by Jerel Law
The fallen angel on top of him yanked him up.
“Now, don’t think we don’t know about your other little gift,” the fallen one growled. He grabbed Jonah’s hip and spun him around, and another red, glowing webbing encircled Jonah’s waist. “Wouldn’t want you to get any ideas with that fancy angelblade of yours.”
All of them were up and on their feet, the quarterlings with their arms bound behind their backs. Jeremiah’s mouth was covered again. Eliza’s head was even surrounded with a red headband of the same material.
They even know about her helmet of salvation, Jonah thought. He wondered how her practice with it had been going. He’d seen it in action only once, last year at school, and while she was good at using it, it had been a work in progress.
The guards corralled them and forced them into the holding room. Abaddon watched for a few seconds, enjoying the show, but then turned and bounded up the steps. Jonah assumed he was heading to the top deck to enact whatever awful plan he had for some of the world’s most important guests. He shuddered to think what he could do if he could control the world’s leaders.
Then he remembered—President Kinston was supposed to be there too. This was just getting worse and worse.
The guards and the fallen angels threw them all back in the room. The guards secured the quarterlings to chairs all around the room with ordinary rope and duct tape, and the Fallen wrapped special webbing around them in the hidden realm to keep them from using their gifts. They’d even wrapped up Jonah’s, Frederick’s, and Hai Ling’s feet so that they couldn’t use their sandals of speed.
“This ought to take care of you until he gets back,” the fallen one securing Jonah’s feet growled. “Without your special gifts, you’re helpless.”
TWENTY-SIX
DISCOVERY
Jonah watched Jeremiah straining against the chair and trying desperately to speak but unable to form any words, only groans and growls in his throat.
“Hey, Jeremiah,” Jonah said calmly, “just take it easy. All of that straining isn’t going to get you anywhere. I wish you could talk and use your belt of truth to help us get out of here, believe me.”
Jeremiah stopped pulling at the post and hung his head, shaking it.
“It’s okay,” Jonah muttered. “It’s not your fault. You saw Mom . . . or at least, thought you saw her. I probably would have done the same thing.”
Jeremiah rolled his eyes and glared at him as if to say, Of course it’s my fault . . .
Hai Ling was right beside Jonah and had begun to whimper, and then shake. “We’re in trouble . . . we’re in big, big trouble . . . We’re stuck in the bottom of a ship, and no one knows we’re here. No one knows we’re here!” She was working herself into a panic. Eliza tried to quiet her.
“We’re going to figure it out,” Julia said hopefully. “We’ll make it out of here, Hai Ling. Right, guys?”
Andre shrugged and mumbled something unintelligible.
“Jonah?” Eliza glared at him, looking for an answer. Jonah looked around at all of them, fear growing on their faces by the minute. He tried to think of something, some way to escape. There had to be a way.
He just had no idea what that way was.
“We can’t do anything,” he finally said to Eliza and Julia with an exasperated sigh. “We’re locked in here. How am I supposed to get out an arrow? Or pull out an angelblade? They’ve got your blade pretty well secured there too. Can you reach yours?” She looked away from him, staring at the ceiling.
Jonah closed his eyes.
What can we do? Think, Jonah. There has to be something, some way out of here. Abaddon’s coming back here soon . . .
Nothing was coming to him, though. He prayed and entered the hidden realm. Maybe there would be something he could see here. Maybe there was something they were missing.
He looked around the room carefully. He could now see the glow of the fingerprint of Elohim on each person there.
A few of his friends were praying, and he could see faint tendrils of light coming from their chests, upward and through the ceiling. He was about to offer up his own prayer when he heard mumbling from his left and realized that Andre was losing it. He was bent over, his head drooping, and he was speaking a stream of unintelligible words.
“Is he praying?” asked Hai Ling, looking at him with her brow wrinkled.
“No, there isn’t light coming out of him. I think he’s speaking Russian,” Jonah said. “Andre, are you all right?”
But he didn’t answer Jonah and acted as if he couldn’t hear him. He continued speaking in his native tongue, faster and faster. He had begun rocking back and forth.
“I think he’s going to explode,” Hai Ling observed.
Jonah continued to try to get his attention, along with Jeremiah and Hai Ling. But Andre wouldn’t snap out of it.
Eliza, however, was straining to listen and had begun to lean forward as their Russian friend spoke. As she did, a movement caught Jonah’s eye. Something was stirring, deep inside her chest. He thought at first she must be praying. It appeared as if the tendrils of light were emerging, and he expected to see them go upward. The thing that confused him, though, was that she didn’t appear to be praying. She was listening to Andre speak.
Eliza began to nod, and suddenly her eyes grew bright and her face held an understanding look. “Yes, yes,” she was saying as Andre continued to speak.
I’m pretty sure she doesn’t speak Russian, unless she learned it when I was gone, Jonah thought. What was just as mesmerizing to him, though, was what was taking place in the hidden realm. The strings of light coming from her were going toward Andre and actually entering his chest, making him glow brighter!
Jonah popped back into the physical world.
“Since when do you know Russian?” Jonah said to her. “You should see what’s happening in the hidden realm.”
But she held her hand up to him. She was still listening to Andre, nodding her head.
“Since never!” she said, the goofy smile still on her face. “But somehow I can understand every word he’s saying.”
Before Jonah could even process that, she launched into an energetic response. He couldn’t understand a word of it, though, because it was all in Russian. Andre’s head snapped up as he heard his language being spoken perfectly by Eliza.
“You haven’t learned it, but you can speak it?” Jonah said, but she was too excited to use this newfound gift to hear what he was saying.
The other quarterlings were leaning forward now, having stopped praying to watch the conversation between Andre and Eliza.
“I was in the hidden realm, and something is going on here,” Jonah said, pointing to them both.
Frederick raised his eyebrows. “Strands of light, going from her to him?”
Jonah cocked his head. “How did you know?”
“Well,” Hai Ling said, “if you’d been with us for the past couple of months, you wouldn’t have to ask.”
“It’s a spiritual gift,” said Julia, ignoring Hai Ling’s comment and watching Eliza carefully. “She’s apparently in the process of discovering a new one. If I’m not mistaken, I’d say it’s the gift of tongues.”
“Tongues?” Jonah said. “But I thought . . .”
“Amazing!” Eliza and Andre both said at the same time. They were laughing together, and it seemed Andre had snapped out of it.
“I just started to listen to him,” Eliza said, “like, really listen, and told myself to try to understand him. Just give it a shot, you know. And all of a sudden, I could hear his words plainly. Like he was just speaking English!”
“Kareem says the gifts can reveal themselves in lots of different ways,” answered Hai Ling.
“So you can understand all kinds of different languages?” asked Jonah.
“If she focuses on it, quieting her mind and opening herself up to help another person, then apparently, yes,” said Julia.
They each entered the hidden realm now and obse
rved for themselves the light wrapping itself around Andre.
“He was just worried,” she said. “I gave him some encouragement and a couple of verses to remember.”
“Thanks, Eliza,” said Andre, breathing a little easier. “That really helped. I was panicking. But wow, who knew you could speak Russian?”
“I realize that this is great and everything, but it still doesn’t help us get out of here,” Frederick said.
Jonah shrugged, and then he had a thought. “Maybe there are some other gifts we haven’t discovered yet that could help.”
They looked at each other, chewing on that for a minute.
“But how do you just discover a new gift?” Andre said. “We never really covered that in class.”
“Kareem says it happens through other people around you, observing things,” Julia said, “or through prayer . . . asking Elohim to reveal them.”
The quarterlings studied one another for a minute, but no one had anything constructive to say about gifts they each might possess. Jeremiah looked on too, but of course, he couldn’t speak at the moment.
“Maybe we should ask Elohim,” Frederick finally said.
They each bowed and focused their thoughts, trying to discover something new about themselves, asking Elohim to reveal their gifts. Jonah closed his eyes and tried to gather all of his thoughts together and point them in this one direction.
But even though he knew he already had the gift of prophecy, all he could see was darkness. Like a blank movie screen in front of him, nothing was playing. It was empty.
He peeked up at the others, who were still hunched over. Andre had his eyes closed tightly. Frederick and Julia were perfectly still. Hai Ling was breathing deeply, settling herself.
Jonah closed his eyes again, and this time, something happened. An image flashed in front of his mind. It was the shadow of a figure walking across the landscape of his thoughts. He couldn’t tell who it was, but suddenly, they were holding a flaming sword in their hands, striking it back and forth.
He looked hard, to try to see who it was, but all he could see was shadow.
Jonah opened his eyes. What was he to make of that?
He looked around the room, and the rest were still bowed, except for Hai Ling. She was looking directly at Frederick, her mouth hanging open slightly, as if she wanted to say something but wasn’t sure what. She looked dazed.
“Hai Ling?” Jonah said
At the sound of her name, Hai Ling snapped out of it, shuddered, and turned to Jonah. “I have the weirdest feeling.”
“What?”
“Frederick has a gift. And he doesn’t even know it yet.”
Frederick peeked up at them with one eye. “What did you say? You think I have a gift? Because I’m trying here, but I’m not seeing anything about any new gift.”
Jonah thought about his own vision. Could it be about Frederick?
“It sounds to me like you are experiencing some deeper level of discernment,” Eliza said. “Which is a spiritual gift of its own. That’s what you’re doing, right? You have this deep feeling?”
Hai Ling nodded, biting her lip and barely keeping herself together.
“Well, let’s throw this into the mix,” said Jonah. “I just saw a shadowy figure with a sword . . .”
“And you do have the gift of prophecy!” Eliza said, snapping her fingers. “Frederick?”
He looked at them, bewildered. “I don’t have an angelblade, if that’s what you’re after,” he said rather sullenly. “Believe me, I’ve tried. I just don’t have it.”
“Try again,” urged Eliza. “You never know when Elohim wants to reveal His gifts. I’m a great example of that.”
The ropes the guards had used on Frederick wrapped around his chest. His arms were secured behind his back, but not to the chair itself. “Give me a minute,” he said.
He pulled his legs up as high as he could, and with a great amount of contortion, forced his hands down from behind his back, to behind his legs, then finally underneath his feet. They were still bound together by the red glowing chains, but they were now in front of him.
Frederick looked at Jonah briefly, raising his eyebrows.
“Just reach to your hip and pull,” Jonah said.
Frederick tugged both of his hands to his left hip and made a dragging motion quickly. To all of their surprise, a flaming sword lit the room.
TWENTY-SEVEN
AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POOL
It was a deep shade of red, and the glow from the blade lit their faces. The other quarterlings were in awe, marveling at the discovery. Frederick couldn’t help but break into a full-fledged grin, waving his new weapon in the air and testing its weight.
“I never thought I’d actually get one of these,” he said, holding it up in front of his face. “It feels different than I imagined it would.”
“Hey, it’s cool and all that,” Jonah said, holding up his feet, “but how about you put that blade to work?”
“Oh,” Frederick said, finally snapping his eyes away from the blade, “right. Reach out.”
Jonah held his feet up. “Careful, now.”
“Is it sharp?” asked Frederick as he slowly maneuvered the blade above Jonah’s ankles.
Jonah wrinkled his forehead. “Really, Frederick? It’ll take two seconds for that thing to cut my feet off! Steady yourself.”
Frederick lightly touched the blade against the chains holding Jonah’s feet, and they fell to the ground and fizzled away into nothing. Jonah was then able to push himself up and spin around enough for Frederick to free his hands from behind the chair.
Jonah pulled out his own blade. “Let me return the favor,” he said, quickly slicing through Frederick’s chains, freeing up his hands.
They made quick work of the rest of the chains, and then ropes, until everyone was standing up and rubbing their wrists.
“What about the guards?” Julia asked.
Andre was holding up the rope. “I would say we have everything we need to take care of them right here.”
Jonah glanced at Frederick, who nodded, putting his angelblade away. He then knocked on the door and waited.
The guards quickly opened the door, obviously surprised to hear someone knocking when they were all supposed to be tied down.
“Hi,” Jonah said, waving to the confused men. The guards stormed into the room and reached for Jonah. Jonah took a step back, though, and Andre and Frederick jumped on both of them. They both easily pinned the men down with their angelic strength.
Julia, Eliza, and Hai Ling wrapped the guards’ hands and feet with the rope as fast as they could. Soon the two guards were incapacitated.
“You can’t do this to us!” one of the men shouted. “You’re gonna regret it!”
Jonah smiled, holding up two long pieces of duct tape. “Actually, we can do this to you, and I don’t think we’ll regret it at all. You’re awfully loud, anyway.”
He wrapped the tape around their mouths, and they could only look at him wide-eyed, groaning as they flailed around on the floor.
“Be as quiet as you can,” Eliza reminded her friends as they gathered by the door.
Hai Ling nodded. “We know, we know. Let’s just get out of here, okay?”
They filed out of the room, tiptoeing along the carpeted floor until they came to the stairwell. One flight up, and they were back to the pool level. No one was around. Jonah was sure all of the workers were upstairs, attending to the guests.
They were almost to the door of the next set of steps when Jonah heard a splash in the pool. Just a small slap on top of the water, like a kid would make playing in the summertime. He turned toward the pool and saw a small ripple in the center, moving outward toward the edges.
“What are you looking at, Jonah?” Eliza said, noticing him staring. “We need to—”
A high-pitched scream pierced the air. Before Jonah knew it, Julia had fallen down and was being dragged along the ground toward the pool.
; A green tentacle was wrapped around her foot and was pulling her toward whatever was in the water.
Jeremiah dove for her hands and caught one of them, slowing down her slide across the floor for a second.
“I’ve got you, Julia! Hold on!” he said. But he began to get pulled too. Hai Ling and Frederick grabbed him by the feet, and all of a sudden it was a tug-of-war, with Jeremiah and Julia stuck in the middle.
“You’re going to pull them in half!” Eliza shouted.
Jonah pulled out his angelblade, heading for the edge of the pool. He could see a dark, shapeless form of a creature under the water. There were two others beside it.
Jonah was mid-swing with his sword when he felt himself lurch backward. The sword met only air, and he was suddenly dangling above the water. Another tentacle had wrapped itself around his chest and was squeezing tightly.
The pressure forced Jonah’s hand loose, and his angelblade hit the water with a loud splash.
The monster holding him emerged from the water, and he realized that it wasn’t a tentacle holding him—it was a tail. An enormous, winged snake was glaring at him with beady eyes as water from its wings rained down below.
“Aaaaahhh!” he yelled. But halfway through his scream, he got a mouthful of water. The creature had yanked him down into the pool.
The water wasn’t deep, and he was tall, but he soon realized that didn’t matter if he couldn’t stand up. And right now, the creature was squeezing even harder and holding him under.
Jonah pulled against the tail, trying to tear into the flesh of the creature and free himself. But nothing was working. The snake-like creature was too strong, even though he was fighting against it with all of the angel strength he had.
He heard another splash beside him and saw Eliza, her face twisted in terror, pulling against another tail. Then yet another body entered the pool, wrapped in a tentacle. It was Jeremiah.
This made Jonah fight even harder, and he was able to push the tail away from him for a brief second. He spotted his angelblade, a few feet away from him on the pool bottom. If he could just get enough room to get his arm free and reach down . . .