Page 1 of The Secret Shape of Worship
PART ONE
The Temple
PROLOGUE
IN THE BEGINNING…
The god shuddered.
He blinked.
From the depths of the temple atop his black marble pedestal, warmth cracked through the hard stone of his body.
A soul was near.
That was nothing new. Souls still tethered to bodies came and went constantly. His home was a tourist attraction. Mostly he slept through them.
Years.
Decades.
A century.
But something stood out in this one. The scent of a lotus on the breeze, tickling the small black whiskers at the end of his nose.
His muscles corded.
His heart thrummed.
Already, he could feel the temple calling to the fragrant thing. Doing what it was meant to do. Once every one hundred years, that was the deal he had struck.
He could always smell them, but usually only once they were in his presence. This soul was different. It permeated so strongly he couldtasteit.
Honey and milk.
He wanted to go. To seek. To find. To shepherd.
Patience. The temple would do its work. It always did.
As his body began to harden again to stone, he allowed himself another whiff of the air and lick of his lips—of the sweetness that pulsed through the ancient rock and made the god of the afterlife shiver with delight.
CHAPTER ONE
TOMB
This wasn’t sunlight.
This was assault. The red-hot hand of the Egyptian desert seemed to wrap itself around Mina’s whole body, squeezing the air from his lungs.
“Jesus,” he cursed under his breath, swiping away the sweat already gathering thick in his eyebrows.
The heat was even worse than he’d expected. His seminary-issued blue polo, tucked into his long khakis, suddenly felt absurd as he stood in what he only now realized was the middle of the desert. Blond and pale as a butternut squash, Mina was prone to burn even on cloudy days.
God, if you’re real, please send a cloud. Just a little one. One small, tiny miracle cloud.
Like a cosmic middle finger, a large bead of sweat trickled down the center of his forehead, straight into his eye.
“That’s about right.” Looking around, Mina spotted a cluster of fallen limestone boulders far away from the pack of seminary students still gathered casually in the searing sunlight as if standing on the surface of the sun was no big deal.
