Tom Piccirilli - A Lower Deep

Self clambered up my back and screamed, What are you doing? Let him out! Let him out!

Someone else was there helping. I glanced over and saw Marcus shoulder to shoulder with me. Fighting Jebediah's spell had taken its toll on him-his hair had been singed and the stink of ozone clung to him. His lips were white, and the knotted veins at his temples stood out thick and blue as night crawlers.

His hands pressed against Michael's face and together we grunted as we grappled with the angel. Marcus reared back and started hammering Michael in his nubby nose as I tried to fold my father's separated flesh back over the small fists, but it didn't work. We were covered in blood and watery colored fluids. Dad kept giggling and wriggling as if he found this all to be ticklish.

With a loud and nauseating sound of suction, like a shoe being pulled from a mud hole, the archangel Michael emerged covered in ropes of mucus and internal juices.

His wings barely functioned well enough to carry his stunted cherubic body awkwardly over our heads. Dad clapped and made gestures urging him to fly. Michael grunted in frustration as he tumbled through the air trying to gain control of himself. His erratic flight led him toward my father again, where the general of heaven's armies crashed into Dad and bowled him over. They both hit the ground.

I grabbed Uriel's sword and found it incredibly heavy and unwieldy. My father hopped back up on his feet and grasped the handle with me. His slashed harlequin's suit lay wet and sticking all over his chest so that I didn't have to watch his naked pink lungs working like a bellows. Self yanked Michael up by the tip of one wing and forced him forward until he touched the sword.

Instantly the metal ignited with a fire that didn't burn. Its energy made the inside of my head hum until my back teeth sang. I didn't see how Michael could possibly bring down the behemoth without us, so I gently pressured my dad in the direction of the swing and hoped we could pull it off. The Dragon had not moved at all except for its seven heads shifting in different poses, each one completely expressionless.

Marcus squinted and covered his face. The fire and Elijah's hate were too much for him, standing this close. It blanketed the area like a radiation leak or a toxic waste spill. He was still too weak to fight this kind of venom. The locusts swarmed around us, their human faces on grasshopper bodies speaking in minuscule voices I couldn't understand. Self swatted and ate them by the dozens, and Hotfoot Johnson and the black owl Prickeare did the same, soaring between the Dragon's legs and over its shoulders. Imps jumped and bounced all over, feasting. Jamara dragged itself forward grabbing mouthfuls of the locusts and spitting out their brass breastplates.

I looked up at the Dragon. It's already dead.

Not quite.

Elijah 's not in there. He's abandoned that body. It's just a mindless hulk again. It's not the Beast of Revelation.

Perhaps it is. Or will be. We can't take any chances. We have to do these things even if they appear to be pointless .

His honesty stopped me and made me snap around to look at him. Why?

Self shrugged. You got me.

My father, Michael, and I hefted the sword together and drove it into the Dragon's gigantic ankle.

It was already a creature of stone, and as the fire from the sword moved up the Dragon's leg it seemed to absorb the crimson coloring and draw it from the beast. Once again the hybrid turned ashen, and fissures ran up the length of its marble hewn skin. Elijah's hatred animated it now, but his soul was on the loose. Boulder-sized chunks of its body began to break free and crumble around us. We ran for cover and I dragged my dad back toward the ruins. Michael's expression was one of confusion-even he didn't believe his war with the great Red Dragon could be won so easily as this. He shook his oversize head slowly, knowing that this was only a staged Armageddon of cardboard and smoke, and that he'd been betrayed and misused.

The archangel Michael, warrior hand of God and general of all heaven's armies, turned and glared at me with such intense malice, with the infinite and eternal hate so clear and bright in his eyes, that I trembled until I almost couldn't stand any longer. He sneered and pointed at my heart, and with his little wings flapping he flew off to the south, deranged and furious.

I knew he'd be back one day for his revenge.

He wanted this. Damn him.

Who?

Elijah .

Silver glow ebbing with the coming of evening, the coven began to awaken from Jebediah's spell. The two girls pregnant with Fuceas-spawn immediately dropped inside the magik circle and began to shriek and writhe as they miscarried the hellborn.

I sat in the center of Jebediah's majik circle for the greatest focus of astral energy, tasting the hint of his remnant incantations and charms. He was still smiling and the hexes bled even faster from his eyes. I tightly crossed my legs, feet pulled up so that they touched opposite thighs, spine straight and head back. Motes of black energy leaked from my mouth and wafted past, encircling my own eyes. My hands were at the center of my chest with fingers interlaced into specific placement. Pinkies, thumbs, and index fingers steepled, and these three steeples each pointing back at myself-thumbs aimed at the heart, pointers at my throat, pinkies toward the forehead.

I looked over and Marcus was doing the same, joining me in this invocation and on this journey, wherever it might lead.

Jebediah wasn't about to quit. He intensified his spell and the chanting of the coven grew louder. Even the girls aborting on the ground were still caught in the lace-work of his scheme. Their mouths spoke words while their bellies writhed and the bubbling pink yolk and eggs of the demon earl Fuceas ran out from between their legs.

I visualized his bitterness and I imagined his happiness, the same duality existing in him as in me. His chin leaked sparks and his scarred face lit with remorse, hopelessness, and the lonely intense wish for death and absolution. No wonder we had found each other. We were so much alike.

I saw his heart's desire and I would summon it. Jebediah felt my lengthy reach across the drawn veil, my will joined to Marcus's as we went beyond life and nature.

"What?" Jebediah said. "What is happening? You're doing something!"

I finally knew in my heart that he had not asked me to the place of battles in order to take over the world or do God's will or instigate Armageddon.

He only wanted me to save him.

What time is it?

The ninth hour, of course , Self said. You know what you're doing?

It's a little too late to ask now, isn't it?

It's always been too late.

You said it, not me.

Jebediah's hold on the others loosened and they began to rouse from their stupor.

"What is this?" he yelled, terrified because the world had not yet ended. "What are you doing!"

"I'm giving you what you want, Jebediah."

It was easy to draw power from him as his psychic lusts and ghosts, needs and dreads seethed, churned, and fermented deep within. I caught pieces of desires that weren't my own, each ripping at me like teeth and talons. The edges of my vision turned black and red. My hair stood on end and sweat drenched every inch of me. Waves of violent force pounded and twined around all of us. I spoke the necessary ancient words clearly, my tongue wrapping around the uncomfortable sounds and spitting them out. Self urged me on, shivering and trapped in the backwash of our making.

"You don't know what I want!"

"I told you once. This isn't about Christ," I said.

I summoned forth Peck in the Crown, purified and accepted into heaven.