She looked down at herself and shrugged. “This is how I arrived in the elevator, all transparent. But don’t worry, I feel fine. Actually, like I was telling Raphael, I don’t feel any different from before. I don’t feel weak or sick or anything like that at all. I just look different.”
“You might be transparent, but you’re still the prettiest girl in all of Horizon…”
“Thank you, David,” said Raphael, with the tiniest of smiles. Kara couldn’t hide her own smile either.
Raphael’s face turned suddenly sour when she spoke next. “David, why did Metatron send you here exactly? What did he say to you?”
David smiled sheepishly and let go of Kara’s hand.
“Raphael, did I tell you how ravishing you look today? Is that a new robe? Did you do something different to your hair? It looks awesome.”
Raphael raised an eyebrow. “Tell me.”
“Well, you see…that’s not exactly what happened.”
David crossed the room to one of the wooden tables. He grabbed a glass vial and shook it. He examined the blue liquid inside. “That part might have been a little white lie.”
“Which part?” The archangel moved toward him with her hands on her hips.
David placed the vial back down. “All of it.”
Raphael’s face fell, but Kara could see that she wasn’t sure whether to congratulate him or to scold him.
“This Metatron never sent you, did he?” asked Kara, feeling a little uneasy.
She knew David never cared for rules, but she had the sense that undermining Metatron was a very bad thing. “David, what did you do?”
“Nothing that friends wouldn’t do to help each other,” he answered.
His blue eyes glistened as he held Kara’s gaze. Her skin tickled and she looked away, embarrassed.
“Besides,” he continued. “Ariel wants to see you back at level five immediately.”
He caught Raphael eyeing him and added, “Of course, only once the lovely Raphael has completed her tests, and you’re clear for duty—that’s what Ariel said. Only if Raphael clears you for duty, which I’m sure she will. After that, we need to go. We’ve got a situation.”
“What kind of situation?”
“One that requires your special assistance.”
The fact that Ariel wanted Kara back on her team gave Kara new confidence. Things couldn’t be that bad if she had another archangel on her side.
Kara pondered for a moment.
“David, Ariel does know that I’m not—that I don’t have—that I’m not a normal guardian now, right? I don’t have my elemental abilities anymore. She might not want me back once she finds out.”
She felt a little uneasiness in her chest. It was a strange thing to be back in Horizon as a normal guardian. She wasn’t sure she liked it. Being different, having powerful abilities, being stronger than the other guardians had always pleased her. But being semi-transparent didn’t. It scared her. She didn’t know why, but somehow she knew it wasn’t good. She hid her fears as best she could.
“Don’t worry,” said David. “She does. And she knows about your…your sheer appearance. In fact, she said that the entire High Council knows. Ariel told me that she was with the council when they found out. It was a surprise, but she asked to have you on the team. They discussed it, and they agreed. They didn’t see any reason why you couldn’t get your old job back once Raphael says you’re okay. So, you see, there’s nothing to worry about. Ariel wants you back on the team.”
Kara looked through her semi-transparent fingers.
“No doubt they’ll probably have me followed or something. I’m sure they think I’ve done this to myself on purpose. After the whole marked thing, I’m pretty sure they’ll keep an eye on me. I’ll never be cleared, not really.”
“Probably,” said David. “But who cares? They won’t find anything. And whatever it is that you have, whatever happened to you…I’m sure it will go away on its own.” And then he laughed. “It’s not contagious is it?”
Kara pushed David away playfully. “You can be such a moron sometimes.”
“David has a point,” said the archangel.
She gave Kara a warm smile. “Maybe you’ll be back to normal before you know it. But even so, you need to be very careful using vega. I’m not sure what another leap might do to your angel body or to your mind, for that matter.”
Kara looked up into Raphael’s eyes. “You think I’ll vaporize.”
In all the confusion, she hadn’t thought about what the effects of vega might be.
“I’m not sure,” answered the archangel sincerely. “We won’t know much until we start the tests.”
Kara moved toward the table and fell into an empty chair. “All right then, let’s get these tests over with.”
And so, after an hour of poking, scraping, pulling out some hair, and a series of strange x-rays in which a bright orange jelly-like cream was spread all over Kara’s body and clothes, Raphael finally released Kara into David’s care.
She was clear for duty. But the archangel insisted that she report back for a follow-up at the end of their mission.
In the elevator, as they ascended to level five, Kara and David were silent. Kara was worried about what had happened to her, and why she couldn’t remember.
Even though David had managed to fool everyone with his composed demeanor and appeared unconcerned by her sudden transparency, Kara still had doubts. He kept glancing at her nervously when he thought she wasn’t looking. She thought about asking him how he’d known where she was, to break the silence, but she couldn’t seem to utter any words.
The elevator jerked.
Kara stumbled backwards and hit the back panel. As she steadied herself, she felt like she was floating and realized that the elevator was ascending faster than normal speed.
She pressed her hands on the sides to steady herself and watched the panel curiously. The level four button blinked on, and soon after, the button for level five, but the elevator kept going.
“Um…David,” she said. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think we just passed our stop.”
David turned to the small tanned primate with a hairless wrinkled face who was operating the elevator.
“Dude, what did you do? We’re supposed to be going to level five, and we just passed it. Don’t make me hurt you, buddy, but I will if you don’t make this elevator go back right now!”
The operator shrugged. He looked terrified and pressed the number five button again and again with a shaking, bony finger.
“I don’t know,” he said, his voice high and quivering.
He hit the panel again with his fist, but the elevator kept climbing. “See? I didn’t do anything! I pressed level five, but it didn’t stop. It just kept going by itself. I swear. I didn’t do anything.”
He held his hands over his head and cowered. “Please don’t hurt me. It’s my first day.”
“Well, can’t you stop it or something?” said David as he loomed over the tiny primate. “You’re the operator. Control it!”
The primate raised his arm and then hit a small red button with the word EMERGENCY written in gold. It was the first time Kara had even noticed an emergency button in the elevators. He pressed it repeatedly, and still nothing happened. The elevator continued to climb.
“It’s like something from the outside is controlling it,” said the primate helplessly. “There’s nothing I can do. I’m sorry.”
“Do you know where it’s going?” asked David, but the little operator shook his head.
Kara’s panic increased as the elevator rose. The walls of the elevator felt like they were closing in on her. She was having a panic attack. Where were they going? Level seven was out of the question, and the only other level the elevator could reach was level six—Tartarus. She was going to Tartarus.
The high council had never wanted her back. It had all been a ruse, a trick, and she had fallen for it. She didn’t blame Raphael. She knew the archange
l had tried to help her. She even believed that the archangel Ariel would probably be on her side. But the high council had the final word, and now they were going to cast her off to a gloomy dungeon.
She shivered at the thought of the cold, eerie, black walls, and the feelings of numbness and abandonment that she had felt in Tartarus before. She remembered the distant moans from the other prisoners whose hallucinations were all they had left; these were what they clung to before they plummeted into madness.
She didn’t want to lose her mind to the shadows of Tartarus. She didn’t want to lose David…
Kara pulled herself together. She wasn’t in prison yet. She was stronger than this. She wasn’t about to let them take her without a fight.
As she prepared herself mentally for whatever was coming next, she watched the number six on the panel illuminate, but the elevator didn’t stop.
What was going on? Where were they going? Who was controlling their elevator and why? If they weren’t going to level six, then where was the elevator taking them?
“What happens after we pass level six?” she asked. She couldn’t help but wonder if they were going to level seven, to see the Chief.
David swore and kicked the elevator doors. “No idea.”
Kara started to relax. That was it. It had to be. They were going to see the Chief. Maybe he wanted to see her ghost-like appearance for himself. Maybe he had the answers.
And just when Kara started to smile, the elevator bounced to a stop. Her eyes moved to the panel. Button number seven was not illuminated. The doors swung open and Kara’s smile disappeared.
A man stood before them. Behind him was a long hallway that branched out into separate corridors that became lost in shadows.
It was not the Chief. It was a man Kara had never seen before. She knew right away by his size that he was an archangel. But he was very different from the rest of them. While the other archangels were all beautiful, his face was ordinary.
He was a little pudgy around the middle, and yet his strong, square shoulders were a reminder that he had once been fit and strong. He wore a charcoal-gray suit and shiny black shoes. His thin, straw-colored hair was drawn back from his receding hairline. He looked like a typical middle-aged man. He could be anyone’s neighbor, nothing special. Nothing about him made him stand out, except that he wore sunglasses and was smoking a thick cigar.
He took a long drag of his cigar and blew out a cloud of smoke in the shape of a star. He tapped the ashes loose from his cigar.
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t the infamous David McGowan and his beloved Kara Nightingale—the one with the mark.”
He frowned.
“They weren’t kidding when they said that you looked like a ghost. Not sure I like the look, though. It might have been in fashion back in the late seventeen hundreds, but you should really get with the program. Maybe next time you should try to stay solid—nobody likes a girl who looks dead, angel or not.”
His face turned to David and laughed like it was a private joke they shared. “If you know what I mean?”
“Who are you?” asked Kara, as her dislike for the archangel rose. She moved forward.
The man’s smile widened. “Ah-hah, right to the point! I like that.”
Suddenly a group of twelve very beautiful guardian angel women appeared behind the archangel like a private entourage. They were dressed in identical skin-tight, black dresses, red high heels, sunglasses, and bright red lipstick. If it weren’t for the soul blades in their hands, they would have looked like they were about to perform in a music video.
The man cleared his throat. “Let me introduce myself. I’m Metatron, and I’m here to kill you.”
Chapter 5
Metatron
Kara was trapped. The tips of her fingers tingled with nervous energy.
The group of women ushered them into a dark hall. Kara could only see high ceilings and a stairway with banisters that led to a passageway above. As her eyes grew accustomed to the light she distinguished at least five burning fireplaces and lavish tapestries.
The walls were hung with paintings of Metatron: Metatron lounging on a chaise longue, being fed grapes by a woman; Metatron sitting in a golden throne, being fed more grapes by another woman; Metatron in a plié ballet stance wearing baby-blue tights, being fed grapes by a woman; and most disturbingly one particular painting of Metatron standing proudly, drinking a cup of wine, and wearing only a leaf.
She felt ill, and she could see that David was frowning. It was the look he had when he was scheming something. She knew he was trying to figure out a plan of escape. Under different circumstances, he would have been the first to try to make her jealous by flirting with the gorgeous and voluptuous women, but he didn’t even look at them, not really.
Metatron had said he was going to kill them, but she knew he only meant her. He was going to kill her. But what did that mean? Was he planning to deliver her an angel’s true death? Or was he planning to erase her from both worlds? Would she die forever and never come back as a mortal or an angel?
The thought of never seeing her mother again made her shudder. She clamped her trembling fingers into fists and kept moving forward. She didn’t want David to see her fear.
Metatron strolled ahead of them, his chin in the air, as though he owned the world. He stopped suddenly and squished the remains of his used-up cigar with his polished shoe. He pulled another cigar from the folds of his jacket, bit off the tip, and spat it on the floor. Then he snapped his fingers. The nearest angel, a woman with milky-white skin and gray eyes, flicked a lighter to his cigar. Metatron puffed on his cigar until it was lit and then kept walking.
Kara did not like the way he ordered the angels around, or the way he looked at her. Something in his gaze made her shiver. He was very different from the other archangels. He didn’t belong with them.
As they walked, Kara leaned over and whispered to David. “Who is this guy? Do you know anything about him?”
“He’s the new legion commander,” he whispered back.
Kara eyed the bald spot on the top of Metatron’s head. She watched him as he wrapped his right arm around a beautiful East Indian woman and pulled her close, whispering in her ear, just a little too close, and just a little too long.
He threw back his head and laughed. Then he reached out with his left arm and wrapped it around a slim brunette with legs that would put any model to shame.
He was a spectacle to watch, there was no denying it, and Kara wanted to puke.
“Can’t be,” she whispered, shaking her head. She wondered why these women, these angel women, would let such a repulsive creature get so close to them.
“This has to be a mistake. He’s so repulsive. He’s arrogant, and there’s something very oily about him, too. How can he be an archangel? And how come I’ve never heard of him?”
“All I know is that he was sort of cast aside for a while, and now he’s back.”
“Why?”
“His methods were unsound,” said David. “He didn’t do things by the book. He had his own set of rules, and he did whatever he wanted, no matter the consequences and no matter who got hurt. He was a real menace.”
Kara felt like saying that they didn’t listen to all the rules either, and that they were both a menace to the legion, but she remained quiet.
“Too bad he wants to kill us. I could have learned a lot from him, you know,” said David.
Kara could see a look of admiration on his face, as though he thought Metatron was cool in some sick way.
“You could?”
David measured Metatron.
“Well, he got things done, maybe a bit too violently, but in the end it worked. I think every legion or squad needs someone like him. A guy who puts himself forward and does things others wouldn’t dare, who pushes the envelope. Yeah, maybe his methods were a little unorthodox, but they worked, and he got things done.”
Kara scowled as Metatron added a sudden hop to his step like he wa
s about to break out into a dance.
“Like what? What did he do?”
“I know he likes to blow things up.”
“You mean, like, bombs?”
David nodded his head. “Yeah, apparently it’s his specialty. I know he invented something like an atom bomb for demons. But I don’t think that’s why he was demoted. I think it’s because of the torturing.”
“The torturing?”
“I’ve heard that he’s tortured other angels to get information. I’m not sure what he did exactly, but whatever it was, it was enough to strip him of his duties as an archangel.”
“So he’s a hustler? An archangel hustler?” Kara couldn’t believe what she was hearing, but just one look at Metatron confirmed that every word David had said was true.
“I never thought archangels could be gangsters—”
“Shh! Stop talking.” One of the women shoved Kara.
Kara turned and gave her an angry look. When she turned back around she saw the little smile on David’s face. At least he was enjoying himself. Kara scowled at him too.
Finally, they arrived at a pair of large double doors. Kara could hear muffled voices from behind the doors, as though hundreds of people were waiting on the inside. Metatron let go of his female escorts and pushed the doors open.
Kara and David followed him in.
Gray marble polished floors gleamed in this large long room. Kara moved cautiously, half expecting to see contraptions of torture and explosives, but she was surprised at how empty the room was. The walls were white, and strangely enough there were no portraits of Metatron anywhere.
The room was deserted, but every inch of wall was covered with flat screen televisions. They were lined up in a grid pattern, and each wall looked as though it was one great screen. Kara had never seen so many televisions at once, not even in the department stores where they sold them. It looked like a media room, or a television station where they broadcasted the news. The noise of the on-screen conversations and the mix of music and sports blared from the hundreds of screens.
A couple of desks with monitors were placed at the far end of the room. In the middle was a raised platform with a black leather sofa, chairs, and a coffee table littered with hundreds of remotes. Below the raised platform was an open compartment. It looked like a cage where the accused would await their sentence at a courthouse. It was positioned strategically below the platform, so that those on the platform could look down on those inside.
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