Archangel Evolution (28 page)

Gabriel said, “Brother, my every instinct
would have had me slit your throat. But I am tired of the killing.
So tired. And I realized that the instincts I have to kill are
borne of the lies of our leaders. This I can prove. That is why
these angels are with me today.”

Satisfied, the angel said, “We will listen. I
will try to convince the others.”

“Thank you, brother,” Gabriel said. He
motioned to his unit leaders, one of whom was Sampson. When they
approached, he said to Sampson, “Make peace with these angels.
Gather together in the Lair. Anyone from either side who is
unwilling to make peace should be bound and guarded. Is that
agreed?” He looked to both sides for confirmation.

One of the opposing angels said, “We can live
with that.”

Gabriel’s angel and demon unit leaders
nodded. Speaking for all of them, Sampson said, “We agree.”

Gabriel said, “Good. Now I must go. There is
something I must attend to before it is too late.” Before anyone
could question him he sprang into the night, his wings spreading
wide and propelling him off to the east, where flashes and blazes
could be seen against the dark of the horizon.

Someone shook her shoulder. “Taylor,
Taylor—are you hurt?” a voice said. It didn’t sound like Death.

Taylor opened her eyes and blinked to clear
her vision. Kiren knelt beside her, her eyebrows tense and
concerned. Taylor said, “I can’t move my body.”

“He must have hit you with a paralyzer. It
will wear off soon.”

“Go,” Taylor said. “Help Chris, help
Clifford.”

Like Chris had done before, Kiren sprang to
her feet and ran in the direction of the battle. On one side of
Kiren’s running body, Taylor saw Dionysus bearing down on Clifford,
who appeared to be tiring, his staff moving somewhat slower. On the
other side, Chris was encircled by the remaining three New
Archangels. Johanna was nowhere to be seen—evidently Kiren had
finished her off.

Taylor knew Kiren had a choice to make. Help
Clifford or help Chris. They both needed it desperately. What they
really needed was a miracle.

And they got one.

A magnificent creature swooped down from
above, landing behind Dionysus with a thump. At first Taylor
thought it was David, moving to gang up on the demon leader. But
she could still see Chris fighting three New Archangels, one of
whom was David. Unless he had learned to clone or split himself
into two, the fourth angel could only be one person: Gabriel!

From across the plateau, Taylor heard Gabriel
say, “Let’s end this now.”

Dionysus, who had been on the verge of
breaking through Clifford’s defenses, whirled around just as
Clifford tripped and fell back, landing dangerously close to the
edge of the cliff. His staff clattered from his hands and bounced
over the edge, disappearing into oblivion.

Taylor felt a twitch. Not a crazy,
I-can’t-stop-my-face-from-spasming kind of twitch, but a slight
movement of her left foot. She wasn’t sure if it was an aftershock
from the paralyzing orb that had struck her, but it was something.
Looking down at her shoe, she concentrated hard, trying to get it
to move again. Nothing.

She heard a scream to her right and twisted
her head to identify the source. Dionysus had leapt at Gabriel,
wielding his heavy sword as easily as a feather, aiming his
powerful strokes at Gabriel’s head, heart, and lower abdomen.
Gabriel parried each blow with ease, dancing around like a prize
winning fighter. With each deflected blow, Dionysus’s anger grew.
His body glowed brighter and brighter as he sucked the light from
the firmament, trying to overmatch his opponent.

Taylor feared for Gabriel. She remembered how
he had struggled against Cassandra in her evolved state. This time,
however, he was not struggling. It was as if he himself had
evolved, like he was different, somehow. With the grace of a ballet
dancer, he spun and flipped and parried around the plateau,
defending himself, and generally making Dionysus’s extraordinary
ability look rather ordinary.

He even had time to taunt the angel leader.
“Is that all you got, old man? C’mon!”

Hearing Gabriel’s words, Dionysus shrieked
with fury and redoubled his efforts. Gabriel was ready. He ducked
under the first powerful stroke and simultaneously stabbed upwards,
into the belly of his enemy. With a sickening scraping sound,
Gabriel’s blade slid between the flaps of metal armor, through the
skin, and into his opponent’s innards.

Another twitch. Taylor’s right foot this
time. She looked down, hoping to see her feet dancing a silent jig.
Instead, when her vision passed by her arm, she noticed her right
hand. It was balled into a fist. She remembered clearly that it had
been open when she had fallen. Her body was coming back to
life.

She strained at the invisible bonds that held
her to the ground, picturing ropes snapping and chains breaking. It
worked.

She sat up. Her arms and legs were tingling,
like they had all fallen asleep in unison. Sharp prickles of pain
lanced along her joints, as if there were a thousand Liliputians
jabbing her with tiny swords. Gritting her teeth, she blocked out
the fierce pain and struggled to her feet.

Gabriel was standing over Dionysus, a foot
placed firmly on his chest. Dionysus was laughing, madly,
maniacally, as if he had lost all understanding of where he was,
what was about to happen to him. Something white bubbled from his
lips as he laughed; it was bright in the darkness. Blood. From his
internal injuries.

Gabriel thrust his sword downwards, through
Dionysus’s heart. The crazed laughing stopped. He lay still. Dead,
maybe—hopefully.

Possibly sensing Taylor’s watchful eyes,
Gabriel turned sharply to his left. They made eye contact. She
started to run towards him and then remembered the others. Her
attention had been so focused on her boyfriend’s battle and her own
struggle with her disobedient body, that she had been ignoring the
other fights.

For a second she wondered whether the
remaining New Archangels had been somehow connected to Dionysus’s
life force. A strange memory popped into her head of a book she had
read as a child. It was about an evil magician who controlled an
army of demented clowns. Eventually the magician was destroyed, and
his murderous clowns crumbled to pieces, as if they had never
existed. Would the same happen to the New Archangels now that their
leader had been destroyed? Somehow she knew it wouldn’t.

The fight was far from over.

Now she scanned the plateau until she found
Chris and Kiren, fighting for their lives along the cliff’s edge.
Each had their hands full with one of the New Archangels. They were
losing. Maybe about to lose. So much for the deranged magician
story.

Something was missing. No, not
some
thing
—some
one
. David, the third New Archangel.
Taylor frantically looked for the boy, sensing Death was on the
loose. Gabriel saw the change in her expression and turned to
follow her gaze. They spotted him at the same time.

He was shaking with rage, towering over
Clifford, who was on his back, weaponless, defenseless. Just as
Taylor started to run for them, Gabriel yelled, “Noo!” and headed
in the same direction.

They were too late. Far too late.

T
aylor stopped when
David plunged his sword into Clifford’s chest. Gabriel, however,
kept running, charging, like a bull seeking a red cape. David, who
continued to hold his blade in Clifford’s body, didn’t see his
brother coming. Running at full angel speed, Gabriel slammed into
him, pulling David off the demon leader and slinging him to the
rocky earth. David’s hands had been tight on his sword’s hilt and
it was wrenched from Clifford’s frame during the collision.

Taylor glanced to her right. Chris and Kiren
were swordless, having been defeated by Sarah and Percy. The New
Archangels would show no mercy.

Her eyes flashed back to Gabriel. Her heart
dropped in her chest when she saw him. Staggering, falling: Gabriel
was on his back, David advancing.

David’s sword was ripe with shining fluid
from his victim.

Chris and Kiren were about to die. Gabriel,
too.

Her entire world was about to be destroyed,
annihilated, eradicated, like rats by an exterminator.

Fire, pain, heat, and power seared through
her veins. Her skin blazed with light. She had done nothing. Her
body had done everything. Her vision went black, and then she saw
it. A slithering black snake of impossible size, dripping fangs,
coarse skin, blood-red eyes. Evil in those eyes. Death in that
stare. Closing in on its prey—coming for her.

Taylor had a sword but she tossed it aside.
No
, she thought,
how can I kill Death without my
weapon?
But her arm wouldn’t obey her, wouldn’t retrieve the
sword. Instead, she saw herself glowing in the dark, getting
brighter and brighter. Through her clothes she could see the tattoo
on her ankle, on the inside of her wrist; they glowed the brightest
of all. She peered over her left shoulder and caught a glimpse of
her first tattoo—the snake’s head was as bright as the sun. And
then she exploded. Or so it seemed, such was the intensity of the
pain, of the light, of the impact on her body. All went quiet and
dark. When she opened her eyes the snake was gone. Instinct told
her that it was gone for good—really dead this time.

Vision returned to her. She didn’t know how
much time had passed, but saw that David had not yet killed
Gabriel; Chris and Kiren were still alive. Although the vision had
seemed to last for at least a minute, in real time it must have
been as short as a blink of an eye, maybe less. Her body was still
changing, performing, out of control. The fire-pain-heat-power
sensation escalated and she saw her clothes begin to burn away, but
not all over. On her ankle, the outline of a snake strung up on a
sword appeared; on the inside of her wrist there was a blazing set
of angel wings. And although she couldn’t see it, she knew that the
large snake etched into her back and shoulder had burst from its
shroud, piercing the night with the intensity of the sun.

No, no, no, no!
she thought. It was
about to happen. The explosion. Everything destroyed, except for
her. Not the snake this time, but Gabriel and Chris and Kiren—the
New Archangels, too, which was good, but not at the expense of her
friends. There had to be another way. But if there was, her body
wouldn’t allow it.

She screamed as her body was racked with
tortured agony and all went white. Whiter than white—the absence of
darkness. And then her life went black.

S
he didn’t open her
eyes. Didn’t want to open them. Didn’t want to see—maybe ever
again. Blind to the truth she might be happy.

“Taylor, Taylor,” the perfect voice said. Oh
the sweetness of the voice, the love in its tone. Gabriel’s voice.
Her heart leapt. Maybe she had died along with everyone and was
about to be reunited with him, with her friends. But then she
remembered Samantha and misery swept over her mind, her heart, her
soul. She pictured Sam crying, mourning the loss of her boyfriend,
her best friend. Taylor felt like crying, too.

The voice again: “Taylor, Taylor.” A gentle
touch on her shoulder accompanied the voice. She was scared to open
her eyes but she did. Gabriel was looking at her, frowning. “Are
you okay?” he said.

Taylor thought the question was dumb. “If
dead is okay, then I’m great,” she said.

Gabriel laughed. Taylor couldn’t help but to
think how rude it was for one dead person to laugh at the death of
another. He said, “You’re not dead.”

“Gabriel, it’s good that we get to keep
seeing each other, but I’m not going to be one of those stupid
ghosts like Bruce Willis in
The Sixth Sense
that don’t
realize they’re dead. I am going to try my best to accept it and
move on with my life—well, not my life, but my death I guess.”

Gabriel said, “Sit up, hero-girl. You’re as
far from death as anyone on this plateau.”

Despite her mind’s objections, Taylor allowed
Gabriel to lift her into a sitting position. She scanned the area
around her. First she saw Chris and Kiren, rising to their feet,
walking towards her. They didn’t seem to be dead. She noticed the
wetness on Gabriel’s arm. “Are you…?” she said.

“Hurt? Yes, but it’s only a flesh wound. I’ll
be just fine.”

Nodding, Taylor continued her gaze, looking
for the New Archangels, for Dionysus, but they were gone. “Where?”
she said.

Gabriel said, “A blast of light resonated out
from you, in a circle. They were vaporized, just the New
Archangels.”