She heard a whimper and followed the sound. She peered through a doorway into a bedroom.
A little boy stood against the far wall clutching a stuffed animal, like somehow it was going to protect him. Blood poured from a cut above his blue eyes, and his face was red and wet.
A woman lay at his feet. Her black empty eyes stared up at the ceiling. The pained expression on her face told that she had failed in her last attempt to protect her child. She still clasped a kitchen knife in one hand, while her other hand was wrapped around the leg of a crib.
And when Kara looked inside the crib, she held back a scream. The lifeless body of an infant lay on his side, staring at her with black soulless eyes.
Suddenly a reaper stood in the middle of the room.
The top of its head grazed the ceiling. Its long shadowy robe rippled and moved in tendrils of black smoke. It pointed a single rotten finger of exposed flesh at the boy, as if telling him that he was next.
Its red eyes were barely visible, but it watched her. Its red scythe glimmered with the helpless faces of the thousands of souls it had reaped.
Kara cringed not only for the pain of the souls reflected in the blade, but also from her own fear of the darkness and death that emanated from the reaper.
Its wet, gaping mouth moved. It spoke directly to her mind. She could hear the darkness of the voice of death.
Come to me, said the voice inside her head. Come to me.
And then she felt the cold fire and nightmare darkness that she had felt on their first encounter.
She wanted only to run and hide, to escape from the clutches of such evil and death. She was transfixed. The creature had some sort of hold on her. She felt her own angel essence breaking like shattered glass as the cold feeling washed over her like a thick fog and clouded her mind with blackness.
But at the sound of the boy’s cries, the cloud lifted, and she could concentrate again. She pushed away the darkness. She had to save the boy. Save the boy.
“Get away from him!” cried Kara.
She reached inside her cloak for her weapon, and she cringed. She had forgotten it in Raphael’s chamber. She cursed. How could she have been so stupid?
“Help me,” whimpered the little boy. His face was wet with tears, his eyes wide as he pleaded for Kara to save him.
The reaper stood between them. She knew that as soon as she made a move, the reaper would be on her.
She had to save the child.
She rushed forward, leaped over a toy truck, and tripped over her cape. She stumbled to the ground, tangled in her disguise. She reached out for the child, but the reaper moved more quickly.
“NO!” Kara screamed. But it was too late.
In one great swing, the reaper’s scythe slashed the child’s body across his abdomen. Red and black mist coiled from the blade and reached out to the boy. Brilliant light particles seeped from the boy and moved to the scythe as it sucked the life of him. The light particles entered the blade where they turned into an exact replica of the little boy’s face.
The boy cried out one last time. His large and frightened eyes clouded over and then turned black, as though a switch had been turned off. The boy fell to the ground, lifeless. His head hit the side of the crib with a crunch, but he didn’t feel it. He didn’t move again.
He had become trapped forever in the reaper’s scythe.
Chapter 17
First Flight
“No!”
Kara struggled against her cape. In a fit of madness and rage, she ripped it off and tossed it away. She jumped to her feet. Her fear had been replaced by hatred. The reaper would pay for murdering this family. She wanted it dead.
And yet, she had no idea how to kill it. Nobody did.
Even though she was alone on an unauthorized, selfish mission, it was still her mandate to figure it out. It was the least she could do. She needed more time before it killed her. If she could study the creature, she might be able to find its weakness. Maybe the answer had been staring her in the face. Stall it. That’s what she needed to do. Stall it, and learn from it.
Hoping the reaper couldn’t read her mind, she faked a leap forward, spun around, and dived out of the bedroom door. Even though she was still bound in tape, she felt freer and more agile without the cape. She leaped over the body of the dead man, but just as she thought she had escaped, the reaper caught her legs.
Kara went sprawling into the broken glass at the bottom of the stairs. She heard a loud rip and felt an immediate release around her chest. The duct tape had ripped, and she could feel her right wing move more freely.
She squirmed and kicked, trying to break the reaper’s hold on her. She slammed her fist into its thigh as hard as she could. The creature moved back, but his grip didn’t loosen. She was ensnared in black tendrils that issued from the creature’s cloak and body like extra-long fingers.
The reaper loomed over her.
Her plan of stalling seemed more and more foolish the longer she struggled against her shadow bonds. She was going to die.
But then she felt a flutter ripple through her. At first she thought it was her elemental powers coming back, answering her desperate call for help. But instead of the electrifying warm elemental power—this feeling was cold. Black cold. She could sense it, but she didn’t surrender to it. It frightened her. It frightened her more than the reaper.
She curled her hand around a shard of glass and thrust it at the creature’s head. But it dropped its scythe and caught her hand before she could even get close to its contorted face. The creature was too fast, but she had distracted it, and it loosed its grip on her.
She jumped to her feet and used her momentum to spin around and kick the reaper in the legs. The reaper was surprised and stumbled back into the wall. Before it had time to react, Kara slammed her feet and her fists into his chest and head, again and again. The reaper turned on her in frustration, grabbed her by the throat, and hurled her across the room.
She flew through the front window and fell onto the debris in the street below.
Okay. The creature was mad.
Kara stood up and picked a few shards of broken glass from her M-5 suit.
The reaper stepped casually out of the broken window, the scythe at its side, and its haggard, rotten face raised in hatred and defiance.
It’s really going to hurt now, isn’t it? thought Kara.
The creature’s robe spilled out in swirls of black smoke behind it. She could hear the souls pleading from within the creature’s skin and scythe. She steadied herself. She would go down fighting.
The reaper raised its scythe above its head.
There was a pop behind her, and the last of the tape tore off.
Kara’s wings fluttered behind her. It was such an exhilarating feeling that she temporarily forgot about the ugly reaper.
Kara stretched out her wings and gave them a hard flap. The force drove her to her knees, and her face scraped the pavement.
Kara spat out the gravel in her mouth.
Obviously, having wings was not as easy as it looked on television.
She expected the reaper to use this opportunity to strike her down. But when she stood up again, straining to keep her wings from making her fall again, she gasped.
The reaper was on his knees. He was bowing to her like a knight would bow to a king. His scythe lay on the ground in front of him. It was almost as though the creature thought that she was his mistress.
But that was absurd.
And just when Kara thought things couldn’t get any weirder, a ball of white light hit the reaper square in the chest. It exploded, and the reaper howled and fell to the ground. The white light coiled around him like wild electricity. The stench of burnt flesh and tar rose into the air around her, as the reaper’s body smoked and sizzled.
“Kara! Kara!”
Kara turned around.
Mr. Patterson came running toward her, smiling proudly at his successful attack on the reaper.
B
ut then his smile was lost, and his eyes widened at the sight of her. He staggered and then halted in front of her. His crystal weapon slipped from his hand as he paled in shock and bewilderment.
“What in the name of Horizon?” began Mr. Patterson, blinking, “…Bless the souls…how…how can this be? You have wings!”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
Kara took his hand in hers and smiled, relieved that he was okay. “I’ll explain later.”
She turned quickly when some motion caught her eye. Although the reaper’s body still smoked, it grabbed its scythe and stood up. The vapors diminished, and in a flash of black smoke the reaper was gone.
“How did you do that?” Kara turned and faced Mr. Patterson.
“What weapon did you use? I’ve been dying here, trying to figure out what we can kill it with, and whatever you used…well, it worked. It didn’t kill it, but it hurt it. We’re going to need a lot more of whatever those were.”
“Mr. Patterson? Why are you staring at me like that?”
The old man stared at Kara in wonder.
“You have wings. You have wings.” He hesitated for a moment and then said, “Kara, why do you have wings?”
Kara remembered events fully now, and she recounted them as fully and articulately as she could.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before,” she said finally. “But I couldn’t remember what had happened to me. And now I have these things.”
With a single thought, she spread her wings as easily as spreading her fingers. It had become second nature to her. She didn’t know why, but she felt proud and happy to have her wings. It wasn’t her elemental power…but it was something different and exceptional. And no other guardian had wings—except her.
Mr. Patterson examined Kara’s wings closely, mumbling to himself as he poked and prodded them. He couldn’t believe that they were real.
“I don’t know what the big deal is,” she said, shifting uncomfortably as the oracle continued to examine her.
“I mean, for one thing, I’d always thought angels had wings…you know, like everybody else, I suppose. I’ve seen pictures. There was this giant painting in my grandmother’s house of two children playing and in the background there was an angel watching over them. The angel had wings. Anyway, it’s what I thought…before I became one.”
Mr. Patterson stopped examining her and said, “Angels don’t have wings.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
Kara was unsettled by the old man’s tone. It was almost as if having these wings frightened him. But what was so frightful, and why?
“And they just grew, like a weed,” he said, “right there in your back?”
“Yup.”
“Astonishing,” said Mr. Patterson. “If we weren’t in such a pickle already, I might have found this truly astounding. But from what you told me, being injected with a substance without your consent, and the means by which it was done, and by the creature you describe…I’m afraid it could only mean one thing.”
Kara spun around. “What? Tell me!”
Mr. Patterson said softly, almost to himself, “There has only ever been one creature which was created with wings. Just the one…”
“What creature?”
Mr. Patterson dismissed her with a wave of his hand. “Never mind that now,” he said.
Since he was obviously not going to answer her question, Kara asked instead, “So what happened to you? Where are the imps and that giant insect-like creature they had with them?”
“Gone. Some destroyed, some not. They finally gave up the search for the key and returned to their foul home. I wanted to give Peter and the rest of you enough time to escape.”
“It worked.”
Something occurred to Kara. “What about my mom?”
“She’s safe. She’s back in Horizon training the rookies.”
Kara had to know. “So, are you going to tell me which creature was made with wings? I think I have a right to know, don’t you?”
Mr. Patterson ignored her.
Finally he said, “I might be wrong, but I think we need to figure out how to remove them.”
“Remove them?” Kara took a step back, her voice loud and angry.
She folded her wings back. Intuitively she knew she had to save herself from mutilation.
She glared at Mr. Patterson, but when she saw that her impulsive fury had confused him, she felt ashamed.
“I mean…is that going to hurt? I just started to get used to them.”
She knew he was probably right. Even though she liked the idea of having wings, she knew that removing them might be the only way to stop the transformation.
“To be perfectly honest,” said Mr. Patterson, “I just don’t know. But what I do know is that angels don’t normally grow wings. It’s never happened before. Whoever did this to you obviously had dark plans for you.”
Mr. Patterson paused for a moment before he continued, “I can see that you wanted a different answer, Kara. But these wings are not good news. I’m sorry Kara, but I’m afraid the wings have to go. If we can remove them at all without…”
“Without what?”
“Here I go again,” said the old man, “I’ve said too much.”
He scratched the top of his head, and then his eyes broadened like he had just remembered something.
“Quickly, back to the bookstore!”
“What? Wait!” Kara balanced herself awkwardly as her wings spontaneously flapped behind her in reaction to her sudden outcry.
Mr. Patterson scrambled up the pile of rubble that had once been his bookstore. While he was distracted, she took the opportunity to try out her wings. Just a little.
She unfurled her wings, and they caught the air immediately. She hovered just above the ground. She angled her wings downwards and touched back down softly. It wasn’t as easy as she had first thought. How did birds do it? Well, she wasn’t a bird and had no real instinct for flight…or did she? It did feel natural. But that was crazy…wasn’t it? How could that be?
She tried again.
She pushed down with more strength this time, and her feet lifted off the ground. As she felt gravity start to pull her back down, she pulled her wings up and pushed down again, harder.
She was flying!
Kara laughed as she surged upwards. She was flying, up twenty feet…thirty feet…forty feet. Forty feet in the air, hovering like a bird of prey. If this was how birds felt, the great feeling of spirited flight, then she envied them. She remembered a dream in which she was flying. It had always been her favorite dream, the way it made her feel free and untouchable—this was like her dream.
It was an incredible feeling to fly. Her wings moved now, up and down. It was coming naturally to her now. The world from above was incredible. She could see clearly now the destruction the reapers and imps had wrought on her town. It looked like a thousand elephants had trampled the buildings.
She was surprised at how much she could see, how far her sight could reach from so high up. Was that also because of her wings? Was the change giving her hawk vision?
She felt the pull of her wings hard at work. The air whistled in her ears and rippled through her wings. With the breeze rustling her hair and the warm sun’s rays tickling her face, she never wanted to go back down. She wanted to stay up forever—
“KARA! GET DOWN HERE THIS INSTANT!” Mr. Patterson, the size of a hamster from where she looked, shook a fist at her.
“Are you mad? The mortals will see you!” he hissed. “You’re not invisible!”
Right. The mortals. She had forgotten about the mortals.
In a moment of panic, Kara folded her wings and fell forty feet to the hard pavement.
It hurt. It hurt a lot. It hurt a lot everywhere. Kara moaned, as she lay spread-eagled on the cement sidewalk.
“Have your newly acquired wings affected your mind?” asked Mr. Patterson. He tapped his toes impatiently.
“What were you thinking? Anyone could have seen
you. Can you imagine the disaster—the impact if you had been seen? We’ve already been hit with a cataclysmic invasion of reapers. We can’t afford to go around changing history, erasing mortals’ memories. Too much is at stake here already. There’s just no time for that.”
Kara pulled herself to her feet, still a little shaky from the fall. Her wings were fine, but her knees were bleeding.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I wasn’t thinking.”
“Obviously not.” Mr. Patterson watched her with narrowed eyes.
Kara shrugged. “I didn’t think the mortals could see my wings. You know, aren’t they blind to the supernatural?”
“Yes, they are,” agreed Mr. Patterson. “They cannot see your wings…but they can see you.”
Kara’s face fell. “Oops.”
Mr. Patterson’s anger faded away at the sight of her injuries. He sighed.
“Well, we have to clean you up before more demons and imps smell your essence and come looking for you. Let me fetch my first-aid kit. I can’t do much, but I can stop more of your essence from spilling out.”
He walked back across the toppled remains of his precious bookstore searching for the first-aid kit.
Kara followed him.
“So, what were you looking for before? When I first got to the bookstore?”
Mr. Patterson pulled out a small white metal box with a red cross marked on the top. He popped the lid open and pulled out a roll of gauze.
“Something that might help explain what has happened to you,” said Mr. Patterson as he dressed her wounds.
“And did you find it?”
“No.”
“What was it?”
Mr. Patterson finished tying the bandage around Kara’s knee and looked up at her.
“It’s a map, in a matter of speaking. A map to help us find those with the answers—”
David suddenly bounced into view. His blond hair was disheveled, and he wielded a soul blade in each hand.
“Kara! I’m here!”
Mr. Patterson raised an eyebrow. “So we can see.”
Kara fluttered her wings in annoyance, something she just realized she could do, so she did it again.
“David McGowan,” she said through gritted teeth. “What are you doing here?”
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