Archangel Evolution (14 page)

Taylor spun around to face them.

“This should be fun,” Sampson said,
grinning.

“Yeah, for me,” Taylor retorted.

Gabriel said, “I don’t know, Sampson, are you
sure we should hit a girl?”

Sampson said, “You’re right. We’re too
gentlemanly for that. Let’s just let her win.”

“That would certainly save you the
embarrassment,” Taylor taunted.

“On second thought, I have no qualms about
decking a chick,” Sampson joked.

Tiring of the verbal-jousting, Taylor
launched herself at her opponents, spinning through the air,
twirling her swords like a propeller. Rather than blocking with
their swords like she expected, the best friends jumped back,
avoiding her completely. Taylor grinned. “Why fight when you can
run,” she said.

Gabriel strode forward, swinging his sword
back and forth. Taylor deflected his blows and watched out of the
corner of her eye as Sampson curled in behind her. Instincts
flashing, Taylor knew that the two old army buddies had a strategy
prepared, and it was likely one that had worked many times before.
She had to finish them off before they could execute it.

For the third distinct time that day, Taylor
gave herself over to her instincts, letting them dictate her
actions, even if they seemed to push her to do something that
didn’t initially make sense. In this case, her instincts really
weren’t making sense, as she felt her hands unclasp the hilts on
her swords. Her weapons thumped to the grass ominously, like they
were tolling the bell on her life.

Seeing the surprise on Gabriel’s face, Taylor
tried to shrug off her strange behavior by saying, “I just want to
make the fight fair.”

She raised her hands in the air, not knowing
why. Light energy poured through her body, up her arms and through
her fingers. With a few chirps, two tweets, and at least one cheep,
a flock of glowing golden birds flew from her fingertips, like
something out of an annoyingly perky Disney movie. Taylor waited to
hear herself burst out into some painfully cheerful melody against
her will, while the birds chirped and tweeted and cheeped at all
the right times, and simultaneously dressed her in some
excruciatingly girly pink dress with satin bows.

Gabriel and Sampson were mesmerized by the
sudden explosion of migrating fowls, watching them soar overhead.
Lowering their swords, they followed the birds with their eyes.

Despite her fears, Taylor did not sing a
single melody, tune, or even a note. And the birds turned out to be
as un-Disney-like as they could possibly be. Initially one by one,
and then in bunches, the flock began falling from the sky,
dive-bombing the two unsuspecting male angels. Sampson and Gabriel,
on opposite sides of Taylor, were hit by dozens of falling birds,
each detonating with a powerful
BOOM!

And then it was over. The Elders were
standing and applauding. Angels and demons alike were rushing to
Taylor, and then picking her up, carrying her around the field. It
was like some stupid movie where the runt football player kicks the
winning field goal and becomes the hero. But Taylor enjoyed every
minute of it.

“Y
ou were
incredible,” he said.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Taylor
replied jokingly. Although she had impressed even herself with her
performance, she knew she couldn’t have done it on her own.

They were sitting on Taylor’s bed, in her
dorm room. After she successfully navigated the obstacle course and
defeated all enemies in her path, a celebration was held in the
stadium. There was drink, there was food, there was laughter.
Taylor had been forced to shake all one-hundred-and-fifty-one Elder
hands. When the party looked like it might go on late into the
night, Taylor whispered to Gabriel, “Can we get out of here?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” he had said.
They had left after promising Clifford that a final training
session would be held the following night in the stadium. Next
steps would be planned, hard decisions would be made, team members
would be selected. But that was tomorrow. Tonight was a chance to
be alone with her boyfriend. Of course, he wouldn’t stop badgering
her.

“Teach me,” Gabriel said seriously.

“Ahh, grasshopper, the student becomes the
master.”

Ignoring her flippantness, Gabriel said, “How
did you do it?”

“Do what?” Taylor said.

“The birds….the ground strike….the cube of
light around your body? I didn’t teach you any of that. Hell, I
don’t think I could’ve done any of those things, or have even
thought of doing them.”

“What cube?” Taylor asked.

“Stop messing around, Tay. Remember the
gaggle of orbs headed for your head while you were flying?”

“I’m not messing around, Gabriel. And, yes, I
remember the
gaggle
, but then I closed my eyes, so I’m a bit
hazy on what happened after that.”

“You closed your eyes?” Gabriel asked, the
corners of his lips curling up ever so slightly.

“Look, it’s like this. When I don’t know what
to do, I just stop trying to think and let my body do the work.
It’s like I’m a squirrel or something, and I just know that I have
to gather and store acorns in my tree for the winter.”

“You store acorns?” Gabriel joked, looking
around the room as if he expected to see hordes of tree fruit piled
up around them.

“Ha ha. It’s called a simile.”

“Okay, so you’re saying you let your
instincts take over.”

“Duh.”

“Alright, fine. So let me tell you what I saw
you do then. You were high in the air, hovering in the corner of
the stadium, a
gaggle
of orbs heading your way, ducking and
diving and twisting. You were dead in the water, dead meat, dead
girl walking, deader than dead—”

Taylor cut him off: “I get it. I was
dead.”

“Sorry, I guess I got carried away. Anyway,
you were practically road kill…,” Gabriel said.

Despite her efforts to look tough, a smile
escaped Taylor’s closed lips. Gabriel laughed, too. “As long as I
can always make you laugh,” he mused.

Taylor hugged him. “As long as I can always
make you cry,” she joked back. Releasing him, she said, “What
happened next?”

“So the ducking-diving-twisting light-rockets
were about to blast you out of the air, when a cube of light forms
around you, as if you had been trapped inside a block of frozen
lemonade.”

“I was stuck in lemonade?” she asked,
sniffing her arms as if she expected the fresh scent of lemon juice
to waft from her skin.

“Touché,” Gabriel said. “That was a simile,
too.”

“Oh,” Taylor said, pretending to be
confused.

Ignoring her act, Gabriel said, “Although you
were surrounded by light, it didn’t look like a spotlight or
anything, it was much more tangible than that, like it had
substance…Like it was hard, a barrier.”

“Like a wall.”

“Exactly. When the orbs hit the pillar of
light, they bounced off like it was made of rubber. Did you see
what they did after that?”

“Yeah, they hit the same angels who
originally shot them at me.”

“Right, plus a couple extra.”

Taylor didn’t get it. So what? Evidently it
had been a nice trick, but why was Gabriel so focused on it? She
had seen him do amazing things, too. They were angels after
all—inherently amazing, if only for the fact that they existed.
“What am I missing?” she said, almost to herself.

“What do you mean?” Gabriel asked.

“I mean, why are you making such a big deal
out of what I did? A pillar of light, wow. I’m sure you’ve used
that trick many times before while in a real battle.”

Gabriel’s eyes widened. “Taylor, did you
think you were carried around the field just because you made it
through an extremely difficult training course?”

Not wanting to sound stupid, but having only
one answer to the question, Taylor said, “Uh, yeah.”

“No, Taylor. No, no, no. They cheered because
no one has ever seen anyone—angel, demon, human, gargoyle—do what
you did. I might be able to pull off the pillar of light one time,
but I would be so weakened from the effort that I would be killed
soon after. And the swords-in-the-ground trick? No way I could pull
that off, pushing the light energy through the ground the way you
did, and then morphing it into hands. Don’t get me started on the
flock of birds. I’ve never—never—seen anyone handle light with such
ease, with such grace. It was poetry, Tay. That’s why they cheered
you. In you they found hope.”

Gabriel’s monologue stunned Taylor into
silence for a moment. The gravity of his words lay heavy in the
air, pressing down on her shoulders, and although her usual
response to such a moment was to make a sarcastic comment, the mere
thought felt wrong, sacrilegious. They sat unspeaking for a time,
until Gabriel said, “You okay, Taylor?”

Taylor looked at him for a long second before
saying, “I’m fine. Do you think I am what they say I am? That I
have the potential to change things?”

Looking deep into her eyes, Gabriel’s face
looked more certain, more full of truth than Taylor had ever seen
before. He said simply, “Yes. I do.”

Something her mother once told her popped
into her mind:
Taylor, the only support you need is your own. If
you believe in yourself, that is enough. But if you can turn that
self-support into the support of another, and then another, until
you have hundreds of hearts behind you, the effect will be
magnified, and the sum total of that support will be unstoppable,
immovable.

Taylor said, “Thanks, I’ll do my best.”

Gabriel put a hand behind her head, her neck,
and pulled her in close. He kissed her deeply, lingering on the
edge of her lips. They kissed again.

Tonight they wanted love; the pain would come
later.

T
he demon spy had
checked in. The girl would be training the next night again. Except
this time they would be there. He could almost feel her neck
between his hands, bones cracking, muscles withering, life
ending.

David hated her. She was the great corrupter.
If not for her, he would be standing side by side with his brother,
fighting for the cause. Instead, he would have to kill Gabriel too.
He deserved nothing less.

He wondered if Gabriel, his own brother,
would recognize him now. He hoped he would. That he would see how
strong he had become without him. That he was better off on his
own. That Gabriel was no longer his idol. Then he would tell him
how badly he had hurt him. How he might not have become who he had
become if not for his relentless anger towards Gabriel. He hoped
Gabriel would see that he was partly to blame. After breaking his
mind, he would kill him.

Given her seniority, Johanna would lead the
mission, but David knew he had become the true second-in-command
over the New Archangels, the one everyone feared. Even before he
had defeated her in a test of strength and skill, Johanna had
feared him. And while Lucas still tried to treat him like his
apprentice—like a child—David knew that he feared him, too. That
was good—to be feared. It was a form of respect, something that
Dionysus had taught him. And now Dionysus feared him, too, but not
as much as the others. No, he was too arrogant for that. Which is
why David still respected him, and would serve him.

David cracked his knuckles and smiled.
Tomorrow would be a good day. At long last, his growing lust for
blood would be fulfilled.

T
hey slept in the
next morning. Samantha had stayed at Chris’s so they were alone.
Sleeping in didn’t always involve sleeping, but did mean that they
stayed in bed. Sometimes kissing, sometimes doing more, they spoke
little.

Eventually, they arose and had a late
breakfast—a brunch—at one of their favorite on-campus spots. The
food was good, the atmosphere was light, and the excitement level
was high. Taylor didn’t know why she should feel excited. The end
of training meant going on her mission. The mission might mean
death, or worse. Yet she was excited.

Gabriel seemed to sense it, and spurred her
forward, his words upbeat and positive. At this time more than
ever, she was glad he was her boyfriend. He knew what it was like
to embark on a first mission, although his had been of a somewhat
different nature—to destroy the world, rather than save it—but the
feelings were similar: a twinge of fear, a burst of excitement, a
dash of optimism, a slice of pessimism.

“Back when I was your age…,” Gabriel
joked.

“You are my age,” Taylor commented.

“Good point. I have no advice for you.”

“Come on, there must be something you can
say.”

“Not really. Just to…..trust your instincts.
As you proved yesterday, they are your greatest weapon.”

“And you’ll be there to watch my back,
right?” Taylor asked.

“No.”

“No?” Taylor repeated, still assuming he was
joking.

“I’m sorry, Taylor. I have a different
mission.”

“But I thought—” Taylor started.

“It was never the plan,” Gabriel said.

“But Clifford implied you would be going when
he said I would have a team of the best angels and demons,” Taylor
pointed out.

“He never said
I
would be going, but
you’ll probably get Chris, Sampson, and Kiren. There’s a second
mission. One that I will lead. Clifford thinks it’s my destiny,
although I’m not sure I believe all that legend stuff.”

Taylor said, “He thinks you will lead a great
angel rebellion against the Archangel Council. He thinks you’re the
chosen one.”

“Clifford thinks a lot of things. All I know
is that he wants me to travel the world, trying to convert angels
to our cause. I don’t know about legends and myths and stories, but
I do know that it is a good plan. We can use all the help we can
get and if I can turn Dionysus’s own people against him, he won’t
stand a chance.”