Tom Piccirilli - A Lower Deep

I hissed into his face. "Do you expect the sun to become black as a sackcloth of hair, and the moon to become blood, and the stars to fall from heaven?"

"There is no wind."

I swallowed, spun around, and just then saw Theresa floating above us with the silver cord flapping hard against the windows. My name on her chest stood out as clearly as if it still ran with her warm blood. She clawed at the air, trying to get closer. I brushed Fane aside and went to her, but she was already moving off, reeling with her arms outstretched to me as she slipped farther and farther away.

Fane took a step forward and nearly fell into my arms. "There's no wind because the four great angels hold the four winds in the corners of the world."

Maybe it was true, but I'd never much believed in Revelation because so few angels were spoken of by name.

"The apocalypse is already in motion," he said.

"And has been since the beginning of time."

"Abbot John said-"

"Do you really believe that my actions, or yours, might somehow alter the will of God?"

"We all must fulfill our fates."

I burst out laughing. It was a deranged and lonesome sound in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, in the place of the skull.

Perhaps no one had laughed here in thousands of years-perhaps never.

And I couldn't stop.

Holding a cup of sweet Muslim coffee, Self found me in the streets. He was eating stolen Easter cookies, traditionally shaped like crowns of thorns. Crumbs speckled his lips, but still somehow reminded me of blood.

Glad you're having such a good time , he said.

What's so funny?

Nothing. Have you seen my father or Gawain?

Heard Pop's bells ringing a couple of times but I never caught sight of him .

He finished his spiced coffee with one large slurp and started to head back toward the bazaar for more. I stepped in his way and he glanced up curiously, with only the hint of his teeth showing. We'd come so far together and yet had hardly moved at all. The spices worked at the back of my throat, flooding my sinuses. Sugar coated my tongue, those cookies fresh and still warm in my stomach. He understood so much at times, knowing what he shouldn't. Other important concerns didn't matter to him at all.

My second self climbed up my shirt, perched on my shoulder, clambered over my head, and leaped to the ground where he ran off to find more coffee. I followed and watched while he stole a cup from a street stand. I tried not to enjoy the taste of it too much while he hummed to himself in delight.

Where's my father?

I don't know.

Tell me.

You don't listen very well.

I reached out to him then for some reason, and in the same second he held his hand out to give me a cookie. My new skin was red and looked raw and bleeding in the sun. I noticed his lifeline was much different from mine now, and I wondered if one of us was going to die soon.

Try to keep that happy mood , Self said. He nodded east, toward the Mount of Olives. Jebediah's arrived with his brood. They're waiting for you.

Any suggestions?

He actually seemed to think about it. Let's leave this goddamn dusty place to the zealots and head for Jamaica.

I only wish.

He stomped a nice calypso beat, slowly at first before really swinging into it. He was good. I could almost hear the kettle drums and conch shells. Come on, da ganja do you good, mon.

We headed for MountOlivet, toward the central summit, which was regarded as the Mount of Olives proper and where Jebediah would undoubtedly be expecting me in the Garden of Gethsemane.

I was still weak from the fire, and the walk emptied me further as sweat ran through my hair and dripped down the backs of my arms. Soon I felt as if I'd spent all morning in a sweat lodge ceremony and yet hadn't been cleansed. There was no balance or tranquility in it. The nausea returned, vicious but fleeting, and I was forced to my knees in order to ride the sickness out.

Faith meant everything now, even if the reasons for it were unknown. When the queasiness passed I stood and continued to climb the hills. The interminable silence was broken only by my footsteps and the occasional passing tourist bus. Self kept practicing his Jamaican accent and mimicking the booming laughter of huge island black men. I could feel the knotted mass of my thoughts and emotions unraveling into perfectly spun threads. Where could Michael be trapped and how could I find and release him? Who had the power to control the archangel that would champion the earth? Who had sent Griffin? And could I possibly resist the temptation to raise Danielle again?

Self said, Mon, we get dat good roadside jerk chicken and steamed callaloo, and listen to dem drums! We gonna dance! We dance all day long and into da dark night!

Who's here? I asked.

He gave the only answer he could, grinning while he pranced. Everyone who needs to be.

And there at Gethsemane, in the Grotto of Agony, where Iscariot had brought the soldiers and placed his kiss upon the betrayed,

I looked up to see the stoic disfigured face of Jebediah DeLancre.

His hair had grown almost completely silver and white, and those mismatched lips, forever melded into a sneer, looked like the kind of mouth that might have kissed Christ and led him to his death. The moon caught the exposed shard of yellow canine so that it glinted like a fang. He wanted to be beautiful again, and his vanity had led him to work on new spells to rid himself of the ugly stretches of scar tissue. They hadn't helped. He plucked at his goatee, which was also white.

Even now, as he aimed toward ruling the earth, he seemed less than half the man he'd once been. He would never get over the loss of his familiar, Peck in the Crown, or forgive the Sephiroth that had purified and ushered it into heaven. I no longer got any satisfaction from his suffering. His glare forever held fury, righteous loathing, and incredible overconfidence, but there were also traces of loss and transgression in his eyes.

Here, for the moment-this was his temple.

The members of his new coven milled about. They had names but no identities, growing to function as a single conflicted essence. Six men and five women, victims and victimizers, almost interchangeable as they moved through the garden. I could see that he'd snatched them from the world already rotted. They stank of murder, prison, and asylums. He'd learned after his first coven, after using and destroying us, that innocence and naivete had capability too, and it was a potential he could not completely control. He'd learned from his mistakes.

Still, they were young, the same way we'd once been. Their faces were vain and arrogant and enraptured in the mystical lore and texts they'd unearthed. I had difficulty telling one set of features apart from another because they shared so much in common.

The marks of a variety of demons branded them already, and their familiars played in the garden and ran around my ankles. I recognized the jackdaw Hotfoot Johnson and the black owl Prickeare, the imps Vinegar Robyn and Mr. Broadeye Sack. The fat legless spaniel called Jamara, having once been lord of North Pandemonium and leader of sixty legions, worked itself like a slug over my shoes. Even at the bottom of hell there are still lower depths.

Uriel sat among them, desperately holding on to Aaron's sword, empty of its traitorous familiar. He'd torn most of his hair and beard out so that thick welts and scabs crosshatched his broad, sorrowful face. Perhaps he was a martyr for his god, or simply another lunatic. His porcelain figurines, plastic saints, and wooden statuettes lay broken but carefully propped up near his feet. He still needed his dolls.