Demon Evolution

Published by David Estes at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 David Estes

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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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.

“
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)

B
eing 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.

G
rudgingly, 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.