Reapers (25 page)

Kara followed him.

“
So, what were you looking
for before? When I first got to the bookstore?”

Mr. Patterson pulled out a small white
metal box with a red cross marked on the top. He popped the lid
open and pulled out a roll of gauze.

“
Something that might help
explain what has happened to you,” said Mr. Patterson as he dressed
her wounds.

“
And did you find
it?”

“
No.”

“
What was it?”

Mr. Patterson finished tying the
bandage around Kara’s knee and looked up at her.

“
It’s a map, in a matter
of speaking. A map to help us find those with the
answers—”

David suddenly bounced into view. His
blond hair was disheveled, and he wielded a soul blade in each
hand.

“
Kara! I’m
here!”

Mr. Patterson raised an eyebrow. “So
we can see.”

Kara fluttered her wings in annoyance,
something she just realized she could do, so she did it
again.

“
David
McGowan
,” she said through gritted teeth.
“What are you doing here?”

David shrugged and looked
around.

“
I’m here to save you?” It
was more of a question than an announcement.

“
Well, we don’t need
saving, boy,” said Mr. Patterson.

“
We need answers. Answers
to all this.” He raised his arms. “Answers to
this
.” He pointed to Kara’s
wings.

“
And answers are what
we’ll get if you help me find the yellow crystal.”

He kicked and tossed fallen debris,
looking under fallen bookshelves and books.

Kara turned to David and
lowered her voice. “I told you
not
to come.”

She looked at him with a mixture of
irritation and delight; part of her was glad to see him again so
soon.

David smiled mischievously.

“
I just
love
a bossy woman. Even
when I don’t necessarily listen to her every command, I just love
the way she orders me around. I love being ordered by you. Any
requests?”

“
God, you’re so
irritating
sometimes.”

“
One of the many qualities
you love about me.”

“
Don’t flatter yourself,”
she said, but she couldn’t hide her smile. “And help us find this
thing—this yellow crystal.”

“
Found it!” Mr. Patterson
held a yellow glass sphere the size of an apple high above his
head.

David stared at the yellow
ball.

“
That’s it? This tiny
thing is what’s going to help us? A small yellow ball is going to
give us all the answers? Are you serious?”

Mr. Patterson eyed David
angrily.

“
It’s going to help
us
find
those who
have the answers we are searching for.”

Kara watched Mr. Patterson. “And who
might that be?”

Mr. Patterson scratched his
beard.

“
We need to look for the
oracle mothers.”

“
The—the
oracle mothers
?” Kara
choked on her own words. The old man had clearly gone
senile.

“
I’m surprised that you
would joke about something like that,” she said to her boss.
“You’re joking, right?”

But Mr. Patterson had gone strangely
serious. He looked sad, like something that had pained him a long
time ago was resurfacing, like an old memory had suddenly become
clear again.

Kara glanced over to David.

“
There are
female
oracles?” she
asked. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Did you know
this?”

David had a dreamy smile on his face
and said, “No, I didn’t.”

He turned to the old man and smacked
him on the arm, grinning stupidly.

“
Mr. Patterson, you old
dog. Keeping all the ladies for yourself, eh?”

Kara shifted her wings in
irritation.

She looked at Mr.
Patterson again and asked, “The oracle mothers? But I’ve never seen
any
female
oracles in Horizon. I didn’t know they even
existed.”

“
That’s because
they’re
not
in
Horizon.”

Kara imagined the oracle wives as
pudgy little women with long beards, like dwarf Mrs. Santa Clauses.
She could see them running on top of their snowy white
crystals.

Mr. Patterson held out the yellow
crystal ball.

“
I’ve been keeping this
for over three thousand years, hoping one day I might have use of
it. That I might see…”

He trailed off, but there was panic in
his look, real fear.

“
This will lead us to
them,” he said suddenly.

“
What do we do about the
key?”

Kara was worried about Peter. The last
time she had seen him he looked as if he were about to rip open his
arm and pull out the key. He had looked terrified.

“
We can’t do anything
about that now. The key is safe in Horizon with Peter, for
now.”

“
Yes, but soon the legion
will send him out to fight the reapers again,” said
David.

He had begun to feel the same sense of
urgency as Kara. “He won’t be in Horizon for very long. He’s going
to need our help.”

“
Exactly what I was
thinking,” said Kara. “Peter will be in danger as soon as he
materializes down here. The imps will be after him. We need to go
back—”

“
No.” Mr. Patterson
reached out and grabbed Kara’s arm as she started to turn around.
He squeezed it with surprising strength, the strength of a man ten
times his size. Kara realized that there was much more to these
oracles than she knew.

His eyes blazed with fierce
determination.

For the first time, Kara
felt that he really did fear her. Or at least he feared for her, or
what was going to happen to her as she
changed
.

Kara looked away. She realized that
she was using the key and Peter as an excuse to hide from the
reality of her transformation, from her wings, from it all. She was
afraid of what might happen next.

“
You were used before,
Kara, because of your unique essence,” said Mr. Patterson. “And I’m
afraid we’re facing the same thing now…or a version of the same…I
just don’t know. What I do know is that you’re being used again,
and it’s
dark
.”

He let go of Kara’s arm.

“
First, we must find
out
how
and
why
you
grew these wings. The key, the reapers, the archfiends—they’re all
connected.”

As Kara hung her head, silently
acknowledging the truth in his words, David squeezed her hand. A
silent understanding passed between them. She squeezed his hand and
smiled back, grateful that he was coming along for the ride,
grateful that he was on her side.

“
So where do we find these
oracle mothers?” asked David with a sly smile. Mr. Patterson
brought the yellow crystal to his lips and blew.

A bright light danced inside the
crystal, growing stronger and stronger until the little globe shone
like a miniature sun. He raised the luminous yellow crystal ball
over his head and said, “In Eden.”

Kara raised her hand to shield the
light from her eyes.

“
Do you mean
the
Garden of Eden?” she
asked incredulously.

But before Kara could ask any more
questions, three beams of light exploded from the tiny sun, and the
three of them vanished.

Chapter 18

Eden

Y
ellow. More yellow. Everywhere Kara looked, it was yellow.
She felt like she was floating in a giant yellow ball. She couldn’t
see David or Mr. Patterson, but she felt them, especially David.
The sensation was like when it’s dark, and you can’t see, but you
can still sense a person behind you.

She knew she was moving or
being propelled to the place Mr. Patterson called Eden. As she felt
her body tingle, the sensation reminded her of how it felt to use
vega—from Horizon to Earth. And yet it was
different
somehow. She wasn’t
exactly sure, but this time it was almost as though her body had
remained intact. She had no sense that her body and soul had
dematerialized or that it would rematerialize as it always did when
she used vega.

It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling. More
than once she thought she heard laughter that sounded very much
like David. It felt like she was floating along in a dream state,
where she could sense her body, and yet she couldn’t.

Finally she felt her feet touch solid
ground. She blinked the light from her eyes. Her vision cleared,
and she looked out over a world of green and blue.

Eden
was
a giant garden. It looked like a
paradise.

She stood in a vast meadow with
rolling green and golden hills that faded to distant mountains. A
brilliant sun hovered in a perfectly blue sky that was peppered
with white clouds.

There was a large river that came up
from the south-east and broke into four smaller rivers that
streamed with silver and gold water.

A warm breeze caressed Kara’s cheeks
and the air was thick with the rich scents of wet earth, freshly
cut grass, and lilac blooms, her mother’s favorite. It might have
smelled like spring, but it had all the mesmerizing beauty and
color of the fall. Leaves fell from red, orange, and yellow trees,
and drifted around them like multi-colored snow. Everything had
color and brilliant light that never left. It was on the trees, the
leaves, even the butterflies.

And there were animals.

Kara had never seen so many animals
all in the same place. There were birds, cats, dogs, pigs, and
galloping horses in the meadows. Wolves, lynxes, foxes, beavers and
mink prowled the rivers’ shorelines, and bears, cows, deer, and
goats wandered in the woods. And in amongst the more familiar
animals, exotic animals like lions, tigers, alligators, elephants,
giraffes, hyenas, pandas, gazelles, zebras, and wildebeest fed and
basked in the sun.

There were species she didn’t
recognize and some she had only seen on her computer. There were
thousands, probably millions of animals and insects in Eden, and
they all shared something in common. They all radiated a type of
inner light. 

Watching a long-haired orange cat
resting lazily in the grass, Kara could see the white light clearly
coming off it, as if the cat itself was a light.

Butterflies of every color fluttered
around them. Some even landed on their heads and clothes, like tiny
fairies wanting to be a nuisance. Birds flew above them, chirping
happily as they glided on a breeze.

Kara thought of her own wings. She
still had them, that part hadn’t changed. She wanted to jump up and
fly with the birds, to feel the wind on her face, to feel the wind
on her wings. She almost did, but when she caught a glimpse of
David and Mr. Patterson, she realized how foolish she was being and
stayed on firm ground…for now.

This was paradise. It was absolutely
breathtaking. Even more beautiful than the forests and mountains in
the Miracles Division, something she thought not possible. But here
it was, staring at her in the face.

“
It’s beautiful,” said
Kara finally. “It’s like an enchanted forest.”

“
It is that,” said Mr.
Patterson as he pocketed his yellow globe.

Kara had half expected to see him
appear in his gleaming silver robes and standing above his crystal
orb like the oracles in Horizon. But instead he was wearing his old
brown plaid suit, with his crystal orb nowhere in sight.

Kara knew they weren’t anywhere in the
mortal world. This realm radiated a pure light that was almost like
a soul. It was everywhere, in the trees, the grass, and the
animals.

“
This is Eden,” said the
old man.

“
It is a world between
Horizon and Earth. We’re on another plane of existence. Only
creatures of the ethereal kind can come here. And you two are the
only guardian angels ever to have set foot in Eden.”

Kara caught a glimpse of fear again in
his eyes. She couldn’t imagine why he would be afraid in a place
like this. It was so calm and peaceful. Kara felt safe
here.

David watched Kara closely.

“
I’m feeling kinda
special
right now,” he
said with a goofy smile.

He tossed Kara his spare blade. “Here,
just in case.”

Kara took it and slipped it in her
jacket pocket, although she felt that she wouldn’t need it
here.