Fire Prophet (Son of Angels) (22 page)

They emerged from the giant apartment buildings and onto a busy street.

“Fourteenth Street, like Sisera said,” said Eliza, pointing to a street sign. “And there’s Avenue B. Since the avenues are letters instead of numbers, this should be Alphabet City. Where to now?”

She looked at Jonah expectantly, waiting for an answer. Jeremiah and David stared at him too.

He waited for some kind of sign, any indication from Elohim of which direction would be best. But he didn’t feel anything. Finally, he picked a direction, pointing straight ahead.

“Let’s walk down Avenue B.”

Jonah checked his watch. It was 5:01, and the sky was still dark. Streetlights illuminated the pavement and the sidewalks
ahead. It was a wide street and more occupied than the neighborhood they had just walked through. Jonah was thankful for that. They passed an old man pushing a grocery cart, a loud group of college-age kids probably returning from a party, two teenage girls going who-knew-where, and a younger man in an overcoat, smoking a cigarette. Their presence made Jonah feel a little less scared, even though he knew they couldn’t see or help the quarterlings if they ran into any more trouble.

Humans weren’t the only ones they might see, though. Jonah was especially aware that they might come across other spiritual beings. It was only natural that they would spot fallen angels wandering around. They just couldn’t let any fallen ones spot them and sound the alarm.

Eliza suddenly pushed Jonah, Jeremiah, and David against a glass storefront, into the shadows. She put her forefinger on her lips and pointed across the street.

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 N
EW
W
EAPON

B
ut 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.