Commitment - Predatory Ethics: Book II

by Athanasios

  ‘Thanasi saw I was obsessed with religion. The meaning of life, he called it. He had read up on it whenever he could, because it was also a subject he was interested in. To ‘Thanasi it was more about how opinioned reality shaped actual reality. He thought that reality was shaped by perception. We argued the pros and cons of most topics, countless times, and although he had never come out and asked, he knew where I stood on every subject and who I was.

  It didn’t bother him because he believed that his perception was paramount in his mind just as everybody’s is in theirs. He knew that his friend Adam was a decent human being so it didn’t matter that Adam was also the AntiXos. Revelation was only a revised, re-edited, washed, and watered-down version of faulty perception.

  It made no difference that I could send nightmarish things away from me with a thought. It didn’t matter to him when he saw my own Darkness protect both of us against devoted Crusaders of the Storm. He didn’t care about all the things that had terrified my father and his wife. He took my measure and loved me because I was worth it.

  “Oh only the good die young.”

  “You got a nice white dress and a part on your conformation. You got a brand new soul, mmmm and a cross of gold.”

  “Ooooo, you didn’t count on me, when you were counting on your rosaries. And they said there’s a heaven for those who will wait, some say it’s better but I say it ain’t.”

  “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints. The sinners are much more fun, you know that only the good die young.”

  I hear the fat fuck singing along to one of his favorite Long Islanders even as I turn my head to see my phone close by and dialed his number. I hear his voice answer on his outgoing message. “Here I sit alone in the dark with nothing on but a smile and a cock-ring, please leave a message.”

  He screened everything because he just couldn’t be bothered to talk to anybody who he judged boring. I surprise myself with tears of joy at hearing his voice again. I believed I would never see him and would never enjoy his company so I was grateful of getting whatever time I had with him, even if only on a phone call.

  “Hey bucket-butt, what are you doing? You woke me up with your Billy Joel Karaoke. Keep it down. Pick up.” With a click on the line, his tooth-missing smile was answering back and bringing my own grin from my normally stone face.

  “Hey, candy ass, what’s up?” he answered.

  “You mind if I come up?” I always asked. He had become quite particular of who he let into his place even if he was a friend. ‘Thanasi valued his solitude as much as I did. I sprang up but stopped short with a start.

  This made no sense. How was I here? How was he? This didn’t feel like a dream because I didn’t feel my broken self at all. I couldn’t bring my legs to move any longer. A terror gripped me that was unreasoning. I was in an impossible place at an impossible time. Had everything I went through never happened? What bullshit season eight Dallas was this? It could not have all been a dream. No way!

  I dropped to my knees and curled up in a ball with my eyes squeezed tightly shut. Whatever was upstairs right at this second wasn’t ‘Thanasi. Not how I remembered him. I would not tolerate screwing with the only other person besides Kosta who cared about me. Nobody would alter my memory of him. He would stay who he was, and there would be no power anywhere to make me go see him now. No matter how much I needed to see him and feel his securing presence. I would rather feel the terror I felt than change ‘Thanasi in my mind. Whoever was doing this to me knew where to strike and it now left me completely paralyzed.

  After what seemed like an eternity a soft knock came at my door. My head came out from between my arms and I sat up from the ball I had contracted into. The knock repeated, soft and strangely inviting. I made no move to get up but sat on the floor looking at the front door, my mouth agape in confused shock. Moments passed with no further noise from the door.

  “Adam?” It was a woman’s soft voice, and it scared and shocked me more than the knocking.

  “I know you don’t know me,” she said reassuringly. “You’ve been through a lot in the past few years. With all the tributes and stupid demons trying to change your mind about your destiny.” The voice took on a softer tone, which unnerved me, further. “I’m not here to add any more pressure. I just wanted to tell you that I’m putting a stop to all of it.”

  She said it with a finality and assuredness that was hard not to believe. “Did you hear me? It’s going to stop, I promise. I’ll prove it, you’ll see. When you see I meant what I’m saying I’ll send for you.”

  “What do you want?” I ask, and Broken Adam cowers behind me whimpering in terror. Now he returns to make this confusing situation more so with his distracting whining and repeating like a mantra, “No, no, this is not good. This is not good at all.”

  “What do I want? Only to show you somebody still cares. That you’re not alone, Adam.”

  “What do you want in return? Why would you do all that, to make it all stop?” I answer. I learned without needing reminding that few did anything for nothing.

  “It’s nothing to me to make it all stop. It’s not worth what you’re going through. It’s just not fair to you.” Her tone and everything she said should’ve been making Broken Adam, and me, should’ve made us both happy. Her promises should’ve put me whole again.

  “Adam, you’ve never known a mother’s love. A woman’s compassion.” She spoke to my broken self, who for once started being more reassured. “Do you remember the Jesus at Rio Adam?”

  “Yes,” he answered meekly, still terrified.

  “I sent Him to you to make you feel better,” she said. “I just want to help, Adam. I want you to stop being afraid.”

  “How did you know?” I asked and could feel Broken Adam feel better about the woman behind our old front door.

  “I’ve seen everything you’ve seen, dear boy, and I’ve done all I could to stop it. It took some time to get it all done but I did it, it’s stopped. The tributes, the nightmares, the visitations, everything.”

  “Who are you?” The question is asked at a shout. I didn’t realize I needed to know this so badly. I didn’t think I cared about anything she said, but at the saying I wanted a mother, I did.

  “That’s not important right now, Adam. I only want you to be better. When the time is right, I’ll send for you or you can come and find me on your own.” It was all I could do to keep from opening the door to be in her arms. I never felt this connection. “Just get better and know Mother Rothschild loves you.”

  Time: March 4th, 1975, Templar Chapter House, New York, U.S.A.

  Bernhardt stood and faced his oldest friend for a few moments but said nothing. He did this to honor him and take his measure before anything was said or done to change his memory of Quentin. Bernhardt had put this off long enough. Weeks came and went without his keeping his promise of ending his oldest friend. He looked at his face and how he stood and saw compliance there he hadn’t seen before. He would have to be sure he wasn’t mistaken. Any doubt would leave Bernhardt no choice but to keep his original promise.

  “What say you, Father Quentin? Are you ready to rejoin our struggle to keep what’s ours?” He asked as he had every month since 1973. There was nothing in his tone or cadence that showed it was the last time he would do that.

  “Yes,” Quentin answered conversationally. His tone betrayed no ulterior motive. No desperate bid to end imprisonment or save his life. The Quentin he knew would only live or die by his convictions. He would not change them to save himself. The day was finally come when the stalwart, determined Templar saw the world the way it was and not how he wished it to be. Quentin took a step and waited with his hand to his sides and at attention.

  “Yes,” he repeated. “I am ready to defend and keep what’s ours.” Months of dogged obstinacy were gone. The pressure of pushing against Quentin’s determined opposition had aged and weakened Bernhardt. Truth be told, Quentin’s opposition was but one of the many b
alls the Grand Master kept in the air. What really took its toll was the Luciferians. To complete his tasks there, he traveled to Hell and back, literally. All that weight had taken its toll, yet it was forgotten from the relief knowing his most trusted friend had finally returned. He began to say how happy he was that Quentin saw reason and understood the necessity of sacrifices made by previous Grand Masters.

  He felt giddy at the prospect of what they would accomplish together. Their combined focus had nearly obliterated the Luciferians before, but they were thwarted by their fickle Vatican masters. Now they would literally rule the world. They would become the Templar symbol of two brother knights astride a horse. He went on about Quentin’s renewed place in the Templars. They would be the twin pillars of creation and now would command both Templars and Freemasons, with each groups’ myriad of subdivisions.

  Quentin’s attention quickly wandered to dim sounds from above. He had planned on dying this day but when he saw his former Grand Master he also heard the unmistakable sounds of fighting. At first he thought it a precursor, his senses preparing for his own coming death but as the familiar questions of rejoining the fight continued, he still heard them and was surprised Bernhardt had not. His attention was split from Bernhardt’s earnest hope for his giving in to the slowly closer din of battle. Bernhardt had also failed to see his deception and hear the increasing sound. Quentin looked closer and saw his Grand Master was obviously exhausted—a deep weariness that had dried him out and sapped his strength.

  “You seem tired, Bernhardt,” Quentin added, putting the focus away from the sounds. “Heavy hangs the crown of Supreme Tribunal does it?” Bernhardt’s jaw dropped open in shock. Quentin hadn’t wanted to force his hand yet, but he needed to keep him unbalanced and away from gunshots and bellows of pain. He wasn’t sure what the fighting meant, but Quentin would play it wherever it took him.

  “I wasn’t sure until now. I’ve only seen the marks of power in books but never thought I would see them on you,” Quentin continued. “What else can you say now, Grand Master? How do you explain them? Until now you had credible arguments for all the rest. The similar goals of Masons and Templars, the twin pillars of creation. It was all coming together. I was feeling swayed, believe me.” He finished. “How do you explain those?” He nodded to Bernhardt’s tattoos.

  With a deep breath Bernhardt concentrated hard on his answer. He labored on every word that came out of his mind. He told him he had been born into the Families. He could no more turn it down than refuse his parent’s love. If he had, what then? Would they have let him go on his merry way and still be Grand Master? Think of all the years of work and good they had done? It would’ve been lost. As Supreme Tribunal, he could topple the Luciferians from within. Quentin was wrong if he though him a traitor in this. He saw an opportunity, a challenge to strike at the enemy, at their very heart and destroy them forever. How could he say no to that?

  Quentin could have only answered that question with what he would’ve done. Yet now said nothing of the sort. He wasn’t always so diplomatic. The very nature of his calling had been adherence to strict dogma. He was one of its key enforcers after all. In the years he spent there, jailed to the Templar plans, Quentin’s zeal had become tempered and he no longer used it to measure the intent of any other man. One could say he had mellowed. Some would say that but not he. He kept the plans of his indignation stoked in the long time he was here, alone with his thoughts and Bernhardt’s pestering visits that whittled away at his resolve. Quentin also knew that if he was now still irrevocably obstinate, they would end him. They wouldn’t let him live out of any obligation or loyalty to his years of service to the Brotherhood. The Seneschal had to draw upon strategies and guile he had only read about.

  In the years as keeper of the Vatican Secret Archives he was allowed full access to its original texts. Texts the Church amassed over their centuries of reign over the minds of the world. They included tomes unknown to the rest of the world. Treatises on subtlety and diplomacy that put Machiavelli to shame.

  He drew upon them now in his imprisonment beneath the Chapterhouse from which he had terrorized the guilty in the Catholic Church years before. Then no one was safe from his vengeance until Bernhardt tried to include him in the Freemason endgame. A game whose plan sounded remarkably similar to the justification he was now using to rationalize his becoming Supreme Tribunal of the Luciferian Church.

  Quentin had grown past his earlier rigid mind. He still did not argue with Bernhardt’s continued prattle about infiltrating their enemy, yet he wasn’t angry with him for it. The thought of sedition and sin was no longer a condemnation of it anymore. Quentin saw it as the sinner’s personal failure not their willful refusal to follow God’s and the Church’s laws. It was a distinction that brought him peace and saved his sanity.

  “An opportunity?” Quentin asked. “It is more of a sacrifice.” Now Quentin did what he never thought he would, he lied. “You are sacrificing yourself as our Lord did. As the last Grand Master de Molay did. You’re sacrificing yourself to the flames of damnation.” It was a subtle argument he hoped his Grand Master wouldn’t look past. Quentin still had the condemnation for Bernhardt in his heart, yet he preferred to refer to it as a sacrifice for the greater good. Bernhardt’s actions and going on to Supreme Tribunal still damned him, yet Quentin showed Bernhardt he looked at it as martyrdom for their plans. He hoped it would put his own refusal to compromise in a context where Bernhardt would accept it.

  Bernhardt’s shoulders slumped with relief. He looked at Quentin with a gratitude that lit up his face. Tears streamed down his cheeks, and he went forward in a rush, squeezing the door’s bars between his fingers, turning his knuckles white.

  “You cannot imagine how hard it has been for me, Tino. You cannot begin to understand.” His whole form shook with the release of emotion blocking even the sound of gunfire and screams of pain coming from the end of the long corridor. “I am so relieved you finally understand that everything I’ve done was for the Brotherhood.”

  “Yes, I do. I’m sure there were many brothers who didn’t see de Molay’s sacrifice as such either.” Quentin saw greatly proportioned men dressed in dark grey fighting with black clad Templars and winning. Bernhardt saw none of it and for the first time in years Quentin thought he might see the sun again.

  “The world will be ours again. We will no longer have to remain hidden from it. The Templars and Freemasons will be the rulers we’ve always been, but we will no longer have to hide. Soon the Architect’s Plan will become reality in stone, brick, and mortar none will be able to deny.”

  His soliloquy was cut short by the click of a drawn hammer. It was full of finality, an unyielding metal contraction that caught both men’s full attention. Bernhardt’s gaze accused Quentin, but the replying stare answered the obvious how could he have done anything from where he was.

  Quentin quickly dropped down beneath the heavy wooden door and drew the gun wielder’s attention to let Bernhardt quickly mutter, gesture his arms, and throw him away and up shattering his skull and neck against the stone ceiling.

  “Bernhardt, get me out of here. We’re under attack and you’ll need everybody you have.” Quentin’s voice carried from behind the door, and was answered by the clatter of keys thrown through the bars and against his cell’s far wall. The Grand Master’s response was pragmatic. He didn’t have the luxury of time or attention to open the door for his former seneschal. He had his hands full with another two attackers.

  The loud clatter of a Schmeisser machine gun reverberated against the walls and forced Bernhardt to the floor. A quick incantation sent the gun into the Grand Master’s hands who with a few quick bursts removed both his oncoming assailants. Yet as quickly as he got rid of them he found himself immobile, his arms rooted at his sides and his whole body lifted and floating inches off the floor.

  “Herr Hapsburg.” The voice that shouted out from Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, addressing thousands of Teutons who hung
on every breath was heard and was unmistakable. “That will be quite enough, danke.” Bernhardt could do nothing but watch a duo of men in front of a phalanx of Aryan perfection striding ever closer to him. Inside the cell, Quentin was trying the second key of the six on the ring thrown earlier into his cell. He had to reach out and unlock the door from outside. It would not do to have the lock of a cell where the prisoner could reach it from the inside.

  The two leading men walked with unquestioned authority. The taller of the two differing to the shorter even in his movements, letting him walk ahead a few steps. The taller was solidly built with the athletic shoulders and deep chest of a man who was at constant struggle and battle. They were too far away to see which had spoken.

  “You have been quite a problem, Grand Master, Supreme Tribunal, and Premier Traitor to the Great Leviathan.” As they drew closer Bernhardt could not believe his eyes. He had doubted his hearing before but dismissed what he heard. Now his eyes reminded him of what he didn’t believe, and he still couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge who the man admonishing him in the most pleasant of tones was. “You will be remembered as our very own Judas, mein herr. Yes, I am certain you will go down in history as despised as he is by all in the Weakling’s Church.”

  They stopped five feet from the immobile Grand Master. At that distance the shorter man was unmistakable. His likeness had been everywhere in 1940s Europe, at some places adored at others reviled. His Chaplin mustache was under the thin, cruel nose and twitched with self-congratulation.