Ten Plagues

In Corinthians 12:8–10 is a list of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. As I read the list it was very familiar. I’d heard this list many times before and had heard of people with nearly all these gifts. Wisdom, knowledge, prophecy, faith, healing, performing miracles, discerning spirits, speaking in tongues, interpreting tongues. But this once, as I read, I was struck by the gift of discerning spirits. I wondered what that would be like. What if you could walk up to someone and immediately know that they were good or evil, or even discern evil spirits—demons—within them?

When an idea comes to me while reading my Bible, I try to pay very careful attention to that, because I believe God sometimes speaks to us in a voice so still and small that it amounts to not so much a voice as an idea. From this idea a book was born. I’m dedicating this book to the God who gives me ideas.

A
cold chill of evil sleeted through Keren Collins’s veins.

Wind howled like a tormented soul between the Chicago tenements. Goose bumps rose on her arms. Her hair blew across her eyes and blinded her. Being sightless made the evil more powerful, as if it cast her into the presence of a blackened soul.

She felt an impending doom so powerful her hands shook as she twisted her mass of unruly curls into a messy bun and anchored it with an ugly but functional leather contraption.

She had parked her Impala a half block away from the decrepit brownstone she was watching. The front stoop and the young punks gathered there were visible. She looked around, listening. Did the evil have a source? Could this feeling be coming from inside that run-down building?

No way was Keren going in alone to find out. Chicago cops were about as popular in this part of the South Side as the Cubbies. She sat in her car, and waited and itched.

O’Shea, why’d you pick today of all days to be late?

To keep from fretting over this strange premonition, Keren pulled her notes out to reread what she had on Juanita Lopez, reported missing two days ago. Keren and O’Shea had done some preliminary checking yesterday that had led Keren to this old hangout of Juanita’s. No one had seen the young woman for a week. Keren had read about two sentences when she snapped the little book shut and jammed it back in her blazer’s inside breast pocket. She couldn’t sit still when things felt this wrong. Pushed to action and against all common sense, she reached for her door handle.

Pounding footsteps drew her eyes to the left and behind her car. A man raced down the sidewalk on the far side of the street. The beat of his sprinting feet made Keren’s heart speed up. He raced past her, straight toward that cluster of thugs Keren figured for Juanita’s old gang. They saw the man running and straightened like wolves scenting blood.

The runner went up the brick steps right between some of the meanest scum in the city. He collapsed against the wall, gasping for air. Keren narrowed her eyes as he lifted a small piece of … something … and pressed it to the side of the door, sliding it sideways and jamming it into a crack he must have found. A sign maybe, brown wood, a foot or so long and half as high. If it had a picture or words on it she couldn’t make them out. Just as he pressed it against the wall one of the gang members slapped a hard hand on the man’s shoulder, ripped the sign out of his hand, jerked the door open, and shoved him inside.

That sense of evil grew, but Keren didn’t have to be a genius to know that the guy who’d just been shoved inside could be in big trouble.

A half-dozen Hispanic boys erupted from the brownstone and took up positions in front of the building as if they’d been assigned guard duty.

Keren slumped low in her seat, sitting on her backside while someone was being killed. But she couldn’t take on a gang alone. Minutes ticked by.

“O’Shea, where are you? C’mon.”

She couldn’t stand it anymore. She reached for the door handle and her phone at the same time.

An explosion blasted bricks loose from the building’s foundation. The kids standing guard were mowed down by shrapnel.

Keren’s car rocked on its axles. Its car alarm went off and the airbag deployed and punched her in the face.

A blast of heat hit next and gritty dust enveloped the car. She leaped from her car and charged toward the crawling, bleeding boys.

Running and stumbling, she was blinded by the billowing smoke.

Another explosion knocked her down. She could hear glass shattering to her right. Flames shot out of the windows on an upper floor, cutting through the gritty air.

Bits of pulverized brick whizzed overhead. Choking dust coated the inside of her nose and throat. She covered her face and waited until the buzzing debris from the new explosion passed. Forcing herself to her feet, she tripped and went down and realized she’d stepped on a boy.

She caught the shoulders of his jacket. “Get up!”

He looked up at her, dazed.

“Get up and run!” She dragged the boy. She knew she shouldn’t move him, but another brick slashed inches from her face and she knew this was kill-or-cure time.

“You’ve got to get away.” She thrust her face close to his, hoping to penetrate his daze.

Blood trickled down his forehead. Cinders rained down.

Keren staggered as she tried to haul the kid upright. “Run. Now. Move! Move! Move!”

He shook his head. His eyes cleared and he gained his feet and stumbled away. Keren moved forward and fell over shattered brick. This time she stayed down and crawled. The rubble on the ground cut her hands and knees. She reached another victim. This one was already trying to stand. Over the crackling flames and crashing stones, she shouted, “Run, get out of here!”

A falling brick struck Keren in the shoulder and she fell flat on her face just as someone ran out of the building.

“How many are in there?” she yelled.

The kid didn’t answer as he ran past.

Keren saw a dark lump off to the side, crumpled on the ground, and she got to him and yanked at another fallen, dazed teenager. The kid’s face was shredded from brick fragments, his eyes glazed. Keren dragged him to his feet. She suspected only pure survival instinct made him move in the direction she shoved him. She saw two other boys crawling in the right direction and let them go it alone.

She was close enough to the building to see a young child hovered against the side of it. He was frozen, his eyes wide with terror. She crawled toward him.

A stream of staggering, screaming people came out of the building. The man who’d gone running up to the building right before it exploded—tall, dark-haired, commanding, covered with blood and gray soot—brought up the rear, shoving at two kids, yelling and urging them forward like a general on the battlefield. “Get out, go, go, go!”

As the man ran down the steps, the door he’d just charged out of blew off the building and whizzed inches from Keren’s head. Flames raged out of the opening. The man threw his arms around both boys and dove under the shooting flames. They skidded across the cruel pavement.

The air turned white hot from the new blaze. It was alive with glowing embers and toxic smoke. Choking, Keren struggled on toward the little boy. A blaze flared out of a broken basement window and enveloped her. She dropped to her belly and wrapped her arms over her head, afraid her hair would catch fire. The instant the burst of fire ebbed, she crawled forward on broken bricks and glass.

When she reached the child, she caught him to her. Bricks rained down. She forced the child away from his hideout. He got the idea, wrenched away from her, and ran.

She looked at the inferno that engulfed the front entrance and every window in the building. There was no way to get inside to search for survivors. Turning away, she saw the man was on his knees, beating on the flames devouring one of the boys.

The man’s face was coated. His clothes and hair were gray with ash.

Keren charged in, snagged one of the boys by the back of his sweatshirt, and jerked him to his feet. Something solid slammed the man to his knees beside her. A stream of blood cut through the grit on his face.

He staggered to his feet when Keren would have expected him to be down for good. “The whole building’s coming down.”

He tore at the boy’s burning jacket. The panicked boy fought him, but the man ripped the coat off.

Keren shoved the other boy forward then turned to help the bleeding man. Turning to her, his eyes blazed with life in the midst of death. His spirit hit her almost as hard as the bricks. His square shoulders, and the honor and compassion in his eyes, didn’t match with this soul-destroying neighborhood. What was he doing here? Besides bleeding. She reached to help him get away.

The old building howled like an angry monster. Flames reached for the heavens. The buildings on both sides were engulfed in flames and near collapse, too. The man glanced back. Keren’s gaze followed his. Through the choking grit, she saw someone lying unconscious at the corner of the building, near the alleyway.