Saint Peter's Soldiers (A James Acton Thriller, Book #14) Read Free Page A

looked. He scanned the crowds
from his vantage point, a bench along the outer wall of Vatican City. The entrance
to St. Peter’s Square was to his right and hundreds if not thousands of
tourists were pouring in and out constantly. He had been there countless times
himself, of course, his order literally worshipping at the altar of the man
himself.
    St.
Peter.
    The
founder of the Church, the man Jesus himself had tasked to continue his
ministry after he was gone.
    And I
say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my
church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
    St.
Peter had been a faithful disciple of the Lord, spreading his teachings until
his death at the hands of the Romans, and in the end he had insisted he be
crucified upside down, feeling himself unworthy to be put to death on an
upright cross as the Lord had.
    And from
that moment forward, his symbol was the inverted cross.
    It
annoyed Diego to no end that ignorance among today’s youth meant the holy
symbol had been coopted by idiots who thought it was satanic, some sort of
symbol representing evil, anti-church activists tattooing it on their flesh as
a monument to their obliviousness. He felt like grabbing every one of them and
smacking them up the side of their head and giving them a history lesson.
    He
sighed, absentmindedly rubbing the tattoo on his chest. It was impressive, an
ornate inverted cross, paired with the keys to Heaven, given to him upon his
admission into the Keepers of the One Truth. He bore it proudly, though it did
at times limit him in today’s liberal society. He could never take his shirt
off in public, though that merely forced him to live modestly. Casual relations
with a woman were precluded, the need to explain the tattoo to just any carnal
desire not acceptable.
    It
forced him to lead a better life.
    A moral
life.
    He had
married eventually, explaining the tattoo to his wife as a youthful
indiscretion. Only the first of many lies he had told her, she unable to know
what he did with his life. She thought he had a government job that he couldn’t
talk about, with a workplace she wasn’t allowed to know the location of.
    And she
was fine with that.
    She
loved him.
    She
trusted him.
    And it
tore him apart at first, until he realized that all of the men in the Keepers of
the One Truth had the same problem and had learned to live with it, as had his
own father. Only the sons of Keepers were invited to join, and in modern times,
many refused, too often turning their back on the Church in exchange for
instant gratification, instead of a life of service dedicated to protecting the
Church in exchange for an eternity in Heaven.
    He had
embraced the group wholeheartedly, recognizing the evils of modern life that
threatened to overwhelm those around him, and instead devoted himself to a life
of servitude.
    And lies
to his loved ones.
    It was a
necessary evil that helped keep true evil at bay.
    For the
world was filled with evil, filled with enemies of the Church. It always had
been, and it always would be.
    And St.
Peter had foreseen this.
    And
created an army.
    The
Keepers of the One Truth.
    Their
mission was to protect the Church from its enemies. All enemies. Of this earth
and not. The evils of man were easy enough to protect against. They were
predictable. It was those of Satan himself that were the challenge.
    Thus the
establishment of The Vault.
    The
Vault was a secret archive located under the grounds of the Vatican, its
existence known to very few outside of the Keepers. Over two millennia the
leaders of the Church had hidden away anything that challenged or threatened
the faith, eventually establishing the Vault to secure these abominations so
they could never be unleashed upon mankind.
    Yet their
mandate went beyond ensuring the integrity of the Vault and ensuring the
current Pope performed his duty as handed down to him by St. Peter himself, it
extended to protecting the Church and the Christian