Seals

by Kim Richardson

  The angel’s lips trembled, “I—forgive—you.”

  The angel looked at Death straight in the face and smiled. And then his eyes rolled back into his head.

  The angel’s limp body was in Death’s grip, and she leaned in to devour his soul. She opened her mouth, longing to taste its purity and power—

  But then it recoiled.

  Something wasn’t right.

  Death had sensed it before, but what was it? Why would this miserable angel forgive her for devouring his soul? Was this a trick?

  The angel was unconscious and close to death. Death had already eaten bits of his essence.

  Why did that smile mean something?

  The warm light pulsed inside Death with more urgency now. She staggered and stepped away from the angel. Confused, Death stared at her hands. She didn’t know why she had let it go.

  “What are you doing, Death?” roared the archfiend. “Kill it. I command you to finish him off. Kill the angel now!”

  But Death just stood there, staring at the young angel’s face. There was something about his face…

  Death knew that face. The face meant something to her.

  “Kill it now! Take the soul! I am your god. You will obey, or I will destroy you faster than I created you.” The archfiend was furious.

  But Death felt compelled to look at the pained face of the young angel.

  The light in her intensified. The cold pit in Death’s soul began to warm.

  White light and pain shot through Death’s head. She couldn’t move or think. The darkness fought with the light inside her.

  The golden, warm pulsing light was winning.

  Images and memories, sensations and emotions were all mixing up, matching up, latching on to each other, and splitting off from each other inside her. The darkness struggled with the invasive warm light. The light inside Death and was looking for something, searching for someone…

  Warm light suddenly pulsed through Death and shone into her cold darkness. She stared at her illuminated body. The black veins retreated from her skin and disappeared. Her body throbbed with a hot, golden energy that must always have always been inside her. And now it was unleashed.

  The wild, golden light warmed the darkness inside her, until nothing remained of the cold, damp, dark power.

  Kara stared at the golden power that danced around her palms. She spread her brilliant, pulsing, golden butterfly wings, looked up at the archfiend and smiled.

  “I’m back.”

  Chapter 24

  Elemental

  Kara did two things immediately.

  She rushed over to David to make sure he was still alive, and at the same time, she shot two beams of golden light into the two higher demons that held Jenny. They burst into clouds of dust.

  Golden sparks of wild energy danced around her body. Her skin shone like it had been painted with liquid gold. She radiated power, elemental power, and she felt stronger than she’d ever felt before.

  Kara turned to face the archfiend. She raised her hands, and her elemental power glowed with fierce energy.

  “Impossible.” The archfiend female staggered back, confused.

  “It’s not possible. Simply not possible. You are the fourth knight! You have the darkness in your essence. It cannot be defeated. We studied for thousands of years to make your ingredients perfect—to put the exact amount, the exact percentage—to make your change irreversible. How can this be?”

  Kara moved slowly, her anger boiling inside her and ready to pop.

  “Guess your calculations were wrong, speck.”

  She glared at the real monster, the monster that had tried to change her into a beast. She suffered from the guilt she felt about what she had done as Death. She could never undo what she’d done, and that would haunt her forever.

  But she could make things right again.

  She remembered the white oracle’s prophecy.

  The only way to stop the archfiends is with the demise of the knight.

  Kara was that knight. She realized that she was the one that had needed to die. The oracle’s prophecy seemed to have been correct.

  And now she only needed to nudge it along.

  She looked the archfiend in the face.

  “You’re going to pay for this and for the lives of all the angels you took. You don’t belong in this world, and you never have. You don’t respect it. You don’t love it, and you don’t deserve it. You deserve to be sent back to your cage.”

  The archfiend’s face twisted in rage.

  “Never. Never will I set foot in that…that dungeon.”

  The archfiend laughed.

  “What? You think you can cage us up again? You? A little angel speck? Don’t be foolish. Even the best of your kind weren’t able to vanquish us. What makes you so sure that you can do it?”

  It was Kara’s turn to smile. “I’ll figure out a way. Trust me.”

  Kara felt the golden ring on her finger and rolled it gently. She could feel the reverberations in the energy fields that surrounded the Earth.

  She also could sense the thousands of demons that were slowly making their way toward her.

  The archfiend saw Kara’s shoulders tense.

  “There is still time to fix this little…hiccup.”

  Black mist coiled around the archfiend’s hands and fingers.

  “We will not go back. I will not go back. I will find a way to change you back, to put you right again.”

  “I’m perfectly fine the way I am, thank you.”

  Kara felt a shift in the air, and even before she saw them, she knew that all the other archfiends were coming. She looked to the sky. The dark web had vanished. All the creatures of the Netherworld stopped to watch as the other five archfiends landed next to the female.

  The faces of all the archfiends were disturbingly beautiful. But it was a cold and intense beauty. She sensed the evil in that beauty now. They stared at Kara, and she could see the wild fury in their cat-like eyes. Oh boy, were they angry with her.

  She gave them her best smile, a smile that David would be proud of.

  She watched as Jenny knelt beside David and was surprised and relieved when he sat up. The color had returned to his dazzling blue eyes.

  He smiled at her, and she felt a pang in her chest. She had almost killed him. Well, Death had. She couldn’t think about that now.

  The air moved around her, and Beelzebub landed in front of Kara with a flap of his great wings.

  He inspected her slowly, and then his voice boomed, “Tilia! What is the meaning of this? Where is Death?”

  The female archfiend held her head high. “I’m…I’m not sure. The creature just slipped away, vanished, and left this one instead. I can’t explain it. Perhaps there was a mistake with the extract—”

  “There was no mistake,” growled Beelzebub. “Not in the extract.”

  He turned to Kara. “She did this. Somehow, she destroyed the essence, our essence.”

  “What of the seals?” asked one of the male archfiends? “Has the final seal broken?”

  “It hasn’t,” interrupted Kara. All the archfiends turned their attention on her. “It’s not broken. You failed. And now it’s only a matter of time before you return to your cages forever.”

  “I will destroy you!” Tilia flicked her wrists and beams of shadow shot straight for Kara.

  But Kara was ready, and in a flash of golden light, she darted out of the way. The shadows merely scorched the ground where Kara had been.

  Kara grinned as she looked into Tilia’s surprised face.

  But then Tilia’s surprised look turned into a grin of her own, and she unleashed her fury again, but this time at David.

  But Kara was already moving. She shot into the air faster than she’d ever moved before and gathered David and Jenny into her arms. She protected them with her body as the beams of darkness hit.

  Although Kara yelled in pain as the darkness coiled around her, and the feeling of death tried to ent
er her again, she did not succumb to it. Her elemental power broke free of the tendrils of darkness and blasted them into tiny particles.

  Kara turned from her friends very slowly. She was trembling with uncontrollable anger. She was going to rip them to shreds.

  But then she saw something in their eyes, something that told her that she needn’t worry.

  She could see fear in Beelzebub’s perfect face.

  Kara knew that he sensed the change. He sensed that his time left on Earth was short.

  The archfiends began to shimmer. Their bodies were fading away like ghosts.

  Kara knew what she needed to do. Her elemental power blazed around her like a glowing star. Let them all tremble in fear of the monster that they had woken. Kara soared into the sky in a blaze of golden light.

  She spotted the three knights hiding nearby and saw their recognition of her power in their eyes as she neared them. They brandished their weapons and pressed their steeds toward her. But it didn’t matter. She was light, and they were darkness. They didn’t belong.

  She screamed her rage, for the all the mortals they had killed. “Murderers!”

  Kara became a whirlwind of black shadows and wings. She cut through the knights as though they were mere paper cutouts. With a last flicker, their bodies turned into dust, and the knights shimmered and disappeared.

  Suddenly the ground shook below her feet, and she could hear screaming. But it wasn’t angels crying for help, this was something else.

  Kara glided back to David and Jenny. She could see it had already begun.

  A beam of fire erupted from the bowels of the earth, shot up through the air, and tore a hole in the sky. It was just like the rift she had seen before. It wavered and shimmered. It looked as if it were waiting for something.

  Then the archfiends cried out. Their bodies wavered and started to fall apart. An invisible force was pulling at them. One by one the archfiends were sucked into the portal and disappeared.

  Beelzebub grabbed on to a large boulder and yelled at Kara. “I will return! I will destroy you! I will destroy you all!”

  But suddenly his body disintegrated, and he was swallowed up by the portal, just like the others.

  The archfiends had been beaten.

  Cheers rose up, and Kara turned to see the smiling faces of the angels that had stayed behind and survived.

  With grim determination, the angels unleashed their fury on the demons.

  It wasn’t like anything she’d ever seen. They fought with purpose and ferocity. They fought like they were going to win.

  A battle cry sounded, and Kara saw Metatron charge into combat, slicing and dicing his way through the hordes of demons.

  “Kara! Kara! Kara!” The angels shouted her name as a battle cry. Now they had something to fight for.

  Without their endless supply of power, the demons retreated and vanished into the cliffs and back into the dark depths of the volcano, back to their Netherworld.

  The angels had won the war.

  Chapter 25

  A New Dawn

  The cheering lasted all through the night after the last of the demons had disappeared. The angels celebrated their victory. The mortal world and Horizon were safe.

  Although her M-suit was on its last legs, Kara stayed behind. She didn’t want to go back to Horizon. Not just yet.

  She stood on the spot where she’d last seen the archfiends. The angry gray clouds slowly dissipated to reveal a night sky that glimmered with stars. Memories of what she’d done in the name of Death pulled at her heart. These were things that she’d have to live with. There was no other choice.

  The thought of losing Mr. Patterson pained her the most.

  “What are you thinking about?” David moved next to her.

  Kara gave him a slow, bitter smile. “I can’t believe I nearly killed you.”

  “Nah, you didn’t. Not even close,” he teased. “I was just pretending. I was doing the gentleman thing and making you think you were winning, when in fact you weren’t.”

  Kara’s laugh died in her throat. She looked as if she were overwhelmed with sadness.

  “Tell me. What’s the matter? What’s in that head of yours that’s putting on such a sad face?”

  With a trembling voice, Kara recounted the events that had led to the oracle’s death.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” David said gently. She couldn’t look him in the eye.

  “You can’t blame yourself for this. He wouldn’t want you to.”

  That part was true. Kara knew that Mr. Patterson wouldn’t have wanted her to feel guilty about his death. He had chosen to come with her, even though she had asked him not to.

  Kara looked up into David’s eyes.

  “Are oracles like angels? Will his soul live on?”

  “I’m not sure, but something tells me that they do. He’s probably back in Horizon waiting for you.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Kara smiled briefly. “Most of this was my fault you know, whether you want to admit it or not. They used me to do horrible things—”

  “That you had no control over.” David grabbed her shoulders and made her face him.

  “It wasn’t you. The Kara I know would never hurt anyone. I know you’re stubborn, and most of the time you think you’re right—and you are sometimes—but not with this. What the archfiends did was not your fault.”

  Even though she knew David was right, it would take her a long time to come to terms with what she’d done. David couldn’t possibly understand. But she loved him for trying to keep her spirits up.

  David…

  She’d almost killed him, and yet here he was, full of admiration and with love sparkling in his eyes. She trembled with the temptation to pull him into her and kiss him.

  “Here she is,” said a familiar voice.

  Kara’s spirit rose at the sight of Jenny, Peter and Ashley.

  “Thank the souls, you’re all safe.”

  Kara’s troubles washed away momentarily as she took in the sight of her friends, alive and well. She threw her arms around them and squeezed them in a hug, ignoring Peter’s protests and pulling him in, too.

  Finally she let them go. “I’m so glad to see you guys. You have no idea. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing any of you. You’re all so very special to me.”

  “You’re special to us too, Kara,” said Peter, but he avoided her eyes.

  “Well, you’ll be surprised to know that a lot more of us did survive.” Ashley gave a wave of her sword. It was still caked with dried demon blood.

  “There were casualties, of course, but more injuries than deaths. It’s a miracle I think.”

  “I don’t know much about miracles, but it’s a relief to see you safe.” Kara’s chest swelled as she watched their happy faces.

  “We all saw what you did, Kara.” Peter straightened his shattered glasses on his nose, and Kara wondered why he even bothered to wear them. “You saved us. You did it.”

  “We all did,” said Kara, a little embarrassed. “This is everyone’s victory. We all played an important part in it.”

  “Maybe,” said David. “But you most of all.” He caught her eye, and she couldn’t look away.

  “Well, I told you she was a fairy.” Jenny’s eyes brightened at the sight of Kara’s wings. “A golden fairy.”

  Everyone burst out laughing, including Kara. Her friends’ laughter was the most beautiful thing she’d ever heard. She never wanted it to end.

  “Truthfully, I don’t know how long I’ll have them.” Kara had already sensed that her golden wings, like weights, were gradually lifting from her shoulders.

  “I can’t explain it, but I feel like they’re leaving me. Like I won’t have them for much longer.”

  “Well, that’s too bad because we could have used them.” The archangel Ariel walked slowly toward them. Her metal armor was stained with black blood, and her grin was fierce.

  “You never cease to amaze me, Kara.” Ariel beamed. “Th
e legion is lucky to have you. But something tells me you’re not as thrilled as the rest of us.”

  “I did some terrible things when I was Death.”

  Ariel put a hand on her shoulder. “You just said it, as Death, not as Kara. That wasn’t you. And we can’t hold you accountable for something that horrible creature did.”

  “Told you,” whispered David.

  “Ariel’s right.” Metatron’s cigar dangled from his lips.

  Immediately Kara knew there was something different about him. His entourage was missing. Were they dead? She didn’t like the lipstick angels, but she didn’t necessarily want them dead. Well, not all of them.

  “You were possessed. You were being controlled by a demon,” continued the big archangel. “You were not yourself, and the legion doesn’t condemn angels who have been possessed. Under our laws, an angel who is not in control of their actions cannot be convicted of any crime.”

  “Am I still under arrest, though?”

  Kara had the feeling that even though they had won the war, Metatron didn’t forgive or forget easily. “For the other thing?”

  Metatron looked at Kara with a blank face.

  “In view of recent events, let’s just say the arrest warrant has been lifted.” He exhaled a cloud of gray smoke. “For now, that is.”

  Kara shot David a look and tried to control the laugh that wanted to burst from her mouth.

  But then she lost her smile and turned to Ariel.

  “What about the mortal world? All the diseases and the lands poisoned by the knights? All those sick people? What’s going to happen to them?”

  “The mortal world will heal. The crops will grow back. The animals will thrive again, and the sick will recover. It has already begun. Most mortals will not remember this experience, the oracles are already back hard at work adjusting memories and correcting lapses in time.”

  “And the archfiends?” Kara’s eyes moved to Metatron, but he only seemed interested in his cigar.

  “They used up all of their resources,” answered Ariel. “They cannot break free. I can say it with confidence. They will never break out again.”