Spirit Fighter (Son of Angels, Jonah Stone)

by Jerel Law

  He sighed heavily as he brought himself to a halt and slipped his gym bag from his shoulder, standing in the middle of the field and leaning over with his hands on his knees. “God, it’s Jonah,” he said, and with that, the words began to erupt. “I know You are there, and I know You love me. But I don’t know what to do. Things aren’t great right now. I can’t believe what just happened at the basketball tryout. I know I haven’t been getting much sleep the past couple nights, but am I really that bad? Everyone thinks I’m a loser. I’m . . . I’m not good at . . . anything . . .”

  Tears began to form in his eyes and then run hotly down his face. He wiped them on his shirtsleeve, but that didn’t help them stop. Instead, his shoulders began to shake and his chest heaved as he cried. He stood there until the tears finally dried up.

  “God, can You help me? Can You show me what to do? Can You just fix this?”

  His dad was fond of calling God Elohim, one of His names from the Bible, which in the ancient Hebrew language meant “Strong One.” He also loved to tell Jonah and his brother and sister that praying was the most powerful thing any human could do. And that Elohim listened to them—and that if they would listen back, He would speak. But the truth was, neither Jonah—or his dad, as far as he knew—had ever heard God’s voice. Maybe it was just something his dad was supposed to say. He was a pastor, after all. It was his job to believe that stuff.

  Jonah looked up at the sunny sky, hoping for an answer, but all he heard were a few birds chirping in the distance. And even they grew silent. He shrugged his shoulders and began to walk off the field. What did he expect? For God to show up on the field and turn him into LeBron James? What a joke.

  He suddenly felt his anger welling up again, at the coach, at himself, at everybody, and he clenched his teeth. A stray soccer ball was on the field in front of him, and without thinking, he charged it, kicking it at the soccer goal as hard as he could.

  Then the strangest thing happened.

  The ball bounced—no, flew—no, rocketed off of his foot. It went up, higher than the goal, higher than the treetops, and kept rising, like it was shot out of a cannon. Jonah’s mouth dropped open as he watched the ball fly up, up, up, so far into the sky that it was a speck within a few seconds.

  Then it was gone.

  Spotting another abandoned ball, he looked around to see if anyone had seen what had just happened. No one was in sight, so he concentrated on the ball in front of him, ran toward it, and swung his leg.

  The ball shot off like a rocket again, blasting over the forest behind the school and—at least it looked like it—tearing a hole through a lone white cloud in the sky. Then it disappeared.

  Jonah pushed his fingers through his matted hair. He had never seen anybody do what he just did. He was pretty sure that a professional soccer player couldn’t do that. So how did he, a thirteen-year-old kid who had just gotten kicked out of basketball tryouts for not being good enough, kick a soccer ball over the trees and out of sight?

  What is going on? He stood staring at the sky, almost in a trance, as his mind churned.

  Finally, he glanced down at his watch. He was late for his ride home. He grabbed his gym bag and quickly made his way around to the front of the gym, still shaking his head and looking at his foot.

  TWO

  A LITTLE BACKYARD

  FOOTBALL

  Eleanor Stone was waiting for her son in a rusty white Subaru station wagon in the pick-up lane in front of the school. Jonah climbed quietly into the car.

  “How’d it go?” she asked, looking at him in the rearview mirror as she pulled away.

  His mind was stuck on what had just happened on the soccer field, and it took him a few seconds to remember that she was asking about the basketball tryouts.

  “Not great,” he said, and he told her all about it, how bad he had done, and the talk Coach Marty had with him afterward. He saw his mother’s eyes flash in the mirror.

  “He told you not to come back?” she said loudly, slamming the brakes and sending Jonah lurching toward the front seat. “That’s it! We’re turning around. No one is going to treat—”

  “Mom, please! You can’t go back,” Jonah said, cringing as he pictured his mother yelling and shaking her finger in Coach Marty’s face, and what Zack Smellman—and probably half the student body—would have to say about it later. “Everyone will see us, everyone will know that my mom came in and talked to the coach. Just . . . leave it alone.”

  “Jonah . . . ,” she started to protest again, but she saw the look on his face and just pressed her lips into a tight line.

  The rest of the ride home he stared out the window in silence. He sensed his mom’s eyes watching him in the mirror but ignored them. He didn’t feel like talking. The tryouts were one thing. But what happened with the soccer ball . . . it was just off-the-charts weird.

  He wondered if he could do it again.

  Because if he could, then maybe he could do more than just kick a soccer ball really far. His brain was telling him it must have been a trick ball, or some kind of optical illusion, maybe even something he only thought he saw after not getting a good night’s sleep. But he began to feel a nervous excitement. Like somehow he was on the verge of something big. Then his mind continued to circle back to the awful tryout, reminding him of how much of a loser he was.

  Jonah needed time to think.

  When he got home, he immediately went to his room and locked the door behind him. Snapping on his headphones and plugging them into his portable video game player, he popped in a game and lost himself in a world of spaceships, force fields, and laser beams.

  After a couple hours alone in his room, Jonah was ready to talk. He headed downstairs to his dad’s study. Jonah peered through the glass-paned door and saw his dad inside, back turned to him, facing one of the three massive walls of books.

  Books of all colors and sizes covered the walls. The desk was stacked high with piles of opened ones—dictionaries, Bibles, massive tomes in Greek and Hebrew. Some lay open; others were precariously balanced on top of each other in various places around the room. Jonah walked in and plopped himself down in his dad’s squeaky old desk chair.

  Benjamin Stone was so focused on finding a book that he didn’t hear his son come in. Standing on his tiptoes, he reached up for a large encyclopedia, the overhead light shining brightly off the bald spot on his head as he stretched. Jonah’s mom could have reached it easily, but his dad was short, just like him. After edging the book off the bookshelf with his finger and almost dropping it on his head, he finally had it. Pushing his glasses up his nose, he turned around as he searched the pages of the volume.

  Jonah couldn’t resist. He coughed loudly.

  “Oh!” His father looked up and jumped at the same time, dropping his book. It landed on his foot. “Ow!”

  Jonah smirked. “Hi, Dad.”

  “Son! You’re going to give me a heart attack,” his dad said, picking up the book and rubbing his foot. He came around the desk and held out his hand high, and Jonah instinctively slapped it in a high-five—their daily greeting. Benjamin sat down on the corner of his desk.

  “Your mom told me about basketball tryouts,” he said quietly. “Want to tell me about it?”

  Jonah shrugged and spun around in the chair, not saying anything. It was official: he was terrible at basketball and he was never going to get another chance to prove himself. What was the point of talking about it?

  His dad’s face was mostly beard and glasses, but behind those were bright, blue eyes that blinked at him softly.

  “I guess I can’t make you talk about it, Jonah. But if you decide you want to discuss it, we can do that.”

  “I know,” Jonah sighed, still spinning.

  Then he stopped. “Dad, something really, really weird happened today.”

  “At the tryout?”

  “No,” said Jonah. “Afterward. And you’re not going to believe me when I tell you about it.”

  Benjamin set
the book down on the desk and cocked his head to the side, looking intently at his son.

  “Try me.”

  Jonah took a deep breath, and launched rapid-fire into the story. He was sure that his dad would talk some sense into him. He would explain to him how he must have been imagining things, or tell him about some new high-tech soccer ball that had just come out. Offer some kind of explanation. His father’s mouth hung open, and Jonah paused, waiting for whatever cool-headed advice his father would be sure to provide. But he didn’t say a word.

  “You don’t believe me,” Jonah finally said, feeling the anger well up inside him again.

  “No, no”—his dad waved his hand in the air—“it’s not that. It’s just . . . well . . . come outside with me.”

  Jonah followed him out to the backyard. It was beginning to get dark, but there was still a little daylight left. Even though their house was small, they had a great backyard that met up with a large pond.

  His father walked over to the small storage shed and leaned inside, rummaging around, until he came out with something in his hands and a curious smile on his face.

  “Here,” he said. “Throw this.” He tossed a football at him. Jonah caught it and squeezed it in his hands.

  “To you?” he asked, and cocked his arm back toward his dad.

  “No,” Benjamin said, unable now to contain the excitement in his voice, “over there.”

  He motioned toward the other side of the water. Jonah blinked.

  “Over there?” he said. “Across the pond?”

  His dad nodded and pointed at a house in the distance. “At that blue house.”

  “But, Dad, what if it breaks a window?”

  “Don’t worry about that!” he said eagerly. “Just throw it. As hard as you can.”

  Jonah looked at the house. It was easily two and a half lengths of a football field away. Spreading his fingers across the laces, he gripped the ball firmly in his right hand. He took a few steps, drew his arm back, and threw.

  The football took off just like the soccer balls had. It tore through the air over the pond. It went over the water, cleared the house by fifty feet, and disappeared from sight.

  Benjamin Stone grabbed Jonah in a big bear hug as he broke into a fit of laughter. This made Jonah start to smile, and then chuckle a little. Before he knew it, they were both hugging and laughing so hard that Jonah was getting a stomachache.

  “Amazing, Jonah! Absolutely amazing!” Benjamin finally said, and quickly he jogged back to the storage shed. This time he pulled out two old baseballs and a softball. Jonah threw each of these, with the same result. Each time, his father said something like “Wow!” or “Incredible!” or “Unbelievable!”

  Finally, after they had both calmed down and Jonah’s arm was starting to hurt a little, his father looked at him, now quite serious, and asked, “Jonah, did anything else happen right before you did this? Did you tell me everything that you remember?”

  Jonah thought for a minute. “I prayed. Out loud,” he said. “Because that’s what you always tell me to do when things don’t go the way they are supposed to.”

  A proud smile flickered across Benjamin’s lips, but he let him continue.

  “I just asked Elohim for help. I asked Him to fix it.”

  His dad nodded his head thoughtfully. “I think we should share this with your mother. The three of us need to have a little chat tonight.”

  Something in his dad’s voice made Jonah shiver as they walked back inside.

  THREE

  THE NEPHILIM

  Benjamin sent Eliza and Jeremiah up to bed early, despite their protests, and asked Jonah to sit at the kitchen table. Then he pulled his wife aside into the study, away from Jonah, and they began to talk in low whispers.

  Jonah moved a little closer to see if he could overhear anything, but they were speaking too softly. Finally, his parents came back in and sat down, his dad placing his Bible on the table.

  “Jonah,” his father began, “like I said, there is something we need to discuss with you.”

  “What is it?” Jonah said, on the edge of his seat. His parents both seemed very nervous, and he felt like he was going to explode with curiosity.

  His mother looked at him and swallowed hard before she spoke. “Jonah, you are not entirely human. You’re mostly human, just not . . . totally.”

  She paused, and they both took shaky sips of coffee, watching Jonah’s reaction and letting the words sink in.

  “Not totally human? What in the world does that mean?”

  “Well,” she said, gathering herself. “Try not to be alarmed, son, but you are actually part . . . angel.”

  Jonah’s head started to spin. Try not to be alarmed? She must be joking. That was the only explanation he could come up with. She was getting ready to burst out laughing, any second now.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Jonah asked. But neither one of them was smiling.

  “No, we’re not joking,” his dad said. “We are entirely serious.”

  Jonah breathed in sharply. “I’m . . . part angel? Mom, Dad . . . seriously?”

  His father glanced at Eleanor, and she nodded. “You are one-quarter angel, to be exact. You are what’s known as a quarterling. We suspected that there would come a day when there would be something . . . unique . . . about you that would present itself. We just didn’t think it would be so soon . . .”

  Eleanor put her hand firmly on Benjamin’s arm as he took an extra large gulp of coffee.

  “Jonah,” his mom said, “I need you to listen and accept what we are telling you. This is a very, very serious thing. And very real. Now, you and your brother and sister never knew my parents. And what your father and I have always told you is—”

  “—that they died before we were born,” Jonah said, jumping in to finish her sentence. “You never told us anything else. So you’re saying . . . there’s a lot more to it than that?”

  “Yes, there is,” she said calmly. “We wanted you to grow up with as normal a childhood as possible, so we never told you about them. Or me, for that matter. Or you.”

  Eleanor glanced at Benjamin again, and he continued this time. “In order to understand who you are, you need to know the truth about your family. Your grandmother, Francine, was a lonely, troubled woman. Always searching for something, but never finding what she needed. What only Elohim could give her, of course. But sadly, she never turned to Him. Instead, she let someone else into her life. A man who called himself Victor Grace.”

  Eleanor grimaced at the coffee circling around in her cup.

  “Victor was very handsome. Very charming. He took his time and swept her off her feet. She was in love and was fully convinced that the feeling was mutual. When Victor asked her to marry him, Francine of course said yes. But even though she had always wanted a big family wedding, Francine didn’t invite anyone at all to the ceremony. Looking back, it’s clear to see that he pulled her away from all of her friends and family, one by one, until he was the only person in her life. She did whatever he asked her to do.”

  “So they got married,” Eleanor continued. “But after their wedding night, he disappeared. When she woke up in the morning, he had vanished. My mother didn’t know where he had gone. She never heard from him again. But a few weeks later, she discovered she was pregnant.”

  “With a baby she would name Eleanor,” his dad said with a slight smile, gently tucking a stray wisp of hair behind her ear before turning back to face his son. “When Victor left, it destroyed Francine. She had no faith, no friends or family, nothing to build a life on anymore. This turned her into a very bad mother, who was not very kind to her daughter. Especially when she discovered that her little girl was not so . . . normal.”

  “I began to do things that other five-year-olds couldn’t do,” Eleanor said, her eyes distant and sad. “When I was young, it would happen because I was angry. The first thing I remember doing was smashing a metal teakettle. It was a beautiful day, and I wanted to g
o outside and play. My mother was sitting on the couch, staring vacantly outside like she sometimes did. She refused to take me and wouldn’t let me go by myself. There was a metal teapot on the table, and I got so mad that without thinking, I grabbed it and crushed it with my bare hands. Mother wouldn’t let me play outside for a month.”

  She laughed softly. “I was just five years old. I didn’t know how I had done it; I just did it. But it began to happen more often, at first whenever I would get angry, but along the way I began to discover that if I became very, very focused, I could learn to control what I did.”

  Jonah interrupted now. “So you’re saying that I’m like that too? That I have these powers because I’m a . . . what did you call it, Dad?”

  “A quarterling,” his father said.

  “So that means that my grandfather—”

  “—was an angel. Yes,” said Benjamin, finishing the sentence. “But listen closely, Jonah. There’s more. We believe that your grandfather was a particular kind of angel. He was one of the Fallen.”

  Jonah sat back in his chair now, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands. Kicking soccer balls way too far . . . angels . . . quarterlings . . . the Fallen . . . it was all too much.

  “But you have that picture of him, Mom, and he looks just like any other guy . . . well, for a guy back then, anyway,” Jonah said, trying to make sense of everything they were telling him. She nodded and reached over, opening up a kitchen drawer. Pulling out a faded black-and-white photograph, she placed it on the table. It was a picture of a young couple holding each other closely. The woman was gazing up at the man with a huge smile on her face. The man was grinning confidently at the camera, a dark goatee on his chin, wearing a stylish brown suit and matching hat.

  “This is the only picture I have of my parents,” she said, her voice cracking as she outlined her mother’s face with her finger.

  “Jonah, I know this is a lot to take in,” his father said, “but the sooner you can accept it, the better. We have kept these things hidden from you on purpose, but now it seems that Elohim Himself is ready for you to know.”