Seals (19 page)

She wished he would stop talking.

“I know you can’t see it now. You can’t
imagine what it would be like to have limitless power.”

Salthazar’s voice rose with excitement as
his lust for power revealed itself. He reminded Kara of her
father.

“But you will, and you will embrace it.”

“Why do they want to see me?” Her voice was
a whisper.

She stared at the blood on her hands, and
her knees buckled at the shame. But the higher demons pulled her
back up and shook her awake as though she had fallen asleep.

Salthazar made for the door of her cell.

“Don’t parents yearn to see their young? The
dark gods have waited long enough. We’ve wasted enough time with
your beauty sleep. When you are fully recovered, and your mind is
focused, you will take your rightful place and fight alongside your
true
family.”

Kara squirmed at the word. She had already
lost one member of her family. She would carry the weight of his
death forever.

The demon lord’s black eyes sparkled in
delight.

“Enjoy your last moments as an angel, my
darling, because they won’t last. Soon you will feast your eyes on
the new world where we will reign as king and queen. It has already
begun.”

Kara had no idea what he was mumbling about,
but she felt obligated to ask.

“What has?”

Salthazar halted outside the cell. He turned
with a sly smile on his face and said excitedly, “The war of the
worlds.”

Chapter 16

T
he higher demons
dragged Kara through dim corridors carved into the same black rock
as her cell. Smoky torches on the walls of these great gloomy caves
were the only source of light, and Kara peered through the smoke to
try and figure out where she was. They climbed higher and higher
through a confusing network of tunnels, and the smell of death
clung to her skin like a mist. She could almost taste it in her
mouth.

Kara kept her face blank as she asked, “What
is this place?”

“Mexico,” said Salthazar brightly.

He walked a few paces in front of her. “At
the root of the Popocatépetl volcano. But don’t worry, it’s not
active
…well, not right now anyway.”

So she had made it to Mexico after all. Now
she understood why it was so hot. Demons or not, Kara was pretty
sure that they weren’t immune to scorching lava. If this was some
sort of demon safe house, it wasn’t exactly safe. But she had to
give Salthazar points for originality. Then again, he had mentioned
earlier that he was taking her to see the archfiends, so maybe this
wasn’t exactly a hideout. Maybe it was the archfiends’ lair.

“How did I get here?” she grunted after a
moment. If this was the archfiends lair, she didn’t want to see it
or be in it. They should have left her in her cell.

Salthazar watched her for a moment. She
hated the desire in his black eyes. It made her feel dirty. He
seemed convinced that they would be together in the future. She
still wanted to claw his eyes out.

Kara saw a smile on his lips.

“You have more of
us
in you than you
think. Things are changing for you, Kara. Your fiend essence, or
whatever you want to call it, allowed you to move through rifts
with us. Your body no longer needs to replenish itself outside the
veils. It’s stronger. You’re stronger.”

He paused. “You’ll see. It gets better.”

The higher demons on each side of her
laughed. She glanced at them all, one after the other, and was
disturbed by the dark shadows that danced on their identical faces
as they smiled at her. They were enjoying this a little too
much.

Kara didn’t want to know what
got
better
. Just the thought of becoming more demon, or whatever
she was, than angel made her feel like her soul was being ripped
away from her body—she was losing her true self. The suffocating
darkness was devouring her soul. It was that fear she had struggled
with since the very beginning of her training with the legion. She
had been marked since the very beginning.

But she deserved what she got. All of
it.

Thousands of red and yellow eyes watched her
from the shadows as she trudged along behind Salthazar. Normally,
she would have been apprehensive, but now she didn’t care. Ghoulish
creatures with corrupted bodies covered with sores stalked along
the edges of the tunnel beside her, hissing and cursing her in an
ancient language.

A wall shimmered to her left, and a great
horned demon with purple, scaly skin and two pairs of arms walked
through the rift on hooves the size of car wheels. His four
white-milky eyes settled on Kara. His maw opened as he growled at
her, but one look from Salthazar and the creature retreated into
the shadows.

All along the tunnels more and more rifts
rippled open and spit out creatures with dripping maws and twisted,
pulsing bodies. It was like an underworld train station.

Some of the creatures were the size of
elephants. Others were smaller. Gray dwarf creatures appeared from
puffs of black smoke and hurried down the tunnels. Imps. She’d
never forget what they had done to Peter. She shook her head so she
wouldn’t dwell on her friends and forced herself to focus on the
lower demons. They all moved with quiet purpose as they marched
together in lines and disappeared down various tunnels.

As they climbed, she couldn’t tell if these
tunnels were natural or manmade, but she could feel the rumbling
under her feet increase. Eventually the reverberation was coming
from everywhere at once. And over the sound of the tremors and the
tread of their feet, Kara could hear muffled sounds from above. It
sounded like the clatter of steel against steel.

The reek of sulfur had burned her nose when
she was in her cell, but as they climbed higher, the sulfur became
more bearable. But the echoes of clashing steel grew stronger.

After what felt like hours of climbing, the
gloom thinned, and Kara could see a wall of soft yellow light at
the end of the tunnel. Kara followed Salthazar into the light.

At first, the bright light was so intense
she had to cover her eyes with her hands. But as she blinked, her
eyes gradually adjusted.

She stood near a platform on the lip of a
ravine that led down to a vast desert hundreds of feet below.
Thousands of higher demons, shadow demons, clowns demons, hound
demons, imps and other devilings and creatures she’d never seen
before crowded the cliffs around her.

Near the edge of the platform on a raised
stone dais, seven archfiends sat on seven black marble thrones.
They looked out over the desert below from their ledge where the
mountain opened up to a clouded gray sky.

The sounds of battle raged from somewhere
down below the ledge, but the platform was still, and the
archfiends sat and watched.

When Kara had imagined them, she had assumed
they would be big, menacing humanoid monsters. She wasn’t prepared
at all for what she saw.

There were four males and three females, and
they all wore crowns made of black diamond. They radiated dark
power.

Even in the soft light, they were cloaked in
shadow. Black veins pulsed under their gray-colored skin, and their
long black tresses hung over their chests. The females wore metal
armor around their chests, but the males’ muscular torsos were
bare. They wore golden loops in their ears. Long necklaces hung
from their necks, and too many rings glimmered on their fingers.
They were kingly and terrifying.

But the thing that disturbed Kara the most
was that they all had wings just like hers. She couldn’t miss them.
Their giant leathery black wings were like the wings of
dragons.

Their thrones faced out from the mountain’s
ledge, and the archfiends were fixated on something down below. But
before she could see what they were looking at, the higher demons
dragged her toward the center of the platform.

The male archfiend in the middle differed
from all the rest. He was nearly a head taller than the other
males, and he clutched a globe in his hands. Kara could see that
the globe represented the mortal world.

Slowly, the archfiends turned their heads
and watched her with great interest as she made her way across the
platform. The higher demons’ grips tightened around her arms as
they steadied her, and she stood facing the archfiends.

“My lords and ladies,” Salthazar groveled
before the archfiends.

“My gods and goddesses.”

Kara clenched her jaw and rolled her eyes.
He was pathetic. Didn’t demons have any pride?

The archfiends watched Salthazar with faces
as expressionless as stone masks.

Kara took the opportunity to look around.
Half a dozen men and women stood to the left and right of the
thrones. They looked like bodyguards, although Kara had the feeling
that the archfiends didn’t need them. The bodyguards had unsettling
large yellow eyes with slit-like irises, like cats. Their black
veins shone under their paper-white skin like tattoos, and they
wore long black cloaks. Kara could see the strong bodies they hid
beneath. Their features were perfect.

One of them in particular caused a shudder
to pass through her. She recognized him at once.

He was tall and thin, and he smiled at her
with a mouthful of black needle-like teeth.

It was the same man who had injected her
with the syringe when she had run through the woods in search of
David. It had been his needle that had started her mutation.

She cringed when she realized that all the
archfiends were glaring at her.

“Kneel before your gods,” growled the
archfiend in the middle.

Kara immediately took him to be their
commander. His voice thundered and cracked, and she felt it
resonate inside her core. But she met his stare and wouldn’t look
away. It was stupid, she knew, but right now she didn’t care.

Shouting erupted from below the ledge where
the archfiend had been watching. They were screams, and they
definitely weren’t the screams of demons.

She turned to look, but Salthazar backhanded
her.

“Lord Beelzebub told you to kneel,” ordered
Salthazar.

Her cheek seared in pain, but she wouldn’t
kneel. She stood her ground and challenged them to make her
kneel.

Beelzebub looked furious, but Kara didn’t
alter her stone-cold expression.

Salthazar cursed, and then he kicked her
feet from under her. Kara went down hard in a tangle of her limbs
and wings.

“Bow to your new masters, darling,” hissed
Salthazar.

Then he added, very low, so that only she
could her, “Because if you don’t, we’re both dead.”

Kara didn’t care about the demon lord or
these giant scary archfiends. She stood up stubbornly, her chin
high in defiance, and said, “I don’t kneel to demons.”

The archfiends shouted and pounded their
fists on their thrones. They bared their black pointy teeth in
feral snarls. The shadows around their thrones darkened until the
entire mountain went dark, and the air burned hot and smelled of
sulfur.

Beelzebub raised his hand.

“You insult us gravely,” said the archfiend.
“We are your gods. We created you! And you dare to insult us? Is
this how you repay those who have given you more power than any
other worldly creature?”

It all made sense now. These were the
creatures behind her mutation. They were the ones who had destroyed
her spirit. She would never thank them for what they had done to
her. They had destroyed her.

Kara stood with her chin in the air.

The archfiend examined her face and her
wings. A frown materialized on his pale brow.

“You should have been fully changed by
now.”

“Glad to disappoint you—”

One of the high demons punched her in the
stomach.

She groaned and then straightened very
slowly. She made a mental note to kill the demon once her bonds
were free.

“Something is slowing the process down,”
said the dark god. “Perhaps we overlooked something. Perhaps it’ll
just take a little longer until you become—”

“A demon like them?”

Kara directed her bound hands at the
creatures standing next to the thrones.

“I’d rather you’d kill me right now. You
have your escorts and your bodyguards. You don’t need me.”

She could see that Salthazar looked
frightened, but she couldn’t tell whether it was fear for her, or
fear for himself.

“If my lord will permit me,” said the demon
creature that she’d recognized from the woods.

Beelzebub gave a slight nod, and the
creature turned to Kara.

“
We
,” he raised his arms to indicate
that he meant the other beings next to him, “are
not
demons,
girl. We’re much more complex and stronger than mere demons. We
outrank them. We are superior to all lesser creatures. We are
fiends.”

Salthazar’s expression darkened.

Kara shrugged. “Demons…fiends…I don’t care.
To me, you’re all the same. Evil.”

She glared at the fiend who had injected
her.

“But you…you’re the worst.” She tried to
free her wings, but they were held tight. “You did this to me.”

“I’m called Betaazu—”

“There are a few names I’d like to call
you.”

Betaazu didn’t flinch. His face was as blank
as the stone floor. He made a move toward her, but he halted at the
archfiends’ glare.

“Wait,” said Beelzebub, “she might still be
useful in her angel body. Let’s not spoil her just yet. I’m
curious.”

Lord Beelzebub was silent for a moment. He
seemed to be thinking. He fiddled with the globe in his hand, and
then he turned his eyes on Kara.

Something moved in her peripheral vision.
Three giant knights had appeared quickly and silently behind her,
and now they sat on their great steeds, expressionless beneath
their metal helmets, just like their creators.
How could she
have not seen them arrive
? They were enormous.