Archangel Evolution (4 page)

Lastly, Dionysus’s eyes fell upon David, the
boy. Of the group, he was clearly the biggest risk. He was
young—barely fifteen-years-old—and had the most to lose if the
angels defeated the demons; his entire family would be executed.
But like Cassandra and Lucas and Dionysus himself, David was full
of anger towards the demons. And the boy had demonstrated his
dedication to the cause when he had stabbed Gabriel with a demon
blade on the Warrior’s Plateau. Anyone who would stab his own
brother was okay in his book.

Satisfied with his selections, Dionysus said,
“Do you know why you are all here?”

“To celebrate,” Lucas offered.

Johanna snapped, “No, you imbecile! We are
here to plan the next move. We angel leaders never rest on our
laurels. We are always looking to the future.”

Lucas scowled, but didn’t respond.

Dionysus smiled. “You are somewhat correct,
Johanna. And you can save your anger for the demons; it will be
much needed if we are to succeed.”

To Dionysus’s surprise, David said, “We are
here to rebuild the Council.”

He stared at the boy who had looked so young
not that long ago. In just a few weeks, he seemed to have aged,
matured,
changed
. He was wiser, somehow. Ready to take his
place. Ready to take action and to do whatever was asked of
him.

“The boy is right,” Dionysus admitted.

Johanna was in one of her moods. She said,
“Then you’re wasting our time. You need to have the prospective new
Archangel Council members in attendance so we can consider them and
vote.”

Dionysus stroked his chin. “Actually, they
are
here.”

“You can’t be serious. These are children,”
Johanna growled.

“And yet I trust them more than our fallen
brothers and sisters.”

“That’s blasphemy!” Johanna roared.

Dionysus managed to remain calm, choosing his
words carefully: “Johanna, I realize that my methods will appear
somewhat…unorthodox. However, the actions that I am about to
propose must be carried out immediately if we are to ensure
success. There is simply insufficient time to select additional
Council members from the general population, train them, initiate
them, and determine their trustworthiness. We have no choice but to
go with those who have already proven themselves worthy.”

Johanna started to respond, but then
hesitated and held her tongue. She made eye contact with Sarah, who
said, “You’ll still need the support of one existing Archangel,
otherwise you’re outnumbered.”

“Are you saying you disagree as well?”

“I haven’t heard a proposal yet,” Sarah
said.

“Ahh. You are correct. Despite the urgency of
the situation, we must adhere to the formalities required by our
office. I’ll give you a proposal: I propose that effective
immediately, Lucas, Cassandra, and David be sworn in as members of
the Archangel Council.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Dionysus
watched for reactions from his nominees. Almost identical smiles of
victory exploded onto Lucas’s and Cassandra’s faces. Only the boy
remained stone-faced, without reaction, as if he had already
anticipated Dionysus’s proposal.
Interesting
, Dionysus
thought.

On the other side of the table, Johanna
rolled her eyes, while Sarah scoffed. Only Percy seemed unaffected
by Dionysus’s declaration. Because he already knew about the
proposal. Because he had already agreed to it. Because he was
Dionysus’s secret weapon against the two female members of the
Council.

Johanna said, “Surely you’re joking. Two of
your nominees are barely old enough to drive and the third may not
even be potty-trained.”

Sarah said, “Can we check to see if he’s
wearing a diaper?”

“SHUT YOUR INSOLENT MOUTHS!” David roared.
Shocked, all faces in the room turned towards the boy, who was
fuming. He was on his feet, arms dangling awkwardly in front of
him, his fingers curling into fists and then uncurling rapidly,
again and again. Face beet-red, his eyes were night-black and yet
were shining with rage.

For once, Johanna and Sarah appeared to be
speechless, their mouths hanging open, gawking at the boy.

In a much softer but just as sharp tone,
David said, “Percy, what is your vote?”

Not expecting the question, Percy had trouble
speaking at first—his mouth opened and moved but no words came out.
Finally, he found his voice: “Well, I…uh, I vote to approve the
proposal.”

Dionysus wanted to smile, but he couldn’t
seem to control the muscles in his face. Hiding emotions was
usually one of his many talents, but his interest in the boy’s
outburst was written all over his expression: eyes wide, eyebrows
raised, mouth formed into an O, head cocked slightly down.

David made eye contact with him, a direct
stare that seemed to pierce him to the heart. The boy said, “Then
it is done, my lord.”

Still struggling to gain control of himself,
Dionysus said, “Yes, it is. Sorry, Johanna, Sarah—we have a tie and
as Head of the Council, my vote breaks the tie. David, Lucas,
Cassandra: You will now be sworn in as members of the Archangel
Council.”

An awkward silence followed and more than a
few glances were directed at the boy. He was sitting again, his
face no longer red, his hands clasped loosely in front of him, his
eyes no longer fiery. It was as if his outburst had never
happened.

Needing to think, Dionysus handed over to
Percy to take care of the formalities. Dionysus barely heard a word
as each new Council member repeated the oaths and was officially
declared a member of the Archangel Council. Instead of listening to
the proceedings, he thought about David. Something had changed in
the boy. Or something was changing. But what? And how? As the
ceremony proceeded, Dionysus couldn’t stop thinking about David’s
rage.
Anger, rage, power, the boy, the boy, boy, boy,
boy…

G
abriel was
unwilling to answer her question until they had both visited
Sampson. Taylor’s seemingly simple inquiry of
What am I?
was
evidently more complex than she had thought. She wondered whether
Gabriel was withholding the information because it was bad news.
Like perhaps during the act of evolving into an angel, a mutant
gene had formed in her brain that would eventually cause her to
turn purple and grow a third eye. Or maybe a long-dead angel spirit
had inhabited her body and would slowly take over control until she
was merely a trapped voice, unable to participate in her own life.
While those possibilities might seem a bit farfetched, like
something out of a bad sci-fi movie, given all the crazy crap that
Taylor had seen over the last six months of her life—winged angels,
fiery demons, and ugly gargoyles, to name just a few—she wasn’t
about to discount any ideas at this point.

Unfortunately, Sampson was not permitted to
have visitors when they arrived, so instead, they waited with Kiren
outside his room. Her eyes were closed when they sat down next to
her.

“Kiren?” Taylor murmured, gently touching her
shoulder. Kiren’s eyelids rose slowly.

“Taylor…can you save him?” Kiren asked.

Taylor was taken aback by the question.
Save him?
She was no doctor. Hell, she could barely take
care of herself when she skinned a knee. “Wha…What do you
mean?”

“Please save him…like you did Gabriel on the
plateau.”

Taylor was stunned by Kiren’s request. Of
course, she
had
healed Gabriel, but now that she thought
about it, she didn’t know how she did it. It was as if a spirit had
inhabited her body and taken control of her, performing incredible
feats that Taylor wasn’t capable of. Sure, she could already
perform simple angel skills, like creating light and increasing the
glow of her body, but she hadn’t even flown yet. “I don’t know
how,” she said.

“Don’t think…just try,” Kiren said.

Taylor looked at Gabriel. He shrugged. “It’s
worth a shot.”

Taylor said, “What if I hurt him more?”

“You won’t,” Gabriel said.

“Okay.”

“I’ll get the doctor,” Gabriel said.

“Thank you,” said Kiren.

“Save it until afterwards.”

At first the doctor—a dark-haired beauty that
could have passed for twenty-two or forty-two—was skeptical about
what they were proposing, but after Gabriel described what Taylor
had done for him on the plateau, and her remarkable transformation,
she became more and more interested in the idea.

When Gabriel finished, she paused for just a
moment, and then said, “Okay, you can try. But my team needs to be
there to monitor him the entire time and if we say to stop, then
you must stop.”

“Of course,” Taylor said. Her mind was
whirling, trying to remember what she had done to Gabriel, what
technique she had used, what she had been thinking. Her mind was
blank, as if that particular segment of her memory had been cut out
and tucked away into a drawer full of lost memories. All she could
remember was Gabriel looking dead on the ground and then he was
suddenly awake. She followed the doctor into the room.

The room was well-lit, a far cry from the
dark, torch-lit tunnels and caverns she typically associated with
the Lair. Sampson was laying on his back on the bed, with his arms
at his side, coffin-style. The comparison to death caused memories
of movies about the undead to flick through Taylor’s head.
Vampires, zombies, demons of the night: they all tended to sleep
the way Sampson did now. Trying to convince herself, Taylor
muttered, “He’s not dead yet…”

“What?” Gabriel asked.

Taylor’s head jolted to the side and then she
realized she had spoken. “Nothing,” she said.

She moved to the side of the bed and touched
Sampson’s motionless hand. It was warm. For some reason, she
expected it to be as cold as ice, ready to send chills up her spine
and through the marrow in her bones. “He’s not dead yet,” she
reminded herself again.

Sampson’s face looked peaceful and serene and
he might have passed for merely sleeping if not for the bandages on
his head and the breathing tubes in his nose. He was in a coma, one
he might never wake up from. Once again, Taylor tried to conjure up
images of how she had healed Gabriel, as she put her hands on
Sampson’s head, like a priest about to give a blessing. Her mind
remained blank.
Stupid, stupid, stupid
, she thought.
I’m
no magical healer, I’m barely an angel.

Unsure of what to do next, she closed her
eyes and tried to think healing thoughts. Thoughts of scabs,
Band-Aids, and ice cream floated randomly through her mind. Not
helping. Despite her efforts to control her thoughts, they pursued
their own agenda, bringing up memories of Gabriel: the first time
she saw him when he found a four-leaf clover for her, the first
time she saw him in angel form, their first kiss, their first night
together.

Abruptly, she felt a warm sensation in her
outer extremities. She opened her eyes to see her hands glowing,
hot-white with energy. The light crept up her arms, over her
shoulders to her neck, and then down her torso and through her legs
until she was a full-fledged glow worm, the envy of the entire glow
worm community. She realized that her mouth was moving, but no
words came from her lips. Her body-and-mind-control theory was
looking better and better.

And then Sampson was sitting up, gasping,
choking, pulling the tubes out of his nose, yelling something. It
sounded like “Crap!” No wait, that wasn’t right, it was “Trap!”

When Sampson had reanimated, Taylor had been
pushed away from him, and the doctor and her assistants had
surrounded their patient, trying to calm him, to get him to lie
back down, although he seemed unaware of them or his
surroundings.

His yelling continued for thirty
seconds—although an eternity couldn’t have passed any slower—and
then his mouth and eyes closed, his body went slack, and he
collapsed to the bed once more.

“What was that?” the doctor hissed.

Taylor was thinking the same thing, except
she would have phrased her question more like
What the flying,
crazy, bloody, crikey, flaming hell was that?
And she had hoped
the doctor would have been able to answer her pointed question, but
instead she found the shadowy surgeon asking the very same thing.
Not knowing whether to respond and hoping the question might have
been rhetorical, Taylor remained silent.

Taylor was relieved when one of the
assistants answered: “Not sure, but his vitals are stronger—heart
rate is back to normal, BP is about right, fever is gone. He seems
to be recovering.”

“Really?” Taylor asked.

The doctor said, “Early indications are that
whatever you did seems to have made a difference. But we’ll have to
wait a few hours to confirm.”

“You did it, babe,” Gabriel said, putting his
arm around her waist.

“
I
didn’t do anything. My new body
did. Which reminds me: Can we talk about the test results now? I
want to know who’s inhabiting my body and how many eyes I’m going
to have.”

Gabriel frowned. “What?”

“Never mind,” Taylor said. “Can we go
talk?”

“Of course.”

Gabriel told Kiren the good news before they
left and she promised to take Taylor out for dinner once Sampson
had fully recovered. “Where do you want to go?” Gabriel asked.

“Not here,” Taylor said. “Anywhere but
here.”

“How about the Bird’s Nest?” Gabriel
suggested.

Exhilaration filled her.
The Bird’s
Nest!
Given all that had happened over the Christmas holidays,
Taylor had almost forgotten about the place where it had all
started. Just a few months earlier, Gabriel had first revealed
himself in full angel form to Taylor. On that same night, he had
used his powerful wings to fly them to a quiet and tucked away
alcove high above UT’s football stadium. Eventually the spot had
become
their spot
and Taylor had nicknamed it the Bird’s
Nest. She longed to return there, for Gabriel to hold her, to
laugh, to live, to love.