Marked, Soul Guardians Book 1

by Kim Richardson

Kara hadn’t even let David hold her mother’s soul while they helped Jenny and Peter back through the Rift. It is not that she didn’t trust him; she just couldn’t bring herself to let it go. Kara clutched the soul protectively against her chest, like a mother would her own child. With every little elevator jolt, she found herself tightening her grip. It was as though she had Krazy Glued her hands to the brilliant ball.

  Once they were safely back in Horizon and headed towards the Healing-Xpress, Kara said her goodbyes and took off towards the Hall of Souls. David had offered to accompany her, but she brushed him off. She told him that she needed to do this alone. It was her own fault her mother’s soul had gone missing in the first place. She could only relax once she knew her mother’s soul was safe—finally, and once and for all.

  The elevator swayed slightly to the right, then to the left. Kara cupped the soul tenderly. Her eyes never left the operator. An ape with long light brown fur and a small black face, watched her from his chair. His hands and feet were completely black, as though he were wearing gloves. He wore a green tall hat that engulfed his tiny head, as though it was two sizes too big. He looked like an ugly leprechaun. His black beady eyes observed her. His eyes glanced at the soul momentarily. They flashed with sudden interest. Kara pressed her lips into a hard line and hid the soul within her jacket. The ape raised its eyebrows and kept staring at her. She looked him in the eye, stone faced, without blinking. She didn’t care that he was supposed to be one of the good guys. If he tried anything, she would cut him up into tiny monkey cubes.

  After a few moments, the elevator wrenched to a stop. With a ding, the doors slid open. The operator pulled off his hat and bowed.

  “Level four! Hall of Souls!” he called, to no one in particular.

  Kara pressed the soul protectively against her chest and stepped off the elevator.

  She heard the doors close behind her. She looked around. She stood still.

  The once brilliantly lit chamber with millions of hovering spheres was now dark and gloomy. Kara’s favorite giant field of fireflies had been extinguished. Only a few thousand spheres still floated radiantly in the black sky, casting a lonely glow in the vast space. A chill passed through her. What was going on?

  Kara gazed at the ground. The black marble floor was covered with dark grey powder, like a plush carpet of dust. Dead souls, Kara realized in horror. Everywhere she looked, dead souls littered the ground. It was like staring at the ashes from the aftermath of a volcanic eruption with mounds of cinders everywhere. The ground was completely covered. There was nowhere for her to walk, if she didn’t want to step on the remains of a soul. She bent down and reached out—but pulled her hand back. She cringed as she remembered the feeling of dread and despair she had once felt, while handling a dead soul, Mrs. Wilkins’s dead soul. It had been a horrible experience for her, and she never wanted to feel it again. But something told her that this was an entirely different situation.

  A shiver passed through her. She could see a huge stone fireplace in the distance. She remembered the magnificent white flames that sprouted high into the air. But there weren’t any flames now. The white fires of Atma were doused. Dread crept inside her like a fever. She forced the frightening feeling aside and thought of the archangel Ramiel. He would explain this to her.

  Kara stuck out her leg, and gently tapped one of the dead souls—nothing happened. Curious, she pushed it to the side with her boot. She still felt nothing. There were no intense feelings of despair and misery. No voices screamed inside her head. No visions of past lives fluttered inside her mind’s eye. It was as though it had never happened. She tapped it again, and the soul rolled over and stopped—like a black ball, hollow and dead. What had happened to the soul? Why it wasn’t crying out when she touched it, she couldn’t tell. Something was terribly wrong.

  Kara made her way carefully through the thousands of dead souls that littered the ground, brushing them gently with her boots, so as not to step on them. God forbid if she stepped on one of them. Her footsteps echoed throughout the chamber, a strange and lonely sound in the majestic space. She strained her eyes to see beyond the peppered black sky. The room was still, nothing moved. It felt dead to Kara. She looked for the blond haired children, but she couldn’t see any. Where were the cherubs?

  Crunch.

  Kara frowned and glanced at the floor. She stood in a small mound of sparkling sand, as though someone had dumped a pile of diamonds on the ground. She brushed her boot through it. How beautiful the stones looked against the black marble floor. Her mother loved diamonds. But they could never afford to buy the real ones, only the zirconia. She tapped the soul gently against her chest.

  “I’ll buy you real diamonds one day, mom. I promise.”

  A sparkle caught her eye a few feet away. More piles of diamonds, she realized. And now that she knew what to look for, she noticed hundreds more hidden beneath the blackened souls. Strange. She had never noticed them before.

  A scraping sound reached her ears. She whirled around—and a golden haired person with long blue robes fell into her arms. Balancing the cherub with one arm, Kara slowly lowered herself to the ground. He was surprisingly light. She positioned herself on her knees and brought the little child closer to her—and froze.

  An emaciated face with sunken eyes with a nose and mouth lost in hundreds of wrinkles looked up at her. His withered skin was like parchment and stretched over his skull-like face; it looked as though it would disappear. This was not the youthful face of the cherubs she remembered. She was staring at the face of an ancient man. His lips moved, but no sound escaped his mouth. Kara felt him shivering in her arms. Gaunt grey feet stuck out from beneath his blue robes, like a cadaver from the morgue. Kara desperately tried to wrap his robe around him. She thought of crying out for help, but thought better of it. She felt as though he would break if she raised her voice. She brushed his thin hair from his face with shaking fingers. His lips moved again. She lowered her ear near his lips.

  “Save us.”

  Kara felt suddenly cold. She frowned. “What? What do you mean … save us? What’s wrong with you?”

  The cherub’s eyes rolled back in his head. He didn’t answer.

  Kara fidgeted uncomfortably. “I’m … I’m going to lift you up now—and take you to Raphael. Just hang on.”

  Delicately, Kara balanced the cherub tenderly against the left side of her chest. She remembered having dolls heavier than he was. It frightened her. She glanced down at her mother’s soul, still clutched gently to her chest, as was careful not to squish it with the cherub’s weight. She knew that was probably unlikely, since the little guy weighed no more than her neighbor’s cat.

  “Save us … you must save us,” croaked the cherub again, and Kara noticed how much louder the voice was, as though he had gained some strength back.

  She stopped and looked gently at him. “I’m going to get you some help. Don’t you worry. Don’t talk … save your strength.”

  The cherub lifted his hand and pressed a finger against Kara’s forehead. She shivered as his touch sent a cold chill from her head down to her toes, as though someone had poured a bucket of ice-cold water on her head. A sudden burst of emotions exploded inside her. Voices screamed inside her head. Millions of people cried out to her at the same time. She could hear them clearly, as though they were right there beside her. Her vision blurred. She blinked. Images of different men, women, and children flashed in her mind’s eye, like a fast-forwarding movie. More like a dream, she realized. All at once, she felt their joy and their pain. A man walked his dog in a lush green park. A middle-aged woman with a straw hat worked feverously in her garden. Children laughed and chased each other on a playground. A black mist approached. The children screamed. Shadows swallowed the children and muffled their screams. Darkness came. She heard the screams of thousands of mortals. She heard their pleas for help. Creatures from their nightmares tore at their bodies, ripping them limb from limb. Kara cried out, just as the people
in her mind cried out as they died—

  The visions disappeared.

  Kara trembled and looked down into the wet golden eyes of the cherub. His mouth opened in a soundless cry. Suddenly, his skin and robe began to glow. They shone brilliantly like crystals. The skin cracked. Kara noticed small crevices forming on the cherub’s face, like a puzzle. And with a sudden pop, the cherub exploded in a cloud of diamonds.

  “No!”

  Terrified, Kara searched the air in front of her with her hands trying desperately to catch some of the falling particles. She watched them drift to the ground. The cherub was now a beautiful pile of glimmering diamonds.

  Kara fell to her knees. She grabbed a fistful of the tiny crystals and watched them fall through her fingers like grains of salt. Overcome with sadness, Kara cursed the fact that she couldn’t cry.

  “They are dying,” said a voice behind her.

  Kara whipped around and stared up into the face of a giant man. He was dressed in a white robe, open in the front with a high gold-rimmed collar and gold rimmed cuffs. His handsome face was twisted in grief. A golden glow emanated from his pale skin.

  “There is nothing we can do,” said the archangel Ramiel solemnly.

  “He—he just exploded into dust in my arms!” Kara lifted her arms dramatically in the air. “What is happening to them?”

  The archangel’s lips were a hard line. “The cherubs … are all dying.” He gestured before them.

  Kara followed his gaze and cringed. About half a dozen cherubs, their faces skeletal and sickly, strained to walk. They teetered to and fro, unable to keep their balance. The agony on their faces pained Kara. She pitied them.

  A cherub shuffled towards them. Hunched over, as though his back was broken, he could barely walk. His shrunken face was lifeless and his eyes were a milky white like a blind man’s. And with a final effort, the cherub fell forward and landed head first on the ground. Within seconds his body exploded in a cloud of brilliant particles. All that remained was a small pyramid of diamonds. She stared in horror at the hundreds of piles of cherub dust. The ground was covered in these mounds.

  Kara studied Ramiel for a moment. “But, why are they dying? How can they die? I thought the cherubs were immortal?”

  Ramiel bent down to examine the remains of a cherub. “Cherubs exist as long as souls exist. Without souls, the cherubs will die. They need the life force of the souls to live.”

  Unconsciously, Kara hugged the soul inside her jacket and stared up into the black sky. Only a few thousand of souls hovered above and around them. It was like staring up into the sky at night, trying to see the stars through the clouds. She set her jaw and squinted at the ground. Millions of dead souls covered the floor. She feared the worse. The cherub’s last words echoed in her ears.

  Save us.

  A cry escaped her lips. She was responsible. She knew that she had enabled thousands of demons to enter the mortal world. Thousands of souls lay dead because of her. “The demons are killing the souls,” said Kara.

  “Yes,” answered Ramiel. “It is a savage attack. Brutality on a colossal magnitude against the mortal world. We have never been faced with such an atrocity before. The death toll of souls has reached unfathomed proportions.”

  “What will happen to the rest of the cherubs?” Kara’s chest ached. She watched the little figures dragging themselves around the chamber. She reached into her jacket pocket. “There are still souls that live. They’re not all dead—here. This is my mom’s. Keep her safe.” Kara handed her mother’s glowing white sphere to the archangel.

  Ramiel took the soul carefully and studied it. He looked up at Kara suddenly, with a perplexed expression. “How did you get it back? I thought Zadkiel had destroyed it—”

  Kara sighed. “Long story … but I got her back.”

  The archangel looked at Kara thoughtfully. “Well, she will be safe here—”

  “Kara!”

  Kara turned to see David jogging towards them. His face was drawn and tight. He gave Ramiel a nod, and Kara found it strange that he didn’t insult the archangel as he usually did.

  “David, what’s wrong?” asked Kara, and she started to feel nervous again.

  “All the guardians are being called to an emergency meeting,” said David as he jammed his hands in his front pockets, “... on Lieutenant Michael’s orders. We’re meeting at Operations.”

  “What’s the meeting about?” Kara suspected that the dying souls and cherubs were part of it.

  “No idea. But I know it’s big … something’s going down for sure. I’ve never seen a meeting of this magnitude.”

  Kara didn’t like the sound of that. She felt responsible. She had been a pawn in Asmodeus’s plan. Without her, the Mirror of Souls wouldn’t have worked, and the demons couldn’t have entered the mortal world. She was like Asmodeus—an abomination to the angel world, a half-breed, bred only for one purpose—to destroy the mortal world. She clenched her jaw. She would get her revenge. You are not my father. She made a silent promise to herself that she would do everything in her power to mend the horrors she had unleashed. And then it would be payback time.

  “When do we leave?” asked Kara, her voice deep and trembling with rage. She remembered Asmodeus’s joyful face as his demons slipped into the mortal world and began tearing their way through human hearts.

  David raised his brows. “Right now.”

 

  Chapter 6

  The Legion of Angels