Spirit Fighter (Son of Angels, Jonah Stone) (13 page)

“My name is Robert,” the tall one with the dark hair said with a friendly smile.

“And I’m Helene,” the woman said, smiling, looking deep into Jonah’s eyes. Eliza stared up at them both, captivated.

“Helene. Robert. HR!” Jonah exclaimed. “You must be who we’re looking for.”

“I . . . I . . .” Eliza tried to speak but no words came.

Robert laughed loudly. “Cat got your tongue, Eliza?”

She just nodded stupidly, still speechless. Jonah would normally have been amused by his sister’s sudden lapse in brainpower, but, after all, these
were
the most good-looking angels they had ever seen.

“Let’s cut to the chase,” Robert said, grinning and winking at them both. “Are you ready to see your mother?”

“You know where she is?” Jonah asked eagerly.

Helene reached out and touched his arm. “Of course, Jonah. She is safe. But she needs you. She needs you both.”

“We’ve been waiting for you all night,” Robert said. “We’re glad you finally made it. Let’s take you to your mother.”

They began walking down a street that was almost completely deserted and much darker. The sun still hadn’t risen, and it was especially dark among the tall buildings. Helene turned and motioned to them to follow, still smiling warmly.

“Come on, Jonah!” Eliza said, following them. “They’re going to take us to get Mom!”

Jonah paused as he caught Helene’s eyes again. There was something . . . the way she was looking at him, unblinking . . . A small voice deep within him was trying to speak to him, one he could barely hear above the noise of the street and his own heartbeat. Something was trying to hold him back, warning him, tugging at his soul. But these were angels, and the prospect of having his mother back was louder than whatever quiet voice was trying to speak to him inside. This had to be the next step, the one they were looking for.

“Jonah!” Eliza beckoned impatiently. “
Hurry up
.”

Robert and Helene walked briskly. Jonah and Eliza struggled to keep up, half-walking, half-running to make sure they didn’t fall too far behind. Jonah became aware of the putrid smell of rotting garbage as they made their way down the street.

Robert finally stopped. “This is the way we have to go,” he said. All they could see of the angels were their eyes, gleaming in the shadows. He pointed into the darkness of a narrow passage off the alleyway.

“In . . . there?” Eliza swallowed hard.

“Yes, of course,” Helene said, a slight edge to her syrupy voice. “This is where the door is, to get inside and find your mother. Come on, now. Hurry along. She’s very close.”

Shivering and covering their noses, Jonah and Eliza peered into the crevice between two buildings. They could make out the outlines of a few metal doors and a rusted-out staircase that went up along the side of one of the walls. Jonah could tell Eliza was nervous, but she managed to smile at Robert and Helene, and took a brave step into the alleyway.

The smell grew even stronger. It was horrible, and yet also vaguely familiar . . .

“Someone forgot to empty the garbage,” Robert with a chuckle that seemed rather forced. “Come on now, Jonah. We don’t want to keep your mother waiting any longer, do we?”

Jonah shook his head, catching Helene’s eyes again as he walked by. For the briefest moment, he thought he saw a glimmer of . . . yellow.

Yellow eyes. The same ones he had seen just an hour ago, in the Newark terminal. The same ones he had seen just a few hours before, on a lonely stretch of highway in Peacefield. And the same ones he had seen in the face of the hideous creature that chased him all the way to Mrs. Aldridge’s house.

Helene and Robert weren’t the “HR” after all. Jonah was suddenly sure about that.

He was moving to grab Eliza’s hand and pull her back through the alley when he realized that Robert and Helene were standing in the entrance, blocking their way back to the street. Closing off any escape route they would have. Jonah began to move away from them as Eliza turned around.

“What’s going on, guys?” she said, and then gasped.

In front of them, the angels were changing. The glow of their yellow eyes grew stronger in the darkness. Their faces were turning dark, almost black. They had been standing straight up, tall and strong, but now they began to hunch over, like someone carrying a heavy burden on his shoulders. Their wings crumpled, blackening, as if they had been set on fire and then extinguished. They grew sharp and angular behind their backs. Gone were their crisp white clothes, replaced by dark leathery skin that looked like armor. Their fingers grew long, with sharp claws on the end. Yellowish teeth protruded from their mouths now, crooked and vicious. They stood in the darkness, glaring at the two kids in front of them.

The one who had called himself Robert spoke, a sarcastic tone in his hissing voice, which had changed along with his appearance. “Didn’t your mother tell you to never trust a fallen angel?”

Helene reached back over her shoulder and in her hand appeared a long arrow, flaming red at the tip. A bow was suddenly in her other hand, and she strung the arrow as she spoke. “It’s time for both of you to go away. Forever.” In an instant, Robert had pulled and strung a flaming arrow too, and they trained them on Jonah and Eliza.

They turned and ran as fast as they could down the alleyway. An arrow flew just over Eliza’s shoulder, slamming into the wall beside her. It disappeared like black dust into the brick, but the wall erupted in flames. The one aimed at Jonah grazed his hair, exploding into a pile of garbage in a corner of the street. Flames shot up into the sky as the trash caught fire.

Eliza quickly moved behind a pair of garbage cans, dropping out of sight. Jonah’s closest shelter was a small Dumpster, and he scurried to get behind it. They both crouched down against metal and the cold street, and Jonah saw Eliza’s terrified eyes trying to locate him in the dark.

The Fallen were walking slowly down the alleyway. He could sense it even though he had not turned around to look. For the briefest moment, he closed his eyes, gathering himself. He glanced at Eliza again. She had located him in the darkness and was watching him, looking back over her shoulder, and waiting.

String your bow, Jonah
.

The words came out of nowhere, and he wasn’t sure if they had been spoken out loud or were just in his mind. But he heard them clearly, and in one motion, before another thought ticked across his brain, he stood up, turned toward the fallen ones, and reached back over his shoulder. An arrow appeared in his right hand, and then suddenly there was a bow in his left. The arrow was on fire with a pure white flame on the tip, and as it passed by his face he felt a cool sensation hit him, not heat.

This shook Eliza out of the shock she was in. She quickly sprang up, standing alongside her brother, and threw her hands up above her. Beams of white light erupted from her fingertips, forming a shield around them both, as they stood back to back in the alleyway. All of this happened at once, before the Fallen had even had a chance to blink. Then Jonah aimed the arrow at Robert and fired. It pierced Eliza’s shield easily, moving through it as if nothing were there.

Robert ducked his head, and the white flaming arrow flew past him and hit a trash can. A flash of white light blasted the can all the way out of the alley and across the street. Robert looked back at it, clearly surprised. He turned back toward them both, looking even angrier than before. Both he and Helene began to fire arrows, one after the other. But every time they hit the shield, they evaporated into dust. Jonah kept pulling arrows off his back, aiming them, and letting them go. They were faster than he was, though, and they kept avoiding his shots. Plus, his aim was not very good.

“Will you please hit them?” Eliza begged, her voice straining as she concentrated on the shield.

Jonah was firing arrow after arrow, but kept missing. “I’m trying! These guys are faster than they look!”

“I think you need to work on your aim, Jonah!” Robert shouted, as he rolled against the wall, dodged another arrow, and fired his own black arrow into the shield. Jonah immediately shot one that hit no more than an inch from his head. Closer. Robert growled and dove to the ground.

He was having a hard time focusing on both of them at once, and that was probably how Helene got so close without him realizing it. But suddenly, while Jonah was trying to get a good shot on Robert, she had rolled forward on the ground and stood up, right in front of Eliza. She contorted her face into a yellow-toothed grin with her sharp teeth and raised her hand to her face, holding it flat, just in front of her lips. There was something on the palm of her hand.

“Jonah!” Eliza yelled, and he turned, but it was too late. Helene blew across her open hand, and something dusty and black floated in the air toward her. When it hit the shield, Eliza screamed in pain, and she staggered back and down on her knees. The shield flickered a couple of times, and then went out.

They were exposed. Whatever that dust was, it was strong enough to extinguish the shield when it touched it. All Jonah and Eliza could do was try to scramble backward as fast as they could. Both of the fallen ones held flaming arrows up to their bows, Robert’s aimed at Jonah, Helene’s at Eliza.

“Good-bye, children,” Robert said calmly.

Jonah could hear his heart beating furiously in his ears, and the likelihood that he was going to die crossed his mind. He would never see his mother, his father, or his brother again. Closing his eyes, he waited for the arrow to pierce his heart.

Suddenly, a blur of light came from over the top of the building, right above the fallen ones. Jonah’s eyes popped open, and the fallen ones turned and looked up, only to find the charging bullet of light coming directly for them. Before they could think of shielding themselves, the blur crashed into them both, blasting them into the alleyway wall, sending shards of bricks and a cloud of dust flying through the air.

The fallen angels fell to the ground, covered in rubble. Something, or someone, grabbed their arms, and Jonah and Eliza began to rise quickly into the sky. As they zoomed up next to the wall of the building and over the edge, Jonah saw Robert take off after them.

Jonah was on one side of whatever was carrying them, and Eliza on the other, hurtling through the air at an unbelievable rate of speed. They caromed around like a pinball, turning, ducking, diving around buildings, swerving narrowly to avoid streetlights. Jonah’s head was bouncing back and forth as he flew along on his back, something wrapped around his arm tightly. But not painfully, Jonah realized. Finally, he was able to turn his head enough to see someone between the two of them wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, with two wings coming out of his back.

“Hi, Jonah!” The smiling face of Henry turned toward him briefly. “Having a good flight so far?”

All Jonah was able to say was, “
Aghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
” Henry just laughed good-naturedly and readjusted his grip on Jonah’s arm.

“Hold on, now, we’ve almost lost them,” he said, gunning forward even faster as he circled building after building. Eliza was screaming at the top of her lungs. But after Jonah stopped panicking so much, he noticed that he didn’t feel like he was being dragged. His body was not hanging down so much as it was floating along, with the angel. His feet and legs felt light. It was almost like with Henry holding on to him, he was able to fly too.

With no sign of the fallen angels, Henry began to descend. They floated toward the ground, in between a few large skyscrapers, landing in the median of a quiet street. Taxicabs were cruising past them, but there was no sign of the black creatures. They sensed something behind them, though, something large, and quickly Jonah and Eliza spun around. A giant bull with massive horns glared at them, looking like it was ready to charge.

“Ahhh!” Eliza yelled, and started to throw her hands up and form another shield as Jonah reached behind him for another arrow.

“Guys!” Henry said, trying not to break down in laughter. “It’s a statue. You know, the Wall Street bull?”

They lowered their arms slowly, realizing that it was indeed a bronze statue of a bull. It looked menacing, but it wasn’t going to charge after them anytime soon.

Jonah snorted as the tension drained from his limbs and laughter replaced it. Soon, he and Henry were laughing so hard that Jonah had to sit down on the sidewalk. When they finally stopped gasping for air, they found Eliza staring at them furiously.

“You about got us
killed
!” she said, pointing at Henry, whose smile faded just a little. “All of that flying around, every which way, zooming around buildings, up and down. Are you crazy?”

Jonah stepped forward. “He saved our lives, Eliza! What did you think was going to happen back there? Did you think those arrows were going to miss us again?”

“Hmph,” mumbled Eliza, kicking the sidewalk at her feet.

Henry extended his hand, smiling warmly at her. “Hi, Eliza. I’m Henry. In all of the hubbub, we didn’t get properly introduced back at your house. Glad you can finally see me, after all these years.”

Reluctantly, she reached out and shook the angel’s hand. “So how did you know where we were?”

“Henry is our family’s guardian angel,” Jonah answered, putting up his hand for Henry to high-five. “He can find us anytime he wants to.”