by Jerel Law
Jonah looked and saw the outline of a dark creature walking on the opposite sidewalk in their direction. His wings cut an unmistakable figure under the street lamp—a fallen angel. Running his hands along the brick, glass, and doorways as he walked, Jonah could tell he was aimlessly loitering, not up to any good but not looking for anyone in particular.
He breathed a little easier. The fallen one had no idea they were here.
Jeremiah sucked a deep breath in, and Jonah could tell he was about to speak. He slapped his hand over his little brother’s mouth.
The creature eventually passed, and Jonah finally dropped his hand.
“That was a close one,” whispered Eliza. “We have to keep our eyes open for more of the bad guys. They’re probably everywhere. The good news is that none of them know we’ve left the convent.”
“Except the Canaanite cab driver,” Jonah said, raising an eyebrow at her. Her face fell as she remembered that he was right.
“We destroyed him, though. You think he could . . . reappear and let his friends know that we’re heading to Alphabet City?” Her voice sounded desperate, not wanting it to be true, but fearing she already knew the answer.
Jonah had no clue. The only thing they could do now was press forward.
TWENTY-FIVE
A NEW WEAPON
But where to? They were finally on the edge of Alphabet City. Jonah’s MissionFinder 3000 had stopped giving them any clues. His prayer hadn’t seemed to get them anywhere, and they were walking down a street, an activity that felt more and more aimless the farther they went.
Jonah was about to give up hope when he heard a cry echo in his ears.
“Help . . .”
It was faint, so quiet that he almost didn’t hear it.
He stopped in his tracks, cocking his head sideways. “Did you hear a voice?”
“No,” said David, looking at Jonah curiously.
“I didn’t hear anything,” said Jeremiah. The blank look on Eliza’s face said that she hadn’t either.
“Is it hers?” she said.
He closed his eyes, straining to hear it again. Why was he the only one who could hear it?
“Help . . . help me please . . .”
It was the prophet! He was sure of it. But what direction was it coming from?
Jonah looked down the street. Avenue B continued as far as he could see. A cross street met it a few yards ahead.
He listened again. Her cry for help came to him one more time, very faintly, but yes, it was there. The voice sounded weak and tired. Yet suddenly he knew what direction it was coming from.
“That way,” Jonah said, pointing left.
“Okay,” said Eliza, glancing left and right. “Let’s be careful crossing the street, though. It puts us right out in the open.”
“Don’t worry, Eliza,” said Jeremiah with a confident smile. “David and Jonah can shoot arrows, remember?”
They moved across the street as quickly as they could, Jonah keeping his eyes peeled in every direction. As far as he could tell, they weren’t being followed.
“Help me . . .”
This time the voice seemed a little louder. This made Jonah more determined than ever, and his pace began to pick up.
“Come on!” he told his brother and sister, who were lagging behind the pace set by him and David. “Keep up. I think we’re getting closer.”
They walked two blocks, and he stopped to listen for the voice again. He closed his eyes, standing in the middle of the sidewalk, concentrating on shutting out all of the surrounding noise except for the prophet’s cries.
Instead of the voice, though, he began to hear something else. It was a faint rumbling sound like thunder, rolling toward them.
Jonah glanced back at the others, wondering if it was like the voice, something only he could hear. By the look on their faces, though, he could tell they heard it too.
“What is that sound?” asked Jeremiah. “It sounds like a train or a stampede in Dad’s old western movies. But nothing’s there.” He pointed his finger down the street and into the darkness ahead of them.
“It reminds me of the chariot we were just in,” offered Eliza. “Except that it sounds like a hundred of them.”
Whatever was causing the rumbling noise, Jonah realized that it was growing louder.
A cloud moved around the corner of the building three blocks down the street. It was dark, with sparkles of gold reflecting the streetlights.
Eliza pressed her glasses more closely to her eyes. “What is that?”
“It looks like a cloud of some sort,” Jonah said, his eyes locked on the strange mist. “One that’s moving our way fast.”
David was studying the movement too. “I don’t think that is a cloud.”
It was close enough now that Jonah could see that David was right. It wasn’t a cloud at all.
It was a swarm.
Jonah couldn’t believe what he was seeing: a horde of creatures, flying toward them, the beating of their wings creating a thunderous roar. But they didn’t look like insects. Instead, to Jonah’s horror, each one had a human-looking face, with a golden crown on its head, covering a shaggy mane of hair. They had torsos like a man’s, covered with gray armor, but each had four brown, galloping legs. To top it all off, the creatures had tails that were swishing back and forth, raised up high, with a sharp point on the end.
“Weapons!” Jonah yelled, drawing his sword. David pulled an arrow off his back, while Eliza covered them all with her shield. Jonah pushed Jeremiah behind him.
They stood trembling as the creatures approached, now less than a block away. Jonah had seen his share of awful-looking fallen angels, but these brought ugly to a whole new level.
“They look like something straight out of the Bible!” Eliza shouted, hands raised above her head.
David focused his arrow on the lead creature. “I think they are! They look like Abaddon’s locusts from the book of Revelation. You’ll have to read about it later! Just watch out for their tails!”
As Jonah’s sword was raised in front of him, glistening in the darkness, he glanced down at Jeremiah and considered the fact that maybe they should run, not fight. There were at least a hundred of these creatures, and he didn’t see how they could defeat them all.
But David looked at him, seemingly reading his concern, and said in a loud voice, “1 John 4:4: ‘You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.’”
Jonah realized it was too late to run anyway. The buzzing sound had grown almost unbearable. The locusts were upon them.
Jonah swung his blade at the first creature he saw, whose jaws were open, baring a mouthful of long, sharp teeth. The locust didn’t try to bite him, though. Instead, it swung its tail around to reveal a pointed stinger, like a scorpion’s. Jonah’s sword sliced the locust in half, separating the tail from its body. With a roar of agony, it shattered into a thousand brittle pieces raining down onto the pavement.
David was firing arrows as fast as he could at the closest locusts to them. His arrows pierced one, then another. As Jonah was swinging his sword, he could hear the creatures wailing in pain before their bodies crystallized in midair and hit the pavement with a sound like crashing glass. Jonah quickly sheathed his sword and began to fire arrows along with David. Jeremiah huddled behind the three of them, unsure of what to do. He had no gifts yet to bring into the fight and could do nothing other than watch, occasionally calling out to the others when a locust began to get too close.
But the more arrows Jonah and David fired, the more locusts seemed to join in the battle around them. And to make matters worse, they were swinging their tails, more and more of them, jamming them into Eliza’s shield of faith. As if they were trying to sting the shield. Although her shield was protecting them, it wasn’t damaging their stingers at all.
Soon they were completely surrounded. And as hard as she was trying, it was clear that Eliza’
s shield was growing weaker. She was starting to wince with every blow from their sharp tails. “I don’t know how long I can keep this up!”
Jonah looked around wildly as he continued to shoot, searching for any possible escape route. David was firing as quickly as he could, all the while calling on the name of Elohim.
One of the locusts screeched loudly, and the rest pulled back together. For a minute, Jonah thought it looked as though they might retreat, but it was just wishful thinking.
They charged the shield as one with their teeth bared and tails raised.
The blow of all their tails crashing into the shield together sent Eliza hurtling to the ground.
Her hands dropped. Her shield was gone.
Jonah didn’t know what else to do. He pulled his sword out, yelled as loudly as he could, and began to swing wildly. He felt the blade slice through two of them at once, and he kept swinging.
It wasn’t long before the side of one of the creature’s tails slammed into him, so forcefully that he was knocked to the ground. His face hit the pavement, and he felt dizzy and sick to his stomach. He had landed beside Eliza, and David slammed into both of them. Apparently he had met a similar fate.
Jonah turned his groggy head upward just enough to see the blurry image of four massive locusts, hovering above them with their venomous tails swinging back and forth. They looked poised to finish the job.
Jonah didn’t close his eyes, but just patiently watched as he awaited the final, fatal sting.
But then another shape moved forward, standing over the three on the ground.
Jeremiah hadn’t been hit. He’d been behind them the whole time. Now Jonah watched in horror as he moved forward, within striking range of the awful beasts.
“Back off and leave us alone!” Jonah heard his brother’s small voice cry out above the drone of the locusts’ wings. Jeremiah’s chin jutted out, defiantly daring the locusts to come closer.
Jeremiah’s lost his mind. The thought rambled through Jonah’s still-cloudy brain. Why didn’t I find some way to get him back inside the convent when I had the chance? Now we’re all going to die, and it’s all my fault.
The locust hovering the closest roared and charged at Jeremiah. But he still stood.
“I’m not afraid of you!”
As Jonah looked on, sure he was going to watch his little brother die, something metallic appeared around Jeremiah’s waist.
Before the beast could dig its tail into Jeremiah’s chest, a loud boom sounded, and the creature was blasted backward, slamming into the others before shattering into a million shards on the ground.
Jeremiah was shaking, hands at his side, but still standing. Somehow, the blast had to come from him.
Three more locusts snarled at him, lowered their heads, and made a furious charge. Jeremiah looked momentarily uncertain, but gritted his teeth and stared them down again.
“Elohim is way more powerful than you are!”
Boom!
Another invisible sonic blast hit them, and they met the same fate as the first one, ending up in pieces on the ground.
The other locusts swarming around them paused, unsure whether to fight or retreat.
Before they could decide what to do, Jeremiah opened his mouth again.
“All of you need to go back to the pit of Abaddon, where you came from! We have Elohim on our side!”
Another blast, this one so intense that all of the locusts surrounding them shrieked in unison, right before they turned brittle and crashed into the ground.
There were others behind them who saw what happened and fled. They were all gone.
Jonah, Eliza, and David stood up, gawking at the seven-year-old in front of them.
“Jeremiah,” Eliza finally said. “What is that you’re wearing?”
He looked down and seemed just as surprised as she was to see, across his waist, a belt of silver. It was covered with intricate markings.
“Whoa,” he said softly, running his fingers along the markings. “I . . . didn’t want them to hurt you anymore. The words just came to me. What is this?”
Jonah moved in for a closer look.
“Unbelievable,” he whispered, in awe of the gleaming piece of metal. “David, Eliza, what do you think?”
David studied it. “I think it’s the belt of truth.”
TWENTY-SIX
THE PROPHET ABIGAIL
How . . . what . . . ?” Jonah sputtered as he eyed his little brother with admiration.
“It’s one of the gifts listed in Ephesians 6,” Eliza said. “I guess you had to figure it would pop up sometime. We just haven’t had a chance to cover the belt of truth in class yet. But I do remember Taryn saying it is one of the more advanced giftings.”
She smiled, resting her hand on Jeremiah’s shoulder. “But just like Dad says, Elohim is Elohim, right? He’ll do whatever He wants to do. And you, Jeremiah, got a pretty awesome gift.”
“It seemed to activate when you spoke,” David said.
Eliza nodded. “Not only when he spoke, but when he spoke truth to the locusts.”
“Totally cool,” uttered Jonah, realizing David was right. Then he laughed. “Makes sense. Jeremiah has been known to blurt out the truth when it might be better not to!” Eliza laughed too.
David agreed. “You saved us, Jeremiah.”
Jeremiah just grinned, looking down at his belt.
“But it’s fading,” Eliza said. “Look.”
She was right. The belt was quickly losing its glow. They watched as it disappeared from sight.
“You’ll have to begin to learn how to use it now,” said Eliza. “Study it, practice with it, just like we do.”
“Help me . . . hurry! Please!”
Jonah’s attention was suddenly drawn to the voice again. Even louder than before. He ignored the others for a minute and strained to hear it.
Jonah reached down to his side and pulled his hand across his body. His glittering angelblade emerged again.
“Keep your eyes open and your arrows ready,” he said to David. “Eliza, are you ready with your shield? Good. Jeremiah, see if you can get yourself ready to use the belt again if you need it. Now, let’s go.”
He continued to listen for the voice of the prophet, and as it grew louder and louder, he found his confidence—and his nerves—rising. At least he was sure now that he wasn’t going crazy. But he had no idea what they would find. He kept going back to the dream, trying to figure out what the figures in the room with her looked like, who they were, how many of them there were, and what they were armed with. But he simply couldn’t remember what he had seen.
They turned a corner and suddenly Jonah stopped. In front of them was a sign that read TEMPLE MISSIONARY CITY CHURCH. In pink neon.
“Temple . . . ,” Jonah said to himself. “It’s exactly how it looked in the vision!” He turned to the others. “We’re close, guys.”
Looking across the street, he noticed a large, metal-sided warehouse. One rusty red door faced them from across the avenue. “And that’s the same door!” he said. “This has to be it.”
Jonah stood, watching the warehouse for a minute, suddenly feeling uncertain about what to do next. Should they just walk through the front door?
David slapped him on the shoulder. “No time to get cold feet now. We’re here. Let’s go ahead.”
Eliza fidgeted with her glasses. “Let’s just be careful, okay?”
Jonah nodded, his eyes locked on the door. “Jeremiah, stay behind me the whole time, do you understand?” He knew he sounded like their parents right now, but he didn’t care.
Jeremiah nodded solemnly. “Gotcha, Jonah.”
“And be ready for anything,” Jonah said. “My guess is there are fallen angels all over this place.”
They hurried across the street. Two homeless men were leaning against the brick wall of the warehouse, asleep. Scanning to the right and left, they saw no signs of the Fallen.
Jonah placed his hand on the door ha
ndle and quietly reminded himself that their job was to rescue the street preacher and get her to safety with as little trouble as possible. The next steps were up to Elohim. He had no answers beyond that. Only the lingering feeling that she would be able, somehow, to help them.
The rusty metal door creaked open and they stepped inside.
Jonah held his sword out in front of him. Eliza’s hands halfway lifted, ready to produce her shield of faith. David already had an arrow strung, aiming it into the darkness of the room they stepped in.
It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, but pretty soon Jonah could tell that they were in a small room. The floor was covered with junk and garbage. Old, dusty furniture sat in random places, most of it turned upside down and broken.
Jeremiah stepped on a soda can, and the sound of crinkling aluminum made them all stop at once. Eliza glared at him and mouthed the words BE CAREFUL! Jonah waited for a full minute before he was satisfied that no one had heard them. They may not be so lucky the next time.
They finally reached another door at the far side of the room, cracked open just enough that faint gray light from the next room poured in, and Jonah leaned over until he could see through the opening. It was some kind of office area, or at least used to be. He could see a couple of desks along the wall, a few office chairs, and a bookshelf. But clearly none of it had been used for a long time.
Jeremiah leaned in.
“What do you see in—?”
“Shhh!” Jonah said, listening. He could have sworn he heard something. They all stood perfectly still, not making a sound.
There it was again. The sound of muffled voices.
“Did you guys hear that?” David whispered.
Eliza nodded. “Yeah. Sounds like at least a few people. I was kind of hoping we wouldn’t see anyone except this prophet.”
Jonah’s forehead wrinkled. “Wishful thinking.”
He pushed open the door slowly. It let out a loud creak, and he winced and stopped. His heart beat faster, wondering if they’d been heard. The murmur of voices continued uninterrupted. Well, it’s now or never, thought Jonah. He pressed his hands against the metal surface of the door again, and as slowly and quietly as he could, pushed it open just enough for them to slip through.