Reapers (33 page)

Soul Guardians Book# 8

Chapter 1

Flight

H
orizon was mad.

The supernatural world that
Kara had grown to love and respect had gone off the deep end.
Making deals with the Netherworld was like asking the wolf
not
to eat the
scrumptious little rabbit. It was a contradiction. It didn’t make
sense. Horizon and the Netherworld had been at war with each other
since the beginning of time. It was the ongoing ancient battle
between good and evil, light and darkness. And now the light was
letting the darkness in. It was preposterous, infuriating, and yet
it
was
happening.

When Kara had first heard the news, she had
been confused and shocked. But her confusion soon boiled into an
uncontrollable, white-hot anger. The only way she would make it
through the up-coming meeting without losing her temper and cutting
a few higher demons would be to get out. Get out and fly.

Kara kicked off hard and let the wind cool
her hot temper. She soared high above the outskirts of Green Bay,
Wisconsin and practiced maneuvering with her newly formed wings
until flying seemed second nature, anything to keep her mind off
the ridiculous notion of making a deal with the devils. She stroked
with her wings, again and again, until the city had disappeared
beneath her, and she was alone in the sky.

She aimed for the clouds. And like a runner
in thick fog, she could feel the vapor on her face as she flew
through them. Like a great eagle, she glided above the clouds that
hid her from mortal eyes and relaxed for the first time since the
archangels Metatron and Ariel had told her about their arrangement
with the higher demons.

She knew it was stupid and
reckless to be out in full view for all mortal eyes to see, but she
didn’t care. Why should she care what the legion thought anyway?
She wasn’t the one siding with the enemy—
they
were. Besides, it was nearly
dark out, and she didn’t remember reading any rules about not being
allowed to
fly
above the mortal world. Her wings were too new, and too
unusual, for any decrees to have been written just yet.

And she was going to take advantage of
it.

Her mind was in hyper-drive. She was so
angry she wanted to scream. She had to focus elsewhere, and she
concentrated on flying.

Flight was a constant learning curve. She
wasn’t born with wings, and there was no one to teach her, no petty
officer to show her the ropes. She was on her own. She needed to
practice as much as she could. It required a lot of effort just to
support her weight at such a high altitude, and it would take many
hours of flying to fly efficiently, let alone to defend herself and
to attack.

However, right now she needed to clear her
head. She had to forget this new pact with the Netherworld because
she was losing her concentration. And it took loads of
concentration not to plummet to the ground below.

And yet, as hard as she tried, the events of
the recent meeting kept crawling back into her head. Kara gritted
her teeth. The way the higher demons had sneered at her like they
had won some secret victory enraged her. She couldn’t shake off the
feeling that somehow the demons had their own secret agenda. In
fact, she was prepared to bet her angel life that they were using
the archfiend’s escape as a means of some evil plan of their own.
They were demons after all, human-soul-eating monsters. They
couldn’t be trusted. They were up to something, and she was going
to find out what.

As she banked softly to the left, she
marveled at the sight of the city lights that blinked at her
through holes in the clouds. She loved it up here and wished she
could stay forever. She felt free. Free of responsibilities. Free
from the changes that threatened her mind and body.

Kara didn’t know how long she’d been flying
when a throbbing pain suddenly erupted in her head and took over
her body. Like a sudden wave of sickness, a cold sweat formed on
her back and forehead and a chill shuddered through her.

She knew she couldn’t stay up for much
longer. A pulsing ache surged through her wings, and they
faltered.

She wasn’t sure how high she had flown,
maybe six thousand feet, but the one thing she did know for sure
was that if she fell now, her mortal suit wouldn’t be able to
withstand the impact. She would be no use to anyone as an exploded
M-suit mess. As the throbbing increased, Kara tucked her wings in,
banked a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, and began her
descent.

Falling was a pretty cool sensation.
Ignoring the pain in her head and body, Kara smiled as she
dive-bombed to the surface. The wind whistled in her ears. The air
flapped at her face and clothes, and her hair spilled madly behind
her. She grinned wildly.

She recognized the barn,
and she raised her head and angled her body upward, spreading out
her wings to slow her descent. She could see David and Ashley’s
smiling faces looking up at her. They may have been expecting some
grand, graceful landing, but she hadn’t
mastered
the art of landing yet, and
she was going too fast.

She was going to crash.

Kara cursed. She wished they hadn’t been
there to see her make a fool of herself, especially David. She
thrust her body backward in a desperate attempt to slow down. She
swung her wings in a circular motion, back and forth, like giant
hands clapping. She stuck out her legs in front of her like the
ducks did when they landed in the pond at her grandma’s cottage.
But there was no pond here to slow her descent. The impenetrable
ground looked more and more like a giant concrete runway than a
soft farm field.

David ran toward her, arms stretched out
like he wanted to catch her.

“
Get out of the way!”
yelled Kara. She waved her hands frantically in a desperate attempt
to make him move away, but it only made him run faster toward
her.

“
What are you doing? I
can’t stop! Get out of the way—”

Kara rammed into David.

The force of the impact propelled them both
into the air, and they skidded to a stop in a field of tall golden
grass. She landed on top of him. With her wings folded behind her,
Kara looked down into his blue eyes, and for a moment she forgot
all about her wings, the higher demons, and the archfiends. There
was only her and David in a farmer’s meadow.

David pulled her closer, and his mouth
twitched in a mischievous grin.

“
I saved you, my darling
butterfly.”

Kara spit the grass from her mouth.

“
You’re
delusional.”

She tried to ignore how comfortable she felt
with his arms around her.

“
You didn’t
save
me. I
crashed
into you, but I
did try to warn you. Didn’t you hear me?”

David’s smile widened.

“
You can crash into me any
time, if it means I can hold you like this.” He tightened his hold
around her.

His eyes mesmerized her. He pulled her in
closer to him, his lips dangerously near…

“
Where is everyone?” Kara
turned away from David’s scrumptious lips before she did something
stupid—like kiss him.

“
Is the meeting over? I
didn’t realize I’d been gone that long. It didn’t
feel
long. I guess I lost
track of time.”

“
I’ll give you the
answer…
if
… you
give me a kiss.”

Kara whirled around. “David, don’t be
stupid. I’m serious.”

She tried to pull herself off of him, only
too aware that Ashley was probably somewhere near, watching them
with a scowl on her face. She wasn’t sure how she’d feel about
Ashley witnessing this. But she couldn’t break away from his
embrace, or maybe she just didn’t want to.

“
Come on, David, let me go.
Wasn’t Ashley with you?”

“
Give me a kiss,” said
David again, “and I’ll let you go. I swear it. Angel’s honor.” He
puckered his lips.

Kara snorted.
“
Angel’s honor
?
Are you kidding me? When did you ever have angel’s
honor?”

“
Kiss me,” David repeated,
“and I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

As much as this offer was tempting, Kara
tried to pull away from him again, but her smile betrayed her.

“
I swear, if you don’t let
me go this instant—”

David leaned in and kissed her. It was
brief, but she felt its electricity from the tip of her wings to
her toes. She missed his kisses. She wanted more. Much more.

Kara stared at his eyes and leaned in—

Someone cleared their throat.

David’s grip loosened, and Kara jumped as
far away from David as she could.

“
I knew the rumors were
true about you guys,” laughed Ashley softly. She raised her hands
when she saw the look of panic on Kara’s face.

“
Don’t worry, your secret
is safe with me. I wouldn’t dream of telling anyone what I
saw
. And I saw
plenty
.”

Kara was utterly mortified that Ashley had
seen her private moment with David. Her angel life was already an
open book for the entire legion to read. She wanted to keep some of
it private.

Her wings ruffled in annoyance as she put
more distance between herself and David. She tried her best to look
natural, as natural as a winged creature could be.

“
I hate to
interrupt
you,” said
Ashley, “but Ariel asked me and David to get you, Kara. I wasn’t
expecting he’d take it
literally
.”

Kara wanted to tell Ashley
that she hadn’t interrupted anything, but she lost her voice when
she looked back at David. He looked as if he had been rejected,
like she was
ashamed
of him. Kara wanted to reach out to him, but the moment had
passed.

“
We’re all ordered to
report back to Horizon for further instruction,” said Ashley. She
looked uneasily at David.

“
I don’t know about you
guys, but this whole thing feels really rotten. I have to trust
that the legion knows what they’re doing. But I just don’t know. I
heard Ariel mention something to Metatron about teaming up with
demons, but maybe I’m wrong.”

Ashley shook her head, not wanting to
believe that what she had heard might be true.

Kara glanced over at the barn uneasily.

“
No, I’m sure you’re right
about what you heard. I wouldn’t put anything passed Metatron,
however disturbing it might sound.”

She shuddered inwardly at her own mention of
Metatron and turned her attention back to Ashley. “Has everyone
left?”

Ashley nodded. “Yes. We’re the last.”

Kara looked up into the deep, navy sky. The
memory of the archfiends soaring into the sky was still fresh in
her mind, and she felt the panic that they brought with them
again.

A war was brewing. It was inevitable. The
threat was as real and as tangible as she was. She felt in it her
soul. Could the legion defeat their archenemies? She didn’t want to
admit it to herself, but she was frightened at the hopelessness of
their situation, frightened that they would lose this battle. She
had never felt like this before. It was terrifying. She was losing
hope.

“
Things are going to be
different now, with this new
arrangement
.”

Kara did her best to try and hide her
anxiety. “We have to prepare ourselves.”

“
I know,” said Ashley.
“It’s not going to be easy. But what choice do we have?”

“
We always have a choice,”
said Kara.

Ashley shook her head. “Not this time. Come
on. Ariel’s waiting for us. Let’s get out of here and go home.”

She made her way toward the small creek
behind the barn.

Home
. Kara felt disconnected. Even though she was still horribly
angry with the legion, Horizon was
still
her home. She had to protect it
from the archfiends. It was time to go back. She needed to check on
her friends.

Jenny and Peter were still healing. The last
time she had seen them, they were both in critical condition. She
had saved them, but just barely. Now she missed their smiling
faces. She missed the usual demon-killing routine. She needed
normalcy.