Luring an Angel into a Trap
When Jubal Stone is put in charge of apprehending the last rebel angel expelled from Heaven, he and partner Thaddeus Coleman arrive at the meteor crater he arrived in to discover that not only has the fallen angel disappeared, but he has slaughtered the entire Michigan National Guard unit that had secured the site.
Jubal's orders are still the same. He must apprehend the rogue angel and deliver him for transport. Now that the angel has gone on a killing spree and is obviously not going to cooperate, he will have to hunt him down and take him by force.
But how do you capture a fallen angel?
No one has an answer at first, but Thad Coleman, son of a priest, recalls that in The Holy Bible, Daniel: 10 states that an angel called to help the prophet Daniel was delayed for 21 days by the “Prince of Persia.” But no one knows how was he delayed because no one knows what powers an angel.
Power.
The fact that an angel could be delayed surprised Jubal and got him to thinking. To trap the angel they would need to neutralize his power. Perhaps 21st Century technology could divulge a method unknown to the prophet Daniel. Jubal recalls that Toby Barton, his civilian geneticist friend, has an isolation chamber at his lab, Bio-Analysis Masters, that he uses to isolate organisms to analyze environmental effects.
Anything placed inside this “sensory deprivation chamber” is cut off from all outside stimuli. If the rebel angel is drawing power from the world around him, he would be powerless inside such a chamber. If Jubal was wrong about angelic beings drawing power from the natural world around them, the isolation chamber would be useless and they would probably all be killed. The moment of truth arrives.
From The Last Angel To Fall:
I jumped to my feet and grabbed the phone.
“Target acquired! Target acquired!”
Toby turned on the monitor mounted to the wall.
The area out back was well-lit, but nothing was
moving. Snow and ice still dotted the ground. The
drone suddenly dropped into view. It circled slowly
and came to a soft landing on the pad designated
for drones. It shut down and went dark.
We watched the monitor closely. I couldn't help
glancing through the opening out into the back
yard repeatedly. Waiting for something to happen
is the worst thing for an investigator. Especially
when you might be waiting for your own death.
Then he was just there, in the center of the
camera. The Fallen Angel in all his glory. The best
view of him we'd had so far. His wings fluttered as
he touched down. They bent back and
disappeared behind him, tucked in, out of sight
and out of harm's way. He stood on two feet and
walked upright, like a human being.
The Fallen Angel looked both ways, then turned his
focus on us. He stared into the opening,
apparently trying to decide if this was a trick.
He walked inside the airlock. He stopped and
studied the room. I focused on his arms, following
them all the way down to his claws. There were
claws on each, as there should be. I looked down.
His feet were also intact. He couldn't have grown
back the severed limb that quickly! But there he
was, with all appendages intact.
The Fallen Angel jerked his head toward me. I
stared into his eyes. They were cold and
searching. There was no warmth in those eyes,
only a grim determination. His face was human,
but somehow still alien. There were protrusions on
each side of his head that I couldn't see clearly.
He turned his head to the left, then the right, and
it became clear what those protrusions were. They
were faces. The face of a lion and an ox. I
couldn't understand how such a creature could
exist, but if Asheba was right, it had existed before
all life on earth. And all life on earth was made
from this.
What was it Toby said? A chimera. An animal
containing characteristics of two or more animals.
A hybrid that shouldn't exist, but it was standing in
front of us. It seemed to be weighing whether or
not I was worth taking the time to dismember. If
he found out I was the one who sent the missile
after him . . .
“The Man Who Came Back” episode of Gerry & Sylvia Anderson's British sci-fi series UFO helped trigger the idea of an isolation chamber. In that episode of the classic sci-fi series, SHADO (Supreme Headquarters Alien Defence Organization) Dr. Doug Jackson (Vladek Sheybal) places astronaut Craig Collins (Derren Nesbitt) in what he calls an “isolator” that cuts him off from all outside influences. Collins went missing for a few weeks after a close encounter with a UFO while on a spaceflight from the moon to earth. Jackson's tests show that once put inside the box, Collins was, in the words of his antagonist, Colonel John Grey (Gary Raymond), “Inert, a nothing. A body without a will.”
Such would be the case with this angel. If trapped inside the isolation chamber, he would be cut off from all sources that he could draw energy. The forces and fields of the natural world are an angel's food and drink, their sustenance. Without them, they are inert.
Will Jubal be able to lure the angel inside the isolation chamber? To read the novel Kirkus Reviews calls “A powerhouse first volume in a supernatural thriller series,” point your browser to:
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