Reapers (5 page)

Initially, Kara didn’t
think anything of it. She was used to elevator operators with an
attitude. But there was something
different
about the way this one was
looking at her. It looked frightened.

“
What?” said Kara
defiantly after she couldn’t take his staring any
longer.

“
What now? I just got
here, you know. Can’t you give me a moment’s peace before you start
your monkeyshines? Don’t you know it’s impolite to
stare?”

She shook her head. “Never mind that,
just tell me why you’re looking at me like you’ve never seen a
guardian angel?”

Chimp 6L75 looked away quickly and
began whistling nervously. It was as though he pretended not to
have heard her, which was very unusual. She knew that the elevator
operators in Horizon always enjoyed tormenting their passengers.
But this operator was behaving very peculiarly.

Kara frowned and leaned forward. “Did
I miss something while I was away? Excuse me, Chimp 6L75? Did you
hear me? Hello?”

The primate continued to whistle,
ignoring her completely.

“
Have the operators turned
deaf while I was gone?”

She leaned her head against the panel.
She wasn’t going to let an uncommunicative elevator operator ruin
her first day back. She hoped David was back, too. It just wouldn’t
be the same without him.

She was about to reprimand the primate
for being rude when she noticed that the third button on the
elevator control panel was illuminated.

She stepped forward for a closer look.
The brass button with the number 3 was indeed illuminated and
operational. They were ascending to level three, the Miracles
Division.

“
Excuse me, why are we
going to level three? Shouldn’t you be dropping me off to level
five—”

Kara stopped. Since she didn’t have
her elemental powers, maybe she wasn’t in the Counter Demon
Division any longer. It stung a little, not to be part of the elite
group. Perhaps she should go to level two, Operations. It was the
only other option.

“
I think you pressed the
wrong button,” began Kara. She was doing her best to be polite
since this creature seemed to be frightened of her, but she still
couldn’t fathom why.

“
If not five, then I’m
pretty sure I should to be going to level two. Yup. Level two it
is. Go on now, please press level two.”

The operator ignored her.

Kara’s temper flared. “Fine. Keep
pretending that I don’t exist.”

She leaned forward. “I’ll do it
myself—”

The operator flung itself at the panel
and covered it with its body. It turned its head slightly, but it
wasn’t angry. It looked frightened.

For a moment Kara was lost
for words. It was behaving so strangely, so out of character for an
operator. It didn’t make any sense. What was wrong? Was it sick?
Could they even
get
sick? The way the chimpanzee avoided her eyes and stole a
look when it thought she wasn’t looking made it clear that it was
afraid of
her
.

She cleared her throat and tried to
control the panic in her voice.

“
What is it you’re not
telling me? I can see it in your eyes. You’re hiding something.
Come on…spit it out.”

Wide-eyed and shaking its head, Chimp
6L75 raised a single, long finger and pointed at her. “Look.
Something’s wrong with you. You’re not a normal angel.”

“
What?” Kara almost
laughed. She was used to being called
not
normal
. But when she looked down at
herself, her knees buckled, and she fell against the back
panel.

She was semi-transparent, like a
ghost.

Her clothes were see-through, like
tissue paper. They looked as if they would tear and break with a
touch. Her angel essence shone through her thin, brittle skin so
that she radiated light. But it was as though half of her essence
hadn’t appeared with the rest of her in the elevator. Part of her
being was lost, and she had become a specter. When she tried to
remember the moments before she died, her memories were lost in a
fog.

The panic in the primate’s eyes only
made her own fears multiply. It all made sense now. The operator
was taking her to level three because she was definitely in need of
a miracle. If anyone could figure out what was wrong with her and
fix her, it was the archangel, Raphael.

The elevator stopped, and
with a
ding
the
doors slid open.

On shaky legs, Kara willed herself to
move and stepped off the elevator onto level three.

The sky above her was a mix of scarlet
and orange, twisting and swirling like giant candy canes. She could
see a thick line of forest, and at the base of a great mountain she
could see the archangel’s chamber.

And so, with fear weighing her down,
Kara began her journey toward the forest. On her way, she passed
the giant warehouse-like building of the Healing-Xpress, the
one-stop fixer-upper for the angel in need of repair. She knew that
her own curious affliction was something the grand machine couldn’t
fix. She needed Raphael’s help.

The tall green trees rippled in a
light breeze as she made her way through the forest and came face
to face with the colossal mountain. It rose high above the forest
and was lost in a sea of red clouds.

She could see the city that was carved
from the mountain’s core. She had met no one yet, and was glad of
it. With every step, her panic increased. She hurried passed the
two giant manlike rock sculptures that stood on either side of the
entrance like sentries and sneaked through the opening into the
city—

“
What in the souls?” said
a voice.

Kara froze.

The oracles and guardian angels in the
street stood with expressions of shock and disbelief on their
faces. Others hurried over to see what the commotion was about
until Kara was surrounded.

She wanted to disappear.

An oracle with long wisps of white
hair down his back dropped his dossiers. “How—how is this possible?
What anomaly is this? Who are you?”

Kara looked down. She
could see the cobblestones through her shoes. She
was
an
anomaly.

“
What’s wrong with
her?”

Kara looked up to see a woman guardian
angel with short, curly red hair pointing at her.

“
She looks like a ghost. I
can see Jamie’s head right through her.”

“
Demon!” shouted a man
with dark skin.

“
She’s a
demon!”

“
Get away from
her!”

“
Throw her in
Tartarus!”

As the crowd of oracles and GAs
increased, so did the whispers and accusations. Kara couldn’t hear
all that was being said, but she heard enough. It was clear from
their faces what they were thinking. Freak. Monster. Mutant.
Demon.

There was nothing worse than being
singled out in a crowd as a freak. It was the worst feeling, and it
was a feeling she knew all too well. She could see them judging
her, condemning her, but most of all she could sense their
fear.

The streets were so still she could
hear the trees rustle in the wind in the forest behind her. All at
once the painful memories of being marked by a demon overlord
overwhelmed her like a giant wave.

But this situation was worse. Her
demon mark had been carefully hidden. But now, every single
creature in Horizon could see that she was transparent. She
couldn’t hide it.

With her head down, fighting the urge
to cry out, Kara brushed past the crowds of onlookers and ran down
the winding and turning walkways that wound between the buildings.
She needed to find Raphael soon, before the mob did something
stupid and threw her in Tartarus.

Kara ran as fast as she could. And
when she thought for sure she was lost, she recognized a familiar
stone structure and made for it. She passed two angels who jumped
out of her way and flattened themselves against the walls. Finally,
she pushed open a wooden door and bounded into a large
chamber.

“
Kara? What’s happened to
you?”

A beautiful Asian-looking woman,
draped in white linen, looked up from a long wood table. Red
highlights reflected off the jet-black hair that spilled down her
back. The golden shield that was crisscrossed with two silver
swords on her forehead marked her as an archangel. She pushed back
her chair and stood up. Her eyes were wide with concern.

Kara stumbled into the room awkwardly.
Her feet seemed to be made of lead.

“
I don’t know,” she said
nervously.

“
I was like this in the
elevator. I just got here. I can’t believe I’m back so soon. I
don’t know why exactly. I scared the operator half to death—well, I
guess technically they’re dead, right? I mean, aren’t they? Aren’t
they like a different type of guardian or entity? I guess that
really doesn’t matter now. You should have seen the way he was
staring at me, like I was a ghost—”

“
You look like a ghost,”
said Raphael.

She was still for a moment, as she
studied Kara. Then she stepped out from her table and moved quickly
toward the door to her chamber. She secured the door and made her
way toward Kara.

She frowned. “Try to calm yourself and
let me have a look at you.”

Although the archangel tried to hide
the look of alarm on her face, Kara could see the distress in the
archangel’s eyes. Gently, Raphael lifted Kara’s arms and inspected
them. She poked, and prodded, and brushed her fingertips over
Kara’s skin and clothes, until she had inspected every last inch of
her. Finally, she looked up. Her face was grim.

“
I’ve never seen anything
like this before,” she said.

“
I can see your essence
flowing around in your body, which we sometimes see in cases of
defective or battered M-Suits, where the skin gets paper-thin. But
this is different; both your body
and
your essence are translucent.
It’s astonishing and very mysterious.”

For a second, Kara thought she heard
shouting coming from down the corridor.

“
I am half here?” she
asked. “I mean, is the rest of me on some other plane or something?
I was thinking maybe something happened before I made the
transition here, like the veil was broken, and part of me is in the
waiting room back on the 8
^TH
Plane? Or maybe the room
was packed, and now I’m waiting in limbo?”

Raphael’s face was
serious. “No. When there’s a fracture in the planes, you’d either
be lost in oblivion until the end of time or your legs would be
waiting for you on the 8
^Th
Plane.”

The archangel frowned
again as she inspected Kara. “This is something else entirely. This
looks almost like a vega malfunction, as though the metamorphosis
process that builds and sheds temporary bodies hasn’t quite
finished yet. It’s almost as though you’re still transforming, like
your angel essence is still processing—but
what
it’s processing, I’m not sure.
This is very strange. But that’s just a theory. I’ll have to do
some tests to find out for sure.”

She saw the look of fear on Kara’s
face and squeezed her shoulder gently. “Don’t worry, Kara. We’ll
find out what this is, I promise.”

Kara looked into the archangel’s
almond-shaped brown eyes and forced a little smile. “I hope so. I
thought there was nothing worse than being marked.”

She raised her hands in front of her
eyes and stared at Raphael’s stunning face through them. “But
this…” she paused, “this is a million times worse.”

“
How do you feel? Are you
in pain of any kind?”

Kara wanted to say she was suffering a
different kind of pain, a mental one, but she decided against
it.

“
No. I feel pretty normal,
I feel just like all the other times I came back to Horizon.” She
shrugged. “I know I
look
different, but I don’t feel any
different.”

Raphael put her hands on her waist,
puzzled. “What’s the last thing you remember before your transition
here?”

Disjointed, Kara floundered, doing her
best to recall the moments before her surprise return to Horizon.
She was a little calmer now and felt safe with Raphael.

She closed her eyes. “I remember
working at the bookstore. I remember a bat dying after it crashed
in the window. Yes. I remember that. Then I went to the park to lay
it to rest…”

Kara drew a blank. Her memory faded.
It was obstructed by something, and she couldn’t reach it. It was
like a black wall shielded her memories. She strained, but she
couldn’t see past it.

“
Hmm. This is
weird.”

“
What’s weird?”

Kara opened her eyes.
“It’s like something’s blocking my memory. I’m trying to remember.
I know I
should
remember, but I
can’t
. I don’t remember anything
else. How come I can’t remember how I died? I’ve always remembered,
every single time.”