Reapers (19 page)

An imp fell on her from the ceiling
and got her in a headlock, all the while stabbing her repeatedly
with its short dagger. She jabbed her blade into the creatures left
eye, then flipped it over her on the floor and stepped on its
throat. She unsheathed her blade and brought it down into its head.
The imp shook and exploded into a cloud of gray dust.

Kara looked down at herself and
gagged. She was covered in the imp’s ashes. It was in her face, on
her hair, and even in her mouth. Kara spat the imp ashes from her
mouth. They tasted sour and flaky, like she had swallowed toilet
paper marinated in vinegar. It was utterly disgusting.

David climbed up a bookcase and hurled
books down at the imps, while Mr. Patterson screamed in outrage for
his beloved books.

Finally, when there were only a few
imps left, one with a patch over its right eye raised its fist and
called out, “We’ll be back! We’ll be back for the key, and we’ll
kill you all, angels!”

The last imps rushed out through the
front door and were gone.

Kara brushed the ashes from her hair
and clothes as best she could, but the more she rubbed, the more
the particles seem to want to stick. She wiped the ashes from her
eyes and looked around.

Everyone was covered from head to toe
in gray ashes, and the bookstore looked like a bomb had gone off.
Plaster dust and debris fell from the ceiling like snowflakes.
Bookcases were toppled over one another, and books were strewn on
the floor. Glass shards mixed with the remains of the imps lay in
piles of gray ashes between shredded books and wood splinters. The
bookstore was in ruins.

David spat on the floor and then
whistled.

“
Wow, what a mess,
literally. There are imp
leftovers
everywhere. Hope you have a good cleaning lady,
Mr. Patterson.”

His smug smile disappeared when he saw
the murderous look in the old man’s eyes.

“
Is everyone okay?” Kara
inspected her friends closely. Although there were many deep cuts
and serious-looking gashes, overall they were fine. Mr. Patterson
didn’t have a mark on him except for some fluffy dust.

Kara wiped her hands on her jeans and
then moved toward Mr. Patterson.

“
What’s this key they were
looking for? They seemed to believe they’d find it
here.”

She measured his face closely and
said, “I know you know what they were talking about. They tried to
kill four angels and an oracle to find it. Tell us, what’s so
special about this key?”

The old man looked at each of them in
turn. After a moment, he lowered his bat, straightened up, and
said, “They are looking for the key to unlock their master’s
prison. I am its keeper.”

Chapter 13

Keeper of the
Key

M
r. Patterson picked up his bat, climbed over the piles of
books and debris, and returned it behind his counter. He stood,
shaken for a moment, and held the sides of the counter to steady
himself. Then he untied his bowtie and tossed it on the
ground.

Kara had never seen her boss so
distraught. It was uncomfortable just looking at him. For the first
time since she’d known him, he looked lost. And if he was lost,
what did that mean for the rest of them?

David, Jenny, and Peter looked equally
confused.

Kara moved toward the
counter.

“
Mr. Patterson, are you
okay?”

The old man lifted his head, “Not even
remotely.”

“
Tell us what this all
means,” said Kara. She tried to hide the urgency in her
voice.

Mr. Patterson closed his eyes and
shook his head absentmindedly.

“
The archfiends were
expelled from our reality thousands of years ago. The archangels
forced them into a barren dimension.”

“
You mean the
Netherworld?” Kara looked at him.

“
Yes, and no.” Mr.
Patterson opened his eyes.

“
Beyond the Netherworld
there exists another plane, another dimension, a place of fire and
shadow, darker than even the Netherworld. And it is there that the
archfiends were exiled. All this time we thought we had
successfully banished them, and that it was impossible for them to
escape.”

“
But they haven’t escaped,
not yet.” said Kara. “If the imps are looking for your key, it
means that the archfiends are still locked up.”

The old man looked
serious. “Yes, but the fact that they are
aware
of the key’s existence
and
know
where to
find it means they are planning something.”

“
And
if
they get their hands on the key,”
began Peter, as he drummed his fingers on the counter, “they can
unlock their prison. Doesn’t that sound a bit too easy? If the
archfiends are as dangerous as you say, why didn’t the legion take
better care of how they banished them? Why didn’t they just destroy
the key? Why didn’t they destroy the archfiends?”

“
That’s exactly what I was
thinking,” said Jenny. She leaned over the counter next to Peter
and picked up a crystal ball from the glass case.

“
Because we
couldn’t
,” said Mr.
Patterson.

He glared at Jenny. He took the
crystal ball from her, and then gently placed it back inside the
broken glass case.

“
They were too strong, too
powerful. The only thing we could do was to banish them, to keep
them from doing harm. Which is what we did.”

“
And the key?” asked
Kara.

“
The key is part of it,”
said Mr. Patterson. “It’ll take more than just the key to unlock
their prison. There are other elements that need to work together
in order to breach the force field that confines them. We never
thought it possible.”

Mr. Patterson hit the counter with his
fist. “I still don’t understand how they can even contemplate an
escape.”

“
Well, they’re thinking
it,” said David. “They must think that they can escape. They’ve
sent the reapers out, right? Which can only mean they’re getting
ready to break out.”

Kara knew David was right. If the
archfiends had released their reapers to clear the mortals and
angels out of the way, they were preparing their escape and knew
they could achieve it somehow.

Kara turned to her boss. “So how do we
keep them from escaping?”

Mr. Patterson shifted uneasily and
held her gaze. “They must never get hold of the key. No matter
what.”

“
Sounds easy enough,” said
David. “Let’s just keep it hidden—”

A shrill cry of someone being attacked
echoed from outside.

Mr. Patterson moved over to Kara,
grabbed her elbow, and steered her to face him.

“
The imps are coming back.
And this time there’ll be more of them.”

“
Why am I not surprised?”
said David lazily.

“
The key cannot stay with
me anymore,” continued the old man more urgently. His grip
tightened around Kara’s arm.

“
They know I have it now.
The key
must
be
kept hidden and secret if we are to save our worlds.”

“
Okay, we’ll help.” Kara
bobbed her head vaguely, a little confused. “Just tell us where it
is, and we’ll help you hide it somewhere—”

“
No!” said Mr. Patterson.
“The key must be transferred
into
the hands of another keeper. That is the only way
to keep it safe.”

Kara watched Mr. Patterson
closely. “Did you say
into
?”

But before he answered her, Mr.
Patterson grabbed a glass shard from the counter and slit his arm
from the wrist to the elbow. Instead of the bright, white essence
Kara was used to seeing in the wounds of angels, a silver light
spilled out of his cut. His arm disappeared in the bright silver
light.

He worked fast. He dropped the glass
shard and pried his skin open with his fingers. He rummaged inside
his arm like it was a carry-on bag, and he was looking for his
toothbrush.

“
Stop!” cried Kara. She
tried to grab his hands, but he yanked himself free. “Have you gone
mad?”

And then Mr. Patterson withdrew a
brilliant crystal key from his arm. It was the size of his palm and
had a shield engraved into it. It looked like the archangel’s
symbol of two wings sculpted into a bow. Etched all around the
edges were symbols and letters written in a language she didn’t
understand.

“
This is the key,” said
Mr. Patterson.

David cursed loudly, and Kara eyed it
curiously.

“
I bet that hurt,” she
said.

Mr. Patterson reached out and grabbed
her wrist. She felt a small electric shock. But before she could
ask him what he had done, he grabbed David’s soul blade.

“
Hold out your arm
Kara.”

Kara looked at him, stunned. “Excuse
me?”

“
You are the new keeper,”
he said simply. “Hold out your arm, quickly now. We don’t have much
time.”

Kara expected David to save her from
Mr. Patterson’s sudden madness, but he gave her a short smile and a
nod. Jenny and Peter nodded, too. Somehow, there was a silent
agreement amongst them that she should be the new
keeper.

Kara knew she couldn’t refuse. But she
wasn’t sure she was the best candidate.

“
Mr. Patterson,” Kara
began, speaking as fast as she could. “There’s something I didn’t
tell you. Since I’ve been back I haven’t just lost my memory—I’ve
also been experiencing pain—”

“
There’s no time!” Mr.
Patterson glanced over his shoulder as though expecting a new horde
of imps to crash into his bookstore at any moment.

“
Give me your arm! Make
haste! Hurry!”

Kara held out her arm and flinched as
Mr. Patterson sliced up the inside of her forearm. Her angel
essence spilled out like sunshine. She felt a tug and watched,
transfixed, as he tucked the crystal key under her M-suit
skin.

He pulled his fingers away, and Kara
felt a sudden white-hot pain. The key was burning her from the
inside.

“
It’s burning!” she cried
and shook her arm violently. The key popped out of her arm and fell
to the ground.

Mr. Patterson jumped back in alarm,
recovered quickly and scooped up the key again.

“
What just happened?”
David asked Mr. Patterson. “Is that normal?”

Mr. Patterson gazed at Kara, but she
knew what he was going to say.

“
The key has rejected you,
Kara,” said Mr. Patterson.

He looked at Kara
curiously, as though there was something about her that he wasn’t
saying. Something confused him. If the key rejected her, it could
only mean that somehow
she
was bad.

Kara pressed down on her
open wound. “But why? Why would the key reject
me
?”

Mr. Patterson studied the crystal key.
He looked up at Kara and said, “I’m not sure.”

But just when she thought he was going
to explain himself further, he grabbed Peter and sliced open his
arm. Peter yelled in protest, but Mr. Patterson shoved the key into
his arm, just as he had done with Kara.

Everyone was quiet, waiting to see if
the key would reject Peter. And when nothing happened, Mr.
Patterson let him go and stepped back.

“
There! The new keeper,”
he said, relieved.

Peter didn’t look relieved at all. He
felt desecrated. He looked at the wound in his arm like it was a
huge infection.

Kara wondered why the key had rejected
her, but had accepted Peter.

Mr. Patterson pressed down on Peter’s
skin to stop the essence from seeping out.

“
Penny, take that bowtie
and wrap it around his arm,” he said pointing his head at Peter’s
arm. “As tight as you can. We don’t want the key to fall out
accidentally, before the skin has time to heal. Hurry.”

Jenny held the bowtie taut for a
second, like she was about to strangle Mr. Patterson. “It’s Jenny,
not Penny.”

Moving fast, she wrapped the bowtie
around Peter’s arm until it was bandaged completely, and his angel
essence was intact.

“
There…” Mr. Patterson
stepped back and admired his handiwork. “How does that
feel?”

Peter moved his arm and
ran his fingers along the bowtie-bandage. “Like I’ve been
violated
. It doesn’t
hurt, but I feel it. It feels like I have a foreign object inside
my arm like a tumor.”

“
Perfect! The key has
accepted you as its new keeper,” said Mr. Patterson and then he
added, “Quickly!”

Mr. Patterson jumped over the piles of
rubbish and headed toward the door.

Kara held her arm with her hand. She
felt a little annoyed, even envious, that somehow she wasn’t good
enough to be the keeper of the key—that Peter was a better
guardian, one without fault, one that wasn’t tainted.