Demon Evolution

by David Estes

  DEMON EVOLUTION

  Book Two of the

  Evolution Trilogy

  David Estes

  Published by David Estes at Smashwords

  Copyright 2011 David Estes

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Discover other exciting titles by David Estes available through the author’s official website:

  http://davidestesbooks.blogspot.com

  or through select online retailers.

  The Evolution Trilogy by David Estes:

  Book One—Angel Evolution

  Book Two—Demon Evolution

  Book Three—Archangel Evolution

  This book is dedicated to my mother, Nancy,

  for being my first-draft reader,

  sounding board and supporter, and

  for instilling in me the love for a good story.

  PART I

  “You say you gotta go and find yourself

  You say that you're becoming someone else

  Don't recognize the face in the mirror looking back at you

  You say you're leaving as you look away

  I know there's really nothing left to say

  Just know I'm here whenever you need me, I will wait for you

  So I'll let you go, I'll set you free

  And when you've seen what you need to see

  When you find you...come back to me”

  -David Cook- “Come Back to Me”

  From the album David Cook (2010)

  Chapter One

  Being reunited with him was the sweetest feeling that Taylor had ever experienced, which she was loathe to admit. He had harmed her. Deeply, emotionally. But that didn’t matter now. As Gabriel held her in his arms, the electricity of his embrace flowed through her like a fast-acting drug. By the time it reached her legs, she felt like she was floating. Maybe she was. Taylor looked down to see the ground moving away from her quickly, as Gabriel’s snowy-white wings propelled them upwards.

  “But where did you…how did you—?” Taylor started to ask.

  Still gripping her firmly with one arm, Gabriel used the other arm to raise his index finger to her lips, to silence her. Removing his finger, he kissed her passionately on the lips, as they hovered thousands of feet from the distant earth below.

  Momentarily drunk from the emotion of the kiss, Taylor struggled to remember where they were, how they got there—what question was she trying to ask him seconds earlier? The temporary intoxication waned and clarity returned to her mind. Wait a minute, she thought. Something wasn’t right.

  In a cliché act of truth-seeking, Taylor pinched herself hard on the arm. Nothing. She felt nothing. Not wanting it to end, she clung to Gabriel and hugged him fiercely. Despite her efforts, his perfect body began to fade—first his strong arms and legs, then his sculpted torso, until all that was left was his beautiful smiling face, framed by his wavy, sandy-blond hair and strong chin. With nothing left to hold on to, Taylor dropped from the sky, plummeting towards the earth below. She was barely able to read his lips as she fell.

  “I still love you,” Gabriel’s bodiless head mouthed.

  Chapter Two

  Grudgingly, Taylor awoke from the dream and sat up, slowly rubbing her eyes. “I still love you, too,” she found herself whispering. “No I don’t,” she reminded herself. It wasn’t that she wasn’t a forgiving person. She was. But Gabriel had scarred her in more ways than one. His lies had been unforgivable, but she had forgiven him already. After all, he would be making the ultimate sacrifice for her: dying a traitor’s death.

  What she couldn’t come to terms with was how he had changed her. By the end, she was no more than a trophy on his arm, a tool to be used mercilessly, a mere shadow of the independent girl her mother had taught her to be. The last time she was with him she almost died because of him.

  Her mind wandered back to her dream from four months earlier, in which she had seen Gabriel for the first time. Gabriel’s explanation tumbled through her head as vividly as if it were yesterday: “One of my abilities is to alter the dreams of any human I choose,” he had said.

  Taylor wondered if her own subconscious had created this dream—she hoped not—or if Gabriel was trying to communicate with her. She wondered where he was, what he was thinking. She hadn’t seen him in nearly two weeks and, despite Christopher’s reassurances, she feared he was dead. Angel prison was not a place you wanted to be, especially after being charged with treason, for which the penalty was death.

  While her head warned her to steer clear of him, her heart hadn’t given up the fight yet. Hearts, she thought, what a nuisance. No matter how hard she tried to listen to only her brain, her heart fought back like a cornered animal, yearning for Gabriel’s touch. She knew she would give him a second chance—or maybe it was a third—if he didn’t die first.

  If Gabriel had forced himself into her dream, then it meant he was still alive, but for some reason Taylor was unable to draw any hope from the thought. The dream only made her miss him more. She needed to get back to the Lair, or she was going to go crazy. There was only one problem: her father.

  “Taylor! C’mon down, I think you’ve slept in enough already, it’s Christmas morning for goodness sake!” Her dad’s voice carried up the stairs, down the hall, and straight through her bedroom door. She cringed.

  “Okay, Eddie! I’ll be right down!” she yelled back. How had she forgotten it was Christmas? Given everything that had happened to her in the last two weeks, she was entitled to be a bit less interested in the holidays than usual, but completely forgetting? That was unprecedented.

  Nevertheless, she would be required to put on a happy face and participate in the festivities with her family, so as to not raise any unnecessary suspicion. She needed her dad in a good mood before she hit him with the question she had been procrastinating asking him.

  Given his history of being extremely overprotective, Taylor doubted her father would easily agree to her plans to go on a beach vacation with her best friend and college roommate, Samantha. Of course, if he knew the real plan—to spend the school holidays in a dark cave network nicknamed “the Lair” with a bunch of demons, while trying to help her boyfriend, who happened to be an angel, escape from angel prison—there would be zero chance of gaining his approval.

  Knowing her dad, she would need to concoct a reasonable and believable lie, and launch it at exactly the right time and in the right way. Easier said than done.

  Before she could make a move to get out of bed, the cell phone sitting on her bedside table blared Pearl Jam’s Alive, in response to an incoming call. She grabbed her phone and checked the caller—it was Samantha. Sam was the only other human who knew about her plight. In fact, given Sam’s serious relationship with Christopher Lyon, a surprisingly well-mannered demon, she had become deeply involved in Taylor’s situation.

  Sam had been a rock throughout the ordeal, providing comfort, laughs, a shoulder to cry on, and anything else that Taylor needed. It was comforting for Taylor not to have to keep any secrets from her childhood friend.

  “Hey, Sam,” Taylor said.

  “Merry Christmas!” Sam replied enthusiastically. “Why so glum, Tay? It’s the happiest day of the year!” Taylor couldn’t help but smile at her friend’s energy. From the time they were kids, Sam had always believed in the magic of Christmas and seemed to truly
believe that the holidays would somehow bring Taylor luck.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Sam. Maybe just the fact that my boyfriend has been kidnapped by some really nasty angels that want to cut him up into little pieces, which they will then burn just to be sure he doesn’t put himself back together.”

  A few seconds of silence passed as it seemed Sam didn’t know how to respond. “Look, Tay—” Sam began.

  Taylor cut her off: “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I know you’re just trying to make me feel better. It’s just that I had a dream about him last night, and it’s kind of put me in a rotten mood. It felt so real, like he had never left. I really miss that lying, flying jerk, Sam.”

  Sam laughed. “Funny how things change. It was always me that dated the jerks, but now I am with a gentleman.”

  “He’s a demon, Sam.”

  “They’re the good guys, remember?”

  Admittedly, Taylor was still having trouble getting her head around the fact that the demons were trying to help save humankind, while the angels sought to destroy it. “I know,” Taylor said.

  Sam said, “But Gabriel showed he wants to be good, too. When he tried to save you. We will get Gabriel back. First, we need to get back to the Lair though. It just so happens I have some good news about that. My dad bought the story about Florida and he’s letting me go as a reward for my grades this semester. He also said something like, ‘Taylor is such a responsible girl.’”

  Taylor laughed. “If only he knew the type of boys we’ve been hanging out with, he might change his tune,” Taylor said.

  “What did your dad say?”

  “Umm…well, I haven’t exactly told him yet.”

  “Tay! We are supposed to leave in three days, you need to tell him.”

  “I know, I know, I just haven’t found the right time yet. I’ll do it while we’re opening Christmas presents this morning, so hopefully he’ll be in a good mood. And you gave me a great idea: to use the good grades I got this semester as leverage.”

  An annoying voice came from the hallway. “Taylor, you seriously need to get off the phone and come downstairs; we’ve been waiting for you for hours.”

  James, Taylor’s older brother, glared at her from the doorway. He had one foot in her room in an attempt to get under her skin. It worked.

  “Get out of my room,” Taylor demanded, standing up.

  “Make me,” James sneered.

  “Sam, I gotta go, I have to call pest control.”

  “Okay, hun. Call me back as soon as you’ve talked to your dad.”

  “I will. Bye.” She pressed the END button and returned her phone to her nightstand.

  Turning her attention back to her infuriating brother, she considered giving him a real earful—telling him how full of himself he was and how his voice sounded like nails on a chalkboard. Instead, Taylor changed her mind, deciding that now was not the time to pick a fight with James. It would only put her father in a bad mood and lower her chances of getting his approval for her trip.

  Laying on the sarcasm really thick, Taylor said, “Why thank you, James, for reminding me that I should be downstairs with my family on this beautiful Christmas morning.”

  James was unfazed by Taylor’s attempt at civility. He suddenly darted into the room, tackling Taylor onto her bed. Before she could even curse at him, James had released her and was back out the door and running down the stairs laughing.

  Taylor took two deep breaths and waited for her anger to subside. I can get my revenge later, she thought. Before making her way downstairs, she looked in the mirror. Ugh. Her brown hair was tangled and full of static. Her face was tired, with slightly sunken eyes and an unsettling weariness in her skin. She made eye contact with herself, her mild brown eyes probing into her consciousness through the looking glass, searching for something. Turning her shoulder, she was able to make out a portion of the dark tattoo that slithered across the upper left quadrant of her back. The red-eyed serpent had been etched in her skin when she was sixteen, as a symbol of conquered childhood fear. Once upon a time, as a little girl, she had been scared of closing her eyes. Plagued with a recurring nightmare about a deadly black snake that sought to end her existence, Taylor eventually—only after he mother died—cast aside her fear. The nightmares didn’t stop, but she didn’t fear them anymore.

  Then Gabriel came along and slew the beast. Literally. He entered her nightmare and thrust a sword through her childhood monster’s heart. She hadn’t had a nightmare about the snake since. So she got another tattoo, on her ankle. Much smaller, the second bit of skin-art again featured the inky snake, but this time the serpent was strung up on a steel blade, limp and lifeless. Defeated and dead.

  Shaking off the memory, Taylor focused on brushing the knots out of her messy hair. Then she went to her dresser and slipped on each of the nine rings that she wore on a daily basis. When she had met Gabriel, she wore only eight. Three days earlier, she had added the ninth, featuring a pair of angel wings. At the jewelry store, she had hesitated before buying the silver ring; she was worried that it was a sign of weakness, of dependency on Gabriel. But then she bought it anyway. To her it was more of a reminder to trust her instincts, what her mom used to refer to as her “good gut”.

  Not bothering to change out of her pajamas, Taylor made her way downstairs and into the kitchen. Entering the cooking area, she took a moment to breathe in the mouth-watering aroma of sausage, eggs and bacon. Despite all of her complaints about Eddie, she had to give him credit: he was an amazing cook.

  “Wow, Dad, something smells delicious!” she exclaimed enthusiastically.

  “Good morning, princess,” he replied, kissing her on the forehead, “and Merry Christmas.”

  “Merry Christmas, Dad,” she said, her voice catching in her throat. The hint of emotion that she felt took her by surprise.

  With his usual dad-radar, Ed noticed the change in her voice and gave his only daughter a big hug. “I know. I miss her too, Taylor.”

  Taylor hugged him back tightly and tried not to tear up. Although her mother had died more than five years earlier, the pain still lingered, especially around the holidays.

  She had died in a car accident, when a drunk driver ran a red light and collided with her front driver’s side door. The medical examiner said that she had likely died instantly.

  Nancy Kingston died while coming home from one of her business trips. Her flight had been delayed almost two hours and didn’t land until ten o’clock at night. She was flying first-class and was probably one of the first people off of the airplane. Having only carry-on luggage, she would have made her way directly to her car and would have been on the highway by ten-twenty.

  She had called home on the road to let her family know that there was construction on the I-5, and she was going to use her GPS to reroute through Dixon County, an area she was not particularly familiar with. Having successfully navigated through Dixon, her mother was only two miles from home when she crossed the normally busy intersection of Commander Street and Apache Avenue. At the late hour, the area was deserted and the traffic light showed a steady green in her favor.

  Not giving it a second thought, Nancy would have cruised through the intersection, her mind carrying thoughts of seeing her family, having a hot shower and getting to bed. Evidently, she didn’t notice the black truck, its headlights extinguished, bearing down on her left side—until it was too late.

  A witness on a bike confirmed that the accident was the fault of the driver of the black truck and, given his blood-alcohol level was well over the legal limit, he was sentenced to manslaughter, which carried a prison term of five to seven years. But none of that made up for the unnecessary loss of life that had occurred.

  Taylor’s mother had been a highly respected expert on public speaking and had traveled around the country giving Speak Out seminars to help people overcome their fear of public speaking, as well as to help seasoned public speakers hone and perfect their skills. She had worked with many
politicians and CEOs, and her funeral was attended by the who’s who of the nation’s government and business leadership.

  Taylor often thought about how, if one small detail of her mother’s day had changed, she wouldn’t have arrived at that exact intersection, at that exact time. What if the plane wasn’t delayed? Or delayed less? Or delayed more? What if she was stuck in the back of the plane and it took her a few minutes longer to escape into the terminal? What if there was no construction on the highway or she had just decided to suffer through it? At first, Taylor made herself crazy thinking about the what-ifs, but over time she thought about them less and less and tried to move on with her life, as her mom would want her to do.

  Taylor’s mom has been her hero, her confidante, and most importantly, her friend. Good memories of her mom swirled through her mind, but she quickly blocked them out as she knew it would only lead to tears.

  Releasing her dad from the embrace, she said, “Let’s eat.”

  Her father smiled and prepared three lots of food. James appeared just as his plate touched the table, like a bloodhound that had tracked a pungent scent. He smirked at his sister, but Taylor managed to ignore him as she took her first bite of food.

  “Mmmm, this is great, Dad. If it were up to me, we would just skip the presents and eat all morning.” While it felt like a lame attempt to butter him up before dropping the question, Taylor actually meant what she said. Presents were not really her thing. Food was.

  James took the opportunity to take another shot at her: “We can tell, Taylor. It seems the dining hall buffets are catching up with you already. You do realize that you have a full year to gain the Freshman Fifteen, you didn’t have to do it all in one semester!”