Archangel Evolution Read Online Free PDF Page B

coffin-style. The comparison to death caused memories
of movies about the undead to flick through Taylor’s head.
Vampires, zombies, demons of the night: they all tended to sleep
the way Sampson did now. Trying to convince herself, Taylor
muttered, “He’s not dead yet…”
    “What?” Gabriel asked.
    Taylor’s head jolted to the side and then she
realized she had spoken. “Nothing,” she said.
    She moved to the side of the bed and touched
Sampson’s motionless hand. It was warm. For some reason, she
expected it to be as cold as ice, ready to send chills up her spine
and through the marrow in her bones. “He’s not dead yet,” she
reminded herself again.
    Sampson’s face looked peaceful and serene and
he might have passed for merely sleeping if not for the bandages on
his head and the breathing tubes in his nose. He was in a coma, one
he might never wake up from. Once again, Taylor tried to conjure up
images of how she had healed Gabriel, as she put her hands on
Sampson’s head, like a priest about to give a blessing. Her mind
remained blank. Stupid, stupid, stupid , she thought. I’m
no magical healer, I’m barely an angel.
    Unsure of what to do next, she closed her
eyes and tried to think healing thoughts. Thoughts of scabs,
Band-Aids, and ice cream floated randomly through her mind. Not
helping. Despite her efforts to control her thoughts, they pursued
their own agenda, bringing up memories of Gabriel: the first time
she saw him when he found a four-leaf clover for her, the first
time she saw him in angel form, their first kiss, their first night
together.
    Abruptly, she felt a warm sensation in her
outer extremities. She opened her eyes to see her hands glowing,
hot-white with energy. The light crept up her arms, over her
shoulders to her neck, and then down her torso and through her legs
until she was a full-fledged glow worm, the envy of the entire glow
worm community. She realized that her mouth was moving, but no
words came from her lips. Her body-and-mind-control theory was
looking better and better.
    And then Sampson was sitting up, gasping,
choking, pulling the tubes out of his nose, yelling something. It
sounded like “Crap!” No wait, that wasn’t right, it was “Trap!”
    When Sampson had reanimated, Taylor had been
pushed away from him, and the doctor and her assistants had
surrounded their patient, trying to calm him, to get him to lie
back down, although he seemed unaware of them or his
surroundings.
    His yelling continued for thirty
seconds—although an eternity couldn’t have passed any slower—and
then his mouth and eyes closed, his body went slack, and he
collapsed to the bed once more.
    “What was that?” the doctor hissed.
    Taylor was thinking the same thing, except
she would have phrased her question more like What the flying,
crazy, bloody, crikey, flaming hell was that? And she had hoped
the doctor would have been able to answer her pointed question, but
instead she found the shadowy surgeon asking the very same thing.
Not knowing whether to respond and hoping the question might have
been rhetorical, Taylor remained silent.
    Taylor was relieved when one of the
assistants answered: “Not sure, but his vitals are stronger—heart
rate is back to normal, BP is about right, fever is gone. He seems
to be recovering.”
    “Really?” Taylor asked.
    The doctor said, “Early indications are that
whatever you did seems to have made a difference. But we’ll have to
wait a few hours to confirm.”
    “You did it, babe,” Gabriel said, putting his
arm around her waist.
    “ I didn’t do anything. My new body
did. Which reminds me: Can we talk about the test results now? I
want to know who’s inhabiting my body and how many eyes I’m going
to have.”
    Gabriel frowned. “What?”
    “Never mind,” Taylor said. “Can we go
talk?”
    “Of course.”
    Gabriel told Kiren the good news before they
left and she promised to take Taylor out for dinner once Sampson
had fully recovered.