Seals (9 page)

She felt her power surge.
It pulsed in her hands and legs.
She was going to kill them
all.

With bloodlust in her eyes, she spotted
Famine. It was looking straight at her, and for a horrible moment,
it seemed
happy
.

She didn’t have time to wonder why it looked
so smug. She had to help out her friends first. The knight would be
next on her to-kill list.

Kara spread her wings and jumped into the
air. Masses of locust-men had overpowered her friends like a sand
storm. Jenny lay crumbled beneath a swarm of locusts. Ashley was a
few feet away, and Kara could see her angel essence seeping from
her many wounds as she fought the creatures with her bare
hands.

Kara dove toward Jenny. She spun around with
a powerful beat of her wings so violent that the blast of wind
flung the locust-men into the air and splatted them onto the ground
in a black and green mess. Then she spun like a top, spreading out
her wings like a razorblade tornado. The edges of her wings hacked,
sliced, shredded through the locust-men like a revolving meat
grinder. Insect blood and guts fell like heavy rain.

She was lost in a fury of hatred, in her
hunger to kill, and she kept killing until she had annihilated
every last locust creature.

“Kara, stop!”

Kara halted, but the darkness still pulsed
inside her. It wanted her to kill again and again. She knew in that
moment that it would never leave her, not anymore. She had broken
its
seal.

David ran up to her. He surveyed the severed
bugs and then stared at her for far too long. His face hardened,
and his eyes narrowed. Why was he looking at her like that? Hadn’t
she just saved them? Shouldn’t he be thanking her?

Peter was lifting Jenny to her feet. She was
battered, but in much better shape than Kara would have thought.
Ashley stood next to them with her sword in her hand and a
murderous look on her pretty face. Her friends were safe. All of
them. Strangely enough, she felt great.

The earth rumbled slightly, and Kara’s
sudden heroic feeling died like the bugs at her feet. She spun on
the spot.

“Where’s the knight?”

“Gone,” said David. He was still looking at
her with a perplexed expression as he moved closer to her.

Kara felt deflated and furious. They had
lost their chance at killing it.
She
had lost her chance.
She feared what had been revealed between her and the knight. She
didn’t understand the truths that she so desperately wanted to
know. Where did it go and why?

“The bugs,” she squished a few dead locusts
underfoot. “They were a diversion for a quick getaway. They kept us
busy while it continued to spread its wickedness.”

She looked quickly at her injured bicep. The
wound had healed, but it didn’t make her feel any better.

“Well, I don’t know exactly when the knight
packed up and left, but it was around the time you went all DEET on
the bugs.” David stood right in front of her now, but there was no
love or kindness in his eyes, only fear.

“What?” said Kara.

David was not supposed to look at her that
way. At first she thought he was looking at her arm, but his eyes
remained fixed on her
face
.

“Is it the bugs?” Kara watched for his
reaction. But there was none.

“Do I still have bug guts all over my face
or something?” She wiped her face with her sleeve.

“Is it gone now? What is it, seriously? Stop
staring at me like that and just
tell
me.”

The others were staring at her, too.

“Your face,” began Jenny. She looked at
Kara’s face like it was the ugliest thing she’d ever seen. “It’s
all…it’s all...”

“It’s all
what
?” Kara felt the
darkness start to rise in her. It wanted to be released again, but
she pushed it down.

What was wrong with them all?
They
should be grateful that she had risked her angel life to rescue
them, not pass judgment on her.

“I can clean it off later,” Kara
growled.

“That’s not it.” Kara wasn’t surprised that
Ashley should have a compact mirror. She tossed it to Kara.

“You’re all covered in like black veins or
something like that. See for yourself. Take a look.”

Kara caught the mirror and looked at her
face. It was her worst fear.

Like deep black tattoos, the veins covered
her face like crawling vines. They extended from her neck, all the
way up her cheeks, to her forehead.

Kara tossed the mirror on the ground. She
turned away from her friends and hid her grotesque face with her
hands. She shook in fear and shame. It was her fault. She had let
the darkness in, and now there was no going back.

How could she have been so stupid? So
careless? The white oracle had warned her that she could change the
future. But now her future seemed to be set in stone.

She looked like a monster because she was
about to become one.

Part of her wanted to cry. A good mortal cry
had always made her feel better. But she wasn’t mortal anymore. She
wasn’t even an angel. There was no point in crying. All she could
feel was anger.

“Kara?” asked David softly. “What’s going
on? What are those markings?”

She opened her mouth to answer him, but her
voice wouldn’t come, and she cursed herself silently.

“Did you know this would happen? Please,
tell me what’s happening to you,” he pleaded.

When he saw the terror in her eyes, he
continued with a touch of humor. “I promise I won’t laugh, even if
you do look like you belong at the circus.”

God she loved him. She wanted to smack him
for the last comment, too, but she just loved how he always tried
to make her laugh in sensitive situations. She didn’t deserve such
a good friend. But all that would change when she’d turned into a
monster. Would she even remember his face?

David moved around her, but she kept her
face hidden with her hands.

“Is that why you’ve been wearing gloves?
Because of this? There are more of these veins, aren’t there? If
it’s on your face now, then it’s all over your body, too. Your
secret is out, Kara. You can’t hide anymore. Tell us. Tell us
what’s going on.”

David wasn’t accusing her in any way. He was
surprisingly cool and comforting.

Finally, Kara pulled her hands away from her
face. She longed for some tears, god how she longed for a really
good cry. She nodded slowly, still unable to speak. She pulled her
gloves off and felt the others watching her. She was inflicted with
an incurable disease. She was corrupted, and it would only get
worse.

She tossed the gloves on the ground and
raised her hands for all to see, but she didn’t look at them. She
was afraid that they would be disgusted with her, and she was
ashamed.

But what happened next, she didn’t
expect.

Instead of looks of repulsion and fear, they
looked at each other and then tackled her into a group bear
hug.

It was too much.

Kara’s lips wavered. Her knees were weak,
and she was barely aware of the little cry that escaped her lips as
her friends hugged her tighter. She could feel their love and their
loyalty. It was if they knew exactly what she needed. She needed
them, and she hugged them back.

Finally, as everyone drew back, she found it
hard to look at them. They had never really shared such intimacy
before, not like this. But now she felt empowered because she had
the support of her friends.

David still had his arms around her waist.
She raised her eyes to his he said with an impish smile, “Your body
could be covered in green scales for all I care. It doesn’t matter.
It won’t change how I feel about you.”

Kara bit down on her bottom lip. She had
never expected him to make such a strong declaration of his
feelings in front of everyone. She knew her friends had figured out
how she and David felt about one another, but it had always been an
unspoken understanding. He had just never announced it in such an
affirmative way before.

“You’re still my Kara.”

Kara shook her head, “You’re
impossible.”

Kara couldn’t help herself. She burst out
laughing and pushed him away playfully. Her smile was as wide as
the fields. She couldn’t find the right words to thank them. Maybe
she didn’t need to.

“Well, the knight is definitely gone,” said
David. “Our chances of finding him now don’t look so great. He’ll
know we’ll be looking for him, and he’ll make it harder for us to
find him, I guarantee it.”

Kara’s smile faded. “Maybe, but we still
need to find him. We’ll just have to look harder because he’ll need
to destroy a lot more crops and animals to break the seal. We’ll
follow the trail of death that follows him, and we’ll find him, I’m
sure we will. It’s only a matter of time. He couldn’t have gotten
too far even if he is supernatural.”

As Kara surveyed the hectares of dead and
diseased crops and animals, she wondered what she would do when she
faced the knight again. Could she kill him without injuring herself
further? She thought about asking Mr. Patterson what he thought the
connection was. If anyone knew details about the knights, she
trusted that he would. And she wouldn’t make the same mistake of
hiding anything from anyone, not anymore.

“Well, whatever we
do
decide to do,
we better hurry,” said Jenny.

She looked at her wristwatch. “The day’s
almost over. If we don’t find him soon and destroy him, it’ll only
leave us three days to find and kill all four of them. We don’t
have much time. And if the other knights are as strong as him—”

“I’m sure they are,” interrupted Ashley. She
twirled her sword in the air like she was slicing invisible
locusts. “They’re probably worse.”

Jenny shrugged. “Then we haven’t really made
any real progress at all.”

“We just got our butts kicked,” grunted
Peter. He pulled off his glasses and began to wipe off the caked on
bug guts with the bottom of his t-shirt.

“We need to do better. If the knights are
this strong, I hate to image the strength of their creators. Can
you image what they’ll do to the legion of angels? Mr. Patterson
was right—they’d annihilate them. It’s up to us to stop the knights
from breaking the seals.”

“Praying that the old man’s plan will
actually
work
,” said David.

He saw the irritated looks they were all
giving him. “What? He said
believed!
You were there, you all
heard him. Even
he’s
not entirely sure his grand plan’s
going to work.”

“We’ll make it work.” Peter pushed his
glasses back on his face.

“Kara made it work, right, Kara? We all saw
it. The creature let us go. You did something to it didn’t you?
What was it?”

“I injured it,” she answered.

Peter’s eyes gleamed. “How did you manage
that?”

“Well, I can’t really say that I injured it
because I doubt that very much. It was more of a surprise. I caught
it off guard and sliced it across the arm with my blade. It
happened really fast and to tell you the truth I’m not even sure
how it let me get so close. But I did. Maybe it was too busy trying
to kill you all and didn’t see me coming. The cut wasn’t very deep,
but it must have been painful enough to break the hold it had on
you guys.”

She couldn’t bring herself to tell them
about the wound that had appeared on her own arm, at least not
until it made more sense. She’d speak to Mr. Patterson first.

“So that’s great,” said Jenny cheerfully.
“At least one of us achieved something today.”

Kara’s face was blank. “Don’t get too
excited. I would hardly call this an achievement. I surprised it,
that’s all. I doubt that the knight will let me get that close to
it again.”

David let out a long sigh and looked to the
sky. He sheathed his blades inside his jacket. “Well, it
can’t
get any worse than this.”

“Oh, it gets worse,” said Ashley. Everyone
turned to look at her. She pointed her sword at Peter’s hand.

Jenny’s eyes widened. “Oh, no. Peter, your
ring!”

Peter lifted his ring hand. His ring was
gone.

The first seal had been broken.

Chapter
8

I
t was with a
feeling of dread that Kara and the others travelled back to
Horizon. They had failed to stop Famine from breaking his seal. The
archfiends were getting closer to their victory.

Kara hid in the shadows while she waited for
the rest of the group to be released from the archangel Raphael’s
care. They were fine, but protocol demanded that they get checked
out anyway. She refused to get checked, partly because she felt
fine, but mostly because she didn’t want to draw attention to
herself. She had to agree with David. She looked like a freak show
all on her own. Ultimately, she would seek Mr. Patterson’s council
first
, and then she’d decide whether or not to let the rest
of the legion in on the progress of her transformation. Would they
even care? They were on the brink of war. Perhaps they wouldn’t
even notice.

Time was passing. After spending a few hours
in Horizon to repair their injuries, they had only three days
left.

Kara waited for her friends in a long
corridor opposite the hallway from Raphael’s chamber. A group of
middle-aged CDD agents came strutting down the corridor, and Kara
stepped back deeper into the shadows and flattened herself against
the stone wall.

“…who sent them on this mission anyway,”
said a man’s voice.

“I checked the chart, and no field missions
assigned to anyone. What the heck were they doing? Don’t they know
it’s pointless? We could really use the extra manpower. Gabriel
said it would be the biggest battle the legion had ever seen. They
should be fighting alongside us tomorrow when he hit the
archfiends.”