All of the quarterlings were down in their basement lounge, resting and discussing the attacks. Each of the three groups had a surprisingly similar story. They were searching for Jeremiah, looking everywhere, when they suddenly came under attack. Angels had rushed in, offering protection where they could, but they had all been overwhelmed by a large number of fallen angels. Their only choice had been to retreat.
“It’s not worth it right now,” one of the angel commanders had told David. “We’ll fight them another day.”
Eliza grabbed a plastic cup and poured a soda from the machine. Even that made her tear up, though, as she thought about Jeremiah and how much he loved soda. Right now, she would do anything to be able to give him one.
She yanked her phone out of her pocket and found the number she wanted. The phone rang a couple of times, then rolled straight into voice mail.
She didn’t even try to hide the disappointment and anger in her voice.
“Where are you, Jonah? I haven’t heard back from you, haven’t even gotten a text. Jeremiah is in trouble, he’s been kidnapped, and I don’t even know if you got that message from me or not. I don’t even know if you care anymore. But if you were here—” She paused, trying to keep her voice from cracking, and composed herself. “If you were here, you would really be able to help us out. I just don’t know where you are, and your own brother is missing, and I . . . I . . .” Forget it, she thought. She hung up.
“Hey,” Julia said softly, just behind her. Eliza turned, tears streaming down her face. “It’s okay, Eliza. It’s going to be all right. You need to rest for a few minutes. Come sit down with us. We’ll figure it out.”
Eliza nodded, taking a sip of her drink and sitting on the corner of a sofa in the middle of the room.
She sighed loudly and closed her eyes. She would force herself to be quiet. She would make herself concentrate on the only one who could help them.
Elohim, she prayed, we are stuck. I don’t know where to turn now. We don’t have any more clues to go on. The police don’t seem to be getting anywhere, and Jeremiah is out there somewhere, lost and alone, and maybe hurt. I would do anything to get him back, absolutely anything. Maybe somehow You could switch my place with him . . .
She sat silently, pausing, her upper lip beginning to tremble again.
Just please help us find him. Show us the way.
David put down his phone and walked over to her. “The police haven’t found anything yet,” he said. “They are continuing their efforts, though. They say that they’re not going to stop until—”
“Well, they don’t know what they’re dealing with, do they?” Eliza interrupted. The whole room grew silent, everyone cutting their eyes toward her. “I mean, they hardly know what to look for, and we’ve all seen that finding a kid in a black car in New York City is like . . .”
She stopped in mid-sentence. A light had begun to glow in the corner of the room. It was hovering over the television.
She walked closer to it, studying the light. Elohim was trying to show her something. She could feel it.
Her eyes were drawn up to the television, which was on mute.
“Does anyone have the remote control?” she suddenly said. “Can somebody turn the volume on?”
On the screen was a man in front of a bank of microphones. Behind him were a dozen or so people, all of whom were in suits and ties, looking very official. They were standing in front of a building, where several flags from different countries could be seen waving in the sunlight.
“Why do you want to see a random news conference on CNN?” asked Rupert.
She hushed him. “Someone just turn it up, please.”
The caption underneath the man read: United Nations agrees to historic African peace treaty
And underneath that: Vitaly Cherkov, Russian Ambassador to the United States
“It is my pleasure to announce that I—that we—have been able to negotiate a historic peace treaty between the countries of northern Africa, and that, largely because of the efforts of my own office, as well as the officials from both of these countries, that the millions of people there will be able to enjoy year upon year of peaceful, productive living in their countries . . .”
He continued on and on, smiling, somehow projecting humility while pulling the message back to himself and how he had accomplished great things on behalf of these countries. Behind him were representatives from several African nations. They all appeared stone-faced but nodded along as the Russian ambassador spoke.
That wasn’t who Eliza was looking at, though. She stepped close to the television, looking at the men who stood behind Cherkov.
Could that be him? A man in a dark suit, with curly, silvery gray hair stood in the background. He wore sunglasses, his hands were clasped in front of him, and his head moved back and forth, as if he were watching the crowd.
Eliza pointed at the man. “It’s him!” she shouted. “That guy, I know it. I’m sure of it! It’s him!”
“It’s who, Eliza?” Rupert asked, standing beside her and squinting at the screen.
She punched him in the arm, a little too hard. “One of the guys who took Jeremiah!”
He rubbed his arm in pain. “Are you sure? Some guy with the Russian ambassador to the United States . . . he took Jeremiah?”
“He looks like he’s watching for something,” Frederick observed. “I think he’s security.”
Hai Ling had moved over to a computer against the opposite wall and was busy clacking away.
“You want to know some information about this ambassador?” she called out to the rest. She quickly scanned several articles at once, clicking from page to page.
“Vitaly Cherkov, the Russian ambassador to the United States. He’s been in that position since 2006. He has a long history of political service, though. His entire career seems to have been in Russian politics. Apparently his uncle used to have the same position, back in the 1980s.”
This news caught Andre’s attention. “Yes, the Cherkovs are like kings and queens in my homeland Russia. Everyone knows who they are. They’ve made billions of dollars in oil . . . and probably other things that aren’t quite so legal.”
Hai Ling tugged at her lower lip. “I guess they have enough money to buy a mega yacht. This story is all about their giant boat, and the special permission it took to be able to dock it in New York Harbor. The thing is enormous. Look at this picture.”
They oohed and aahed over the boat for a few moments. Eliza stepped back, though, her mind churning.
“Where exactly is it docked, Hai Ling?”
Hai Ling studied the article for a few more seconds, scrolling down until she came to it. “It says here that it’s located at Pier Fifteen.”
“Can you pull that up on a map?”
She began hacking away at the keyboard again. Up popped a map, with a red marker just on the eastern edge of Manhattan. “Right there,” she said.
“Interesting,” Eliza said. “Can you drop some more markers in?”
“Sure, what do you want?”
Eliza leaned in. “The three places we were fighting today.”
Hai Ling shrugged her shoulders and plugged the three street corners into the map.
“Wow,” said David as he studied the screen.
Rupert covered his mouth. “Oh my goodness.”
The three locations formed a sort of semicircle, all around the exact location of the yacht.
“In each one of the attacks, we were pushed backward,” said Frederick, pointing to the screen. “Away from the yacht.”
Hai Ling chewed on a pencil. “Maybe it’s just a coincidence,” she said. “I mean, what do these things have to do with each other?”
“But why would they take Jeremiah to the yacht?” Rupert asked. “I don’t get it.”
“Put yourself in the head of a fallen angel,” responded Frederick. “If you had the chance to lure one of us away, wouldn’t you? One of us would make a pretty great prize to show Abaddon.”
They continued to argue back and forth about it, but Eliza was already holding the phone. “I think Frederick’s right,” she said as she punched in the number for Officer Kelly of the NYPD. “I bet that security guard is either under control of a fallen angel or is a fallen angel himself.”
“But how can you be so sure?” protested Rupert. She held her hand up toward him and the phone to her ear.
“Hi, Officer Kelly, this is Eliza Stone,” she said. “I know you’re busy, but I have some information that we think might help us. I think I saw one of the men.”
She paused.
“No, on television. He was standing behind the Russian ambassador.”
“Yes, I know that sounds a little crazy, but I think somehow they might be connected. He has this boat . . .”
“Yes, I know it’s been all over the news. His yacht, well, we think that maybe . . . it’s where Jeremiah is.”
Eliza closed her eyes and started to pace around the room as the others watched.
“I know, I know, you are busy and are working hard to find him. I’m just trying to help . . .”
“Yes, yes,” she said, her voice growing quiet. “You’ll check it out, then? Okay . . . bye.”
She sat down in one of the soft chairs. “Officer Kelly said they’d check it out,” she said. “But she kind of blew me off.”
“Why didn’t you tell her about the attacks?” Carlo said.
“What was I supposed to do, tell her we were beaten back by fallen angels?”
Eliza stood again. “There’s something there. I really think that’s the same man who took Jeremiah. And why would we all be pushed back by a huge force of fallen angels, away from the direction of the boat?”
“There are probably a lot of reasonable explanations here,” suggested Rupert, always eager to avoid a fight. “If we can just think for a few minutes . . .”
“You guys can think,” answered Eliza, moving toward the steps. “I’m going to check it out. Anyone who wants to come with me, well, come on.”
She didn’t wait for anyone to decide. She simply headed up the steps. But it didn’t take long for her to hear footsteps.
Waiting in the hallway, Eliza watched as they all emerged through the doorway, surrounding her.
“We’re with you, Eliza,” Julia said. The others nodded. “Lead the way.”
Eliza barked out instructions as they hurried down the city streets, back toward the place where they’d been turned away earlier by Abaddon’s forces.
“We need to find a way to get past the Fallen,” she said. They all agreed that if they were watching the streets, they’d be guarding subway stations too.
A city bus drove by, spitting exhaust fumes in their direction. Frederick snapped his fingers. “I have an idea.”
They were still in the hidden realm, and the bus that had stopped at the street corner to pick up passengers was filled. Frederick was studying the bus map plastered against the bus stop wall.
“That’s the one we want. Follow me! Quickly!” he said, and began to run toward the back of the bus. He jumped onto the back bumper and, using the door handle like the rung of a ladder, pushed himself upward, and with the grace of a gymnast, he was on top of the bus in seconds.
He stuck his hand down and helped pull up David, who in turn began pulling up the rest of the quarterlings along with Frederick. They were all easy, except for Andre. His foot had barely lifted off the ground when the bus began to move. Both David and Frederick had to yank him as hard as they could, Frederick turning red in the face as he strained and wrestled the big Russian to the top of the bus.
“Don’t you think the fallen angels can see us up here?” Hai Ling said as they sat on top of the moving vehicle. Rupert was nodding his agreement.
“No, this is a good idea,” Eliza said. “They might see us if they think to look up here, but we’ll be moving faster than we normally would, and who knows, we just might get lucky.”
“Well, it’s a good thing the top of this bus is flat,” Ruth said.
“Thank you, Ruth,” Frederick said. “I can always count on you to see the positives. Unlike some of the rest of you here.”
He glanced toward Hai Ling and Rupert, who were scowling but said nothing.
Eliza was tracking their movement on the map on her phone. The bus made three more stops, and with each one, drew closer to the boat.
“Be on the lookout!” she cautioned the others as they approached the points where they were attacked before. “Be careful! Just stay ready for anything!”
“Okay, okay, Eliza,” said Frederick. “Take a deep breath or something.”
“It looks like we’re only a couple of blocks from the yacht’s location,” said Rupert, studying his own phone.
Most of the quarterlings were watching the sky, but so far, they’d seen nothing.
“Maybe we’re going to get lucky after all,” Eliza whispered.
Ruth, who was the only one looking down, pointed at the street ahead. “Look!” she said, a smile on her face. “It’s a cute little puppy, walking all by himself.”
The girls moved toward the front of the bus to see. A scruffy dog was standing on the street corner. Gray, black, and brown, though it was unclear what was his actual color and what was dirt. It obviously hadn’t been brushed or taken care of in quite some time, if ever. It seemed to be watching the bus.
“Aww,” Bridget said, “he’s so cute! I wonder if he’s lost.”
“It seems like he’s looking right at us,” said Ruth. “Which I know is impossible, since we’re in the hidden realm. But still . . .”
The dog watched the top of the bus and then barked a couple of times. Then he walked back around the corner.
“Where’s he going?” Bridget said. “You know, I was thinking just the other day that we need a pet for the convent . . .”
Several of the kids began to talk excitedly about the possibility, and they momentarily turned their eyes away from the road and the sky.
They didn’t see the dog reemerge from around the corner until he was standing in front of the bus.
And he wasn’t alone this time.
“Guys, I think you better take a look at this,” Andre said, standing up on the bus rooftop.
Behind the dog were seven others, who looked almost identical to the small one. They started barking loudly, snarling at them. And then, they began to change. Their tails grew long and pointed. Claws grew out of their feet, a particularly sharp one coming from their front paws. Their fur was replaced by scaly, greenish skin. Their snouts extended, with mouths suddenly full of sharp teeth.
“What are those?” Rupert cried out, backing up a couple of steps.
“I don’t know,” said Frederick, “but it seems as if they can actually see us. Don’t you think, Eliza?”
She had already pulled out her angelblade. “Yes, I’m afraid it does.”
No one else could, apparently. A continuous stream of people were walking down the street, but no one looked over at the creatures.
“They look like some kind of giant lizard,” said David, pulling an arrow off his back and stringing it to the bow, which had appeared in his left hand. “But not like anything I’ve ever seen.”
The creatures leaped forward, over the cars that were in front of them, like they were small fences, easily cleared. Eliza swallowed hard as she moved to the front of the bus.
As the bus moved forward, the lizards ran beside it, jumping up and slamming their heads into the side of it.
“Move to the middle, everyone!” Eliza called out. They crowded toward the center of the roof, but just then the bus turned to the right. Hai Ling lost her balance and fell backward, her body dropping off the side. Only her two hands were visible, having grabbed onto the low-hanging rack that went around the top.
“Ahhhhh!” she screamed. “Help! Help!”
The creatures all moved to her side, eager for a feast. Wide-eyed, she kicked downward as hard as she could, meeting one of the animals in the nose.
“David, Lania. Arrows!” Frederick called out as he reached down for her hands. David aimed down and released an arrow. Lania strung one of her own and did the same. Each of them hit a giant lizard squarely. It tumbled to the ground, rolling along the asphalt road behind the moving bus.
Frederick had both of Hai Ling’s hands in his and fell backward toward the middle. Hai Ling sprang up over the edge, landing beside him. She was still screaming, and for a second, Eliza thought she’d been bitten.
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” she finally said, catching her breath.
Frederick pulled her up. “Good, because we need your arrows.”
Eliza stood on the edge, swinging at any of the animals that dared jump high enough. David, Lania, Frederick, and Hai Ling stood on the edges too, firing as many arrows as they could. But it seemed like every time one of them connected with a lizard, two more emerged from the streets.
They were so busy with the creatures below they almost didn’t see what was descending on them from above.
Creatures with the heads and wings of eagles and the bodies of lions swooped down from over the tops of buildings and around corners in the air. Eliza only looked up when she heard the awful screeching in the air.
“We have more trouble, guys!” she said, pointing her sword up. “Shields, quickly!”
Rupert, Julia, Carlo, and Bridget immediately shot their hands in the air, forming one large bubble, encompassing all the quarterlings still in the middle of the roof.
“What are those things?” Julia yelled, just as three of them slammed their claws into the shield. It held steady, but they could feel the impact and braced themselves against the roof. Four more dove down, with their awful sound, and slammed their heads into the shields. Carlo and Rupert both fell to one knee but bravely kept their hands up.
“I hope this bus keeps moving!” Andre shouted, gathered in the middle with the others. “If it stops, I think this could get even worse!”
Eliza snuck a glance ahead, hoping more than anything to see a tunnel. Instead, the light ahead of them turned red.
“Don’t look now . . . ,” said Rupert in an already defeated tone.
The bus was slowing to a stop. As it did, one of the giant lizards stood still, while another climbed on its back. They did it so fast that no one had time to react. A third animal hopped up on those two, snagged Lania by the arm with its sharp teeth, and dragged her to the street.
“Lania!” Andre shouted, running to the side. Two of the beasts were on top of her. Eliza saw only one arm and one leg from her perch above.
Without considering herself at all, Eliza hopped down, slamming her foot into the head of the creature, and landed on the ground.
Her sword was still in her hand, and she sprung up.
“Hey!”
Swinging her blade with all her might, she sliced into one of the giant lizards on top of her friend. He immediately turned into a silver liquid, draining into the street. The other was on top of Lania, pinning her down and going for her neck. She was fighting him off with all her strength, but clearly losing.
Eliza thrust her sword forward. The lizard yelped, just before it turned into the same silvery liquid.
The bus had begun to pull forward again, though, and Eliza and Lania watched the creatures raining down from the sky, blasting themselves into the glowing but ever-weakening shield, while the gang of creatures continued its pursuit.
“They’re leaving!” Lania said, leaping up. But quickly, they realized they had more pressing issues to deal with.
Four lizards surrounded them and were closing in slowly. Each had a forearm outstretched, with a long, razor-like talon held up high, ready to strike. They were small, but fierce and aggressive. And, without needing to look up, Eliza could feel the presence of creatures in the air above.
Lania had an arrow drawn, and Eliza held her sword aloft. But what could they do against all of the creatures at once?
“We have to fight, Lania,” Eliza said, trying to find strength for her voice, but hearing herself shake. “No matter what, we need to fight.”
The scaly lizards crept in, their fangs dripping with the prospect of a kill. They looked hungry, ready for a quarterling feast.
One of them reared its head back and let forth a terrifying screech that chilled Eliza down to her bones.
“Please, Elohim,” she whispered, closing her eyes. All she could think about, the only face she could see, was Jeremiah’s. She needed to be there for him, no matter what. But it didn’t appear now that she would have that chance. “Please . . .”
A screeching sound, a blast of light, and the feel of something cool and wet hitting her cheek caused her eyes to pop open.
The awful lizards were gone. She and Lania were covered with silvery liquid.
Another flash above her, and the flying creatures scattered up above the buildings and out of sight.
Looking up, a figure stood above them, silhouetted by the sun behind. He held a glittering silver blade in his right hand.
Eliza blinked for a few seconds, unable to believe her eyes.
“Jonah?”