The Wrath Walker (The Wrath Series Book 1)

by Matthew Newson

  “One.”

  “What am I? A child? You’re going to count to three and kill me, because that is what you’re going to be doing, Elizabeth. You are about to commit murder, and I know you won’t be able to live with yourself after that.”

  “Two!”

  She was really going to kill me if I didn’t stop and put down the gun, and the city would be doomed in my death.

  “Okay. You win!” I raised my hands and she quickly grabbed the pistol from me and patted me down. She found and took the extra bullets from my pocket. “These men are going to kill me, you know that, right? They’re probably going to kill you too.”

  “Sounds like you have angered a lot more people with your stunts than just me. You need some real help, Brandon. Too bad they don’t have sanitariums anymore.”

  “Yeah well, you’re the second person who’s told me that today, but it’s true, they are going to kill me. They are going to sacrifice me because of my love for justice, and the city will fall into perpetual spiritual darkness when I’m gone and then it will be destroyed.”

  She pulled my arms down and turned me around. I looked her square in the eyes as she locked the hand cuffs on my wrists.

  “Elizabeth, wait.”

  “Enough Brandon, you’re lucky I’m not cuffing you with your hands behind your back.”

  “Lizzie please,” I said in a way that caused her to stop and gave her a moment of pause. I stared directly into her eyes like I used to do when we were together, and I wanted her to know I was serious about something. She tilted her head slightly and narrowed her eyes, and I could tell I had started to get through to her.

  “Will someone please fill me in on what happened here this evening, before I take Mr. Farmer downtown?” She turned to Phillip and the others at the table.

  Phillip chimed in first as Scott got up and walked to Elizabeth. She stood in between us, and I knew I could still take Scott, even with my hands cuffed.

  “You see Elizabeth, Brandon showed up here about twenty minutes or so ago at the side door, the same one I’m sure you used.”

  “I did,” she replied.

  “I didn’t lock it because Brandon started making some wild accusations about me that he said his friend in a red suit told him. I believe he called him Wrath. Brandon had also come in a few times in the past several days telling me about this man, and how that man had killed Ron and some of the Amaras.”

  “He told me the same stories,” Elizabeth said to Phillip.

  “Anyway, after that he started making these outlandish claims that I was a Satanist, or some such nonsense like that. He pulled the gun which you now have and walked me back here to the meeting I was having with the elders of the church. I silently prayed that God would send someone to save us from Brandon’s insane delusions and thank the good Lord he did. You got here just in time because I’m positive he was about to shoot me. I hate that it had to come to this, Brandon, but maybe you can find the help you need from a prison cell.”

  “It’s all true, babe,” Scott chimed in with his wheezily annoying voice. “It all went down the way Pastor Phillip said it did, and I knew after he killed Phillip, he was going to kill me next for the crime of us being together.”

  Elizabeth was quiet for a moment and looked back and forth at us while she weighed everyone’s accusations.

  “What about his claim you all were going to kill him?” Elizabeth asked.

  “I can answer that one for you if I may,” Phillip said as he stood up. “It’s simply not true. We never had nor will we ever plan on sacrificing Brandon, and I don’t know where he got that idea from. I can’t even believe I’m repeating that ridiculous statement.”

  “Yeah, that one seemed a little too farfetched even for me to believe,” Elizabeth said as she gave me a look that could kill. I too was familiar with that expression from her because I had seen it so often from her lately.

  “You see, Elizabeth, we require someone who is pure in this regard for the sacrifice, and Brandon here has been too polluted by the world. I mean, you should have seen some of the techniques he used to collect evidence on cheating spouses. It was extremely immoral to say the least.”

  “Wait, did you just...” was all Elizabeth was able to say before Scott punched her in the face, and pulled the gun from her hand.

  “Elizabeth!” I shouted as she stumbled to the floor.

  I was filled with a fury I had known all too well over the past several years. I immediately halted in my tracks as Scott had the gun in my face before I could charge him, and then he knelt and took the revolver from her waist that she had taken from me.

  “What are you doing, Scott?” Elizabeth said with a sob. She was a fighter, but I knew she had all the fight ripped from her in that moment of betrayal from the man she thought was the love of her life.

  “He played you, Lizzie. He’s the reason why the Amaras suspected me right away of killing Ron and Joey before word was able to get out. I suspect that he is also why every time you had an eyewitness or enough evidence to arrest one of the Amaras, it all suddenly disappeared. Scott warned them after you had innocently told him about it. I’m sure it was all under the guise of the age-old innocent question of how was your day, sweetheart. What I’m guessing he never told you is the part about how Phillip had been using the Amaras this entire time to pull the city into deep levels of gross sin to prepare it for tonight.”

  Scott shrugged. “You got me, Brandon. Pillow talk. What can I say? Man, you really are a good detective. I bet you’re better than Elizabeth here, seeing how you were the only one who ever got a bad feeling from me.” Scott backed up, keeping both guns trained on us.

  Elizabeth’s cheek was already bruising as the hurt turned to anger and filled her face, but I knew she was okay. She was one of the toughest people I knew, and I had seen her take a whole lot worse than a cheap sucker punch. But I was a little more concerned over her emotional state after Scott’s admitted betrayal. The worst part was he seemed genuinely pleased with himself over the charade and appeared relieved it was over.

  “So, our relationship this whole time was fake. Just an act you put on, so you could pump me for information.”

  “Yes, you were just a job to me and nothing more,” Scott said.

  Elizabeth screamed out in hurt and rage and lunged forward to attack Scott. I was able to grab her in time, even with my hands cuffed. She fought as hard as she could against my grip.

  “Elizabeth, stop, he’s going to shoot you if you attack him.”

  “Let me go!” she shouted as Scoot stood a few feet away just smiling at us and doing nothing else. He didn’t try and move away or shoot either one of us. In fact, he wasn’t doing anything but standing there. I realized why Scott hadn’t shot her or why any of the other men hadn’t tried to attack her in spite of being the most wicked people I’d ever met.

  “Let me go, Brandon! I can take care of myself,” Elizabeth yelled as she continued to try and pull away from me.

  I forced my weight down and pulled back as hard as I could while the hand cuffs re-opened the cuts on my wrists from the zip-ties I had on earlier that day.

  “Lizzie, stop and listen to me,” I yelled as her shoulder slammed into my chest, and she turned to look up at me in her rage.

  “What are you doing? They are going to kill us! When did you become such a coward, I thought you liked fighting?”

  “They’re not going to kill me, Lizzie. They only want to kill you. You are the pure justice-loving sacrifice they need to complete their evil plan.”

  Her eyes widened with fear, and she slowly turned back to the men who all now stood in front of us.

  “It’s true, Elizabeth. Well halfway true,” Phillip said. “You’re going to be sacrificed to night to our master for the promise of power he will bestow upon us for aiding him in his plans for total domination of the city. But we also fully intend to kill Brandon after it’s done with our newly earned abilities, as a way to test them out. After he’s dead,
we’ll resurrect him so we can kill him multiple times until we have discovered the full range and scope of our newfound powers.”

  “Sounds fun,” I said sarcastically. “If you’re going to kill me, you better leave me that way, because I will get my hands on all of you, and if not me then my friend will kill you for sure.”

  “It will be fun discovering the full extent of our powers, and your friend will not be able to stand against us once we have ascended. To be honest with you, he doesn’t stand a chance against me now, and that’s the honest truth,” Phillip said. “Now you two can follow us willingly to the basement on your own power, or we can shoot you in the kneecaps and carry you down there ourselves while you cry and moan in pain. Your choice, so which one will it be?”

  I was determined to go down in a hail of gun fire before I’d let them hurt her, and as I geared up for a fight. Elizabeth looked at me with soft tears in her eyes.

  “Brandon, please let me go.”

  “No, Elizabeth, we can’t just go with them. We have to try and...”

  “It will be okay,” she said and discreetly slipped something in my hand and firmly clasped my palm around it. As the wicked men her and I once revered as next to God led us to the basement, I could tell she had slipped me the key to the handcuffs.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Brandon Farmer

  The Holy Anointed Church

  THE DOOR TO THE BASEMENT was slammed shut and locked behind me as I walked down the stairs with Phillip’s men in front and behind me. Elizabeth directed some pretty severe threats at Scott who just smiled at her in return as he enjoyed the heartbreak and betrayal he inflicted upon her. We were both witnessing how truly of an evil human being Scott turned out to be, to be able to make someone fall in love with them, only for the sole purpose of luring them to their death.

  Lizzie was one of the best people I’d had ever known in my lifetime. I loved her from the moment I’d laid eyes on her, and I would have done anything to win back her affections. And here that guy was willingly throwing it all away because it never really mattered to him. I wanted to lash out at Scott and the rest of those guys, but I decided to play it cool, and let them think I had given up hope of being saved. I prayed that wherever Wrath was, he and his brothers would save us before it was too late.

  I got to the bottom of the stairs with the key still firmly pressed against the inner palm of my fist, as I was greeted by the smells of a well-ventilated room instead of the damp musty odors I’d come to expect from such spaces. There were upside down pentagrams painted in red on each of the four white walls, and what appeared to be an altar for sacrificing in the middle of the room. I recognized it was a copy of what they used in the Biblical times. I had seen so many different versions of what people thought they looked like in books and in movies throughout the years. There were four sides to the rectangle-shaped altar with a smooth slab on top.

  I was surprised how brightly lit and cleaned the room was as Phillip motioned to his men for me to follow him as they pulled Elizabeth to the other side of the room and forced her to sit in one of the chairs lined against the wall while a man pointed her own gun at her. I recognized him from when I use to attend the church regularly. He had aged some, but I still saw the man I had seen so often in passing. I never knew any of those men in my church-going days because they stayed away from the majority of the church members. They also weren’t the real elders of the church. The men I was in the room with had to be the elders of whatever Satanist stuff Phillip was in to.

  “Pretty nice set up down here for being a basement after all, don’t you think?” Phillip asked as he put on a black robe trimmed in gold that one of his men handed him. “I had it specially designed and built by the gentlemen that are here with us today, and the best part is, this room doesn’t exist. Not officially on any blueprints anyway.”

  “Yes, it’s a very lovely, sick, and twisted place you have here for you and your devil spawn over there. I’m curious how did you all meet? Did Satan throw a mixer for you guys or something?”

  “Typical Brandon, always ready with a joke or a smart-mouthed comment.”

  “I aim to please,” I said.

  “If you must know, they’re not devil spawn. They are the elders of my church.”

  “Elders of the church? No, they’re not. My father and I knew the elders of this church pretty well. They all ordered Bible Study books and things like that from dad at his store. I’ve never seen those guys before, except for that degenerate, Scott, over there.”

  “That’s because those men over there are the elders of my true Luciferian church that I founded and grew in these very walls.”

  “Luciferian? Don’t you mean Satanists? You know Lucifer fell, and became the devil.”

  “That story is a lie, and after tonight you will come to know the truth as I have. Anyway, the best part of those men over there is no one really knows who they are. They are quiet, unassuming, average people that you pass on the street every day, and you pay them no attention because they seem unworthy of your time. But if you only knew how great those men really are, then you would give them the respect they are due.”

  “They look like a bunch of middle-aged losers who still live in their parents’ basement if you ask me,” I said as I tried to keep my anger in check.

  “What an ugly thing to say. Didn’t your parents teach you that if you can’t say anything nice, that you are not to say anything at all?”

  I scanned the room as I tried to figure out a way to stop what was about to happen and save Elizabeth and myself.

  “I guess I missed that one too, but I’m sure they are not greater than you of course since you are a Luciferian high priest.”

  “You are correct in the knowledge that they are not greater than me, and that is a very profound observation. Tell me, how did you come by that notion?”

  “Call it a hunch or lucky guess,” I said.

  “I don’t believe in hunches, but the spirits must have shown you that, just like they showed me you were going to bring us Elizabeth tonight.”

  I looked at him in disbelief as the desire grew within me to try and snap his neck. “The spirits showed you?”

  “Yes, they did, in fact, on the same day you showed up at the church to talk to me about Ron’s murder.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Indeed, I am, and that is why I indulged all your interruptions and pointed you toward the record department at the city’s Black Castle, because my lord appeared to me and told me to. He told me it was time to shed the Amaras like the dead skin they had come to be and move the city into its true destiny at which time I would be greatly rewarded. But you are already aware of most of that, so do you mind if we talk about something else tonight before we begin? Because no matter what, you’re not stopping what’s going to happen here.”

  What did I have to lose by hearing him out? I hoped it would buy me enough time for Wrath to find us. Maybe I’d get lucky and he would bore me to death with his stories about how great he was.

  “Something tells me you’re not wanting to counsel me on how to live my life for Jesus.”

  “No, but I want to talk to you about having a life after all of this because it is entirely possible for you to not only live through this, but to thrive in the world that is coming.”

  “Is that right? And I suppose you’re the one who’s going to make all my dreams come true.”

  “Well, in a way, yes. You see, I am not lying to you when I say that I consider us to be friends, and that is why I would hate to have to kill you.”

  “But you’ll kill Lizzie and countless others in your sadistic pursuit of your own goals,” I snapped back. “If you want to make my dreams come true, then stop all of this.”

  A twinge of anger tugged on Phillip’s face as his eye twitched for a moment. “Yes, that’s correct, and make no mistake, she is dying tonight, and this city will belong permanently to Lucifer. The people will be fully given over to their baser fl
eshly instincts and stop trying to live a lie that people can be decent and moral when that is not what we were made to be. As Lucifer’s will flows from here and across the country and the world itself, the masses will finally be set free from the lie of God and religion. I think you of all people can see how much of a terrible lie religion is, and all Lucifer and I want to do is set the people free.”

  As Phillip spewed his demonic logic at me, I knew why the city had been marked for destruction. It had been flooded with sin on the streets by the Amaras, and from the pulpit by Pastor Phillip.

  “I have always been impressed by your observational talents that have made you into one of the greatest detectives this city has ever seen, and that is why you had to be taken down and disgraced to keep you from discovering what was really going on. You have no idea how close you came to exposing us one time, that even I feared it was all over, but I want to restore you to your proper place. I can give back to you everything you lost and more, and all you need to do is work for me.”

  “You have really lost your mind because I’d never work for you. I’d never be a part of whatever all this is.”

  “Hold on just a minute before you make any hasty decisions. You haven’t asked me why I’m doing all of this. So, go ahead and ask me, Brandon.”

  “I just assumed you and your buddies were the lowest dregs of society, besides being totally and utterly insane. But something tells me you really believe everything you’re saying to me. So, go ahead and tell me why you are doing all of this.”

  Phillip motioned to some other chairs for he and I to sit down in, and as he did, I took a quick glimpse at Lizzie. She was completely surrounded by Phillip’s warlocks, and she was madder than a bear when someone gets in between the beast and its cubs. I loved how she never showed fear in the worst situations, but then Phillip started talking again.

  “I was raised in the church, and as far back as I can remember, my family and I were always there if the doors were open. My parents constantly told me that Jesus loved me, and died for my sins, and all the other things parents tell their children when they’re young to keep them from questioning their authority and to follow their orders in obedience. They wanted me to become a pastor, and always talked to me about how they knew God wanted me to be one because he had told them. Can you believe that they said that to me just about every day as I grew up?” Phillip said as he leaned in to make his point. “Well, if God told them that, he never bothered to tell me that, or tell me anything at all my entire life.”