Reapers (30 page)

Kara smiled with determination as she
flew over the maze of buildings and streets of London and headed
for the River Thames.

Chapter 21

Battle of the
Scythes

“
L
ook at her!”

“
She’s one of
them
!”

Kara did her best to ignore the
whispers and the stares from the guardian angels who watched from
the chamber door as Raphael moved a magnifying glass over her
wings, inspecting them inch by inch.

“
And you can fly?” said
Raphael, half smiling, half anxious.

“
Yup.”

Kara turned and glared at the
guardians at the door. She opened her wings, showing off, and they
disappeared down the corridor in fear.

“
You didn’t have to do
that,” said Raphael. “That’s more like something David would
do.”

“
I know,” said Kara with a
smug smile. “But it was fun.”

Raphael pocketed her magnifying
instrument. “You know what they’re saying, don’t you? That you have
the wings of the archfiends.”

Kara looked away from Raphael and
shrugged. “I know. But I’m not one of them.”

She looked over at Ashley who sat in
the same chair where Kara had last seen her. She just stared into
space in painful silence.

“
Will Jenny and Peter be
okay?” she asked finally. They had looked dead when she had handed
them over.

“
Thanks to you, for
getting them out of danger and back so quickly, your friends are
recovering well in the Healing-Xpress.”

Raphael took Kara’s hand and squeezed
it reassuringly. “It’ll take time, but I believe they’ll make a
full recovery.”

Kara sighed in relief, and then she
thought of something that bothered her.

“
Archangel Raphael,” she
began, “I told Ariel that the imps had stolen the key from
Peter,
the
infamous key that would unlock the so-called unbreakable
prison that keeps the archfiends confined. But Ariel didn’t look as
upset as I thought she would be. And judging by the look you’re
giving me now…you’re not either.”

“
That’s because it doesn’t
take
just
a key,”
answered the archangel.

“
There are other elements
in play. Their prison was built with a force field that keeps them
contained. The key was only used to seal the final stages of their
confinement.”

“
But they have it now,”
interrupted Kara.

Raphael raised a brow.

“
Yes, but they can’t open
their prison with just the key. That would have been too easy.
There are other elements in place that need to align
perfectly
for the key to
release the energy field. It needs a rare astronomical event, when
the mortal world is in shadow.”

Raphael looked at Kara
reassuringly.

“
The imps are cunning, but
they are not clever. They will try and
fail
to open the prisons. Do not
worry. We still have time to repair the mortal world and rid it of
the reapers.”

Kara wasn’t sure she understood. “Wow.
I think I’m lost in translation. What’s a rare
astronomical—?”

“
Kara!”

David bounced into view.
“The reapers are attacking a hospital with sick kids in Vancouver,
BC. They’re killing
kids
, man, little kids. I hate these
soul-sucking-leeches.”

He looked at Kara.

“
Ariel and Gabe need every
last working guardian to get on the way over there, and you and me
are the only CDD guardians left. We’re not much, actually. Can you
believe it? Besides Jenny and Peter, it’s just me and my favorite
little fairy.”

But Kara wasn’t looking at David
anymore.

“
We’re
not
the only ones left.”

She brushed past David and crossed the
chamber until she stood next to Ashley.

“
Ashley, we need you,”
said Kara. “It’s time to get up.”

Ashley picked her fingernails. “Leave
me alone.”

“
Get up,” repeated Kara,
her voice strong and commanding; she even surprised
herself.

Ashley looked at Kara.

“
What’s your problem? Are
you deaf? I said leave me alone! Can’t you see that I’m worthless,
that I suck as a guardian? You win. You’re the better guardian. You
could save your team, and I couldn’t.”

She laughed sarcastically. “And now
you have wings. That’s just great. Just leave me alone.”

Kara hadn’t realized that Ashley felt
jealous. She’d always thought she hated her because she had been
tainted.

“
Stop feeling sorry for
yourself,” said Kara. She sounded like her mother.

“
They’re gone. It wasn’t
your fault.”

“
It was,” said Ashley.
“I’m an idiot.”

“
You’re right. You
are
an idiot,” said
Kara, and she folded her arms over her chest. “Only an idiot would
sit here and feel sorry for themselves instead of helping us fight
back. Don’t let Sasha, Raymond, and Ling’s deaths be in vain. They
wouldn’t want this. They would want you to
fight
back, to get payback. We need
you Ashley. You need to get up.”

For a moment Ashley said nothing, but
then her eyes brightened with new determination.

“
I’ll meet you guys at the
tanks,” she said suddenly, and then she left without saying another
word.

“
That was the best thing
you could have done for her,” said the archangel Raphael with a
smile.

Kara watched Ashley
disappear down the corridor. She wasn’t sure how the three of them
would get along, but it didn’t matter. What mattered were the
reapers. They
had
to kill them.

“
You sure about this?”
whispered David, looking a little apprehensive.

“
Yes. I guess she reminds
me of Lilith. In some disturbing way, I miss her. I feel sometimes
that I could have prevented her death. I guess I want to help
Ashley in the way I couldn’t help Lilith.”

“
That’s so messed
up.”

“
Oh, shut up,” said Kara
as she headed toward the door. “Come on.”

Kara, David, and Ashley
ran down the gloomy hospital corridor beside the archangel Gabriel
and ten strong guardian angels. The sound of children’s screams and
cries was difficult to resist. Kara wanted to stop and save them
all, but Gabriel was in charge. The deeper they ventured into the
hospital, the louder the screams became. The children’s cries
ripped her soul apart.

Her anger toward the
reapers brewed into a white-hot fury. Killing the souls of mortals
was one thing, but killing the souls of sick kids was unbearable.
Even the higher demons didn’t feed on the souls of sick and dying
children. These reapers were much worse than any creature she had
ever faced.

Thinking about demons,
Kara thought it strange that they hadn’t encountered any. More so,
when she realized that ever since the reapers had shown up, there
had been no assignments to hunt down demons. Odd. Very odd. Where
were the demons?

Originally, there had been
fifty guardians, excluding Kara, David, and Ashley, but Gabriel had
divided them into five groups of tens and sent them off to
different locations in search of the reapers. Even with these
numbers, Kara wasn’t convinced they could take down the reapers.
Their weapons didn’t work on them. The only thing that she had seen
work—or at least
injure
a reaper temporarily—was Mr. Patterson’s crystal
ball. But when he had told her that it
hadn’t
worked before, and then
suddenly it did, he was just as mystified as she was. She was
determined to figure out why that had happened. And she had to
figure it out soon if any of them wanted to survive their next
reaper encounter.

The archangel wore golden
armor that shone in the dark hallways like a beacon. It shone with
hope in these dark times. She wondered if it had any magical powers
of protection against the reapers. She hoped it did.

She wondered if her own
wings could be armor as well. The weight of them was still
noticeable on her back, but they pulled less now, and they felt
lighter too. Her body had probably adjusted to the weight of the
wings due to the
change.
The change was making her stronger. She forced
that dismal thought from her mind.

“
What’s up with you?” said
David quietly. “You’re so quiet.”

“
I’m thinking,” answered
Kara, as her shoulder brushed against his.

“
Please share,” said
David.

He poked his head through an open
door.

Kara closed her eyes for a second,
trying to collect her thoughts about something else that had been
bothering her.

“
I don’t know. It’s
something Raphael said about the key. I think they’re too confident
about their archfiends’ prisons. Something’s off. I just can’t wrap
my head around it.”

David watched her silently, but didn’t
offer anything.

Gabriel raised his fist, and the group
halted at the end of the corridor. He waited and
listened.

David and Kara shared a
look.

“
Get ready,” said Gabriel.
He pulled two golden swords from the double scabbard secured on his
back. His muscles rippled in the light, and he looked like a giant
golden samurai.

“
He’s so badass,” said
David, with a look of envy on his face.

Kara was about to hit him when the
wall to their right exploded.

They were all sent sprawling to the
ground. Kara’s ears were ringing as she pushed herself up. The
explosion had blown a hole in the hospital wall the size of a city
bus. Gabriel was the only one standing, and he was in hand-to-hand
combat with a reaper on the other side of the missing
wall.

Then an avalanche of imps scurried
over the debris of the wall. They were all carrying what looked
like homemade grenades.

And then a battle between the imps and
angels began.

From the corner of her eye she saw
Ashley leap to the left and avoid the scythe of the nearest reaper.
She was a skilled guardian, and Kara would have been in awe of her
skill if she weren’t already occupied trying to save her own
skin.

An imp slashed at her with its dagger,
but she blocked it with her right wing and pushed her blade under
its chin and up into its brain. The imp exploded into dust. She
kicked it back, just as another jumped her. She swept her wing
again and caught the imp across its chest, sending it to the
ground. Then she stabbed her blade into its head and ended its
miserable life.

She spun around to see David behead
the imp that had tried to sneak up behind her.

He grinned at her. “You’re
welcome.”

He ran into a wall of imps, slashing
and kicking them like it was his favorite sport.

Kara shook her head.

“
This isn’t a game, David!
Try to act like a normal guardian for a change.”

“
Define
normal
guardian? My
score’s fifteen so far,” David yelled back.

He impaled another imp with his blade.
“Make that sixteen!”

An imp yanked at Kara’s wings from
behind. She spun around and beat her wings, and the imp went flying
into the air.

David skewered it on his soul blade.
“Gotcha.”

Kara marveled at her wings. She was
able to use them like a second and much stronger pair of arms. She
leaped in the air, turning like a top with her wings out, and
slashed five imps at once.

David whistled. “Nice.”

Smirking with a new sense of agility,
Kara made it her mission to kill as many imps as she
could.

But then her smile
vanished.

The lifeless bodies of ten small
children lay dead at her feet. Their eyes were wide and black, and
their mouths were open in silent screams. An imp danced happily
around the dead children’s bodies as if he were participating in a
ritual sacrifice. A sick gurgling laugh drummed in its
throat.

Kara was fueled with anger. She
screamed. With her wings extended she pushed off hard and impaled
the imp with her fist in its chest. She hit it with such force that
her arm went right through to the other side. She pulled her fist
out of its body, and the imp exploded into dust.

Kara stared at her hand in shock.
Yellow slime that reeked of death and rotten flesh dripped from her
knuckles. Disgusted, she wiped the remains of the creature on her
jeans. She had never killed a creature with just her bare hands
before. Her elemental powers had always been the source of her
added strength before, but this power was different. It was cold.
She could feel it pulsating through her like a shot of adrenaline.
She was much stronger than she had ever been. She tried to convince
herself that she didn’t like this new feeling of power, but she
couldn’t hide her smile as she swung her blade at an oncoming
imp.