A Lower Deep

Chapter Fifteen

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.

He'd slid his hands over the blade so often that he'd cut the fingers of his left hand down to their last knuckles. The nubs were freshly cauterized.

When he looked up I knew he didn't see me at all. He whimpered, "Thy will be done, oh Lord, thy will be done." He'd said it so often since killing, his brother that the words had lost all meaning, even for him. His voice was strained and sounded as dead as Aaron. I thought he probably hadn't said anything else to anyone since the caves beneath the mount, repeating his one plea to God as if that could save him.

Jebediah's other murdered coven wafted past, eager for their fulfillment and vengeance. If he'd sent Griffin against me, then he might possibly control the others. Jebediah himself didn't have enough respect for the dead that one needed to beckon them back at will, but he knew enough to toy with souls and reanimation, and always surrounded himself with ghosts.

I looked around at the new coven thinking there might be a new necromancer among them. Sweat stung my eyes as the faces of the living and the deceased swam, blended, and merged.

The stench of the atrocities they'd committed rose from them like vapor. I smelled Fuceas among the women and realized the demon earl had impregnated his eggs in two of them, just as he'd stuffed Janus with his yoke. They were hardly more than girls really, not even yet out of their teens. They stood together with their bloated bellies nearly touching, unsure of how they should greet me. They each gave a bizarre little curtsy.

They all used the olive grove like the altar beside the covine tree, circling but not quite fully aware of each other. They weren't a true coven, in balance and harmony with the earth. Even their evils did not fully mesh. Unlike our own covendom, this was not a place for witches. For martyrs, of course, and for the dissidents and the faithful, but not for us. They all knew it too, especially Uriel, looking toward Jebediah for some kind of authority that would make them potent here. I could see death in their eyes already, and couldn't get past the fact that Jebediah was about to slay yet another assembly of his followers.

Even as a ghost, Bridgett enjoyed touching the slain as much as she had when she was alive. She wove among Rachel and Janus, wanting the spawn of Fuceas for herself.

Self found her there and, almost shyly, crept closer to her as she kneeled before him and allowed him to scale her chest. Her blond hair still had those two sweeping curls crab-clawing into her mouth, and he used his tongue to sweep her ringlets back. Her slashed throat still poured psychic energy, and he nuzzled the stream, kissing and licking her neck, trailing his fingers against her thighs. Like his mother, Thummim, he swung from Bridgett's left breast, suckling the witch's shriveled teat, which was filled with just as much syrupy milk as before. Her piercing green eyes cut toward me, features still containing some of the love of the novitiate she'd once been.

"Hey, lover," she said.

The incensed ghosts of the triplets Diana, Faun, and Abiathar, their lips still wet with wine, faded in and out around the Franciscan flower gardens. None of us could get away for our own past, not even the dead.

As I'd done so many times before, I reached forth into the depths of Jebediah and found the silver cord of his soul, hoping something had changed about him by now. But it was still nothing more than a razor-sharp wire, rusted and slicing into my psyche. It hurt, but I'd missed the old feeling. He groped for my spirit as well, stalking my heart, pressing into the soft spot at the back of my skull. His dissatisfaction showed through. He'd found that the well of my love for Dani was still full.

He tried to smile as if there weren't a decade of carnage between us. "Walk with me."

"All right."

Most of the tourists and spiritual seekers stayed close to Jericho Road and the Church of all Nations, facing across from the Golden Gate. They liked to look at the stone presumed to be the place where Jesus prayed before his arrest. I had no doubt that Betty Verfenstein had been here or would soon visit as part of her vacation package. Danielle would have enjoyed the serenity of the garden despite what had occurred here twenty centuries ago.

"You still love her," Jebediah said, "even after all this time-"

"Yes."

"I don't believe that someone who so desperately holds on to the past can be called a romantic. It's why you're the Lord Summoner and master of the art. This love for the dead."

I didn't argue the point. He was right, in his own fashion, and though he meant to be insulting I took a certain pride in what he said.

"Do you really want to murder more children, Jebediah?" I asked.

"Oh, don't be so tedious. They're not children. You wouldn't dare say so if you knew what viciousness they can be held accountable for. Or perhaps you would. In any case, they came to me seeking glory. Surely you, of anyone, can relate to that. Who am I to deny them the chance?"

"This absurd dream of yours isn't glorious."

He didn't hear me. His askew smile widened as he drank in the atmosphere. Swirls of remnant energy circled above us and spilled on him. "This beautiful site is known throughout the world as the place where Christ pondered his fate before the soldiers dragged him off to be executed. Do you think he kneeled there?" Jebediah pointed in one direction, then another. "Staring toward that hill? Or that promontory? Can you guess what happened in that spot centuries before Jesus stepped foot here?"

I could guess. Holy sites were usually built upon the unholy. He couldn't help feeding off the errant majiks of the land, and motes of black energy bubbled from his eyes. I didn't need to suck the marrow of massacre to know this had once been a place of child sacrifices.

I said, "Do you think a history of barbarism gives you the right to forfeit others?"

"Everyone is free to leave whenever they wish. Even you."

"If only that were true."

"It is, and always has been. We're all here of our own accord. I'm not to blame for the fate of others."

"Is that what you tell yourself when you think of Aaron?" I asked.

It stopped him cold, and the funnels of eddying power dissipated. I was glad that he cared enough to show some grief. He dropped his chin and stared thoughtfully at the ground for a minute. "I had nothing to do with that."

"Uriel's here and stands with you."

"He is my brother, after all."

"Yes, and also the murderer of your brother. You've done a hell of a job looking out for them."

That got to him. He whirled on me, the web of veins in his neck bulging. It was good to see that he could still feel so strongly about matters of family. He closed in. "They made their own choice to enter that damnable monastery. Uriel suffers for his sins, and his guilt has driven him into near-catalepsy. They each did what they believed had to be done, no different from me! Who are you to judge?"

His scars were nearly pressed against my own face as he shouted. I'd had enough of his rationalization and grabbed him by the collar. My grin was nearly as ugly as his.

The black energy encircled my eyes too, and the air burned with the stink of ozone. Sparks skittered along my new fingernails, and a hideous bark of laughter escaped me. "I watched you cut Bridgett's throat."

"She was nothing to you!"

"You refused to let my father find peace in death and turned him into a caricature just to mock me." The rage kept surging, and a voice said, That's it, that's it, release it all, let it go, this will be wonderful. It wasn't Self provoking me-the voice was my own. "You set the Fetch on me and forced me to play along in your plans. You dangled my love for my lady and let the temptation drive me half mad into your trap. All of your followers lie cold in the ground, even that rag tag bunch of bitter teenagers back there. They're already dead, Jebediah, or don't you know that?"

"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.