Mortal (8 page)

All except for one. They
raced towards the soft yellow light that emanated from a shop
nestled between
Mario’s all you can eat
Pizzeria
and
One-eye Bill’s Bakery
. As she
staggered forward, Kara turned—her heart skipped.

The hound demons were feet away. Their
putrid hot breath made her gag. She lost her footing and tripped.
In an instant the stranger grabbed her jacket and pulled her up
just as a giant claw slashed so near her face she could smell its
stink of rotten flesh.

The stranger pushed Kara forward, to
protect her with his body.

He turned to face the
demons.

He hit the first one between the eyes
with a powerful blow, and the beast fell to the side—only to be
replaced by another larger one. Its sharp fangs snapped towards his
face and the tentacles on its head lashed out at him like a nest of
hungry snakes. He screamed and when he pulled the barbed tentacle
from his neck, brilliant light seeped from the gash on his
skin.

Kara was breathing hard. She heard a
grunt and turned to see rows of pointy teeth that glimmered in the
dark like the jaws of a great white shark. Red eyes glowered with
hatred. Kara was staring at death. Instinctively, she kicked out
with her leg and managed to make crunch her boots into its
head.

The creature howled and leaped for her
throat—

The front door of
Jim’s Old Bookstore
exploded open.

Mr. Patterson charged madly into the
street with two glowing crystal balls the size of grapefruits in
his hands. He whipped them hard towards the demon hounds, one after
another, like a baseball pitcher. The stranger pulled Kara down,
and the crystals soared inches above their heads.

The ground shook. Thunder and
lightning cackled overhead, and an intense white light illuminated
the street.

The demon hounds’ bodies blazed in
white fire. The creatures tore at their own skin, howling. And then
they dissolved and the fire subsided. Except for the piles of ashes
on the white snow, the street was deserted. The hounds were
destroyed.

Kara stood up on shaky legs—amazed she
could still stand. She held the cramp at her side. Her throat
burned with every intake of air, and she choked and coughed as she
fought for air. She wiped her wet face with the sleeve of her
jacket.

"Filthy creatures! How dare you show
yourselves on my street! Go back to the Netherworld!" spat Mr.
Patterson.

He paced around the street, kicking up
snow as he went.

"And don’t ever think of
coming back, you hear? I’m warning you, keep your
dogs
on a leash! The
light will always prevail! Darkness will never conquer the
light!"

Kara had no idea who he was ranting at
out there in his Hawaiian shirt and green Bermuda
shorts.

Mr. Patterson turned and beamed at
Kara and the stranger.

"Ah! Finally, there you
are. You’re a half hour late. I was beginning to worry. Messy
business this is, sending hound demons in the
streets—
my
street.
Dark days are coming, mark my words—I have seen it. We mustn’t
linger, there are worse things than hound demons out tonight. Come
inside, quickly."

He waddled past them hurriedly,
mumbling to himself and then disappeared through the front door of
his shop.

"Mr. Patterson?" Kara watched her boss
disappear behind the door.

She tensed, a cold shiver on the back
of her neck. The stranger was staring at her like she was some sort
of experiment gone wrong.

"So...this is your safe house? Is this
for real? I work here!"

"Come on," he said. "We’ll explain
everything to you inside."

Before she could argue that she wasn’t
going in until he explained himself, the guy turned and pushed open
the front door. Curiosity and the fear of more hound demons got the
best of her. As she stepped across the doormat she could hear
muffled voices. Wind chimes sang faintly from above the front door
as she pushed in.

Jim’s Old Bookstore
was in its usual borderline—hoarding state. The
air smelled like a mixture of old glue and mildew, and the single
flickering light bulb on the loose wire in the center of the shop
illuminated the dust particles like miniature snowflakes. Crooked
stacks of books teetered perilously in piles that went all the way
up to the ceiling.

Mr. Patterson stood behind a glass
case on the right side of the shop, frantically polishing a crystal
ball as if it were stained, and he couldn’t get it out no matter
how much he buffed it.

Movement in the back of the store
caught Kara’s eye. A girl around her age emerged from behind a
bookshelf. She looked like a combat elf, with sharp features and a
short purple pixie-like haircut. She wore a purple bomber-style
jacket, black cargo pants and matching purple boots.

A shy, nerdy-looking boy
with glasses followed closely behind her. He fidgeted nervously and
eyed everything in the shop with great interest. He was dressed in
the same military-style black clothes, and finished the look with a
green T-shirt that read,
Nerds
rule!
Their skin gave off a subtle glow,
just like the stranger’s.

The girl came skipping
towards Kara. "So—how does it feel? Are you filled with
disgustingly
sappy mortal
emotions? Are you all giddy inside? Do you feel like crying all the
time? God, I miss a good cry. Is it different from when you’re in
an M-suit? I bet it is."

The girl smiled, her large green eyes
sparkled like giant emeralds.

Kara stepped away from the
girl.

"You’re an angel, too—aren’t you? And
him," she said, pointing a shaking finger at the boy.

It was warm inside but somehow she was
still shaking. She wrapped her arms around herself. Why were there
angels in Mr. Patterson’s bookstore?

She watched as the girl and the
stranger who called himself David exchanged a worried
look.

"She doesn’t remember anything," he
told them. "It didn’t work."

His face was deflated, and he kept
glancing at Kara as though she might fall to pieces at any moment.
She felt as if she had just walked in on a private conversation,
everyone knew what the subject in question was—except her. It
annoyed her a little.

"But they told us it would work on
her?" said the boy with the glasses. "This doesn’t make
sense—oracles don’t usually get anything wrong?"

The girl examined Kara
closer.

"Nothing, really? You don’t know who I
am?" she asked Kara, and then she lowered her voice, as if somehow
that would help her remember. "It’s me...Jenny, your gal pal. I was
the first GA to greet you on your very first day at CDD. Don’t you
remember?"

Kara shook her head.

"Never—seen—you—before—in—my—life,"
she said.

Kara was cold—her teeth chattered
together. Her nose began to run, and she wished she had a
Kleenex.

"Oh dear," said Mr.
Patterson.

He placed his crystal gently beneath
his glass counter and made his way towards them. His bare feet
slapped the wood floors, and his large footprints smeared the top
layer of grime. "Now we’re in a pickle."

"You think? You oracles told us that
it would work. Obviously, it didn’t." The strange David guy paced
around the room in a rage and punched the nearest bookshelf. It
wavered and a selection of books banged to the floor.

Mr. Patterson ignored the guy’s
tantrum and clasped Kara’s hands into his. His eyebrows shot up.
"Dear me, your hands are cold as ice!"

"I lost my mitts," said Kara grumpily.
"My mom knitted them for me." Her throat throbbed and her eyes
began to burn.

She hated herself for forgetting about
her mom. Her mother still needed medication—she had to get out of
here. She forced herself not to think of her mother. She didn’t
want to cry in front of these strangers.

Mr. Patterson smiled kindly. "Well,
let me fetch you a cup of hot chocolate to warm you up. And if I’m
not mistaken, I think you’ve left a pair of mittens here. Just a
second dear."

"I’d like that, thank you," said
Kara.

Mr. Patterson disappeared behind his
counter, clicked on a microwave, and returned moments later with a
cup of hot chocolate and a pair of grey and black wool
mitts.

Kara wrapped her stiff fingers around
the warm cup. She took a sip. The hot chocolate warmed her and
soothed her throat. It rejuvenated her.

"So that memory-charm thing
didn’t work, then, huh," said Jenny looking worried. "That’s a real
bummer. They said they could only do it once—so what are we going
to do? Ariel told us that Kara was the only one going on the job as
a mortal. It’s not like
we
could do it?"

"It’s much worse than
that," said the stranger David angrily. "Somehow, she’s attracting
more demons than before. That pack of hound demons nearly finished
us. Whatever the oracles did to her, they marked her as an easy
target. It’s like she has a sign on her forehead that reads,
free soul for demons—come and get
it.
" He turned to Mr. Patterson and his
expression darkened.

Mr. Patterson frowned. His
eyes disappeared into his wrinkles. "Oh, dear, I’m afraid we had
not thought about that. If you’re right, then she’s tainted—in more
than one way. Her
true
self is exposed."

"Exposed?" Kara watched the scene
unfold like a miniseries on television except that it was about
her!

"Like a guardian without an M-suit,"
said Mr. Patterson matter of factly.

Jenny’s jaw dropped. "A skinned
chicken. Now that sucks."

The stranger David pulled at his hair.
"I should have never let her do this! I should have known it
wouldn’t have worked! The legion has always used her to their
advantage. And now she’s as good as—"

"As what?" said Kara,
"...dead?"

She stared at the guy, challenging him
to speak his mind. He opened his mouth, but no words came out, then
he looked away. Something about his nervous expression made her
uncomfortable. Could there be some truth to what he was
saying?

"Oh, man," the nerdy guy with the
glasses rubbed his forehead. "How is she supposed to complete her
mission like this? She doesn’t even know who we are. We should head
back to CDD and brief Ariel. I mean—we’re stuck aren’t we? It’s not
like we can move forward with the mission now, with her like
that."

"This royally sucks." Jenny threw
herself in a chair and crossed her arms over her chest.

"Mr. Patterson," said Kara as she
edged into the group. "What’s going on? Do you know these
people?"

She wanted to say angels, but she felt
it would just be too weird asking him that.

Mr. Patterson sighed. "Yes, dear, I
do. And so do you, but you just don’t remember."

"But I don’t." Kara shook her head and
did her best to hide her annoyance. "I’ve never seen them before. I
think I would remember them—they glow in the dark."

"See? What do we do now?" shouted the
stranger David, before Kara could ask another question. "We’re
finished! There’s no way we can get to the witch now. Let’s face
it, the mission’s over. We’re done."

Kara frowned as she
repeated the word
witch
in her mind. What was that about?

"It is not as bad as it
seems. We foresaw a few
flaws
in the procedure," Mr. Patterson twirled his white
beard between his fingers. He was silent for a moment then said, "I
believe she just needs a little
push
—in order for her memories to
return. But we must move quickly before the projection wears off
completely."

The stranger David stopped dead in his
tracks. "What kind of push? You better not mess this up more. I’m
afraid I might go a little crazy in your store."

With a hop in his step, Mr. Patterson
scurried over behind his counter. He pulled the sliding top across
and grabbed the largest of his crystal balls. As he held it up, it
glistened in the light like a miniature moon. He grinned like a
schoolboy.

"We need to jump—start her
brain."

Kara’s mouth fell open. "You want to
do what to my brain?"

Mr. Patterson suddenly looked a lot
like a miniature Dr. Frankenstein—he had a crazed mad-scientist
look in his eye.

"I don’t think I want you to do
anything to my brain," she continued, "I like my brain the way it
is, thank you."

The tiny old man hurried over,
cradling his crystal ball like a newborn child. "It won’t hurt,
dear, I promise." His eyes widened. "Actually, it might sting just
a little—"

"It’ll bring back her memories,"
interrupted stranger David, "you’re quite sure it’ll work? Are you
a hundred percent positive, old man?"