The Wrath Walker (The Wrath Series Book 1) by Matthew Newson (fun to read .txt) 📗

I SPED AWAY FROM THE warehouse as the flames began to dance into the windows, and black smoke slowly edged out from the cracks in them and into the night sky. I wondered if Wrath watched where I was going from wherever he disappeared to. There wasn’t a force on the earth that had a chance of stopping him, or even matched the kind of power that man possessed. I was more terrified of him than I had been after he killed Ron before my eyes and said that he was coming to kill me as well. I had literally just witnessed a ball of fire form in his hand and then move on its own to ignite Frankie into a screaming inferno. That was all the proof I needed to know that Wrath was who he said he was, and I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that he came from God. God, who was supposed to be all loving and forgiving, and didn’t want any to perish, but wanted all to come to know him.

Then again, he also punished the wicked when he became angry. He kicked out the angels who rebelled against him and put Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden for disobeying him when he said not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. God didn’t even save his only begotten son, Jesus, when they nailed him to a cross and crucified him for all to see. Yep, I was a dead man, and I desperately needed to find the answer in that old Bible story to save my life. A chill ran up my spine as I thought about ending up like Frankie and then burning for all eternity in Hell since God seemed determined to consume me in his wrath. I hadn’t talked to God in years, and I felt compelled to cry out to him for help.

I sadly dismissed the thought.

Even if I cried out to him, I doubted he wanted to talk to me, or even turn his ear to hear me.

I hesitated for a moment as I approached the road, but then I remembered the fire station was several blocks to my left. They would come from that direction, so I turned right to avoid any of them seeing me and tying me to the scene of the crime. I wasn’t ready to be interrogated again by Lizzie. If I wouldn’t have been there and witnessed it all firsthand, I would have a hard time believing it myself. It was only a matter of time before Lizzie pinned all the murders on me anyway, but I was sure Wrath would kill me before the trial. He’d make it look like I took my own life so everyone would think I did that to avoid prison.

With each breath I took, the clock was ticking, and Wrath only had two more targets on his list before he turned his sights on me. That only added to the overwhelming stress of my plight. I knew I couldn’t return home because the Amaras had to be looking for me once they were tipped off about whatever remained of Frankie in that warehouse. They’d sent him after me because they thought I had killed Joey, so I knew they wanted me dead. The Amaras were nothing but narcissistic psychopaths that would kill even their own family members for a dollar, but I wondered what I had done that even the divine wanted me dead. I decided to drive around as I tried to figure out what Wrath wanted me to see in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.

I passed a burger place and wanted to swing through the drive-through, but the Amaras had eyes everywhere. I figured I would only be able to eat about two bites anyway before the adrenaline that ran through my veins shut off my appetite and caused the food to make me sick. I checked my speed and saw I was going about twenty miles an hour over the speed limit, and I immediately let up on the accelerator. I needed to calm down and not draw any attention to myself until I was ready to face Wrath and the Amaras. Wrath only said I could stop him from killing me, but he hadn’t said anything about the others. It wouldn’t be a great loss to society if he intended to kill the rest of the Amaras. He would be doing the city a great service, but that wasn’t the way to look at the situation. The Amaras should stand trial and spend the rest of their miserable lives locked up in a super max facility.

As I made the turn at the next light, I began to break down the old Bible story in my mind to find the needle in the proverbial Biblical haystack. Two angels went to Lot and said they were going to destroy the city, and Lot and his family needed to get out of there as fast as they could. Is that what I needed to do as well? Run away from Black Castle? If I went to another city, was that really all I had to do to stop Wrath from ending my life? That didn’t make any sense. He could find me anywhere I tried to hide. He’d told me that, and I had nothing concrete that said his activities were confined only to Black Castle. Also, Wrath hadn’t told me to leave the city like those angels did Lot, but to solve his puzzle in order to save my life from my sin of not opening my own eyes to what Ron was doing and how he used me.

I checked my mirrors to make sure no one was following me and returned to my train of thought. After Lot and his family left, his wife being turned to salt was the next major event from the story that popped in