Archangel Evolution (2 page)

Out of the corner of his eye he spotted
movement, subtle and small. Despite the tiny web-crawler’s
positioning in the far upper corner of the room, Dionysus could see
the spider clearly. It had already designed and built an
intricately detailed trap, beautiful in its simplicity—a web. Under
normal circumstances, the spider would be motionless, waiting for
his invisible net to capture dinner. In this case, however, the
silky contraption had already done the deed—a fly was stuck in the
corner, frantically buzzing and twitching in a fruitless effort to
escape. The spider moved closer. Not only did Dionysus marvel at
the beautiful appearance of nature in his fortress, but he also
wondered at how a spider could have penetrated his innermost
sanctuary. And even more incredible was the appearance of the fly.
He would have to fire his housekeeper. But first, the spider and
its web of perfection had given him an idea, one that excited
him.

Assuming the success of his idea—and being an
optimist he always assumed success—he would have all the firepower
he needed to destroy Taylor, murder Gabriel, and eradicate the
demons and their allies, like flies pitifully trapped in a web,
waiting to be eaten alive.

But first he needed to rebuild the Archangel
Council, and he knew the perfect recruits.

The spider crawled onto the fly.

T
aylor Kingston
waited for him to arrive. She needed to talk to him. He was already
an hour late.

She was wearing ripped jeans, flip-flops, a
t-shirt, and her usual nine rings. Her straight, brown hair was
unkempt—she hadn’t bothered to comb it. As usual, she wore no
makeup, although since her
transformation
her skin had
become flawless—just another benefit of angelhood.

As she sat on the lawn waiting, she was
subconsciously aware of the demons protecting her. One was on the
roof of a nearby building, another high in the uppermost branches
of a tree, and two more in a parked car. There were likely
countless others in the vicinity as well, but as of yet she hadn’t
spotted them. She almost felt like yelling
C’mon out, guys, we
can all sit and wait together!
but she held her tongue.

She gazed at the inside of her wrist—her new
tattoo still looked fresh, having been inked only a week earlier. A
pair of basic angel wings decorated her arm. They were a reminder
of what she had become, and also what she had come from. Despite
the increased strength of her skin, the tattoo-artist eventually
got the job done, but only after breaking two needles and severely
damaging the third. She had paid him extra for his efforts.
Taylor’s dad had shrugged when he learned about the new
tattoo—after the second one he had come to expect it.

Taylor’s new tattoo was the first to not
feature the black snake. The deadly obsidian serpent that had
plagued Taylor’s nightmares her entire life was not important to
her anymore—a mere shadow of the great tormentor from her past. Her
first tattoo—on the back of her shoulder—was the largest and
displayed only the snake; it had been etched while she was still in
high school, as a symbol of her waning fear of the nightmarish
creature. The second tattoo—on her ankle—showed the snake strung up
on a sword, dead and gone. She had had it inked during her first
semester at college after Gabriel had entered her dreams and slain
the snake in its most fearsome form yet: a monstrous serpent bigger
than any demon python or anaconda from some cheesy horror
movie.

Taylor smiled as she ran her fingers over the
freshly stained wings. She was an angel! A week earlier, she was a
human girl, and now she had crazy-impossible-beautiful wings
growing inside her back. Granted, she had been dating an angel and
fighting alongside the demons to protect the earth, but she was
still only a human, before. But somehow she had evolved like others
had before her. She was still waiting on the test results, which
would hopefully shed some light on the remarkable transformation
she had undergone.

Naturally, her hand slid down to the second
tattoo, on her ankle. Her thoughts reverted to her most recent
dream. Awakening from the dream, she hadn’t been scared or upset;
rather, she had been surprised. It had been months since she had
dreamed of the black serpent. The last time was when Gabriel had
entered her dream and plunged his sword into its evil black heart.
She wanted to know why the slithering Evil had made such a sudden
reappearance. That’s why she needed to talk to Gabriel, among other
reasons.

Still bored, Taylor began playing with a lock
of her hair, twisting and twirling it on her finger, braiding it
and pulling it apart, flipping it in the air. It was the lock she
always played with when she was bored. The white one. Taylor wasn’t
blonde all over; rather, she had acquired a single lock of
white-blond hair when she had been changed. At first it had annoyed
her, but now it was growing on her.

Taylor had only been back at college for a
week, but was already growing tired of the daily routine: get up,
go to class, eat lunch, more class, dinner, study, bed. After all
she had seen and been a part of in the last few months, she wasn’t
ready for routine just yet.

She considered phoning Gabriel, but something
stopped her. Most of her life she had relied on her instincts—her
“good gut” as her mother used to call it before she was killed by a
drunk driver. One of the few times Taylor had ignored her gut was
when she had trusted Gabriel implicitly, and had almost died
because of it. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.

Now, her gut was telling her that something
was wrong. She knew without a doubt in her mind that something
terrible had happened.

A
n hour earlier.

Despite all that had happened—from the
kidnapping of his parents and their subsequent rescue, to Taylor’s
evolution to an angel and her destruction of most of the Archangel
Council—the daily grind of the Great War went on. Most of the
soldiers had heard rumors of the events that had taken place on the
Warrior’s Plateau, but few of them knew the details.

The daily battles continued as scheduled;
angels and demons fought—and died—while the real fight was being
fought behind closed doors, in the minds of their leaders.

Gabriel Knight yearned to fight again. Now
was the time to strike, while the Archangel Council was in ruins,
while Dionysus doubted himself, while they had a chance. For once,
Clifford, the head of the Eldership of the demons, agreed with him.
He said they were developing a plan, but that Gabriel needed to be
patient.

He ran a hand through his wavy, sandy blond
hair in frustration. Gabriel’s request to fight in the day’s battle
had been rejected. Clifford had said he would have a much larger
role to play in the War, and risking his life in a skirmish was out
of the question. He could only watch from afar as his best friend,
Sampson—an angel—and his demon girlfriend, Kiren, marched into
battle.

He checked his watch. There were only thirty
minutes until he had to meet Taylor. Because the flight to the
University of Trinton, or UT, would take more than seven hours even
at angel speed, one of Taylor’s demon guards agreed to teleport
back to the Lair—the demon’s cave network that housed the demon
army—and then teleport Gabriel to UT’s campus.

High atop a cliff outside the Lair, Gabriel
waited impatiently for the battle to begin. The opposing armies
were completely out on the battlefield now and awaiting the signal
for the clash to begin. With his ultra-powerful angel vision he
could see Sampson hovering in the air, flanked by at least two
dozen other angel fighters. Sampson’s bright, white shock of hair
was hidden beneath a sturdy helmet, but Gabriel could still easily
recognize him. Like a sore thumb, Sampson’s shorter, bowling-ball
body stuck out amongst his taller, leaner comrades. Compared to his
bull-like frame, everyone else almost looked fragile.

It was the first battle where a significant
number of angels would fight on the side of the demons. They would
be considered traitors by the angel warriors, and especially by
Dionysus. The angel leader would likely be seething in the Command
Center. Gabriel wouldn’t have been surprised if Dionysus—known for
his bad temper—charged from the mountain in a fit of rage,
attempting to kill the angel traitors himself.

Below Sampson, his demon girlfriend, Kiren,
popped in and out of view rapidly, like a magician performing a
series of awe-inspiring disappearing acts. Compared to Sampson,
Kiren looked thinner than a bean pole, although in reality her
muscles were well-toned. Her short, punk-styled hair was orange
today, although it changed color regularly.

Gabriel couldn’t help but to chuckle to
himself as he remembered the last time Sampson and Kiren went into
battle together. When Sampson was injured early in the contest,
Kiren was forced to rescue him, thus adding a bruised ego to his
damaged body. His body had healed much faster than his ego, and
behind closed doors Sampson had told Gabriel that he was going to
make up for his poor performance in the battle today. Gabriel
couldn’t wait to see him try.

Sweat pooled in the center of Gabriel’s back,
but it was not from the hot, sunny day. Rather, it was in
anticipation of the action. Action that he desperately wished he
could be a part of.

From somewhere at the demons’ end of the
valley a horn sounded, clear and loud and ceremonious, and was
quickly answered by a similar blast from the angels’ side. The
battle had begun.

With a flash of light, the first angel
light-orb was fired, a massive pulse of energy that arced towards
the demon army, until it was stopped in midflight by a well-aimed
ball of fire set loose by a demon defender. The resulting impact
was deafening, and filled the blue sky with an exquisite array of
colors, whose beauty was marred only by the circumstances under
which they were created.

Despite the forecast for clear skies and sun,
a freak thunderstorm moved in as if by magic. For once, it wasn’t
the forecast that was wrong; rather, the demons had used their
ability to control the weather to darken the skies, giving them a
distinct advantage as angels relied on the power of light for most
of their attacks. Giant spotlights flicked on throughout the
battlefield—it was the angels’ tactical response to the lightless
skies.

Despite the smog-black skies, roaring
thunderclaps, and icicles of lightning that filled the atmosphere,
not a single drop of rain wetted the ground. While the demons
preferred to fight in darkness, they also preferred to fight
dry.

The scene rapidly became a spectacular
lights, lasers, and fireworks display, although each magnificent
color was filled with death. Fireballs charged through the legions
of angels, while light-orbs pierced demon armor. Demon fire-swords
clashed with angel light-swords, with each blow sounding like the
beating of a bass drum. The battle was typical, neither side giving
an inch or applying any unusual tactics.

Then everything changed.

The angels’ horn sounded mid-fight, which
Gabriel had never heard before.
Something was wrong.

It was a signal.

Despite having heard the same horn hundreds
of times before, the blast sounded ominous, dangerous, yet
mellifluous at the same time. Gabriel squinted, his already
incredible eyesight becoming further magnified—he was trying to see
how the angel forces would react to the horn.

Like a flock of birds, the entire angel army
lifted off the ground, at first leaping high into the air, and then
using their powerful wings to propel them further skywards. In
formation, they began to retreat.
What the hell?
Gabriel
thought. Dionysus was a lot of things, but he wasn’t the type to
run from a battle, unless the dangers outweighed the potential
rewards.

Something was wrong.

Deadly wrong.

But what? As he watched the angel army soar
back towards their hideaway, Gabriel puzzled over the question.

The demon army seemed confused, unsure of
whether to chase their fleeing enemy, stand their ground, or
retreat. Before the demon generals had an opportunity to make a
decision, the entire angel army changed course again, stopping
abruptly in the air and turning back towards the eastern fringe of
the battlefield.

It was the area currently occupied by Sampson
and his demon-friendly angels, who had been given the nickname
Hell’s Angels. In Dionysus’s warped mind, these angels would only
ever be known as The Traitors. And he was targeting them.

Gabriel held his breath and could only watch
as the mass of winged enemies crashed into Hell’s Angels with rabid
fury, slashing through them with ease. Despite the rapidity of the
demon response—they realized the situation and took action,
teleporting into the air to defend their exposed brethren—it was
too late. Sampson and his squad fell from the sky, having been
torn, slashed, blasted, and trashed.

In the chaos that ensued, bodies crashed into
bodies as the demons attempted to catch the fallen angels, but
mostly just got in each other’s ways. Some of Hell’s Angels crashed
into the earth, some were caught by demons, and others landed on
fallen demons.

Having successfully completed their task, the
angel army took advantage of the confusion and carnage to perform a
real retreat and escape back into the safety of their mountain
refuge.

The entire event took about eight
seconds.

Gabriel leapt from the cliff, his wings
bursting instinctively with a slight
pop
, and then flew to
where he had seen Sampson go down. He landed with a solid
thud
and pushed his way through the hordes of demons that
had gathered amongst the injured. At least he hoped they were
merely injured. He didn’t let himself consider the alternative.