Augura met Kara’s eyes.
“You have the wings of the archfiends, of that there is no mistake. I cannot tell you how they did this, but I can tell you that they want to get something from you.
“These creatures possess an anger that has been brewing for many millenniums. It is an anger that can only lead to devastation. They want to avenge themselves on us and to destroy the world with fire and death.”
The oracle’s voice softened as she spoke next. “I do not know your full purpose, Kara, in this life or the next. These creatures have done something to you, and yet I don’t know the full extent of what they have done.”
For just a second the oracle looked to Mr. Patterson, and they shared something. It was then that Kara knew that the white oracle was holding something back.
Augura looked back at Kara. “What I do know is that you are still changing.”
Kara felt like she’d been punched in the face by a brick fist.
“I’m afraid it is true,” agreed the oracle with the light blue robe.
Kara felt a tug on her wings as the oracle rubbed Kara’s wing between her fingers. “I still see traces of the change like a thin film of silk over your wings, like a chrysalis. You have not yet finished your transformation.”
“I believe you are correct, Annabelle,” agreed Niri. “Her wings bear all the signs of the archfiends.”
She looked at Kara. “If we are correct, you will continue to change until the transformation is complete.”
Kara forced the words from her mouth. “And what is that? What will I change into? Will I become one of them?”
The oracles watched her uncertainly. Only the white oracle spoke.
“We are not sure,” said Augura. “You are different from them. You must take comfort in that. Perhaps your difference will set you apart.”
“Can’t you remove the wings or something?” said David. “Why did we come here, if they can’t help us?” he growled at Mr. Patterson.
“We came here for answers,” said Mr. Patterson. “And now we have them.”
David kicked the ground. “Not good enough. These are not answers. I want to know what’s going to happen to her. What happens after she changes?”
It was as though David had taken the words right out of Kara’s mouth. She wanted to know, too.
Augura was silent for a moment, and then she looked at Kara and said, “The images are broken. I cannot break through the blackness. I cannot see your past, but perhaps…”
In a flash, the white oracle moved toward Kara, faster than she thought an old woman could move. She pressed her thin, bony fingers on Kara’s forehead.
“Close your eyes and relax your mind,” said the old woman. “Empty your mind. Go on. Empty it.”
Kara gave in and closed her eyes.
The cool touch of the oracle on her temples sent a shiver down Kara’s back. Nothing was happening, and she felt a little foolish. But then her skin tingled, as though millions of tiny ants were crawling all over her body. The cold touch of the oracle spread into her head like a bucket of ice water had been poured over her.
And then images flashed in her mind’s eye. She saw herself as a mortal. Then she saw the bookstore, Mr. Patterson, the dead bat, the forest, her wings. It was like a movie played in fast-forward behind her eyelids.
Although her eyes were closed, Kara was aware of the oracle standing in front of her. And then something happened.
Kara’s head pounded as a fog appeared in her mind. It got thicker and denser with each passing moment.
A figure moved, but then it was lost from sight.
And then she saw it and recognized it. It was her.
She stood in the middle of a road. There were buildings on either side of her. The road was cracked, and the buildings burned and smoked. It was a dead city. Mortals lay dead in piles, splayed out on the streets and in their cars.
She heard muted shouts in the distance. And then screams. People were screaming. The screaming was coming from everywhere, from above and from below. It was the sound of people dying in battle.
Dark figures were visible now, running, fighting, killing each other.
Kara recognized the silhouettes of the reapers.
Then she saw angels.
The reapers were slaughtering angels and oracles.
Horizon burned. It lay in devastation.
The images changed.
A shadowy figure with great wings soared through the blackened and smoky sky. It flew over the dead city and dropped lower and lower toward the silhouette of someone running. It was a woman carrying a child in her arms.
The woman and her child stopped running and looked around, as though she had heard something. The dark figured loomed over them, spread its great black wings and black tendrils shot out and coiled around the woman and her child.
Their bodies shriveled and broke, before they could even scream in agony. And then they lay dead, their souls a blackened pile of dust.
With a great beat of its wings, the creature climbed high above the dead and burning city.
Kara saw movement in the street, and the great creature dove again.
Angels. She recognized their faces. It was Peter and Jenny, and they were fighting off reapers.
But then the winged creature lashed out with black tendrils that shot out like shadows and wrapped around Peter and Jenny. Their eyes blackened and their bodies withered away and crumbled to the ground in piles of dust.
The creature turned for just a second, and Kara could finally see the beast that had killed her friends. Red veins covered its gray, glossy skin. Long black hair billowed around it. It was humanoid with the black leathery wings of a bat.
And it had her face.
“No!” Kara stumbled backwards and fell.
The cool feeling washed away, and Kara felt the oracle’s touch leave her.
“No,” she repeated, devastated. “No, it can’t be! It isn’t real!”
David rushed toward her and helped her to her feet.
“What? What is it? What did you see?”
Kara’s lips trembled.
She looked at the white oracle and shivered.
“It can’t be. I…I don’t believe it. I wouldn’t—I couldn’t…”
Augura frowned.
“This is the future as I have seen it,” she said, “as we have both seen it. But the future can be changed. Not everything we see comes to pass.”
David shook Kara’s shoulders. “Kara, what did you see? Tell me!”
But Kara couldn’t find the words to describe what she had seen.
“You can change it,” said Augura. “You can change the future.”
The images of Jenny and Peter’s death haunted her. She felt sick. She wanted to rip off her wings. She wanted all of it to end.
“I know this was difficult to watch,” the white oracle continued, “especially for a non-oric. Your mind was not programed in the same way as ours. You don’t have the ability or training to fully understand what you saw. Nothing is what it seems when dealing with visions of the future. Everything is subject to change and to interpretation.”
“I saw what I did.” Kara winced. “It was me. I killed them.”
“Not yet,” said Augura gently. She took Kara’s hand in hers.
“Remember who you are, Kara. You can still change the future.”
Chapter 20
Into the Streets
After returning with Mr. Patterson to his ruined bookstore, Kara and David made their way back to Horizon.
It was hard, but in the end Kara had told David and Mr. Patterson what she had seen in the visions. All of it. She didn’t leave anything out. Why should she—if she was going to murder her friends. She begged them to leave that part out when they told Jenny and Peter. She had a feeling it wouldn’t go down so well with either of them. And then she had thought of something.
“You should move the key,” she said suddenly. “You should find another keeper and not tell me. I
t’ll be safer that way.”
“I hate hearing you talk like that,” David said. “You heard what the oracle said, you can change the future. It doesn’t mean you’re going to do all those things.”
Kara stood quietly for a moment.
“You should move it.” And then she added, “And then you have to tell the legion about me.”
“Kara…” Mr. Patterson began, but she had stopped him.
“The legion has to know. You know what you have to do. It’s okay. It’s better this way. Tell them.”
Kara tried really hard to hide her feelings from David as they went to find Ariel. She felt devastated and needed to cry. She barely said a word in the elevator. Was David watching her carefully because he was afraid of her? Was he looking for signs that she was becoming even more of a monster?
She was still changing. She could feel it.
It was only a matter of time before they threw her in Tartarus. She thought about volunteering to go first, before the change was completed; it might be best. For all she knew, Mr. Patterson was probably spilling the beans at this very moment. But in the end, she decided she would leave it to the legion. The archangels would know best. She placed her trust, her future in their hands.
Kara didn’t bother to try and hide her wings this time. She wore them out in the open so the entire legion could see the monster. And yet there was no one to show them to.
The chamber was quiet and empty when they stood in front of Ariel. When Ariel looked up at them, Kara could see that the news of her wings had already reached her.
That’s it, she thought, she was going to Tartarus. Although she hadn’t expected it to be so fast, she knew it was coming, and she began to prepare herself for the gloomy stone walls of the angel prison.
Ariel jumped up from her chair.
“Hurry,” she said and made her way toward the vega tanks.
Kara and David ran to catch up to the archangel.
“I’ve been waiting for the two of you. I just got word that Peter and Jenny are in serious trouble. They’re with one of the new units with Gabriel. I’m sending you two to get them out of there. I just can’t lose Peter and Jenny, not now.”
David looked at Kara uncertainly. “So, this is a search and rescue mission?”
“Yes,” said Ariel. She looked troubled.
“What happened?” asked Kara.
Ariel shook her head. “A trap. They set a trap for us, for them. It seems that they’re after Peter, but we don’t know why.”
Kara and David shared a look.
“Can you use those?” Ariel looked at Kara’s wings. “Can you fly?” she added hesitantly. “We could really use them to our advantage.”
Kara’s wings fluttered behind her. “Uh, I’m not…well, I haven’t really practiced. But I think I can.” And then she added firmly, “Yes, yes I can.”
Kara felt a glimmer of hope. If she could somehow use her transformation to do good, to save mortal lives and souls, then maybe the oracles had been wrong. She was determined to do as much good as she could before she lost the ability to tell between friend and foe, before the darkness took over, and she was no longer herself.
David smiled at her confidently. She looked away, both a little embarrassed and pleased.
“Good, that’s good,” said Ariel, staring at Kara’s wings with a mixture of interest and a little fear. “I have a feeling this is exactly the miracle that we need, and we desperately need one. It just might save them.”
Kara wasn’t sure how much Ariel knew, how much Mr. Patterson had told Horizon. Did they know that she was transforming into a killer of angels? Somehow she had a feeling her boss hadn’t told them everything.
Kara positioned herself next to David in front of the green, stirring waters of the vega tanks as her own insides stirred with the uncertainty of her future.
“Get back safe. May the souls protect you, and all of us,” said Ariel.
Kara and David stepped into the green waters.
The sky was blood-red. The sunset was a ball of red fire. The devastation in the streets of downtown London reminded Kara of her own hometown. A darkness had swept the busy streets like a plague, leaving London barren, dead, and scorching with fire and smoke.
There were no signs of the living. The few people that they did see lay dead in the streets. Their blackened, lifeless eyes showed only their last expressions of fear. The body of a young man, his future no longer before him, lay in the gutter like a crumpled piece of paper. The mortal bodies had become mere vessels for the denomites now. It was clear that the reapers had been here. The city that would normally have been teeming with life was quiet and dead.
David kept throwing nervous glances her way, as though he felt at any minute now she would transform into a winged monster and attack him. What good was it to have wings if in the end they were going to do evil?
She did her best to hide the hurt she felt and focused on saving her friends.
You can still change the future, the white oracle had said. Kara was determined to try.
Tall stone buildings rose up on either side of the miles of shops on Oxford Street. They passed a red double-decker bus that had crashed into a shop. Kara peered inside, but it was empty. There were no living mortals anywhere.
They passed a shop with paper sunglasses on display. A huge sign in the window said Solar Eclipse, Sunday, August 18th.
Their footsteps echoed along the street and mixed with the sounds of the fires that crackled and popped. Kara feared the worst for her two friends. Where were they?
Just as they began the next block, her wings felt heavy suddenly. They were pulling her down, as though some invisible entity had attached itself to her back. She staggered. An icy cool feeling crept inside her, and she shuddered violently. Her vision blurred as she tried to blink the spots from her eyes.
And then she felt the darkness of an overwhelming feeling of power. It was intoxicating. It churned deep inside her like an icy storm. It wanted her to succumb to it, to set it free.
With all her inner strength, Kara forced it back down into the little pit of gloom where it lived. She knew it was there now. She kept it there. She forced it there.
And then the feeling was gone.
“Kara, what is it?”
Kara blinked and her vision cleared.
“Nothing,” she lied.
She avoided David’s eyes. She couldn’t bear the fear she knew was in them.
“Let’s keep moving.”
“It’s not nothing, is it?” pressed David. “I know you, Kara. I know you’re trying to be brave, but I know you’re scared. I’m your boyfriend, remember?”
Kara’s mood brightened a little at the mention of boyfriend. He was a light in her darkness.
“With everything we’ve been through together,” he continued. “I know you can fight this.”
Kara was moved by David’s faith in her. They had been through a lot. She wasn’t the same scared, unsure guardian she had been when she had first died and started to work for the legion.
She looked at David and wished she could stay with him forever.
“You’re the strongest angel I know,” David smiled. “You have a good heart—theoretically speaking—and a good soul.”
Kara watched the end of the street as they walked.
“My soul,” she said absentmindedly. “What’s the point of all this if I have no soul? What’s the point of life as a mortal or as a guardian? Without our souls…we’re nothing. What happens when I don’t remember who I am and become…and become this dark, terrible thing? What happens then, David? I won’t exist anymore. My soul will rot, and I’ll be a creature. My soul will be dead.”
David sighed heavily. “Stop saying that.”
“I have to. I have to get used to it. You have to get used to it. You have to be prepared for when I—”
Someone screamed.
“That’s Jenny!”
Kara tore down the street, but the weight of her wing
s made it seem like running with a fifty-pound backpack. David passed her, and she knew for a fact her wings were slowing her down. She would have to do something about it, and fast.
They rounded the corner, and in the middle of the street Kara could see that Sam, Todd and Valerie from the CDD unit were trying to fight off two reapers. The guardians brandished their soul blades, but before Kara and David could warn them that their weapons would have no effect, the reapers hacked through them. Their bodies fell to the ground in pieces, and their angel souls were consumed by the reapers’ scythes. Nothing was left of them but piles of ash.
And that’s when she saw Jenny.
Her angel essence dripped from a large cut over her eye. Her bow lay broken in half at her feet. She was using the sharp head of her last silver arrow like a sword as she pierced and kicked the imp infestation that was swarming over Peter. She was using only her left arm, because her right arm was gone.
A dozen imps pulled, clawed and stabbed at Peter. Even with Jenny hacking them away two at a time, there were too many. She disappeared under a wave of imps.
A cry died in Kara’s throat as she ran.
The imps pulled and tore Peter’s body as he screamed in anguish. They sliced him open everywhere that he had skin. They slipped their tiny gnarled hands inside his body, searching. Finally, two imps grabbed his right arm and sliced it open. They dug their fingers in and pulled out a crystal key.
They had the key.
“The key! We have the key!” the imps chanted, and jumped around like a bunch of monkeys at the zoo.
“Key! Key! Key!”
Kara felt the darkness flicker inside her again, but she managed to push it down.
The reapers slowly made their way toward Jenny and Peter. The imps scattered as the reapers neared.
“The eighteens! The Dark Gods will rise! The eighteens is coming!” screeched an imp as he scampered away with the key.
David ran harder.
Kara could see the desperation in his movements as he ran to save the lives of his friends. But they were too far away. They would never make it in time. The reapers would kill her friends, just like they had killed the other angels.
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