Seals (6 page)

She shuddered at the thought. Mr. Patterson
had said that all things had a weakness, and she believed him. She
would find it.

A faint clicking sound caught Kara’s
attention, like the rustling of dry leaves. But there were no
leaves and no trees for miles. “That sound…do you guys hear
that?”

Everyone froze.

“I don’t hear anything,” whispered David,
breaking the silence. “What did you hear exactly?”

Kara searched the barren land and strained
for the sound again, but all she could hear was the faint swishing
of wind.

“I’m not sure. It’s gone now, but it was
like a creepy clicking sound.”

“Probably just a small animal.” Ashley’s
eyes were hard, and she didn’t look convinced.

“I think this place is making us hear
things.” Jenny scanned the area. “I don’t like the way it makes me
feel. It makes me feel like death.”

Kara had to agree with Jenny. There was
something evil lurking somewhere. She felt it, too. Whatever it
was, she felt like it was watching them. Waiting…

After another moment of silence, David said,
“Probably just the wind. I wouldn’t worry too much about it.
Everything here is dead.”

But Kara wasn’t convinced. She had heard
something. She was certain. But what was it?

“What’s up with that smell?” Jenny moved in
amongst the dead crops, her face twisted in disgust. “It’s not the
bile, and it’s not coming from
this
field. It smells like
raw sewage left out in the sun all day.”

Her brow furrowed. “Smells like demons.”

Kara picked up the scent. It was just to the
north of where they were. Jenny was right.

Curious, and before anyone could stop her,
Kara jumped into the air and stroked hard with her wings.
Immediately, she soared into the air and flew toward the smell.

The smell was coming from beyond the small
hillside to the north. It wasn’t easy to see. Everything looked
gray and in shadow. A quick glance below her and she smiled. David,
Peter, Ashley and Jenny were running below her. It gave her great
pleasure to be able to do something that
they
couldn’t.

She would miss this, the flying, her wings.
She assumed that she would return to normal once they had destroyed
the knights and sent the archfiends back into their cage. The way
the air rolled over her leathery wings was exhilarating. But if all
worked according to plan, she would only have four days of flying
left. She would get her four days’ worth.

With a final bank to the left, she pulled
back and arched her wings high above her head. She rolled them back
and forth, her feet brushed the ground, and she landed with a
slight hop. She beamed. She had landed with more grace than usual.
Did the others catch that? As she turned, her smile died.

Below the hillside a vast bowl stretched
beyond the horizon and disappeared into shadow. The ground was
littered with the corpses of dead animals.

Thousands and thousands of cows, goats,
sheep, chickens, and pigs were piled on top of one another in a
giant, open grave. Their bodies were emaciated. Their skin was
pulled so tight around their bodies that it was almost
transparent.

How could they have died of starvation in
only three days? They looked as though they had been drained of
blood, of their organs, and only skin and bone remained. Even their
fur and feathers had fallen off. Their eyes were empty sockets, and
their bodies were stained in that same black liquid.

Kara knew they had died in pain. It was the
most horrific thing she’d ever seen. It didn’t feel real. It was
too gruesome. No demon had the power to wreak such devastation.
Only a god, a dark god, could have done this.

Instead of crying out for the fallen, Kara’s
rage poured through her like hot oil. She had to blink the dark
spots from her eyes. She wanted to destroy the archfiends…she
wanted to kill them all…

“Oh. My. God.” Jenny collapsed to her knees
beside Kara, her hand on her mouth. Peter knelt beside her and put
his arms around her shaking shoulders.

“This is sick.” David looked about as angry
as Kara.

“There must be
millions
of dead
animals down there. How did they all end up like this? It’s like
they were picked up and thrown in this valley to die. What kind of
monsters could have killed so many?”

“The archfiends are as powerful as gods,”
said Kara. “And the four knights must have a lot of that power.
It’s pretty clear that
they
did this. It’s their mission to
destroy life so that they can break the seals for their
masters.”

“I don’t know what I was expecting. Mr.
Patterson did say they were nothing like we’ve ever faced before.
But this…”

She lost hope. She didn’t know how she could
have imagined she’d be able to defeat the four knights of the
apocalypse if this was any indication of what they could do. How
would she defeat even a single one of them?

Kara heard that strange clicking sound
again, as though someone was sharpening hundreds of knives.

“But which one did this?” asked David.
“Death? It’s gotta be Death.”

Kara surveyed the devastation.

“I don’t think it’s the one called Death.
This is the one called Famine. It killed the crops
and
the
animals. It destroyed our source of food, and now millions of
people are going to starve. Death would have left the crops and
just focused on the animals.”

Her face became hard as she realized the
truth to her words.

“Do you think we’re too late?” asked
David.

Kara could only look at him.

Ashley stepped forward, a long silver sword
hung in her hand. “Check your rings. We’ll know if one of them is
gone.”

As one, David, Peter and Jenny stuck out
their hands. Their golden rings glimmered on their fingers. Kara
reached inside her pocket and felt around for the ring. For a
horrible moment she couldn’t find it. The gloves made it hard to
feel anything. But then her fingertips touched something solid, and
she pulled out her golden ring.

“We’re not too late,” she said hopefully.
“The seals are all still intact. We still have time—”

Suddenly Jenny screamed.

Kara looked where Jenny was staring.

The animal corpses moved. The tangled bodies
rolled and pushed awkwardly. Their limbs moved without purpose.
Their stiff bodies jerked and popped like bad animation.

And just when she thought the animals were
possessed and were coming back from the dead, millions of insects
poured out from the mouths and eyes of the dead animals. They
pushed the corpses aside as they scuttled toward the guardians like
a moving carpet. Their glinting red eyes glared with eerie
intelligence, and their black carapaces glimmered in the soft
light.

At first Kara thought they were spiders, but
then a swarm took flight like an angry black cloud. Earsplitting
noise filled the air as the insects beat their wings. It sounded
like knives being honed. And as they got closer, she recognized
them. Locusts. Millions of locusts.

“Well, now we know where the secretions came
from.”

Peter glared at the wave of bugs and swung
his blade around like a fly swatter. “I hate bugs.”

Kara hated bugs, too, especially locusts.
She hated how they used to cling to her clothes when she would go
for long walks in the fields at her grandmother’s cottage. She
remembered the neighboring farmers complaining about how they ate
entire fields of corn in a matter of hours. There was something
really creepy about how much they could eat.

But these bugs looked different. They were
bigger, much bigger, and they were as black as night. From what she
remembered, normal locusts didn’t devour animals.

“Is it me or are their beady eyes staring at
us?” asked Jenny.

Ashley took a careful step back. “They’re
staring at us.”

David cursed. “And to think that I forgot to
pack my bug spray.”

“I doubt bug spray would work on these,”
Kara said dryly. “They’re not normal bugs.”

The light vanished from David’s eyes. “You
got that right. They’re more like demon bugs.”

Kara watched as a cloud of bugs hovered in
the air, turned, and looked as if they were preparing to
attack.

“You’ve got a brilliant plan?”

“Nope. You?”

Kara shook her head. “No. Maybe if we walk
back very slowly, they won’t attack—”

The giant swarm of locusts dived at
them.

“MOVE!” cried David as he spun around and
ran back.

Kara just had time to drop her ring back in
her pocket, before the cloud of bugs hit her like a brick wall. She
went sprawling on the ground, and the locusts covered her body,
clawing and biting at her skin, her wings, and her face. She beat
her wings and waved her hands frantically in a panic to get the
bugs off her. But there were too many. The buzzing of their wings
and the chomping of their tiny mouths on her skin blocked out all
other sound. They crawled up her sleeves and down through the
collar of her t-shirt, all the while their teeth like thousands of
death blades pierced her skin. She could feel her skin being pulled
and eaten. She could feel the acid-like poison seeping inside her
body. The tiny insects tore her angel skin like wild piranhas.

She thrashed out widely, like a wild,
panicked animal. She was blind. She tried to pry her eyes open, but
the locusts pinned her eyelids shut. She felt them biting her
navel, and she panicked even more as they scrambled into her ears.
When she opened her mouth to scream, more locusts climbed in.

Kara spit out the bugs, overwhelmed with
terror. She felt tiny legs, likes needles trying to pry open her
mouth, to get in and devour her from the inside. She thought of the
animals and how this was the way they must have died, eaten from
the inside.

Over the constant humming in her ears, she
thought she heard screaming. Was that David? Were the others under
blankets of bugs? If only she could fly. Yes!

She yanked and pulled, desperately trying to
open her wings. But as soon as she made to move her wings,
thousands more locusts attached themselves to her, as though they
could
sense
what she was about to try. Were they
communicating? She shuddered at the thought of
smart
bugs.

She punched out with her arms and tried to
loosen their hold on her wings. She kicked out, trying to shake
them off. But it was useless. The weight of the locusts pulled her
down. She couldn’t fly. It was like they knew what she was about to
do before she did it.

She fell, and it took tremendous effort to
keep her mouth clamped shut. She was thankful she didn’t need to
breath. The locusts were crushing her.

She couldn’t move. She couldn’t scream. She
couldn’t think. There was only one thing left to do, something that
she had sworn she wouldn’t. But what else could she do?

The darkness throbbed
inside her. It was like cold blood that wanted to be free.
Kara had sworn never to call
forth the darkness
inside her or to succumb to its power. It was too dangerous. The
black veins were proof. The darkness was slowly taking control of
her. She would lose herself to it. What if she couldn’t control it?
But she couldn’t let herself be eaten by bugs. It was just too
lame. What kind of guardian angel dies of bug bites?

No. She wouldn’t. She
couldn’t. She wished for her elemental power…

Jenny cried out, and it was like something
inside Kara snapped.

Without thinking, she let go, and a tiny
spark of dark energy pulsed through her. It was enough. With
renewed strength, she jumped to her feet, thrashed her wings
violently, and then spun like a top.

The locusts fell. She was surprised at how
fast they came off. It was almost
too
easy. With a last loud
hum, the locusts rose in a massive cloud and disappeared into the
dark sky. It was almost as though something had compelled them to
leave. It didn’t matter. They were gone.

With a victory smile on her face, she looked
back at her friends.

Jenny, Peter, Ashley and David staggered to
their feet. Their faces were streaked with blood, but the locusts
were gone.
Where had the locusts gone
?

Kara moved toward her friends, but a sudden
fear in their eyes made her stop. They weren’t looking
at
her. They were looking
past
her.

There was something behind her.

Kara whirled around, and her victory smile
vanished.

A ten-foot humanoid creature sat astride a
giant skeletal horse with glinting red eyes and a mouth filled with
too many fish-like teeth. The horse’s ribs protruded through its
thin, stretched, hairless, sickly skin. It was so thin it was as
though its bones alone held it up. The rider’s white skin looked
like crumpled paper. Corded muscles sheathed its arms and legs like
pale ivy. A war helmet with horns covered most of its face, and
body armor covered its skeletal frame. It looked like a
two-thousand-year-old mummified corpse. A gleaming black sword the
size of a small tree dangled from the grip of the rider’s enormous
hand, and the great white horse stared at her with fiery red eyes
and pointed teeth.

Kara let out gasp. She was standing face to
face with one of the four knights of the apocalypse.

Chapter
5

“
W
hy didn’t they
tell us the knights would be giants?” grumbled David as he
brandished his soul blades but then he frowned when he glanced at
them. He knew that his blades wouldn’t do more than scratch the
giant.

“What did you expect,” said Ashley, her blue
eyes blazed with a fearlessness that Kara envied. “Gnomes? Dwarves?
Tiny little elves?”

“Ha. Ha.” David looked at Kara. “Now what?
Please tell me you’ve packed your magic beans?”