Tom Piccirilli - A Lower Deep

From an ashtray on the nightstand I grabbed a book of matches with the hotel name on them and lit one. Griffin's eyes, already loose and quivering, danced madly, the same way they had the night he came back from burning down the children's hospital. I blew out the match and he let loose with a squeal of frustration.

"Who sent you?"

"Nobody."

He could be playing semantics. Half the demons in hell were called "nobody" or "nothing" or Beliya'al, meaning "without worth." If there was any possibility that Jebediah's demented plans had to do with Armageddon, then all the dukes and lords in Pandemonium might be ready to assist him, despite their general disgust to truck with headstrong witches.

"Who called for you?"

"You did-"

"Why have you revoked your forgiveness? Are you in service to Jebediah?"

"Are you? Are you? Listen here-"

I preferred Griffin's hate to the machinations of some hidden will. He'd been murderously insane but it was a human madness, driven by a human perverse need. Who could have the power to bring Herod's body back and stuff it with the fiery heat of Griffin? And why?

"I want a name," I said.

He was desperate for some kind of release, jittering as the salamanders swarmed over and through and inside him. "I know you do."

"Why've you come back?"

"To tell you a secret, you prick!"

The fireman was fast, and he sprang at me.

He had Herod's body but none of his strength. Flailing, he splashed the room with neurotoxins, the salamanders sticking to the walls. I reached into his chest and squeezed my fist on things that slinked and burned. They poured free of him, squirming from his mouth, out his nose. They shoved aside his eyeballs to clamber down across his distended cheeks. And still he smiled.

"What secret?" I shouted. "Griffin, tell me!"

The djinn had been born in fire, but Pondo wasn't waiting around any longer to see what happened. He grabbed up his cash and made it out the window, and the game broke up.

I'd waited too long.

Salamanders fled under my feet, furious and full of loathing. Like all witches, Griffin believed in irony and symbolism, and the creatures kept leaping to burn my left side in the same place where I'd stabbed him to death. Dozens became hundreds as they dropped from the ceiling and crawled into the drains, a thousand slithering amphibians roiling with inferno.

I was on fire.

Smoke swirled and filled the room. Alarms sounded. My spells and hexes broiled and fractured into pieces. I turned for the door but Griffin lurched forward and held on, even as Herod's corrupted corpse blazed into more salamanders. Poison spewed into my face. My own screams deafened me as my skin bubbled and incinerated, the flames destroying tissue and burning down to the fat, muscle, and bone. The black tissues shredded away. Rolling in excruciating pain, gritting my teeth, I looked up to see Self calmly sitting atop the television.

He only stared at me.

Herod's body wasted away as the salamanders continued to burst from the rags of his clothes. I tried to scream again but couldn't get it out as my vocal cords boiled away. The torture was unbearable.

Burning, I crawled to Self.

Help me!

I do , Self said . I did.

Please!

You sure? he asked. He cocked his head and looked down at this mess, his features so similar yet different from mine, completely unreadable even to me. You positive you want my help? He wanted me to beg some more even as I was lost beneath a tide of flame, but I couldn't ask again, even as my seared corneas ripped off against my eyelids. He thought about it for a moment before saying, Of course.

Invocations flooded his frame. He gripped me by the wrist and yanked me from the room, more layers of my skin coming off in his claws. There wasn't any pain anymore because all my nerve endings were gone.

He pulled me down the empty corridor. It was easy for him because I weighed no more than eighty charred pounds now.

Clambering up my back, Self licked along the length of my spine, cuddling and cooing as I moaned and sobbed, magic coursing along his radiant hands, stroking the wounds. He spit on me and cooled the burns. I cried out and tried not to bite through my tongue from the torture. I couldn't help it though and my mouth flooded with blood as the damaged tissue grew back and my nerves sang with agony. Self nuzzled my throat, his charms mending me as I held back screeches, ligaments and muscles rebuilding. My eyes healed and I could see again.

He kept working, restoring me with his gentle, loving touch.

Come on, let's go .

The entire building was in flames now as the salamanders ran freely through the hotel, spewing fire. Naked, I held on to Self's hand and followed him out through the billowing smoke. Somewhere along the way I got lost in the thick haze. He seemed to shake me off, and I lunged for him, grabbing hold again. It wasn't until I was outside that I saw I was clutching on to a man's sleeve.

He was clearly Greek, with curly black hair salted with white, clean-shaven, and teeming with the power of epochs. I'd been burned enough for one night. I stepped away from him, my eyes still tearing, and when my vision cleared enough I saw that he was only a dying old man.

The plowed lines of his face ran to dark trenches that cut so deeply he seemed to have been sliced open with a nail file. His mouth hung slack and his lips were a sickly gray. He was trembling so badly I thought he'd fall over and die in my arms, but he held his ground, regarding me carefully, and slowly backed off.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"A companion in tribulation," he said, and was gone.

Iwalked the Via Dolorosa at dawn.

Dominated by the TempleMount, called the Haram by the Muslims, the OldCity was split into separate quarters: Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Armenian. Churches showed the architectural touches of the Byzantine and Crusader eras. Eight gates in the wall of Suleyman the Magnificent opened to the smell of spices and the sound of meuzzins calling Muslims to prayer.

Along with hundreds of others, I'd spent hours last night outside the hotel watching the firefighters and rescue crews battle the blaze. They carried out the wounded and the dead by the dozens. Someone covered me in a sheet and police questioned me at length. The investigators wouldn't be able to determine that the fire originated in my room. The salamanders had scattered flames all across the building so that it went up simultaneously on several different floors.

They cared a great deal about my passport. Members of the American Consulate appeared and asked more questions and made assurances. I was given a gratis room in a different hotel. Somebody brought me some clothes that didn't fit and Self handed over his poker money so I could get some that did.

Now I stood before the Golden Gate, called the gate of mercy, which is situated on the eastern wall of the TempleMount. It was sealed by the Turks hundreds of years ago because of Jewish tradition that the messiah would return through it after traveling from the east over the Mount of Olives. Now it opened toward the mount and the Garden of Gethsemane. Self stared into the distance as if he could see Jesus walking toward us through all of history.

He sniffed and said , He came this way.

Christ?

Herod. And Griffin.

And Jebediah, I was certain. He wouldn't have been able to pass up this place of murder. King Solomon's Temple stands alongside the Muslim mosque called the Dome of Rock. Archangel Gabriel carried Muhammad to heaven from there. It's also the place where Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son. Jebediah would have pressed his forehead to the ground, dreaming of an exposed throat offered before heaven, the curved blade edging into the child's skin.