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138<br />
Guardians of the Seal<br />
As the creature got close, she looked into eyes that burnt with a consuming<br />
hatred. Its gaze overwhelmed her and she fell to her knees. She tried to speak<br />
again, but her voice failed her one more time. Visions of Lamela on that fateful<br />
day and ritual ceremonies in which similar creatures were invoked while she<br />
was at The Place flooded her memory. The bloodlust of these creatures was<br />
clear in her mind. The creature had risen to the ceiling, looking down at them.<br />
Then, without warning, it dived down at lightening speed and picked her<br />
daughter. She tried to touch the creature, but her hand simply slipped through<br />
it as if she was trying to grasp smoke. Without taking notice of her efforts, it rose<br />
up and hovered in the ceiling again.<br />
It began to speak to her. She heard it not with her ears, but with her being,<br />
similar to the way she heard Gabriel. “Tell Lucan he must come to the Plain of<br />
New Megiddo with all the seals by midnight today, or the girl dies,” it said. “I<br />
trust that you will tell him very convincingly.”<br />
Without another word, it opened a dark hole in the ceiling and went through<br />
it with Imani, leaving behind the hazy smoke to remind Tara that this was no<br />
dream. She screamed with the anguish of a mother who was watching her<br />
child being led to an inevitable death.<br />
The four guardians were gathered in Benzahr's mansion, where Lucan had<br />
first been introduced to the rest of the guardians. Lucan had called for this<br />
meeting after receiving Tara's message. He had rushed to Tara's to see her,<br />
but she just sat there, wordlessly looking at him with a void expression in her<br />
eyes. It moved him to tears. The last time he had seen her, she had been a<br />
lively and somewhat mischievous woman. He had seen a husk sucked dry of<br />
her essence today. He was going to save Imani. There were two of them who<br />
couldn't live without her.<br />
At the moment, he was making a passionate appeal to the rest of the<br />
guardians to help him get her back.<br />
“You need to help me get her back,” he pleaded. “Her mother blames me<br />
for her abduction because the demon specifically mentioned my name. I love<br />
this woman and cannot lose her, dear friends.”<br />
Eldad rose up, pounding his fist on the table. “Do not spew such nonsense,
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