LITMIR.BIZ

       PROLOGUE

       The basement is dark and quiet.

       A figure, stripped to the waist and kneeling takes the blade in his right hand and draws it across the skin at the joint of his left arm and shoulder, tracing the scar of a previous cut. The blade is sharp and the scar opens easily, letting blood run down skin quivering at the bite of the knife.

       ‘The first,’ he says, his voice low in the darkness. ‘This blood binds me in pain with the Sacrament. As it suffers, so must I, until all suffering will end.’

       He switches the blade to his left hand and repeats the cut on his right shoulder.

       ‘The second,’ he says, continuing the ritual learned from a hospital worker in the southern Turkish city of Ruin, a man loyal to the cause who had faithfully recorded everything the dying Sancti said through their delirium and suffering. The knife continues to cut, drawing fresh blood from old wounds, carving the same pattern he has seen on the bodies of the sacred monks, captured on a camera phone by the same spy after their suffering had finally ended. It is a ceremony that remained secret and locked in the Citadel at the heart of Ruin for thousands upon thousands of years. The enemies of the Church believe that the death of the Sancti and the breaching of the Citadel mark the end of the old ways.

       They are wrong.

       When the ceremony is over he cleanses his wounds, flushing them with saline solution before drying them and sealing them with superglue that stings as it binds the flesh back together. The pain sharpens his mind, and so does its purpose. Only through suffering can redemption be reached, and only through sacrifice can the enemy be beaten.

      He dresses quickly, buttoning his high-collared shirt to hide the scar on his neck and fixing his tie. Only a very few know him by the name he wears, down here in the dark: Novus Sancti, keeper of the sacred flame.

       But he is not alone in the shadows. There are others, many others like him who have devoted themselves to the silent and secret protection of God’s sacred mission on Earth. They are everywhere, woven into the fabric of society – law makers, politicians, opinion formers – the crosses round their necks the only sign that they serve a higher law than those of the lands they live in. They are Legion, for they are many, an army waiting to be mobilized when judgement day draws near.

       And that time is now. He knows this to be true, for he has seen the signs and felt the call inside him. God has spoken to him and now he will answer.

       He slips on his jacket then mounts the stairs back up into the modern world like a man rising from the dead.

       Reborn.

       Renewed.

       Ready.