Seals (14 page)

As tendrils of black shadow cut through
Kara’s skin and made furrows in her flesh, her screams grew
louder.

Another shadow tightened around her ankle,
and she groaned as it lifted her off the ground. She dangled upside
down, swaying, trying to breathe. White light exploded behind her
eyes, and then the shadows vanished.

“Stay down, if you know what’s good for you.
I don’t want to destroy you, but I will if you do not
cooperate.”

Kara screamed in rage. She snarled. And then
she was back on her feet, running as fast as she could toward the
knight, her wings dangling behind her like useless baggage. She
lunged and smashed into the steed.

The blunt force of the impact threw the
creature sideways, and it stumbled. The knight slipped off his ride
and crashed to the floor.

Kara was on top of the knight in seconds.
Just its smell was enough to knock her out, but she threw herself
at it wildly and hit it over and over again in its unprotected
face.

More shadows sent Kara sprawling, but she
clambered to her feet and threw herself at the knight again.

The creature raised its arms, ready to shoot
out more shadow tendrils, but Kara was faster.

With incredible speed she dodged, spun, and
hurled herself at the knight’s head again. She thrust her blade
into any unprotected space she could find around its neck and face,
slicing, stabbing, and cutting, over and over. She cried in fury
and in pain as she desperately attempted to kill it. She didn’t
care if she killed herself in the process.

Pain exploded in her head, and Kara was
thrown in the air again.

She landed with an agonizing crack, but she
ignored the deep wounds and the searing pain in her own face and
neck, staggered to her feet, and faced the knight.

More orange and black blood oozed from deep
gashes in the knight’s face and neck, and as he advanced, he
staggered. It was hardly noticeable, just a slight pause, but Kara
noticed. She had injured it, which meant she
could
kill
it.

“You think you can destroy me?” laughed the
creature. “You think by destroying me you can stop your
transformation? I know what you are…and what you’ll become. You
cannot stop what is inevitable. The final stages of your
transformation have commenced. You are no longer an angel. Accept
it. Embrace your fate.”

With her blade still clasped tightly in her
hand, Kara screamed in fury and ran.

But she hadn’t taken more than three steps
when something crashed into her from the side, and she went
tumbling. Her head hit the ground hard, and she heard a crunch. Her
chin scraped the metal roof, and she skidded to a stop. For half a
second she lay there, dazed. Her head throbbed. She could barely
think.
What had happened? Had the knight’s horse kicked
her?

When she rolled over and pushed herself back
to her feet, she thought for sure that she must still have been
stunned from her head injury because she stared straight into the
identical faces of three higher demons.

Chapter 11

K
ara cursed under
her breath and then turned on the demons. “Are you stupid? What are
you doing?” she hissed.

A higher demon raised his eyebrows with an
evil sneer on his pasty face. “Saving you, of course.”

“Saving me?” Kara staggered forward. Her
head throbbed more than ever as the pain from her injuries finally
reached her and ploughed through her body like a hundred death
blades stabbing her at once. She could hardly stand.
Did she
just hear them laugh?
She blinked the black spots from her
eyes.

“I don’t need saving, you fools!”

The higher demons looked amused. Their
pallid faces and cruel black eyes stared at her coldly.

She pushed past the higher demons. “Get out
of my way. Move I said! I’ve got him. I can kill him. I’ve got the
knight—”

But she stumbled when she saw that the
knight and his steed were gone.

A few speckles of orange and black liquid
were the only signs that the knight had existed at all. He was
gone. She had failed.

At that moment a door on the roof exploded
open and David, Peter, Jenny, and Ashley rushed onto the roof.

“Where’s the knight?” David eyed the higher
demons that stood sneering at them.

“Where is he? Kara?”

Kara looked to the last spot where she had
seen the creature. She felt warm liquid roll down her face and
neck. It trickled down her arm until it dripped from the tip of her
blade. She blanched. It was not the brilliant white essence of an
angel, but the black blood of a demon.

“Kara, what happened here?” David came up by
her side.

“You look like you took a beating. I hope
the knight looks as thrashed as you do.”

He paused and then he added excitedly.
“That’s it. You got him, didn’t you? You killed the knight!” He
sounded so pleased and proud of her that she felt even worse.

“What? Did you really destroy it, Kara? How
did you do it?” Jenny sounded elated.

But Kara couldn’t look at them. She could
barely hear them all. All she heard were the words from the knight.
They echoed in her mind as she stared at her black blood.

You are no longer an angel.

“What’s wrong with her?” Ashley walked
slowly around Kara and then faced her.

“She looks...a little
off
.” Her eyes
widened. “And she’s bleeding. She’s bleeding
black
blood.”

So now they all knew.
Kara opened her
mouth, but the words would not come.

“Kara?” David slipped his hand in Kara’s
free hand and squeezed it gently.

“You’re hurt. What happened here?” he asked
tenderly.

When she didn’t answer, he turned from her
and eyed the demons.

“And
why
are you three douchebag
demons here? And why do I get the feeling you’re to blame for her
injuries, eh? What did you do to her?”

“We did nothing to the female,” said one of
the higher demons smoothly. He sounded innocent, but Kara felt the
deceitful undertones.

“We were ordered to come here. That is all.
We were ordered to help.”

“That’s right,” said another higher demon,
“we were charged to help you.”

“Help? Why?” David glowered. “We never asked
for
your
help. How did you even know we were here? Did you
follow us?”

The three higher demons watched David, but
didn’t answer.

“Kara,” said Peter as he made his way over
to her. “Did you kill it? Did you vanquish one of the knights?”

Kara raised her eyes to Peter, but still she
couldn’t find her voice.

“Everybody, check your rings,” said Jenny
suddenly. She wiggled her fingers. “I still got mine—”

“My ring’s gone,” said David. Everyone
looked at his bare hand. “We were too late. Another seal is
broken.”

Jenny looked at Kara thoughtfully. “So you
didn’t
defeat it. It defeated you. It defeated us. This
bites.”

“It seems that luck is
not
on our
side,” said Ashley as she circled the higher demons with her sword
in her hand. “We’ve only got two seals left. These odds suck.”

“At this rate, it doesn’t look like we’re
going to make it.” Jenny shook her head. “And from what Mr. P said
I get the feeling that the last two knights are the worst. How are
we going to beat them?”

“We’re not going to make it,” said Ashley
gloomily. “It’s over.”

“Don’t say that,” said Peter. “It’s not
over, there’s
still
a chance,” but the quiver in his voice
betrayed him.

But when he spoke next, his voice was full
of valor, as though it had been there a long time and had suddenly
awoken.

“We still have time, there’s a little more
than two days left. We can still defeat the remaining two. I have
to believe. No. We
must
believe we can do it. If we don’t
have faith, then this mission has already failed. The fates of the
worlds depend on us succeeding. There’s no room for failure.”

“I hear ya, Pete,” said David. “But I hate
to burst your bubble. I have to agree with Ashley on this one.
These things keep slipping away from us and time’s running out.
They’ve got superpowers from the dark gods, and all we’ve got are
these…”

He waved his soul blade.

“If Kara had defeated this one, then maybe
we would have been on the winning side. As of now, we’re on the
loser’s team.”

Kara had heard enough.

“
They
did this,” she snarled as she
eyed the higher demons and gripped her soul blade in her bloodied
hand.

Jenny watched Kara carefully. “Who did what,
exactly?”

Kara let go of David’s hand. “I had him. I
was going to kill him. But they…” her eyes met the three higher
demons, and she scowled wildly. “They stopped me.”

Kara looked into those black, soulless eyes,
and she knew they had stopped her on purpose. The demons had
saved
the knight from her wrath. The demons had seen that
she had had an opening and was about to kill the knight. They had
sensed that she might even survive.

Kara knew that the demons had their own
agenda. She didn’t know exactly what it was—yet—but she would find
out.

For now, all she knew for certain was that
they had stopped her from killing the knight, and in the process
they had ruined their chances of stopping the apocalypse.

Her chances to become normal again were
disappearing.

“They stopped me from killing it on
purpose
,” she hissed.

She moved slowly toward the demons, like a
predator about to kill its prey. Her throbbing headache had gone,
and it had been replaced by a pulsing hatred for the demons.

“Are you freaking kidding me?” David waved
his blade menacingly toward the demons, but Kara was already
there.

She raised her blade and roared like an
animal. There was nothing angelic about her behavior. She was
projecting all her hatred for taking away her chance of becoming a
normal angel again upon the demons. She heard the shouts of her
friends, but she ignored them as she lunged for the higher
demons.

The higher demons hissed and snarled as they
sprang at Kara with their death blades.

Kara dove into the demons with a fountain of
savage, unforgiving cold power. She could smell, hear, and see
everything with heightened senses that gave her an advantage over
the demons, over everything.

“Kara, you can’t do this!” she heard David’s
cry over the pounding of power in her ears.

“Don’t do this! There’s a treaty! They won’t
forgive you this time!”

But Kara paid no attention. Kara would never
have fought or wanted to fight three higher demons at the same time
when she only had elemental power. But things were different now,
she
was different, and she bellowed her challenge.

The higher demons answered her challenge.
They rushed at her in a blur of gray. Their death blades glistened
in the dull light as they attacked. She ran at them, flinging her
blade and slashing at them with cold power.

They dodged and blocked her every blow,
hissing and grunting at her triumphantly as though they had already
won. Kara knew that they were mocking her because she had seen
through their lies. She knew that they had helped the knight escape
from her grasp.

She halted. Her soul blade was too weak. The
demons smiled confidently.

She tossed the blade on the ground and
called forth all her cold, raw power. The demons tensed, as though
they sensed what she was about to do. But it was already too late
for them.

Kara embraced her darkness. Enraged, she
spun in the air and decapitated them all with a powerful swing of
her giant razor blade wings. She landed on the ground next to their
headless bodies, and their heads rolled to her feet.

Their bodies and heads disintegrated into
black dust and disappeared in a gust of wind.

“Kara, what have you done?”

Kara froze.

She recognized that voice. It didn’t belong
to any of her friends. Bracing herself, she turned around slowly
and met the archangel Ariel’s fierce stare.

Chapter 12

“
W
hat is the
meaning of this?”

The authority of the archangel Ariel’s voice
cut through Kara’s dark madness.

What was the archangel doing here?

Kara wanted to shy away when she saw the
look of horror that flashed momentarily in the archangel’s eyes. It
was gone just as fast as it had appeared, but it lasted long enough
for Kara to have felt it.

“My. My. My.” Metatron stepped from behind
Ariel, and Kara flinched. His angel entourage all had blades in
their hands, and they all watched Kara with loathing.

“She killed
three
higher demons with
her wings. Remarkable,” said Metatron, although there was nothing
commendable in his tone.

Ariel frowned and examined Kara
carefully.

“Why? Why would you do this when you knew we
had an accord with the demons? We have a treaty. We need them. If
we’re to beat the archfiends, we need to collaborate with the demon
legions. How could you do this, Kara?”

Kara suspected that the archangel wanted an
apology rather than an explanation.

But she wasn’t sorry at all. She knew the
truth. The treaty was a joke to the demons. They didn’t believe in
it, so why should she? David looked shocked, but she could see that
he feared what was going to happen to her.

“If word reaches the demons about this…about
what you’ve done,” said Ariel, her beautiful features twisted in a
deep scowl, “there’ll be repercussions.”

“They’ll take it as a threat and as grounds
for retaliation.” Metatron made his way to Kara.