Reapers (23 page)

“
I have to go and check on
Mr. Patterson. I don’t expect you guys to understand, but I just
have to. I just do. I have to make sure he’s all right.”

“
Kara,” said David, “he’s
an
oracle
. Of
course he’s all right. He’s probably smoking his pipe and having a
pint of beer at the local pub. Wish it were me. Trust me, the guy’s
totally fine.”

But Kara had a horrible feeling that
he wasn’t.

“
I have to,” she said
after a moment. “I just do.”

David stood still for a second. “Fine,
then I’m coming with you.”

He stepped into the elevator, but Kara
pushed him back.

“
You can’t.”

“
Oh, yes, I can,” pressed
David. “If you’re going, then I’m going.”

“
We’re coming too!” echoed
Peter and Jenny.

The elevator operator
frowned.

“
No,” said
Kara.

She raised her hands in protest,
“Especially not you, Peter. You can’t go back there…not after,” she
raised her brows and looked at his bandaged arm.

“
I appreciate it guys. I
really do. But you have to stay here and do what Gabriel says.
Hopefully, he won’t notice that I’m gone—”

“
I seriously doubt that,”
argued David. He crossed his arms over his chest.

“
Excuse me,” said the
operator, raising his eyebrows like he wished he were anywhere
else. “Make up your minds. I’m on a time frame. What will it
be—
in
or
out
?”

David was so handsome when he was mad
that Kara was tempted to lean in and kiss him. But instead she
leaned over and pushed him out of the elevator.

“
Out,” she said with a
playful smile. “And don’t look at me like that, David. You guys
stick together. I’ll be back before you know it.”

“
How do you expect to use
the vega tanks without Ariel seeing you?” noted David. “It’s not
like there are a lot of angels using them at the moment. She’ll see
you.”

Kara turned and spoke to the operator.
“Level one, please.”

She turned back to David and said,
“I’m going to use one of the pools at Orientation.”

She hadn’t thought about how she was
going to get back to Mr. Patterson, not really, until she said it
aloud. And as she said it she could sense it was all coming
together.

She waved to her friends, and the
doors closed in front of David’s face. She had the feeling he was
going to pry the doors open and pull himself in. But he
didn’t.

The doors stayed closed.

A few minutes later, Kara shuffled
down Cedarview Street like a battered penguin. Having wings was one
thing, but being duct taped like a mummy constricted her every
movement. She would have to tear the duct tape off.

Kara wobbled past houses, shops,
cafés, and the little parks in between. The sun rose and the street
took on a warm orange hue. However, there were no smells of baking
bread, coffee, or the sounds of doors opening and cars rushing by
to work. The devastation told a different story.

The once quaint and neatly kept rows
of houses and shops looked as though an army of giants had trampled
over them. Everywhere she looked, walls, roofs, windows, and doors
littered the street and sidewalks. Dust and debris coated
everything like the ashes from a volcano eruption. From what she
could tell, there was no sign of life. There was no sign of imps or
reapers either. She felt like she was walking through the set of a
post-apocalyptic movie; everything was barren and
ominous.

Kara shuffled as fast as she could,
scrambling over boulders and glass in the street. When she reached
the last block, she slowed. She had to move carefully now. She
might not be able to see or sense the reapers or the imps, but it
didn’t mean that they weren’t hiding somewhere in the
rubble.

But her fears weren’t just about Mr.
Patterson. Her fears were also about herself.

She could feel her transformation more
deeply now. It seemed her body and soul were slowly accepting the
changes—whatever they were. But with the change, with the wings,
there was also a darkness. She could sense it. At first she was
thrilled, because she’d believed that the fiery ball in the pit of
her being from which she drew her elemental powers was
back.

But soon after she felt it, she knew
it was different. It was cold.

She stared at her hand and
remembered the traces of gold light that had once covered her palm
and fingers. Whatever was happening to her now
wasn’t
elemental. Kara soon started
to feel dread. She feared the future and longed for things that
once were. What was she changing into?

She finally stood in front of what
remained of Old Jim’s Bookstore. Two brick walls stood, open to the
sky above. The only evidence that it had once been a bookstore were
the hundreds of books that littered the debris and spilled onto the
street. Bricks, wood splinters, and fragments of plaster covered
the floor, as though the walls had caved in on
themselves.

Kara carefully stepped over the front
door and peered in for a closer look. She’d always loved the quirky
bookstore, but a tightness formed in her chest at the
devastation.

“
Mr. Patterson?” she
called, as quietly as she could.

Her voice carried too loudly across
the rubble. She waited and then called again. “Mr.
Patterson?”

Silence. The longer Kara waited, the
worse she felt. She tried to think positively. Mr. Patterson was an
oracle who could take care of himself. But where was he? If he had
been here, he would have answered.

The street was too quiet, and it
unnerved her. Had the imps gotten a hold of him? What if he lay
hurt and dying under a pile of rock? Was Mr. Patterson
dead?

A scream cut through the
silence.

The hair on Kara’s arms rose. It came
from the building next door. It wasn’t Mr. Patterson, but it was
the desperate and agonizing scream of a young child.

Kara shuffled as fast as her
constricted body and legs allowed her. The building next to the
bookstore was still standing. She entered through a large gap in
the wall and stood in the rubble of what had once been a living
room.

She smelled rancid sulfur. There was
something rotting in here, and it wasn’t the garbage. She stepped
over lamps and cushions, and stopped to examine a picture frame on
the ground. A family with a young blond boy of around seven or
eight years old smiled back at her through the broken glass. An
old, green-carpeted staircase led to a second floor above.
Carefully, she picked her way over a fallen couch and stared at an
empty kitchen at the other end of the building.

As Kara strained for any
sudden sound, an ache began to sting on her back. She realized then
that it was her
wings
that hurt. To be taped down for hours was probably not a good
thing for her or for her wings. How odd, to even think of such a
thing. She wondered if the cape would still hide them if she took
the tape off. What would Mr. Patterson think if he got a good look
at her?

THUMP
.

The sound came from upstairs, like
something heavy had just fallen on the floor above her
head.

Kara ran up the staircase as fast as
she could. She nearly tripped over the body of a man whose black
empty eyes stared up at her blankly. His hands were slashed and
bloodied like he had fought to protect himself. It was too late for
him, but maybe she could save another.

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.
I
ts 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

“
N
o!”

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.