over the front of the shorts she’d pulled on, and then wrapped her arms around her chest. She clearly didn’t want to talk about it, and that frightened Stiles more than anything she might have said. Dylan didn’t keep things in; she didn’t hide things from the people she trusted. And she trusted him despite the lies he’d revealed that he’d told her, despite her confusion over they’re connection.

She looked up at him and there were tears in her eyes.

“Joanna disappeared when I made my choice, right?”

“Joanna’s long gone, Dylan.”

“You’re sure?”

Stiles moved in front of her and took her face in his hands, caressing her chin with his thumbs. “I promise you, if even a little piece of Joanna was left, I would feel it. I haven’t felt her in forty-three years.”

Relief flooded her eyes. She moved closer to him, pressed her forehead to his chest. And then these images burst into his mind—women, children, running from people they once trusted, running from murderous rage that was inexplicable. Men with dark souls—with something wrong about them—chased them, some with weapons but most without. They used their hands to do unspeakable things.

Everything Stiles had seen in the war…it was nothing compared to what she was showing him. Those images shook him to his core.

He stumbled back and broke the connection Dylan had opened between them.

“What…how…?”

“Demons. That’s what the first one called them.”

“The first?”

“Andrea. She was the first to come to me in my dreams. A pretty girl, living in ruins somewhere in Europe. She called them demons…demons that had come to possess her friends.”

“Demons?”

“Like Joanna.”

He understood then. After Joanna had died from the angel disease that Dylan had taken from Lily and given to Joanna, her soul was unable to return to heaven. It became obsessed with anger and a need for revenge. She’d made it appear that Wyatt had been killed and that all the people of Genero had died in a blast, but it was all an illusion she’d created with some sort of warped version of her angel abilities. When Dylan made her choice, Joanna and her illusions had disappeared.

But it seemed that Joanna wasn’t the only one.

“They possess these people?”

“That’s the way it happens in most of my dreams. People who were good and kind suddenly become dark and violent, overnight, like someone flipped a switch. Most of the victims never see it coming.”

“And Andrea…?”

“She was one of the victims taped to Demetria’s wall.”

“They’re calling to you, asking for help.”

Dylan looked away, her arms once again crossed over her chest. She looked so small like that, like she had looked when she was younger, when he was still Anita and she was still an innocent girl living in a domed city. He touched her arm and drew her back into the circle of his embrace.

“You couldn’t have known.”

“I should have told you sooner. I should have helped them.”

“We’ll help them now.”

“How?”

He ran his hand slowly down the length of her back, resting his chin on the top of her head. “Do you know where this last dream was? Where the people are?”

“They’re coming closer,” she said, her voice mumbled slightly. “Four or five hundred miles south of Genero.”

“We’ll go there, see if we can figure out what’s happening.”

“And if we run into Joanna?”

“We won’t. She’s gone.”

Besides, it seemed to Stiles that Joanna was the least of their worries.

Dylan slipped back into the bedroom she shared with Wyatt and grabbed a pair of pants to change into. She grabbed a jacket too, since she was not sure how long they would be gone. Before she left, she ran her hand over Wyatt’s shoulder, drawing out the pain of his arthritis. He didn’t like her to do it while he was conscious, but he couldn’t stop her when he was asleep.

She and Stiles slipped away without anyone noticing. They couldn’t see them in their ethereal form anymore—those who had been capable of seeing it before. They arrived in the small community where Dylan’s dream had taken place in seconds, morphing into their human forms still wearing the same clothes they’d left in—a mystery Dylan had yet to figure out. No one noticed them at first. It was a group of maybe a hundred, still a little on the primitive side, still working out living conditions and just beginning to build small farms. It would be a while before they reached the caliber of a place like the city where Dylan and Stiles lived.

Dylan and Stiles walked side by side along the ruins this group had decided to call home. It was strange to Dylan to see these buildings, still standing despite the changes brought on by long-term neglect. It was in ruins like these that she’d run and hid from angels and gargoyles alike, and ruins like these that they’d tore down to build the city that now thrives under her daughter’s direction.

A woman stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of them and frowned as she studied them.

“Where did you come from?”

“Could you tell us where your leaders are? We’d like to speak to them.”

The woman seemed confused for a minute. “Strangers are not welcome here.”

“We’d like to help,” Dylan said.

The woman’s eyes narrowed, but not before Dylan saw a spark of hope in them. She came toward them, cautiously glancing over her shoulder as she did.

“What do you know about what’s been happening here?”

Before either Dylan or Stiles could answer, a young man came out of another building a block or more further down the street. Dylan recognized him immediately despite the distance.

Him,
she spoke directly into Stiles’ mind.
That’s the boy who was murdered in my dream.

As she passed the information to Stiles, she saw three men come out of the same building behind the child. They were the same men she’d seen kill him in her dream.

She didn’t even think about it. She instantly moved into her ethereal form and wrapped herself around the boy. Not even a full second later, the first of the three men snatched at the boy and tried to tear him out of her veil of protection. But he couldn’t reach him. She saw confusion wash over his face, confusion and anger.

Another of the three men attacked; his hands were rough as he tore at the smoky quality of Dylan’s ethereal form. He couldn’t see her, but he could sense there was something there; something was keeping him from what he wanted. And he wanted it, like a dying man wants salvation, like a starving man wants food. But he wasn’t getting it.

Each time one of these men touched Dylan, she felt a coldness, a darkness that was like nothing she’d ever felt before. It was painful, both physically and mentally. She shrank back from it as much as she could, but she couldn’t leave the boy unprotected. Stiles ran over, yelling at the men to leave the boy alone. The last of the men, the one who had yet to reach the boy, turned on Stiles, slicing a knife across his arm as Stiles moved to defend himself. In a quick motion, Stiles grabbed the knife and threw it to the ground, then wrapped his arms around the man’s neck and cut off his air until his knees buckled and he fell to the ground.

Dylan screamed—a soundless scream that seemed to reverberate around her—as the men attacked together, both pulling and tearing at her form almost as though they could see it, as though it was as real to them as the boy whose body they wanted to tear from limb to limb. Stiles rushed to her aid, but it was almost as if someone had called a warning. The two men suddenly backed off and ran, rushing around Dylan to disappear somewhere along the far side of the street.

Dylan let the boy go and slipped back into her human form. Her clothing was torn and her arms were covered in deep red welts that seemed unwilling to heal. The boy fell, unconscious, to the ground. She touched his forehead to make sure he was still breathing, and was relieved to find he was.

Stiles moved up behind her, wiping his hands over her arms to make the welts disappear. He pulled her back and his hands moved up to her head, checking to make sure there were no other marks or injuries on her body.

“I’m okay,” she said, stepping away from him. “What was that?”

Instead of answering, Stiles went back to the man lying on the ground. He bent over him, not touching, but studying him. There was something wrong with this man’s aura, Dylan could see it from across the street. She walked over and joined Stiles, kneeling on the other side of the man.

“His soul is blackened,” Stiles said.

“Why?”

Stiles touched the man’s forehead, and then reared back. A second later, a dark, inky cloud rose up out of the man’s body. There was laughter that seemed to echo all around Dylan, humorless laughter that chilled her as the touch of the other men had done. She watched it dissipate and was relieved when it disappeared.

She looked back down at the man. His aura was no longer changed, his soul no longer darkened.

“What was that?”

Stiles shook his head as he stood. “Another soul.”

“Another? A soul just floating free?”

Stiles stared at the man on the ground for a long moment. Then his gaze slowly came up to Dylan’s.

“I think I know what it is. And, if I’m right, we could be in for a long, difficult battle.”