Dark Hope: Book One of the Archangel Prophecies

Dark Hope: Chapter 9

My cell phone rang that night, jarring me awake from a fitful sleep.

I looked at the clock glowing beside my bed. Two a.m. I groaned. It was probably a prank call or a wrong number, but it just might be my mother calling from overseas.

I swatted around my nightstand, trying to find the phone amid the tangle of teenage detritus. I knocked over the clock and a vase of flowers my mother's cleaning lady had placed in a vain effort to "prettify" my room.

There, under a book, I spied the phone, quivering with energy as it rang and rang.

I scrambled to answer it. "Hello?" I croaked. But all I heard was silence. It had rolled to voice mail.

Annoyed, I looked for the number, but it showed up as "not available." Just then, the phone jumped to life in my hand. Quickly, I pressed the tiny green button.

"Hello?" I demanded again, this time more awake as I sat up, pushing the hair out of my eyes.

"Hope?" The voice on the other end sounded tinny and far away. "Hope, is that you?"

"Who is this?" I stifled a yawn.

There was a long pause. "It's me. Maria."

I jolted awake with a rush of adrenaline, words and relief pouring out of me. "Maria? Are you okay? I've been so worried. Where are you?"

"I went for my sister, like I told you."

"Did you find her?"

"I did, but I need your help."

"What kind of help?"

There was another pause. "She has a broken leg and broken ribs. She cannot walk. I need you to come and get us."

My heart seemed lodged in my throat. "Where?"

"I'm not sure," she whispered. "I was by a big . . . how do you call it? Camposanto? You know, with the dead people?"

"A cemetery?"

"Sí, a cemetery. Very old. And we are hiding in a big neighborhood, lots of old houses. But the building we are in, it is not a house. It is like a factory. It is broken. Everything in it is dirty and broken. Other broken houses, too."

I racked my brain, but being new to Atlanta myself, nothing rang a bell.

"Is there anything else nearby? Any landmark?"

The silence on the other end grew as she thought. In the background, I began to hear the distinct rumbling of a train.

"Maria, is that the MARTA?"

"I don't know. What is MARTA?" she answered.

"The noise-that machine that I am hearing-is there a train nearby?"

"Sí," she said, lapsing into Spanish in her excitement. "Muchos trenes cada hora."

I heard a noise on the line from somewhere near her.

"I have to go, Hope," she whispered, a note of panic creeping into her voice. "You will come tonight?"

"I . . . yes. I will find you tonight. Watch for me. I will have my phone on."

"You will find us, Hope, I know it." Her whispered confidence heartened me.

I threw down the phone and went to my computer. A quick search turned up Oakland Cemetery. Apparently it was one of the largest cemeteries in Atlanta and extremely old, dating from before the Civil War. But the neighborhood next to it-Oakland-was far too small to be the place Maria had mentioned. Buried deeper in the text was a mention of a tornado that had ripped through Atlanta and damaged the cemetery. I clicked on that link.