Angel Evolution (16 page)

O
n Saturday, Christopher agreed a meeting with Jonas and his henchmen for the following Friday at noon.

A day passed without event.

On Monday, the angel, the demon, and Taylor were all going through their normal routines: wake up, shower, brush teeth, go to class, go to lunch, etc. Although they were all worried about how well the plan would work later in the week, they thought for the time being the demon spies would leave them alone. They were wrong.

Gabriel and Christopher were in afternoon classes when it happened.

Taylor had been dismissed from class early and was walking alone to her last class of the day when abruptly, Jonas appeared beside her and grabbed her hand. She felt a powerful twisting of her body—and maybe her mind, too—and then all went dark.

A few moments later her sight was restored and she was alone in a clearing in the woods. She turned 360-degrees to get her bearings, but all she saw was dense forest surrounding her. The forest was quiet.

Without warning, a piercing shriek erupted from somewhere within the woods. Taylor turned towards the sound, covering her ears with her hands. A loud splintering sound followed, and she saw several trees flap wildly from side to side before collapsing with a thundering crash.

Something dark was advancing towards the clearing.

Unsure of whether to run, scream, or hide, Taylor remained frozen in place, her eyes wide with terror. Another tree fell, then another. The dark form stepped into the clearing. It was like nothing she had ever seen.

Huge, clawed hind legs gave it stability as it walked slowly on two feet towards her. The creature’s body was massive, in direct proportion to its legs, but its front arms were relatively small, similar to Tyrannosaurus Rex from the Mesozoic Era. The monster’s head had characteristics that were both human and reptile with small, jet-black eyes and a set of knife-like teeth accentuated by two long fangs protruding beyond its lower lip. Its entire body was covered in scaly skin so black it could almost be defined as the absence of light.

Taylor knew at once what it was:
a gargoyle
.

Finally, she screamed, knowing it would be fruitless, as surely there was no one near the secluded spot. Even so, she had to try. Turning, she ran onto an overgrown path that led through the woods, away from the clearing. Sharp branches scratched her face and foliage raked her legs, as she recklessly charged down the rarely used trail. She heard another ear-shattering shriek from the gargoyle as it pursued her. Trees snapped, branches broke, and leaves shook.
It was catching up
.

Just as her lungs began to burn from the sudden exertion, the noises behind her ceased. The silence was almost worse; she didn’t know where the beast had gone. Afraid to stop, she ran a bit further, albeit at a slower pace, until she reached another clearing. She chomped at the air, trying to suck in much needed breaths. Still gulping down oxygen, she walked to the other side of the circular hole in the forest. When she was almost halfway across, she was startled by a solid thump from behind her.

Taylor whirled around to see the gargoyle towering over her. It was only a few yards away. She noticed something she had missed the first time she had looked at the alien creature: Two small wings protruded from its back, barely visible above its muscly shoulders.

Taylor had two quick thoughts before the gargoyle attacked: One,
I am going to die
; and two,
those are awfully small wings for such a large guy
. The monster moved towards her. Not knowing what else to do, Taylor screamed again at the top of her lungs. From the corner of her eye she saw a flash of light.

J
onas chuckled to himself from the shadows, as he watched the gargoyle advancing on the girl. It had been so easy. Of all his powers, teleportation and the ability to teleport others were his favorites.

Back on campus, he had teleported so that he was directly next to her and then, as soon as he touched her, he teleported her to the middle of the forest where his “little” friend had been waiting.

Jonas wanted to scare both the angel and the girl before their meeting later that week, to ensure that they didn’t try anything sneaky. The girl was obviously scared already and the angel would be equally scared when the girl told him what had happened.

He put a dog whistle to his mouth, ready to sound the stop command once Freddy, as he liked to call this particular gargoyle, had gotten close enough to her that she could smell his bad breath. The girl screamed again. That’s when he saw the flash of light.
Damn
, he thought,
even a full-grown gargoyle was no match for a highly trained angel
.

G
abriel was sitting in class, ignoring the professor’s lecture, doing what he had been for the last week: harnessing the power of the lights in the room to heighten his hearing ability. By this point, he could pretty much hear every word that Taylor said, whether she was right next to him, or a few miles away. He had accomplished this by training his angel ears to pick out the exact frequency of her voice from the many others in the surrounding area.

She didn’t know that he was doing this, which he preferred so that he could protect her without smothering her.

On this occasion, he hadn’t heard anything from her since she answered a question midway through her previous class. This likely meant that she was out of class and walking alone to her next class. The silence didn’t concern him that much, as it probably meant she was safe. If she wasn’t safe, she would likely be crying, yelling, or reasoning with her attacker or captor.

This was the logical reasoning that streamed through Gabriel’s head as he listened for her next sound. The next thing he heard from Taylor froze him with fear. A high-pitched scream tore through his ear drums, causing him to wince in pain.

Instinctively, his mind coordinated the analysis of the information with his ears, and determined the direction and the approximate distance of the yell.
North. Nearly two miles. Must be the forest.

Without a word, he darted from his seat in the back of the crowded lecture hall, slammed through the exit, and charged outside. Once in the open air, he ran at normal human speed until he was out of sight. As soon as he had an opportunity, he transformed into full angel form and raced off towards where Taylor’s vocal signature had resonated.

Flying faster than he ever had before, he reached the target area in mere seconds. He was low to the ground, scouring the dense foliage for any sign of her. He passed one clearing and approached another. In the second clearing he saw something unexpected: a gargantuan black shape moving through the open space.

As he closed in to investigate, another earsplitting scream disrupted the calm quiet of his flight. It was coming from exactly where the dark shape stood.

He thought that the creature might be carrying Taylor, so he needed to be careful how he attacked it, fearing that he might injure her at the same time, but as he passed the gargoyle he could see that she was out in front of it. Barely. It was closing fast.

That was all the motivation he needed as he cut hard to the left and locked his flight path directly on the gargoyle, soaking up the bright sun to gain strength.

Harnessing the sun’s life-giving rays, Gabriel’s body emitted a blinding light more brilliant than any Fourth of July fireworks display.

He slammed into the beast, knocking it backwards several feet. He hung onto its arm as it sprawled on the earth, landing several hard, blazing punches to its head before it came to rest on its chest. Mustering all of his strength, he grabbed both its wings and pulled them like he was trying to uproot a pesky weed from a garden.

“Nooo, don’t!” came a cry from his right, but he ignored it and kept straining at the wings until he heard a satisfying crunch and the wings ripped from the gargoyle’s back. He tossed them aside and looked to see who had tried to stop him.

Jonas approached him slowly, his palms open at either side, as if trying to capture a cornered animal. “Calm down, Gabriel. I can explain.”

Gabriel stepped down from the gargoyle’s back and the creature groaned. “I’m going to kill you and then finish off the beast,” Gabriel replied.

“No, please, I was just trying to scare her so you guys wouldn’t try to trick us on Friday. I swear I was going to stop it before it hurt her.”

He’s scared
, Gabriel thought,
fear creates weakness. This pathetic demon is nothing without his posse.

As if in response to his thoughts, two fiery shapes blazed across the clearing, coming to a stop on either side of Jonas. The reinforcements had arrived. With a sneer, his confidence was regained, and Jonas cracked his knuckles. He said, “We’ll see who kills who.”

In his rage, Gabriel had nearly forgotten what he was doing there until he heard a voice yell, “Please, no! Leave him alone!”

All four turned and saw Taylor, tears streaming down her face, running towards Gabriel. When she got to him, she jumped into his arms, wrapping her legs tightly around his back. Her shoulders shook as she sobbed uncontrollably.

“I
am
scared,” she wept. “Jonas, you accomplished what you wanted to. We are not going to try anything. Please just leave us alone until Friday.”

Gabriel held her tightly and said, “You’re safe now, it’s going to be okay.” He glared at the demons and commanded, “You heard her, get the hell out of here!”

Unsure of how to respond, Jonas shrugged and motioned for his thugs to follow him. “We’ll cut you a break this time, pigeon, but next time we won’t be so nice,” Jonas said, clearly trying to sound tough in front of his buddies. They disappeared.

Gabriel ignored the parting comment and turned his full attention to Taylor, a look of concern etched on his face. “Are you okay?” he asked.

To his absolute surprise, the tears dried up and Taylor gave him a wicked smile. “Yeah, I’m fine, not a scratch on me.”

“Weren’t you scared though?”

“Well, at first I was, of course, but once I saw you coming I knew you would save me. And if you didn’t, I had it all planned out. I was gonna kick it in the nuts and run like hell. I’m not hurt, so there’s really nothing to be concerned about anymore. Plus, if what Jonas said is true, I was never really in any danger.” She said all of this very matter-of-factly, like she was solving a math problem out loud.

Gabriel was completely mystified by where this kooky, fearless human girl had come from to turn his life so completely upside down. He said, “Well then, if you’re fine then I guess you don’t need a ride home.” He placed her back on the ground and flew off.

“Hey, wait a minute!” Taylor yelled after him, laughing now.

In less than the time it took her to blink, Gabriel was back by her side, laughing too.

“I
will
take a ride back,” Taylor said. “I just didn’t want you to make too big a deal out of the gargoyle thing. I was afraid you would change our plans.”

“‘The gargoyle thing,’ as you put it, could have killed you. They are dangerous and hard to control, and any demon that thinks they can is a complete fool. Like our friend Jonas, for example.”

Taylor looked around Gabriel to see the hulking black monster on the ground. “Okay, okay, point taken. Is it dead?”

“Not yet, I just removed its wings, which is pretty much the only way to easily stop one of those things. When you pull the wings out, they slip into a sort of coma until the buds of the wings start to grow back. It usually takes about 24 hours. I should really finish him off though, I’m afraid those idiots won’t come back to secure him properly.”

Taylor moved around him to get a closer look. The gargoyle appeared to be sleeping, its chest heaving up and down as it breathed deeply, rhythmically. She could see two large holes in its back, where the wings had been extricated. There was a trickle of black liquid, presumably blood, coming from the wounds.

She walked to the other side of it, where Gabriel had tossed the damaged wings, only to find two piles of ash. Following her, Gabriel said, “Demons and their offspring don’t die in the classic sense. Their bodies turn to ash.”

Taylor continued to look at the piles of soot. “What happens when an angel dies?” she asked.

Gabriel seemed taken aback by the question. “Why do you ask?”

“Just morbid curiosity, I guess. Do they turn into ash too?”

“No, but we also do not die like humans do. After a while, our bodies vanish into a bright, white beam of light. They say that each angel’s beam returns to one of the stars in the sky, making that star shine brighter, so it can provide even more power to the remaining angels on earth.”

Taylor looked reflectively at the sky. “I wonder how many angels are in the stars.”

She was startled when Gabriel answered her rhetorical question with, “Exactly three hundred and sixty four.” Her eyes searched his face for some meaning behind his words.

“How did they die?”

“All of them were killed by demons.” Gabriel said bitterly.

“And how many demons have been killed by angels?”

Gabriel hesitated, and then said, “Five hundred and two, including gargoyles. We keep very accurate records of the angel and demon populations for purposes of our war strategy.”

“Seems like such a waste,” she mused.

Gabriel had never thought about it like that. He was always taught that the War was necessary and that sacrifices had to be made. Then he remembered that it was the angels who had the power to stop the killing, while the demons were just doing what they thought they had to do to save human lives. His loyalties to this girl were deadlocked with his loyalties to his race, to his people.

Gabriel suddenly felt a heavy strain on him, and for the first time in his life, all confidence in his ability to make decisions was sucked from him, like venom from a snake bite.

He had a strong desire to change the subject. “Why were you wandering out in the woods by yourself? I didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary until you screamed.”

“I wasn’t, I have no idea how I got here. One minute I was walking on campus and then I saw Jonas, he grabbed my arm, and I was here running for my life.”

“Ahhh, very clever,” Gabriel said. “He teleported you here. It is one of the demons’ most powerful abilities. It’s a skill that they didn’t even learn to fully use for at least 20 years.”

“It felt very strange, but it didn’t hurt. Wait a minute, what do you mean you
heard
me scream?”

Gabriel told her the truth. “I was worried about you so instead of listening in class, I trained my super hearing ability to recognize your voice so I would know if you were ever in danger. It really paid off in this case.” Gabriel waited for a negative response and he got one, although she was joking with him again.

“You were spying on me?” she accused, a small grin curling on the edges of her lips. “Did you find out anything interesting?”

Gabriel was grinning now, too. “Eh, not really, just some things about how you think I’m gorgeous, that you can’t get me out of your head and that you still get butterflies when you see me, nothing major.”

“Oh, okay good. I’m glad you didn’t hear the part where I said you are an arrogant little pretty boy who flies around like a butterfly trying to save the world.”

Gabriel pretended like his heart was broken by clutching both hands to the left side of his chest. “That hurts, Tay, it really hurts.” He put his arm around her and squeezed hard. “You know, Tay, I really do love you.” And he meant it. Which scared the hell out of him.

“I love you too, Gabriel. Let’s go home.”