Soul Thief

The Brotherhood of the Order is one of the oldest and most mysterious organizations on earth. Those who know of their existence are few. Fewer still understand who they are; a band of brothers once known as the Knights Templar. Persecuted and murdered for their beliefs, the ultra-secret Order has survived the ages to protect one of the most carefully guarded secrets in human history, an object so enigmatic and powerful that in the wrong hands it could wreak havoc upon the earth. In the right hands it just might have the power to save humanity from its own destructive impulses. Doug McArthur, hit in the face by a young friend at the age of seven, is suddenly able to see a supernatural creature who calls itself Collector. Doug's life is turned upside down when he realizes that it's not just the creature he sees, but the atrocities it commits. Since marrying Annie his visions have been quiet and Doug is grateful. Now Annie is pregnant with their first child-a child who promises to be special-and their world is in the process of coming apart, beginning with the destruction of their home and forcing them to run for their lives, back into the world of Annie's childhood, the De Roché dynasty, to a murdered mother and a cruel and enigmatic father. Doug, whose love for Annie borders on the obsessive, has a deep and abiding hate for her father. He is nearly insane with grief over their plight, but soon finds that De Roché is the least of his worries when he begins to hear the pleading voice of a lost child that he cannot possibly save. And then, in the midst of Annie's mother's funeral, Doug is given a strange artifact along with a dire warning by a dying priest. The artifact, purported to be the tip of the spear that pierced Christ's rib cage at the crucifixion, is only part of the story, for Doug must take the artifact, leave Annie and his unborn child and begin a sojourn into the darkest regions of the human heart. In his attempt to save his wife and unborn child, Doug finds that there is much more at stake than the lives of two people, perhaps the very salvation of the human soul.