Reapers (4 page)

He reached inside the folds of his
jacket and retrieved a syringe. He held it in the air and flicked
it with his finger. The black liquid inside looked like blood. His
eyes widened in pleasure, and he looked at Kara as though she was
some long-awaited prize he was about to win.

“
What—what is that?”
Kara’s heart thumped in her throat.

She took another step back and kept
her eyes on the strange black liquid in the syringe.

“
Are you going to infect
me with some virus? Is that what this is about? You’re sick. You’re
demented.”

She remembered the hundreds of zombie
movies she’d seen, and although she doubted she would become a
zombie, she knew instinctively that the black substance was
bad.

“
You’re not touching me
with that thing.”

Kara swung her wooden weapon and
steadied herself. “I’m warning you, I’m a lot stronger than I look.
Don’t come any closer.”

She hoped she looked fiercer than she
felt, since she was about to fall apart with fear.

The man admired the contents of the
syringe and ignored her.

“
This is the lifeblood of
my masters. They were once the most powerful creatures that ever
existed, and they will be again, very soon.”

He glanced at Kara. “They were cast
away from their own world because they were feared. But they will
rise again. I promise you.”

Kara frowned. She couldn’t
make any sense of what the man-creature was telling her. Clearly,
it was mad. It was mad, and it was going to hurt her. David had
always said that the mad ones were always much more dangerous
because they
believed
their delusions. She wished David were here…

The creature flicked the contents of
the syringe again.

“
With this—you’ll be
stronger than ever. Your abilities will thrive. Your power will be
limitless. With this you will be invincible,
angel
.”

The word
angel
rang in Kara’s
ears, resonating clear and then fading away. For a second she felt
that the word
angel
had some weight, some meaning. But that was crazy. He was
crazy. The entire situation was crazy. He was going to stab her
with that needle and then kill her. She had to get away before he
did.

“
Too long have we ethereal
creatures been forced to live a life of secrecy, abandonment, and
rejection. We have been forced to live like wraiths. Promises were
made that never came to pass. The legion lied. They tricked us and
chose
this
world,
when it was promised to us. The legion chose to favor mankind over
their own kind.”

He sneered wickedly. “But not for
long.” His eerie yellow eyes burned with a mixture of madness and
hatred.

Kara’s heart thumped in her ears. The
beast was insane, delusional. None of it mattered. She took another
step back and swallowed hard.

The creature eyed her neck.

“
They thought they could
hide you from us. They attempted to make you
different
—so that we couldn’t find
you—but they were wrong. You still have enough of
it
to make you whole
again.”

He held up the syringe.

“
This will make you
stronger than you were. You have so much potential, Kara. There is
so much power in you. Your uniqueness, your strength singled you
out. Your peers rejected you. They were jealous of you. You never
belonged with them—you belong with
us
.”

“
You’re mad. You’re
insane,” said Kara.

The hot air and rotten smell were
making her dizzy. As she blinked the sweat out of her eyes, she
knew she’d have to escape before she fainted.

The man-creature grinned at her
discomfort.

“
You showed incredible
potential and talent. You were powerful, but now you will be much,
much more. Your power will be unmatched. You will become a creature
of darkness.”

He bent slightly forward and watched
her, like a cat about to pounce on a mouse.

“
Get that away from
me!”

Kara’s knees buckled, and she strained
to regain her strength. And when the creature’s gaze turned away
from her for a moment, she screamed, “Mr. Patterson!”

She looked over the creature’s
shoulder. For a split second he turned and looked behind
him.

It was all that she needed.

Kara dropped the wooden club and
bolted.

She ran with all her strength. She ran
knowing that her life depended on it. She knew that if she peeked
over her shoulder to see if he was after her—she was dead. Branches
scratched and tore her skin like a crazed cat, but she didn’t
stop.

With her heart hammering at her chest,
Kara tore through the dense forest, pushing her body as hard as she
could.

David. She had to see him
again…

Just when she thought she couldn’t run
anymore, she burst out of the forest and stumbled onto a baseball
field. She expected the cat-eyed man to burst out of the forest
behind her, but he didn’t appear.

The trees rustled in the wind. Kara
waited and listened. Nothing. Maybe he had given up. Not likely,
but perhaps she had lost him in the thick of the woods.

Light spilled from tall light posts
surrounding the baseball field. She could make out the nearest
street. She felt safer out of the forest. She massaged the cramp in
her side. It was time to go home. With a deep breath Kara started
forward—

Something pricked the skin at the back
of her neck like the sting of a wasp. It burned.

“
Ah!” Kara brushed the
back of her neck with her hand. It was wet. In horror, she willed
herself to turn around.

“
Our business was
inevitable,” said the creature with a black, toothy
grin.

“
It was foolish for you to
think you could run away from me. You can’t hide from your destiny,
Kara. You were meant for this. Now you will become a
terrible, dreadful force, a storm more powerful
than the foundations of the earth.
Soon
the darkness will consume you, and you will come to me. All will
fear you.”

He tossed the empty syringe to the
ground like it was garbage.

Kara held her neck with her hand. She
trembled.

“
What—what did you inject
me with?” her voice cracked. “What did you do?”

Her throat was dry and felt like it
was swelling closed. She pulled her hand away from her neck. A
mixture of blood and black liquid marked her hand.

As she stared dumbfounded at her
stained hand, she started to tremble. She was cold, then hot. Fever
broke out all over her. Her throat swelled until she could hardly
breathe. And then her body was on fire, like she had swallowed
acid, and it was eating away at her from the inside. Her vision
blurred. She could hardly see. She collapsed to her knees and
gasped for breath, as the world around her spun like a
merry-go-round.

Kara knew she was going to
die. She was dying, and she couldn’t even cry out for help. She had
been poisoned by a madman, and now she was fading away. David. Her
mother. She would never see them again. Tears streaked down her
face.
David
…

A sudden burst of anger welled inside
her.

She wanted to kill the man—to knock
that evil smile from his face forever—but her arms fell limply at
her side. She gasped for air.

“
A—Am I—going—to
die?”

The man’s yellow eyes glowed
unnaturally in the semi-darkness like two little suns. He surveyed
her attentively for a moment, like a scientist watching an
experiment unfold before his eyes for the very first
time.

“
Not from the injection,”
he said finally, “but from
this
you will.”

Before Kara could react, with one
quick movement the stranger stabbed her in the chest with a dark
maroon blade. Searing pain exploded around her chest. She cried out
and then keeled over. Wetness spilled down from her abdomen to her
legs and leaked across the ground. She felt her life essence
flowing away.

As the wound drained her energy, she
lay on her back and blinked at the bright stars. They were so
beautiful, and she thought it strange how she could think of such a
thing, right before she died. She felt the last of her strength
leaving her body. She could hardly keep her eyes open. She tried to
turn her head, to look upon her killer one last time, but she
couldn’t.

“
Why?” was all she was
able to say.

The man tossed his raven hair behind
his back. He leaned over Kara and smiled.

“
Because. I needed to
inject you…and then I needed for you to die. You need to die for
the transformation to work. Your metamorphosis would be incomplete
if you didn’t die. Things must die in order to be born again, as
you angels know all too well.”

He reached out and wiped a tear from
her eyes. She had not the strength to move away.

“
Only in death can we rise
up stronger. Like the caterpillar becoming a butterfly, your
chrysalis is your death. You
will
rise again, Kara, and when you do, you will
be
magnificent
.”

As she listened to the crazy man speak
about angels as if they were real, Kara’s last thoughts were of
David.

And then she succumbed to the darkness
and was no more.

C
hapter 3

Back with a
Twist

A
white world. A blurry haze. Silence.

Kara felt as though she
were floating. Her mind was empty, empty of feeling, empty of
everything. It was a strange dream. It was as though her
consciousness was all around her, and she was a big, floating
brain. It was as though she didn’t have a body. At first she
thought she was dreaming, but then in dreams you don’t
usually
know
you’re dreaming. You only know you’re dreaming once you wake
up. This was different.

She felt like she was millions of
different pieces at once, like she was in every particle of dust.
Her consciousness was stretched and everywhere at the same
time.

The world shifted. As her vision
cleared, she felt the weight of her body return, like the millions
of bits of her were gathered up and made whole again.

Then she was standing on solid ground.
Kara blinked the fogginess from her mind and looked
around.

She stood in an elevator, not an
ordinary elevator, but the special elevators that transported
guardian angels to Horizon. She recognized the elegant, handcrafted
cherry panels with golden-wing crests, and the familiar mothball
smell. She was back, back on her way to Horizon.

But how could that be? Her last memory
of Horizon was of the conversation she had had with the Chief. He
had told her that she had channeled every last bit of her elemental
power into the obelisk and had drained her elemental part away. She
specifically remembered him saying, “We won’t be requesting your
services for quite some time.”

So there it was. Quite
some time, that meant
a long
time, and right now she knew it hadn’t been that
long. How could it be? When she was still a college student,
working in the same bookstore. She shouldn’t be here…and yet she
was.

Moreover, she was back and
a
regular
angel—no more special elemental abilities, no more rays of
golden power—she had exhausted her special powers. She was an
ordinary angel.

She wasn’t sure how to feel. She had
been unique, and even though she had been hated by most of her
peers, she had always secretly enjoyed being different from the
other guardian angels. It had been a big part of who she was—it was
what made her special.

Without knowing why, she reached up
behind her and felt the back of her neck, half expecting something
to be there. But what? She couldn’t remember. Why was she acting so
silly?

As Kara leaned against the back panel
of the elevator, she held her head in her hands. Her memories
flooded back. She recalled the memory projection, her last mission
as a mortal, the Fay Sisters, Olga, Gideon, and the Dark Warlock.
The memory of Lilith pained her. She hoped Lilith’s soul was safe
and had been reborn.

She regained her composure and took
stock of her surroundings more carefully.

A primate, a large
gray-black chimpanzee, was standing next to the operating panel.
Its single red bowtie made it look like a furry black present. It
wore a purple vest over its broad shoulders with the nametag
Chimp 6L75
stitched in
golden letters. Its large brown eyes were wide and looked almost
fearful. It eyed her strangely, like it was looking at a
ghost.