A Lower Deep

Chapter One

Despite the fiery omen of murder burning over their table, the couple seemed perfectly content. The woman's smile brought out the beautifully etched laugh lines around her eyes. Her lips parted to show a sexy, small overbite, and her dark hair glistened with melting snow. The husband stood a solid six feet, large scarred hands looming from inordinately thin wrists. They placed their infant son in a stroller between them and proceeded to laugh their way through appetizers. When the waiter named Jake arrived with their entrees, they shyly admitted it was their second anniversary. Fred and Kathy Rumsey introduced themselves and their son, Walt.

His voice booming with a two-pack-a-day smoker's resonance, Jake bellowed and offered complimentary champagne. The couple thanked him but chose a chateau instead, their baby giggling affectionately. Jake returned and poured wine that oozed from the bottle like black clotted blood.

The Fetch-light spun over their table, whirling languorously before fading to a hazy nimbus of crimson. Flames drifted across Walt's face and he groped for the waves of red lapping at him. When his fingers touched it, the Fetch-light abruptly drew back like a startled animal and vanished. Walt started to scream.

I groaned, finished my steak, and took a last sip of beer.

Snow spattered against the windows in thick gouts while Kathy Rumsey quieted her child. Top-heavy trees leaned precariously, branches bogged like weary arms, and the surrounding fields were an empty range of wind and darkness. Downtown Billings, Montana, hadn't gone far in disproving the notion that this wasn't a nexus of social night life. I ordered coffee. Eidolons and shadows wove intricate patterns in the growing drifts surrounding the restaurant.

The dinner crowd left and the blizzard kept other potential patrons at home. Soon only the Rumseys, a few people at the bar, and I remained in the place. One woman in a black slit-skirt appeared to have been stood up by her date. The bartender looked uncomfortable giving her more to drink. Surrounding men joked loudly and paid for another round. They got giddier and became more and more hopeful with every swallow she took. Music played softly above their laughter, and timbers settling in the rafters sounded like occasional hammer blows coming from the roof.

The baby stared at me.

Jake opened the front door and glanced down the highway, muttering that he saw no traffic, not even the usual truckers working the long haul out of North Dakota. He perused the rest of us with a noncommittal grin, face flat at the thought of his poor tips tonight. His twin brother had recently been murdered: An astral afterimage followed limply behind him strung on a silver psychic wire, the dead part of his shared soul tumbling like a corpse being dragged. As Jake wandered back to the kitchen he brushed past the lady at the bar, who finished her drink, spun in her seat, and approached my table.

Her blond hair fell in a wild tangle about her shoulders, two sweeping curls crab-clawing into her mouth. Those dark eyebrows offset her features nicely. "Uhm-" she said. "Hey, listen-" Bleary green eyes scanned my coffee, the satchel at my feet, and the thin vase on the table filled with two freshly clipped ugly, half-dead wildflowers. Her gorgeous full lips were the kind that made men grimace in appreciation, that jaw set with a slight jut. "I'm Bridgett. Care to dance?"

The other guys grumbled and glared. They'd spent their money, cajoled, and bent an ear only to watch her walk off. This might not get bad but it probably would. Her dress hugged her abundant chest as well as all the other nice curves, and she threw a pose to make a few more show up. Bridgett knew just how to kick a step forward so one leg appeared like paradise from the slit-skirt, giving us all a slow view of the entire ride up her knee to mid-thigh. I hoped nobody was drunk enough to go for a rifle.

I told her, "Sure."

We made our way to the small dance floor at the other side of the room. She dropped heavily into my arms as we clumsily slow-danced to melodies that were hot before the Japanese surrendered. Snow continued to violently pound the windows behind us, battering the glass like frantic children dying to be let in. It felt good to hold a woman again, her nails scratching lightly at my back. There was a scent to her, one I hadn't smelled so strongly on another person in years. Church. It reminded me of my mother. Church in its truest, deepest form. The fragrance pervaded her pores. An energy of hymns, whitewash sermons, and an unshakable faith in the scriptures-but beneath that, something dank and awful.

She sobbed into my chest and murmured a name. Jerry. Terry, maybe. "So, I've got a question for you, okay?" She attempted to enunciate each word properly and did a pretty good job. "Why would a man not show up on the night he was supposed to make a surprise proposal except he talks too loud to his mother on the phone and lets the secret out of the bag a few days ago?"

"Give the guy a break," I said. "There's a blizzard. Maybe he just got stuck on the side of a road."

"My ass! He's got a Dodge Big Red with a twenty-four-valve turbo diesel engine. I lent him the down payment. The thing could drive up Rushmore hauling two tons of cinder blocks." Bridgett suddenly dipped, jerking me to her. "Squeeze me," she whispered, and the provocative husky tone in there made my breath hitch. "Harder. I want you to hug me closer. Come on, at least let me feel you, if nobody else."

Moonlight still managed to ignite the flowing November sky as it grew more alive with the surging snowfall. The roughnecks who'd failed with Bridgett gave one last sneer in my direction before leaving. Maybe this would be all right. She slumped farther in my arms until I had to shift my grip on her waist to keep her from falling.

I caught another whiff of that blissfully sweet salvation and syrupy damnation church stink, and my second self trembled. He yipped a name I didn't quite recognize. I wondered how that odor came to be on her-whether Catholic school had invaded her life to such a great degree or her father was a Baptist preacher.

"You're a good dancer," she said as I shuffled and box-stepped. "You're wonderful at holding a woman."

I wasn't. I never had been, and my love Danielle had died because of it. Bridgett didn't look anything like Dani, but somehow I kept seeing hints of her and my brain began to twist. "Thanks, I appreciate the kind words."

She chuckled, a low and ugly sound. "I like your voice too. There's no saccharine in it, none of that haughtiness or twang either. You're not into trucks, are you? You got a place to stay?" For the first time a grin creased her face, one composed of annoyance and worry, and perhaps the thought of further humiliation. "You don't, do you? I see that pack on the floor. Huh, now isn't that something. I've got plenty of room." She leaned in close and tried to lick my neck, but she ended up on my collar. "I suggest you take me up on that offer. No matter where you're from, I can teach you things the girls don't do there at all, or at least not half as well."

The baby gazed about the restaurant with a cool reserve. Walt kept staring at me as his parents held hands and ate cheesecake. I worked Bridgett back into a nearby table just hard enough to knock its flower holder to the floor. Her heel crunched squarely on the oddly shaped wild roses, grinding them into the carpet. "Hey, honey, watch where you're swinging me," she said. "I already made you the offer. No need to get pushy now."

"Sorry."

I braced her against the seat and stooped to check the roses, interpreting their position using a Romany version of phyllorhodamancy-divination through crushed flowers-and saw in the petals something about worshipers of toads, worms, and the gnawers of the dead.

The Rumseys gathered their toys, stroller, and diaper bag, and put Walt into his winter gear until he was packed up like a Power Ranger-loving Eskimo.

"Come on," I told Bridgett. "Let's go."

"Whoa, boy, you're a little slow out of the gate but you're a racehorse when you want to get moving. Give me a second here."

I left Jake a tip that would lighten his heart and when the psychic cord leading from the back of his head came around toward me I caught it in my concentration and snipped it with my mental teeth, allowing his dead brother's portion of their soul to at last let go.

Bridgett drew on a leather coat loaded with studs and buckles that clashed with her evening dress. She laughed humorlessly at nothing, grinning wildly and weaving with little excited steps as if imagining what her fiance might do after finding us together in the morning. I pictured a guy in a large red truck backing over me a couple of times and it didn't put a smile on my face.

The parking lot was a blinding swirl of thrashing snow, and the few cars still remaining were almost buried by four-foot drifts. Rumsey carefully brushed off his station wagon.

"The blue Mazda's mine," she said. "It's not very practical in winter but I like it and . . . well, anyway-" She made a fluttery motion with her hand. "It's over there someplace, I think."

We got in just as Rumsey turned east onto the highway. It took me a minute or two to rock the Mazda out of its spot where the snow had bunched high around the tires. I followed at a fair distance with no other traffic in view. Bridgett kept trying to fondle me, still muttering about Jerry Terry, his Dodge, and broken promises. His mother would be pissed too-the old lady liked Bridgett and wanted grandkids soon before her bad hip completely gave out.

With her face planted in the side of my throat, those lips were like passionate razors cutting deep that reminded me of another lady from the dead past. I put my arm around her and listened to her sighs, until at last she slept.

The Mazda handled poorly on the slippery highway, fishtailing and skidding all over. One headlight was out and the other pointed under the grille. I had trouble keeping Rumsey's station wagon in sight. We drove for twenty minutes before he pulled into a sparse hillside area and backed into a lengthy driveway, the house secluded by acres of brush on either side. I turned around and parked at the far edge of their property.

Even with the fierce wind blowing, a stench of blood and burned flesh bloomed over the house. Between that and the heady aroma of church I had barely enough time, as the nausea hit, to open the door and vomit outside the car. Spasms wracked me and I reached down to get a handful of snow and washed my face with it.

My second self uncoiled at the pungency in the air and pranced up my back. His mouth watered for bonemeal, Bridgett's sexuality, and the Fetch-lit doomed. Self nuzzled my neck, his tongue working at my skin the way Bridgett's never could, his breath warm in my ear and mind. He plucked at her coat, claws clinking rhythmically on the metal studs. Hot-chee Mama. Nice winnebagos. Now you're thinking, boy!

We've got problems.

He scrambled back and forth across the dash, his arousal overpowering. Hey, no problem here!

Finally he wheeled from her and splayed himself against the passenger window, sniffing and mewling. His eyes could pick up the Fetch-light glowing where mine no longer could, the flaming portent of murder spinning lazily in the night. Warmed in his blood lust, growls of ecstasy escaped him as he dreamed of what might be shuddering, pleading, or eviscerated inside. His thoughts pounded vindictively at me, showing images that made my already queasy stomach tumble further. Cold sweat exploded across my body. Quit it.

Good stuff going on in there, he said, but weird.

How so?

Can't tell yet.

You yipped a name before. What was it?

Did I?

I got out and left the car running, heater going full blast to keep Bridgett warm. The woods were filled with tree branches so heavy with ice that they blocked my passage as I stumbled through hip-deep snow.

The first floor was brightly lit, every room blazing. Smoke rose from the chimney but no fire burned in the living-room fireplace. Two calico cats slinked across colonial furniture made by Sears. The Rumseys were nowhere to be seen. I tried the front and back doors and found them both dead-bolted. At the other side of the house, grades in the snow showed a few inches of shuttered windows at the stone foundation. I got on my belly and dug a corner of the shutter free, planted my feet, and pulled. The wood splintered and enough came away for me to see the painted black glass of a cellar. Self spat on the window and the paint on the inside bubbled and ran.

"Holy God," I whispered.

Self guffawed at the sight. You've got to be kidding me. This? In Billings, Montana?

Burning coals in a circular brick pit at the center of the cellar threw fingerlicks of shadow along the walls. A teenage girl lay gagged, naked, and tied spread-eagled to an old-fashioned metal box spring standing against one wall. Thin and gangly, her ribs pressed out sharply beneath her small breasts. It looked as if she'd been holed up here for at least a week. Intricate braids of lengthy red hair had come loose and curled down past the butterfly tattoo on her left thigh and the blackly emboldened name MEL on the right. She was covered with gashes, bruises, and burns from melted wax.

Gouged patterns of cabalistic symbols confirmed she'd never wear a bikini again. Copper wire had been strung so tightly around her wrists and ankles that the crusty skin had sealed over the wounds and her extremities had turned blue. She might not ever have the use of her hands or feet again. Self slurped and jitterbugged beside me, in his element now and wanting a taste of everything. He crooned, begging for entry. Mel-or Mel's girl-looked up. She spotted me and moaned, unsure of whether to cry out from beneath her gag, half expecting me to be just another form of agony.

At the opposite end of the basement, Fred and Kathy Rumsey sat in a poorly drawn chalk majik circle, a variation of Baphomet's inverted pentagram: The customary nine-feet of circumference had been whittled to five, and titles of the Infernal hierarchy had been misplaced between the tetragrammaton of Jehovah's holy name along the inner edge; along the outer ring Hebraic figures at each point of the pentagram incorrectly spelled out Corozon instead of Leviathan.

The Rumsey's wore cheaply sewn, hooded gray robes, turning pages of a book and reading aloud in badly accented French. I recognized passages from the eighteenth-century grimoire called La Petite Grossetete written by Emile la Duc, a charlatan hoping to cash in on the depravity of certain French nobility of the time. His wife had killed him with a broom handle.

Walt sat in his stroller, still silently staring.

If not for the girl, it would have been laughable. Another couple of ridiculous modern Satanists, and poorly adept ones at that, wearing Halloween costumes and humping books on the occult back from the library. Not too uncommon a sight in the Manhattan or LA underground club scenes, with parlor games, group sex, blood fetish, and a modicum of Anton La Vey's Satanic Bible special effects tossed in for good measure. Shops in Greenwich Village and on the Sunset Strip stocked eyes of newt and devil's chalices, catering to the social fringe. But . . . Christ, in Billings, Montana? None of this accounted for the signs I'd seen in the roses. The Rumsey's weren't witches, only perverts, kidnappers, and possibly killers.

The two-sided blade Rumsey used proved to be a true athame-a witch's knife-sharply honed as he stood facing his wife from across the circle, chanting an invocation so garbled I couldn't make any sense out of it. They approached and kissed, taking turns pricking their wrists, licking the droplets, and smearing each other's face with blood. The flames wavered as a real hint of sex majik filled the room. I held my hand to the glass. Bursts of yellow sparks popped painfully around my fingers, and the girl writhed as though I'd scratched her. Walt continued watching. Nothing fit together.

Something's wrong, Self said. You know what I mean?

Yes.

This reminds me of . . .

Me too. Neither of us liked talking about the beginning.

His breath cracked the remaining paint. I'm getting bad vibes. Let's get out of here.

No.

Quickly. Now.

First, the girl.

Forget her, we've already got one in the car! I leaned back ready to smash the glass and he hissed, Do that shit and you're so dead, as if daring me. Variant majiks are in motion. She's no one to care about. Just bait, a thing on the floor lying in the open trap. You've got to let this debacle play out.

Fred Rumsey untied the teenager and dragged her stumbling into the Baphomet pentagram. She sobbed and struggled wearily until he dumped her into the circle, scuffing the chalk marks and erasing all-important characters-her head cracked against the floor and she fell over semiconscious and groaning for Mel. The arcana intensified until the hair at the back of my neck crawled, electrified.

The Rumsey's took off their robes and continued sharing the knife, cutting at each other's naked flesh, getting into it now, wielding the blade high and drawing it down fast and slicing, tittering all the while. They dragged it deeply across bodies, first one and then the other, politely handing the sticky athame back and forth, soon chopping and slashing through muscle and bone.

They were insane and they had no real style. True masters at the art of mutilation would have frowned at the waste. Their blood arched and splashed madly across the room. With a final thrust Fred Rumsey shoved the blade into his wife's heart-as she grinned and mumbled, giving up one last bark of delight-then turned the knife on himself, and with a careful flick opened his carotid. He dropped heavily over his wife, and their blood pooled across the pentagram and ran around the girl. It was only going to get worse.

"Enough of this crap."

I kicked in the window and dropped inside, the storm following as Self jabbered in the snow, the trap closing. Walt drooled and shook his head happily at me, arms filled with toys. I pulled his stroller out of the way. In the pentagram the Rumsey's' corpses vibrated, eyes bulging and blinking, teeth bared.

Invisible daggers flayed them as I watched, skin ripping back from bone. Veins, nerves, and organs danced little shimmies as the viscera smoked, yanked free from the bodies like corn being shucked. Coagulating, the blood withdrew, and all that spineless flesh slid across the floor and began merging into one large mass that hunched before the teenager like a giant toad.

Get the girl, I said.

Nuh-huh, I'm not stepping into that screwy circle. You don't know her or owe her anything. She's got no character, no soul you can see. Why do you keep doing this? You can't care about her.

I just…

You don't, no one does. She's only meat on the floor, intended for the moment. She doesn't mean anything.

Shut up already.

Will you ever listen?

Nothing else to do but get it done. Conjuring Babylonian wards of protection-head back and arms out, pinkies precisely placed to cover the lifelines of my palms-I crossed the outer boundary of the Baphomet circle. Connecting with it was like tying into a conduit of fathomless anguish-and an overwhelming love of that anguish-as red mist reared about me.

Jaws of the corpses dropped open and cackled as the charnel beast formed of their flesh started sprouting heads now. Three semi-human, insectoid faces sprang from the belly of the eight-foot toad. Two pairs of arms extended from its viscous torso, those chitinous heads excitedly stirring. I picked up Mel's girl and backed away, feeling the majik trying to chew my skin off too. I dragged her outside the pentagram and wondered if running would do me any good.

Is that Arioch? I asked.

Yes, Self said, much calmer now than he should've been. That meant running wasn't going to work. A smile tugged his lips apart. The Bishop of Worms. I haven't seen it since the goblin market in Sepharvain.

Maybe you can reminisce.

An ally of thoughtful Adramelech, Chancellor of Hades, Keeper of the Wardrobe. Watch out for the wings. It doesn't use them for flying.

Get over here and help me.

I am here and helping you, Self said. I always am.

Arioch. Impossible-these simpleton Satanists couldn't have called Lord Arioch from its sixty regions. I scanned the badly drawn chalk circle again for signs of hidden names of power, a subliminal commandment of the Infernal, or some obscure or coincidental incantation of the Lightbringer's echelon. I couldn't spot anything. The Bishop of Worms hopped forward with great scraping noises, four flaming hands stuffed with killing strokes.

Every eye on those three heads gazed at me in fury, each mouth working at once. Its voice contained multitudes, composed of the voices of half a million human and animal souls-I heard kids and women in there, dogs, cattle, and impaled ravens, the elderly evil and misbegotten, wailing beyond its words.

"And so," it said. "Am I a piece to be moved about in mortal games now, Necromancer?"

"There's been a mistake. I have no quarrel with you, Prince Arioch."

Something like a snicker-myriads of whines and yelps-escaped its throats. Razor-sharp wings sprouted from its sides, expanding to the entire width of the cellar and leaving gouges in the stone walls, buzzing as those four hands worked spells I couldn't comprehend. "I'll not be party to your gambit."

"I-"

"Why have you tried my patience so? You and your brethren need to be made an example."

"My brethren?"

"You've finally called forward your death, children of oblivion."

"Now you're just being mean," I said. Black flames of hexes filled my own fists, motes of energy rising to encircle my eyes. "I didn't call you at all." In the back of my mind Self pleaded with me to leave the girl and make a dash for it, knowing I wouldn't.

"You are the impetus for this travesty, and for that alone I shall set a quarter region of Pandemonium aside for you." Twelve thousand torturers reserved throughout eternity, just for me.

Kathy Rumsey's features had been taffy-pulled along Arioch's back, widened ten times farther, but those laugh lines and that cute overbite were still plainly visible. Arioch appraised me, and I could sense the ego within the Bishop of Worms. As slayer of a hundred thousand Arab soldiers in the deserts of Medain Sali, next in line as Chancellor of Hades, he did not act without prudence. I spun mystic litany webs about the room hoping to hold it back long enough to get the infant and teenager out. Why had it mentioned my brethren?

"Give me a life and I'll leave this damnable plane for the moment, in peace," Arioch said in all its conflicting voices. "Settle your own debts. You can afford no less."

"You've taken two lives already."

"Voluntary husks tender no pleasure, nor payment."

In a fashion, the Bishop of Worms was right. An Infernal of his stature asking-not even commanding anymore, but asking-for a single life was an incredibly polite gesture. Offering to depart without further murders proved a testament to Adramelech's influence. Even in hell chancellors were devout on keeping peace.

"How about a couple of cats?" I asked.

A maelstrom of baying and shrieks immediately crammed the basement. Arioch's many faces and fingers and teeth pointed at me. "I'll have the maimed female child now, for further disfigurement, or you condemn and forfeit ten others to me."

Do it, do it, Self urged from the window. It'll all work out . . . don't put yourself through this anymore. This isn't your burden or trial.

Its mine and yours too.

Will you trust me for once?

Like hell.

"Sorry," I said to a prince of hell. "Still no good."

Arioch's three heads opened in frustration, mandibles and pincers snapping as loudly as clashing swords. It straggled forward and cried, "Your damnable kind does not deny me!"

I pulled back my arms and drove hexes straight into its middle face, black and fiery spells pouring off its cheeks in splashes of flame and embers. The weight of history is always upon us. Words ran roughly over my lips in the same way the Knights Templar sang during the Crusades, before the Bishop of Worms orchestrated King Philip IV of France's condemnation of the order. Hundreds of the knights took their mystical secrets to the stake. That voice of screams split apart, and among the separate screeches I heard my dead enemies, inhumanly thin whispers, and Grand Master Templar Jacques de Molay's curses as he burned.

Malevolence slithered in there pretending to be Danielle.

She said, "Come for me. Find me, love."

I lunged as jagged green and blue charges of arcana flashed between us. Those incredibly sharp wings whizzed over my head, hunting to slash through my neck. Its blazing arms caught me flush in the chest and my teeth slammed together on my tongue.

Arioch said, "You've much to learn."

"Don't I know it." I coughed, grimacing, and trying to put my burning shirt out.

Its hands dimmed, the unknown incantations skittering about the room, cold and impenetrable. Those arms grabbed me and changed beyond color to the distorted silver of a mirror. Prince Arioch hauled me into the air, hungry to add my flesh to its transient body, but I managed to frantically kick free.

I flew backward into the corner and felt something crack hideously in my lower back. I drew breath to scream and the Bishop of Worms yanked Walt out of his stroller and pressed the child's mouth over mine.

Get over here, damn you!

Shhh, I am, Self said.

Visions clashed with memories and my brain came apart in shreds.

She was there, my love, alive in my arms-in the past, where we swung out of the parking lot at the prom and headed for the pond, and impossibly in the near future. The coven circled us as always, acting on their own delights in the old covenstead, lost in common depravity, with the priests shivering behind their pews again. Breath of God filled my lungs and launched into my mind. Eyes rolling back into my skull, the pure yet hazy breach of the future tinged my laughter with shrieks. Walt dropped off my face like a bloated spider.

I rolled, trying not to think, pressing the visions away as the skeletons of the Rumsey's clattered together in a bedlam of ancient unholy tunes. Flopping forward, I rolled into the Baphomet pentagram tasting blood and chalk as Arioch laughed a thousand snickers and guffaws, not all of which were disgusting. The Bishop of Worms lifted its bulk to smash my spine, that stolen toad meat returning to color and hopping high against the ceiling to shatter timber.

Snow wafted in through the broken window, dappling the dead. I rose to my knees, thinking, She'll be with me again somehow, and I felt bones in my chest grating horribly. Flickering arcana swirled about the cellar like leaves in the wind. I called, I could use a little help and heard echoes of Persian oaths and chewing sounds. My vision swam and I couldn't find Self. Faces of Arioch made tsking noises like a disappointed father needing to punish a child further. Others tsked within it as well, Danielle's cries ringing through clearly.

"Stop it!" I shouted. My hexes whirled and picked up speed slinging through the air, winding in faster and faster until they struck with a burst of putrid yellow liquid and hissed steam, igniting that skin.

Graveyard musk spilled from the Bishop of Worms, an intoxicating mix of jasmine, fried hair, and souls frying. Arioch bellowed, the wing and arms on its left side torn off. Unable to stand, I finally focused on Self and saw him nibbling something, with ropes of fat trailing down his chin. He gave one last crunching champ of his fangs, smiled beatifically, and scrambled to me.

Scorching and sinewy, Arioch's fury was palpable, the oppressive fetor of carnage thickening around us until Self bopped in front of the prince of sixty regions and said, Hey, Chief, got a minute to spare?

Now a few puzzled gasps gurgled up within that dreaded voice. Arioch responded with a string of damnations. Danielle wept, "Come for me, love," and my throat closed. Eventually Arioch's three sets of pincers drew into repulsive displays of humor. Self spoke quietly, doubled over giggling at times, and clasped a reassuring arm around the grotesque toad. His claws caressed the Bishop of Worms' oozing flesh, and he occasionally licked the wounds I'd inflicted.

I could see the sweat fall from my second self's upper lip, those curved fangs beaming but ready to rip if necessary. At least I hoped so. Arioch nodded gravely, and moaned when Self's tongue touched a particularly sensitive area. It snorted in my direction and said, "You've strained my armistice with mortality further this night, Necromancer. Many will eventually perish in your stead. Think upon that with your human conscience, at what you've seen and have yet to live and suffer. I will take ten lives presently, and mention your name to their ghosts so that they might find you."

Mouths still frozen open in that threat, its chitinous heads dissolved from the top to the bottom, those blended organs and tissues now discarded and melting as Arioch's essence fled. Stretched but nearly whole, the Rumsey's' skins draped sideways across their skeletons before liquefying into a puddle of viscous ooze.

You two are friends? I asked. The pain had me trembling badly.

It owed me from the Goblin Market, and has learned to pay its debts. It had a fling with my mother and I didn't tell its wife.

Why not?

He didn't answer. Certain secrets continued to be kept, boundaries uncrossed, although I could never be sure which were his and which could be mine.

Self uttered a low chuckle that drove deep, making me squirm even more as the agony in my back corkscrewed up through my brain and skewered it. He sprang and caught Walt's body by the neck, claws spearing that chubby belly, tearing as he ate, and then climbed inside the shell. Relax, the kid was already long dead. Walt unwound layer by layer like his parents, the child's corpse leaking dark goblin ichor. The dead baby had actually been used as a disguise. For a djinn.

No wonder the breath of God had been upon me. Djinn learn the future by eavesdropping on the angels, but why had Arioch damned me in this fashion?

Why was I destined to meet my brethren once more?

"So," I hissed. "It's been a game the whole time."

This stinks big time. We've been set up to take the heat. He said it as if he was enraged, but I could tell the fun and excitement was there too.

Crawling, I tried to grab hold of the wall and haul myself up, but I couldn't make it to my feet and slid facedown against the cold stone floor, groaning. I'd bitten through my tongue and my mouth filled with blood. Self wouldn't budge, continuing to maul and wash himself in the boy's remains, until I couldn't fight the pain anymore and was forced to ask.

Please help me, I begged.

But of course.

It had come to this before, the acknowledgment of need. I always hated seeing that grandiose look in his eyes, the arrogant smile so similar to my own. Is this what my love had seen in me? Self said, I'm here. He climbed out of Walt's chest and clambered across my shoulders, tore open my shirt, and lovingly licked and kissed my shattered back, claws prodding away the agony like acupuncture.

His invocations were in different archaic languages every time, as if he didn't want me to learn them. I moaned in relief, his palms gently massaging ruptured muscle. He kept thinking of what he wanted to do to Mel's girl, as if I might consider rewarding him with more blood. He stuck a pinkie into my mouth and scratched at my tongue until it fused together. Vertebrae and slipped discs audibly snapped back into place while I held in more screams, his healing hands and love mending me.

Thanks.

Always my pleasure.

When I could function again I brought the girl upstairs. I laid her on the couch in the living room and bundled her in crocheted blankets, untied the copper wires, and did my best to massage circulation back into her limbs. Maybe with a lot of therapy her hands and feet wouldn't be a total loss. Her breathing was shallow and erratic, heartbeat somewhat arrhythmic. Highly stylized sigil scars and glyph burns would forever mark her for other attentive demons to notice, but she'd make it for now. Using the phone in the kitchen I dialed 911 and left the receiver off the hook.

Self danced down the hallway to the bedroom and cried, Yowzah! What's with the penguin?

Bridgett sat on the bed dressed in a nun's full habit, with the cats curled in her lap, drinking a White Russian.

No wonder she'd smelled of church. I should've recognized it from the start but I'd fought too hard to forget. God's breath told me I was going back. Her leather coat had been thrown over a settee near the door. I touched it and it was dry. She'd been in the house the entire time.

She wore her habit the way folks at costume parties wear their clothes from the 1970s-as kitsch. Bridgett lifted her glass in a toast, gave an utterly false sloe-eyed gaze, and patted the covers beside her. "You did quite well," she said. "I think you deserve a reward."

Self clapped happily and said, Thanks, baby, I knew I could count on you! The beauty of blasphemy and depravity drove him nearly out of his gourd.

I grabbed her by the wrists and yanked her to her feet until our noses touched. "So you're the real executor behind tonight's display."

She laughed in my face until the killing hexes seeped from my hands. "Hey now," this wife of God novitiate said. "None of that."

"Who are you?"

"Very admirably handled. Apparently going rogue hasn't diminished any of your skills. We weren't altogether sure you'd survive the encounter with Prince Arioch."

I knew who she meant when she said "we" and I sucked the last drops of blood from my torn tongue down my throat, enjoying the taste.

Under her skirts skittered her familiar. Rosary beads bounced as the demon climbed up her chest to suck at her witch's teat, a tiny misshapen nipple near her collarbone. Colorless fluid dripped from her teat as the familiar finished feeding and worked its way out of the garments to sit on the brim of her habit, kissing those luscious lips. It cocked its head at me, crimson eyes glazed, with a smile that twisted with a hundred curved teeth.

Self yipped that name again and now I recognized the word: Thummim. An icy shiver worked up into my hairline.

Self said, Mom?

Bridgett's jaw line jutted even farther, showing off the sweet angle of her neck. That juicy mouth kept trying to draw me in like Baphomet. The migraine hit at once, white-hot spikes driving into my forehead.

I let out a grunt and she grinned. "Jebediah sent me, but you already know that. Your days as a solitary are at an end. He wants you back and the new coven isn't complete without you. We need our Master Summoner. Say yes and we'll help you raise that bitch Danielle from the dead."