Tom Piccirilli - A Lower Deep

"They do what they will!"

"Your egomania has brought you against the design of heaven, in a belief that you might raise the messiah for your own ends. You damn fool, you aren't innocent, Jebediah."

I raised my glowing fist and thought that all my pain would end now if I murdered him here without a regret.

"But you are?" he asked. And as he said it he grasped me by the back of the neck, drew me to him, and kissed me.

Perhaps all the DeLancres, even the witch killers, were equally audacious, and called to them others who were just as impudent and reckless. He shrugged, let me loose with a small and pleased laugh, and started walking off. If I'd had my athame with me I might have stuck it in his back right then, or perhaps I'd have only heard my rage, nagging me on. I grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him to face me again.

"Don't make me kill you, Jebediah. For Christ's sake-"

"Yes," he nodded. "For the sake of Christ, of course. And the world. Can't you feel the culmination of God's will approaching?"

"That's your problem. You separate large incidents from the small. Find God in the whisper."

"Like you have? You rail against him even now in your heart, for stealing your precious love. You hate and seethe with an intensity I've never seen before, and you do it under the auspices of serenity. It's sad, really."

We had walked to the limestone ridge and stared down at the narrow KidronValley.

"Why did you send Griffin against me?" I said.

"I didn't. He forgave you for murdering him, as I recall. I don't have the finesse to manipulate a soul as insane as that."

I believed him. "Give up this notion of resurrecting Christ."

"Can you give up your heart's desire?"

"No, not even when you turn it against me, but you're not-"

"So be it."

There was no wind.

Violence had flared in the OldCity again. On the West Bank two Israeli soldiers had been shot, and in response several Palestinians were wounded at the Haram during a protest. There was a good deal of rock throwing and the Israelis claimed to have used rubber-coated steel pellets to disperse the crowd, but now four Palestinians were dead. Delicate peace talks had begun to break down in the wake of the latest bloodshed.

Nip sat waiting atop the Wailing Wall.

He moaned while the Jews prayed forty feet below him, writing out pleas and placing them in the cracks of the stone. Here, at least, they were all believers, though some men cursed God as they always would. I was surprised by the amount of noise and activity in the square, a vast rumble of voices and music and shouting.

Nip gave another great heaving sigh that blew knots of gray fur before his quivering nose and sent slips of paper whipping across the tiled plaza. His meaty pink paws clamped on his knees as he turned to stare down at me. I kept hoping that the spirit of Abbot John would join us. I thought I could raise him if I needed to, just so I could ask him about those dreams concerning the archangel Michael.

But I was a little afraid that after leaving the mountAbbot John's sanity had also left him, returning him to the days when he twisted the heads off dogs and raped old women in their nursing home beds. Somewhere along the line my dad's own finite rationality had been given up to him, and I dreaded what might happen if I brought it back into the world.

I gestured for Nip to come down off the wall, but he merely gazed at me. He kept lamenting and held both hands out like a child wanting to be picked up.

What's he doing?

Might be nothing. Whining is his whole gig.

Get up there and find out.

Self shot me a glare and said, What the hell am I? A capuchin monkey? I'll fall off and break my ass!

I took him by the neck and lifted him to the stone where the essence of God supposedly still resided. I held him to the rifts in the stone like the Jews holding their written prayers. Self hissed at me. You've got to learn how to handle these aggressive tendencies . I shoved and he started to scale the wall.

His claws left fresh holes in the ancient rock, as if he were purposefully scratching at the face of God. The noise escalated in the square. Everyone could feel the blasphemy occurring even if they couldn't see it, and they talked louder and read faster and sang with a note of hysteria. Rabbis glowered at me, the outsider standing alone before the Wailing Wall, neither kneeling nor weeping nor taking photos. Dust and pebbles scattered down around my feet as Self continued to climb.

When he got to the top he sat beside Nip and put his arm around the masterless familiar. Nip slumped into wild sobbing as Self patted his back. He might mourn Uriel's treachery forever. Without his other half, Nip must have felt as empty and disconcerted as Jebediah felt without Peck in the Crown. Self pressed his face close to Nip's, and I couldn't be sure if they were speaking at all.

A hand reached out of the crowd and touched my shoulder. I spun to my left, ready for an assault from one of Jebediah's new coven members. I backed away and whispered a Mesopotamian spell, the syllables coming so easily in this land of ruthless and relentless warriors. My ears rang as Nip continued his keening moans. Hassidim pressed around, their bearded faces and muttering voices boxing me in. None of Jebediah's mad children were here, and so far as I could tell, none of the dead had come to attack. My fists began to throb with the need to kill.

At the last moment I saw the cloudy dark eyes and lengthy black hair held back in a shawl. I had to bite down hard to keep from saying the slaying curse already poised on my tongue.

It was the woman from the Chapel of the Nailed. She too had been crying. I could see that the sudden and terribly heightened sensitivity had affected her as well as everyone else in the square. A gold cross around her neck flickered in the sunlight. Hassidim scowled. She grimaced as the din increased, and though she didn't want to get too near me she was forced to so we could hear each other.

My chest tightened. This wasn't an accidental encounter. Coincidence didn't exist anymore.

Even as a Christian she'd undoubtedly visited the TempleMount before, but it was clear she didn't enjoy being in the square, so close to the Western Wall. This was not the place for her to pray. In a city that still had quarters and remained ghettoized, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher belonged to the Christians and the TempleMount to the Jews and the Haram to the Muslims. People died for crossing lines in the sand. It was one of the reasons why these people would never have peace.

She struggled with her decision to speak to me. Slips of paper floated down and brushed her cheek. She kept looking from side to side as if she might break into a run. I felt the same way.

She didn't want to be here, and when she peered up at me from beneath the shawl I knew she was thinking the same thing I was-that our meeting in the chapel hadn't been a fluke. Finally she said, as if still not quite believing, "My father. He told me he knows you."

"I don't know anyone in Israel."

Frustration skewered her features, and I thought she might burst into tears or give me a roundhouse to the jaw. Either was understandable, considering the situation. She looked up, wondering why the papers were falling around us.

"How did you find me?" I asked.

She frowned, thinking about it. "He told me you would be here."

In that moment she was so beautiful that I almost felt happy in a way I hadn't for ten years. I couldn't control myself and watched as I took her shawl in my hand and pulled it from her head. Her rich black hair loosened and slipped over her shoulders. Her eyes widened and so did mine. I couldn't believe I'd done that.