by David Estes
“You’re gonna pay for this one,” the leader of the group sneered. He was young, probably no older than Gabriel, and athletic-looking—Gabriel could see his lean, sinewy muscles straining through his shirt. His mouth formed a snarl.
Sampson gritted his teeth and said, “You’ll get what’s coming to you, Lucas.”
Somehow Lucas’s mouth widened into a smile while maintaining the snarl. He laughed, deep and throaty. “Now that’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in my entire life. I am going to build my career off of the back of your mistakes, Sampson, and the mistakes of Gabby here.” He turned to Gabriel. “You would’ve been a star, but instead you’re a dead man, and I’m the rising star.”
Gabriel stared at him, unspeaking.
Lucas was about to unload another threat when Gabriel saw a flash of fire come from the side, barely within the spectrum of his peripheral vision. Lucas’s reflexes were up to the challenge; in less than a second, he was wielding a dazzlingly bright sword, raising it swiftly to thwart off the incoming attack. Despite the speed of his defense, Lucas was thrown back by the deafening metal-on-metal impact of the fiery sword against his own.
Moments later, there were a dozen bursts of fire around the group, as the demon special-attack force surrounded them, brandishing flaming swords and shields. The angels moved into formation to prevent their captives from being rescued—their brilliant swords lit up in response to the attack. With a yell of “Attack!” from one of the demons, probably the mission leader, the battle began. The clash of swords sounded like thunder in the night and, for someone watching from the distance, it would have looked like a small fireworks display.
The angels were mercilessly outnumbered and during the hand-to-hand combat one of the demons was able to slip through their defenses and slash the ropes away from Gabriel and Sampson. They were free, again.
Sampson immediately drew his sword, but the demon that had freed them said, “This is not your fight, I will get you out of here.”
Seeing the wisdom in this, Sampson replied, “Okay. Gabriel, get over here.”
Gabriel was gazing at the battle, debating whether to jump into the fray, despite not having a weapon other than his bare hands. “Give me your sword, Sampson,” he commanded.
“Gabriel, there will be a time and a place to get your revenge. But now we must escape.”
Gabriel watched as Lucas struck down the demon he was fighting. He thrust his sword directly into the heart of his struggling victim. With a look of pure hatred, he stared at Gabriel and pointed his sword at him. For Gabriel, retreating from a fight with Lucas was the hardest thing he had ever had to do in his life. Every instinct was telling him to destroy the rival angel, but instead he listened to his friend, who had risked his life to help him escape.
Just before Gabriel was teleported from the battle, he saw Lucas raise his arm and slash his thumb across his neck. Gabriel understood the message: “I’m going to kill you.” It didn’t bother him though, because he was thinking the same thing.
Chapter Seven
Taylor watched as Sam gripped the wheel harder, her knuckles turning white from the pressure. By applying more force to the accelerator, she had managed to stay close to the lead car when it sped up in response to the reports about the angel pursuers. Taylor had never seen her friend this nervous—typically she was highly confident, bordering on cockiness at times.
The road they were on was quiet—no one was outside and they were the only cars on the road. That’s when they lost their last line of defense.
One moment the lead car was zooming along, about three car-lengths in front of them, and the next moment it erupted in a ball of fire when a basketball-sized pulse of light struck it, like a heat-seeking missile finding its target. The car flew thirty feet in the air before landing in a heap on one of the well-manicured front lawns they were passing.
Samantha screamed and tried to swerve, but she couldn’t avoid driving directly through the wall of fire that rose from the road. Luckily, the car was moving fast enough to slice through the flames and emerge on the other side unscathed, but due to the lack of visibility and Sam’s sudden turn of the wheel, the car jumped the curb and clipped a fire hydrant. They came to rest on the sidewalk and, amidst a shower from the burst hydrant, Chris jumped out and pulled a stunned Samantha from the car. He re-belted her into the backseat and took over as driver.
Chris gunned the engine, reversed, and then accelerated quickly, spraying rubber on the curb, as he tore back onto the road. “Are they dead?” Taylor asked, referring to the demons in the lead car.
“No, they should be fine,” Chris replied. “A little banged up maybe, but a little fire doesn’t hurt our kind.”
“What the hell was that?” Taylor said.
Chris answered in one word: “Angels.”
“I know that, but does it mean they defeated the demon guard?”
“I don’t know. Let’s find out,” Chris replied.
Pumping the radio to his mouth, he barked, “Rear guard, what is your status?”
The radio crackled and they heard, “Mission complete. We teleported onto the angels’ backs and were able to force them to land. But then one of our men grabbed them and teleported them to who knows where. Adrian is a traitor, sir.”
“Okay, there’s nothing we can do about that now. We’ve been attacked by a second group of angels. Can you and one of your squad members teleport to our vehicle? We are about two blocks down Crown Street.”
Seconds later, they heard a thud on the roof of their car. “Sam, move to the middle seat,” Chris ordered. Obediently, his girlfriend undid her belt and slid over. After rolling down his window, Chris shouted, “C’mon in!”
Even though she would have been expecting it, Sam visibly twitched when the demons suddenly appeared on each side of her. “Hiya, Sam,” one of them said.
“Hey, Chuck,” she replied. Charles Booth was a close friend of Chris’s, and both Samantha and Taylor had talked to him a few times before. Charles, or Chuck as most of the demons called him, was an intelligent, but fit-looking demon, with dark black eyes and sharp eyebrows that made him appear to be intensely concentrating. He was also highly handsome—he kind of reminded Taylor of the smart but sexy Dr. Karev from Grey’s Anatomy.
Taylor didn’t know the other demon who had appeared, but she looked strangely familiar. Her hair was a bright shade of green, which contrasted sharply to her shadowy aura. “Hi, I’m Kiren. I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced,” she said, extending her hand.
Taylor shook her hand while looking at her curiously. “Taylor. Do I know you from somewhere?”
Kiren laughed. “Sort of. I go to the University of Trinton with you guys, too. I actually live on the same floor as you in Shyloh Hall. My roommate is your friend—Marla.”
“Seriously? Sorry, I should have known,” Taylor said.
“No, no, don’t worry. I came to UT just to keep an eye on you and Chris, and I was instructed to lay low. I hope I didn’t freak Marla out too much, she seems like a sweet girl.”
It was Sam’s turn to laugh. “Well, I think she would like a roommate that actually talks to her and doesn’t come out only at night, but other than that I think she loves you as her roommate.”
Kiren’s eyebrows wrinkled into a frown. “I guess I might have overplayed the strange and mysterious vibe a little bit. I’ll try to be more social next semester, especially now that my cover is blown anyway.”
Taylor was happy for some light conversation to take her mind off of the near-death experience they had just had. Her distraction was short lived, however, as she was jolted back to reality when Chris cried out, “We’ve got company, hang on!” Yanking the wheel hard to the left, he fish-tailed the car onto a side street, just as a ball of light struck the road in front of them.
The passengers turned around to gawk out the back window. Three white cars made the same turn behind them, in hot pursuit. “Uh, Chris,” Chuck said, “they’ve got better
wheels than us.”
“Yeah, thanks for pointing that out,” Chris retorted. He was driving Sam’s red 2009 Honda Civic Hybrid. Not a bad little car, and great for the gas mileage, but it was no match for the souped up vehicles that were chasing them. In fact, Taylor wasn’t sure that a jet would be any match for the angels’ rides: A Porsche, Ferrari, and Lamborghini cruised down the road behind them in a rare display of beauty and power that would surely draw the gaze of anyone within sight. They needed to get to the highway.
Kiren opened her window and pulled her narrow body through it. She looked back at their pursuers. “Incoming!” she yelled. Taylor watched as another orb of light pulse from the white Porsche. The top was down, making it easier for the angels to fire off light attacks.
Chris slammed his foot down hard on the accelerator, trying to outrun the ball of light. Thrusting her hand out, Kiren was barely able to maintain her balance by clutching the side of the car, while precariously dangling from the window. At the same time, she fired her own weapon: three boulder-like balls of fire bounced down the road. The first collided with the orb, in an explosion of fire and light. The smoke and fire from the blast temporarily blocked their rear vision, but it also allowed the remaining two boulders of fire to charge towards their pursuers unseen.
At the exact moment when the white Porsche cut through the smokescreen, the fiery cannonball struck its front bumper. Like a lever, the car was flipped high into the air and then, reaching its peak, arced downwards, landing on top of the next car in the line—the Ferrari—stopping it dead in its tracks. The final pursuer deftly maneuvered around the mangled white metal of its two predecessors, but met a similar fate when the third and final fire boulder hurtled into its side, leaving the Lamborghini incapacitated.
“Three for three—not bad,” Kiren said, as she pulled herself back through the window.
“That was amazing,” Sam said, clearly in awe.
Kiren grinned from ear to ear. “Nice work, Kiren,” Chris said.
“No problem,” she replied.
Taylor looked in the rear-view mirror at the female demon sitting beside Sam. She hadn’t really paid much attention to her appearance when they first met, but now, after seeing what she was able to do, Taylor couldn’t help but stare. She was of average height, her muscles toned, but not too bulky. While her green hair was cut short, like a boy, it was styled—spiky in all directions—giving her a kind of punk rock star look. Her smile was cute, infectious even. Taylor turned her attention back to the road, thankful that for the moment they weren’t being pursued.
Two streets later, they were on the highway and headed for the airport. While it would be easier to simply teleport from where they were, they needed to maintain the charade that they were taking a trip to Florida, just in case. Ten minutes later, they pulled into the airport parking lot and quickly found a spot as far away from any other cars as possible.
“Okay. Chuck, you teleport Sam and I’ll teleport Taylor. Kiren, you’re on your own.” Chris gave orders like they were in the military—he was still in mission mode.
They held hands with their teleport buddies and, after a few seconds of the tell-tale swirling-twisting-flipping feeling, they appeared in a dark room with many rising seats in a U-shape on three sides of them. Dark men and women stopped in mid-conversation to inspect the new arrivals. Taylor had never been to the place before, but the rest of them had.
“Hi, Cliff,” Sam said energetically.
Her remark was directed at a particularly old demon, who was standing at a raised podium, set off from the other seats. While he showed clear signs of aging, he was still a very handsome man, like Sean Connery, or Bob Barker, with a full head of dark hair and a well-kept beard. He smiled at Samantha. “Ahh, my dear, how nice of you to return to us. And you’ve brought your friend, I see.”
“This is Taylor,” she said, with a wave of her hand.
Taylor waved casually.
“Welcome to the Eldership of the demons,” Clifford said grandly.
“Thank you,” Taylor said. She had been in a similar situation before, but in a room full of angel leaders. That hadn’t turned out too well, so she was wary of her current situation.
“Now…,” Clifford started to say.
Taylor cut him off: “Have you rescued Gabriel yet?”
Clifford looked at Taylor with pain in his eyes. “The mission was going according to plan, but then we received reports that, while they were making their escape, Gabriel and his escort were recaptured by a contingent of particularly nasty angels. A few minutes before you arrived, we sent our special-attack squad to try to save them, but we haven’t heard back from them yet. We are beginning to fear the worst.”
“No!” Taylor yelled. “Send another squad; you can’t let them take him. They’re going to kill him.” She felt her muscles tense under her clothing. Sweat beaded on her forehead, although she wasn’t warm. Images of Gabriel whipped through her mind like a whirlwind: Gabriel sitting in a dark cell; Gabriel being taunted by the angel guards; and finally, Gabriel being murdered, his body burned to prevent him from pulling himself back together.
Chapter Eight
Bodies crashed into bodies, like a game of Twister gone horribly wrong. Someone screamed. Then, like a row of dominos, they collapsed in a heap of flesh.
Taylor had the wind knocked out of her when a large body landed on her. Gasping for breath, she croaked, “Get the hell off of me.” That’s when she saw the blood, black and pooling—demon blood. “Help!” she yelled as loudly as she could.
In response to her plea, the lifeless body was lifted from her small frame by two hands. The hands were strong. And familiar, somehow. The hands said, “Take him.” That voice, she thought.
The body was passed to a second pair of hands and a face came into view. “Taylor,” the face said.
Just another dream. Gabriel’s beautiful face peered down at her and he reached for her hand. “You can’t keep doing this to me,” Taylor said. “I have to learn to let you go.”
Gabriel looked puzzled. “What do you mean?” he asked. He grabbed her hand, pulling her up.
His touch felt so good, so real. Taylor looked around her. She was still in the room with the rising chairs. She saw Chris helping Sam to her feet, and a dozen other demons were in the room now. Something was different about this dream. Taylor was afraid to hope, but still….She pinched herself hard on the arm. “Oww!” she exclaimed.
Gabriel looked amused. Taylor reached out and pinched him equally hard. “Ouch!” he yelped. “What did you do that for?”
Taylor’s muscles tensed again, but not in anger or frustration…in anticipation. Wrapping her arms around him, she hugged Gabriel tightly, as if anything less would allow him to disappear. “I thought I’d lost you,” she whispered.
Gabriel tilted her head back to look into her eyes. He said, “I thought I’d lost your love.”
“You should have,” she said, an edge creeping into her voice.
“Why didn’t I?” Gabriel asked.
“I don’t know,” Taylor said honestly. A sudden rage surged through her. She had the desire to punch him, to kick him, to swear at him. He had hurt her so badly, he deserved to be hurt too. He had been hurt, she reminded herself. His punishment had been sufficient.
Abruptly, Taylor noticed that everyone in the room was watching them now, but she continued to hold Gabriel fiercely, afraid to let go. She spotted Sampson, and her eyes widened. “But what—? What are you doing here?”
His face bursting into a massive smile, Sampson said, “Oh, come on now. You didn’t think I would leave Gabriel all by himself, did you?”
Taylor smiled back. “No, I guess not,” she said.
Clifford approached them and said to Gabriel, “We have much to discuss, young angel, but first you should eat…and rest.”
“Thank you,” Gabriel said. “Thank you for everything.”
Chapter Nine
“Whose body was that?” Taylor
asked. Taylor, Gabriel, Sam, Chris, and Sampson were in the demon café watching Gabriel inhale a massive plate of food. They had already eaten. Gabriel was working on his third plate.
Gabriel looked up from his feeding, like a pig above its slop bucket. “I dunno. Chris?”
Keeping his voice even, Chris said, “It was Dom. He was dead before they even got him to the medical center. He was a friend of mine.” Samantha put her arm around her boyfriend’s back and pulled him towards her.
“Oh, Chris, I’m so sorry,” she said.
“Who killed him?” Chris asked.
Gabriel finished chewing the mouthful he was working on and replied, “A filthy angel named Lucas. He is the Archangel Council’s new toy. They will try to use him to kill me and abduct Taylor. But I’m going to kill him first.”
Taylor frowned. “That would be stupid, considering you’ve just been rescued.”
Chris interjected, “Don’t worry, we won’t be doing anything right away. The Elders will need to discuss the situation and decide what to do next. For now, no one is going anywhere.”
The scowl that had formed on Gabriel’s face when he was talking about Lucas lingered for a moment, and then dissipated, as he apparently resigned himself to the fact that he needed to involve the demons in any plans going forward. “Fair enough,” he said. “Besides, I have everything I need right here.” He smiled at Taylor, although she continued to frown at him.
Samantha asked, “What happened in the Elder’s room, anyway?”
Chris laughed. “Remember when I told you that all teleporting in and out of the Lair is carefully controlled?” She nodded. “Well, that is why we need to control it. In emergency situations the Elders allow teleporting to and from restricted areas, like the Elder’s room. In this case, we happened to teleport in just before Gabriel and his rescuers did. It was almost like a busy intersection with all traffic lights showing green.”