Demon Evolution (14 page)

“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 another 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 too 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.

Chris looked around. “Where’s Taylor?” he
asked.

Gabriel swiveled his head side to side while
saying, “What do you mean? She’s right beside me…At least she
was…”

“She’s still looking at the baby gargoyle,”
Kiren said, looking behind them.

Sure enough, Taylor was crouched, low to the
ground, her hand reaching through the bars of the
Prince-Belinda-Rocky cell. Quickly realizing the situation, Chris
yelled, “Taylor! Don’t move. Pull your hand away slowly and then
get to your feet and move away quietly.”

Anticipating Gabriel’s move to save his
girlfriend, Chris put his hand out and stopped him. “Any sudden
movement may provoke the parents. Wait for her to get clear.” Not
looking convinced, but trusting his friend who clearly had more
experience with gargoyles than he did, Gabriel remained still, but
was poised to spring into action if necessary.

Taylor said, “Don’t worry, it’s okay, guys.
They like me.” She had turned her head to look at them when she
said this, but now turned back to the cage. She spoke in a gentle,
high voice, like you would speak to a baby, or a dog. “Aren’t you
the cutest little thing? I want to take you home with me. Protect
you from these mean angels and demons,” she cooed.

They watched in surprise as a tiny head poked
through the bars and Taylor stroked it softly. Her mannerisms
appeared as normal as if she were petting a dog; only she was
rubbing an animal that could only be described as grotesque when it
was full grown, albeit rather cute at this early stage in its
life.

“Stay here, guys,” Chris instructed, making
eye contact with Gabriel to ensure he would obey the instruction.
Gabriel looked worried, but his eyes showed that he would let
Christopher handle the situation.

Chris walked slowly over to Taylor, who was
now sitting cross-legged on the ground. Every few steps he paused
to survey the scene ahead and ensure that the parents were
emotionally stable. To his surprise, when he got close enough to
see completely into the fiery chamber, the parents seemed
completely at ease, more so than when they were merely being
observed. Now, Taylor was actually handling their young child, and
they seemed to be fine with it.