Reapers (8 page)

“
Well, well, well, if it
isn’t the infamous David McGowan and his beloved Kara
Nightingale—the one with the
mark
.”

He frowned.

“
They weren’t kidding when
they said that you looked like a ghost. Not sure I like the look,
though. It might have been in fashion back in the late seventeen
hundreds, but you should really get with the program. Maybe next
time you should try to stay
solid
—nobody likes a girl who looks
dead, angel or not.”

His face turned to David and laughed
like it was a private joke they shared. “If you know what I
mean?”

“
Who are you?” asked Kara,
as her dislike for the archangel rose. She moved
forward.

The man’s smile widened. “Ah-hah,
right to the point! I like that.”

Suddenly a group of twelve very
beautiful guardian angel women appeared behind the archangel like a
private entourage. They were dressed in identical skin-tight, black
dresses, red high heels, sunglasses, and bright red lipstick. If it
weren’t for the soul blades in their hands, they would have looked
like they were about to perform in a music video.

The man cleared his throat. “Let me
introduce myself. I’m Metatron, and I’m here to kill
you.”

Chapter 5

Metatron

K
ara was trapped. The tips of her fingers tingled with nervous
energy.

The group of women ushered them into a
dark hall. Kara could only see high ceilings and a stairway with
banisters that led to a passageway above. As her eyes grew
accustomed to the light she distinguished at least five burning
fireplaces and lavish tapestries.

The walls were hung with paintings of
Metatron: Metatron lounging on a chaise longue, being fed grapes by
a woman; Metatron sitting in a golden throne, being fed more grapes
by another woman; Metatron in a plié ballet stance wearing
baby-blue tights, being fed grapes by a woman; and most
disturbingly one particular painting of Metatron standing proudly,
drinking a cup of wine, and wearing only a leaf.

She felt ill, and she could see that
David was frowning. It was the look he had when he was scheming
something. She knew he was trying to figure out a plan of escape.
Under different circumstances, he would have been the first to try
to make her jealous by flirting with the gorgeous and voluptuous
women, but he didn’t even look at them, not really.

Metatron had said he was
going to kill them, but she knew he only meant
her
. He was going to kill her. But
what did that mean? Was he planning to deliver her an angel’s true
death? Or was he planning to erase her from both worlds? Would she
die forever and never come back as a mortal or an angel?

The thought of never seeing her mother
again made her shudder. She clamped her trembling fingers into
fists and kept moving forward. She didn’t want David to see her
fear.

Metatron strolled ahead of them, his
chin in the air, as though he owned the world. He stopped suddenly
and squished the remains of his used-up cigar with his polished
shoe. He pulled another cigar from the folds of his jacket, bit off
the tip, and spat it on the floor. Then he snapped his fingers. The
nearest angel, a woman with milky-white skin and gray eyes, flicked
a lighter to his cigar. Metatron puffed on his cigar until it was
lit and then kept walking.

Kara did not like the way he ordered
the angels around, or the way he looked at her. Something in his
gaze made her shiver. He was very different from the other
archangels. He didn’t belong with them.

As they walked, Kara leaned over and
whispered to David. “Who is this guy? Do you know anything about
him?”

“
He’s the
n
ew legion commander,” he whispered
back.

Kara eyed the bald spot on
the top of Metatron’s head. She watched him as he wrapped his right
arm around a beautiful East Indian woman and pulled her close,
whispering in her ear, just a little too close, and just a little
too long.

He threw back his head and
laughed. Then he reached out with his left arm and wrapped it
around a slim brunette with legs that would put any model to
shame.

He was a spectacle to
watch, there was no denying it, and Kara wanted to puke.

“
Can’t
be,” she whispered, shaking her head. She wondered why these women,
these
angel
women, would let such a repulsive creature get so close to
them.

“
This has to be a mistake.
He’s so repulsive. He’s arrogant, and there’s something very oily
about him, too. How can he be an archangel? And how come I’ve never
heard of him?”

“
All I know is that he was sort of cast aside for a while, and
now he’s back.”

“
Why?”

“
His methods were
unsound,” said David. “He didn’t do things by the book. He had his
own set of rules, and he did whatever he wanted, no matter the
consequences and no matter who got hurt. He was a real
menace.”

Kara felt like saying that they didn’t
listen to all the rules either, and that they were both a menace to
the legion, but she remained quiet.

“
Too bad he wants to kill
us. I could have learned a lot from him, you know,” said
David.

Kara could see a look of admiration on
his face, as though he thought Metatron was cool in some sick
way.

“
You could?”

David measured Metatron.

“
Well, he got things done,
maybe a bit too violently, but in the end it worked. I think every
legion or squad needs someone like him. A guy who puts himself
forward and does things others wouldn’t dare, who pushes the
envelope. Yeah, maybe his methods were a little unorthodox, but
they worked, and he got things done.”

Kara scowled as Metatron added a
sudden hop to his step like he was about to break out into a
dance.

“
Like what? What did he
do?”

“
I know he likes to blow
things up.”

“
You mean, like,
bombs?”

David nodded his head. “Yeah,
apparently it’s his specialty. I know he invented something like an
atom bomb for demons. But I don’t think that’s why he was demoted.
I think it’s because of the torturing.”

“
The
torturing?”

“
I’ve heard that he’s
tortured other angels to get information. I’m not sure what he did
exactly, but whatever it was, it was enough to strip him of his
duties as an archangel.”

“
So he’s a hustler? An
archangel hustler?” Kara couldn’t believe what she was hearing, but
just one look at Metatron confirmed that every word David had said
was true.

“
I never thought
archangels could be gangsters—”

“
Shh! Stop talking.” One
of the women shoved Kara.

Kara turned and gave her
an angry look. When she turned back around she saw the little smile
on David’s face. At least he was enjoying himself. Kara scowled at
him too.

Finally, they arrived at a
pair of large double doors. Kara could hear muffled voices from
behind the doors, as though hundreds of people were waiting on the
inside. Metatron let go of his female escorts and pushed the doors
open.

Kara and David followed him
in.

Gray marble polished
floors gleamed in this large long room. Kara moved cautiously, half
expecting to see contraptions of torture and explosives, but she
was surprised at how empty the room was. The walls were white, and
strangely enough there were no portraits of Metatron
anywhere.

The room was deserted, but
every inch of wall was covered with flat screen televisions. They
were lined up in a grid pattern, and each wall looked as though it
was one great screen. Kara had never seen so many televisions at
once, not even in the department stores where they sold them. It
looked like a media room, or a television station where they
broadcasted the news. The noise of the on-screen conversations and
the mix of music and sports blared from the hundreds of
screens.

A couple of desks with
monitors were placed at the far end of the room. In the middle was
a raised platform with a black leather sofa, chairs, and a coffee
table littered with hundreds of remotes. Below the raised platform
was an open compartment. It looked like a cage where the accused
would await their sentence at a courthouse. It was positioned
strategically below the platform, so that those on the platform
could look down on those inside.

“
Where
are we?” whispered Kara to David. “What
is
this place?”

“
Level six-and-a-half,”
answered Metatron. His smile told Kara that he had probably heard
every conversation she and David had had.

Kara shot a curious glance
at David.

He shrugged. He had never
heard of level six-and-a-half before either.

The archangel beamed, puffing on his
cigar. He raised his brows and smiled proudly.

“
I call
it,
A Room with a
View
. You like it?”

His smile faded at Kara’s
silent response. The noise from the multitude of TVs was giving her
a headache.

Metatron snapped his
fingers and then pointed to the iron cage. “In.”

Reluctantly, Kara and
David made their way toward the iron box and closed the gate behind
them.

“
Whatever happens, Kara,”
whispered David, “don’t make a deal with him. Do you
understand?”

“
Why would I want to make
a deal with a sociopath?”

“
Just promise that you
won’t.”

Kara watched David. He was
furious, but he also looked frightened.

“
Okay, but why?” Kara’s
voice was low.

“
You can’t trust him. He’s
going to want to make a deal with us, but you can’t agree to
anything. You can’t. Do you understand? No matter what.”

As she nodded, Kara didn’t
realize she was shaking until David laced his fingers between hers
and squeezed her hand tenderly.

“
Whatever happens,” he
said, “we’re in this together.”

Kara’s lips quivered.
David was her strength when she needed it most, and she needed him
now.

She wondered what kind of
deal the archangel would try to make with them.

Metatron stepped up the
platform and reclined on his black couch. With his cigar in his
mouth and his fat fleshy stomach protruding beneath his shirt, he
propped his feet up on the coffee table and leaned back
lazily.

Six of the guardian angel
women, three on each side, lowered themselves next to him. They
kicked out their legs in unison and then crossed them. They made
Kara think of the Rockettes.

The other six women
continued to hold their soul blades unsheathed and stood guarding
Kara and David’s metal cage. Kara hated the fact that she couldn’t
see their eyes. Their sunglasses made them look colder and more
calculating, like demons.

Then something on one of
the screens caught her eye.

“
Is that…?”

But even before she could
finish her question, she already knew the answer.

On the middle screen to
her left Kara could see the archangel Raphael examining the
contents of a glass vial. Her long black hair spilled over her
shoulders like a shawl. A large syringe lay on the table in front
of her. It was from Kara’s essence.

Kara looked
away.

She felt embarrassed to
intrude on the archangel’s privacy. To be eavesdropping and spying,
watching something private, seemed wrong.

She glanced away. On
another screen she recognized red dunes and white tents. On the
screen, Gabriel stared intently at a screen monitor, and for a
moment he looked up and their eyes met. She cringed, but then she
realized that his eyes were not directly focused on her.

Now she felt both ashamed
and angry. On one screen, a group of oracles at Orientation busied
themselves with groups of the newly deceased. On another screen,
r
ays of yellow light spilled through the
enormous glass dome and illuminated a group of seven
archangels—t
he high council. The image was
so close that she could see
Jeremiel, the
minister of ministration and peace, perfectly well. He was right
beside her, and she could hear his comments, even the shuffling of
his papers.

Kara was afraid to speak, in case the
high council could hear her. But then she realized this was a
one-way spying scheme. She could see and hear them, but they could
not see her.

Kara stared at Metatron,
incredulous.

“
Are you spying on the
archangels? The high council?”

She heard David curse as
he saw and heard the truth for himself.

“
And what if I was?”
answered Metatron lazily.