“That’s not it.” Kara wasn’t surprised that Ashley should have a compact mirror. She tossed it to Kara.
“You’re all covered in like black veins or something like that. See for yourself. Take a look.”
Kara caught the mirror and looked at her face. It was her worst fear.
Like deep black tattoos, the veins covered her face like crawling vines. They extended from her neck, all the way up her cheeks, to her forehead.
Kara tossed the mirror on the ground. She turned away from her friends and hid her grotesque face with her hands. She shook in fear and shame. It was her fault. She had let the darkness in, and now there was no going back.
How could she have been so stupid? So careless? The white oracle had warned her that she could change the future. But now her future seemed to be set in stone.
She looked like a monster because she was about to become one.
Part of her wanted to cry. A good mortal cry had always made her feel better. But she wasn’t mortal anymore. She wasn’t even an angel. There was no point in crying. All she could feel was anger.
“Kara?” asked David softly. “What’s going on? What are those markings?”
She opened her mouth to answer him, but her voice wouldn’t come, and she cursed herself silently.
“Did you know this would happen? Please, tell me what’s happening to you,” he pleaded.
When he saw the terror in her eyes, he continued with a touch of humor. “I promise I won’t laugh, even if you do look like you belong at the circus.”
God she loved him. She wanted to smack him for the last comment, too, but she just loved how he always tried to make her laugh in sensitive situations. She didn’t deserve such a good friend. But all that would change when she’d turned into a monster. Would she even remember his face?
David moved around her, but she kept her face hidden with her hands.
“Is that why you’ve been wearing gloves? Because of this? There are more of these veins, aren’t there? If it’s on your face now, then it’s all over your body, too. Your secret is out, Kara. You can’t hide anymore. Tell us. Tell us what’s going on.”
David wasn’t accusing her in any way. He was surprisingly cool and comforting.
Finally, Kara pulled her hands away from her face. She longed for some tears, god how she longed for a really good cry. She nodded slowly, still unable to speak. She pulled her gloves off and felt the others watching her. She was inflicted with an incurable disease. She was corrupted, and it would only get worse.
She tossed the gloves on the ground and raised her hands for all to see, but she didn’t look at them. She was afraid that they would be disgusted with her, and she was ashamed.
But what happened next, she didn’t expect.
Instead of looks of repulsion and fear, they looked at each other and then tackled her into a group bear hug.
It was too much.
Kara’s lips wavered. Her knees were weak, and she was barely aware of the little cry that escaped her lips as her friends hugged her tighter. She could feel their love and their loyalty. It was if they knew exactly what she needed. She needed them, and she hugged them back.
Finally, as everyone drew back, she found it hard to look at them. They had never really shared such intimacy before, not like this. But now she felt empowered because she had the support of her friends.
David still had his arms around her waist. She raised her eyes to his he said with an impish smile, “Your body could be covered in green scales for all I care. It doesn’t matter. It won’t change how I feel about you.”
Kara bit down on her bottom lip. She had never expected him to make such a strong declaration of his feelings in front of everyone. She knew her friends had figured out how she and David felt about one another, but it had always been an unspoken understanding. He had just never announced it in such an affirmative way before.
“You’re still my Kara.”
Kara shook her head, “You’re impossible.”
Kara couldn’t help herself. She burst out laughing and pushed him away playfully. Her smile was as wide as the fields. She couldn’t find the right words to thank them. Maybe she didn’t need to.
“Well, the knight is definitely gone,” said David. “Our chances of finding him now don’t look so great. He’ll know we’ll be looking for him, and he’ll make it harder for us to find him, I guarantee it.”
Kara’s smile faded. “Maybe, but we still need to find him. We’ll just have to look harder because he’ll need to destroy a lot more crops and animals to break the seal. We’ll follow the trail of death that follows him, and we’ll find him, I’m sure we will. It’s only a matter of time. He couldn’t have gotten too far even if he is supernatural.”
As Kara surveyed the hectares of dead and diseased crops and animals, she wondered what she would do when she faced the knight again. Could she kill him without injuring herself further? She thought about asking Mr. Patterson what he thought the connection was. If anyone knew details about the knights, she trusted that he would. And she wouldn’t make the same mistake of hiding anything from anyone, not anymore.
“Well, whatever we do decide to do, we better hurry,” said Jenny.
She looked at her wristwatch. “The day’s almost over. If we don’t find him soon and destroy him, it’ll only leave us three days to find and kill all four of them. We don’t have much time. And if the other knights are as strong as him—”
“I’m sure they are,” interrupted Ashley. She twirled her sword in the air like she was slicing invisible locusts. “They’re probably worse.”
Jenny shrugged. “Then we haven’t really made any real progress at all.”
“We just got our butts kicked,” grunted Peter. He pulled off his glasses and began to wipe off the caked on bug guts with the bottom of his t-shirt.
“We need to do better. If the knights are this strong, I hate to image the strength of their creators. Can you image what they’ll do to the legion of angels? Mr. Patterson was right—they’d annihilate them. It’s up to us to stop the knights from breaking the seals.”
“Praying that the old man’s plan will actually work,” said David.
He saw the irritated looks they were all giving him. “What? He said believed! You were there, you all heard him. Even he’s not entirely sure his grand plan’s going to work.”
“We’ll make it work.” Peter pushed his glasses back on his face.
“Kara made it work, right, Kara? We all saw it. The creature let us go. You did something to it didn’t you? What was it?”
“I injured it,” she answered.
Peter’s eyes gleamed. “How did you manage that?”
“Well, I can’t really say that I injured it because I doubt that very much. It was more of a surprise. I caught it off guard and sliced it across the arm with my blade. It happened really fast and to tell you the truth I’m not even sure how it let me get so close. But I did. Maybe it was too busy trying to kill you all and didn’t see me coming. The cut wasn’t very deep, but it must have been painful enough to break the hold it had on you guys.”
She couldn’t bring herself to tell them about the wound that had appeared on her own arm, at least not until it made more sense. She’d speak to Mr. Patterson first.
“So that’s great,” said Jenny cheerfully. “At least one of us achieved something today.”
Kara’s face was blank. “Don’t get too excited. I would hardly call this an achievement. I surprised it, that’s all. I doubt that the knight will let me get that close to it again.”
David let out a long sigh and looked to the sky. He sheathed his blades inside his jacket. “Well, it can’t get any worse than this.”
“Oh, it gets worse,” said Ashley. Everyone turned to look at her. She pointed her sword at Peter’s hand.
Jenny’s eyes widened. “Oh, no. Peter, your ring!”
Peter lifted his ring hand. His ring was gone.
The first seal had been br
oken.
Chapter 8
Secrets and Lies
It was with a feeling of dread that Kara and the others travelled back to Horizon. They had failed to stop Famine from breaking his seal. The archfiends were getting closer to their victory.
Kara hid in the shadows while she waited for the rest of the group to be released from the archangel Raphael’s care. They were fine, but protocol demanded that they get checked out anyway. She refused to get checked, partly because she felt fine, but mostly because she didn’t want to draw attention to herself. She had to agree with David. She looked like a freak show all on her own. Ultimately, she would seek Mr. Patterson’s council first, and then she’d decide whether or not to let the rest of the legion in on the progress of her transformation. Would they even care? They were on the brink of war. Perhaps they wouldn’t even notice.
Time was passing. After spending a few hours in Horizon to repair their injuries, they had only three days left.
Kara waited for her friends in a long corridor opposite the hallway from Raphael’s chamber. A group of middle-aged CDD agents came strutting down the corridor, and Kara stepped back deeper into the shadows and flattened herself against the stone wall.
“…who sent them on this mission anyway,” said a man’s voice.
“I checked the chart, and no field missions assigned to anyone. What the heck were they doing? Don’t they know it’s pointless? We could really use the extra manpower. Gabriel said it would be the biggest battle the legion had ever seen. They should be fighting alongside us tomorrow when he hit the archfiends.”
Kara frowned but crept a little closer to hear more.
“There was no official mission,” said a woman’s voice. “It was the one with the demon wings, the freak. No doubt she orchestrated all of this to bring more attention to herself. She lied to her team and nearly got them all killed. She’s always been a real problem with the legion. She makes everyone uneasy. Cathy in Operations told me that she was supposed to be terminated last year.”
“No way,” said one of the men.
Kara’s mood darkened. She clenched her fists.
“I swear it on the souls,” the woman’s voice rose with excitement.
“There’s something foul about her. I just know it. She’s corrupted, and she corrupts everyone around her, like a bad apple. I honestly don’t know why they keep her around. If it were up to me, I’d get rid of her.”
“Well, it’s not up to you.”
“Her team is going to die because of her, you just watch,” said the woman.
“If they’re stupid enough to follow that freak,” said another man’s voice.
“Then they’re stupid enough to die along with her.” The voices laughed.
“I wouldn’t be sorry if she did die,” the woman snorted. “We don’t need mutants like that here. She doesn’t belong in Horizon. They should have left her locked up in Tartarus. Or better yet…fed her soul to the demons.”
The all laughed as they went past Kara.
She stepped out of the shadows. She wanted to shout at them, to tell them off. It took every ounce of strength to keep from dive-bombing the three of them and slapping them around with her wings. She’d show them how much of a freak she was. She had to tell herself that these were ignorant fools.
But they didn’t appear to know anything about the seals; otherwise they would have said so. No. It was clear that her mission was a secret one. She might look like a freak, but she was important enough to Mr. Patterson, and hopefully some of the other archangels, to entrust her on this secret and vital mission.
“Idiots,” she said under her breath.
“Well, well, well. What do we have here, ladies?”
Kara froze. And then she cursed. Even before she turned around, she knew who it was. She kept her head hidden in the shadows of her hood and turned around.
“Kara Nightingale,” said Metatron between puffs of his cigar. “The one with the mark—or should I say the one with the wings.”
He looked exactly as she had tried hard to forget. His charcoal-gray suit was a bit tight around the middle, and his thin, straw-colored hair was drawn back from his receding hairline. He hid his eyes behind his glasses, but she knew he watched her with great interest. He was oily, like a gangster lord, full of false promises, full of criminal resolve and evil secrets.
His entourage of stunning angel woman in skin-tight, black leather suits, red high heels, sunglasses, and bright red lipstick stood in his shadow.
Kara held back a growl.
“Why are you hiding?” he laughed as he tapped the ashes from his cigar.
“With such a pretty face like yours I’m surprised you’re not flaunting it around.”
He glanced toward the group of guardians who had just passed. A knowing smile spread on his lips.
“I wasn’t hiding”
Metatron laughed harder. “But you are hiding. But the question is why? And from whom are you hiding?”
The archangel’s laughter only made Kara’s fury bubble even more. He was a rude and arrogant fool who still thought it was cool to smoke cigars. She hated him and his stupid entourage. Their sweet cherry-blossom and vanilla perfume was giving her a giant headache.
“Leave me alone,” growled Kara. She remembered who she was speaking to and added, “Please.”
Metatron’s face twitched.
“Remember who you’re speaking to, guardian,” he warned with a dangerous edge to his voice. “I’m not some mindless, spineless archangel. I’m your commander, and you’d do well to remember that.”
Kara wasn’t about to apologize. Maybe if she ignored him, he’d get bored and walk away.
Metatron smiled.
“Come, come, Kara. Aren’t we friends? Of course we are. Let me gaze upon that pretty face of yours.”
But Kara didn’t budge.
“Come here now,” he ordered. “I won’t say it again.”
Kara had been caught by the worst archangel in all Horizon. Why couldn’t it have been Raphael? She cursed herself for not going with the others.
She took a step forward and kept her head down. But she knew he was close enough to see the markings on her face.
“Oh dear,” said Metatron.
Smoke from his cigar billowed into her face. “It’s worse than I expected. You have been busy.”
She raised her head slowly and angrily and stared into his sunglasses. The entourage gasped, but she ignored them.
“You know this isn’t my fault. I never asked for any of this.”
Kara caught her reflection in his sunglasses and froze for a moment. The shock of the thick, black veins tattooed on her face was still very fresh. She didn’t like the monster that stared back at her. She looked away and hid under her hood.
Metatron took a drag of his cigar. She hated that she couldn’t see his eyes.
“Maybe not,” he said, and then he was quiet for a while. “But it’s happened, hasn’t it.”
Even though she couldn’t see his eyes, she knew he was taking in everything.
And then Metatron said finally, “Your transformation seems to be progressing faster than I had expected.”
“This complicates things,” he said to himself.
What things? Kara wanted to ask.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
Kara thought that it was an odd question, coming from him.
“Does it hurt? Are you in any kind of pain? Do you have a fever?”
“Fever? No. I feel fine.” Kara glared at one of his entourage who was openly staring and laughing at her.
Metatron took another drag of his cigar. To her surprise, he blew a butterfly.
“You certainly don’t look fine. Such a pity. You had such a pretty face.”
He was silent again, and Kara had the feeling that he knew more than he let on.
“I feel fine,” she repeated. She couldn’t let him remove her from her mission. She needed to save herself, as well as the world.<
br />
“I can still do my job, if that’s what’s worrying you. Nothing’s changed—”
“Except for those black marks all over you.” His eyes rolled over her body too long.
Kara controlled her temper. “It doesn’t affect my skills as a guardian. I’m just as good as I was before, even better because of the wings. I’m a real asset to the legion and to my team. My—my condition won’t affect my work. I promise.”
The women snorted at this. She wanted to slice off their pretty heads.
The archangel gave her a sly smile. “It’s already affecting your work if you feel the need to hide in the shadows. You can’t hide your wings anymore, and you certainly can’t hide your face.”
He flicked his cigar toward her. “You say that your wings are an asset, so why do you shy away like you’re ashamed of them?”
“I’m not.” Kara contracted her hands into fists and concentrated hard to keep the darkness from taking her over.
Metatron’s smile faded a little.
“Only the guilty shy away from others, those who do not wish to share their secrets, those who do not want to be discovered. Tell me. Are you guilty of something, Kara? What shameful incident have you done that makes you lurk in the shadows?”
“I haven’t done anything,” she said coldly.
“Really?” Metatron shared smiles with his entourage. It made Kara want to vomit.
He turned his attention back to her and took a long drag from his cigar.
“From where I’m standing, it sure looks like you’re hiding something. I told you before, I can always tell when someone is lying…and you, my dear, are lying. It’s all over your face.”
Kara flinched.
“I’m not lying. I haven’t done anything. I’m just standing here waiting for my team. I don’t recall any laws against lurking in the hallways.”
“A tongue like a razor. I like that. I find it very charming in someone so young.”
Kara made a face.
“We all have our secrets—though I’m curious why you’re so jumpy. If I were a fool, I’d say you can keep your secrets. But I am no fool. And keeping secrets from the legion, from me, is a capital offense. I could send you straight to Tartarus without questions or a hearing.”
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