The Wrath Walker (The Wrath Series Book 1)

by Matthew Newson

  If I was smart enough to figure out what really happened, I was sure everyone else did back then as well. The Riccis had the reporter killed for their efforts in exposing the truth, but as I continued on a year to the day when that reporter was killed in his home, a suspected high-ranking member of the Ricci family was found dead. Just like the reporter, the man was found in his home brutally murdered, a victim of walking in on a home invasion. A week later another prominent member of the Ricci family was found dead in his car in front of his house. Someone had shot him in the head while he was still in his car. I’m sure the top brass being knocked out so close to each other gave the Amaras the foothold they needed to get their racket going in the city until they were strong enough to permanently end the Riccis altogether.

  As I continued on in my reading, the next person to die under peculiar circumstances was one of the city council members. The woman drowned in her own pool even though she had been an award-winning swimmer throughout most of her life. The article said the police suspected she had gotten drunk and fallen into her pool, but the odd part was she had drowned in the shallow end. That and the other deaths all seemed to have Wrath’s fingerprints all over them, and it only confirmed for me how the Riccis had been weakened enough for the Amaras to take over.

  It seemed like every week there was a story about one of Riccis or city council members dying in some kind of explainable way, and that was why no one had suspected it was the workings of a serial killer. But I knew better than that, it was Wrath who was behind each and every one of them. However, I caught myself in the middle of that thought, because it couldn’t be physically possible for Wrath to have been the killer then. Wrath appeared to be a young man in his mid to late twenties at the most, and if it was really him, he would be well into his seventies or eighties. Maybe it was a group of assassins that worked together, and really believed they were God’s messengers on Earth. They had to be some kind of fanatical cult. I proceeded on through the slew of articles until I came across the story of the death of the mayor. He seemed to be the last to go, because after his death I didn’t find any more city officials and mobsters passing away or getting killed.

  The article said the mayor died after he had accidently fallen down the stairs in his home. He had suffered a severe head trauma as well as several broken bones. His neighbors had heard loud noises coming from the mayor’s house, and they called the police, who called an ambulance when they found the mayor unresponsive on the floor. The ambulance rushed him to the hospital where he passed away shortly after he arrived. It sounded to me that Wrath had smacked him around, and then thrown the mayor down the stairs of his own house. The police did a full investigation, but they didn’t find any evidence of foul play, and they confirmed that the mayor was alone when he fell. If Wrath had been there, he had fully concealed his presence, but all my questions were answered when I got to the article that covered the mayor’s funeral on the front page. I zoomed in on the picture to be sure, and I struggled to fully believe what I saw.

  A lot of people showed up that day for the mayor’s funeral, and there wasn’t an empty seat in the house. It appeared the photographer had the crowd form a circle around the casket, I guess to show the city how much the mayor was loved by the people. At the top right-hand corner, my eyes locked in on something that seemed completely out of place. All the people around the casket looked like a great sea of black and muted-colored outfits. The shoulder of one man’s jacket peeked out from behind the crowd in the back and could be easily passed over if I hadn’t looked closely. The unmistakable smiling face of Wrath stared back at me from the photo.

  There was no mistaking it was him, and my mind raced to come up with some way to explain how it couldn’t be so. He hadn’t aged a day since then, and he looked exactly the same as when I first met him, as he did back when that picture was taken. I practically jumped from my seat, and several people looked at me in surprise. I said a quick sorry and acted like I needed to stretch before I nonchalantly sat back down. I checked again, and it was the same face in the picture of the man I watched bury a knife into Ron’s chest, and showed up in my apartment the night before.

  Wrath had killed several high-ranking members of the Ricci family, and people in the city council that year. He was telling the truth when he said he had been to our city before. But if he wasn’t lying about that, then he really was at Sodom and Gomorrah and destroyed it with his brothers. If all that was real, then he had to be telling me the truth when he said there was a way to stop him in that story. But the pieces that made up that puzzle still eluded me because no one seemed to be able to stop the destruction of that city. Something otherworldly was definitely going on in Black Castle, and I found myself in the middle of it. I went through several more years of articles, but nothing stood out like the other ones had. It appeared Wrath hadn’t returned to the city since that time, and if he had, no one documented his escapades in any of the newspapers. There was nothing more I could do there, so I packed up my things and left the records department and the Black Castle.

  As I got back into my car, I knew that I had found the very answers I had wanted to find, but with that I had many more questions than when I walked in the building. I felt more hopeless than before, and I figured things couldn’t get any worse for me than they were at that point.

  “God, what am I going to do?” I asked quietly as I started my car.

  Then the passenger door opened.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Brandon Farmer

  The City of Black Castle

  “IF YOU TRY AND RUN, I’ll put a bullet in your head right now. Do you understand me?”

  My dismay at my perceived hopeless situation was immediately replaced with disdain as I stared at the man who was pointing a gun in my face. I wanted nothing more than to reach out and strangle him with my bare hands over and over again. I hadn’t been that close to that piece of trash since the trial, and he still reeked of the same cheap cologne that he used way too much of.

  “What’s the matter, Brandon, are you deaf? I asked if you understood me!”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I understand,” I said as my eyes darted back and forth between Frankie’s face and the nineteen-eleven in his hand. I judged by the large bore of the gun that it was chambered in forty-five ACP, and I didn’t stand a chance of surviving at that close of a distance. His face was red and filled with determination, and at that moment I knew the Amaras had blamed me for killing Joey and probably Ron, even though Ron had never become an official member of their criminal organization.

  “Good. Now drive, and don’t get smart and try anything or I will blow your head off. You got that?”

  “Yeah, I got that based off the gun you have in my face.”

  Frankie smacked me hard on the side of my head with the pistol and caused me to see double for a second.

  “I said don’t get smart with me, and that includes your stupid comments.”

  “Alright, where are we going, Frankie?” I blinked hard several times to get the world around me to come back into focus.

  “I’ll tell you when we get there. Take a right out of the parking lot and keep going straight until I tell you to turn again, and I’m going to keep this gun pointed at you the entire time so I wouldn’t make any hard turns if I were you. You wouldn’t want my finger to slip accidently, now would you?”

  “Does it really matter? I’m a dead man anyway, aren’t I?”

  “You’re not as stupid as you look, Brandon.”

  I nodded as I slowly backed out of my parking spot. I thought about all the ways I could grab my gun under my seat and unload the magazine in his head, and some of them brought a smile to my face. I had to get him distracted so I could make a move without him knowing what I was doing. He was supposed to be the funny guy, but I judged from the cut on his cheek, he got smacked for something. If I had to guess, he probably stepped out of line with someone higher up than him. Anyway, I figured if I could get him talking, then I had a good shot o
f pulling something off to make it out of there alive.

  “I thought you were just the money collector or something like that, and now I see Skeeter’s bumped you to hit man. Way to go. You’re moving up nicely in the world of organized crime.”

  “Shut your mouth, Farmer, before I put one in you right here. Take a left at the light.”

  “I’m just curious as to why Skeeter sent you and not Enzo after me? I thought he was the designated killer of the Amara family?”

  “I told you before to shut your mouth because you have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re just some guy who was too dumb to be a detective, and that’s why you’re nothing more than a washed-up loser.”

  “You might be right about that, Frankie.”

  He was getting angry, and if I continued to push him like that, he’d make a mistake sooner or later. But I still had to play it cool and make sure he didn’t shoot me before I could try something to save myself.

  “Come on, Frankie, even a broken watch is right twice a day. You know I have files filled with the extensive research I’ve done on all the Amaras. I know a lot about what you guys do, so why don’t you throw me a bone and talk to me before you kill me?”

  “You have files on all of us?”

  “Oh yeah, so why don’t you answer my questions to see how much I got right before you end me?”

  “Turn right at this light up ahead.”

  I turned where he said. “Come on, I just want to know how close I was on everything—”

  The cold metal slide smashed the side of my face so hard my head bounced off the window. The car jerked violently from side to side and Frankie grabbed the steering wheel to keep it straight until my head stopped spinning.

  “There you go loudmouth, how was that? You wanted me to give you something so there you go, now keep your mouth shut for the rest of the drive. I’m not interested in talking to you. Now, where are those files at?” He raised the gun to hit me again.

  “At my apartment,” I blurted out in my dazed state.

  “Is that the only place?”

  “Yes,” I said as the world around me slowly returned to normal.

  “Good. Now after I’m done with you, I’m going to have to take care of that trash heap you call a home.”

  As my senses fully returned, I picked up an unmistakable but familiar sent. “Is that gasoline?”

  “Yes, you must have caused a little to spill in your trunk after I slapped you around.”

  “Did you put—”

  “Shut up.”

  “You’re not going to—”

  “No more questions.” He pulled back the hammer on the gun, so I kept my mouth shut and followed his commands until we arrived at our destination. It was an old, abandoned building in the warehouse district. Frankie pointed at the open bay door, so I drove into the old warehouse and stopped the car. I looked around and was a little relieved when I didn’t see any other people waiting in the shadows for our arrival as I turned off the car.

  Frankie reached over and took the keys from the ignition. “Get out.” He exited the car on his side and closed the roll up door, and then went and opened the trunk of the car. That was my opportunity. I needed to get my gun and turn the tables on him. He was never that smart but leaving me alone in the car was a new level of stupid for him. I reached under my seat but felt nothing and continued to feel nothing as my hand frantically moved all around the floorboard. Frankie tapped on the window and held up my gun for me to see.

  “Is this what you’re looking for, genius?” He smiled as my stomach sank to my feet.

  He was smarter than I had given him credit for. He had gotten in my car and took the gun and put the gas cans in the trunk while I was in the Black Castle records room. My assumptions about his intelligence had blinded me to the danger he truly poised to me, and I was about to pay the ultimate price for it. I slowly opened the door. Musty air wrapped around me like a blanket as I stepped out of the car while he kept my own gun trained on me. I wasn’t going to beg him to let me live or to even make it quick. I knew that’s what he wanted, and I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Part of me wanted him to just get it over with and put me out of my misery.

  “So, what’s the plan here, Frankie?”

  He pulled a pair of hand cuffs from behind his back and tossed them to me.

  “You see that railing over there?”

  I looked at what Frankie thought was a safety railing in the middle of the building but was in fact part of the frame that was left over from an old conveyor belt.

  “Yeah, I see it.”

  “Good. Now get over there, and cuff yourself to it. You’re about to have a very bad day, Brandon.”

  “Why, because you’re about to cover me in gasoline and set me on fire?”

  “You got it, smart guy.”

  “What if I don’t want to do that?”

  Frankie chuckled to himself and shook his head. “Then I will shoot you in your spine and drag your paralyzed good for nothing body over there myself and handcuff you to that rail. Make no mistake, you’re going out in a blaze of glory. I figured I’d give you some dignity by cuffing yourself to the pipe. Either way, you’re dying tonight, and no one will ever find your miserable corpse—not that anyone would mourn you anyway.”

  “You’re probably right about that.” I tossed the hand cuffs in his face, but Frankie was ready for it, and delivered his knee to my stomach as I charged forward. As all the air exited my lungs, Frankie brought the butt of the gun crashing down upon the back of my head. I fell to the ground unable to breathe as the world around me came a blurred mess.

  “You will never learn, will you. Here I was always told how we all needed to be careful because you were some great, smart, hotshot detective, but you’re just as dumb as the majority of the people around this city.”

  He cuffed my left wrist and dragged me to the railing where he initially said to cuff myself. He locked the other cuff around the structure and walked back to the car to get the gas can. That left me on my back on the floor. My head seemed to throb in unison with each beat of my heart, and the room slowly came back into focus. Frankie quickly walked back with a large red gas can in one hand and a lighter in the other.

  “Any last words before you die? Please feel free to beg for your life. I always love it when people beg for their lives while they are being cooked alive. They call out to their mothers or Jesus to save them, and you know what you and all of them have in common? Just like all of them, no one is coming to save you.” Frankie put the gas can down and unscrewed the cap while I was too dazed to respond.

  “I’ve always found the begging to be rather tedious if you ask me,” said a voice behind me.

  Frankie looked up in shock as he dropped the lighter, pulled the gun from his waist, and fired several rounds at the voice. Wrath sprang over the railing like a man off the blocks at the start of a race and landed in front of Frankie. He slapped the gun out of his hand and knocked him off his feet. Frankie landed hard on his back. Before he could react, Wrath landed several hard punches to Frankie’s stomach, and he looked to be in the same place I’d been a moment ago. Wrath dragged Frankie over by his arm to the rail and dropped him right next to me.

  “Hello Brandon, it is good to see you again. We have so much to discuss, but before we do, may I borrow those handcuffs?”

  I didn’t know what to do as Wrath politely smiled at me. I still was almost certain he was from another plane of existence. I only hoped he wasn’t going to kill me yet since he wanted to talk to me.

  “Yeah, but you’ll have to check him for it, I don’t have the key.”

  “Thank you, but that won’t be necessary,” Wrath said as he winked at me. He grabbed the locked cuff on my wrist, and it immediately opened. I pulled my arm back as he secured the cuff to Frankie’s wrist so tight that Frankie cried out in pain. Wrath grabbed me by my shoulders and raised me to my feet with ease.

  “Are you going to kill me now?” I asked somewh
at terrified since we stood face to face at that point.

  Wrath looked down and checked his watch like I’d seen him do so many times before.

  “Time is very important to you isn’t it?”

  “Oh yes, it is,” Wrath said with a smile. “And no, your time hasn’t come yet, but for now, if you will please stand over by your car and wait for me.”

  “Hold on, he has my keys and my gun.” I turned to Frankie to get them from him.

  “Not anymore,” Wrath said as he released me and pulled my car keys from his pocket and my gun from behind his back and handed them to me. “Now if you will please stand back, but do not run away. I want to talk to you when I have concluded my business with Frankie. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, I understand. But how did you get me...”

  “Good. Now if you will please do what I have asked of you.” Wrath gestured for me to move away. I dashed to my car, and I dreaded what I knew was about to happen. I wanted to run, but I also wanted to talk to Wrath. I had questions only he could answer. As Wrath proceeded back to Frankie, who was slowly returning to his senses, he picked up the gas can.

  “Wait, you can’t do that,” I called out to him.

  “But I must, I’m compelled to, remember? This is the reason why I am in your fair city,” Wrath called out from over his shoulder.

  Wrath unscrewed the gas cap and started pouring the flammable liquid all over Frankie who began to cough violently from the fumes. Even I was bothered by them, but Wrath seemed immune to the vapors.

  “Stop it! You don’t know what you’re doing. I’m a made guy! You do this to me, and your life is over, you hear me? My friends will find you and hurt you in ways you never knew were possible, and no one will ever see you again. Do you hear me?”