Seals (16 page)

Kara knew that Mr. Patterson’s so-called
unauthorized
mission was still the right thing to do. She
had faith in the old man, and she suspected that the archangel
Raphael did, too.

She knew what she had to do. She was going
after the third knight on her own.

As she flew toward Montreal, she brushed her
hand over the places on her neck and shoulder where she had been
wounded. She let out a little startled gasp. Her wounds were gone.
Her skin had healed.

Kara wasn’t all that surprised. She felt
different. Her skin felt different. It was almost as though her
M-suit had shredded away like snakeskin. Her new skin didn’t need
to replenish itself. She wouldn’t need to go to Horizon to
replenish her strength because her wounds healed themselves. And
she felt stronger than ever.

She suspected she could never return to
Horizon again, not because she had escaped, but because of what she
felt she was
becoming
. The monster that brewed inside her
was not angel, but something else, something darker, something much
more sinister. She tasted it. She felt it. It was inside her, and
it was cold and dark. There wasn’t time to feel sorry for herself.
It didn’t matter anymore. What mattered now was how she could use
her new strength to do good.

Whatever she had become, she took some
comfort in knowing that she still had her mind and her soul. They
hadn’t been corrupted yet, which meant that she still had time to
stop the last two knights before her transformation was complete
and she was lost forever.

Kara spotted the bookstore. She dropped to
the ground. Soft yellow light spilled from the edges of the boarded
up windows. She glanced down the street. Nothing. Most of the
street’s shops were still in ruin from the imp attack. A buzz came
from a single street lamp. The old bookstore was surrounded by a
bubble of quiet that told her the place was empty. Was she too
late? Had Metatron gotten here first?”

But just when Kara was about to scream her
frustration, the front door burst open.

“What took you so long?” Mr. Patterson’s
thin white hair was disheveled. His eyes were wide, and he panted
like he had run a marathon.

“I’ve been waiting for
hours
since I
heard about your encounter with Metatron. Quickly, get inside.”

He looked past Kara’s shoulders. “You never
know what lurks in the shadows.”

Without a word, Kara folded her wings behind
her, stepped through the threshold and watched Mr. Patterson lock
the door behind her.

“I thought you were gone,” she said.

She was a little shocked to find him here
and still in one piece.

“I thought I was too late.” Without
thinking, she pulled the old man into a hug.

Mr. Patterson giggled as if Kara had tickled
him by accident. He pulled away from her with a huge smile.

“Well, they did come,” said Mr. Patterson.
“Those wretched angels with high heels and all that stuffy makeup.
Why do they have to dress like that anyway? Well, I knew I’d be in
a lot of trouble if they found me. I gather they know I’m
responsible for sending you all after the knights.”

“They do,” said Kara. “I’m sorry, Mr.
Patterson. I held on for as long as I could…but he literally had us
cornered, and he knew it. He knew where we were. I think he’d
figured it out when he confronted me in Horizon. It’s my fault. I’m
not as good a liar as I thought. Now, we’ve lost David and the
others.”

Mr. Patterson smiled tenderly. “Don’t ever
blame yourself for this my dear. None of this is your fault.
Remember that. I’m just sorry it happened at all.”

He sighed. “I wish we’d had more time, more
guardians to help us. But I just couldn’t take any chances with
unfamiliar guardians. I’m not sure how much good it would have done
anyway. He still discovered our plan.”

Kara pressed her lips together. “What’s the
deal with Metatron anyway? He seems to have a vendetta against
you.”

Mr. Patterson blinked. “Well, my
relationship with Metatron goes back a long time. We’ve never seen
eye to eye. We’re basically like cats and dogs. He gets under my
skin. We just can’t seem to agree on anything.”

“Because you don’t buy into his
schemes.”

“Precisely,” said Mr. Patterson. “But
understand, Metatron’s not
bad
—not in the way a demon or an
archfiend is bad. He’s not a fallen archangel or a disloyal one. On
the contrary, he’s a little too loyal, too obsessed, and it makes
him very dangerous as both an ally and as an enemy.”

“Wonderful.” Kara hated the guy. The next
time she saw him she decided that she would feed him his cigar.

“So how did you escape from his clutches?”
she asked. “It took me almost two hours to get here—”

“I know,” said Mr. Patterson dramatically.
“It was a very long time to be stuck in my little cupboard.”

He saw that Kara looked confused. “I
hid.”

“You hid. Where?”

The old man crossed the room and made his
way around his makeshift counter. She watched as he made a fist and
punched the wall behind the counter. A small panel popped open and
revealed a small room the size of a broom closet. It was large
enough to fit two grown men, so there was plenty of space to fit an
oracle. A shimmer caught her eye, and when she leaned in closer she
saw a row of gleaming crystal balls tucked away neatly in a
sky-blue blanket in a box on the floor. They looked like newborn
babies cuddling together.

Kara suppressed a laugh. Who was she to
judge anyway?

“My secret cupboard.” Mr. Patterson
beamed.

Kara smiled back at him. “A panic room.
Brilliant.”

A smug smile materialized on his face.

“Well, it wouldn’t work if demon hounds were
after me. They’d smell me a mile away. But it works for the
average, lousy angel spy.”

Kara inspected the small closet more
closely. “This is great, but someone must have told you he was
coming.”

Mr. Patterson pulled the cupboard door shut.
“Ariel did.”

Kara’s mouth dropped open.

“Ariel?” she repeated. She realized that
there was much more to the archangel than she had given her credit
for. She was grateful that Ariel had defied Metatron.

“But…I thought
Raphael
was one of
your secret allies?”

“She is,” said the oracle. “But Ariel had
always been conflicted when it came to Metatron. She fears
Metatron, and with good reason. But still, she believed your story
about the demons. She told me so. But she couldn’t defy Metatron
openly, so this is her way of helping us.”

Kara’s spirits lifted. “I’m glad she
did.”

The old man watched her warily.

“Tell me,” he ruffled the front of his shirt
with his hands. “Are the four seals still intact? Ariel wasn’t able
to give me any information on that account.”

Kara shook her head. “No. There are only two
left.”

There was no point in lying to the man. She
dug a hand into her pant pocket and retrieved the small golden
ring. She held it between two fingers and searched it to see if it
had any power. And when she didn’t find anything, she slipped it
over her right ring finger. It felt right. No point in keeping her
hands hidden now.

“Jenny and I still have our rings.”

Mr. Patterson watched her silently.

“We tried. We really did. But the knights
were wickedly strong. They have powers unlike anything I’ve ever
faced before.”

“What about your connection to them?” Mr.
Patterson’s eyes widened. “Any news on that score? Have you
discovered anything new that could help us?”

Kara ruffled her wings in irritation. “Not
really. But I know we
can
kill them.”

She gave the old man a wicked smile. “I know
it because some of the higher demons confirmed it.”

She frowned at the memory of the way they
had sneered and laughed at her. God she hated demons.

Mr. Patterson was very still as he asked,
“What do you mean, they
confirmed
it?”

“Because they were there.”

“What? I knew it! I knew it!”

He spat. His expression hardened, and he
looked like a bulldog ready to fight.

“Those wretched, foul, double-crossing
creatures.”

He paced around the room, kicking and
punching at invisible foes, all the while mumbling to himself.
“Wait till I get my crystals. They’ll wish they’d never been
created! We’ll see who’s calling the shots! I’ve never...”

Kara watched silently as the old man’s
tantrum faded away. She stared at the black, spidery veins on her
hands, but she couldn’t look at them for more than a few seconds.
They disgusted her. She disgusted her. But as she looked at
herself, she realized that the demons hadn’t been at all surprised
at the black markings on her face and body. It was almost as though
they had
expected
her to look that way…

But how was that possible?
No one had
known about her transformation, except for some of the archangels.
She needed to find out more about the demons.

Finally, Mr. Patterson sighed loudly and
flattened the top of his thin hair with his hands as he gathered
his wits again. Kara was surprised to see how much anger still
lingered in his eyes.

“Tell me exactly what they did,” he
asked.

“Just when I was about to destroy the
knight, three higher demons came out of nowhere and tackled me. And
when I pushed them off me, the knight was gone. It’s obvious. They
didn’t want me near it. They didn’t want me to kill it because they
knew
I could. They protected it
from
me and made sure
it got away.”

Kara shivered at the thought of the knight’s
foul body. She had been so close, so close to her own freedom.

“The demons aren’t going to honor this
treaty, you know,” she said after a moment. “They’re planning
something…I can
feel
it.”

Mr. Patterson narrowed his eyes. “I never
believed for one minute they would. They’re demons, after all. It’s
in their nature to be dishonest. They can’t be trusted, and the
legion was foolish in thinking that they could. I cannot blame them
for trying, but I wish they would have listened to me.”

Kara shrugged. “I don’t get it. Why did the
legion trust them in the first place? It’s like the entire legion’s
gone mad, or they were hypnotized or something.”

“Because desperate times call for desperate
measures.”

“You can say that again,” said Kara
indignantly.

The weight of their failed mission weighed
heavily on her shoulders. Without the others she was on her own,
and that terrified her. She feared that she would fall into the
darkness more easily, since no one would be there to help pull her
back to the light. And her light was running out.

“So what do we do about the legion?” asked
Kara. “Will Ariel help us? Maybe with her and Raphael on our side,
the legion will listen to us. They have to.”

Mr. Patterson looked exhausted and frail.
“And if by chance you had an audience with them, do you think they
would ever believe you?”

Kara hung her head. “No, not me, of course
not me. I was thinking
you
might tell them. You know, you’re
an oracle after all—”

“Ha!” Mr. Patterson choked on a laugh. “You
give me too much credit, my dear girl. As the souls would have it,
I
cannot show my face in Horizon—not for quite some time I’m
afraid.”

His eyes twinkled with a hint of mischief.
“I’ve already had a lengthy discussion with Metatron and the High
Council about the treaty with the demons. They chose to ignore me
and
all
the oracles, including the oracle mothers.”

“What did the oracle mothers say?”

Mr. Patterson patted a round lump inside his
front jacket pocket that Kara suspected to be a small crystal
ball.

“They have seen many versions of the future.
Many of them projected time lines that could occur and many of them
end in our doom.”

“But that can’t be.” Kara whirled on the
little man. “You said we had a chance. You said if we destroyed the
knights before they broke the seals, then we’d have a chance. You
said!”

“Yes, yes, yes,” said the little man, and he
sighed loudly.

When he looked at Kara again, he gave her a
little smile.

“The white oracle saw
another
version
of the future. It was just one trifling strand of the future that
differed from the others—the tiniest glimpse. But it was the
only
one that showed a better future. The only one that
showed
life
.”

Kara felt like she was going to explode in
anticipation. “Which was the one you based your
theory
with
the seals on, right? Well tell me already, I’m dying here.”

He raised his chin and changed his voice to
a high-pitched tone that Kara figured was his attempt at sounding
female, but it only made him sound like he had a bad case of strep
throat. He coughed and then said, “The only way to stop the
archfiends is with the demise of the knight.”

Kara frowned.

“Wait a minute. Something’s not right. You
said…”

She faltered. A ray of hope shone through
her. She feared that if she spoke her thoughts out loud, then the
spark of hope would diminish, because it was too good to be
true…

“Hmmm?”

Kara spoke very carefully, as though she
were addressing a young child.

“You said
knight
. Singular. Not
knights
.”

“No,
she
said that.”

Kara rolled her eyes and waved her hand at
the old man frantically.

“I know. I know. I mean the white oracle
said
knight
. Not
knights
—plural, right?” Her eyes
widened impatiently as she encouraged him to answer.

Mr. Patterson pressed his lips into a hard
line, his brows furrowed.