Free Seals by Kim Richardson

feet
inside her body. The locusts had infected her.
    “Kara!” she heard David shout,
terrified.
    But she hardly heard him. Her own terror
took had overtaken her.
    She felt the insects spreading as they
multiplied inside her. Kara screamed in utter terror as the locusts
began to feast on her angel essence. She staggered as more locusts
crawled around her face, and she felt herself weakened by their
poison. She was vaguely aware that three more locust-men had begun
to assault her.
    Dimly, she heard Jenny cry out.
    Then she heard a scream that she recognized
as Ashley’s. Were they being infested as well ? Three
locust-men held Ashley down, and Kara could see Ashley’s angel
essence pouring out from many tiny cuts.
    Jenny was on her knees, screaming and crying
as she punched and slashed at the five locust-men that came at
her.
    Kara was overwhelmed. They couldn’t keep
fighting like this. She couldn’t see or hear any signs of David or
Peter.
    David…
    She felt her own strength evaporate. Her
legs shook, and she collapsed. The locusts were inside her, eating
her essence and spreading their poison. She couldn’t move or fight.
It had happened so fast. And there was nothing she could do but lie
down and wait to die.

Chapter
7
A Little Bit of Darkness
     
     
     
    H er vision had
blurred, and she was about to pass out when she felt the ripple of
a little spark inside her. At first she thought the locusts had
finally reached her soul, but then she felt it again. This was
different, like an electrical charge, like a battery being
recharged—her battery.
    It was like her body had turned on its
self-defense mode, and even though she had not called upon it, the
darkness inside began to assert itself. It wouldn’t let her
die.
    Her body jerked as the cold, rippling
darkness sent shockwaves through her. Her wings tingled. Her cold
power flowed more forcefully. Her fingers curled, clawing into the
dirt. The power terrified her, but it was also intoxicating. She
lost control to the dark force so quickly that she wasn’t even
aware what had happened. The darkness churned inside her, and her
fingers pulsed with a new energy. Strong energy.
    It was the same sensation of dark power she
had felt before, that wild forbidden power that had whispered to
her and teased her. It wanted her to succumb to it, to set it free.
She feared and embraced it as she felt it pulse from the tip of her
wings and through her body. And although she knew
she’d be lost to it now that she couldn’t control the force that
was taking her over, she didn’t care.
    It had saved her. And now she would save her
friends.
    Kara groaned, and as she stood up hundreds
of dead locusts poured out of the deep wound in her stomach like
waste. Black veins spread over her chest and pulled her wound
together, stitching it up like medical thread until she was
completely healed. Except for the hole in her shirt and the black
veins that covered her upper body, it was as though the locust-man
had never punched her at all. The last locust scurried over her
face and tried to pry her lips open, but she bit it in half and
spit out the bug’s guts.
    She felt her power surge.
It pulsed in her hands and legs. She was going to kill them
all.
    With bloodlust in her eyes, she spotted
Famine. It was looking straight at her, and for a horrible moment,
it seemed happy .
    She didn’t have time to wonder why it looked
so smug. She had to help out her friends first. The knight would be
next on her to-kill list.
    Kara spread her wings and jumped into the
air. Masses of locust-men had overpowered her friends like a sand
storm. Jenny lay crumbled beneath a swarm of locusts. Ashley was a
few feet away, and Kara could see her angel essence seeping from
her many wounds as she fought the creatures with her bare
hands.
    Kara dove toward Jenny. She spun around with
a powerful beat of her wings so violent that the blast of wind
flung the locust-men into the air and splatted them onto the ground
in a