by David Estes
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Their New Year’s celebrations had been ruined by Dionysus, but the successful rescue of the angel spies gave them a new reason to celebrate. The twenty-six ex-prisoners, each in various levels of deterioration, had recovered quickly, their superhuman angel bodies responding well to a day of rest, proper food, and lots of water. Their clipped wings had been replaced with the latest in titanium wing technology until their natural limbs were regrown. A feast was planned for the second evening from their rescue.
The loss of one of their own, Boyd Chance, was mourned at first, but then instilled in each of them a steely resolve to see their rebellion through to the end. Without being asked, each angel spy vowed to continue their fight against Dionysus, the Archangel Council, and all who supported them.
Gabriel and Taylor, along with the others who had participated in the dangerous mission, were debriefed by Clifford. The strategy going forward had yet to be determined, but endless accolades were poured out upon Taylor, to which she responded, “No biggie.”
After the debriefing, Sampson was embarrassed. “I can’t believe I was the first one down, how pathetic,” he muttered.
“Yeah, pretty bad, man,” Gabriel agreed.
Chris decided to join in on the verbal pile-on. “If it wasn’t for Kiren, you’d be mince-meat. She stood over you like she was defending her first-born child.”
“Kiren has a kid?” Sampson asked, looking concerned. It was impossible for him to hide his interest in the dark and tenacious beauty.
“Don’t listen to them, Sampson,” Kiren replied. “I am single, childless, and I thought you performed admirably as my steed. You protected me by taking the hit for me.”
Sampson smiled sheepishly at the compliment.
Unfortunately for him, it just added fuel to the fire. “Geez, even after the battle is over, she is still stuck defending you,” Gabriel taunted.
Trying to negotiate peace, Samantha said, “From where I was watching, you all would’ve been screwed if it wasn’t for Taylor.”
“True,” Chris said. “Thanks again, Taylor.”
Taylor frowned at Sam, irritated that she had turned the spotlight back on her. “Listen up. I don’t want to hear anyone thank me, compliment me, or say anything else nice to me that is related to what happened on New Year’s Eve.”
“Looks like someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” Sam said, giggling. “But, please. Indulge us just one more time.” Taylor looked at her confusedly as her friend extended her arms like she was conducting an orchestra. “One, two, three,” she said, and then, when she raised her arms, the ragtag gang of angels, demons, and humans said in unison, “THANK YOU, TAYLOR!”
This time Taylor didn’t get mad. Instead, she couldn’t help but shake her head and laugh at the five beautiful individuals standing before her. While they were all physically attractive, she felt that the beauty inside them far exceeded the quality of their outward appearance. A little cliché, maybe, but nevertheless true. The dynamic of the group was interesting. Not only because it was comprised of a mix of three different races, each linked by evolutionary forces, but also because of the length of the relationships.
Taylor and Sam had been best friends for years, but had only been with Gabriel and Christopher for a few months. Gabriel and Christopher, however, had known each other somewhat longer, having fought on opposite sides of the War. Likewise, Christopher had known Kiren, and Gabriel had known Sampson, since childhood, but Sampson and Kiren had only just met, and now seemed on a collision course with the first ever demon-angel romantic relationship. Lastly, Taylor and Samantha had only known Sampson and Kiren for a few weeks and yet they already felt as close to them as they did to each other’s boyfriends.
Sam put an arm around Taylor, affectionately pulling her close. Taylor shook her off, pretending to look mad, but really she was glad to have her friend with her. Despite having Gabriel Knight, the love of her life, back with her, she knew that without Sam she would feel lost and alone. Sam always knew when to crack a joke, like just a moment ago. Taylor could only wish that she could ever provide as much support to Samantha as she received from her.
Still laughing at Taylor, Sam asked, “What should we do now?”
With a gleam in his dark eyes, Chris suggested, “Why don’t we go say hello to the gargoyles? You girls haven’t seen them close up yet, have you?”
Simultaneously, Gabriel and Sampson said, “No!” while Samantha exclaimed, “Yeah!”
“Why not?” Sam asked, when she heard that the angels’ reply was opposite to her own.
Taylor replied, “We kind of forgot to tell you about our last close encounter with gargoyles.” Taylor went on to tell about Sampson’s brilliant idea to visit the angel gargoyle paddocks and how the gargoyle had nearly killed them all by connecting with Taylor’s aura. While Sampson was partly to blame for them being there in the first place, he recovered some of his pride when he told, in great detail, the part about how he and David, Gabriel’s younger brother, subdued the raging beast before it could seriously hurt anyone.
“So you can see our hesitancy in going anywhere near a gargoyle again anytime soon,” Gabriel explained.
Chris said, “I hear you, man, but that situation only turned bad because it was an angel gargoyle that was able to connect with Taylor’s aura. Demon gargoyles, like demons, don’t even have the ability to see the human aura, much less connect with it. I don’t see any harm in taking them down there.”
Gabriel looked like he was ready to punch his demon friend, but held his anger back when Taylor said, “Cool it. He’s right, Gabriel. We won’t be in any danger. It’s completely different.” After a few minutes of Chris describing the security measures in the gargoyle cages, the types of stone walls used, and the strength levels of the steel bars, he reluctantly agreed to give it a try.
Chris, always the leader while in the Lair, walked at the front, his arm linked with Sam’s. He led them down a narrow, spiraling tunnel. Other than the demons, none of them had ever been in this area of the Lair before.
Taylor and Gabriel followed closely behind them; Gabriel kept putting his arm around her protectively and she kept shrugging it off. He could be so damn protective sometimes. She needed to find balance in her life. While she forgave Gabriel for his sins, she didn’t want to go back to being just his girlfriend. She wanted to be herself: strong, resilient, tough, independent.
Following a healthy distance behind were Sampson and Kiren. Their flirting had picked up in the last few days and now, as their hands brushed against each other’s casually while they walked, they chatted more privately, their voices hushed as they spoke in fierce whispers.
As they descended, the lighting became darker and darker until the frequency and strength of the torches declined enough to thrust them into darkness for long stretches of time. Already on edge, Gabriel’s glowing lips moved up and down. He said, “Hey, demonboy, is this really the way?”
Kiren laughed somewhere in the darkness behind them. She said, “Yeah, Chris. Isn’t there a faster, less scary way?”
Chris admitted, “I thought the long way would be more exciting and suspenseful. We could have taken a transporter directly there, but that’s so boring.”
“Next time give us the option,” Gabriel grunted. “We’ll take the transporter back.”
“Grouch,” Taylor said, shrugging off another attempt by her boyfriend to hold her hand. She wasn’t in the mood.
Chris snapped his finger and a healthy fire ignited in his palm, lighting the way. Sam said, “It never has to be dark with my not-so-human torch.”
Taylor added, “Yeah, for me either, with my not-so-human glow worm.”
The girls laughed together loudly, Chris sniggered, and even the right corner of edgy Gabriel’s lips turned up in amusement. Not ready for the joke to die yet, Kiren rekindled the laughter when she said, “We’ve got both back here! Dionysus would die from the sight.”
After ano
ther three—or maybe three hundred—turns in the tunnel, Chris stopped abruptly. Taylor inspected the tunnel around them. It was the same monotonous gray rough rock arching above them. “Why the hell are we stopping?” Taylor asked bluntly.
“We’re here,” Chris explained.
“Oh,” Taylor replied, not understanding at all.
With a flourish, Chris waved his fiery hand towards the seamless, rock wall and then pressed his knuckles to the cold, textured stone. The grinding of gears and the clatter of chains resonated from somewhere within the mountain. Like something out of an Indiana Jones movie, a hidden door rose upwards, disappearing into the roof, revealing a well-lit chamber beyond. Taylor looked inside, expecting to see lifelike coats of armor and human skeletons walking around, as if possessed by ghosts. Crossing the threshold, she cringed, anticipating the sting of poison darts and preparing to run if a massive boulder crumbled from above, ready to flatten all those who dared to trespass.
When none of her imagination’s darkest creations proved to be true, she relaxed, although she found that she had instinctively gripped Gabriel’s hand. She quickly released it, horrified at how easily she fell into the boyfriend-girlfriend trap that she used to always make fun of.
“Let me introduce you to some of my favorite gargoyles,” Chris suggested, sounding like a zoo tour guide ready to introduce a family of gorillas to an excited group of kids. “I think, Taylor and Gabriel, you’ve met the first one. On your left is Freddy.”
Taylor squinted, and was barely able to discern a large, black shape through the gloom.
Noticing her inability to see in the dark, Chris said, “Sorry, I always forget that humans don’t have the same capacity for night vision as we do.” He touched his torch-hand to a notch at the side of the thick, metal bars, and Taylor watched in awe as the flame travelled across the whole of one of the cell walls, fully illuminating the space.
In one corner stood a hulk of an animal. It stared at them suspiciously, clearly startled by their presence and by the unexpected flair of fire in his cave.
“Freddy…,” Taylor murmured.
Seeing the angels, Freddy became agitated, stomping his feet, gnashing his teeth, and flapping his humorously inadequate wings.
Sam asked the obvious question: “What happened to his wings?”
Chris smirked and looked at Gabriel. “Care to answer, angel-boy?”
“Let’s just say we didn’t see eye to eye on something,” Gabriel responded furtively.
An answer like that was never enough for Sam, and after a couple minutes of nagging, he eventually told everyone the entire story from what felt like an eternity ago: Taylor being hunted by Freddy, Gabriel’s daring rescue, and the necessary destruction of Freddy’s wings to incapacitate him.
“Why was it necessary to rip out his wings?” Sam asked.
Chris answered for Gabriel. “Short of killing it, the only way to quickly stop a gargoyle is to remove its wings. That sounds like an easy task, but I can tell you from experience, it isn’t. Even with our superhuman strength, most angels and demons would struggle to quickly incapacitate a gargoyle.”
Sam nodded. “Okay, but how does Mr. Freddy have wings now then.”
“They grow back eventually, it takes about a year. Because the attack on Taylor was a couple of months ago, the wings have a long way to go, which is why they look pathetically small. But even when they are full grown, gargoyle wings appear to be far too small to allow them to fly, but trust me, they are sufficient.”
“Yeah,” Taylor agreed. “I thought I had outrun the damn thing and then like some winged freak, it swooped down behind me, with drool hanging off of its fangs, stomping around like it was Godzilla.”
“Hey! Not everything with wings is a freak,” Gabriel objected.
“Oh, sorry, birdman,” she joked, “I didn’t mean you.”
Sam was more interested in the details of the story. “That’s intense, Tay. How close did you get to him?” She motioned to Freddy the gargoyle.
“Let’s just say he was close enough that I could smell the filthy reek of his bad breath; it smelled like he had been eating onions and garlic all day and not brushed his teeth. I was more worried about dying from nasty odor intake than I was from being mauled.”
Sam sniffed the air expectantly. “I see what you mean, this entire place smells like bad B.O.”
“Nah, that’s just Sampson, did you forget to put on your Nivea deodorant again, man?” Gabriel joked.
Sampson was not about to back down on this one. “Wait a minute. How is it that you are trying to make fun of me, Gabriel? I thought we agreed that as compensation for me being such a straight-arrow, stalwart of goodness, defender of humans, and you being such a devious, lying, puppet for Dionysus, you weren’t going to give me a hard time anymore?”
“Ouch, man, straight through the heart.” Gabriel feigned like he had been shot with an arrow. With a performance equal to that of Cruise or Pitt, he struggled to pluck the “arrow” from his chest, eventually succeeding in wrenching it from his flesh. Clutching his breast, he sank to his knees and then keeled over, dead as a doornail. The entire group was in stitches by the time he regained his feet and gave a small bow. “Anyway, Sampson, I only agreed not to tell old stories about you, but I don’t remember anything about not joking with you. I feel like that is part of our dynamic, what makes us friends.”
“True, buddy,” Sampson laughed. “I was just hoping to be able to take shots at you for a while without getting anything in return.”
“No hope for that,” Gabriel replied.
Sampson shrugged. “Oh well, what’s next on this comedy gargoyle tour?”
They moved onto the next cage. As they walked, Chris explained how the cages were staggered—one on the left, then one on the right and so on—so that the gargoyles didn’t have a direct line of sight to each other. Gargoyles, by nature, were afraid of being alone and so, by keeping them separated, they were easier to work with, less likely to act up.
“Do the parents have any interest in them?” Sam asked.
“Not really,” Chris answered. “They are bred more for their fighting ability—they are absolute killing machines—than for their companionship. There are only a handful of demon couples. Most demons go for humans, with whom they can have demon children. But in the rare instances where two demons fall in love, they are asked whether they would be willing to breed gargoyles for battle. Most of them accept it as a responsibility, but once the baby gargoyles are born, they leave them in the care of the army.”
“Seems a bit cold,” Taylor suggested.
“I see where you are coming from, but unfortunately, it is a necessary evil. The angels breed gargoyles like rabbits, and so we have to do the same to ensure we don’t get overpowered in battle.”
“It’s true,” Gabriel confirmed. “The angels’ gargoyle breeding program is completely out of control. Every day they get more and more angel volunteers to participate in the program.” He didn’t try to justify it.
“If this war is ever over, I would do everything I could to change things. No creature should be bred to die,” Taylor said.
“War makes all beings do stupid and disgusting things,” Chris conceded. Clearly trying to change the subject, he said, “And on your right is a brand spanking new gargoyle family. As you can see, not all gargoyles are bred from two demons, many of them are bred from other gargoyles. In this case the mom, Belinda, and the dad, Prince, have created young Rocky here.”
Taylor peered through the bars while Christopher once again lit a wall of fire for the humans. Between the large stumps of legs of the full grown male and female gargoyles, Taylor watched as a tiny, dinosaur-like creature peeked out at them, its black eyes barely visible in the fire-lit cell. Like his parents, Rocky had short, stubby arms and thick legs. His body was inky-black and covered in scales. His open mouth had tiny sets of razor-sharp teeth that already looked capable of shearing an arm, or even a leg, from anyone that got to
o close. But what truly captivated Taylor were his eyes. They were so fully black that they appeared to be a void of darkness, sucking the light from the immediate area around them. And yet, they sparkled. The contradiction was so poignant that Taylor found herself unable to shift her gaze from them. When he saw the group staring at him, he quickly withdrew again, seeking protection behind his father’s right leg.
“Aww, he’s a cutie!” Sam exclaimed.
Prince let out an agitated snarl, and a short burst of fire plumed from his strangely-human mouth. Belinda followed suit, stomping her feet and snarling furiously.
“I think it’s time to move on,” Chris suggested. “Their parental instincts are kicking in. We usually try to stay away from newborns for at least a month. They develop remarkably fast and once they do, the parents will lose interest in them entirely, allowing them to make their own way in the world.”
They continued along to the next cell. “This one is Mr. Magoo,” Chris said. “Despite his not-so-tough-sounding name, he is our oldest gargoyle and by far, the toughest in the lot.”
“How old is he?” Gabriel asked.
“Two years old,” Chris said proudly.
“Impressive. Ours, I mean, the angels’ gargoyles have never made it past a year,” Gabriel explained.
“Really? Their life spans are that short?” Sam asked.
Chris grimaced. “Well, not exactly. While not as long-lived as any of us, gargoyles can last a good forty to fifty years if they stay out of trouble. Having a forty-year-old gargoyle was very common in the early-1900s, before the angels evolved. Now their main purpose is for war, and most of them are killed off quickly and replaced.” Chris expounded all of this with a pained expression on his face. And after Taylor’s reaction to some of the other information, he said it pensively, expecting another negative reaction. Instead, there was only silence.
