A Lower Deep

by Tom Piccirilli

  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 o
f 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."

  Chapter Two

  Somewhere between Mullen and Lincoln, Nebraska, tooling east into the dawn on the dark expanse of I-73, Brenda Hasselman pulled her eighteen-wheeler Blue Moon iron box sharply into a truck stop.

  Six diesel islands lay as empty as the four hundred miles and half dozen weigh stations beforehand. She said, "Listen, if you don't start making a little conversation soon I'm gonna boot your ass out right here. And believe me, this coffeepot called Myra's Home Cookin' ain't the place to find yourself thumbing at five in the morning. Myra's real name is Freddy Calhoun and once he starts talkin' about Oswald you got to hear it all. The Mafia, Monroe, Ruby and the Mexicans, KGB, and how it was LBJ himself really up in the book depository. This is the last stop for me until I slide into Aurora and get my six hours' sleep. I'm not asking for a life story, y'understand, but I'm not especially fond of silence. Reminds me of my tight-lipped ex-husband. That man couldn't string a simple sentence together between two cans of beer."

  With ratty sneakers and oily duck hunter neon jacket, Brenda Hasselman cut anything but an imposing figure even inside her own Kenworth cab. She drove wearing huge gloves that made her look like a little girl dressed in her father's clothes. She had a kind but aggressively high pitched voice that brought derisive comments from the night radio chatter every time she picked up the mike.

  She had the mark of fire on her forehead, the touch of Iblees, king of the Djinn. Jebediah and the others took great pride in matters of detail and had already set my course. I either fought or followed, and the breath of God allowed me the advantage of already knowing what I would do. Brenda Hasselman was just another part of the fetch, a way to see me home again.