Pillars of Fire

by Laurice Elehwany Molinari

  “It’s the island of earthquakes,” Kane said, the color slowly returning to his cheeks.

  “Vero, anything from those guys?” Greer asked impatiently.

  “Not yet.”

  “And no sign of Ariel,” Greer grumbled. “Is anybody else as nervous as I am about running into the Children of the Fallen? I mean, they don’t exactly sound like sweethearts.”

  “No, I’m sure they’re not,” Ada said. “I believe Lucifer and his angels are called the fallen.” She anxiously scanned the trees.

  “Maybe they’re not as bad as the overgrown Venus flytrap,” Kane suggested.

  Greer felt a slight crunch beneath her feet. She looked down in the dim light. Littered all over the ground were corpses of dead ants — hundreds, maybe even thousands of them. She spotted a moving ant trail and stopped to watch the ants crawl over the moss-covered ground in a perfect formation to their anthill.

  “What are you looking at?” Vero asked.

  “Those ants.” She pointed to the line of insects.

  Vero raised his eyebrows. “Why?”

  “I was just wondering what killed all these over here.” Greer motioned to the mounds of dead ants at her feet.

  “Hey, look, that guy’s got a mind of his own,” Vero chuckled, pointing to an ant as it broke formation from the line.

  The angels watched as the lone ant moved farther away from the line of marching ants and climbed up the trunk of a leafy shrub. The ant stumbled along, walking clumsily. As it continued its climb, its tiny body started to convulse. A look of pity came over Greer. She reached out to touch the little ant. Kane slapped her hand away.

  “Hey! What’s your problem?”

  “Don’t touch it,” Kane said forcefully. “It’s a zombie ant.”

  Greer rolled her eyes at him.

  “I saw it once on TV. Watch. He’s going to crawl to a leaf, then bite down on the underside of it and die.”

  Sure enough, the worker ant climbed a bit farther up the branch. It crawled onto a leaf and flipped itself over, plunging its mandibles into the juicy main vein of the leaf. After a few moments, the angels watched as it expired, still clinging onto the leaf.

  “Why did it do that?” Greer looked sadly to Kane.

  “There’s this parasite fungus, and it infects the ants. Then it takes over their brains and turns them into zombies.”

  “Oh, come on,” Greer interrupted, rolling her eyes.

  “It’s true,” Kane said. “The ant becomes a host for the parasite. It leads the ant away from the other ants and controls them to bite on the leaf. After the ant dies, a couple of days later, the stem of the fungus sprouts from the dead ant’s head and shoots toxic spores to other unsuspecting ants, trying to infect them too.”

  “He’s right. Look.” Vero carefully lifted up the tip of the leaf. Several dead ants clung to the underside. Each had a long stalk that had sprouted from their heads.

  “Weird,” Greer said.

  The drizzle continued as the fledglings trudged forward. The day was wearing on them when the canopy overhead finally began to thin out. The ground was increasingly soggy, and the mud that clung to their shoes made each step twice as heavy. Even worse, mosquitos began to taunt them, buzzing around their heads. Vero slapped the side of his face, killing one.

  “These mosquitos are real annoying,” Vero said, wiping blood from his cheek with his sleeve.

  With both hands and arms, Kane swatted mosquitos away from him. As more mosquitos swarmed him, his movements became more frantic. It looked like he was conducting a maniacal orchestra. “These are so much bigger than our mosquitos!” he yelled.

  Kane danced around like a mad man, trying to flee the swarm of mosquitos. Ada grabbed the back of Kane’s shirt, and Kane stopped wildly flailing his arms.

  “Look!” she yelled. “There’s a hill over there, and it has an opening in it!”

  A few hundred yards in front of them, the jungle widened out to a clearing. There was indeed a hill with what appeared to be an enormous cavity carved into its side.

  “Maybe we can get a break from the mosquitos and go inside and rest for a while,” Ada said.

  Kane didn’t have to be persuaded. He pressed through the overrun greenery, swatting branches and leaves from his face in an effort to reach the opening and escape the swarming insects. The others trailed right behind him. Just walking into the cave, Kane felt better. The mosquitos did not follow, and the cool temperature was a welcome relief from the muggy, sweltering air outside. Kane glanced around. It looked like a typical cave made of rock walls, yet the ceiling was fairly tall — at least thirty feet. There were several narrower tunnels that branched off from the main one.

  “It feels good in here,” Kane announced. “Should we check it out?”

  “Why not?” Greer answered.

  “Which way to go?” Kane asked as his eyes scanned the various tunnels.

  Vero turned to look around and saw a splinter of light forcing its way through the dimness at the back of the main tunnel. “I see light up there,” he said excitedly while scratching the mosquito bites on his arm. “Let’s go that way.”

  “But be quiet,” Ada said in a low voice, anxiously twirling her finger through her hair. “We don’t know if anyone or anything is living in here.”

  Vero followed the stream of light with the others close behind. He had thought that caves were usually moist and damp, but the air felt dry, and he noticed that the dampness on his shirt had already disappeared. He rounded a slight bend in the cave then froze at the entrance to what was a massive chamber off the main tunnel.

  “Look,” Vero said, holding out his arm and stopping the rest.

  The others looked past Vero and took in the sight before them. Neatly stacked on wooden shelves lay hundreds of skeletons of what looked to be gigantic humans! A huge lantern hung from the ceiling illuminating the macabre scene. From head to toe, their skeletal bodies measured about fifteen feet long. That was almost the size of a T-Rex! Their skulls were about five times the size of a normal human head, and their arms were longer than Vero’s entire body. And their hands! Vero thought one could easily hold the biggest watermelon in its palm and crush it like a tiny grape. But what unhinged Vero most were the teeth — the size of a whale’s.

  “Giants,” Greer said, her voice barely above a whisper, as if she was afraid she’d wake them.

  “All I can say is that I’m glad these guys are dead,” Kane said with awestruck fear.

  Greer elbowed Vero. But he had both hands over his ears. His eyes looked distant, fixed on something only he could see.

  “He must be picking up on something,” Greer said in a low hush to the others.

  Moments later, Vero put down his hands and turned to the others. “Nephilim,” he said. “Pax said the Children of the Fallen are the Nephilim . . . giants.”

  “Go on . . .” Greer motioned.

  “He said the Nephilim go back to Genesis 6. God sent several angels to earth to watch over man, but they rebelled against Him by taking human wives . . .”

  Vero’s mind strayed to thoughts of Davina. Before he had understood he was an angel, he had had the biggest crush on her. But both Uriel and Michael the Archangel had warned him that it was forbidden for angels to fall in love with humans. “We have such great love for humans, but, Vero, we are not to fall in love with them.” Michael had assured Vero that his feelings for Davina would become less and less with the progression of his training in the Ether. It was true. He wasn’t as love struck for Davina as he had once been; however, he wasn’t sure if it was because he now knew he was an angel or the fact that she liked Danny over him.

  “Hello!” said Greer. “Keep going.”

  Vero shook his head and continued. “And so the children of the women and the angels were the Nephilim . . . giants. They had superhuman strength, and they used it to spread violence and evil in the world.”

  “What happened to the angels that fathered these creatures?” Kane w
anted to know.

  “Abaddon has them chained in the Lake of Fire.” Vero shuddered at the thought. He remembered the time when he had ventured too close to the Lake of Fire. Just being near the entrance of the pit, Vero knew it was a horrid place. He couldn’t image being chained inside it for even a second, let alone thousands of years.

  “That’s a fate worse than death,” Kane said with a solemn look.

  “The fallen angels fell right in with Lucifer and his minions, and they took the human wives because they wanted to taint the human bloodline that God so cherished,” Vero said.

  “Why?” Greer asked.

  “They were jealous and deeply offended by God’s love for the humans. So they wanted to corrupt and destroy them,” Ada answered.

  “So that’s why God sent the Great Flood, isn’t it?” Vero suddenly realized. “Noah and his wife and children were the only ones not tainted by the fallen angels.”

  “Yes, He sent the flood to punish the wicked, to restore humanity, and to rid the earth of the Nephilim,” Ada said. “In the Bible it says Noah was ‘perfect in his generations,’ but Noah and his sons weren’t the only ones on the ark. They took their wives with them. Noah and his sons were not tainted, but a wife of one of the sons was carrying the Nephilim gene, and it was passed down.”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense,” Greer said, confused. “God would have known that. Why would He let that happen?”

  “Because the Nephilim still had a role in God’s plan,” Ada said, looking around at the giant bones. “Man needed to cast out evil for himself to make the earth his own. God just made it more of a fair fight. Because they were chained in the Lake of Fire, the fallen angels never had anymore offspring, so the Nephilim after the flood were not as powerful as the bloodlines became more and more diluted, even though they were still giants by human standards.”

  “How do you know?” Vero questioned.

  “Because in Numbers 13, Moses sent some scouts out to explore Canaan. They came back and reported having seen giants. ‘We saw the Nephilim there. We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.’ And don’t forget Goliath. He was also a giant. As a matter of fact, a great number of the Philistines were believed to be giants,” Ada told them.

  “Wow,” said Vero. “Who needs the library when you could just bring Ada with you everywhere? You know everything.”

  Ada blushed.

  Suddenly Vero’s face lit up as he put two and two together, “Whatever we’re supposed to solve has to do with these giants. Uriel was trying to give us a hint. Don’t you remember when he mentioned David and Goliath?”

  “Yeah, he did,” Greer said slowly, as the memory came flooding back to her.

  “Well, I’m still glad these guys are dead,” Kane said, staring at a giant’s massive skull.

  “Umm, I have news for you.” Greer’s voice was suddenly full of worry. “Someone’s been visiting these graves.”

  The others’ heads whipped around to face her.

  “Look, over there . . .” Greer shakily pointed to the corner of the chamber.

  Greer walked deeper into the chamber as the others followed. Ada gasped at the sight before her.

  A clump of brightly colored, freshly cut flowers lay across the bare chest of one of the giant’s bones.

  10

  BEYOND THE CLOUDS

  Pax’s head tilted back as he looked up at the many, many scrolls shelved in the library. His mind raced a mile a minute, trying to solve the riddle. X tapped him on the shoulder, startling him.

  “Sorry,” X said. “Didn’t mean to break your concentration. Are you talking to Vero?”

  “No, and I’m feeling pretty useless to them.”

  “‘They laughed at me, mocked me, and called me an ass. However, today they cower should I ever pass. They have felt my strength — one thousand men strong — when I was called to settle a terrible wrong. Yet, there is no rest beyond the clouds. No rest for me, ’till I be shroud,’ ” X recited. “This guy may have been called a fool, but he obviously knew how to kick butt when he needed to . . .”

  “Vero said it might not even be a person,” Pax reminded him. “Remember, Ariel said past Trials involved Biblical objects.”

  “Okay. I’ll research Biblical objects, and you research the number one thousand in the Bible,” X said. “Maybe there’s a link between the two. Then again, Ariel is a competitor, so she could be trying to throw us off track.”

  Pax put a thought in his mind, and a scroll freed itself from a shelf and floated downward into his hand. Another landed in X’s. They sat at a table and unrolled their scrolls. The number one thousand materialized and shot into Pax’s ear. A teeny, tiny Bible sprung forth from X’s blank scroll and sailed into his ear. X shook his head as the tiny Bible exited his other ear then jumped back into the scroll and disappeared when the scroll rolled itself up. Both scrolls flew back to their shelves.

  “So what have you got?” Pax turned to him, sticking his index finger in his ear to itch it.

  “Unfortunately, there’s a ton of Biblical objects,” X said, discouraged.

  “I didn’t get too many references,” Pax informed him, “There’s Psalm 40 that says ‘a thousand years are as a passing day.’ Peter said, ‘a day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day.’ ”

  “None of those involve any artifacts,” X thought out loud.

  “Isaiah, ‘the last of you will become a thousand.’ ” Pax continued reciting. “Judges, ‘he struck down a thousand men . . .’ ”

  “What was that?” X’s interest suddenly piqued.

  “The story of Samson.”

  “That’s it!” X yelled. “Not only did Samson kick butt . . . but he used the jawbone of a donkey! It’s the jawbone! Recite the rest of the passage!”

  “Finding a fresh jawbone of a donkey, he grabbed it and struck down a thousand men. Then Samson said, ‘with a donkey’s jawbone, I have made donkeys of them. With a donkey’s jawbone, I have killed a thousand men.’ ”

  “That’s it!” X shouted. “They laughed at me, mocked me, called me an ass . . .”

  “A donkey?” Pax wondered. “Of course! Ass is just another word for donkey.”

  “Yes,” X answered. “They have felt my strength of one thousand men strong when I was called to settle a terrible wrong.”

  “After they burned his wife and her family, Samson slew a thousand Philistines.”

  “It makes perfect sense,” X stated happily.

  “And some of the Philistines were giants,” Pax added. “So we’re in the right place!”

  “Probably.” X grinned. “We still don’t know where the jawbone is, but at least now we know what we’re looking for.”

  “The jawbone of a donkey?” Greer said, looking at Vero quizzically.

  Vero shrugged. “That’s what X and Pax say.”

  Greer looked around. “I don’t even know what one would look like.”

  Without warning, the floors in the chamber began to shake. Vero’s face flushed white. Ada pushed her body up against one of the chamber’s ancient rock walls, bracing herself.

  “I don’t want any of these skeletons to fall on me!” Ada yelled to the others, looking up at the swaying shelves of bones.

  Vero grabbed Ada’s arm, pulling her away from the wall, “Let’s get out of here!”

  As they raced to get out of the burial chamber, Kane and Greer followed. The walls continued to shake, and the ground underneath them buckled. Ada stumbled, taking Vero and Greer down with her. They fell right next to the skeleton with the freshly cut flowers, and Vero noticed that the underside of one of the leaves was loaded with dead zombie ants still clinging to the vein. Seeing the ants only a few feet away, his eyes went wide, and he held his breath, afraid of catching whatever killed them.

  “Get up!” Kane yelled, holding both hands out to them.

  He had just pulled Ada and Greer to their feet when something massive shuf
fled toward them from the cave tunnel. Kane stopped short, arms out, holding Greer and Ada back as Vero stood up. Kane couldn’t quite make out what was before him, but when he heard it moving closer, he quickly turned around.

  “Go back!” he said in a loud whisper.

  The angels retreated farther back into the chamber as the shaking became more violent. Bones rained onto the fledglings as Nephilim skeletons fell from their resting places and crashed onto the cold floor, snapping skulls from their vertebrae. The angels ducked while racing to the safety of the closest wall. Kane pushed the others behind him around a tall, wide boulder that created a gap between itself and the wall. They shrank behind the boulder and watched as a giant stepped into the lantern’s light.

  “I guess we know what was causing those earthquakes,” Ada said faintly.

  A hideous creature loomed sixteen feet tall in the middle of the chamber. Its bald head and skin were a dark grayish color, the texture of an elephant’s hide — thick, with ridged creases. Its eyes were dull black. Its feet and hands were massive with yellow, cracked, and rotted nails. But what nearly caused Greer to gag were the numerous hairy warts that sprouted from its face.

  “Thank God, he’s wearing a loincloth,” Greer whispered in disgust.

  The giant’s head whipped around at the sound of Greer’s voice. The fledglings froze. The creature’s gloomy eyes scanned the chamber, lingering over the angels’ hiding place behind the massive boulder. Vero and the others held their breath and crouched down even lower. A loud, grunting sound emanated from the giant’s mouth, growing louder and louder. Vero thought it was the sound of pure anguish. The giant then shuffled his enormous feet toward the front of the chamber. When he slid his feet this way, Vero noticed that the ground did not shake.

  Vero wondered what the source of his pain could be. He peered around the boulder and watched as the giant bent down on one knee and picked up a severed skull. He cradled it in his massive arms as if it were a newborn then reattached it to the proper body — the one with the cut flowers lying across its chest.