FALLEN (Angels and Gargoyles Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page B

She felt an overwhelming sadness with the touch and wasn’t sure why. But, again, she did know. She knew it was unlikely that when everything was said and done that she would be allowed to know the kind of love Joanna had shown her from her memories, memories of a love shared with Jimmy so many years ago. It was unlikely Dylan would have a child, or know the happiness of a shared life with someone.
    It was unlikely she would survive what was to come.
    She dropped her hand from his face, tears threatening to fall. She wasn’t as strong as they needed her to be. She wished she was, she tried to be, but she was afraid she was failing. Badly.
    Images rushed through her mind, things she had seen, realities she had discovered. She was frightened of what the future held for her. Her choices seemed limited. What she had to lose seemed infinite.
    She stared down at her hands, the images chasing each other so quickly she couldn’t catch them. She took a deep breath, and then Wyatt’s hands were on her face, lifting her chin.
    He was back.
    “Stiles?” she asked.
    He seemed to hesitate a moment. Then his hand came up to her temple and her mind was again filled with images. This time it was Stiles, walking beside a tired, defeated Sam. They were talking about Ellie. Dylan heard Sam say something about how she had found him after he was dropped into the desert by a vehicle from his own city. Before he could say more, Stiles became aware of Wyatt’s consciousness almost the same way in which Davida had Dylan’s a while before.
    The Redcoats are following you, Wyatt told him.
    I know. I’ll lose them.
    Don’t lead them to Dylan. They’re working for Davida.
    The image faded.
    “They’ll meet up with us in the morning,” Wyatt told Dylan. He dropped his hand, but his eyes remained on her face for a long moment. “He cares about you,” he said.
    Dylan ran her fingers through her hair, catching them on tangles here and there. When had she stopped caring about hygiene? When did it become less important to comb her hair and brush her teeth? When did baths becomes something of a luxury rather than a daily habit? It just seemed to add to the burden that was already weighing her down. She was once a girl who prided herself, not in her looks exactly, but in her cleanliness. She was almost embarrassed to be sitting so close to Wyatt.
    “I don’t know why,” she said quietly.
    “I do,” Wyatt said. He took hold of her hand, stopping her attempts to straighten her dirty, tangled hair. “There are lots of reasons to care about you.”
    Dylan shook her head. “Not any I can think of.”
    He made a sound that was something like a chuckle, but there was little humor in it. His eyes softened as he studied the tears forming in the corners of her eyes. He cupped her chin in his hand, lifted her face so that she was forced to look at him. “What’s going on?” he asked, his voice filled with such tenderness it nearly made the tears fall.
    She laid her hand on his chest, felt the pounding of his heart under the thin material of his shirt. It felt so solid. She took comfort from it, from the familiarity of his closeness.
    “What if I make the wrong choices? What if the best way to save humanity is to allow the gargoyles to use me? Or to go along with Joanna’s plan? What if by refusing to help them, I’m just making things worse?”
    “Both those plans end with you dying,” Wyatt said. “Obviously they are the wrong choices.”
    “But how do we know that? How do we know that by the simple act of living I’m not causing the perpetuation of the war?”
    “I know,” he said. “This war was going on for a long time before you were even born. And the fact that so many people think you are important to the end of it proves that you were meant to end this.”
    “But what if—”
    “Dylan,” he said, drawing her closer to him, his lips brushing the top of her head as he pulled her against his shoulder, “you can’t possibly know