Chapter 30
Shane watched Alejandro slump down in front of the dust that was Anna. She and the lure were back in hell.
With the other men disposed of, he fetched a shovel and began the painful process of burying the still-born baby under a Banyan tree while Alejandro, unblinking, stared up at the heavens.
After he’d patted down the last bit of dirt, the sky blackened and clouds blew in from the horizon at an alarming pace. Everything was terribly wrong here, from Anna and the lure to the mob and their fate. Shane held out no hope that Alejandro would help him now.
He prodded Alejandro. “Hey, man, we need to get out of here. Something is coming in, and fast.”
Brushing himself off, the angel wiped away the last of his tears, and walked toward the ocean. “I’m staying.” He waded into the surf where the waves lapped higher and higher around his ankles. They crashed out at sea as the storm approached.
Shane followed him and had to yell over the deafening winds that were howling around them. “C’mon, we need to get to shelter!”
Alejandro turned and pushed Shane with the force of thirty men. Shane flew back and landed in the sand. The wind went quiet even with the black clouds swirling above them. An opening emerged in the eye of the storm directly overhead and a light shone down upon Alejandro. The light encircled him and lifted him off the ground, and Shane heard the heavens utter, “Thyatira.”
Alejandro fluttered back to earth with glowing white wings.
One look from Alejandro in his glory and Shane was out cold.
****
The next thing Shane knew, a woman was mopping his brow, and he was flat on his back in a bed. He could smell Calise all around him and when he opened his eyes, he half expected to see her nursing him back to health.
Carmen turned from the sink with a washcloth and placed it on his forehead. “Where is Alejandro, transitor? What did you do to him?” she accused.
Shane’s mind was foggy and he struggled to focus, to remember. “Give me a bible.”
“What?” she asked.
“A bible, seer, now!” he demanded.
She opened a night stand drawer and produced a New International Version.
Shane flipped through it, angry that his transition had muddied the verses in his head. He stopped and tapped a page with his forefinger. “Here it is.”
He read:
“Revelations. Chapter Two: Verse Eighteen. ‘To the angel of the church in Thyatira: These are the words of the Son of God…I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first.’ This must be talking about Alejandro! It goes on, ‘Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess.’ That must be Anna. ‘By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality…I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways, I will strike her children dead.’”
Carmen backed away from him. “What does that mean?”
He snapped the book shut and his eyes glazed over as he answered her, “Your Alejandro is one of the seven archangels of the apocalypse. Anna was his Jezebel. The prophesies are fulfilled. If the other six angels are on earth too, that means we have reached the beginning of the end.”