Rain City Gothic by Peter D. Baker

Author:Peter D. Baker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Peter D. Baker

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Bethany boarded the plane to go to Rapid City. She packed virtually nothing other than a backpack with a change of clothes. The only minor regret she had was that she didn’t bring anything to read during her two-hour layover in Minneapolis. After an hour of flying, the attendants started passing out the snacks along with the alcohol, the latter of which Bethany helped herself to. She was particularly happy they had Woodford.

Once she drained the double shot, the lack of sleep she’d gotten recently hit her like a kick to the jaw. She started to nod off and dream. She was in a cathedral, but it had a different layout than the St. James Cathedral back in Seattle. Bethany was observing from above as the laity waited for mass to begin.

Bethany’s focus soon went to the priest at the altar as he began mass.

“Kyrie Eleison,

Christe Eleison.

Kyrie Eleison.”

The priest led the congregation from the opening of mass all the way to the Eucharist, where he fed his flock the bread and wine that more than symbolically were the body and blood of Jesus Christ. After mass, the priest walked outside the church grounds, along with the deacon.

“God is displeased, my friend,” the priest said.

“How can you be so sure, father?” As the deacon and priest spoke, their lips moved out of sync with the spoken words. Bethany felt like she was watching a dubbed film.

“Pope Clement V moved the center of our church to France, and he squashed our faithful soldiers of Christ. Now the Muslim dynasties are trying to control the land, and their instability grows.”

“Is it not God’s will, father? These things are beyond our control, are they not?”

“Clement is giving up all Christendom has fought for by working with these invaders of Jerusalem,” the priest said. “There’s no evidence of plans to conquer, only cooperation. Cooperation with heretics.”

“Are they not the sons of Father God, too?”

“They’re perverted. Their prophet is false, and they don’t acknowledge the importance and divinity of Christ, our savior. Our faith goes back to Isaac and the sacrifice Abraham was willing to make for Our Father. Not Ishmael’s lineage. We’ll see the wasting of our entire order at this rate,” the priest said.

As Bethany looked closer at his face, her eyes widened at what she was seeing. Contrasting the current vision she had of him, this one breathed. It was Anton, but not the same Anton she’d seen before. The general features were there, like his striking long hair. But instead of vacuous pits for eyes, his youthful dark globes possessed untold wisdom mixed with zeal. He was alive and young. Bethany worried. The scrying ritual gave them access to each other, and Bethany preferred not to play mental chess matches.

The vision jumped like a badly edited film. The priest, a few years older, knelt before an altar surrounded by candles in an otherwise black room. At the center, upon the altar, rested a codex, and the priest was cutting it to form individual pages.

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