Seirs, Soul Guardians Book 5 (25 page)

“
Yes, a great
shame.”

“
Indeed.” Mr. Patterson
watched as Kara and David disappeared around a corner.

“
Perhaps we shall call on
her again. What do you say?”

“
Perhaps we might, Sam.
Perhaps we might.”

“
Perhaps we should discuss
her future with the legion at the next High Council meeting. What
do you think, Jim?”

Mr. Patterson raised his eyebrows.
“That we shall, Sam. That we shall.”

Sam tossed his crystal ball in the air
and caught it easily. “Well now, I must be off. There’s a mix-up
with identical twins at Orientation—seems as if we took the wrong
one. I’ll see you later, Jim.”

“
See you on the other side,
Sam.”

Sam stepped through the threshold of
the bookstore, clutched his crystal ball, and vanished.

Mr. Patterson smiled. “See you soon,
Kara Nightingale.”

And now a sneak peek at the next book
in the Soul Guardians series

MORTAL

K
ara sat on the edge of the bed and
watched as beads of sweat glistened on her mother’s forehead. She
hoped the fever had reached its peak. She leaned forward and
pressed a cool cloth over her mother’s forehead. Her skin was pasty
and sickly—grey, like a day—old corpse. Her lips twitched in her
uneasy sleep, but she didn’t wake up. Kara watched her mother
slipping away, and she feared the worst. Her eyes stung and tears
rolled freely down her face.

“
It’s just the flu virus,”
the doctors had said, “nothing to do but rest and wait it
out.”

They had pushed Kara and her mother
out of the local clinic and locked the doors behind
them.

That was three weeks ago, and her
mother was getting worse.

It wasn’t just a normal flu virus,
Kara was certain of that. Her mother hadn’t woken this morning, and
it was now early in the night—it was almost as though she were in a
coma. Whatever it was, she could see her mother was struggling
against it. Something was definitely wrong.

A pale sliver of light poked through a
gap in the curtains, and her mother’s pale face glowed white in the
darkness. The small room was lit dimly by the single tiffany lamp
that sat on the bedside table. Like all the rest of the furniture
in the apartment, it had belonged to her grandmother. Kara took
comfort from their familiarity. She reached out and clasped her
mother’s hand—it was ice cold.

She wiped the tears from her face and
glanced out the window.

Snow brushed gently against
the glass. The heavy darkness outside sucked all the happiness out
of her.
The winds intensified and drummed
along to her heart’s rhythm.
She felt like
she was having an anxiety attack. She let out a long shaky breath
as she tried to calm herself. Gently, she let go of her mother’s
hand.

She picked up her cell phone on the
wooden bedside table.

No new calls.

The cell phone felt unnaturally heavy
in her hand, like a bucket of paint. She placed it back on the
small table, before it slipped from her sweaty fingers. She felt
uneasy.

David was the closest thing she had to
a family, beside her mother, and she needed him with her now. But
where was he? It wasn’t like him not to return her calls. Had he
gotten sick, too? Kara fought to control the panic that rose in her
chest and wiped her clammy palms on her jeans.

But what if something else entirely
had gotten to David?

Goosebumps pebbled her skin as black
shapes haunted her again. Darkness had always seemed to follow her,
and as time had worn on, she had begun to see more and more
unexplainable things, just as her mother had done. Kara saw
creatures from nightmares creep from the shadows. More than once
she had the distinct impression that foul beings, not of this
world, had tried to attack her on her way home from her night
classes. She had never shared her fears with David; she was sure
he’d think she was crazy. But she knew that whatever abnormalities
her mother suffered from had been passed on to her. It was in her
blood. And she wouldn’t risk losing David’s friendship by telling
him she could see monsters.

Kara sighed and turned her attention
back to her mother. Her face was contorted in pain, and then she
started to shake. A lump formed in Kara’s throat. She had to do
something. The least she could do was find something to help
relieve the pain; she couldn’t just sit and watch her mother
suffer. There was a twenty—four hour drugstore two blocks
away.

She rose from the bed—something passed
over her mother’s face like a shadow.

Bright green markings appeared along
her mother’s forehead and the side of her face like glowing
tattoos. They were like words, but Kara couldn’t make sense of
them. What were they? She had never heard of a virus that caused
markings on the skin. What was happening? She leaned closer for a
better look—

Knock. Knock!

With her heart in her throat, Kara
whirled around and strained to listen. The sound had come from the
apartment’s front door.

David! Thank
God!

Kara sprinted into the hallway and
made her way to the front door.

Two police officers stood on the
threshold.

The woman was a head taller than Kara.
She had cold calculating eyes and the pinched expression of a
schoolteacher about to scold. Her long black hair was pulled back
into a ponytail behind her navy—blue cap. She clutched a stack of
papers and a note pad importantly.

Her partner looked like a linebacker,
ready to charge. Nearly as thick as he was tall, his muscular
shoulders bulged under his navy—blue patrol uniform.

Snow melted off their black polished
boots and left a watery trail down the hallway.

Kara exhaled when she realized she was
still holding her breath and forced a smile. “Can I help
you?”

She hoped they couldn’t hear the
disappointment in her voice.

The woman’s brown eyes sparkled, and
she smiled at Kara. “My name is Officer Norman, and this is Officer
Baker. Are your parents home?”

She looked over Kara’s
shoulder.

Kara studied the police officers’
faces for a moment before answering. “Yes. But it’s just me and my
mom.”

“
Can we speak to her?”
asked Officer Norman.

Kara felt tightness in her throat.
“Uh...no. She’s not well, you see. She’s...she’s...sick.” Her voice
cracked. She saw fear flash in officer Norman’s eyes, for just a
second, long enough to see it.

“
What is it that you
want?”

Officer Norman scribbled something on
her notepad, and then she looked up. “We’re patrolling the
neighborhoods tonight. Making sure everything’s in
order.”

Kara shifted her weight. She didn’t
like the way they were staring at her.

“
Why are you patrolling the
neighborhoods? Is there something wrong?”

The two officers exchanged a
look.

“
What’s going
on?”

Officer Baker looked familiar to Kara,
but she couldn’t recall where she had seen him before. Was he a bus
driver?

“
We’re asking everyone to
stay inside. We need to know where you are, and that you are safe,
ma’am.”

Kara didn’t like the sound of this at
all.

“
Why do you need to know
where I am? Is this a curfew...seriously? It’s the common cold! I
doubt a curfew is going to solve anything. Is there something else
you’re not telling me?”

From their edgy expressions, she got
the unmistakable feeling that something more was going
on.

“
We just want to avoid more
people getting sick, that’s all,” said Officer Baker.

His voice was hoarse as though he had
never used it before. He measured Kara from under his cap, and she
could see the tightness around his mouth. His aftershave was so
strong that she thought he must have applied it to cover up some
other nasty odor. She forced herself not to grimace.

“
In the meantime,” he
continued, “you stay home and look after your mother. They’ll find
a cure and then things will get back to normal.”

A cure
? What were they not telling her?

The glowing symbols on her mother’s
forehead weren’t normal. Something was terribly wrong.

Kara’s fingernails dug into her palms.
“My mother’s in pain, she needs medication. I just need to step out
for a few minutes and go to the drugstore—”

“
You’re not going anywhere
tonight.” Officer Baker pointed a large finger at Kara. “You
understand me, kid? Don’t think of doing anything stupid. Nobody
out after seven o’clock. Those are the rules.”

Kara’s lips trembled. Nobody called
her stupid— and she didn’t care for rules. As her temper rose, so
did her voice. “But my mother needs help. I’m going to get her some
meds—”

“
No you’re not. There’s
nothing you can do to help her now. You stay put, you hear me?”
said Officer Baker.

Kara glowered at them. She felt her
hatred rise from the top of her head like steam from a pot. “Fine.
Whatever. Officers.”

Officer Norman shared a sidelong
glance with her partner before turning back to Kara.

“
Good, so we’re clear. We
have to keep moving, we have a lot of ground to cover tonight. Lock
the door once we’re gone—”

Kara slammed the door in their faces.
She didn’t need to be told twice. She wasn’t even sure that they
were real police officers. She waited until she heard the sound of
their heavy boots tapering away before she kicked the door with her
foot. She felt nauseated, but she knew what she had to
do.

Kara dashed across the hallway and made her way towards the
living room’s large bay window. She peered through the plastic
white horizontal blinds, her nose inches from the glass. Below, the
streets were covered in blankets of white. Street lamps cast tiny
yellow lights that sparkled in the snow. Headlights illuminated the
street for a second, and Kara saw a black cat scurry under a parked
car. Two shapes emerged from below, and she watched them make their
way towards the next building to her left. She smiled
when they
disappeared inside.

Her mother needed meds. And no curfew
was going to stop her from getting them.

“
I’ll show them the meaning
of
stupid
.”

Kara ran into her room and pulled open
her closet doors. After rummaging inside, she withdrew a black
winter sky jacket with a faux—fur lined hood and pulled it on. Then
she grabbed her backpack and stuffed wool mitts into her pockets.
She ran back to her mother’s bedroom and grabbed her cell phone.
Her mother’s forehead glowed sporadically with toxic green symbols
that looked almost as though they were breathing.

Kara bent over and kissed her mother’s
cheek. “I love you mom. I’m going to the drugstore. I’ll be back
soon. I’m going to make you better again, I promise.”

Her mother didn’t show any signs that
she had understood, and Kara’s eyes burned as she ran to the
kitchen.

She grabbed the flashlight
from the cabinet above the fridge and then dashed towards the
apartment’s front door. She pulled open the door and locked it
behind her with a
click
.

Her backpack bounced against her back
as she rushed down the hall, and she jumped down the stairs two at
a time. The lobby was a blur of beige and brown. Once she had
emerged through the glass doors, Kara was glad of the cool December
air that soothed her hot face.

She caught her breath. The wind
swirled around her as she stood facing the darkness. Thick
snowflakes fell from the black sky like leaves from a tree. She
looked over to her left. The police officers were still inside the
apartment building. Snow lifted off the ground and twisted around
in white whirlwinds. It was unusually quiet for a Friday
night—nobody was on the streets.