A Lower Deep

Chapter Thirteen

Like all wars, this one began with sacrifice.

Here, in a land of grudges and blood, Abraham had set out to murder his child. According to the Jews, the boy's name is Isaac. To the Muslims, it is Ishmael.

Untold thousands have died over such devotion to minor details and metaphor. Explosive devices are hidden under seat cushions because of mispronunciations. Entire families are poisoned for square inches at the back of a shrine or church. The Palestinians and Israelis fought over lines drawn in the dirt. Symbolism leads to suicidal missions inside wired trucks and boats. Women are stabbed for singing praises to a different god on a crooked street in the wrong quarter.

Where there is sanctity, there is Satan.

It's an ancient adage that fits the wide range of awe-inspiring faith and petty madness that is Jerusalem. It was easy to get preachy here.

The pink-haired lady, Betty Verfenstein, put it another way when she saw that I was watching the Muslims spitting on the Jews in the narrow alleys and labyrinthine bazaars of the OldCity. The Jews were throwing rocks and everybody was screaming while the Israeli border guards hung back with their machine guns pointed down at the street.

"I couldn't care less what these fanatics do to each other," she said. "Except when I see children getting involved. They shouldn't have to grow up in this turmoil, all in the name of God. This isn't religion. I don't know what it is. I've never seen anything like it in my life." She planted her meaty fists on her thick hips and looked ready to outwrestle any of the squabbling well-dressed men. "All I'm sure of is that I wouldn't want any of them in my home during Passover."

There were dead children wrapped around her throat, the silver psychic cords twining and whipping about her. Four miscarriages with broad flat heads and trans, lucent, vein-packed skin, and her daughter, Theresa, who'd been murdered thirty-five years ago at the age of twenty.

Theresa had given me all the bitter details, seething in my ear on the plane. She'd been a sophomore at Yardale, cutting across the quad at night with her roommate on their way to a Phi Beta Kappa party, when the pine brush behind them suddenly came alive with arms and gray gloves. She still felt an intense loathing for her roommate, who ran off and left Theresa behind. Right there on one of the nation's safest campuses, in a spot surrounded by the windows to a hundred empty classrooms, she'd had her bowels carefully cut from her while her dead eyes watched each stroke of the fine blade and witnessed the slow and precise removal of her own internal organs. Still, all she saw were arms, and those unstoppable gray gloves.

Theresa wavered close, her teeth champed and white eyes wide now that she had finally come face-to-face with me.

My name had been carved in thin large letters into her chest, years before I was born.

"You all right?" Betty asked. "You look a little sick."

"I'm fine."

She kept her gaze on the fighting. The sorrow etched itself deeper into each heavy line of her face, and the nervous tension kept her talking. "Manny's back at the hotel with heartburn. I wanted to go to Ecuador, but no, he wants to come see where the Bible was born. Except the water here is as bad for him as it was in Mexico. You and Manny, you're both going to be up all night."

Theresa continued to glare. Her open abdominal cavity showed that the butcher had only taken certain organs: the liver, the lower intestine, and part of her lower esophageal tract. The dried tissues could be used for divination. It reminded me of Eddie as everyone in the mount pulled together in order to replace his heart and put him back together again.

I could imagine Theresa's killer back then, with his gray leather gloves still on, surrounded with the burnt embers of her flesh and using a scrying mirror to stare into the future and see me at this exact moment. Why else would he have carved my name, unless he wanted to see my reaction?

I mouthed, You'll pay for this. I focused on him as well as I could, turning against the years that led toward Theresa's death. My mind roamed widdershins-counter-clockwise-against the natural order of time. He watched me from the past. I could sense him there, grinning, so slick. He held his scrying mirror and looked deeply within it, staring, watching. He wanted a connection and he got it. I drew forth arcana and hid my glowing fists in my pockets. I recited a thricefold Assyrian hex and hurled a curse, feeling the tide flow against the very current of time. Thirty-five years ago it should've shattered the glass and sent the shards into the bastard's face, leaving him blind in at least one eye.

The miscarriages bobbed in front of us, snapping taut on the silver cords and then sluggishly wafting off. Theresa hissed and came at me with her fingernails poised to scratch my face to shreds. I didn't blame her. My second self unwound from my chest and stuck his chin out at her. Hey! Who the hell do you think you are making faces like that?

The wheel revolves. After haunting her mother for so long, the girl now realized she'd been tortured and killed only to become the smallest part of a cruel pattern designed to rattle me. And worst of all-it hadn't. Theresa sneered.

Don't look down your nose at me! Self screamed.

Relax.

She started it! Stuck-up dead bitches are the worst.

"Did I tell you on the plane?" Betty asked. "With Manny's high blood pressure he's a prime candidate for a stroke. He retired two years ago and instead of making model airplanes or putting ships in a bottle he's been dragging me all over the planet ever since. All truth be told, I liked Japan more. Them Japanese are more respectful of other folks than this. Except during the big one, of course.

She'd told me on the El Al flight over, while Gawain and my father sat one row behind us. I had spent weeks going through a hundred obscure incantations but I still couldn't figure out how to strip the harlequin costume and dye from Dad's body. I called up all manner of majiks until my hands were singed and unfeeling. Self licked at the painted white face and black lips for hours as my father tittered like a schoolgirl on her first date.

Finally, I'd had to use pancake and foundation to cover his clown face just so I could get him on board the plane from JFK to Tel Aviv. I hid his jester's cap under a ten-gallon cowboy hat that made him look like a ludicrous version of Hoss Cartwright. The stewardess tried to get him to put it in the overhead compartment. Eventually she realized her mistake when he started doing a jig in the aisle and instigated a food fight onboard with the kosher deli trays.

I hadn't known how I was going to get them past customs, but I needn't have worried. Gawain and my father simply walked past all the Israeli officials while my luggage was checked and rechecked and I was held in a tiny white room for hours until they finally let me go.

Betty and Manny Verfenstein had taken to my father for some reason, perhaps because they thought he was the victim of a stroke.

I could understand it. Betty was nearing seventy and was boisterous and forthcoming about her life. Theresa filled me in on the rest as she dangled from her mother's throat, my name a wide-open wound. The cord's pressure sometimes made Betty gasp with pain as memories lashed against her.

She was a plump woman with crows' feet stamped into every meaty angle of her features. She had buried her only daughter and the endless ache had worn down her faith but not her convictions. She had a defiant rough laugh that filled me with pleasant warmth. It drove Self bugshit on the plane and made him crawl into the overhead compartments, where he rifled the baggage.

Eventually the fracas ended. A girl limped away crying with two badly skinned knees, comforted by her mother. This kind of scene would be repeated several times a day. Small skirmishes, shoving matches, and screaming arguments were punctuated by other, more savage violence. The leaders of nations from around the world had been vainly trying to get these people to talk peace for years. It had not worked in five millennia, and it never would.

It was Good Friday.

Betty shook her head sadly, and her daughter and the miscarriages twined above, swept aside by the dangling cords and coiling together. "This has nothing to do with the Bible."

She was wrong. It had everything to do with a book that had toppled empires and forged ten thousand wars. The letter and law of its lessons. Contradictions and prophecies held too much consequence, no matter what you believed. That was all they had left of God, and all they could imagine.

"Hope your father is enjoying himself," she told me. Another person might have said it with an air of sympathy, sincere or not, but Betty Verfenstein only spoke what she meant. "I've got to get back to Manny. You take care."

Theresa swung down low one last time, my name shining in her gutted flesh. Her ribs had chips in them from where the blade had sunk deep. She glowered, hissing and despising me, as she deserved to do. Even the miscarriages scowled and gave me the malformed finger.

Self shouted, And you, you snooty chick, you're lucky I don't come up there and slap you around some.

I left the Old City of Jerusalem and wandered the hills for the rest of the afternoon. Despite the fervor, you could find peace here, alone in the dirt. There was no wind. I stared out over the countryside and felt a welcoming embrace of heat and epochs.

Even with all of time sewn into Self's soul I found that he was hurrying ahead of me.

Self gazed about the rocky spur of the Judaean hills and laughed, listening to the mania of the land. As expected, all of Jerusalem, full of hostility and passion, echoed his wild happiness.

He was home.

Goddamn, it's good to be back.

I stared down at the city knowing that I should have come here a decade earlier with Danielle, back when my studies might have led to something with purpose and significance. Perhaps even discovery and revelation, at a time when I could have reveled in my belief.

Jerusalem, known in Hebrew as Yerushalayim, and in Arabic as Al Quds, was the center of worldwide credence and certainty. The reverend in Perdido, Alabama, owed his yellow pine altar to this far-off expanse of sand.

I spotted tufts of sallow, a willowlike shrub that supposedly has wept since the Jews' captivity in Babylon. Perhaps it was true. Nature not only reflects God, but history. Each moment is rooted in antiquity. The dead past never recedes, and remains as close now as ever. I had warded off Oimelc, the Feast of Lights sabbat, only to face Lent in the place where Christ had been born, preached, died, and altered the rest of humanity.

Stop it, Self hissed.

What?

Running through it again changes nothing. I'm sick of hearing it. He held his hands over his ears as if I were shrieking into his face. The more sentimental and pensive I grew, the more he leaped around. Quit it! Can't we just have some fun for once?

It would be nice, I said.

Stop it then. Come on, these Israeli army chicks are firm, and they got handcuffs!

He watched the girls walking on the roads and whistled after them. He sighed and dreamed of bruised wrists, lapping at torn veins, and stroking dimpled kneecaps. My stomach tightened and my groin flooded with heat, and I went over sideways in the dust grabbing my guts. He grinned at me, the red sunset washing over his teeth so that it looked as if he had a mouth brimming with blood.

It wasn't his provocation but mine. It had the old familiar feeling. Temptation in the desert was not unknown.

Into this land came a man named Yashua, a stoneworker-not a carpenter-who traveled from a small village to work in the cosmopolitan city of Galilee, during the time of the first zealots. There he learned of the rebellion against the tyranny of Rome, and grew aware of himself within a political tinderbox. He learned at the knee of a man who ate locusts and wild honey and dressed in camel's hair clothes. He returned home to Nazareth and was rejected by his own people, and was forced to start a new and active community with his own disciples.

Just as Jebediah had done.

Is he here yet? I asked.

You know, the fur-lined leather cuffs are just as nice. Twin straps.

It got like this on occasion, when he glided among my weaknesses and took advantage. Is he here?

Yes.

Why hasn't he made his play yet?

Who's to say he hasn't? His grin grew wider. In the coming darkness his mouth was no longer crimson but now hung open filled with moonlit fangs. Why haven't you made yours?

What the hell does that mean?

His smile dropped like a plum stone, and he frowned at me. You're asking the wrong questions.

You deliberately being contrary?

Who, me?

The desert began to grow cold. I stood and headed down the hill. The coastal plain to the west led thirty-five miles to the Mediterranean, and to the east you could see the salt banks of the Dead Sea.

The New City portion of Jerusalem was quite modern, but due to a municipal ordinance all buildings were built with Jerusalem stone, providing a uniquely archaic and primitive aspect to the city. Its garden suburbs, broad avenues, and modern apartment buildings contrasted with the meager dwellings of the OldCity.

I walked through the Dung Gate, located near the Western Wall. It was low and narrow. A great deal of the city's refuse was taken to the KidronValley by an ancient sewer that runs beneath the passage, giving the gate its name. I headed toward the center of town, past the Ben Yehuda mall, and back to the Jerusalem Tower Hotel. Self kept after the Israeli girls and said they all reminded him of the daughters of David. Long black hair curling in waves, features sharp yet somehow soft. He quivered as he rushed into the onset of night.

When I walked in the door to the hotel room, my father giggled and danced with the little bells of his garb ringing wildly. He bounded into my chest like a happy pet and wouldn't let go until I'd patted his back for a few minutes.

Gawain continued his blind vigil, regarding nothing but seeing everything in focus. I realized that he already knew how this would all end, and that he probably didn't really care one way or another.

He and my father, unworldly in their simplicity, could witness and smile at the unfolding of revelations. Gawain was still dressed in a lavender cloak, and his bleached white hair and pale face appeared to glow in the dimness of the room. The lights of Jerusalem opened over his shoulder through the windows.

He mouthed my name and reached for me. I took his hand, but he no sooner grasped it than he let go and moved away. Whatever guidance or warnings he had would remain locked inside him.

Self flipped the channels around past German, French, and Russian stations. With a frustrated snarl he started kicking the television. I can't find Friends, damn it.

The full moon rose over Israel, and my mother came to me again in the gulf of night, into my uncomfortable seat of dreams.

Dad seemed to feel her as well and sat on the floor whispering unintelligibly to himself. Whatever portion of his soul remained would be curled up in shame deep within the harlequin.

Even Self was unsettled. He trembled at the indistinct presence of my mother. He let out caterwauls in tune with Dad's whines and jingling, all of us lost beneath Gawain's endless sight and silence.

She moved as I remembered her, with a lissome balance as though the earth let her go for a moment as she walked, and then took her back again. She'd sit in the church basement teaching Sunday school, surrounded by a ring of children who didn't care about God or our sins or any kind of retribution. We only wanted to go outside to the lake or the park and play softball and try our hand at the rowboats, catching trout on string lines with wet balls of stolen communion wafer.

My mother understood the nest of shadows stirring behind the altar and between the pews. In spite of ourselves, she tried to prepare us for the inevitable. The priests began to scowl at her lessons and eventually dismissed her. She could read the word of the Lord with a clarity unmarred by ages of canon, doctrine, and ego. The hypocrisy of the Pharisees lives on.

My father's clownish face fell in on itself. The painted smile remained though his mouth didn't quite tug so far at the corners. He seemed to be trying to speak, or perhaps even sing, the way he did on the porch during summers when mother swept through the kitchen carrying icy beer out to him.

He leaned back against the headboard, one knee bent and his arm resting atop it, in the same pose as when he tilted his chair on the veranda. He'd sometimes strum his guitar or smoke hand-rolled cigarettes that made him go into sneezing fits. He understood what was coming but refused to be baited by it. He knew calm back then, short-lived as it was, before he started throwing rocks through the church's stained-glass windows.

I called to him once more, just as I had every day since leaving the mount, hoping to find my way to him again. "Dad?"

He didn't look at me, but his smile widened when Self flicked on to some music video program and they started dancing along to an Israeli pop band.

Familiars watched us, perched all across the city.

Every so often Self went on a hunt and brought some lower-tier imp back in his jaws or crushed in his fist. Two nights ago he returned to the room laughing and giving a piggyback ride to Elemaunder Pondo, who now took the shape of a baboon. Pondo had been handed down through the generations of the Lugbara family in Zambia, but the last tribal leader of the Candomble cult had died recently of AIDS. Pondo could not be controlled anymore and he traveled north across the continent, suckling at the teats of witches when he could. He climbed my shirt and tried to get at my chest, bouncing and screeching.

Self said, Ain't no man-boy love for you there, buddy, try the Franciscans. I scrawled a binding charm in front of Pondo's tiny face, and with his fur standing on end he got the point.

They watched television and made fun of everyone's accents. When they got bored they conjured a pair of dice and got up a game of craps in the corner with three shifty djinn. Self cleaned up and made a couple hundred shekels and sixty agorot. The coins and bills had been stolen from the wallets of men murdered in a bus bombing that afternoon. My father let loose with a bark of laughter, watching Pondo trying to make the six point.

The room was already filled with the dead. I could feel them pressing their determination toward us but I couldn't be sure of their intent. Bridgett with her throat slashed, those beautiful emerald eyes turned on me again as she grinned, knowing her place in the much larger pattern. I had survived Oimelc no better than an addict going cold turkey, thrashing and crawling on all fours in my need for Danielle. The desire for redemption had grown stronger each passing minute, year piled on year as my hair became tinged with gray. I had wept and vomited and smashed furniture. Once I'd awoken to find my father holding me in his arms, crying and cackling.

Pondo and the djinn all perked up in the same moment, glanced about the place, and began squawking. It looked as though they wanted to leave, but Self kept the game going, offering outrageous odds so they'd stick around. My hackles stood on end and a shiver went up my spine as if a wedge of ice had been pressed to the small of my back.

So, something was finally about to happen.

Blind Gawain grabbed my father by the hand and led him from the room. His serpent's tongue flicked out once toward me. Giggling, Dad waved and allowed himself to be dragged into the hall. The door slammed shut behind them and the room cooled by ten degrees.

I knew I was about to have a really bad night.

He's here, Self told me.

Who?

He isn't alone.

Who?

Shh.

We waited. Pondo started making a comeback and kept counting his money, which irritated the djinn. Self had to calm them all down before a fight broke out. It went on like that for a couple of hours, with the television blaring, the dice clicking, and coins ringing.

There was a knock at the door.

I turned to answer and stopped in my tracks.

A boy of nine stood inside the room. The skin on his face was puckered, disfigured, and discolored, and he had no hair on his head. His lips were gone and what little remained of his mouth didn't work all that well. There was only a tiny hole in the middle of all the seared flesh.

It took him a while to get anything out, but eventually he whispered, "The fireman is coming."

The child climbed onto the bed and crawled beneath the sheets, fading as he did so until only his outline was left in the blankets. The knocking grew more insistent.

Self said, Don't answer that.

Why not?

You don't want to know.

You're probably right.

Yes.

He tapped his foot in time with the beating of our hearts, waiting it out, his claws clacking together in a steady rhythm. He seemed puzzled, his brow furrowed, as if he were seeing me for the first time in his life. Then he shook his head in disappointment, looking so much like my father that his expression made me suck wind. Perhaps he'd taken so much from me that he finally just wanted to give some of it back.

Can't you just tell me? I asked.

Can't you ever just listen to me?

Another knock, much louder. I went to answer.

Fine, Self said. Don't come crawling to me if you get burned.

I opened the door.

Giant, dim Herod, who had greater power than even Jebediah had ever imagined, stood there ten years dead.

"How're you doin'?" he asked. "How've you been?"

"Herod," I whispered.

"You feeling okay?"

He'd lumbered around the covine tree that final morning, knowing how to laugh and love his enemies. He'd told us all that the invocations would go wrong. He'd wept on Danielle's shoulder, afraid to continue but unwilling to disappoint his friends. For ten years I'd been wondering why I hadn't listened to him.

"You been getting out of the room?" he asked. "You been seeing the sights?"

Herod, the fourth to die, with his eyes bleeding as he was swept backward with open arms, grinning a little while he plunged onto a limb of the covine tree and was run through. His heart had been pierced and dark blood spewed from his nose and mouth across his robes. He'd still held out on the hope of meeting God and being forgiven for all the sins his parents had beaten into him.

"That Pondo over there? Hey, Pondo, long time no see, man. You making some cash? You think you can float me a fifty until payday?"

Herod had been chained in a fruit cellar until he was fifteen years old. He'd learned about life from rats, roaches, and spiders in that time. He'd believed the insane screams of his mother when she branded the devil from him. He was saved by the ministering spirit Reschith Hajalalim and the angel Masleh as his father tried to fight them off with a fireplace poker. I could still see the soldering iron scars on Herod's throat.

He nodded once to me, as if he'd just run out for a six-pack and had returned to watch a ball game. He pawed his sweaty neck and said, "Ah, feel that, fucking amazing, you've got air-conditioning. Mind if I come in?"

I stepped out of his way. Pondo crapped out and stamped his feet.

Herod shrugged with a sidelong glance. "You're wondering about the change, I see.

Well, don't. I can tell you things now that I couldn't then."

He not only teemed with intelligence but he was smooth now, a real schemer. He spoke in the rapid-fire cadence of a used car salesman making a pitch.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"Hey, you know me, c'mon now, what kind of question is that? Listen, you've got to listen to me, I've been meaning to tell you something for a long time but I couldn't before. You'll be grateful for this, really. You know who I am."

Maybe I did.

A little help over here? I called.

Six straight passes! You handle it!

Herod moved with his usual awkward gait, lumbering about as if he might fall at any second. When he got in front of the air conditioner he stood there letting the streams of cold air wash over him. "You're going to cause more trouble, aren't you? Yeah, you are. You might be one of the kings of the earth but you're still a goddamn sap.

"Sounds like you've got issues."

"A few, I suppose. Some things you never get over."

"I'd agree with that."

"Of course you would. But that doesn't matter now. Listen, listen, don't take this wrong, but I think you're going to die here in the dust."

I couldn't yet tell who wore the mask of Herod's flesh. I kept my hands low at my sides and scrawled protective sigils of Machon, Raquie, Sachiel, and Caffiel against my legs.

Jebediah enjoyed playing games with the dead. My father's return, the threat and promise of Danielle being raised, and this whole ludicrous notion of resurrecting Christ proved how much fun he had toying with souls. I tried to get Self's attention but he ignored me.

Little Joe! Papa needs a new Benvenuto Cellini Rolex with sapphire crystal glass and applied Roman numerals with a crocodile skin strap!

"I can make sure you come out on top this time," Herod said, beginning to show irritation. He couldn't quite catch his breath as he continued to sweat. Veins pulsed in his neck, making the scar tissue throb. "There's no need for you to keep being anybody's whipping boy."

"Who in particular?"

"It's all right," he said, fuming. His frenzy came across in full blossom now as he swayed on his feet. The words erupted in bitter bites and he gagged on them. "I'm not mad at you anymore." His eyes bulged, straining free of the sockets. "You did what you had to do. That's completely understandable. Really. Don't worry about it. Listen, listen, I forgive you."

"For what?"

"I can help you." He showed his unbalance in a rictus smile. Sweat poured off his face, droplets catching in those thick eyelashes. A mop of sopping hair stuck against his wet forehead. He was generating serious heat. "This is gonna sound a little out there, but listen, listen. Hey, I … I love you!"

Sparks and ribbons of bile suddenly ran from his lips. His teeth started to break apart. His clothes began to crawl. Coat and trousers distended and ballooned, full and creeping. Ebony motion rippled and peered out from his cuffs, between his shirt buttons, now dropping to the floor.

Salamanders.

They swung their tails, already spraying neurotoxins from their poison glands as he began to ignite and plumes of smoke rose from him in a hundred places. Black and yellow striped creatures swarmed from him.

Griffin. It was Griffin.

The only man I'd ever killed in hate, but in death he'd forgiven me.

Now Griffin's malice was much more alive than he was. I could feel the rage burning as he let it out toward me, thinking of the children with leukemia that he'd roasted to death. He laughed. He was always laughing.

His murder was the worst thing I'd ever done without feeling any regret.

He had loved Jebediah in life but he'd been a slave to his own pyromania. He spoke as if he'd been sent here to help me. What kind of discoveries had the firebug made in the flames of hell?

"Griffin, you forgave me."

"I have!"

"Why this now?"

"I love you!" he shrieked. "He loves you! He is your child, you are his child!"

"Yeah, right."

"You must listen-"

I would've if he'd made any sense. The fires spurting from him had me a little jumpy. "How do those fingers work for you?"

"What?"

"Those fat bulky hands." Herod couldn't even hold a drinking glass without shattering it. He couldn't use silverware or pet a dog. He killed whatever he dared try to caress. Those enormous fingers twitched. "Must be damn near impossible to light a match."

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.