Seals (8 page)

I
t began as a
tickle in the darkness inside her, and it developed into a sudden
surge of power.

Kara broke through the web of tendrils and
managed to free her wings and her arms. She hacked and hacked with
her sword and cut herself free.

The knight stared at her, and she recognized
the surprise in his soulless, red eyes. She wasn’t as weak as it
had first thought. She used the knight’s hesitation to her
advantage.

Faster than she thought possible, Kara
rocketed in the air and ploughed into the knight, putting all the
weight and force she could into her attack. Crazed like a rabid
animal, she thought only of death. She would kill the creature that
had harmed her friends…that had harmed her David.

It worked.

She pushed her blade into the creature’s
left bicep and used her body weight to slice into its flesh. Black
blood splattered onto her face. But at the same moment she sliced
the knight’s exposed flesh—
she
cried out in pain.

Kara yanked her blade out and looked down at
her own arm. She had a deep laceration on her left bicep,
exactly
where she cut the creature.

She hesitated in confusion for a moment and
looked up at the knight. It stared back at her and smiled evilly,
exposing its mouth full of black needle-like teeth. Then it
backhanded her with a brutal blow that sent her flying.

She lay sprawled in pain. She was dazed and
unable to wrap her head around what had just happened.

Before she had a chance to gather herself
again, she felt strong arms lift her to her feet. It was David.

She whimpered slightly in her confusion.
David looked a little disheveled, but otherwise he bore no signs of
Famine’s wrath. His handsome face was back to normal. She collected
her wits and inspected the others. They appeared to be unscathed
and safe, for the moment.

“What just happened?”

David let go of Kara and looked from Kara to
the creature.

“I think…I think I injured it. I stabbed it,
and it broke the connection somehow.”

Kara’s sudden fit of stupid-fury had worked.
But she didn’t have time get into the details. Her friends were
safe. She could work with that. She turned around slowly and faced
the knight again.

She gave him a giant smile and challenged
him, “Is that all you’ve got, knight of the apocalypse?”

She did her best to hide the terror she
felt. Something had happened between her and the knight, something
that felt wrong and terrifying.

She looked at the knight’s wound as she
brushed her fingers over the corresponding wound on her arm.

How was this possible
?
What did it
mean
?
Why wasn’t the knight retaliating
?

The knight had a clear shot now. It only had
to swing its giant sword, and she would be sliced in half. But the
knight had a strange calmness in its eyes, like it knew something.
But what
?

Something
had definitely passed
between them.

Kara steadied herself and resisted the urge
to jump in again. She hated the knight more than ever now, but she
didn’t want to have any sort of
connection
to this demon.
She wanted to gouge its eyes out, to make it stop watching her. She
couldn’t explain it, but she knew the knight knew exactly what she
was thinking. It
knew
what had happened.

If they were connected, what did that really
mean? If she killed the knight, would she die, too?

David was watching her closely. If she
weren’t careful, he would figure out that she and the knight had
identical wounds, that somehow they were linked.

“What?” she taunted the knight in spite of
her fears.

“You scared now? You should be. Didn’t think
I could get that close, did you? Next time, it’ll be your
throat.”

“Kara, what are you doing?” hissed
David.

“Making it angry.”

“It was already angry.”

She took a step closer. She hated this
creature for the fear it caused inside her. If she were indeed
connected to this monster, she would have to cut it from her.

Angling her body as she had trained, she
readied to push off hard and attack again. It didn’t matter if she
and this thing were bonded somehow. She would cut off its head.

As her hatred pulsed inside her body, Kara
leaped into the air.

The knight opened its mouth

She halted.

It opened its jaws abnormally wide until its
chin rested on the back of its steed. Kara could hear humming
emanating from somewhere deep inside the creature’s throat. It
sounded like thousands of drums beating.

And just when things couldn’t get any worse,
masses of locusts shot out of its maw like bullets from a machine
gun.

The locusts swarmed and circled the
guardians. But just when Kara thought they were going to attack
again, the locusts separated into groups. The locusts in each group
drew themselves together, and Kara could see that they were
transforming themselves into something. They were forming humanoid
figures. Locust-men!

“What in the souls do you call those?” Jenny
swung her bow over her shoulder and nocked an arrow.

“I don’t think there’s an actual word for
those,” cried Peter. He parried with his blade dodging invisible
blows.

“I don’t care what they’re called, as long
as we can
kill
them.” Ashley advanced with her sword clasped
securely.

“I’m with Ashley.” David gave Kara a
sidelong glance.

But Kara wasn’t watching the bug-men. She
was glaring at the knight.

“Coward!” she bellowed. “Fight us! Fight
me!”

Fury fuelled her. She could hardly see the
knight, who appeared to be hiding behind the wall of bug-men.
Perhaps it knew she was the only one who could kill it. Maybe it
even
feared
her. She needed to cut her connection with this
monster and find out, once and for all, if she’d kill herself in
the process.

There was no time to think.

The locust-men steadied themselves and then
charged.

“Get ready!” was all Kara could voice before
a locust-man launched itself at her. With a beat of her wings she
leaped from the ground, but not fast enough.

The locust-man caught her leg, and with an
incredible force for a thing made of just insects, it yanked her
down.

Kara beat her wings feverishly, but another
locust creature grabbed her other leg. Their grip was like
thousands of needles pricking into her skin. The creatures tossed
her sprawling to the ground.

They came at her again, but Kara was already
up.

“You’re going to pay for that.”

She launched herself at a locust-man,
spinning and driving a sidekick in the creature’s chest. The
locust-man exploded in a stink of vomit and sewage.

But the locusts reformed, and the locust-man
came at her again. She kicked out hard and landed another blow,
this time to the creature’s head. Again the locusts shattered, but
as quickly as they had split apart they reformed, as though nothing
had happened.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a
glimpse of the knight. Famine sat on his emaciated steed and
watched them with a bored and irritated expression, as though he
already knew that he and his insect army would win.

Kara cursed loudly. If she wanted to be a
normal angel again, if she wanted to stop her transformation, she
had
to stop the knight from breaking the seal. But she had
no idea how she was going to do that. Great.

She soared up into the air and hovered for a
moment as she tried to figure out what to do next. She pulled her
soul blade from the folds of her jacket. It was a guess really, as
she didn’t know if it would affect the creature, but she had to try
something.

A locust-man cocked its head, as though it
was considering whether or not the blade was a threat. For a moment
she thought she saw it flash a smile.

The creature charged at her like a rocket.
She swerved and slashed across its rippling insect chest with the
tip of her blade. Handfuls of locusts fell from their humanoid
host, like burned skin peeling off a body. A screeching buzz
sounded from the creature, as though it screamed in pain.

Kara could see that David was holding his
own against two locust-men, slashing at them with a soul blade in
each hand. But each time he drove his blade into a creature’s
chest, although the locusts exploded into clouds of swarming
insects, they reformed within a few seconds.

Jenny and Ashley weren’t doing any
better.

Ashley spun and sliced skillfully with her
sword, slicing two creatures at once, and Jenny nocked arrow after
arrow and hit her mark every time. But the creatures always
reformed.

She spotted Peter and was surprised as he,
too, held his own. But then two of the locust-men ganged up on him,
and he disappeared under flailing, insect claws.
Peter
!

She made to swoop to Peter’s aid, but
something pinned her wings from behind.

She smelled the bile and heard the buzzing
wings of a locust-man as it pulled at her wings. She cried out in
pain as some locusts broke free and tore at her M-5 suit. She
thrashed out with her blade but missed. The locust man held her
wings tight, and she plummeted from the sky.

Kara hit the ground hard, but luckily she
had squished the locust-creature in the process.

She rolled and pushed herself up. But just
as she almost smiled at her luck, another locust-man punched her in
the face. Her head snapped back. White lights exploded behind her
eyelids. She staggered, and another blow hit her in the stomach.
Locusts scrambled into her eyes, blinding her. Her head snapped
around as another blow caught her on the side of the head.

From the corner of her eye she saw the
knight open its jaws. Another swarm of locusts flew out, and fifty
more locust-men formed and attacked.

She leaped at her attacker, only to be
grabbed from the back again. A second locust-man leaned in, smiled
a contorted locust grin, pulled back its arm, and curled it into a
fist. Then it punched Kara in the stomach, like a shot from a
cannon. She felt her angel shell shatter as the creature’s fist
punctured her stomach.

The creature pulled back its hand, and light
seeped from the deep wound in her chest. Even before she gasped at
the piercing pain, she felt the scurrying and digging of tiny feet
inside her body. The locusts had infected her.

“Kara!” she heard David shout,
terrified.

But she hardly heard him. Her own terror
took had overtaken her.

She felt the insects spreading as they
multiplied inside her. Kara screamed in utter terror as the locusts
began to feast on her angel essence. She staggered as more locusts
crawled around her face, and she felt herself weakened by their
poison. She was vaguely aware that three more locust-men had begun
to assault her.

Dimly, she heard Jenny cry out.

Then she heard a scream that she recognized
as Ashley’s.
Were they being infested as well
? Three
locust-men held Ashley down, and Kara could see Ashley’s angel
essence pouring out from many tiny cuts.

Jenny was on her knees, screaming and crying
as she punched and slashed at the five locust-men that came at
her.

Kara was overwhelmed. They couldn’t keep
fighting like this. She couldn’t see or hear any signs of David or
Peter.

David…

She felt her own strength evaporate. Her
legs shook, and she collapsed. The locusts were inside her, eating
her essence and spreading their poison. She couldn’t move or fight.
It had happened so fast. And there was nothing she could do but lie
down and wait to die.

Chapter
7

H
er vision had
blurred, and she was about to pass out when she felt the ripple of
a little spark inside her. At first she thought the locusts had
finally reached her soul, but then she felt it again. This was
different, like an electrical charge, like a battery being
recharged—her battery.

It was like her body had turned on its
self-defense mode, and even though she had not called upon it, the
darkness inside began to assert itself. It wouldn’t let her
die.

Her body jerked as the cold, rippling
darkness sent shockwaves through her. Her wings tingled. Her cold
power flowed more forcefully. Her fingers curled, clawing into the
dirt. The power terrified her, but it was also intoxicating. She
lost control to the dark force so quickly that she wasn’t even
aware what had happened. The darkness churned inside her, and her
fingers pulsed with a new energy. Strong energy.

It was the same sensation of dark power she
had felt before, that wild forbidden power that had whispered to
her and teased her. It wanted her to succumb to it, to set it free.
She feared and embraced it as she felt it pulse from the tip of her
wings and through her body.
And although she knew
she’d be lost to it now that she couldn’t control the force that
was taking her over, she didn’t care.

It
had saved her. And now she would
save
her
friends.

Kara groaned, and as she stood up hundreds
of dead locusts poured out of the deep wound in her stomach like
waste. Black veins spread over her chest and pulled her wound
together, stitching it up like medical thread until she was
completely healed. Except for the hole in her shirt and the black
veins that covered her upper body, it was as though the locust-man
had never punched her at all. The last locust scurried over her
face and tried to pry her lips open, but she bit it in half and
spit out the bug’s guts.