Monsters prey on the innocent. He preys on the monsters.
Five years ago, Cade Williams was an ordinary cop with a loving wife and a quiet life—until the night a fallen angel known as the Adversary shattered everything. In his own kitchen, Cade watched his partner Jackson take a bullet, then faced the Dorchester Slasher holding his wife Gabrielle at gunpoint. He put a round through the killer's skull. He thought it was over.
He was catastrophically wrong.
The corpse rose. The thing inside it—a demon wearing human flesh like a costume—tore off its own face and attacked. Gabrielle died screaming, her face melted by the creature's touch, while Cade's right eye burned away in the Adversary's grip. The demon left him alive and broken, a warning to those who would stand against the darkness.
But the Adversary made one critical mistake: it left Cade breathing.
A pulse-pounding supernatural military thriller where an elite squad of monster-hunting Templar knights wages covert warfare against biblical nightmares—and their commander carries a blade inscribed with both "Defender" and "Vengeance."
Now Cade commands Echo Team, an elite squad of modern Templar knights who operate in the shadows between the mortal world and the supernatural. When the Boston Police raid a Bridgeport drug house, they call it routine. When Echo Team storms the same location, they shoot the gang leader in both kneecaps and demand to know where the Adversary is hiding. Because Cade's men aren't there for the drugs or the criminals—they're hunting demons wearing human skin, and they'll go through anyone who gets in their way.
When Juan Alvarez's head cracks open from the inside and darkness pours out, Echo Team knows they're on the right trail. The Adversary is moving again, working through human proxies, and this time it's not just possessing criminals—it's building an army.
Meanwhile, across the Order, something else is wrong. Templar commanderies are under assault. Cemeteries desecrated. The dead aren't staying buried—they're being ripped from their graves and animated as revenants, flesh-hungry zombies that attack anyone in their path. Someone is raising the Order's own dead against them, and the pattern is deliberate. Every grave disturbed, every corpse reanimated, belonged to members of a secret unit called the Custodes Veritatis—Guardians of Truth.
Echo Team's tech specialist Sergeant Nick Malone breaks through classified firewalls and discovers the unit's existence: twenty living members and five dead ones, all tasked with protecting the Order's most powerful holy relics. The unit reports directly to Preceptor Michaels. The attacks aren't random—someone's hunting for information about what the Custodes Veritatis guards.
And when Echo Team raids a sorcerer's lair in upstate New York, they find their answer: the Council of Nine, a cabal of necromancers led by a man named Simon Logan. Their target is the Spear of Longinus—the lance that pierced Christ's side on the cross, one of the most powerful artifacts in existence. Logan has someone inside the Order feeding him intelligence, and he's been systematically eliminating anyone who might know where the Spear is hidden.
In one of the book's most haunting sequences, Cade does something his own men don't fully understand: he steps through a mirror into a dimension called the Beyond, a grey wasteland where the dead linger. There he must face the ghost of Templar Knight Zachariah Spencer, whose desecrated grave started the investigation. Spencer doesn't trust the living and tests Cade with lethal intent before deciding whether to share what he knows. What Spencer reveals changes everything—the Council of Nine has been planning this theft for years, and they're not working alone. Dark powers far older than the Adversary are backing them.
The mission becomes a race against time. Logan's forces raid the Lafayette Commandery's vault, and when the smoke clears, the Spear of Longinus is gone along with several other artifacts. Bodies litter the vault, and the traitor's identity sends shockwaves through the Order. Echo Team has one chance to recover the Spear before Logan can complete whatever ritual he has planned.
Cade leads a two-pronged assault on Logan's compound deep in the Louisiana bayou. They navigate through a submerged cemetery—an unhallowed graveyard of thieves, murderers, and unbaptized infants—where something ancient and hungry waits beneath the water. When Cade's boat passes over the center of the cemetery, he feels raw power surge through him like touching a live wire. Logan has chosen this forsaken place deliberately. The unholy ground amplifies necromantic magic.
The battle that follows is brutal and chaotic. Echo Team and Bravo Team storm the compound as Logan's revenants pour out to meet them. Sergeant Malone provides sniper support from a Blackhawk helicopter overhead with the newest team member, Sergeant Sean Duncan, acting as his spotter. Duncan is a battlefield medic with a secret gift—he can heal wounds with his touch, though the ability only works on fresh injuries. Before the night is over, he'll discover exactly what "fresh" means when the bullets start flying.
Inside the compound, Cade and Master Sergeant Riley fight their way through cultists and animated corpses to reach the chapel where Logan has begun the ritual. The Necromancer stands at the altar, holding the Spear of Longinus, and the artifact blazes with divine power in his corrupted hands. Logan believes the Spear has chosen him as its wielder, that he's destined to wield the weapon that pierced the Savior's side.
Cade has other ideas.
What follows is a vicious close-quarters battle where necromantic magic collides with Templar steel, where faith meets corruption, and where every choice carries consequences that echo far beyond a single night. When helicopters crash and shrapnel flies, when dead men walk and holy relics burn with power, Echo Team discovers that some victories cost more than others—and some enemies are more valuable alive than dead.
In the aftermath, Cade faces a choice that will haunt him: execute the man responsible for so much death, or keep him alive for reasons he doesn't yet understand. His sword bears two words—Defender and Vengeance—but tonight he can only honor one of them.
And somewhere in the darkness, the Adversary is still watching. Still waiting. Still running.
But not forever.
Because Cade Williams has made a vow, and he has the rest of his life to keep it.
Perfect for fans of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files, Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim, and military supernatural thrillers where tactical precision meets cosmic horror.
What readers are saying:
"The Heretic doesn't waste time. Five pages in, Cade's already shooting kneecaps and watching demons crawl out of corpses. This is urban fantasy for people who want their monster hunters to use actual military tactics."
"Cade Williams is everything I wanted from a supernatural warrior—scarred, ruthless, and carrying a sword literally etched with the word 'Vengeance.' The man killed a drug lord just to send a message to demons. That's metal as hell."
"The assault on the necromancer's compound in the Louisiana swamp is worth the price of admission alone. Blackhawks, revenants, a haunted graveyard, and a relic that can change the world. Nassise knows how to deliver action."
"Finally, a protagonist who doesn't angst about violence. Cade's wife was murdered by a fallen angel—he's not going to talk the demons to death. The Heretic is relentless."
"The mythology is deep, the action is brutal, and Echo Team feels like actual special forces operators who happen to fight supernatural threats. This series is going to be huge."
New York Times and USA Today bestseller Joseph Nassise launches his internationally acclaimed Templar Chronicles series with a vengeance-fueled tale of military precision, cosmic horror, and one man's unrelenting war against the darkness that destroyed his life.
