The Kingdom (Berkeley Blackfriars Book 1) Read online

  Connie relaxed a little. As he talked, Dylan noticed that her features softened a little. Maybe, he allowed himself to hope, they’re starting to like me a little. “For the Orthodox,” he continued, “baptism welcomes the child into the Community of God.”

  “But…what does that mean?” asked John.

  “Well, that’s the million-dollar question!” Dylan laughed. “Some people draw the circle very small—you know, who’s in the circle of grace and who’s out. Like Christian fundamentalists draw the circle very small, only those who believe exactly like they do are ‘in.’ Some of them even exclude other fundamentalists who don’t belong to their particular sect. The Orthodox are interesting because they mean, on one level, the Church, but they also believe that the entire universe is in the process of being transformed into God’s Community. So, in the Church they celebrate in miniature the community of grace that is transforming the cosmos into Divinity itself.”

  “Wow,” said John. “I’m not sure I follow, but it sounds pretty trippy.”

  “So…Father Dylan, where do you draw the circle?”

  Dylan smiled, and it lit up his whole flat Melungeon face. “I think that everything that is, is in the circle.”

  “So, what is baptism about?”

  “I like to think of it as a Welcome to Earth celebration because the whole world is God’s Community for those who have their eyes open to it. And my hope is that you’ll be able to bring her up so that she can see that.” He patted Jamie on the head and handed her another snickerdoodle.

  In spite of her obvious efforts not to, Connie began to cry.

  “Oh my God,” Dylan said, instantly chagrined, “did I say something wrong?” He looked to John for help.

  Connie picked up Jamie and held her in her lap. “No, it’s okay. I’m just…relieved.”

  “Awww…bless your heart,” Dylan relaxed. He picked up the plate and held it out to her. “Have a cookie,” he offered.

  11

  NO SOONER HAD the door shut behind the friars than Alan Dane walked up behind Nurse Stahl. Thinking he had left the room, she gave a little start then opened her mouth to say something. He held up his hand, and a paternal smile spread across his face like a plague as he spoke. “Not a word, my dear. Not a single fucking word. You will now return to your room where you will pack all that you have. Without saying goodbye to myself or my father, you will leave this house in fifteen minutes—less, if you can. Any remaining pay will be forwarded to your permanent address. Go.” He waved her away like a mosquito and sat on the bed next to his father.

  He picked up one age-spotted hand in his own and held it as he talked. “Well, we have had an adventure today, haven’t we? I take it those priests gave you quite a workout.” The red and glowing eyes of the old man pierced him with fierce and impotent rage, but the demon said nothing.

  The younger Dane leaned in to whisper conspiratorially. “You didn’t think you’d get out of it as easily as that, did you? Really?” He fixed his father with a malevolent grin. “No, dear Father, you will not have your release. Not yet. Not while I live and breathe. Need I remind you what you did to me when I was young and helpless? When I could not escape? Did you have pity on me then? Do you really expect any from me now? I know this demon is hard to live with, Father dear, but it keeps your heart beating so that you can enjoy an interminable string of boring, excruciatingly painful days, world without end.”

  He sat upright again and smoothed out the bedclothes, arranging them neatly. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said, although in truth, his father’s expression had not changed since he sat down. It was frozen in a permanent mask of unmitigated hatred.

  “It’s not like I’m the evil one. You were the one who ruined countless lives to build your fortune. You were the one who drove Mother to end her own life. You were the one who…did what you did to me. I’m not persecuting you, Father dear. I’m simply giving you an opportunity to atone for your own sins. I know, the burden of the flesh is hard, and it would feel ever so good to let go, to shake off this mortal flesh and let your spirit breathe free, but would that be justice? Oh, it would be kind, no doubt, but would it be right?”

  He grinned at the old man. “And I’m not terribly interested in kindness, not now—no, in that you taught me well. But it wouldn’t be fair to let you…expire…without having settled the karmic debt, if only just a little bit, would it?”

  The young man shot him a satisfied look. “Oh, no need to thank me. It’s what I do, you know. You savaged people. I save them. Oh, you made me what I am, no question, but I seek to undo all the evil you worked at so tirelessly.”

  The younger Dane wiped at his own brow melodramatically. “I don’t expect you to be proud of me, heaven knows. I certainly don’t expect you to love me. I don’t even need you to like me.”

  He held aloft the glowing red ring on his right hand and menacingly brought it far too close to the old man for the demon’s comfort. His father jerked and wrestled against the bedclothes, trying to back away from the ring, but the young man held him fast. “I only require that you fear me. And suffer. And despair. Is that too much to ask?”

  12

  SUSAN WAS BURIED in a web page she was proofreading when the phone rang. She picked it up absentmindedly. “Holy Apocrypha Friary,” she said almost robotically.

  “Susan? Bishop Tom here.”

  Susan forced herself to break away from the screen. “Tommy! Hey, how’s the day trading going?” Then she remembered. “Omigod, the synod is on now, isn’t it? Shit, how is the synod going?” The friars had been checking their email every night after dinner for updates. So far, there had been nothing terribly exciting.

  “Not well, I’m afraid. Is Richard there?”

  “No, he’s out getting his pound of demon flesh with Terry and Mikael.”

  “Dylan?”

  “Baptismal consultation. Sorry, you’ll just have to speak to a Lutheran,” she said, referring to herself, “or a Jew,” she added, referring to Brian, “or there’s always Tobias. I must warn you, however, that he doesn’t pass on information reliably. And he sheds prodigiously. Possibly even over the phone.”

  “Can you have Richard or Dylan call my cell phone when you can? We’re neck deep in shit here.”

  “What’s going on?” she asked, suddenly serious.

  “An objection was raised against the order during our session today.”

  “What kind of objection?”

  “Look, Susan, I don’t want to alarm anyone unnecessarily, but we’re actually on the agenda tomorrow.”

  “Oh my God! Tom, what are they saying? And who’s accusing them?”

  “It’s the conservatives, of course. They’ve been out to get the boys for quite some time, and after the Bishop Kaarlson fiasco, they’re seizing their chance.” He breathed a deep sigh. “They’ve been accused of Satanism.”

  “That’s crazy! Surely, no one is going to take them seriously.”

  “Sadly, they are,” Bishop Tom sighed heavily, and the weight of it carried over the phone without any loss of effect or meaning. “Susan, they’re talking about excommunication.”

  13

  DYLAN KNEW that he was indeed late for dinner as he saw John, Connie, and little Jamie out. “Ah’ll email a liturgy for you to look over, especially adapted to your situation,” he said. They nodded and thanked him. “Goodbye, Honey,” he waved at Jamie. “You be good!” She pumped her head forward exactly once and turned to walk down the steps. Dylan closed the door behind them.

  He sighed deeply, taking in the enticing aroma of Brian’s cooking, and looked at his watch—ten past. “Ah’m not too late,” he announced at the kitchen’s threshold, hoping Brian would agree. A huge, rough-hewn wooden table took up half of the room, and Brian and Susan, seated on its long benches, ate sullenly, silently.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  Before she could answer, the front door banged open, and Richard, Terry, and Mikael stumbled in, tired and not
a little bit hungry. They dropped their kit bags at the chapel door and joined the rest of the friary family at the table.

  As usual, Brian’s cooking was exquisite. The evening’s menu was mostly Middle Eastern, with lamb, falafel, salads, pita bread, steamed greens, and generous helpings of tahini and hummus on top of it all.

  But before anyone dug into any of it, Susan announced, “Guys, you need to call Bishop Tom right away.” She filled them in on what Tom had told her, noting painfully the look of shock and anger on her husband’s face. Richard, Terry, and Mikael looked likewise stunned.

  “Holy shit,” Richard said, breaking the shocked silence. “Do you know what that means?”

  “Hell, yes,” Dylan said. “Ah know what excommunication means. It means we won’t be affiliated with the Old Catholic Synod of the Americas. Big deal.”

  “It is a big deal. If we aren’t affiliated, we don’t have a bishop. And if we don’t have a bishop…”

  “We’re not Catholics,” Terry finished his sentence, horrified by the implication.

  “That’s right,” Richard said.

  “So?” asked Susan. “You could be Lutheran friars.”

  They all shot her twisted, pained looks. “What?” she protested. “It’s not oxymoronic! They have Lutheran nuns in Germany!”

  “If we’re not plugged into the apostolic succession,” Richard said, “we lose our priestly mojo—worst of all, we lose any power we might have over demons. We have to have a bishop to be connected to the Succession.”

  “Oh,” Susan said. “Is that really true?”

  “It is for us,” Richard said.

  “That would be the end of the line for us, Gents,” Dylan said. “So, what can we do?”

  “Well, let’s not panic,” Richard said. “After dinner, we’ll call Bishop Tom and get the details.”

  “He sounded pretty rattled.” Susan gingerly stuffed a pita.

  Richard let out a tired sigh. “Let’s hope these things just happen in threes because, honestly, I don’t think I can take another major disappointment today.”

  “Why?” asked Brian. “What else happened?”

  Terry beat Richard to the punch. “Philip dumped him.”

  Susan’s mouth dropped open, and she banged the table with a plump fist. Richard scowled at Terry. “No,” Susan said. “I don’t believe it. I like Philip! Did he give a reason?”

  Richard was suddenly awash in depression. “He said I didn’t have time for him—or didn’t make time for him.”

  “Oh.” Susan picked at her falafel sandwich. “Well, that’s true. I struggle with that one myself.” She glanced sideways at her husband. Dylan shrank noticeably in his seat.

  “Thanks a lot,” Richard said, the hurt evident in his voice.

  “Well, it is true.” No one at the table disagreed. “I’m really sorry, Dicky,” Susan said after chewing a bite. “You deserve a good person like him.”

  Brian reached for the salad and placed a goodly portion on his plate. “What was the second disappointment?”

  Terry piped up, “We had what you might call an unsuccessful exit job this afternoon.”

  “Well, you’ve had those before,” Brian said philosophically. “What went wrong?”

  “I’ve been asking myself the same question,” Richard said, a faraway look in his eyes. “And I honestly don’t know. The demon was responding well, and then at the point of expulsion…well, we stopped it.”

  “Why?” asked Susan.

  “We were afraid we were going to kill the host,” Terry admitted. “But Dicky’s right. It shouldn’t have been that hard.”

  “And then there was the whole Jizz Factory surprise,” Terry continued, kicking Richard under the table. “Okay, I know you’re always down on me for buying into these conspiracy theories, but I wonder if maybe your…encounter with Dane wasn’t an accident?”

  All eyes turned to Richard. “Okay, we didn’t hear this bit,” said Brian, grinning salaciously. Susan looked at Richard with a complex mixture of compassion and disappointment.

  “You did seem more surprised by it than he did,” Mikael noted.

  Richard looked down at his plate, hating the feelings suddenly coursing through him.

  “Maybe Richard was just more ashamed,” said Terry, and the truth of it was evident.

  “Maybe he worked some kind of spell on you,” Dylan said. “Or maybe he planted something on you! Dude, were you top or bottom? ’Cause if you were bottom—”

  Richard slammed the table with the flat of his hand. “I am not having this conversation!”

  “Oh, but Honey,” said Susan soothingly, “you are. You have to. We’re all in this together, and whatever you did in that bathhouse affects us, too. We’re not blaming you for anything; we’re just talking—”

  But Richard had pushed away from the table and was already pounding up the back stairs.

  “And he’s gone,” said Dylan, staring at the space where Richard had been. “That Dane guy coulda planted a bug or something up Dicky’s bunghole; that’s all I was sayin’.”

  “Internalized homophobia,” pronounced Brian, gathering dishes. “That’s always been Dicky’s problem.”

  “But what do we do?” asked Mikael.

  “For now, we do dishes,” said Brian. He waved at Dylan and Mikael, “And it’s youze guyses turn.”

  14

  DYLAN WASHED and placed the dishes in the right-hand sink for Mikael to rinse and dry.

  “Do you really think we’ll get excommunicated?” Mikael asked sullenly.

  “’Sa good question, amigo,” Dylan said. “I just wanna know where the charges are comin’ from. We never had any trouble before. In fact, we’ve been commended by the synod more’n once.”

  “We should have sent a delegate,” Mikael said. “Nobody is there to represent us.”

  “Bishop Tom is there,” Dylan said. “But I take your point. Bishop Tom is about as aggressive as a baby chick.” He shook his head. “His heart’s in the right place, but he ain’t gonna stand up to the bastards. He has a thing against rockin’ the boat.”

  “Fucking Bible-Belt pricks,” Mikael muttered. “I’ll bet my ass it’s those Tridentine Mass nutcases in Texas. They hate us.”

  “Eh, the feeling is kind of mutual,” Dylan admitted. “Their bishop don’t ordain women, and thinks that all sexual minorities are headed straight to Hell, except for the celibates, o’ course.”

  “Yeah, but we’ve never tried to excommunicate their fundamentalist asses!” Mikael said hotly.

  Dylan chuckled. “They’re still brothers, even if they do…have it all wrong.”

  Just then, out the window above the sink, a young woman strode into view across the street. She was slight, dressed in a short poodle skirt and a black leather biker jacket, her long black hair waving in the wind. She appeared to be pacing, and, it seemed, staring right at their house. “I sure like her style,” Mikael whistled. “Do you see her?”

  “Huh? Who, ‘her’?”

  “Her,” Mikael pointed out the window, but the woman had walked out of sight again. In a moment, though, she was back. “There,” he nudged Dylan.

  The portly priest squinted. “Oh yeah. Cool jacket. Is she looking at us?”

  “That’s what I was thinking. She looks kind of upset.”

  Dylan nodded. She did. “If she was spying on us,” he reasoned, “she’d be more careful ’bout it. Maybe she’s still makin’ up her mind whether to come across…” Then it hit him. “Wait! She’s tryin’ to approach the house and can’t. Terry!” he yelled.

  Terry came running from the living room. “What? What’s wrong?”

  “That girl out there—the one looking at us but definitely not crossin’ the street. Do you see anything we don’t see?”

  “What?” asked Mikael. “Do you think she might be possessed—and can’t approach the house because of the warding?”

  “Possessed or oppressed,” Dylan answered.

  “Her aura is
distressed, that’s for sure,” Terry said, squinting. “I can tell that even by the light of the streetlamp. “Wait…yeah, she’s got something else hanging around her. Not possession. Not even oppression, really. But Presence. As if something is watching her. Maybe even lying in wait.”

  “I could go talk to her,” offered Mikael.

  There was something in his tone. Dylan looked at Terry, and they both grinned. “She’s your type,” said Terry.

  “Yup, gothy-punk style, complexion like a corpse. She’s his type, all right.” Dylan shook his head. “Okay, Lover Boy, go see what she’s up to. Take some gall in case she’s really on her way in here and we need to send that demon packin’.”

  Mikael dried his hands hurriedly, rummaged in the sacristy cabinet for a moment, and rushed out the front door. He slowed his pace as soon as he reached the street, and tried to look nonchalant.

  Kat saw a tall, lanky goth guy emerge from the house at a sprint and wisely slow down at the street. He seemed to grow even taller as he approached, and she noted how fine his features were, how angular and severe. He was painfully skinny, and his black clothes hung on him like a scarecrow. He reminded her of Morpheus, the Sandman, from the comic book series. So dark, so brooding, so…smiling.

  “Hi,” he said. “We couldn’t help noticing you out here. Can I help you? I’m Mikael.” He offered his hand.

  “Kat,” she said, a little flustered by the fact that this vision was speaking to her. “Webber. Kat Webber. That’s. My name. Hi.” She grinned back and felt like an idiot.

  He didn’t seem to notice. “Whatcha doing out here? I mean, other than looking at our house?” He realized how that might sound, and added. “Not that we mind—it’s a cool old house. One of the oldest in Berkeley. Maybe the oldest. But, I guess, I mean, is there a reason you’re looking at our house?”