Wrathstone: Family Obligations

By Steven Sterup, Jr

Yet another reinvention of Wrathstone and yet another Solfurn trying to stand in its way. Although this time, Wrathstone has a headstart, and Cassandra Solfurn, the daughter of Scott Solfurn, will need to call upon every ounce of courage she has. Because not only has the apocalypse already begun, Cassandra will have to outsmart Lucifer himself.
The Lord of Hell has found a loophole in God’s punishment. He doesn’t have to escape from hell. He simply needs to be reborn on Earth. If Cassandra can’t figure out who Lucifer has become before he finds a way to regain his demonic powers, Wrathstone might finally succeed in destroying the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steven Sterup, Jr
• Release date: Jul 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215460252

Steven Sterup, Jr

I enjoy reading and writing fantasy themed books, including romance novels. Most of my work is about fantastical worlds with magic and monsters.Since I was young I've had a strange desire to create 'something' and as soon as I started writing my first book I knew I had finally found what I was looking for.I hope you enjoy the worlds I have created and I appreciate your feedback. Feel free to contact me on my website at www.StevenSterupJr.com or email me at [e-mail].

Book preview

Wrathstone

Family Obligations

Written By: Steven Sterup Jr.

Copyright 2022 Steven Sterup Jr.

Legal Disclaimer - This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Words from the Author

The Apocalypse

A Boy

The Camp

Introductions

A Girl?

Secrets

The Horribly Stupid Plan

Cages and Confessions

Small Talk and Missiles

Moment of Truth

Missiles and Yet Another Stupid Plan

Just a Girl

Words from the Author

Just a word of warning as you begin this story. This is book three, and while each of the Wrathstone stories is a self-contained work, there are spoilers if you read them out of order. Without giving away too much, Cassandra, the main character in this book, is the daughter of Scott Solfurn, the main character of the previous book. Now that in itself is not much of a spoiler, but who her mother is might be considered one.

If you have any plans to read the previous two books, I suggest you do so before reading this one. Although, if you are like my wife, spoilers like these are inconsequential. I, on the other hand, would be rather disappointed to find out things ahead of the author’s ‘Big Reveal’.

For reference, Maternal Instincts is book one, and Shattered Legacy is book two. If you decide to read them in order you can find links to them on my website StevenSterupJr.com.

The Apocalypse

With Lucifer’s sword now in heaven, he had no way to escape his prison. Turning his attention toward revenge, he enlisted his allies at Wrathstone. Though the previous attempts to end the world had failed, they were because he had been too focused on his sword. Without the sword to distract him, he could put his full attention into making sure that Wrathstone did not fail this time. If he would be unable to escape hell, he would make sure that God’s greatest creation burned with him.

Years after preparations had begun to end the world once and for all, someone at Wrathstone translated a very old parchment of text dating back to the beginning of human existence. This text spoke of a conversation God had with one of his angels.

This angel was concerned when he realized that there was a problem with imprisoning fallen angels in a dimension without substance. Since the demons held there were merely souls, not physical beings, they could transfer their essence into a mortal body that had no soul. This angel went on to tell his father that if several demons worked together and timed it just as an embryo came to life, they could transfer one soul to Earth.

God dismissed this angel, stating that the cooperation of demons was very unlikely. He went on to say that if enough demons ever cooperated in this fashion, perhaps it would be time to end the mortal world.

With this new information, Lucifer was yet again distracted from ending the world. He left the completion of his plans in the hands of Wrathstone leaders and set about the task of forcing his demonic brethren to transfer his soul to a newly created mortal being on Earth.

Years after sending Lucifer’s sword to heaven, Scott Solfurn and Amber Myrth were married and had a daughter, Cassandra. Thinking that the threat was over and that Lucifer was without options, they settled into the family life that they had longed for. They had no way of knowing that Wrathstone was more than just a loosely administered band of hunters. It was much larger than the law enforcement agency that borrowed its name. It was an ideology that had been ever-present since the creation of man, and it was finally ready to enact Lucifer’s plan for revenge.

On a sunny afternoon in late September, Wrathstone finally accomplished something the organization had been trying to do since it was first envisioned. On an otherwise ordinary Thursday, Wrathstone started the apocalypse.

-----

Run! Anna screamed at the top of her lungs.

Cassandra Solfurn, though she preferred to be called Cass, turned to look at the small blonde with confusion as the girl took off running down the alley. Cass’s long curly brown hair was knotted and mostly in a ponytail...mostly. Her torn, dirty clothes, which she’d found in a dumpster the week before, looked like they were designed for a man. Her seventeen-year-old figure wasn’t exactly womanly yet, but these clothes were baggy in places they shouldn’t have been and tight in areas where they wouldn’t have been on a man.

What is it?! Cass yelled after her friend.

Anna and Cass had been together for two weeks, which was a lifetime when you were trying to survive the end of the world.

Wrathstone! Anna shouted behind her, and Cass now understood her urgency.

Dropping the last of her food, possibly the last food she would find today, she took off down the alley after Anna. Food was important, but it would be hard to eat if she didn’t have a head.

Anna dodged the barking dog, as did Cass, who was now catching up to her friend.

How many? Cass panted.

I saw three, Anna replied.

Cass was at least a head taller and two years older than Anna. Only three short years ago, the two would have been bitter enemies at school. Anna looked like the cheerleader slash prom queen type, whereas Cass was...different. However, during the apocalypse, anyone who wasn’t actively trying to kill you was your new best friend.

As they ran, Cass smiled to herself. Anna would have been one of the girls teasing her about her strange looks. Half Israeli, half Caucasian. Part demon, part angel, with a smidge of human. To say that Cass didn’t fit in with anyone was an understatement. At least until the end of the world came.

The freckles across her nose and cheeks, which neither of her parents had, popped up from nowhere when she was born. Her hair was much curlier than her mother’s, her skin an even darker shade of brown. Her eyes didn’t even match. One was brown, the other a shade of green. At the age of ten, she finally worked up the courage to ask her parents if she had been adopted. In her mind, she thought it looked more like she was half African American and half Irish.

Her parents quickly put her mind at ease, though if Cass had waited another month, she wouldn’t have had to ask the question. Only one month after asking if she had been adopted, she began to manifest abilities like her mother and father. There could be no doubt that Cassandra was a Solfurn.

Left! Anna shouted, nearly out of breath.

The poor human girl wouldn’t be able to keep this up much longer, and Cass didn’t feel like carrying her at a full sprint. Although Cass could do it, she was quite strong and very quick; she was still only seventeen. She’d barely begun to understand what her celestial side was capable of when the sirens went off that fateful afternoon. The day she lost her parents.

Wrathstone had been smart for once and very patient. The end of the world wasn’t a surprise to them. It had been planned. Half-demon agents were waiting outside of her house for the signal that it had begun. Seconds later, Cass was an orphan. Although she wouldn’t find out for hours that her parents had been ambushed in their home as she was contemplating just how close to hell middle school was. Only now did she truly understand what hell was really like.

Turning to her left, she saw the reason for Anna’s warning. Two fully transformed werewolves were charging straight at them.

Cass wasn’t about to lose another friend. She had lost so many in the last few years. People who wouldn’t have given her the time of day before the sirens had come to rely on her, and she welcomed their company. This time she would not second guess herself. She would not cower from what she really was. It was time to let go of her insecurities.

Grabbing Anna under the armpits, Cass held on tightly as she prayed that her wings, one of the few things about her that resembled her mother, would work this time. As both girls were lifted into the air, Cass exhaled and looked down as a grin spread across her face.

Her ebony wings spread wide and caught the air, forcing them even higher. The Wrathstone thugs looked like insects below them. Even as she saw the destruction below her with new clarity, she couldn’t stop the joy rising inside of her. Turning her head down toward Anna, she shouted.

I did it, Anna! We’re flying!

However, Anna had passed out.

-----

I’m sorry, Anna said as she backed away.

Cass had crash-landed in a field outside of town. As she had come to expect, her wings had failed mid-flight, retracting themselves without warning. Thankfully, she had been trying to land at the time, so she was only about twenty feet in the air.

The field, which had once contained soybeans from the looks of it, now had small trees sprouting up every few feet, and the foliage had broken their fall. It took Anna a few moments to wake, but once she did, she was terrified.

You don’t understand, Cass started.

You’re one of them. I need to be with my own kind, Anna said, still backing up.

I saved you, Cass begged.

I know, and thank you, but I have to go, she replied, then took off running back toward town.

Cass flopped down into the tall grass that completely obscured her as she sat. Someone would have to be overhead to even know that she was in this field.

Why am I surprised? Cass mumbled to herself.

This was the way it always went. The second her human companions found out what she really was, they left. Not occasionally, not sometimes, every single time. Not that she blamed them. Wrathstone was entirely comprised of non-humans. A full-blown war with monsters had been bubbling under the surface of society for decades, possibly longer. The end of the world was just a convenient excuse for everyone to act on their prejudice and animosity.

As she laid back in the tall grass, relishing this rare chance to rest, she wondered. Were there any non-humans besides her that weren’t in league with Wrathstone?

Not that these non-humans even understood what they had signed up for. Wrathstone had been rather convincing when they announced on the internet, public television, and any radio station they could that the humans were trying to wipe out anyone not like them.

They had even conjured up proof that the humans were behind the toxic gas that enveloped every major city in the world. Citing a meeting between the leaders of all major countries as the beginning of the end.

In reality, this meeting had been to discuss several smaller countries that were behind the times when it came to civil liberties concerning non-humans. The leaders were discussing sanctions against some of these countries until they agreed to treat non-humans as people. Some leaders had even proposed war against these countries. However, the real reason for the meeting was quickly overshadowed by Wrathstone’s propaganda.

Coincidently, not long after the gas was released and Wrathstone’s message was sent out to the world, the internet stopped working, cellphone towers were mysteriously sabotaged, and communication centers became the focus of terrorist attacks. This quickly cut off any way for humans to refute Wrathstone’s claims. Not that there were many humans left after the gas covered the world.

While most people didn’t see the connections, Cassandra was not most people. Her parents had not raised her with blinders on. She knew exactly what was going on in the world and what Wrathstone was really about. Although her parents hadn’t seen this coming, they’d had their suspicions that Wrathstone wasn’t gone for good. An institution that had attempted to destroy the world twice wasn’t just going to go away.

It was also just a little too convenient that the toxin, which covered most of the globe before it dissipated, was not lethal to non-humans. Billions of humans died that day, and while Cassandra did get sick like all the rest of the partial humans, unlike most of them, she survived. As the days turned into years, she concluded that the only reason the toxin hadn’t killed her was because she was a Solfurn.

Sitting up, Cass decided that she’d rested enough. It would be getting dark soon, and even she would need a warm place to sleep for the night. Her celestial blood wouldn’t protect her from freezing to death, and the nights in South Dakota could get rather chilly in late October. Though she had started out in Nevada, where her parents had chosen to live, she had drifted north over the last few years. She was hoping to eventually make it to Canada, where a Wrathstone resistance camp was reportedly taking in refugees.

Hopefully, this camp wouldn’t have an issue with her bloodline. Not that she would volunteer anything about herself, but her untrained demon side did tend to slip out every once in a while.

-----

Two months later, Cass was walking through the snow-covered plains in what she hoped was North Dakota. It had been a long journey, though it had been made longer since she had been forced to go around Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. These were Wrathstone states that had fallen quickly at the beginning of the war. If you could call the annihilation of humanity a war. These states now contained bases that housed many non-human troops. Though she might have been able to sneak by them unnoticed, she didn’t think the risk was worth it, especially since Wrathstone was looking for her.

In the last two months, she hadn’t met anyone brave enough to join her on her trip. Most of the people she met were heading the other direction, reasoning that the warmth of the southern states would help them avoid freezing to death. While this was true, Cass knew that the south was almost entirely controlled by Wrathstone, most of the northern states as well.

She was