Disclaimer: Um ... here's Part 14. The song is Aerosmith's "Fallen Angels." Pay attention to the lyrics for once [wink] because they're actually important at the end. I can't really think of anything to say other than please read and review, so ... yes. Please review! Love you guys!

Summary: The gang is faced with the prospect of complete isolation from the safety of the council when they help Alexis escape from the Antrim hospital.

Part XIV: Fallen Angels

There's a candle burning in the world tonight
For another child who vanished out of sight
And a heart is broken
Another prayer in vain
There are a million tears that fill a sea of pain

SKY'S P.O.V

I didn't expect the reaction from Hunter that I got when I told him what Alexis had just told—and shown—me. I had expected him to instantly plunge into denial, to immediately deny all charges against the council ... or at least to call Alexis a flat-out liar.

What I did not expect him to do, however, was to stare at me in shock for over two minutes. I'm serious. I counted the seconds.

"Excuse me?" he asked finally, his eyes narrowed. "What did you say?"

I couldn't help but feel slightly nervous as he stared at me; he can have a really creepy gaze when he wants to. "Um, I met a girl in the children's ward who says that the council is evil and that they are coming to steal her mind?"

This time, it was only about three seconds before he burst into laughter. Really. He started laughing. I stared at him in horror; I couldn't think of a single thing that would be worth laughing about in the situation at hand.

"You're joking, right?" he asked, laughing so hard that tears were escaping his eyes. "I mean, you're not serious!"

I just looked at him.

His laughter faltered slightly. "You-You're not laughing," he said, choking slightly on a gulp of air. "Why-Why aren't you laughing? It was just a joke, right?"

Internally, I sighed and felt very sorry for my cousin. He was clearly unable to comprehend what had just happened.

"Hunter," I said firmly but quietly, making a conscious effort to sound comforting but forceful at the same time, "I'm not joking. Alexis really did tell me that, and she's not lying."

He had completely stopped laughing now. Instead, he was staring at me with a vivid concentration that chilled me. His eyes were wide and gaping, and he suddenly looked very pale.

"You're lying," he whispered.

It was my turn to stare at him in horror. He thought that I was lying to him?

"Hunter, I have never lied to you!" I said angrily. "Never! Maybe once when we were little and I accidentally dropped your stuffed dinosaur down the toilet, but never since then! Why would I lie to you, Hunter?" I asked, my voice softening. "I wouldn't do that to you, you know that."

His green eyes were frozen in space; the look of shock had not lessened one iota.

"No," he said. "No, you are. You are lying. Or joking. If this is your idea of a –"

"You think I'm joking?" I had yelled that, apparently so loud that Bree from inside Morgan's hospital room—Hunter and I were engaged in verbal battle outside her walls—felt the urge to open the door and check if everything was all right. I pulled the door shut again without further ado; I suppose that it could have been the reverse equivalent of slamming it in her face, but I was too angry to care at the moment.

"You think I'm joking?" I repeated, my voice barely above a growl as I glared at Hunter. He looked slightly frightened now. "You think I'm joking about this? Hunter, you know me. I don't make stupid remarks and expect a laughing response from them! I'm not Robbie!"

"Hey!" Robbie's indignant voice sounded from inside Morgan's room. I ignored it.

"Hunter, I could not be more serious if I tried," I said forcefully. He wouldn't understand, but he had to. Alexis was sure correct when she said that Hunter would react differently than I did. "Alexis showed me, Hunter, she showed me! We did a tath meanma and –" A thought occurred to me as I heard an outraged gasp from inside Morgan's hotel room. "No, Raven, that is not a sexual thing." I turned back to Hunter. "She showed me her life. She's spent all of it running from the council and they've finally caught up with her. We have to get her out of here."

"What the –"Hunter burst out, his frustration finally bursting over the surface. "Sky, you barely know this girl! All of a sudden, everything that she says is right?"

"I know that she's telling the truth," I said firmly. "The council is evil, Hunter, and they're after her."

"I don't believe you!" he burst out violently. "How can I believe you? She has to be lying, Sky! The council isn't evil, I work for them!"

I then did something that is generally frowned upon in the witch community: a tath meanma treise lámh. That is to say, I literally forced my thoughts into his mind and made his viewing of them mandatory. I guess it's sort of like mental rape, but not. Because, um, ew.

We were watching the scenes that I had first viewed in Alexis's room together in bits and pieces, images flashing by us in a whirl of color and sound coupled with other threads and visions of memories and feelings. He saw, as did I, men in dark suits striking a young woman so hard that blood spilled on the ground; she wanted to cry out, but didn't dare. He saw the sigil permanently burned onto her flesh, the rune that would pull her life away from her and destroy it. He saw her abandoning her daughter, unwilling to leave but knowing she must. He saw Alexis and I sitting together, locked in a tath meanma, and me watching the same scenes that we had just seen, I for a second time and he for an unfortunate first. And he saw, though it was clearer for me this time, the darkened room with two men, conferring about their options. They would finally get their prize, and they knew it. They would finally have access to the brightest mind that the world had seen in generations.

Hunter wrenched out of the mental connection so fast that I let him go out of surprise; I could have held him in otherwise, forced him to watch more, but he looked so ... stunned ... betrayed that I couldn't do it.

"Oh, my God ..." was all that he said. His voice was barley above a whisper and suddenly very scratchy.

"You see?" I whispered, breathing heavily with mental exhaustion. Two tath meanmas in under an hour ... I was lucky to still be able to process thoughts. "We have to help her, and I don't care what they might do to us. I'm not letting them have her."

His mind was stuck on the same track that it had been ten seconds ago. "Oh, my God ..."

"Hunter, please, I need you to concentrate," I whispered in desperation. "I need your help on this! Please, please concentrate!"

"Sky ..." he said weakly, his voice sounding more like a whine than anything else. I sensed something else in it, as well. Resignation. "Sky, we can't ... we just can't ..."

"Can't or won't?" I said harshly. He just cast me a desperate look. "Hunter ..." I sighed. "What would you do if it were me they were after?"

It was a low shot. He knew it. I knew it. But I needed to make him understand. If he didn't understand, then nothing would ever work.

He looked at me in internal conflict for a long time before sighing. "Anything ... anything to save you."

I raised my eyebrows, and he finally caved.

"All right," he sighed. "Okay. Tell the others what's going on." He paused. "Can she walk?"

"I don't think so," I said. "She's been working with a therapist, but I don't get the impression that she's strong enough to escape."

"Then we'll need to create some sort of diversion," he said, turning and walking down the corridor towards the main lobby.

"Without anyone seeing us?" I questioned.

"Concealment spells all around," he said firmly, not turning back to look at me.

I stared after him. "Hunter, where are you going?"

"To the main supply closet. I've got a plan, but we'll need Robbie to carry out most of it. Go explain to the others."

As he disappeared around a corner, I had little choice but to sigh and follow his instructions.

Sometimes I stare out my window
My thoughts all drift into space
Sometimes I wonder
If there's a better place

Morgan, Raven, Bree, and Robbie reacted pretty much the same as Hunter had when I told them about what Alexis had told me about the council, although I guess they were a little less into denial about it. After the initial shock wore off, they stared at me—I was getting tired of people doing that—in wonder.

"I can't believe it," Morgan whispered, her eyebrows furrowed. "How can they be evil? Or, how can some of them be evil?"

"Animal Farm," Bree said promptly.

Raven, Morgan, Robbie, and I stared at her. She looked embarrassed.

"Well, it's true," she said. "In Animal Farm, don't you remember how the pigs took over the farm and then how badly they treated the other animals? If you're in a place of high power, chances are you're going to become corrupt in some way or another. I guess the council is the same."

We nodded slowly, pondering this for a moment.

"So what do we do?" Robbie asked finally. "I mean, we can't just leave her here. They'll get her."

"I don't know what to do," I sighed. "Hunter said that he has a plan, so we can only hope that it's a good one."

Ironically, the Hunter in question chose that moment to make his reentry. He was carrying what looked like a bundle of green hospital robes in his arms.

"Um, Hunter, what are those?" Morgan asked in confusion.

He looked down at them. "I borrowed these, if borrowing means stealing, I guess." He followed that slightly disturbing speech by pulling an empty wheelchair into the room through the door. Simultaneously, five pairs of eyebrows shot up. Hunter just looked at us. "What? We can use this to wheel her out, and Robbie can pretend to be an intern."

"Why can't you wheel her out?" Robbie asked, suddenly sounding nervous. "What if they know I'm not a real intern?"

"I can't wheel her out because Sky and I will be on hand casting glamour spells and concealing spells to make sure that they think you're an intern. And Morgan, Raven, and Bree will be around the back pulling the car up to the main entrance."

"Wow, you've really thought of everything," Bree said in respect.

"Yes," I said, standing up. "The more difficult part will be making sure that everything pans out correctly. Should we go to Alexis's room now?"

"Sooner the better," Hunter said simply. Suddenly, he was very calm about this. "Robbie, here's your outfit." He handed Robbie one of the robes.

"Meet me in room 375," I said, stepping out of the room. "Bring the wheelchair, and the rest of you get to where you're supposed to be."

I paused, then turned around and stared at Morgan, who been out of her hospital robes already and dressed when I came in for the second time. "Oh, God, Morgan, I completely forgot about the spell stuff! Are you all right?"

"Yeah," she said with a smile. "Hunter and I did a mini-breaking spell with a ton of chanting. It'll help until I can get back to the lodge and break the spell fully."

"Spell?" Bree asked, looking between Morgan, Hunter, and I. "What spell?"

As I left the room, I heard Morgan begin to explain what she had done to the others. Robbie left the room soon after I did and headed for the bathrooms to change into the intern's robes. I took a deep breath to steady my increased heart rate.

"Let's hope this works ..."

Where do fallen angels go?
I just don't know
Where do fallen angels go?
They keep falling

"What do you mean?" Alexis asked in confusion, a conceivable response to my statement of 'We're getting you out of here'. "If they see you –"

"I don't care."

"If the council finds out –"

"We'll deal with them," I said firmly. "I'm not leaving you here for them to find."

A small flicker of something appeared in her eyes for an instant. Was it hope? In a moment, though, it disappeared. "I can't walk."

"That's okay," I said, pulling back her bedcovers and helping her sit up on the side of the bed. "My friend is going to bring you out to our car, okay? Then my cousin and I will create a diversion so that they can drive out to the entrance."

Robbie, clad in bright green robes that pained my eyes to look at, poked his head in through the door. "Sky? Are we ready?"

"Yeah, Robbie," I said. "Come in." I looked at Alexis. "Alexis, this is Robbie. Robbie, Alexis."

"Hi," Alexis said simply.

"Pleasure, malady," Robbie said with a mock bow as he pushed the wheelchair over to the bed. Alexis grinned. "I will be honored to aid in your escape."

Alexis turned to me, and I saw that her face was alight with a mixture of both excitement and fear. "Are we really going to do this?"

"We are," I said with a nervous grin.

Unfortunately for our escape plan, a nurse chose that moment to enter the hospital room. "Miss Rody, your father called and said he's about ten minutes away. I'd expect he'll be up to see you in about an hour after he fills out some paperwork."

Alexis's eyes widened almost proportionally, and so did mine.

The council was coming. Now.

The nurse stared at Robbie in puzzlement. "Do you work here?"

Yes, he does, I said firmly in my mind.

"Yes, I do," Robbie said easily.

The nurse continued to look at him suspiciously for a moment but then nodded slightly and left the room.

"The council is here now?" Robbie asked instantly, his voice rising the second that she closed the door.

"I suppose so," I said quietly. "So we have to hurry."

Five minutes later found Robbie, Alexis, and I in the main lobby, I walking beside Robbie and he pushing Alexis in her wheelchair. I noticed Hunter sitting in a waiting chair, his face half-hidden by a parenting magazine, watching us intently. I gave him a small smile, which he returned.

"Where are you taking her?"

Robbie and I both whirled around to face a doctor in a white laboratory jacket, who was watching us curiously. My eyes widened, and I instantly began to chant in my mind. He will believe us. He will believe us. He will believe us.

"Her folks have just arrived outside," Robbie said smoothly, motioning Alexis with a wave of his hand. I could have hugged him; if I was the doctor, I would have believed him easily.

The doctor shrugged. "All right. Have you checked her out?"

"Um ..." Robbie's eyes widened slightly. "Yep, I did. One ... Alexandra Brody ready to go."

"Good," the doctor said pleasantly. "Carry on, then." He hurried off into the staff lounge as Robbie, Alexis, and I exchanged nervous looks.

"Nice play on the name," Alexis said to Robbie with a small smile.

"Hopefully, it'll be smooth sailing from now on."

And it was ... for a little bit. We managed to get out to the front parking lot where Morgan had pulled up the car that we had borrowed from, ironically, the council.

"Did you make it?" Morgan asked breathlessly as she hopped out of the driver's seat and ran to meet us at the sliding door.

"Yeah," Robbie said, struggling to push the wheelchair down a small step. "Geez, why doesn't this place have a ramp? It's illegal not to in the US."

"That's the least of one of our worries," I said irritably. "Can we focus on getting out of here?"

"I'm Morgan," Morgan said to Alexis, smiling at her as she helped Robbie move the wheelchair down two more steps.

"Alexis," Alexis said. "But you probably figured that out." Suddenly, her eyes widened. "Sky!"

"What?" I asked, twisting my neck to look at her and then around the parking lot. She was staring at a red subcompact car that had just pulled up in a parking space about ten feet away from us. Two middle-aged men, both wearing business suits, climbed out of the driver and passenger seat and slammed the doors behind them. Time seemed to slow down somehow as Morgan, Alexis, Robbie, and I stared at them; they didn't look at us, but walked into the hospital through the same sliding doors that we had just come out of.

"Who are they?" Bree asked from inside the car, clearly sensing the tension.

"The council," Alexis whispered.

"We have to get out of here before they see us," I murmured.

As Hunter ran out of the hospital a moment later, declaring that he had seen the council members and managed to leave without being noticed or recognized, he and Robbie lifted Alexis out of the wheelchair—which they then folded up and threw in the trunk for further use—and sat her in the backseat next to Bree and Raven.

"Sky, I'm scared," she whispered, her voice shaking.

"It'll be okay," I whispered, stepping into the backseat next to her as Robbie got in on the other side and Morgan and Hunter jumped back into the front.

"You! Stop right there!"

"Oh, my God," Alexis said in panic as the two council members ran back out of the hospital, staring right at our car.

"You'll be okay," I repeated, my heart racing. "Drive, Hunter!"

With a loud skidding sound, Hunter stepped on the gas pedal and the council's own car rushed out of the parking lot and onto the long, windy, heavily-forested road outside; looking over my shoulder through the back window, as the others were doing, I could see that the council members had gotten into their car and were tailing us not too far behind. It suddenly occurred to me that we were barely going forty miles per hour.

"Hunter, why aren't we going faster?"

"They're putting a spell on the car or something!" he groaned, fiddling with the gas pedal and the ignition. "It won't speed up faster than this!"

"They're going to catch us!" Bree yelped, staring in horror out the window. "They're only about fifty feet behind us!"

"Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, oh –"

"You'll be okay," I repeated to Alexis for what felt like the umpteenth time, feeling much less certain that she, or we, would be. Suddenly, however, I was struck with inspiration. With a simple mental incantation and a small air sketch, the council car almost skidded off the road as a blue Volkswagen materialized out of the forest and nearly crashed right into them.

"Wow," Raven said after a moment. "What in the name of everything holy was that car doing there?"

"That wasn't a car," I whispered. "That was a glamour, and one that they'll see through almost immediately."

"They've been distracted," Hunter said, keeping one eye on the speedometer and one on the car behind us. "The spell they were casting before is broken."

"You don't think they put a watch sigil on the car, do you?" Morgan asked in fear.

I shook my head after briefly casting out my senses and mentally scanning the car. "No, I don't think so. It requires contact, and I can't sense it."

"How could you sense it if it could be concealed?" Bree asked in confusion.

"If you're aware of the presence of something, you're much more likely to sense it," Alexis explained. I gave her a small smile.

"Oh," Bree said.

"Um, Hunter?" Raven was looking out the back window again. "They're catching up again."

Simultaneously, everyone in the car turned their necks to look out the back window. She was right.

"Crap," Morgan whispered.

"Hunter, turn left," Alexis said suddenly, her voice much more steady than it had been two minutes ago.

"What?" Hunter said in surprise, pressing his foot down on the gas pedal harder.

"Turn left!"

"There's no road!"

"There's a mountain road up here that will lead us back to town," she said hurriedly. "It's so overgrown with weeds that I doubt anyone knows about it."

"Where?" he asked, scanning the mountainside that we were now speeding by. "I can't see it—oh, yeah, but you can, can't you?"

True to Alexis's word, a small, overgrown road in the valley between two hills appeared, shrouded by weeds and tree leaves. As Hunter turned the steering wheel to pull onto it, I hurriedly began casting another glamour, one that would hopefully keep them thinking that we were still going down the main road.

"Did we lose them?" Morgan asked hurriedly, craning her neck, as the car was jostled uncomfortably by the rough gravel path of the forest road. I looked behind me and saw the council members' car go speeding by the turn onto the forest path.

"I think so," I said, my heart hammering painfully.

"Thank you," Alexis whispered, looking at me through her dark eyes, which were shining with a happiness that I had never seen in them before.

"Don't thank me yet," I murmured, still watching out of the back of the car.

Somehow, I could not shake the feeling that we would be paying for what we had just done.

Well, the times are frightening
Can't ignore the facts
There are so many people
Just slipping through the cracks

HUNTER'S P.O.V

Apparently, Sky's glamour spell had done the trick because we didn't see a trace all the way back to the lodge of the council car that had been tailing us. As the doors of our car flew open, Robbie, Morgan, and Sky set about setting up the wheelchair again and I rushed around the exterior of the lodge, drawing runes of concealment and hiding all over every surface I could find. As soon as Alexis was safely inside the lodge, Morgan and Sky joined me, and together we scoured the exterior of the lodge, putting layer upon layer of spells on it so thickly that chances were no one would even notice it when they walked down the street.

When we trooped back inside the lodge—Morgan still making inappropriate jokes about how she couldn't find the door—the first thing that I did was call Kennet on one of his many cell phones, not the one that I had borrowed. He answered on the second ring, indicating that he had recognized the number.

"Giomanach? What's wrong? You're emanating fear."

I paused. Was I really? That was scary.

However, it was not as scary as Kennet's reaction was to my accusation that the council was evil and had just chased us out of the Antrim hospital. After complete silence on the other end of the phone line for at least three minutes, the tone of his voice was so cold and so harsh—crueler than I'd ever heard him talk to anyone—that I shivered slightly.

"Never say that, Giomanach."

"Kennet, I swear that it's true –"

"I don't care if it's true!" he screamed, so suddenly that I jumped and held the phone away from my ear. "It might be true; I don't know, but never say it aloud."

"Why?" I couldn't help but ask.

"Because they'll find out," he whispered. "I've had my suspicions about their motives for years, Giomanach, but do you think I ever said anything? Don't you think that there was a reason that I never said anything? The men that are up there in the council, Giomanach, the ones in real seats of power ... they don't care about people like your ataxia girl. They don't care about people like you or me. The only ones they care about are themselves, and that's never going to change."

My head suddenly hurt so intensely that I rubbed my forehead with a groan. "Kennet, if you knew, why ... couldn't you have at least warned me?"

"Because saying it would have made it true," he said, sounding strained. "And I cannot face that, Giomanach, I simply can't. I have built my life around the council, and I will not allow it to fall to pieces. Now, I'll get the medicine that you wanted for your friend, but ..."

We had realized in the car that Alexis's enzyme supplements that were necessary to keep her nervous system in balance were left at the hospital as we hadn't risked actually signing her out. None of us were willing to return to the 'scene of the crime', so to speak, and so I'd asked Kennet to would-he-please do it for us.

He sighed, a deep, resigned sigh that instantly filled me with apprehension. "Giomanach, I think that it's time that you do two things. These are the last two things that I'll ... probably ever ask you to do. And I hope you listen to me."

My throat was dry. "What are they?"

"Consider yourself out of a job," he said, firmly but with a deeper unhappiness than I could measure. "Don't worry about the council coming after Sky and the girl because that would mean that they would have to admit that they a) did something wrong and b) don't have the purest intentions to do good. What they're banking on now is that you two aren't going to babble on them and let the whole witch world know what they're up to. But don't underestimate them. They may yet make you sorry that you helped Rody escape."

"What's the second thing?" I asked, a little more coldly than I perhaps should have.

"Leave Portrush. Do yourself a favor and get out of here."

"We can't," I sighed, running a nervous hand through my hair. "We can't. The trip from the hospital tired Alexis out a lot. She's ... she couldn't travel, I don't think."

"Well, then, you'll need to find a way to fend for yourselves here," Kennet said, and I was struck by the detachment that had become present in his voice. "I'm sorry, Giomanach, but that's all that I can say to you. I'm sorry."

How had this happened? How had, so suddenly, my entire vision of who I worked for and who my colleagues were shattered?

The little beep that let me know that he had hung up was like a slap to the face.

So many ashes are scattered
So many rivers run dry
Sometimes your heaven is hell
And you don't know why

SKY'S P.O.V

When I walked into the lodge room on the first floor that we had given to Alexis, she was sitting upright in bed, propped up by pillows, and staring ahead of her, her eyes unfocused.

"Why the long face?" I asked, attempting a note of cheerfulness in my voice. "I brought chicken soup."

"I was just wondering about my mom," she whispered, not looking at me. "She must have known that they would find a way into the hospital someday. Why did she leave me there?"

I sighed and set the warm bowl of chicken soup down on the bedside table.

"She wanted you to be safe when she couldn't protect you," I whispered, sitting down on the edge of the bed next to Alexis. "She wanted to make sure that she was leaving you in good hands."

"But she didn't," Alexis said quietly, looking at her hands, which were clasped together tightly. "If she wanted me to be safe, why didn't she stay with me? I was safest with her!"

"I know you were," I said softly, brushing back a strand of her hair. "But she couldn't stay with you. You know that. She did all that she could for you."

"Before they took her away." Alexis's voice was hard. "They took her away from me."

There was something in her voice, something quiet and unspoken, that made me look at her with something similar to wonder in my eyes.

"You never cried for her, did you?"

She didn't say anything for a long time before slowly shaking her head.

"No. That would have made it too real." Her voice hitched slightly. "If I didn't cry for her, then I could still pretend that she was ..." Tightened. "That she was coming back for me."

"It's okay," I whispered, feeling tears coming to my eyes. "Don't think that it makes you weak, because you're not."

She whipped her head around and stared at me. There were tears shining in her eyes. "I'm not afraid of being weak! For the love of the Goddess, I'm a cripple! I'm not afraid of weakness!"

"But you're afraid that she really is gone," I whispered.

Alexis still stared at me, her eyes growing redder. Her upper lip quivered slightly, and I found a lump rising in my throat, as well.

"Don't think that you can't," I murmured, my voice breaking. "You think no one else ever cries?"

As tears began to slide out of her eyes, I pulled her to me and hugged her as she began to cry for real ... deep, gut-wrenching sobs that wracked her entire body. I couldn't do anything, couldn't say anything ... nothing but be there.

I don't know how long I sat there, being her shoulder to cry on; it might have been ten minutes or an hour. Her sobs began to subside after a while, and she looked at me through red and swollen eyes.

"I'm tired ..."

"I know," I whispered. "Feel better?"

"A little."

I helped her back underneath the covers and squeezed her hand lightly. She gave me a small smile, still sniffling.

I remembered a lonely night when I was young the evening after Linden died. Cara, Hunter, Alwyn, Shannon, Aimee, Chelsea (my other sisters), and I all slept on cots in Ma and Da's room that night. No one had wanted to be alone. No one had been able to sleep, so drained of tears and emotions, so Ma had sung to us.

"Where do fallen angels go?" I remembered her soft voice floating over me, stroking my hair as my tears soaked my pillow. "I just don't know ... where do fallen angels go? They just keep falling ..."

"Can you hear me? Can you hear me?" I whispered softly, recalling the notes from years and years ago. "Somewhere out there, there's a shining light ... and I got to be with you tonight."

Alexis's eyes closed slowly and she seemed to collapse into her pillows. I stroked her hair lightly.

"And with all we're nowhere ... we still pay the price," I sang quietly. "The devil seems to get his way in downtown paradise ..."

Where do fallen angels go?
I just don't know
Where do fallen angels go?
They keep falling

"Where do fallen angels go?" I wasn't leaving just yet. "I just don't know. Where do fallen angels go? They just keep falling ..."