Reapers (24 page)

But then she felt a flutter ripple
through her. At first she thought it was her elemental powers
coming back, answering her desperate call for help. But instead of
the electrifying warm elemental power—this feeling was cold. Black
cold. She could sense it, but she didn’t surrender to it. It
frightened her. It frightened her more than the reaper.

She curled her hand around a shard of
glass and thrust it at the creature’s head. But it dropped its
scythe and caught her hand before she could even get close to its
contorted face. The creature was too fast, but she had distracted
it, and it loosed its grip on her.

She jumped to her feet and used her
momentum to spin around and kick the reaper in the legs. The reaper
was surprised and stumbled back into the wall. Before it had time
to react, Kara slammed her feet and her fists into his chest and
head, again and again. The reaper turned on her in frustration,
grabbed her by the throat, and hurled her across the
room.

She flew through the front window and
fell onto the debris in the street below.

Okay. The creature was mad.

Kara stood up and picked a few shards
of broken glass from her M-5 suit.

The reaper stepped casually out of the
broken window, the scythe at its side, and its haggard, rotten face
raised in hatred and defiance.

It’s really going to hurt
now, isn’t it?
thought Kara.

The creature’s robe spilled out in
swirls of black smoke behind it. She could hear the souls pleading
from within the creature’s skin and scythe. She steadied herself.
She would go down fighting.

The reaper raised its scythe above its
head.

There was a pop behind her, and the
last of the tape tore off.

Kara’s wings fluttered behind her. It
was such an exhilarating feeling that she temporarily forgot about
the ugly reaper.

Kara stretched out her wings and gave
them a hard flap. The force drove her to her knees, and her face
scraped the pavement.

Kara spat out the gravel in her
mouth.

Obviously, having wings was not as
easy as it looked on television.

She expected the reaper to use this
opportunity to strike her down. But when she stood up again,
straining to keep her wings from making her fall again, she
gasped.

The reaper was on his knees. He was
bowing to her like a knight would bow to a king. His scythe lay on
the ground in front of him. It was almost as though the creature
thought that she was his mistress.

But that was absurd.

And just when Kara thought things
couldn’t get any weirder, a ball of white light hit the reaper
square in the chest. It exploded, and the reaper howled and fell to
the ground. The white light coiled around him like wild
electricity. The stench of burnt flesh and tar rose into the air
around her, as the reaper’s body smoked and sizzled.

“
Kara! Kara!”

Kara turned around.

Mr. Patterson came running toward her,
smiling proudly at his successful attack on the reaper.

But then his smile was lost, and his
eyes widened at the sight of her. He staggered and then halted in
front of her. His crystal weapon slipped from his hand as he paled
in shock and bewilderment.

“
What in the name of
Horizon?” began Mr. Patterson, blinking, “…Bless the souls…how…how
can this be? You have wings!”

“
Yeah, I
noticed.”

Kara took his hand in hers and smiled,
relieved that he was okay. “I’ll explain later.”

She turned quickly when some motion
caught her eye. Although the reaper’s body still smoked, it grabbed
its scythe and stood up. The vapors diminished, and in a flash of
black smoke the reaper was gone.

“
How did you do that?”
Kara turned and faced Mr. Patterson.

“
What weapon did you use?
I’ve been dying here, trying to figure out what we can kill it
with, and whatever you used…well, it worked. It didn’t kill it, but
it hurt it. We’re going to need a lot more of whatever
those
were.”

“
Mr. Patterson? Why are
you staring at me like that?”

The old man stared at Kara in
wonder.

“
You have wings. You
have
wings
.” He
hesitated for a moment and then said, “Kara,
why
do you have wings?”

Kara remembered events fully now, and
she recounted them as fully and articulately as she
could.

“
I’m sorry I didn’t tell
you before,” she said finally. “But I couldn’t remember what had
happened to me. And now I have these things.”

With a single thought, she spread her
wings as easily as spreading her fingers. It had become second
nature to her. She didn’t know why, but she felt proud and happy to
have her wings. It wasn’t her elemental power…but it was something
different and exceptional. And no other guardian had wings—except
her.

Mr. Patterson examined Kara’s wings
closely, mumbling to himself as he poked and prodded them. He
couldn’t believe that they were real.

“
I don’t know what the big
deal is,” she said, shifting uncomfortably as the oracle continued
to examine her.

“
I mean, for one thing,
I’d always thought angels had wings…you know, like everybody else,
I suppose. I’ve seen pictures. There was this giant painting in my
grandmother’s house of two children playing and in the background
there was an angel watching over them. The angel had wings. Anyway,
it’s what I thought…before I became one.”

Mr. Patterson stopped
examining her and said, “Angels
don’t
have wings.”

“
Yeah, I got
that.”

Kara was unsettled by the old man’s
tone. It was almost as if having these wings frightened him. But
what was so frightful, and why?

“
And they just grew, like
a weed,” he said, “right there in your back?”

“
Yup.”

“
Astonishing,” said Mr.
Patterson. “If we weren’t in such a pickle already, I might have
found this truly astounding. But from what you told me, being
injected with a substance without your consent, and the means by
which it was done, and by the creature you describe…I’m afraid it
could only mean one thing.”

Kara spun around. “What? Tell
me!”

Mr. Patterson said softly,
almost to himself, “There has only ever been
one
creature which was created with
wings. Just the one…”

“
What
creature?”

Mr. Patterson dismissed her with a
wave of his hand. “Never mind that now,” he said.

Since he was obviously not going to
answer her question, Kara asked instead, “So what happened to you?
Where are the imps and that giant insect-like creature they had
with them?”

“
Gone. Some destroyed,
some not. They finally gave up the search for the key and returned
to their foul home. I wanted to give Peter and the rest of you
enough time to escape.”

“
It worked.”

Something occurred to Kara. “What
about my mom?”

“
She’s safe. She’s back in
Horizon training the rookies.”

Kara had to know. “So, are you going
to tell me which creature was made with wings? I think I have a
right to know, don’t you?”

Mr. Patterson ignored her.

Finally he said, “I might
be wrong, but I think we need to figure out how to
remove
them.”

“
Remove them?” Kara took a
step back, her voice loud and angry.

She folded her wings back. Intuitively
she knew she had to save herself from mutilation.

She glared at Mr. Patterson, but when
she saw that her impulsive fury had confused him, she felt
ashamed.

“
I mean…is that going to
hurt? I just started to get used to them.”

She knew he was probably right. Even
though she liked the idea of having wings, she knew that removing
them might be the only way to stop the transformation.

“
To be perfectly honest,”
said Mr. Patterson, “I just don’t know. But what I do know is that
angels don’t normally grow wings. It’s never happened before.
Whoever did this to you obviously had dark plans for
you.”

Mr. Patterson paused for a moment
before he continued, “I can see that you wanted a different answer,
Kara. But these wings are not good news. I’m sorry Kara, but I’m
afraid the wings have to go. If we can remove them at all
without…”

“
Without what?”

“
Here I go again,” said
the old man, “I’ve said too much.”

He scratched the top of his head, and
then his eyes broadened like he had just remembered
something.

“
Quickly, back to the
bookstore!”

“
What? Wait!” Kara
balanced herself awkwardly as her wings spontaneously flapped
behind her in reaction to her sudden outcry.

Mr. Patterson scrambled up the pile of
rubble that had once been his bookstore. While he was distracted,
she took the opportunity to try out her wings. Just a
little.

She unfurled her wings, and they
caught the air immediately. She hovered just above the ground. She
angled her wings downwards and touched back down softly. It wasn’t
as easy as she had first thought. How did birds do it? Well, she
wasn’t a bird and had no real instinct for flight…or did she? It
did feel natural. But that was crazy…wasn’t it? How could that
be?

She tried again.

She pushed down with more strength
this time, and her feet lifted off the ground. As she felt gravity
start to pull her back down, she pulled her wings up and pushed
down again, harder.

She was flying!

Kara laughed as she surged upwards.
She was flying, up twenty feet…thirty feet…forty feet. Forty feet
in the air, hovering like a bird of prey. If this was how birds
felt, the great feeling of spirited flight, then she envied them.
She remembered a dream in which she was flying. It had always been
her favorite dream, the way it made her feel free and
untouchable—this was like her dream.

It was an incredible feeling to fly.
Her wings moved now, up and down. It was coming naturally to her
now. The world from above was incredible. She could see clearly now
the destruction the reapers and imps had wrought on her town. It
looked like a thousand elephants had trampled the
buildings.

She was surprised at how much she
could see, how far her sight could reach from so high up. Was that
also because of her wings? Was the change giving her hawk
vision?

She felt the pull of her wings hard at
work. The air whistled in her ears and rippled through her wings.
With the breeze rustling her hair and the warm sun’s rays tickling
her face, she never wanted to go back down. She wanted to stay up
forever—

“
KARA! GET DOWN HERE THIS
INSTANT!” Mr. Patterson, the size of a hamster from where she
looked, shook a fist at her.

“
Are you mad? The mortals
will see you!” he hissed. “You’re
not
invisible!”

Right. The mortals.
She had forgotten about the mortals.

In a moment of panic, Kara folded her
wings and fell forty feet to the hard pavement.

It hurt. It hurt a lot. It hurt a lot
everywhere. Kara moaned, as she lay spread-eagled on the cement
sidewalk.

“
Have your newly acquired
wings affected your mind?” asked Mr. Patterson. He tapped his toes
impatiently.

“
What were you thinking?
Anyone could have seen you. Can you imagine the disaster—the impact
if you had been seen? We’ve already been hit with a cataclysmic
invasion of reapers. We can’t afford to go around changing history,
erasing mortals’ memories. Too much is at stake here already.
There’s just no time for that.”

Kara pulled herself to her feet, still
a little shaky from the fall. Her wings were fine, but her knees
were bleeding.

“
I’m sorry,” she said, “I
wasn’t thinking.”

“
Obviously not.” Mr.
Patterson watched her with narrowed eyes.

Kara shrugged. “I didn’t
think the mortals could
see
my wings. You know, aren’t they
blind
to the
supernatural?”

“
Yes, they are,” agreed
Mr. Patterson. “They cannot see your
wings
…but they can see
you
.”

Kara’s face fell. “Oops.”

Mr. Patterson’s anger faded away at
the sight of her injuries. He sighed.

“
Well, we have to clean
you up before more demons and imps smell your essence and come
looking for you. Let me fetch my first-aid kit. I can’t do much,
but I can stop more of your essence from spilling out.”

He walked back across the toppled
remains of his precious bookstore searching for the first-aid
kit.