Angel Evolution

by David Estes

  “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.”

  PART IV

  “Too alarming now to talk about

  Take your pictures down and shake it out

  Truth or consequence, say it aloud

  Use that evidence race it around

  There goes my hero

  Watch him as he goes

  There goes my hero

  He's ordinary”

  Foo Fighters- “My Hero”

  From the album The Colour and the Shape (1997)

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Gabriel was enjoying the verbal sparring. Given he was the only one who knew the full truth of what was about to happen, the conversation was pointless, but he wasn’t going to stop it. Instead he just played along.

  “We need to tell Sam what’s going on,” Taylor said.

  “Trust me on this one, Tay, the fewer people that know, the better,” Gabriel replied.

  “Don’t I get a say?” Chris asked.

  “No!” Taylor and Gabriel said at the same time. They looked at each other and laughed.

  The girl, the angel, and the demon were camped out in the library trying to make some team decisions while Sam was at the gym. Of course, Taylor and Gabriel were thinking about what to do based on their secret plan, while Christopher was basing his rationale on the plan that he thought they had agreed on. Chris believed that he would be part of a diversion set to occur on Thursday to allow Gabriel and Taylor to escape, and then he would meet up with them later.
Taylor knew that the real plan was for Gabriel and Taylor to fly off alone on Wednesday, leaving everyone else confused and unable to track them. However, she thought that she and Gabriel would hide together until they could come up with a permanent way to get both the angels and the demons off her back. That wasn’t exactly true…like at all.

  The discussion now was about whether to include Sam in any of the plans and whether to reveal to her the true nature of the boys that she and Taylor were dating. Taylor was voting yes, Gabriel said no, and they refused to let Christopher voice his opinion.

  Taylor clearly wanted her best friend to know what was going on. She said, “I have an idea. I will agree that we won’t tell her now. We’ll carry out the plan and find a safe place to hide. Then, after the semester is over, we are going to need Sam to keep up the ruse that I am on an extended vacation with Gabriel. We will need her to reassure my father or he is going to be freaking out and having the cops out looking for me.”

  “Fine. Deal,” Gabriel said. He was the only one who knew the full truth. There would be no need to maintain the lie about them being on vacation for very long. If his plan was successful, the mission would be accomplished in less than a week and she would be back at school, finishing her classes and hanging out with her best friend, Sam, and the love of her life, him.

  Taylor was surprised he had agreed so easily, but wasn’t about to question it. She grabbed Gabriel’s hand and shook it before he had a chance to change his mind. Her mind wandered back to the plan they had come up with. She had lost track of the days and realized then that it was already Tuesday night, the eve of her escape from the demons. She shuddered.

  She had felt bad about not telling Christopher, but she knew that he couldn’t be trusted after what Gabriel told her he had done. She still thought that he might be a good demon and that he had just made a mistake, and was trying to make up for it now. She also knew that if they told him what they were really doing, that he might make another mistake and alert the other demons, so she kept her mouth shut.

  Taylor yawned and looked at her watch. It was only seven-thirty in the evening, but she wanted to get plenty of sleep as the real plan involved getting up quite early.

  “I’m going to head back to my room and make it an early night, you guys want to walk back with me?” Taylor asked. After what happened earlier that week, she knew Gabriel wouldn’t let her out of his sight. Chris decided to tag along, too.

  With a sly smile, Taylor said, “Hey, Chris, a little birdie told me that demons have the ability to teleport and to teleport others, is that true?”

  He smiled proudly; Chris was oblivious to what had happened with the gargoyle, so he didn’t realize that his ability to teleport had some bad memories for her. “Yep, absolutely, why do you ask?”

  “Well, I was just thinking…my legs are tired and I would rather get back to my room as quickly as possible so…do you think you could do anything about that?”

  Christopher laughed, while Gabriel glared at Taylor. “That is a bad idea, Tay,” Gabriel objected.

  “It’s fine by me,” Chris agreed. “I can take you both.”

  “Or I could just fly us all there,” Gabriel suggested, not wanting to give in.

  “Nah, I’m too tired to hang on, let’s just port,” Taylor insisted.

  The two boys looked at each other and laughed at her creation of the verb port, meaning “to teleport”.

  “Whaddya say, Mr. Angel?” Chris asked.

  “Alright fine, let’s make it quick.”

  They found a janitor’s closet and squeezed in so that no one would see them do it. Seconds later they had ported into another small janitor’s closet in the Commons.

  Taylor sighed. “That was way better than walking, although flying does have a certain thrill to it.”

  “Glad you liked it,” Chris said.

  Gabriel walked Taylor home and Chris went back to his room. When Gabriel dropped her off, he asked, “You ready?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess,” she replied. “See you at six o’clock sharp.”

  He kissed her deeply and then hugged her like he would never see her again. “Goodnight, my love,” he said, shutting the door.

  “Back at you, angelboy,” Taylor said to the door.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  It was three o’clock in the morning. Taylor rubbed her eyes, and looked at the shining numbers on her iPhone. Sleep came and went. Her body and mind were restless. Three hours to go, she thought.

  She needed to get some sleep, but every time she closed her eyes, vivid scenes from the last three months of her life flashed by. How had things gotten so out of control? She was just a normal teenager who wanted to have a normal college experience, and now here she was, in love with an angel, hunted by demons, a potential midnight snack for some gargoyle.

  If only she could tell Sam; that would change everything. They would make jokes about it, talk to each other about how they were feeling, and just generally be there for each other. The only ones she could talk to about it, Gabriel and Christopher, were the ones causing the problems to begin with!

  She rolled back over, trying to tell the thoughts in her head to “Shut up!!” when she heard a soft tapping on her window. Glancing at Sam to make sure she was fast asleep, Taylor kneeled on her bed to see what had caused the sound. It was Gabriel, his wings fully extended and slowly undulating, allowing him to hover outside the glass.

  Over the time that she had been dating him, he had appeared outside her window countless times. She loved it when he did that. It usually meant going for a midnight flight around campus, or gazing at the stars and talking about fantastical creatures, like angels and demons, or better yet, feeling his lips against hers, their bodies intertwined.

  She knew this was not one of those kinds of visits, but still, her heart leapt in anticipation, until she saw the troubled look on her boyfriend’s face. His face was panicked, his eyes wide and his facial expressions jerky.

  Ever so slowly, Taylor lifted the window a few inches, praying it wouldn’t betray her with a squeak. “What’s wrong?” she hissed.

  “He’s on to us,” Gabriel growled.

  “Chris?”

  “I wish. No, it’s Jonas. He doesn’t know the real plan, but he knows the one where we escape with Chris. Maybe Chris told him.”

  Taylor said, “Chris wouldn’t do that.”

  “Look, we don’t have time to argue. Jonas and his boys could show up any second!”

  “Okay, one sec.” Taylor crawled across her bed and plucked the small overnight bag she had packed from the floor, slid the note she had written for Sam onto her desk, slipped on and tied her sneakers, and clambered back to the open window.

  Thinking ahead, Taylor had decided to sleep in her jeans and a tank top, so that she was able to leave quickly if necessary. It made her feel like she was a spy or fugitive in some movie.

  She had wanted to bring enough clothes for a few weeks, but Gabriel insisted he wouldn’t be able to fly very far with that kind of load on his back and that they would be able to acquire more clothes along the way if necessary.

  Taylor swung her legs out the window and ducked her head, so that her entire body was in the open air. Positioning her hands to either side of her hips, she propelled herself forward and onto Gabriel’s back, instantly feeling his warmth and the gentle rocking as his body levitated above the ground.

  Gabriel soared into the night. The area around Taylor’s building was deserted, and even if some insomniac was watching out a window, they would likely think it was a dream and no one would believe their story anyway.

  Once they were away from the campus, Taylor spoke. “How’d you know Jonas was coming for me?”

  “It’s really not the time to talk about all this…,” Gabriel said.

  “It’s exactly the time,” Taylor said, unable to prevent a hint of irritation on her voice.

  “Okay, I’ve been watching Jonas all night. Twenty minutes ago, he left
his building and met his buddies and I was able to overhear part of their conversation. They somehow knew we were leaving tomorrow, as we had agreed with Chris.”

  “Was Chris with them?” Taylor asked.

  “No, but—”

  “He didn’t tell them,” Taylor said.

  “I don’t know how they found out then. If neither of us told them, that leaves only Chris.”

  “Maybe they somehow overheard one of our conversations with Chris.”

  “Maybe,” Gabriel said, “but it seemed like Jonas had just found out.”

  Taylor didn’t respond. She didn’t feel like talking anymore. Just a few weeks ago she had felt betrayed by Gabriel, when she found out he had lied to her, and she really didn’t want to think about the possibility that another one of her close friends had betrayed her, too. She rested her head on the upper portion of Gabriel’s left wing, using it as a pillow, and slipped into a restless sleep. Early on in their relationship, Taylor had helped Gabriel fashion a harness of sorts that clamped on his retractable wings, which she could strap herself into, so that while she was on his back she could sleep without falling off.

  A couple of hours later Gabriel landed near a 24-hour gas station so they could get something to drink and use the bathroom. It almost felt like a road trip. If that’s what it was, it was a very strange kind of road trip.

  After they got back “on the road”, Taylor felt like talking again. The endless silence was deafening, somehow.

  “Where exactly are we going?” she demanded, making no attempt to hide her bad mood. “You told me it was a safe place, but that you would give me the details later.” Taylor realized how foolish she sounded. Allowing herself to be taken to an unknown place with a boy she hardly knew. How was this a good idea?