The Revelation of Gabriel Adam (27 page)

“What else could I mean? We’re floating on freaking blood!”

“My God,” muttered his father.

“Are we safe?” Micah whispered.

His silence was answer enough.

“Dad, what do we do?” Gabe asked, but before anyone could make a suggestion, the boat’s engines throttled to life with a violent shudder. He steadied himself against the wall. His balance wavered as the boat altered its position in the river. The sound of the anchor chains coiling onto the deck vibrated through the walls.

He jumped onto the bed, nearly on top of his father, and put his face against the porthole. Adrenaline surged through his veins. With his hands cupped around his eyes to block out the room’s light, Gabe peered through it, scanning the darkness.

The searchlight crossed the window.

“I think we’re turning around. Going back downstream. There’s a light in the distance on the horizon. Might be a city . . . I can’t see.” He swiveled back and forth in the window trying to get a look. “What if the blood is a sign of the enemy’s presence?”

Micah’s breathing slowed. She seemed to be calming and held out her hand, squeezing it into a fist as if to steady it.

“It’s possible, but I don’t think so,” his dad said. “In the Old Testament, God used Moses to turn the Nile to blood. Perhaps this is no different. Perhaps it is a sign or a warning. That the End of Days is upon them.”

“But Enoch said we were alone in this fight,” Gabe said.

“No. It was me,” Micah said. “I felt something inside me when I touched the river. I don’t know what it was, but I felt it spill from my body, from my hand, and flow into the Nile. What’s happening to me?”

Gabe turned from the window and fell against the wall, wondering what her admission meant for her. Another thought slipped into his mind.
Will it happen to me?

His father stood and looked at the girl. “It is a warning after all. Though not from God. A warning from the Michaelion, the leader of men.” He reached out to Micah and held her hand in his. “My dear, your power is growing.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

The boat docked off a pier outside the riverside town of Qinā just as the morning sun broke the horizon. As they debarked from the cruiser, Gabe noted that the water had returned to its normal blue color. But whatever Micah had done had left its mark. Hundreds of single sail fishing vessels were landed on the riverbank, and several cruise ships docked along the boardwalk carried a crimson stain on their hulls.

It had not gone unnoticed, either. Thousands of locals and tourists gathered by the Nile to observe the strange occurrence, discussing what it meant while snapping their cameras. The growing crowd seemed calm, though in the distance Gabe could hear occasional screams from women or the berating shouts of frightened men who must have believed the stains on the boats to be something more.

“They seem only mildly curious now,” his father said, walking up the boarding plank to the pier. “But wait. Soon the fear of the most terrified will spread from person to person. These people live among the Valley of the Kings, a land haunted by ancient tombs and temples built to powerful Egyptian gods. Their superstitions run deep. We have little time before chaos seizes the city.” He handed Gabe his bag. “Wait here.”

Gabe stood with Micah while his dad moved ahead to speak with the ship’s captain. After a moment he returned with a name and an address written on an Egyptian five-pound note. “I got the pilot’s contact information. The captain said he set up a meeting before we left Cairo.”

“But he’s in Luxor, right?”

“Correct. And we’re in Qinā, an hour or so north by rail. I don’t know if that means we’re going to be late or early, but we should get moving. The station is within walking distance. Generally, we’re safe in the city, and English, I am told, is common with the area being so prone to tourists. Just be aware and keep your eyes open.” His father glanced at a group of Egyptian women walking by, draped head to toe in black burqas. “Micah, you should probably cover your head and face. It isn’t that conservative here, but we’d do well to blend in.”

Micah removed a garment from her backpack and fashioned a makeshift hijab headscarf from it, tucking one of the sides across her face. “The smell of fish is getting to me anyway,” she said.

They walked farther into the interior of the city toward the train station. The streets of Qinā moved with the energy expected in a tourist destination. Palms and other trees lined the streets where visitors and locals shopped under the covered markets. The men dressed equally in Western styles and the long, robe-like jellabiya of the local culture. The colorful awnings fluttered in the morning breeze coming off the Nile. Three-story buildings framed the roads, with laundry hanging outside windows and drying on telephone lines. Satellite dishes looked to be very popular, decorating every roof. Above it all, minarets reached into the cloudless blue sky.

At the Qinā Station, his dad purchased their tickets, and they boarded a train packed with passengers. With only standing room available, Gabe held the bar overhead and watched Egypt pass by in the window, the train hugging the Nile as it rolled south. Flattened land streaked by in flashes of green palms and fields of tall grain growing by the river.

Occasionally, he would glance at Micah to see how she was faring in the sweaty, hot compartment, but she didn’t seem to notice. Instead, she once again focused on her hands, studying them as if they were now something foreign to her.

Luxor Station was a tourist’s Mecca. The whole place looked like one giant theme park. Posters of ancient ruins and statues lined every wall, along with advertisements for sightseeing tours for the nearby Valley of the Kings. Last-minute souvenir stands crowded the area with maps for those arriving and trinkets for tourists who wanted to remember their experience with a plastic sphinx.

They took a taxi to the address written on the Egyptian pound, a hole-in-the-wall café off the beaten path in a neighborhood near the airport. Its interior was open like a garage to the patio area outside. Sticky strands of fly tape hung from the ceiling, each full of tiny victims, though it seemed to help little.

Inside the building, away from the unbearable heat of the midday sun, local men sat around circular tables, smoking and talking. A single television above the bar broadcast an Arabic news station, though nobody seemed particularly interested. In the middle of the room a solitary fan limped from its missing blade, clicking as it slowly turned.

Gabe and Micah followed his dad to the bar, but the patrons, all of them men, seemed to stop what they were doing and stare at the girl.

She stopped. “I don’t think I’m welcome in here. How anyone ever meets a woman in this country is beyond me.”

“Right. Perhaps you should wait outside,” his father said.

“I’ll go with her. Try and hurry. It’s sweltering out there,” Gabe said.

He followed Micah through the exit and stood close enough to keep an eye on his father, who tried to engage the man behind the bar. He didn’t seem to speak English, so his father showed him the note. He pointed to a man sitting in a corner by himself, reading a paper.

The pilot
, Gabe thought. He watched his father order two teas and then take them to the pilot’s table, offering him one of the cups.

The pilot appeared agitated and folded his paper in a manner to make the point. He then held up his watch and threw his hands in the air.

“I think we’re late,” Gabe said, watching. “Or early, maybe. Either way, the pilot isn’t happy.”

His dad tried to appeal to him calmly. Then he bent closer, and Gabe watched his father hold out his closed hand and rub his thumb over his index finger—the international sign for money.

“What’s going on?” Micah asked.

“I think my dad is trying to . . . bribe him.”

“Is it working?”

“Looks like it.”

“Good. I don’t like being here,” she said, swatting a fly from her face. “This heat is absurd, and it smells like rubbish.”

Gabe turned to her, and behind her hijab he could see her angry eyes. “You okay?”

“We’re in bloody Egypt trying to find a criminal to take us illegally into Ethiopia. And if you haven’t noticed, I turned a freaking river to blood this morning. No, Gabe, I am not okay.”

Gabe regretted asking, but he was encouraged that Micah seemed to be opening up. Opening to anger but opening nonetheless.

His father shook the pilot’s hand before walking out of the café. “He’s not a pleasant man,” he said. “Like I suspected, we were late. Among his many subtle qualities is a militant stance on punctuality. Apparently, he had chartered a group of tourists to do a flyover around the Valley of the Kings.”

“So we’re screwed,” Micah said.

“No. Luckily, greed is another one of his qualities, and money talks. And he’s not asking questions. I think he’s about to make his year’s salary on us.” He looked inside his wallet, and his nose scrunched up. “He’ll meet us at the airport in an hour. But if this doesn’t work, you may be right, Micah.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

At Luxor International Airport they arrived to a churning sea of people. Angry mobs had formed around various ATM machines, which had shut down, overwhelmed by use. More than a few times someone grabbed Gabe to plead something in Arabic. When he couldn’t respond, almost every one of them, whether indigent or affluent, repeated what they said in English. They all wanted one thing—cash to buy a plane ticket.

Micah and Gabe took advantage of a few spare seats and rested while his father searched for their pilot. Gabe had visions of a seatless, twin-prop plane stuffed nose to tail with smelly passengers and tagalong farm animals. He could almost see the chicken feathers floating through the cabin on takeoff.

“This place has gone crazy. People seem to be out of their bloody minds,” Micah said as she brushed a long strand of hair out of her eyes and placed the sword in its case in the seat next to her. Even without a proper shower for a day, she maintained a certain poise in her look and manner. The lack of makeup had only brought out her natural beauty.

“I think this morning has caught up to us,” Gabe said, trying not to stare at her. He motioned down the corridor.

Television sets hung from the ceiling and broadcast several different news stations. People congregated under them, waiting for information and occasionally pointing at the screen. Images occasionally elicited unified gasps from the viewers.

On one channel, the camera panned to a woman drenched in blood from the river, passing a reporter. She looked stunned. On a different television, journalists reported near the riverbanks, giving on-the-scene commentary or talking to scientists and religious experts. One blurb below a scientist claimed in English
Red Algae Bloom Responsible for Religious Panic—Deemed Hazardous to Humans
. On yet another channel, an Islamic cleric was being interviewed. He looked unconvinced by the official explanation and seemed to be trying to explain or persuade the correspondent that there was more to the story.

The channel then changed to an international feed. A Vatican spokesperson stood at a podium outside St. Peter’s Square nearly hidden behind a tangle of microphones.

“Micah, look,” he said and gestured to the screen. “The Vatican knows. Maybe they know about us. Maybe they can help us.”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea. If an archangel can be compromised like Yuri, then I don’t see why we shouldn’t also be concerned with the Vatican. I think it’s better we’re on our own,” she said.

Gabe sank into his seat, knowing she was right. The incessant roar of the airport crowd and the occasional hysterical scream played against his already frayed nerves. He felt jumpy, and the heat inside the airport choked the oxygen from the air.

“What’s wrong with you?” Micah snapped and leaned away from him in her seat. “You’re on my last nerve. Like a puppy in a thunderstorm.”

“I think I’m freaking out. Things are changing so fast, I can’t keep up.”

“Deal with it,” she said. “We no longer have the luxury to be scared.”

“Really? What about you? Bulletproof all of a sudden? An emotionless robot?” Gabe asked, surprised by his quickness to anger. “Don’t act so tough around me. You’re human, too, and just as scared as I am.”

“This is our task,” Micah said. “And I mean to finish it, whatever it takes. Carlyle would want nothing more from us than that. We do what we can and, if possible, what we were meant to do. Whatever else is left of all this”—she motioned to the crowd and airport—“whatever is left of us, if anything, will be decided soon enough.”

Gabe looked deep into her eyes. They exuded a strength and confidence in knowing who and what she was becoming. She’d accepted this new reality. He could only hope he would soon find the same inside himself.

His father pushed through the crowd and sat down beside them. He looked tired. “We’re leaving. Now. The pilot’s ready on the tarmac. He said the whole damned region is falling apart around us.”

“What do you mean?” asked Gabe.

“News of the river has gone international. Videos of the blood in the river taken by mobile phones have reached the Internet. Riots are breaking out along the Nile, all the way to Cairo. Some of the most powerful religious leaders are trying to take control of the government, convinced that what happened is a sign from God that gives them authority. There’s talk of military action, which would close the borders and all airports. People are desperate to get out of Egypt but not just tourists and foreigners. It seems a large population of locals is fleeing, too, and for some reason, Ethiopia has suddenly become a popular travel destination. If we don’t go now, we could be stuck.”