Kara opened her eyes. She stared at a brass ceiling that was divided into perfect rusty squares. She lay on the bottom of an elevator and clutched the fish net with the soul inside it against her chest. She lifted up the fish net, suspended it in front of her face, and gazed intently at the soul. It was unharmed, lighting up her face with its brilliance. Rolling over, Kara pushed herself up and looked at a grinning David.
“That was awesome!” He jumped lightly up and down, looking thrilled. “I haven’t had this much fun in years!”
“Don’t get too excited, cowboy. We barely made it.” Kara suppressed a laugh.
There was sudden snort and Kara stepped to the side.
A medium-sized gray monkey sat in a chair near the control panel behind David. It had large, square shoulders and a powerful chest. It scratched its bare purple behind while it stared at David and Kara. Its long face was hairless, and sported a furrowed brow. “What floor?” said the monkey, sounding annoyed.
Kara flashed her eyes at David. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to monkeys talking…”
“It’s baboon, not monkey! Baboon L006, if you please,” hissed the primate.
David jumped to the opportunity. “Level Four, then…good looking,” he said. The baboon screwed up its face.
“Careful,” said Kara, “it looks about to spit in your face.”
“You GAs are all the same,” said the baboon. “No respect!”
David dusted off his jacket, not paying any attention to the baboon. “Sure thing, hot stuff. Level Four…we’re waiting …”
For a moment nothing happened. Then the baboon spit on the floor, an inch beside David’s boots. It stared at him, its face crinkled in hatred. Grimacing, it bared a row of large sharp yellow teeth. This baboon looked dangerous. It puffed out its chest, showing off its hard body, and turned around on its chair. Lifting a long arm, it pressed the brass button.
After a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, Kara followed David off the elevator to Level Four, still clutching the soul against her chest as a mother would her newborn child. They walked through the Hall of Souls. The vast space sparkled and shimmered as though it rained diamonds. Millions of hovering souls illuminated the way as they walked up to the dais where a great glass desk glistened. The Archangel Ramiel was busy writing in a large book. He did not look up.
“Ahem, Oh Blessedness!” said David as he smirked and curtsied. Kara hid her smile in her hair.
Ramiel lifted his eyes in David’s direction. A frown materialized on his brow. Suddenly, moving with incredible speed, he pushed back his chair, stood up, and threw a newspaper at David, barely missing his face. “YOU FOOL!” he roared. “You were SEEN!”
Kara picked up the paper from the floor. It was today’s Montreal Gazette. She and David were on the front cover holding hands, falling into the Saint-Laurence River. The heading read:
Couple’s suicide!
A young couple in love plunge to their deaths
off the Old Port in Montreal.
“Uh oh,” said Kara, “this can’t be good.”
David grabbed the newspaper from Kara. “Hey…I look good!”
Ramiel slammed his fist on the desk and a loud boom echoed throughout the chamber. “What were you thinking?! You know our laws! You were not to be seen going into water!” If Ramiel was warm-blooded, Kara was sure his face would be red hot with large veins pulsing on his forehead. Instead, there was a terrifying white coldness. It wasn’t natural.
“You’ve been warned before, David McGowan! Your days as a guardian angel are numbered!” He growled and pointed a long finger at David. Kara was almost certain laser beams were about to shoot out of Ramiel’s eyes and strike David, melting him on the spot. The Archangel’s face twisted in fury.
“David, we’re so screwed,” whispered Kara.
“Don’t worry…I got this,” he whispered back.
David smiled and puffed out his chest. “Relax, Your Holiness . . . see here? My rookie saved the soul.” He gestured towards Kara’s chest, where she kept the soul protected inside the fish net.
With Ramiel’s attention suddenly on her, Kara cringed and backed up. “David! What are you doing?” she said through the corner of her mouth.
She felt her nerves starting to act up. The Archangel’s flaring blue eyes made her nervous, but she found she couldn’t look away—some sort of eerie hypnosis. She was suddenly made aware of his power, as though he made it known to her somehow with his mind. She tried to speak, but the words would not come.
The Archangel cut the silence. “It doesn’t excuse what you did. You broke the law!”
This time David’s smile disappeared. He looked at Kara, then back to Ramiel. “Listen…there were three higher demons. They attacked us. There was no other way…we had to jump.”
Ramiel backed up, as though getting a blow from an invisible force. He narrowed his eyes. “W…what? Higher demons? That’s impossible!”
“Yup. Three of them. It was like they knew we were coming. You know anything about that?”
“What? Of course not!” Ramiel shouted, his face twitching.
Kara watched in silence as the big Archangel seemed to battle something from the inside. He paced up and down. He rubbed his head, and his eyes and brow narrowed. He seemed angrier than before, if that were even possible. Kara took another step back.
Finally, after some time, Ramiel spoke. “I need to speak to Michael about this. Here, give the soul to the cherub,” he said, as he gestured to one of the golden-haired persons, who came at once with a glass jar. The cherub placed the jar in front of Kara and it waited.
“Huh?” Kara said. She thinned her lips and glared at the cherub. “Why should I give it to him? I saved the soul…and I nearly died saving it. No … I’m not giving it to him. What if he drops it? What then?” She reached into the fish net and grasped the soul in her hand, letting the light shine though her fingers. She looked at David for help.
He tapped her shoulder. “It’s ok, kiddo. You did good. Now, give the shiny white ball to the cherub.” The cherub tapped its foot on the ground. It cocked an eyebrow, clearly annoyed by Kara’s reluctance to give up the soul.
She dropped her shoulders and looked down at the soul. The glowing ball emanated light onto her frowning face. Kara pulled her hands away from her chest slowly, and gently dropped the soul into the glass jar. Immediately the cherub turned on its heel, strolled away, jumped into a tiny vehicle, and drove off, leaving Kara staring after it. A sudden feeling of sadness washed over her, as though she had just lost a part of herself.
“What’s going to happen to it?” Kara asked, as the cherub disappeared into the walls of light.
“It’ll be reborn, like every other living soul,” answered David.
A thought nagged at the back of Kara’s mind. “David. You think you can ask Ramiel about my mom? Maybe he knows something?”
“Sure.” David cleared his throat. “Excuse me, Your Highness, but Ms. Nightingale here has a question. . . about her mother.”
“Yes?” said the Archangel heavily and leaned forward.
“Well, she told me that her mother can see demons—so she’s probably a Sensitive—but then the interesting part is that her mother likes to…disappear at times. Reappearing at different places. So, you see . . . I believe she might be a guardian.”
The Archangel’s face was impassive, apart from a light twitch in his lip. “I will consult her profile.”
He moved his hands over his keyboard and started typing. He looked up at Kara. “Is your mother’s name Danielle Dubois?”
Kara’s jaw dropped. “Yes.”
“She is indeed a guardian angel. She’s back on Earth in her mortal body, waiting for her next assignment.”
“I knew it!” David’s face lit up. He nudged Kara on the shoulder. “How cool is that! My parents are just regular mortals. My Dad’s a mechanic and my mom’s a teacher…nothing special.”
But Kara didn’t feel the
news to be special. Things just started to make a lot more sense to her, now that she knew why her mother behaved so strangely. Somehow she felt a lot worse.
“My mother—a guardian angel. It explains a lot. I wish she could have told me somehow.” Kara dropped her eyes and stared at the floor.
“She couldn’t,” said David with kind eyes. “We’re forbidden to reveal ourselves to mortals. It’s one of the laws or something. Plus, it was for your own good. I doubt you would have believed her anyway. It’s like you said…you thought she was mad.”
But Kara thought otherwise. She would have believed her. She knew it somehow. She looked up at Ramiel. With his eyes closed and his head arched up, he looked as if he was meditating. She studied his perfect face as he opened his eyes again and spoke.
“The Archangel Gabriel is waiting for you. Your rookie needs more training. Don’t make him wait.”
“No worries, Your Divineness…your wish is my command!” David bowed and flashed his teeth.
Ramiel stepped forward, looking down upon David with flares in his eyes. “You’re still here only because your rookie shows a lot of promise. Don’t disappoint her by being a fool!”
“Ah…but I’m the best damn fool in all of Horizon,” said David. “Later, Your Worship.”
And with that, David whirled around, grabbed Kara by the elbow, and steered her back towards to the elevator.
“You’re a real ass, you know that?” laughed Kara. She knew David was way too cocky with the Archangels, but at least he made her smile.
“I’ll take that as a compliment, thank you very much.” He lifted his chin and smiled into the black skies. “I’d like to think of myself as an entrepreneur…a visionary.”
“Keep it up and you’ll be visioning Ramiel’s fist when it makes contact with your face.”
The elevator ride back to Operations was a silent one, apart from the loud scratching noises coming from a chimpanzee in a blue fisherman’s hat that kept rubbing its behind. Kara pressed her head against the wood panel at the back on the elevator, closed her eyes, and thought of her mother.
“What are you thinking about?” asked David. He leaned against the panel beside her.
“Oh, nothing much…the usual.”
“And … what’s the usual?”
Kara opened her eyes. “Just that I was flattened by a bus, got a new job as a guardian angel, souls are everlasting and reincarnated into body suits, my mother is an angel, demons are freak’n real…and some, apparently, are out to get you.”
David scratched the back of his neck. “You’ll get used to it.”
“So you keep telling me.”
They jumped off the elevator and walked along the red sand.
“Um, David?” Kara brushed a long strand of brown hair behind her right ear. “Uh…those higher demons…you said that they were after us? Why?” She felt a slight shiver pass through her body. Their black eyes still haunted her.
David looked intently at Kara. “Not only after us, but after guardian angels in general—especially the rookies, since you’re easy targets.”
Kara frowned with curiosity as she walked. Puffs of red sand escaped her feet as she kept up the pace with David. “So they were after my mother, too. But why? I thought demons were only after souls…like, to eat or something?”
“Well, they do eat them, sort of.” He combed the top of his hair with his fingers. “Lesser demons, like shadow demons, devour souls. Souls are a life force. The more they feed on them the more powerful they become, and it gives them longevity on Earth. Without the souls, they would die.”
Kara stared at the salt pyramids as she and David walked past them. She reflected on this new information. White puffy clouds ran across a perfect blue sky, shaped like wild animals. An ocean fragrance surrounded them.
Kara raised her brow. “This place is even creepier than I could have imagined.” Her mind flashed to thoughts of the black eyed demons. “So, what about the black-eyed monsters? Higher demons?” As she said that, a guardian angel with two stars tattooed on his forehead approached them. He smiled, lifted up his hand, and he and David high-fived one another. They exchanged a few words. The angel patted David on the shoulder and then walked away.
“So, I see you’re a celebrity in Horizon,” laughed Kara.
“Huh?” A smile reached David’s lips. “Right…the higher demons. Yeah, they’re nasty,” said David as he lifted up the collar from his leather jacket. “Can’t be too careful when they’re around.” He gave Kara his wink du jour.
She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Wow, you’re so full of yourself. I could slap you!” She kicked up some red sand with her shoe. “But why were they after us? After me?”
“’Cause, you have something they want. Your GA life source is like a thousand regular souls. One guardian angel soul can make a higher demon almost as powerful as an Archangel—and trust me, you don’t want that.” David looked away and seemed lost for words.
“You said that the higher demons knew where we were? That seemed to disturb Ramiel a little…why’s that?”
“Well, for starters, that’s never happened to me before. It usually takes hours before the higher demons—or any demon— can sense us back on Earth. They don’t just show up like that, a few minutes after we show up. I don’t get it.” He searched Kara’s face, with that same puzzled expression on his face.
“Don’t look at me like that! It’s not like I announced our arrival or anything. Besides, I’m new here! How would I know anything?”
David shook his head. “I don’t know, but it smells bad.”
Kara felt that was probably true, but there was nothing she could do about it. This new job came with a lot of unanswered questions and a lot of new dangers.
David raised his eyebrows. His blue eyes glittered. “It almost feels like…someone from the Legion told them.”
“What? But that makes no sense?”
“It makes perfect sense. And it’s happened before.” His face hardened. “Traitors, working for the demons from inside the Legion. They’re fallen angels who go over to the dark side, their heads filled with a lust for power.”
Kara stayed where she was, frozen, as her mind strained to process all this new information. “But why us? Who would do this to us…to me? And why?”
“I can think of someone.” David stepped beside Kara. She saw a flash of anger in his eyes. She knew exactly who he was referring to…someone tall and powerful who happened to hate David’s guts.
“Benson? No . . . are you sure?”
David’s tone was sharp. “Positive. This is his chance to get rid of me for good. It’s his payback for what I did to Sarah.”
If what David was saying was true, that meant Benson was going to get her killed as well—caught in the crossfire—just to get to David. She had just barely escaped with her angel life on their last job. It’s just going to get worse. A part of her felt betrayed. She hadn’t done anything to anyone; she had just died recently. And now her life was in danger. Another part of her was angry that someone wanted to hurt David. She looked up into his clear blue eyes. “So …what do we do?”
He looked fierce. “We get him…before anything else happens. We’ll need proof, obviously, or to catch him in the act. I’d love to see how Gabriel fries his ass!”
“So, should we follow him?” asked Kara.
David narrowed his eyes. “Yeah…he’ll probably have to rendezvous with the demons back on Earth. We should find out what his next assignment is and follow him there. He’s bound to make contact with them sooner or later.”
Images of the higher demons flashed behind Kara’s eyes and she started to feel anxious. “But shouldn’t we tell Gabriel, or one of the Archangels? This is pretty serious, David; shouldn’t we tell them?”
He looked down at the ground. “No, they’ll just think I’m up to something because of our history. They won’t believe me. Don’t think I’m Mr. Popular with the Archangels—or haven’t you noticed? A
nd if Benson finds out somehow, we’ll never catch him. No one can know about this.”
Kara knew David was right. They’d never believe him, or her. They would have to do this on their own.
They wandered through the twisted rows of blue tents, watching the ongoing combats. Operations was full of noises: bursts of combat cries, the clatter of metal on metal and the raised voices of the oracles teaching classes, and then forgetting what they were supposed to teach. The fragrance of salt drifted in the air.
She followed David into the weapons tent. Two guardian angels were making their selection of weapons and looked up as they saw David and Kara enter.
“Yo, Dave! What’s up?” said the taller one. “We heard about your jump. Awesome! It’s spreading all over the Legion already.”
“Don’t think Gabriel’s too happy about that,” laughed the smaller one, as he eyed Kara. “He’s in a really bad mood. You sure you want to be here right now?” he slapped David on the arm.
David lifted his chin and puffed out his chest. “Gabe loves me. He just doesn’t know it.”
The three young men laughed stupidly while hitting one another. To Kara, it was like watching the end of a winning basketball game, where all the boys danced around excitedly after the match. David, so it seemed, had won the popularity game—David versus the Archangels.
More and more guardian angels stopped their training and came to congratulate David on his wild escape. Some even congratulated Kara. She turned around quickly and became very interested in a short silver dagger. She flicked the blade with her fingernail. The sound was drowned by sudden loud cheers. She looked back towards the crowd. She saw David jump down from one of the large tables. He was surrounded by an animated group of predominantly male guardian angels. He re-enacted their suicidal plunge off the Old Port. His cronies giggled excitedly, like a pack of wild hyenas. He bowed after each performance…which were many.
Kara wondered if she was really stuck with this idiot for all eternity.
Chapter 9
A Traitor among Us