The Powers That Be: A Supernatural Thriller by Joseph P. Rogers is an exciting suspense novel in which the action occurs in Rome, London, and St. Louis, Missouri.
A Swiss Guard named Alberto Burke and Dr. Leo Leonard, a college professor, enter the battle between good and evil.They try to prevent a satanic coven from obtaining some powerful spell scrolls.Alberto and Leo are helped by two talk radio hosts (Mark Tobin and Megan Aquilina) who are investigating some mysterious murders.The action in this novel moves relentlessly toward a shocking surprise ending.The author's homepage at JoeRogers.homestead.com
features some mystery stories, plays, and excerpts from his other novels, Maiden of Orleans: a Bayou Thriller, The Snow Maiden: A Suspense Thriller, and Moonlight Warriors: A Tale of Two Hit Men.
This page was last updated: February 7, 2012
Excerpt 1:
It was his favorite time of the week. Alberto Burke sat in the passenger seat next to the driver of the Popemobile. The Pope had just delivered his weekly address to the thousands of persons gathered in St. Peter’s Square and was now greeting the enthusiastic crowd.
Alberto turned to look back at the smiling, elderly Pope who stood waving in the bulletproof glass enclosed area of the vehicle. Everyone, including the Pope, would have preferred for him to be able to ride in the open air; however, since the attempted assassination of John Paul II in the previous century, papal security had deemed it too dangerous for the Pope to travel through a crowd without the protective enclosure.Alberto glanced back at his older brother, Claudio, who was jogging next to the back of the Popemobile. Alberto had been a member of the Swiss Guard for three years, while his brother had been a Swiss Guard for four years. The two brothers had been born and raised in a small town in Switzerland. As teenagers, they had moved with their parents to Italy.Alberto’s eyes scanned the crowd, but he did not see any potential threats. It had been almost two years since there had been any incidents, and that incident had not been a serious threat. An emotionally-disturbed person who charged the altar during a papal Mass had been easily subdued.Alberto looked briefly at the bright, colorful banners that hung from the ancient buildings. His eyes returned to scanning the crowd, filled with the faithful from many nations.As Alberto read a sign held up by a group of visitors, with his peripheral vision, he saw a baseball-sized object coming through the air. The object struck the Popemobile’s bulletproof glass. The Pope, a Cardinal, and a Swiss Guard within the bulletproof enclosure turned to see what had hit the glass.The object bounced down into the front seat of the vehicle. A hand grenade landed on the seat between Alberto and the driver.Without hesitation, Alberto grabbed the grenade, pressed it against his chest, and rolled out of the vehicle, landing hard on the paving stones of St. Peter’s Square.“Go! Get him out of here!” he shouted at the startled driver.The driver pressed hard on the accelerator, causing the Popemobile to shoot forward.Alberto was flat on his stomach with the grenade tight against him. He hoped that his body and the paving stones would absorb most of the blast so that no one else would be killed.He expected to die at any second. I don’t recall dealing with hand grenades in any of our training exercises, but I’m certain that this is the right thing to do, Alberto reflected.He silently began saying an Act of Contrition prayer.The square was in chaos. His brother and two other Swiss Guards subdued the man who had thrown the grenade. Claudio slammed the man’s face into the pavement, breaking the man’s nose. Claudio’s fist smashed into the side of the man’s head and knocked him unconscious.As Claudio pulled his arm back to hit the grenade thrower again, another man placed a restraining hand on Claudio’s elbow.“Claudio, that’s enough!” Ian Glaus told him. Ian, a distinguished-looking man in his early fifties, was the commander of the Swiss Guard.“Yes, sir,” Claudio replied, reluctantly obeying.“Search him for other weapons,” Ian ordered. “And see if you can find some identification on him.” He signaled to another guard. “Geoff, help Claudio search this man.”Ian hurried over to Alberto. He knelt down next to the young guard.“I don’t know much about grenades, Alberto, but I know that there should be a safety handle or lever on the grenade. Can you feel the handle?”“Yes, sir. I have the handle pressed against me -- against my solar plexus.”“Good. Keep it pressed there. The police should be here very soon. They will take the grenade from you and place it into one of their steel boxes.”“Thank you, sir, but you should move back,” Alberto said. His face was perspiring profusely. “I’m not certain that I am maintaining consistent pressure on the safety handle. This thing could explode at any second, and there is no need for both of us to be killed.”“My guess is that grenade is a dud,” Ian said. “It should have exploded before you had time to press in the safety handle. However, the man might have thrown it too quickly or the grenade might have a long fuse, so just continue to do your best to maintain that steady pressure on that handle.”“I’ll do that, sir.” Alberto realized that his commander was going to stay by his side until the situation was resolved one way or another, so Alberto made no further attempt to persuade Ian to move back to a safer location.Excerpt 2:
On a pleasant London evening, Leo Leonard wandered out onto the balcony of his hotel room. The famous London fog was beginning to settle over the city.
As he leaned on the railing, he recalled scenes from literature. He could imagine Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson dashing down the fog-shrouded streets in pursuit of Professor Moriarty. Off in the distance, Leo could almost see the Hogwarts Express carrying Harry Potter and his friends, Ron and Hermione, to their school.He recalled historical figures, too. His hotel was near the Tower of London. Leo thought about Saint Thomas More, Saint John Fisher, and other martyrs of the faith who had been imprisoned in the Tower. Leo was in London for the weeklong conference celebrating the life and work of the great John Henry Newman. Going back into the room, he closed the balcony doors and sat back down at the desk where he had been reading some of Newman’s prodigious writings.
Leo resumed his reflections about Newman’s concept about how our understanding of Christian revelation had deepened through the centuries. Using the analogy of the acorn and the oak, Newman explained that the acorn and the oak were essentially the same thing; the oak tree was a fuller expression of the acorn's nature.Similarly, the 1st century Church in the Holy Land grew into the 21st century Church found in every nation on earth. Through the centuries, our understanding of Christianity had increased in depth and profundity.It occurred to Leo that Newman’s acorn-and-oak analogy also could be applied in other ways. Was there any essential difference between an embryo and an adult human or, like the acorn and oak, were they substantially the same? He reflected upon the implications of this analogy.A ringing phone interrupted Leo’s ruminations. He glanced with surprise at his cell phone. He wondered who would be calling him this late in the evening.Excerpt 3:
Eleanor knew that she needed to feed again soon. Since she and three men from the local satanic coven had killed nine teenagers the previous week, she had only killed one other person. She could feel her strength beginning to wane.
After draining the teenagers, Eleanor had been elevated to the rank of an exalted chosen one. Bertrand explained to her that she would now need to feed more often to maintain her new, higher level of strength.This morning Eleanor drove along Germania Avenue, which bordered the small River des Peres that flowed into the mighty Mississippi River. Eleanor sought a victim whom she could drain. She hoped to spot a jogger or walker along an isolated section of the bike path.Eleanor was a tall 36-year-old woman with long auburn hair. Her hawk-like eyes moved back and forth between the roadway and the bike path. Just as she spotted her prey -- two elderly women walking together along the path, her thoughts were interrupted by a telepathic signal that called to her with a clear, unambiguous message. She instantly forgot about the two women on the path. Eleanor’s car accelerated as she headed in the direction from which the signal was radiating. After she had become an exalted chosen one, Bertrand had told her that she was now powerful enough to sense the proximity of some powerful scrolls that were of importance to their coven.
Excerpt 4:
The following morning, when the Talk of the Town radio show began, Claire Bell, the producer, greeted the listeners as the opening music played.
“Good morning, and welcome to the Talk of the Town featuring What’s-her-name and What’s-his-face and a bunch of people on the telephone.”“Thank you for such a nice introduction, Claire,” Jack said with amused sarcasm. “Remind me why I don’t fire you?”“Because you don’t have the authority to fire me, Jack,” Claire said, grinning broadly.“Oh, that’s right. I knew there was some reason that you were still here.”They often engaged in these mock fights as part of their good-natured banter.“Jack and Claire, you two children need to behave so that we can get on with the show,” Heather said. “As Claire mentioned, there are a bunch of people waiting on the phones to talk to us.”“Yes, Miss Heather,“ Jack said. “Okay. Let’s go to our first caller.” Jack Sanders glanced at his monitor. “Dan from South St. Louis -- talk to me.”“Hey, this is Dan.”“Yeah, we’ve established that. What’s up, dude?” “Listen, a really freaky thing happened last night!”“Well, it’s Friday -- Freaky Friday, I guess.”“Yeah, but this is major league freaky. At about ten o’clock last night, my girlfriend and I were in the pavilion near the boathouse in Carondolet Park.”“A great place in a beautiful park,” Jack said.“Right. Anyway, we were sitting there talking and whatever when this super weird thing happened.”“I’d like to hear more about that whatever part.”“No, seriously, listen man, this is important. We were looking at the illuminated fountain in the middle of the lake when it went all otherworldly on us. The water began shooting much higher in the air and changing colors and shapes.”“Fountains are design to do that, Dan,” Heather Spears joined the conversation, having returned to the studio after refilling her coffee cup.“Not that fountain and not like this,” Dan countered. “There were colors that I’d never seen until now. And the fountain water became a three-dimensional shape with wings! I got goosebumps up and down my arms.”“Did your girlfriend see all this too?” Heather asked.“Yes! Of course! She is still freaked out!”“Were you two drinking a little something or smoking a little something?” “No! I mean we had a couple of beers earlier, but we weren’t drunk or stoned.”“Of course not.” There was just a hint of sarcasm in Heather’s voice.“Hey, there were five or six other persons near the lake when it happened. They had to see it, too.”“Let’s hope that they’re listening. If you saw the freaky fountain tonight, give us a call, and we’ll put you on the air.”Jack had a skeptical grin. “So tell us more about the winged shape, Dan. Was it like a giant bird?”“Or a spacecraft -- aliens coming through a space portal?” Heather asked.“No. You’ll laugh, but truthfully it made me think of an angel with its wings unfolding. However, my girlfriend sensed that the winged figure was dangerous. She thinks that it was a demon, but I think that it was an angel.”“You might both be right; demons or devils are fallen angels. See what a good Catholic school girl I am.”“So what happened next, Dan?” Jack inquired.“The three-dimensional figure in the fountain seemed to become more substantial, more solid. I could almost make out his facial features. Then, all of a sudden, the figure vanished, and the fountain returned to normal.”“Imagine that,” Heather said.“Dan, I’ve got to tell you that I don’t know what to make of your story. I can hear the sincerity in your voice, so I know that this isn’t a prank.”“Bright lights on moving waters can play tricks on the eyes,” Heather interjected. “I’m wondering, too, whether you guys might have had more to drink than you remember.”“No, it really happened!”Jack shrugged. “Okay, man. I just don’t know what to make of your story. We don’t usually talk about paranormal stuff on this show. My old buddy, Mark Tobin, over on a rival station likes to talk about ghosts and UFOs and all that stuff. Maybe you should give him a call. He’ll be on the air tonight.”“Okay. Thanks.”Heather set down her coffee cup. “And call my old friend, Megan Aquilina. She has a good talk show over on that rival station. Megan went to Catholic school with me, so she’ll probably like this whole angel thing.”“I’m sending a bill to the Megan in the Morning show for that commercial,” Jack said with a wide smile.“That’s how we can make a lot of money for this station,” Heather declared gleefully. “We’ll do unrequested promotions of shows and restaurants, then bill them for the promotions.”“Heather, were you out drinking at Carondolet Park with Dan and his girlfriend?”“Hey! Well, maybe that wasn’t my best idea.”“I have three different responses to that, but any of them will get me into trouble.”“You think that you aren’t already in trouble?”“Oh, I know I am,” Jack said. “In any case, we need to take a break and do some commercials that sponsors have actually requested. I’m old-fashioned that way.”“You’re something all right,” Heather grinned.He laughed as they went to a commercial break.
