Angels of Wrath Read Online Free PDF

into the palm of her hand, hard enough to make an impression, hard enough to sear her soul.
     
    Benjamin’s death hadn’t seemed real until the intruders arrived. But now it was very real.
     
    The intruders had tripped over themselves trying to describe the church. They were so wedded to the old age, the ways that had dominated for the past two thousand years that the coming age was beyond their vocabulary. Calling the Seven Angels Christian was like calling Christians Jews. Yes, there were intersections, but the Seven Angels were no closer to Christians—or Jews or Muslims—than they were to Buddhists. They recognized the old age had ended and were dedicated to the new.
     
    The words of the Christian Bible did predict the changes to come, for in the old there are always the seeds of the new. But the Christians in their blindness did not know how to interpret the words they themselves held dear.
     
    The Book of the Apocalypse mentioned seven vials: seven wars. These would begin in the Holy Land, where the other ages had begun. Before the wars had run their course, all of the old holy places—Jerusalem, Nazareth, Mecca, Medina—would be destroyed just as Jerusalem had been torn asunder to signal the birth of Christianity. All that was required was a spark.
     
    Benjamin was to have provided that spark. But the old resisted the new, dinging selfishly to its ways.
     
    Coldwell knew that the intruders were lying about her brother’s death being an accident. They might blame a suicide bomber, but surely that was part of a plot to obscure what had happened. The Jews controlled Jerusalem, and it was only natural for them to blame the Muslims. One did not like to jump to conclusions without evidence, but surely some sort of deliberate act had taken her brother’s life.
     
    Coldwell despised mendacity, but it strengthened her in a way and even provided some comfort. These people were her enemy. They were powerful, but they were not so strong as they pretended. Nor as knowledgeable. They seemed to have no idea that she, too, was a member of the church. But then that was by design. Judy Coldwell had done much for the church soon after the angels visited the Reverend Tallis and instructed him to start the movement. Her job as an overseas accountant with an energy firm and then an exporter had been based in the Middle East, and her contacts helped lay the groundwork for Seven Angels’ early missions. These were primitive and paltry, greatly limited by the group’s lack of funds.
     
    That changed when Kevin Durkest became interested in the group. A real estate developer in the Washington, D.C., area, he had been convinced to sell off some of his minimalls and leave the money in various accounts for the group’s use. Coldwell did not know all of the details. There were rumors that some of these transactions had occurred after the reclusive Durkest had died, and scandalous talk that Durkest’s demise had not been the accident the coroner claimed. But death was of little significance to those who believed, as they would be reborn as high priests in the new age, and so these details were not important to Judy Coldwell. And, in any event, by the time he died, she was no longer close to Tallis and the others, nor did she play a visible role in the church.
     
    Which was not to say that she was no longer a member. Soon after Durkest became involved, the Reverend Tallis had asked her to break her active association with the group and become, in his words, “a sleeper.” Such an agent, he predicted, might become necessary in the future as the new age dawned. The old religions might fight back, just as the Jews and Romans had persecuted the followers of Christ.
     
    At first, Coldwell was skeptical. Tallis had never been comfortable with strong women, and she wondered if this was just a ploy to strip her of influence. But her brother convinced her that what Tallis said was true, and after contemplation she agreed that the old