The Heretic: Templar Chronicles Book 1

by Joseph Nassise

  THE HERETIC

  (Book One of the Templar Chronicles)

  Joseph Nassise

  THE HERETIC

  SWAT urban fantasy style! New York Times bestseller Joseph Nassise delivers the first book in a spellbinding new series that's sure to please fans of Mercy Thompson, Sandman Slim, and the Dresden Files.

  Danger lurks in the shadows and no one knows that better than those who have pledged themselves to keep the world safe from dark and increasingly deadly forces, the Knights Templar.

  Left for dead in the wake of an attack by a fallen angel, Cade Williams now commands the Echo Team, one of six elite combat units in the Templar hierarchy. But Cade is no ordinary soldier; his encounter with the supernatural left him with a thirst for vengeance for the death of his wife, Gabrielle, along with a few unusual abilities of his own. Abilities that have earned him the nickname the Heretic among his faith-driven brethren.

  When a group of necromancers raid a Templar stronghold and steal a powerful relic, Cade and the Echo Team spring into action to prevent the unimaginable consequences. But the mission begins to go awry when Cade discovers that the power behind the necromancers is none other than the Adversary, the angel of darkness that tried to kill him years before. Will Cade sacrifice the mission, and possibly the lives of his men, for the sake of his own agenda?

  The Heretic is the first book in a genre-bending urban fantasy series that combines dark supernatural suspense with military adventure. If you like breakneck-paced thrillers, unforgettable characters, and intense battles with demons and other supernatural creatures, then you'll love this pulse-pounding series.

  WELCOME TO THE ORDER

  The book that you are reading is part of the Templar Chronicles series, in which the Templar Knights have been resurrected as a secret combat arm of the Church, charged with defending mankind from supernatural threats and enemies. The series is set in the modern world, where the average Joe is unaware of both the reality of the supernatural world and of the existence of the Order itself, a situation the Templars work diligently to maintain.

  At center stage is Knight Commander Cade Williams, a veteran of the Order and a man torn between his thirst for vengeance against the supernatural creature that murdered his wife and his need to discover what happened to him during that same encounter several years before. Cade leads the famed Echo Team, a special forces-style unit that is called in only when the situation has become particularly dire. Echo is the best of the best, there is no doubt about that, but the fact that they are led by a man rumored to have more than a few unusual abilities of his own leave many within the Order more than a little uncomfortable in dealing with them.

  The Templar Chronicles Series

  The Heretic (Book One)

  A Scream of Angels (Book Two)

  A Tear in the Sky (Book Three)

  Infernal Games (Book Four)

  Judgment Day (Book Five)

  Fall of Night (Book Six)

  Templar Missions Novella Series

  Shades of Blood and Darkness(Novella #1)

  The Hungry Dark (Novella #2)

  CHAPTER ONE

  Cade Williams crouched in an alley in one of Bridgeport, Connecticut’s rougher neighborhoods, watching the front of a two-story dwelling just up the street from his position. The smell of garbage from the Dumpster he was using for cover was heavy in the early-evening air, though Cade had gotten used to the stench.

  “TOC to all units. You have compromise authority and permission to move to Green. I say again, Green.” The bone-mike was pressed securely against his lower jaw, the high-tech device carrying his words clearly to the rest of his team though they were spoken in no more than a whisper.

  “Five. . .”

  He pictured the assault group sitting in their specially modified Expeditions half a block away, the breaching rams in their laps. He knew they were concentrating on the sequence to come; who gets out first, who hits the door first, how to say “drop your gun” in Spanish.

  “Four. . .”

  His thoughts jumped to the sniper teams on the adjacent rooftops, his eyes and ears since this assault began. He knew their preparations intimately, from the way they slid that first bullet into the breach with their fingertips, needing the reassurance of feeling it seat properly, to the thousands and thousands of rounds they’d fired, learning the way the weapons reacted to heat and wind and weather.

  “Three. . .”

  He knew that his sharpshooters were aligning their bodies with the recoil path of their weapons, pressing their hips against the ground, and spreading their knees shoulder width apart for stability. He knew what it was like to stare through a Unertl ten-power scope at the target, watching, waiting for the moment. He’d been there himself, too many times to count.

  “Two. . .”

  Discipline was the name of the game, and in Cade’s unit, it was the only game being played. The stakes were too high, the consequences too horrible for it to be anything but deadly serious.

  “One. . .”

  His men took out the two guards standing near the front door from 250 yards away, the impact of their .308 caliber rounds knocking the targets backward into the tall grass on either side of the front stoop with barely a sound. As the bodies hit the ground the Expeditions slammed to a halt out front, the rest of Echo Team swarming the house. The front and back doors fell victim to the breaching rams, flash-bangs quickly following, then Cade’s men were inside. Brief, sporadic gunfire reached his ears, then silence.

  Cade held his breath.

  “Echo-1 to TOC. Structure is clear. Objective is secured.”

  “Coming in,” Cade replied. He would have preferred his usual position on one of the entry teams. He was the type of commander who led by example, not from the sidelines, and staying behind as tactical operations command had been a test of his patience; but his concern over their target’s ability to detect his presence had won out over his need to be involved in the action. The need for stealth was over. Signaling Riley, his second-in-command, Cade emerged from cover and strode briskly forward.

  He swept up the steps and entered the house, ignoring the snipers’ victims lying in the uncut grass on either side of the porch. As he moved swiftly through the lower floor he passed four other bodies, all young Hispanic males, each lying in a rapidly expanding pool of blood. He had no sympathy for their wasted lives; they were on the wrong side of this conflict, and the unflinching hand of righteousness had finally caught up with them. If anything, he was simply pleased that there were four fewer gangbangers on the city streets. It was the man that his team held captive in the kitchen that truly mattered to Cade. Everything and everyone else beyond that was just a means to an end.

  Juan Alvarez was seated in the middle of the room in an old chair, his arms pulled back between the steel posts supporting the seat back and his hands secured together with a set of nylon flex cuffs. Wilson and Ortega stood a few feet to either side of the prisoner, their HK MP5s at the ready and aimed in his direction.

  His pistol still in hand but pointed at the floor, Cade crossed the room to stand in front of the prisoner. Alvarez looked as if he had just been roused from sleep; his normally slicked-back hair was in disarray, and all he was wearing was a pair of hastily donned jeans. His usual air of smug superiority was still in place, however.

  Cade fully intended to change that.

  Alvarez had been under surveillance by Echo Team for the last three weeks. During that time it quickly became clear that the Bridgeport police were correct in their suspicions; Alvarez was indeed the primary conduit for the movement of heroin through Connecticut and into the rest of New England.

  Cade
didn’t care about the drugs.

  He wanted Alvarez for a far more personal reason, and he wasted no time getting to the point.

  “Where is he?” Cade asked.

  The prisoner gave him a look of disdain, and a stream of rapid-fire Spanish poured forth from his mouth. Cade understood enough to know that it was more a commentary on his mother’s background than an answer to his question.

  Shaking his head in resignation, Cade nodded to Riley.

  The larger man stepped forward and gripped the back of the prisoner’s chair, holding it tightly.

  Cade moved closer, placed the barrel of his pistol against the prisoner’s left kneecap, and, without another word, pulled the trigger.

  Blood flew.

  Alvarez screamed.

  Riley held the chair firmly in place against the man’s struggles.

  Cade waited patiently until the screaming stopped. Then, softly, he said, “I don’t have time for this. I asked you a question. I want an answer. Where is the Adversary?”

  This time, the answer was in English.

  “Drop dead, asshole. I don’t know who you’re talkin’ about.”

  Expressionless, Cade shot him in the other leg, shattering the man’s right kneecap.

  Alvarez writhed in agony, his muscles straining against the pain. Riley’s arms tensed, but that was the only outward sign of the increased effort he exerted to hold the prisoner securely in place.

  Over the wounded man’s cries, Cade shouted, “Tell me where he is!”

  The prisoner lapsed back into Spanish, cursing his interrogator vehemently; but he did not acknowledge Cade’s demand. His blood flowed down his legs and began to pool on the cracked linoleum beneath his feet.

  Cade snorted in disgust and motioned Riley out of the way. The sergeant lost no time in following orders.

  Cade raised the gun and pointed it at the prisoner’s face. “Last chance.”

  With that, Alvarez went abruptly still. His eyes lost focus, as if listening to a voice no one else could hear, and his face went slack. Out of the corner of his eye Cade caught Riley looking at him quizzically, but he kept his eyes on the prisoner, watching him closely and didn’t respond.

  Without a change in expression, Alvarez began to shake. His head twisted from side to side erratically as it shuddered atop his neck, darting this way and that like a hyperactive hummingbird. His mouth opened wide, stretching impossibly far. It seemed as if he was screaming, but no sound issued forth. Finally, with a loud pop, his lower jaw dislocated itself.

  Cade calmly watched, his gun unwavering from the target.

  The shaking intensified, the legs of the chair skipping and bumping against the tiles, leaving little skid marks in the blood pooling beneath Alvarez’s feet. A strange squealing sound came from his throat. Alvarez’s eyes bulged from their sockets, and blood ran freely from his ears.

  Still, Cade stood and waited.

  It was only when a widening crack appeared in the center of the prisoner’s forehead, a crack that dripped a substance far darker than blood, that Cade reacted.

  With a twitch of his trigger finger, he put a bullet through Alvarez’s skull.

  The prisoner and his chair went over backward to lie still on the blood-stained tiles.

  In the silence that followed, no one moved for several long moments as they waited to be certain the thing that had once been Juan Alvarez was good and truly dead, then Cade gave the signal, and the team went instantly into motion. One of the men policed the brass from the floor while another checked to be certain no one had left anything behind that might betray their presence in the house. Thirty seconds later the team was filing out the front door and climbing back into the Expeditions, with Cade and Riley taking open seats in the lead vehicle.

  Less than five minutes after entry the team was on its way, leaving behind seven bodies to lie cooling in the empty building.

  *** ***

  Niall O’Connor watched those around him intently. It late in the evening but the Vienna streets were still crowded, which could make spotting a tail difficult. He was a veteran of this kind of operation, however, and so he took his time, carefully examining his surroundings. When he was certain he hadn’t been followed from the museum, he stepped into the phone booth on the corner and shut the Plexiglas door behind him. Ignoring the mounted public telephone, he removed a satellite phone from his pocket and dialed an overseas number from memory.

  The phone rang several times before it was picked up. O’Connor could sense someone’s presence at the other end, could hear the sound of breathing, but nothing was said, not even hello.

  Into that silence, O’Connor said, “It’s done.”

  “And?” The voice was deep and liquid, like water running over gravel.

  “The Hofberg object is a fake.”

  Another long moment of silence. Then, “And the other?”

  O’Connor thought back to the long hours he’d spent in the Vatican Basilica; the endless lines, the quiet hope of the faithful, the majestic beauty of the cathedral itself. He’d walked beneath Michelangelo’s Dome and examined the pilasters, the four square columns that supported it, paying particular attention to the great statues of the saints - Andrew, Helena, Veronica, and Longinus - that rested in niches within them.

  There was power in the cathedral, great power. He’d sensed its ebb and flow as it reacted to the faith of those inside; in some fashion almost every object within the building had glowed with traces of it. Even the statue of St. Peter, its right foot worn smooth after generations of caresses by the faithful, had glistened with the faintest of auras though it wasn’t known to be anything more than an ordinary sculpture.

  The greatest concentration of power had clearly been beneath the Dome. Three of the four statues that he’d examined had blazed with it, a result of the True Relics each of them contained, relics that were easily discernible to a man of his particular talents.

  But the statue of Saint Longinus, the one supposedly containing the remnant of the Holy Lance, had not. It was barren, bereft of the same spark of Divinity that so encased the other statutes and their contents.

  “That’s a fake, too,” he said.

  “You’re certain?”

  “Yes. I’d stake my reputation on it.”

  “Very well. Return to us, and we will begin the next phase of the operation.”

  “As you wish.”

  O’Connor closed his satellite phone, put it back in his pocket, and stepped out of the phone booth. Night had come, the Vienna air grown cold and still. He pulled the collar of his greatcoat closer about his neck, glancing around again as he did so. When he was satisfied that he was still alone, he walked to the end of the street, gazing in contempt at the closed iron gates of the Hofberg palace as he passed. Reaching the intersection, he paused for a moment to light a cigarette, waiting for the traffic signal to change. When it had, he stepped out into the street, confident in the performance of his mission and already dreaming of the ways in which he would spend his exorbitant fee.

  The smile of expectation still on his face, he didn’t see the city bus surge through the intersection against the light, didn’t see the wide front grill bearing down on him until it was far too late.

  O’Connor’s body bounced off the unyielding surface of the speeding vehicle, flipped high into the air and came crashing back down several yards away. From where he lay broken and twisted in the gutter, his dead eyes stared through the windshield of the vehicle at the empty driver’s seat.

  Across the Atlantic, in a darkened room, a grey hand reached out in the half-light and finally replaced the phone, severing the connection.

  CHAPTER TWO

  One week later.

  As the SUV turned in through the torn and twisted wrought-iron gates that had once guarded the entrance to the estate, Knight Sergeant Sean Duncan looked out the window at the destruction around him and knew the rumors were true.

  The devil had indeed come to Connecticut.

&n
bsp; The damaged gates were only the first indication.

  The marble statue of the angel that had stood watch over the entrance to the commandery now rested on its back in the middle of the drive, one wing still stretched wide, the other crumbled into fragments a short distance away. Its stone eyes gazed unflinchingly at the sky above as if searching for repentance. In the grass just beyond, a group of knights were laying out the bodies of those who had fallen in defense of the gate, the long rows designed to make it easier for the mortuary team as they sought to identify each corpse. Duncan crossed himself and said a quick prayer for the dead men’s souls. Farther on, past the lawn, the still-smoking remains of a Mercedes sat in the cul-de-sac before the manor house, the once-fine leather seats cooked to a crisp and melted across the steel springs beneath.

  He’d seen his share of combat; it came with the job, but he’d never heard of a Templar commandery being attacked directly. The Holy Order of the Poor Knights of Christ of the Temple of Solomon, or the Knights Templar as they were once commonly known, existed in secret, away from men’s prying eyes. The days when the Order guarded the route to the Holy City had long since passed, the general public was no longer even aware of their existence. Finding the base should have been difficult, assaulting and overwhelming its defenses nearly impossible.

  But someone had done both.

  According to popular belief, the Templars had been destroyed in the 14th century when the Order was accused of witchcraft and the Pope had burned their Grand Master at the stake for the heresy. In truth, the Order had gone underground, hiding its wealth, disguising its power and managing to remain a viable independent entity right up through the end of the First World War. A treaty with Pius XI was followed by a reversal of their excommunication, and the Templars were reborn as a secret military arm of the Vatican. Their mission: to defend mankind from supernatural threats and enemies.