Tom Piccirilli - A Lower Deep

"Don't mention it."

Nip had been leading Fane by about fifty yards, as if ashamed to be seen with him. I pulled up and Nip got in the backseat too, still weeping and groaning as my father swayed to his own rhythms and Self went into another chorus. Because of the wonderful things he does…

"You're making a joke of this," Fane said to me.

"You think so, huh?"

"Yes."

I glanced over and wondered if Fane would have enjoyed having both his arms broken nearly as much as he did his crooked, pitiful legs.

"Listen," I said, and my voice was already quaking. "Yesterday morning I woke up lying beside a butchered woman who'd been taken over by the mother of all harlots and-"

"Another prophecy fulfilled."

"Don't interrupt me, Fane! Last night Gawain bled to death in my arms. Now I'm going to Har Meggidon to face a man I once loved above any other, who tells me if I help him bring our messiah back he'll return to me the woman who made my life worth living. It almost sounds funny, doesn't it?" I glared at Fane and squeezed the wheel until the steering column began to groan. "I've got a fair amount on my mind right now, so don't give me any shit. I didn't have to make this a game. It was a hoax long before I ever got into it."

"Your self-pity is evident," he said.

You talkin' to me? Self's DeNiro still needed work

"Yeah, well, sorry," I hissed at Fane, "but I'm in something of a mood."

"You've never learned the worth of servitude."

"Yes, I have. It's worth nothing. If you weren't always squirming in your own torment you'd know that."

He sighed and shook his head, and I thought he might actually smile. "Each of us enjoys our own agony too much."

"Yes," I said. The air conditioner circulated his noxious perfumes and I had to turn the vents in his direction. "It's the devil, you know."

"You blaspheme even now."

"Especially now, wouldn't you say? The Holy Land is brimming in the blood of children and suicidal believers, but they're not dying with the love of God in their hearts."

"You don't know that."

"I do know that. They're only seething, and they'll keep up their frenzy until they all spill apart in the dust."

It was nothing compared to the coming days, when heaven and hell burst wide open as the wars began, and the stars fell into the boiling oceans and earth became a poisoned cinder.

Are we almost there yet? Self asked.

The street was empty but there'd been fighting here recently, with burned-out trucks littering the walkways. I hit a pot-hole two feet deep and Fane blanched and let out a gasp as his mangled knees clacked together. He spoke through his gritted teeth. "A third of the earth's population will begin dying soon. Today is the start of a war between the sons of light and the sons of darkness. Tell me where you'll stand."

"I'll let you know when the time comes."

"You're not even sure, are you?"

My father let out a knowing high-pitched giggle that made me want to scream. "Well, if you don't like the answer you can always slap me around with your pine sticks."

Fane drew his stiletto and scraped the edge of the blade against the underside of his chin. It might have been a threat of murder or suicide. "Something like that."

Floor this bitch! Self shouted, and I did.

And so we came to the Plain of Esdraelon in the Jezreel Valley, just west of the Jordan River, and faced the entrance to Tel Megiddo.

In the distance we could see MountTabor to the northeast and Mount Gilboa to the south. The watercourse of the KishonRiver kept the soil productive as an agricultural region. There were crops of wheat, corn, and cotton, and my dad went into a sneezing fit because of the heavy odor from the tobacco fields.

Megiddo, the place of battles, connected all the cities of the ancient world. To control it was to control trade and the movement of armies from the pyramids to Babylon and Mesopotamia. It had once been the most heavily fortified city in Israel while the first straw huts were being built in a village that would become Rome and one day conquer all of the Holy Land.

I could feel the death of millions in the air. We all could. Over the millennia more than twenty-five cities had been built and destroyed on this same spot, one on top of the other, erected on a foundation of obliterated armies. The surrounding land was fertile with bonemeal. No wonder they believed this was where the final conflict would take place. All major wars of the ancient Middle East had centered directly on this spot.

Here too the Israelites worshipped Baal, and the archeological vestiges of altars and pillars still existed where the child sacrifices took place.

Not even a brownie , Self whined. You couldn't get me a brownie? My blood pressure is low!

I parked the Jag and we all got out except for Nip. He just sat there in the backseat with the tears coursing through his fur. He didn't want to take the chance of seeing disloyal Uriel again, so I left him there.

Fane limped alongside me through the ruins and said, "I can hear that jackdaw."

"They're all here," I told him. "I feel Elijah's hatred too."

"Within the Nephilim?"

"I suppose so, unless he abandoned the body."

"And what of Michael?"

"Yeah," I said, "and what about Michael?"

Fane gulped air and said, "I hope you make the right choice today."

"I thought you trusted me because I had nothing to lose or gain. I thought you pitied me.

"I don't pity you that much."

"Well, don't be shy. If you know the right way to follow God's .will, you just let me know."

He stuck out his hand and it took me a second to realize he wanted me to shake with him. "Peace be with you."

I shook with him. "Sure, same to you."

We moved through the remnants of an annihilated city following the incessant screeching of Hotfoot Johnson, the squealing and mewling of the other familiars, and the overwhelming weight of consequence. My father no longer laughed aloud but he continued smiling inanely. If I had one great regret outside of the night Dani died, it was that I couldn't remove that goddamn clown costume from him.

Self touched one of the crumbling stone altars and said, Baal got fed a lot of kiddies here.

Yes.

If he didn't get his supper he would have torn out their eyes, and they knew it. He would've dug their smallest veins out inch by inch and knotted their unraveled intestines together.

Listen, do you always have to-

Those old-time Israelites didn't mind feeding him. Oh no!

Don't you think we ought to be a little more focused?

But some of us need to beg just to get a friggin' piece of cake!

My hand had been hurting ever since I'd struck him, and now the pain grew so bad I couldn't ignore it any longer. I looked into my palm and saw my lifeline changing again even as I watched. It crawled and shifted from one pattern into another. Perhaps I still had a few choices left.

We stepped from between two pillars and once again I stood before my coven.

There are meetings you never think about or dream of but you expect nonetheless. There was no surprise in any of our faces. Perhaps I had simply been fighting an unalterable fate as they'd been telling me the whole time. Maybe I hadn't been led here at all but had instead led each one of the others.

I walked to them slowly, casually, as if returning home. Perhaps I was, in a fashion.

Jebediah appeared dangerous, assertive, moderately aggressive, and a little bit crazy. I saw through the gossamer act and knew he was both anxious and frightened. His face crumpled in on itself until he had the expression of a sixteen-year-old boy about to get laid for the first time.