Spirit Fighter (Son of Angels, Jonah Stone) (6 page)

Under normal circumstances, Jonah would have politely said no. Hanging out with ninety-year-old women was not his idea of a good time. But there was nothing he wanted more right now than to be inside, somewhere safe, and her house seemed as good as any.

“That sounds great, Mrs. Aldridge,” he said quickly. “I mean . . . uh . . . if it’s not too much trouble for you.”

“No, child, not at all.” He followed her as she shuffled slowly down her driveway, turning around every few seconds to scan the sky.

She placed a glass full of the ice-cold soft drink in front of him on the table and began to fix herself some tea. She hummed a song as she moved around the kitchen.

Jonah’s mind swirled as he finally had a chance to catch his breath.
What was that thing? Why was it sneaking around my house?
He shivered violently.

“Cold, Jonah?”

She eyed him as she placed her tea bag in the steaming mug and joined him at the table.

“Just a chill, I guess,” he said uncertainly. Mrs. Aldridge was an elder in his father’s church, very wise in the ways of Elohim. Even so, what would she think if he told her what he had just seen?

“Ah, just a chill?” she said as she took a sip. Her eyes searched him. “These old eyes play tricks on me sometimes, Jonah, but it seemed to me you were pedaling awfully fast down my street. Almost like you were running away from something.”

“Well . . .” He tried to think. If he said out loud what was going through his mind, she was going to think he had lost it. If he told her what he had seen. . . . He shivered again, thinking about the black figure with those yellow eyes. She waited patiently for him to respond, slowly sipping her tea. He swallowed. “I . . . thought I . . . saw something. In the shadows at our house. It was probably nothing.”

He tried to laugh, but it came out like a weak moan.

“Your eyes playing tricks on you too, hm?” she joked, but her smile faded just slightly, and she took another long sip of tea. “Sometimes our human eyes do deceive us, Jonah. A shadow can easily become a monster to a young, creative mind like yours. I’ve found that it is more important to develop your spiritual eyesight.”

Jonah cocked his head, not sure he followed. “Spiritual eyesight?”

Mrs. Aldridge leaned forward and rested her elbows on the table. “For followers of Elohim, we must develop our inner vision, the ability to see into the spiritual realm. To hear what Elohim is saying. To be sensitive to the movements of His Spirit.”

She said it like it was as easy as breathing, but this was all new for Jonah. He thought about the last day’s events and nodded slowly. “I think I am starting to understand what you mean.”

“Close your eyes,” she said. He blinked at her for a minute, and then did as she said. “Now, when you were pedaling so fast down that hill just a few short minutes ago, think back. Not to what you were seeing with your eyes. What were you
sensing
? What were you
feeling
in your heart?”

Suddenly, the black creature swooped through his mind, yellow eyes glaring at him. He popped his startled eyes open.

“I was being chased,” he blurted out. “By a black thing with . . . yellow eyes! It felt like being chased by . . .
hate
.”

She swirled her tea bag around, staring into her mug in silence. What she was feeling—surprise, concern, something else—he couldn’t tell. But her silence bothered him. For some reason he found himself wanting to tell her about his conversation with his parents, and about his new abilities.

“Mrs. Aldridge,” he finally said, “do you think what I saw was real? Or am I going crazy? Seeing things, feeling things that aren’t there?”

“I think,” she said, glancing at the clock on the wall, “that it’s time to get you home. Your parents are bound to be wondering where you are.”

“But—”

“And no,” she continued, “I don’t think you’re crazy. Keep your eyes open, Jonah. There’s another world out there. Frightening, beautiful.
And dangerous
.”

With that, she stood up and offered to drive Jonah home. And suddenly, all she wanted to talk about in the car was the best type of soil needed to grow rosebushes and how much sunlight an orchid plant needed.

Jonah sat beside her, nodding politely as he watched the darkened neighborhood streets carefully.

SIX
H
ENRY

T
he next day, Jonah went for a walk after he got home from school. He wanted to try out his powers a little more and he didn’t want Eliza or Jeremiah snooping. Once he got far enough out into the woods behind his house, he practiced lifting fallen branches, some of them triple his size. After a while, he ran out of things to pick up, but the path was a lot clearer. As he moved the last few branches off to the side, he saw a flash of silver light out of the corner of his eye. But when he turned around there was nothing there.

It must have been a trick of the light
, he thought, but he could have sworn—

There it was again. A flash of light, a blur of silver energy, zoomed from a perch high up in the trees down to the ground, behind some bushes.

He stared at the clump of bushes in the distance for another minute, but saw no more movement, no more blurs of light.

He approached cautiously. He knew he had seen something, and from the way things had been going lately, it could have been anything.

Suddenly, a figure came out from behind the bushes and onto the path.

“He-hello?” Jonah said, stepping backward as the image of the black creature flashed across his mind. He prepared to run again, but the form remained motionless, like a statue in the middle of the trail.

“How long have you been able to see me?”

The voice that asked the question sounded like it was coming from a teenage boy. Jonah took a few steps closer, and the figure came into full view.

The boy looked like a regular teenager, in every way except one. He was lanky, but looked strong, and was wearing a white T-shirt and faded blue jeans. Dark, closely cropped hair matched his deep brown eyes. But behind the boy, above his head and across his shoulders, attached to his back, was a set of sparkling silver wings. The wind blew softly through the trees, and the wings fluttered, glistening, glorious, looking metallic and razor-sharp along the edges, and somehow at the same time feather-soft.

The boy glanced over his shoulder at them, then smiled at him. “What do you think about my wings, Jonah?”

Jonah blinked, moving a step closer. His mind was racing. The blur of light he had seen in the forest. Silver wings glinting in the sunlight. It was him.

“You’re an . . . an . . .”

“I’m an angel,” the boy said, matter-of-factly, like a kid might say,
I’m an American
, or
I’m a Miami Heat fan
.

“And that was you just now, in the trees?” Jonah asked.
So I’m not going crazy
.

“Yep, that was me,” the angel said. “Was that the first time you’ve seen me?”

Jonah nodded as he stared. “I think so.”

“Well,” said the boy-angel, shoving his hands in his pockets, “it was bound to happen sometime. I mean, after Elohim revealed to you who you really are, I wondered if you’d start to see me soon. You surprised me back there, though.”

Jonah was standing face-to-face with an angel. Three days ago he was not even sure that they existed. Now, not only was he staring at one, he practically
was
one. Questions began to flood Jonah’s mind. “You’re saying that somehow with my new . . . abilities, that I can see . . . angels?”

“Well, obviously,” the boy-angel said, spreading his arms wide. “You can see me, at least.”

He immediately thought of the creature he had seen, and run from, yesterday.

“Are there others like you?” Jonah asked.

The angel chuckled. “Well, of course there are, Jonah. Millions of them,” he said, and then extended his hand. “Call me Henry.”

Jonah looked at his hand. It looked real enough. Slowly he took it in his own. It felt like real skin, and he shook it.

“Henry, huh?” Jonah said. “An angel named Henry?”

Henry smiled. “Well, actually, Henry is a shorter version of my real name.”

“Oh,” Jonah replied, “okay.” He paused again as he tried to get his mouth to catch up to his quickly spinning brain. “So are you my . . . guardian angel, or something?”

“I have been with you since the beginning of your life,” replied Henry. “Every human family has a protector, or guardian, angel. An angel who is there to help accomplish the will of Elohim in their lives. We exist to serve Elohim and Him alone, and He assigns angels like me to be with His most prized creations.” He smiled. “You.”

“Am I the only one who can see you?” Jonah asked.

“This is a very rare situation, Jonah,” Henry said, stroking his chin. “Very rare. For one thing, you are unique, your mom being a nephilim, as you now know. But then, to be able to see an angel without the angel choosing to reveal himself. . . . It’s quite unexpected, I must admit. Elohim is up to something with you; that’s for sure.”

“So you are surprised that I can see you?” Jonah asked. “Excuse me for asking, but if you’re an angel, aren’t you and Elohim kind of on the same page? Don’t you know His plans?”

Henry threw his head back and laughed. “I’m just a guardian angel. And His plans are often mysterious. Even to some angels.”

Jonah struggled to collect his thoughts.

“Letting people—you know, regular humans—see you . . . this is something you can do?”

“Of course,” Henry said. “But we can do a pretty good job of masking our wings and looking like real humans if we want to. Watch this.”

He closed his eyes and moved his arms away from his body for a moment, and suddenly his wings became transparent.

“Cool,” Jonah said, in awe. If he looked really hard, he could see the outline of Henry’s wings, but he could see right through them. If he were standing farther away, or if he were not focusing on looking for them, he would have no idea they were there.

“So, yes, we can let people see us. Sometimes Elohim has an assignment for one of us that requires face-to-face interaction with a human.”

“Have you ever been caught?” asked Jonah. “You know, by a human, when you were pretending to be one of us?”

“I’ve never been given that kind of assignment, Jonah.” Henry laughed. “That’s for angels much higher up in the ranks than I am. There are those who have been highly trained in such matters.” He sighed, then smiled again. “But not me. I am content to be invisible, by your family’s side. But to your question, there are believers who have a deep connection with Elohim, some who have a knack for spotting us.”

Jonah had heard people in church occasionally talk about feeling the presence of God strongly in certain situations. The Dominguez family swore that they had been helped by an angel when their car flipped upside down last summer.

“How old are you?” Jonah asked. “I mean, you look like you’re a teenager . . . except for the wings, of course.”

Henry grabbed a handful of dirt in his hands and held it up. “Let’s put it this way, Jonah. I was around long before this was.” He let the pile of dirt sift through his slender fingers to the ground.

“You mean you’re older than the planet? But you look like you’re not even old enough to drive,” said Jonah.

“Elohim created us,” Henry said, “just as He creates all living things. Like He created you. The difference is that we don’t die, so our appearance doesn’t age.”

“So do all of you look like teenagers?”

“Elohim is quite creative, Jonah. Just like you humans, there are no two of us who are alike.”

“So,” Jonah said slowly, “you’ve been with me . . . like,
with
me, my whole life? You’ve seen everything?” He gulped as he said this. There were some things in his life that he hoped no one would ever see. The thought that an angel had been invisibly following him around was unsettling.

“I’m not always right beside you, if that’s what you mean,” Henry said. “You get the same level of privacy from me that you would get from, say, your mom and dad. Speaking of which, I do have the rest of your family to watch over too. But let’s just say that I’m close by in case you need me. I hang around.”

That relieved Jonah a little. “So you were there for, say, my fifth birthday party?”

Henry grinned. “When you went to Chuck E. Cheese’s and were afraid of the giant mouse? Yep, I was there.” Jonah turned red, instantly wishing he hadn’t brought that up. “And all of your rec league basketball games, days at school, playing video games, going on vacations. I’ve been right there.”

That is so weird
, Jonah thought. “Are there others here, then? Other angels I just can’t see right now?”

Henry shrugged. “There are others around your neighborhood, your school, everywhere. Eventually you may be able to see them too. Look, Jonah, I am sure it’s uncomfortable to think about invisible angels involved in your day-to-day life.”

“That’s the understatement of the year,” Jonah mumbled.

“Just think of it like Elohim’s hand working in your life,” countered Henry. “It should make you feel good knowing that He cares about you so much that He sent His messengers, His hands, to guard and guide you. Pretty cool, huh?”