Predatory Ethics Book I - Mad Gods

Chapter 13 - Paper Trail -

TIME: FEBRUARY 20TH, 1963. SECRET ARCHIVES, VATICAN 

Brother Quentin was absorbed by codexes. The pages he turned were not paper, but vellum, handwritten by long dead brothers of long dead orders. Whenever he found useful information, he thanked those long forgotten and thought about the current brothers to whom he answered. Their predecessors were very helpful; his current brethren were more secular, if such could be said of a religious order.

The Apostolic Penitentiary dealt with the world of man and had not dealt with the unseen world for decades. Their ancestors were of a time when the unseen was everywhere, just past the edge of the firelight. Now, unless the danger was political the church would do nothing. Those who manned the wheel demanded proof.

At each point in his research he would return and petition his superiors for direct involvement.  He showed newspaper clippings, which on the surface referenced the discovery of body parts, but upon closer inspection, compared to Vatican records, were indicative of demonic occurrences. Tissue samples were brought, tested and positively matched to Vatican-authenticated samples.

Still, this prompted no action. Brother Quentin appealed to them directly, using audiences with a few of the governing heads, even the Major Prefect of the Penitentiary, Cardinal Raimondi, but was politely refused, again, and again. Evil was not an abstract, the Major Prefect empathized; evil was real. It revealed itself through the murder of millions in the Second World War. The Nazis brutality in World War II gave way to the covert evil of modern times. The dark, malevolence could not last in the open light, rather, it hid from scrutiny. It briefly lived in the open light of Nazi rule, but slipped back beneath the waves of world attention.

At present, Quentin had fifteen different instances of a demonic presence, tested and verified by the Vatican’s own forensics. All occurred in the San Francisco area. A few were found in a pattern, leading from Sao Paolo, Argentina. This was where Cardinal Colletti, as well as a Luciferian, were found dead, barely a year before.

At the very least, all of these instances, no matter how slim their connection warranted further, and more importantly, direct scrutiny. Quentin was confident that once the situation was addressed, he would be able to have complete control over whomever they assigned to the task. Quentin had either trained or served with every one of their field clerics. They would follow his orders without question.

He also enlisted the help of two select figures in the church — Jesuits who had been fighting Luciferians for most of their careers. Cardinal Augustin Bae, as well as his champion, Father Lancaster Martin, told him they would help in any way they could.

Quentin also had the collated findings of Sister LaParee’s Apostolic Testis. They scanned all the newspapers and found many unrelated stories, which pointed to a suspicion Brother Quentin nurtured since the previous February.

A bank robber from Massachusetts had finally been captured. A sometime writer had seen a midnight duel between a lightning-fast grandmother and a man, retired from the British military. A waitress was caught in the end of an alley, having sex with minors. A file clerk reports gross prejudice and bigotry in those whom she serves. A San Francisco bookstore now carries openly homoerotic literature. A department store closes its doors for fumigation, after many complaints of rotting odors.

Individually, these people had no connection. The Apostolic Testis found one. They all saw someone who should not be there — someone outside perception. He lived apart of public awareness, though, for centuries, he was written off in hushed, fearful tones. The Vatican housed an entire case in their Secret Archives, dedicated to writings concerning him and his many incarnations.

His past hardly mattered. He was prophesized by legion. The most celebrated 16th-century Frenchman, Nostradamus, got his birth wrong. When he reached adulthood, he was to enslave the world. St. John’s Revelation spelled it all out, and Brother Quentin would use St. John, Nostradamus, the Apostolic Testis, and any means necessary, to move the church against him.