Reapers (22 page)

When he had finished she immediately
regretted her decision to go along with him. She felt trapped, and
she hated it.

“
Now for the grand
finale.”

David shook the black cloth open. It
was long and waved in the light breeze.

Kara dropped her arms to her sides
when she realized what he was doing.

“
It’s a cape,” she
said.

David threw it over her shoulders and
tied it at her throat.

“
I found it in last year’s
Halloween section, part of Dracula’s outfit. There. It’s perfect.
It covers all of you.”

He stood back and admired his
work.

Jenny grinned. “Apart from the two
lumps on your back, it does hide most of the wings. I think it’ll
work.”

Kara didn’t hide her disappointment.
“I look like a witch.”

“
If witches looked like
that,” said David, grinning sheepishly, “then I’d be in a whole lot
of hexing trouble—”

“
Guys,” Peter held up his
hand. “You hear that?”

They all listened
carefully.

“
I don’t hear anything,”
said Jenny.

“
Exactly.” Peter turned
his attention down the street. “I don’t hear the imps anymore. We’d
better go.”

They headed toward the garden pond in
front of a white house with the red door. They had used it
before.

Initially, Kara was constrained by the
weight on her back and the unnatural tightness of the duct tape.
But soon she picked up speed and started to catch up to
them.

But there was another reason she was
hanging back. She couldn’t shake off the feeling of dread that was
growing in the pit of her soul.

Why had she grown a pair of wings?
What was the mysterious substance that had been injected inside
her?

Her transformation had begun. But how
would it end?

Chapter 16

On with the
Search

K
ara walked through CDD, with David, Peter, and Jenny acting
as her bodyguards. She knew they were trying to hide the two humps
on her back, but she had a feeling they were drawing more attention
to themselves this way. And with the constraint of duct tape around
her, she felt like she was walking like a penguin.

Still, they made it to the meeting
table without anyone asking any questions.

At first Kara hadn’t noticed how
unnaturally quiet it was, but when she took the time to look around
she saw that most of the unit was missing. Papers littered the
ground. Many of the chairs were upturned, and most of the
holographic screens were turned off. It was like most of the unit
had upped and left in a hurry.

Ariel sat alone at the great table.
She leaned heavily on her right hand and watched the holographic
screen in front of her.

She looked up as they approached. She
looked even more tired and a lot worse than the last time Kara had
seen her. Her usually bright hazel eyes were red, and a darkness
had settled below them.

“
Good, you’re back,” Ariel
rubbed her eyes with her fingers. “I was getting worried something
had happened to my best team.”

“
As you can see, nothing’s
happened,” said Peter, a little too hastily. David shot him a look
that silenced anything that he might have wanted to add.

“
I’m glad,” said Ariel.
“We have so much to do…so few of us left…so little
time…”

She trailed off. Her eyes went back to
her screen. There was such a sadness about her that it was starting
to make Kara uncomfortable.

Kara shared an uneasy look with
David.

They moved nearer to the archangel so
that they could get a better look at what was making her so
gloomy.

The screen showed the same map of the
world that it usually did. But when she inspected it closer, Kara
could see that there were red dots over nearly every major city.
And the longer she looked, the more the red dots multiplied and got
bigger. Some filled up an entire country.

“
Ariel, what’s going on?
What are all those red dots?”

Ariel’s face darkened.

“
The reapers’ wrath. The
red dots represent the cities where the reapers have stolen the
souls of the mortals, and where human bodies have become hosts to
the denomites. The epidemic is so grave that we’ve lost entire
countries now: Algeria, Congo, even Mexico.”

She closed her eyes. “We just don’t
know how to stop them. And the more we try new approaches, the more
we fail, and the more angels we lose. I’m at a loss.”

“
But where is everyone?”
Kara looked at Ariel. “Are they all out fighting the reapers? Are
they on search and rescue missions?”

“
They’re killing us. The
reapers are killing us.”

Ariel shook her head and stared back
at the screen. “I’ve sent them to their deaths…to their true
deaths.”

Her voice lowered. “They never knew
how to defend themselves against such a merciless, evil threat. I
can’t keep sending out units without more facts.”

“
How many teams did you
send?” David’s voice rose. “How many?”

“
Thirty,” answered Ariel,
her voice shaking.

Kara and David shared a sidelong
glance.

“
And how many returned?”
asked Kara, sensing something horrid.

Ariel’s face was contorted in pain,
and if Archangels could cry, Kara would have seen tears rolling
down her face.

“
Only you.”

Kara felt like she’d been punched in
the gut. One hundred and twenty guardians had lost their lives. It
was a huge loss to the legion.

Kara counted the guardians who were
left in the room. Fifty. Fifty-four if she counted her own
team.

“
What about Ashley?” she
asked.

“
She is still under
Raphael’s care. I don’t know if Ashley will ever return to CDD. Her
own loss was too great, and from what our healer has told me, she
may never recover.”

If Kara had lost her own team, she
would probably have reacted exactly like Ashley. If David were
lost…

“
I’m sure we’ll see more
guardians come back,” said Jenny hopefully. “We only just got here,
and we made it. I’m sure there’ll be more. You just have to be
patient. There are a lot of good guardians out there.”

Ariel looked at her, but her eyes were
unfocused and far away.

“
Yes, and I’ve sent them
to their deaths,” she said darkly.

But then the archangel seemed to
recover a little, and she focused on the small group as though she
had only just really seen them.

“
Gabriel is training as
many new recruits as he can, but I’m not sure how effective they
will be,” said Ariel. “He’s building a new army. My teams are
supposed to track and analyze the reapers—to find a way to destroy
them. What’s the point of building an army if we don’t understand
who we’re fighting against?”

She hesitated. “There are only seven
reapers, and yet just one can take down all of my units. I fear…I
fear…”

But then she smiled when she said, “Is
that some new kind of uniform you’re trying, Kara? A cape? Looks
rather silly if you ask me, something maybe David would
try.”

She laughed again, but it sounded more
like a desperate cry than a laugh.

Kara shifted uncomfortably, and tried
to shrink behind her friends. The archangel was looking at the hump
of her wings. Did archangels have x-ray vision? She really hoped
they didn’t.

Ariel folded her hands on the table.
“What do you have to report? Please tell me that my best team has
discovered something. Do they have a weakness?”

David dropped his blade on the table.
It resonated oddly in the nearly empty chamber.

“
Well, we know that none
of our weapons work on the stupid reapers. It’s like everything we
threw at them had no effect. We didn’t even slow them down. They’re
like super-demons, and we suck.”

Ariel nodded absentmindedly. “I was
afraid of that. What else?”

“
And we were attacked by
imps,” said Peter.

“
Imps?” Ariel’s eyes
widened. “Are you sure?”

“
Yeah,” said Peter, “and
they brought with them a giant—”

Kara kicked Peter in the shin and his
face fell.

“
A giant what, Peter?”
demanded Ariel in a commanding voice.

“
A giant pain in the
butt,” laughed David. “That’s what.”

Ariel was still curious. “Tell me more
about these imps.”

“
Well,” Kara began, “we
don’t know why, but they just showed up with the reapers,” she
lied. “We took care of the imps and were able to control the
situation very easily.”

Kara felt terrible about lying to
Ariel, but she had made a promise to Mr. Patterson. And she was
going to keep it, for now.

The archangel measured the group
intently. She knew they were hiding something from her.

“
Imps, you say,” repeated
the archangel. “Imps don’t just show up for no reason. They are not
like your regular demons. They must have been after
something
.”

Her eyes went to Kara’s shoulders and
settled on her hump again. But just when Kara thought that the
archangel was about to ask her to remove her cape, a beeping sound
came from her computer.

“
Gabriel’s requested the
four of you to level two immediately.”

Ariel brushed her fingers over the
keyboard.

“
You will help him train
the new CDD guardians. I have faith in your abilities. I’m sure
you’ll all make great coaches.”

“
Super,” said David
gloomily.

He slipped his soul blade back inside
his jacket pocket. “Just what I wanted, more rookies to
train.”

“
Not just
any
rookies,” said
Ariel. “The
only
ones who volunteered that showed enough skill to join CDD on
such short notice.”

She pushed her chair back and stood
up.

“
This is not a request.
Don’t make me repeat myself, David. Get a move on.”

Without another word, Kara and the
others crossed the chamber and stepped back into the elevator. Kara
was glad to be away from Ariel. She could have sworn that the
archangel could see under her cloak.

As the elevator descended to level two
something kept playing over and over in Kara’s mind. Something
nagged her.

“
Guys,” said Kara,
breaking the silence. “The imps kept saying
the
Eighteens
. Do you know what they meant by that? Are the
Eighteens
demons?”

Peter shook his head. “I’ve never
heard of the Eighteens.”

“
Can’t say that I have,”
said David.

“
Me neither,” said Jenny.
“What do you think they are?”

Kara shrugged, and wiggled under the
tightness of the duct tape around her abdomen. “I don’t know. But I
have the strong feeling that the Eighteens, whatever they may be,
are linked to the key somehow. Maybe the Eighteens are the
archfiends? It could be their numbers, like there are only eighteen
of them left. It would make sense.”

Jenny shrugged. “Who knows?
Maybe.”

“
Eighteen, the legal age
to drink,” said David as he leaned against the back panel with a
goofy smile.

Kara ignored him.

“
Maybe if we find out more
about the reapers and the archfiends, we’ll know more about the key
and the Eighteens.”

She feared that the Eighteens were the
Dark Gods, something much worse than the reapers.

The doors swished open, and Kara
stared at the bright red dunes of Operations. Jenny, Peter, and
David jumped off the platform and landed in the soft red sand. But
Kara remained where she was.

David realized that Kara wasn’t beside
him.

“
Kara? I don’t think it’s
wise to make Gabe wait…especially now. The dude’s got a temper to
match his size.”

Kara shook her head.

She could see the tan-colored primate
who operated the elevator watching her. Its fingers twitched
anxiously around the CLOSE door button.

“
I’m not coming with
you.”

Peter crashed into Jenny’s back, and
they both turned around.

“
What do you mean
you’re
not
coming?”

David walked up to the elevator. “You
heard Ariel; we have to do this.”

“
I know we do,” said
Kara.

She tried unsuccessfully to reach an
itch somewhere between her new wings.

“
But
I’m
not going.”

“
Why not? You’re not
making any sense.”