A large doorway made of light opened behind Paul.
I stood and my stomach churned. “What just happened?
“Ah... very good. Your eyes are opening”
“What are you talking about?”
“I know this is a lot, but after all you have been through, it should start to seem normal. Jesus wants to meet with you. You’ll need his help and wisdom if you’re going to fix all of this mess, and he wants to heal you of your past and all the trauma you suffered from this ordeal.”
I stared at the door as it became clearer and clearer. “You mean from all the crap you did to me.”
Paul let out an exhausted sigh. “Yes, because I was the one who waited for you in your office, and tossed you around like a rag doll, and then took you into the spirit realm and threatened to kill you. Because I did all of that to you. Oh wait, that wasn’t me. Who was it who did that again? Oh, that’s right. Lucifer. Not me.”
“Stop. You made your point.”
“Good. Come. There are many others up there that want to meet you as well.”
We approached the doorway.
“Paul wait, what do you mean, others?”
As Paul walked to the door he glanced back. “You’ll see, my friend. I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”
We stepped through the door into Heaven.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Lucifer
The Spirit Realm
I WATCHED THE TWO FRIENDS reunite through Alec’s office window, safely concealed in the spirit realm. I was immediately thrown out of the office by the presence of the Lord when Alec answered The Man Wrapped in Darkness’s question. The defeat I suffered at the hands of The One made me look weak to the demonic world, but it didn’t matter because a far greater victory came from that failure. I was filled with rage and hate, and not one of them would dare challenge me in that hour. But I also had hope, because ever since the day I was expelled from Heaven, I had been trying to find a way to bring about the end of the world by my hands so I could escape the tortures listed in the pages of the book of Revelation for me and my fallen brethren. If I could cause the end to happen before The One’s declared time, then I could use it as the bargaining chip to restore my former prestige and position in Heaven.
But in order to bring about the end of the earth and all of mankind, something would have to be done about The Man Wrapped in Darkness. His intervention would be too big, and his previous transgressions of meddling in my affairs could no longer be overlooked. Every time he inserted himself into a Williams’ life, I’d always had another Williams in my back pocket to use once he claimed the one he was after.
This time was different
Alec didn’t have any heirs to take his place since The Man went after him sooner than he had the others. Alec hadn’t found a woman to marry or even one to impregnate by mistake, which posed a real problem. Rachel couldn’t be trusted with running the company, because she was too ambitious which would lead her to inevitably overreach in her authority and risked exposing everything I had built over the years. The Willenskis served the purpose of serving Williamses, and the Williamses served me. That is how it had always been, and that is how it would always be. The Williamses had to always be in charge, since The One had set his sights on Frederick and his company in the first place. I knew how my enemy operated. If I replaced Alec with anyone else other than a Williams, The One would surely move on and use someone else and their company for whatever he had planned, and all of this would have been an effort in futility. Alec would have to remain in place for now, but Alec would have to be punished for the events of that night.
Alec and The Man Wrapped in Darkness had humiliated me in front of all of Heaven and Hell, and I would not let that go.
Something had to be done. It wouldn’t be the first time I had to deal with Heavenly beings meddling in my business. I had overcome them before, and I would do it again.
I would lay low and act as if I had been ultimately defeated to lure my enemy into a false sense of security, and when the time was right, I would personally drag the two of them into Hell and destroy them over and over forever. Those two deserved a special place to be tormented for all eternity, and I would go and prepare the place myself, especially for The Man Wrapped in Darkness. For the last hundred years he had been the wrench in the works, and the proverbial thorn in my side. All of my perfectly crafted plans—each one was like a highly precious crowned jewel—he had personally ruined, which caused severe setbacks to my kingdom.
The One he served, my former master, thought he could mock me by wrapping his champion in darkness. His darkness kept me from knowing his true identity and has thus prohibited me from being able to identify and swiftly kill him, which I knew would greatly set back the kingdom of Heaven. Over the years The One had used The Man Wrapped in Darkness, and others like him, to attack and weaken my kingdom, but no more.
The Prince of Darkness would not be made a fool. I would make The One suffer for his insolence. The pain he inflicted upon me on the day he cast me out for the high crime of desiring to be like him had never left my mind, and I had longed to hurt him far worse than he had hurt me. Even though he created the angels first. The One chose his children to be like him. He pushed me and my brethren to the wayside and made us lowly servants of those inferior creatures. The day The One declared we angels were to serve and protect his precious humans was the day I made up my mind to raise my throne above his. The One was no longer fit to rule. If he truly was the higher power and he knew everything, than why did he make such a fatal mistake?
Upon my first interaction with his highly favored creation, I got the woman and the man to question his love for them—which wasn’t hard to do because The One never loved anyone but himself. As soon as they doubted the love of The One for them, they quickly ate from the tree he told them not to and were cast out of the garden.
I was filled with rage as I looked up to Heaven. “Is this what you do to your precious creation? Just cast us out the moment we dare to question your judgement? I swear I will not stop until I claim every single one of your precious children and, in that day, I know you will do anything to get them back. You’ll do anything to get them out of the pit of Hell you made for me. If you want me to relent, then you know what you have to do. Let me and all my brethren back into Heaven, and then bow down before me and beg for your beloved. For I delight daily in the endless cells I have filled in Hell with your children, but still you persist in attacking me. If you really knew everything, you apparently didn’t know when to cease your attacks on my kingdom.”
Oh yes, I already felt better after I made my declaration out loud to The One. He had been placed on notice, and all of my underlings would have heard me as well, ensuring they would keep in their proper place.
There was something else that evening which had brought me sheer joy, and that was I finally learned the identity of The Man Wrapped in Darkness. Paul Luca. A sly smile slid across my face and I let out a soft chuckle, because I knew how to defeat him. I’d always had the weapon to kill The Man Wrapped in Darkness at my disposal—The Man in White.
I had kept my champion, The Man in White, from engaging The Man Wrapped in Darkness for years, because I didn’t want to risk losing one of my greatest assets until I knew how he could be victorious.
If the destruction of the souls of The One’s children hadn’t caused him severe enough pain, then maybe the death of The Man would. Maybe that was what I had been missing all the time. I had caused numerous wars, terrorist attacks, plagues, and natural disasters that had killed countless people, and still The One never ceased to relent in his efforts to destroy me. I could see Alec was determined to bring about an end to what I had worked so hard to build in the company he now ran, and I couldn’t allow that to happen. I could tell Alec was already taking on aspects of The One’s personality by his desire to do what some called the right thing, so I would have to act swiftly before Alec could become anymore like my enemy.
&nb
sp; The Man Wrapped in Darkness was Heaven’s revered and feared champion, so now he would meet mine. The Man in White had caused so much havoc on the earth, and he had also killed eternal beings before. He had a knack for luring his prey to their own destruction, and I knew he would do the same to Paul. As I stood there, I could feel my joy had been fully restored, along with my elegant appearance. I was excited at what the future held for me, and my complete victory over The One seemed to be within arm’s length. The Man Wrapped in Darkness’s defeat would set off a domino effect of events in the spirit that would cascade down to the natural, and then my planned end for earth would come. My luck had finally changed for the better.
I descended into Hell to plan my revenge.
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The Man in White
The Man Wrapped in Darkness Book 2
The Man in White
Excerpt
“FETCH ME THE MAN IN White.”
I calmly surveyed my kingdom as I sat upon my throne made of the human bones of the fallen leaders of The One who were now eternally damned. I used their bones to craft my throne as a trophy and permanent reminder to all my underlings that I was not one to be trifled with. As I waited for my champion to make his grand entrance, I drank in the beautiful and grotesque scene in front of me as if it were a perfectly aged fine wine. The sounds and sights of The One’s fallen children being tortured and ravaged by my demonic subjects warmed my heart as it would a parent looking upon their child for the first time. Those people were now my children, and their various moans and shouts played in my ears like a beautifully composed symphony of misery.
Their cries filled my inner being with sheer joy and elation, but it wasn’t the horrifying display in front of me that caused my jubilation. Oh no, it was a revelation which filled me with pure joy, and for the moment, that secret was mine alone. The knowledge of the identity of one of my greatest adversaries, Paul Luca, was The Man Wrapped in Darkness. The Man, Paul, had caused me copious amounts of frustration over the years and interrupted my best laid plans for the Williams family and their company. However, I had the solution to my problem...The Man in White.
He was one of my greatest champions of Hell, and he, unlike so many others in the past, had never failed me. He was solely committed to the cause of dethroning The One, and he had never shown signs of wavering, as far as I had known. I never figured those two men had so much in common. Both The Man in White and The Man Wrapped in Darkness used to be human and walked amongst the other mortals on the earth, and the best part is they existed at the same time. Well, that is until I properly introduced myself to the one who became The Man in White. There was no finer warrior in all of Hell than he. I thought of him as my own son, but if he were to ever rebel against me, I would most assuredly kill him—
but still a son, nonetheless.
Due to my fondness of him and his success rate in battle, I had kept The Man in White from engaging The Man Wrapped in Darkness over the years for fear I might lose my fiercest warrior. I wanted to be sure there was a way to defeat The Man Wrapped in Darkness, and after I had searched for some time, I had all but given up. It appeared to me The One had made a flawless soldier with no weakness to exploit, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The Man in White was precisely the one who had always been equipped for the extermination of The Man Wrapped in Darkness—I hadn’t realized it until then. I basked in the joy of the knowledge I now possessed, and I kept it to myself for the time being. The last thing I wanted was to let all of Heaven know I was aware of who Paul Luca really was, and that I had the means of his destruction at my fingertips. I had done the same with the identity of The Man in White by keeping his face covered with the comedy mask one would find in a drama class. I considered the mask to be a cruel joke, for the smiling face would be the last thing The Man in White’s victims would see as he brutally ended their existence on the earth.
I wasn’t the least bit surprised by how quickly word had spread of my defeat at the hands of The Man Wrapped in Darkness, coupled with the fact Alec had given his life to my enemy. All of Hell expected to feel my wrath, and all my subjects did everything they could to not make direct eye contact with me for fear of reprisal. However, all they saw was me seated on my throne, smiling.
All my demons carefully kept about their work with a greater sense of fear. I knew they worried about incurring my rage upon them, or worse, The Pit of Eternal Suffering, but suddenly, a figure appeared in a bright blinding flash of white light at the base of the stairs to my throne. The Man in White radiated waves of malevolence which caused even the principalities to shudder at his presence.
The hordes of Hell marveled as he appeared, for The Man in White’s ruthlessness and power was only rivaled by my own. I could see their curiosity had peaked by the way I had dressed him in an outfit no one had ever seen on him before. I used my dark powers to change his clothing when he showed up in the bright light. He fancied himself a bit of a showman, much like me. If he’d ever try and outperform me then I would have to destroy him on the mere principle alone.
DEDICATION
I’D LIKE TO THANK, Jesus, my Lord and Savior, for giving me this book. My editor, Carla, for taking the time to teach and guide me on this journey. Without you, none of this would have seen the light of day. Finally, my wife, for her unending encouragement to keep going, and for always being there for me.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MATTHEW NEWSON IS EXCITED to jump headfirst into making his writing a career with his first series. He calls the great state of Texas home where he juggles his days between a full-time position, his family, his church and writing. His passion for writing stems from a desire to bring the spiritual world to the fictional page. He enjoys a good battle scene with epic clashes of light versus dark.
Connect with Matthew Newson Books at
www.matthewnewson.com
The Man Wrapped in Darkness Page 18