Reapers (7 page)

The senior officer cleared his throat,
but he still had a panicked look about him. “We release the
intruder to you, as per Metatron’s instructions.”

“
Ha!” David’s sudden
outburst caused the officers to scowl at him
skeptically.

David realized his slipup and quickly
recovered. “I mean, yes, good, very good.” His tone grew more
serious. “Metatron will thank you for it. You’d better go now.
We’ll take it from here.”

Just when Kara was
starting to wonder which
we
David meant, the senior officer spoke.

“
Right then,” he looked at
Raphael. “We apologize for this unfortunate
misunderstanding—”

“
Yeah right,” muttered
Kara under her breath.

“—
We’ll be going
now.”

With a final look in Kara’s direction,
the two officers bowed, and then made for the doorway with their
giant gorilla escorts. They looked as though they feared the wrath
of the mysterious Metatron. They clearly didn’t want to get on his
bad side.

Kara had the sudden urge
to run over to David and jump into his arms to kiss him. Horizon
had strict rules about romance, but she couldn’t control her
feelings. Even in the body of an angel, or half an angel, she could
still
feel
. It
took every effort to restrain herself and stay put.

David watched her. He misunderstood
her reluctance to speak or move as fear. He hurried over to Kara
and squeezed her hand.

“
It feels…it feels the
same as before, but what in Horizon’s name happened to you? Why do
you look like a ghost? Are you okay? How do you feel? Does it
hurt?”

Kara squeezed David’s hand back. She
wanted nothing more than to tell him how good it felt, to have him
with her now that her world felt upside-down.

But instead she said, “I don’t know
why I’m like this.”

She looked down at herself
and shrugged. “This is how I arrived in the elevator, all
transparent
. But don’t
worry, I feel fine. Actually, like I was telling Raphael, I don’t
feel any different from before. I don’t feel weak or sick or
anything like that at all. I just look different.”

“
You might be transparent,
but you’re still the prettiest girl in all of Horizon…”

“
Thank you, David,” said
Raphael, with the tiniest of smiles. Kara couldn’t hide her own
smile either.

Raphael’s face turned suddenly sour
when she spoke next. “David, why did Metatron send you here
exactly? What did he say to you?”

David smiled sheepishly and let go of
Kara’s hand.

“
Raphael, did I tell you
how ravishing you look today? Is that a new robe? Did you do
something different to your hair? It looks awesome.”

Raphael raised an eyebrow. “Tell
me.”

“
Well, you see…that’s
not
exactly
what
happened.”

David crossed the room to one of the
wooden tables. He grabbed a glass vial and shook it. He examined
the blue liquid inside. “That part might have been a little white
lie.”

“
Which part?” The
archangel moved toward him with her hands on her hips.

David placed the vial back down. “All
of it.”

Raphael’s face fell, but Kara could
see that she wasn’t sure whether to congratulate him or to scold
him.

“
This Metatron never sent
you, did he?” asked Kara, feeling a little uneasy.

She knew David never cared for rules,
but she had the sense that undermining Metatron was a very bad
thing. “David, what did you do?”

“
Nothing that
friends
wouldn’t do to
help each other,” he answered.

His blue eyes glistened as he held
Kara’s gaze. Her skin tickled and she looked away,
embarrassed.

“
Besides,” he continued.
“Ariel wants to see you back at level five immediately.”

He caught Raphael eyeing
him and added, “Of course, only once the lovely Raphael has
completed her tests, and you’re
clear
for duty—that’s what Ariel
said. Only if Raphael clears you for duty, which I’m sure she will.
After that, we need to go. We’ve got a situation.”

“
What kind of
situation?”

“
One that requires your
special assistance.”

The fact that Ariel wanted Kara back
on her team gave Kara new confidence. Things couldn’t be that bad
if she had another archangel on her side.

Kara pondered for a moment.

“
David, Ariel does know
that I’m not—that I don’t have—that I’m not a
normal
guardian now, right? I don’t
have my elemental abilities anymore. She might not want me back
once she finds out.”

She felt a little uneasiness in her
chest. It was a strange thing to be back in Horizon as a normal
guardian. She wasn’t sure she liked it. Being different, having
powerful abilities, being stronger than the other guardians had
always pleased her. But being semi-transparent didn’t. It scared
her. She didn’t know why, but somehow she knew it wasn’t good. She
hid her fears as best she could.

“
Don’t worry,” said David.
“She does. And she knows about your…your sheer appearance. In fact,
she said that the entire High Council knows. Ariel told me that she
was with the council when they found out. It was a surprise, but
she asked to have you on the team. They discussed it, and they
agreed. They didn’t see any reason why you couldn’t get your old
job back once Raphael says you’re okay. So, you see, there’s
nothing to worry about. Ariel wants you back on the
team.”

Kara looked through her
semi-transparent fingers.

“
No doubt they’ll probably
have me followed or something. I’m sure they think I’ve done this
to myself on purpose. After the whole
marked
thing, I’m pretty sure
they’ll keep an eye on me. I’ll never be
cleared
, not really.”

“
Probably,” said David.
“But who cares? They won’t find anything. And whatever it is that
you have, whatever happened to you…I’m sure it will go away on its
own.” And then he laughed. “It’s not contagious is it?”

Kara pushed David away playfully. “You
can be such a moron sometimes.”

“
David has a point,” said
the archangel.

She gave Kara a warm smile. “Maybe
you’ll be back to normal before you know it. But even so, you need
to be very careful using vega. I’m not sure what another leap might
do to your angel body or to your mind, for that matter.”

Kara looked up into Raphael’s eyes.
“You think I’ll vaporize.”

In all the confusion, she hadn’t
thought about what the effects of vega might be.

“
I’m not sure,” answered
the archangel sincerely. “We won’t know much until we start the
tests.”

Kara moved toward the table and fell
into an empty chair. “All right then, let’s get these tests over
with.”

And so, after an hour of poking,
scraping, pulling out some hair, and a series of strange x-rays in
which a bright orange jelly-like cream was spread all over Kara’s
body and clothes, Raphael finally released Kara into David’s
care.

She was clear for duty. But the
archangel insisted that she report back for a follow-up at the end
of their mission.

In the elevator, as they ascended to
level five, Kara and David were silent. Kara was worried about what
had happened to her, and why she couldn’t remember.

Even though David had managed to fool
everyone with his composed demeanor and appeared unconcerned by her
sudden transparency, Kara still had doubts. He kept glancing at her
nervously when he thought she wasn’t looking. She thought about
asking him how he’d known where she was, to break the silence, but
she couldn’t seem to utter any words.

The elevator jerked.

Kara stumbled backwards and hit the
back panel. As she steadied herself, she felt like she was floating
and realized that the elevator was ascending faster than normal
speed.

She pressed her hands on the sides to
steady herself and watched the panel curiously. The level four
button blinked on, and soon after, the button for level five, but
the elevator kept going.

“
Um…David,” she said.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think we just passed our
stop.”

David turned to the small tanned
primate with a hairless wrinkled face who was operating the
elevator.

“
Dude, what did you do?
We’re supposed to be going to level five, and we just passed it.
Don’t make me hurt you, buddy, but I will if you don’t make this
elevator go back right now!”

The operator shrugged. He looked
terrified and pressed the number five button again and again with a
shaking, bony finger.

“
I don’t know,” he said,
his voice high and quivering.

He hit the panel again
with his fist, but the elevator kept climbing. “See? I didn’t do
anything! I pressed level five, but it didn’t stop. It just kept
going by itself. I swear. I
didn’t
do anything.”

He held his hands over his head and
cowered. “Please don’t hurt me. It’s my first day.”

“
Well, can’t you stop it
or something?” said David as he loomed over the tiny primate.
“You’re the operator. Control it!”

The primate raised his arm and then
hit a small red button with the word EMERGENCY written in gold. It
was the first time Kara had even noticed an emergency button in the
elevators. He pressed it repeatedly, and still nothing happened.
The elevator continued to climb.

“
It’s like something from
the outside is controlling it,” said the primate helplessly.
“There’s nothing I can do. I’m sorry.”

“
Do you know where it’s
going?” asked David, but the little operator shook his
head.

Kara’s panic increased as the elevator
rose. The walls of the elevator felt like they were closing in on
her. She was having a panic attack. Where were they going? Level
seven was out of the question, and the only other level the
elevator could reach was level six—Tartarus. She was going to
Tartarus.

The high council had never wanted her
back. It had all been a ruse, a trick, and she had fallen for it.
She didn’t blame Raphael. She knew the archangel had tried to help
her. She even believed that the archangel Ariel would probably be
on her side. But the high council had the final word, and now they
were going to cast her off to a gloomy dungeon.

She shivered at the thought of the
cold, eerie, black walls, and the feelings of numbness and
abandonment that she had felt in Tartarus before. She remembered
the distant moans from the other prisoners whose hallucinations
were all they had left; these were what they clung to before they
plummeted into madness.

She didn’t want to lose her mind to
the shadows of Tartarus. She didn’t want to lose David…

Kara pulled herself together. She
wasn’t in prison yet. She was stronger than this. She wasn’t about
to let them take her without a fight.

As she prepared herself mentally for
whatever was coming next, she watched the number six on the panel
illuminate, but the elevator didn’t stop.

What was going on? Where were they
going? Who was controlling their elevator and why? If they weren’t
going to level six, then where was the elevator taking
them?

“
What happens after we
pass level six?” she asked. She couldn’t help but wonder if they
were going to level seven, to see the Chief.

David swore and kicked the elevator
doors. “No idea.”

Kara started to relax. That was it. It
had to be. They were going to see the Chief. Maybe he wanted to see
her ghost-like appearance for himself. Maybe he had the
answers.

And just when Kara started to smile,
the elevator bounced to a stop. Her eyes moved to the panel. Button
number seven was not illuminated. The doors swung open and Kara’s
smile disappeared.

A man stood before them. Behind him
was a long hallway that branched out into separate corridors that
became lost in shadows.

It was not the Chief. It was a man
Kara had never seen before. She knew right away by his size that he
was an archangel. But he was very different from the rest of them.
While the other archangels were all beautiful, his face was
ordinary.

He was a little pudgy around the
middle, and yet his strong, square shoulders were a reminder that
he had once been fit and strong. He wore a charcoal-gray suit and
shiny black shoes. His thin, straw-colored hair was drawn back from
his receding hairline. He looked like a typical middle-aged man. He
could be anyone’s neighbor, nothing special. Nothing about him made
him stand out, except that he wore sunglasses and was smoking a
thick cigar.

He took a long drag of his cigar and
blew out a cloud of smoke in the shape of a star. He tapped the
ashes loose from his cigar.