A Lower Deep

by Tom Piccirilli

  Self dropped from Bridgett's chest and folded around my throat, licking the drops of blood off my upper lip.

  How does your mother fit into all this? I asked.

  Perfectly.

  Tell me, damn it.

  I have.

  The nine murdered coveners whispered and hissed, sounding even more hideous than Arioch's voice of the endless damned.

  Jebediah could barely contain his excitement, a nervous jitter in his step. "Won't it be delightful to see them all again?"

  "You're insane," I said, and he burst out laughing.

  We stood before the crypts of our brethren, feeling them in the air around us.

  Rachel and Janus, both pregnant, she with their child and him stuffed with the yoke of Fuceas, demon earl in charge of thirty regions. Both of them lying at the feet of Danielle as she tried to carry them to safety, their bloated abdomens bursting.

  The triplets Diana, Faun, and Abiathar, caring more for wine and women's roller derby than the teachings of the friars who'd raised them. At once they were geniuses at the craft but also hopelessly divided over their cause. The widening fissure between their conflicting beliefs cost them their lives as the three of them, drunk and brawling that last hour, hip-checked one another into oblivion.

  Griffin, Keeper of the Salamanders, a firebug completely intoxicated by flame. He'd finally allowed his appetite to get the best of him and burned down a children's leukemia hospital before arriving late to the sabbat. He'd been the first to die, drooling flame, with my blade between his ribs. The fire had poured out of his chest while his dying angry gaze softened, both of us surrounded by the vengeful ghosts of children.

  Elijah, who'd loved Danielle almost more than I had. He wanted me dead as much as he wished to face his namesake, the most holy of prophets.

  And retarded giant Herod, the only real innocent, who'd known what would happen long before it did, but none of us had listened.

  A slab had been set in the empty tenth vault with Danielle's name chiseled on it, as if Jebediah still wafted for a time when he could recover her from a grave full of my protective charms in Calvary. I didn't need anyone else to raise Danielle. I'd had my chances before and I knew it wasn't worth the price. Like my father, she would never be the same. Too much of her soul had fled, and I didn't dare discover what remained. It might be too much like her to resist. I'd stopped her own teenage sister from digging at her majik-steeped grave, bent on revenge.

  Elijah's living hatred swelled in the darkness. Jebediah shoved at the slab and it creaked aside with a hollow roll that echoed throughout the tombs. He reached into the crypt and, like a careful lover, placed his hands gently against a shadow within and drew it into the light. It was a woman's body.

  With his split tongue slipping out both sides of his mouth, Gawain made a sound of caution at the back of his throat.

  Jebediah's beatific smile grew only mildly more sadistic as he spun to show me his hands, moving his fingers down the cream-colored angles of flesh inch by inch, pressing against golden hair and burrowing as though digging though graveyard dirt.

  "What game is this?" I hissed.

  At last, after another anxious moment, he revealed the face of my lost love, Danielle.

  The edges of my vision turned black, then red, and I crumpled. "Oh my Christ, you bastard."

  "I got her for you."

  Dani. All our nights together, the wash of the pond, and the shouts of our fathers. My life, my girl in her crypt now as beautiful as ever, somehow remaining as perfect as always. God, I never could have expected this. My broken charms lay strewn about her corpse like the petals of her prom corsage. Even with his new coven it must've taken him a thousand hours of fiddling with my safeguard spells to unearth her. But he'd been willing to do it.

  "Aren't you pleased?"

  My father skipped from foot to foot, clapping and chuckling as the bells on him rang. He kept going, "Woo woo, woo woo." He seemed to recall Danielle as he peered into the tomb, or perhaps he only remembered that part of his life before the paint, back when he lent me the car on Friday nights to take her to the movies. He'd died trying to save Dani as much as me. He'd been damned himself for nearly as many reasons as I'd been, and I wasn't sure which of us had proven to be the greater failure.

  Now he had another role to play. Our ill-fated coven deserved a doomed mascot. Maybe he saw himself the way he was meant to be-dead in his coffin, at rest, a fool perhaps but not a harlequin. Gawain tried to calm him, both of them making gurgling noises.

  Bridgett said, "She's not that pretty."

  Jebediah stroked his sparse goatee, his eyes almost bleeding his obsessions without any discernment. Perhaps in heaven one sin really was just as bad as another. But not here, Jesus no.

  Dry heaves backed me up to the other side of the crypts. That freezing slate felt white-hot against my neck. I staggered back to Dani, and though my hand trembled I managed to touch her arm. Her flesh was neither warm nor cold. I could barely keep from climbing up onto the slab with her. The ancient words were already on my tongue because I so desperately wanted to raise her now.

  I croaked, "Let her go. Let them all go."

  "That's not what you truly want."

  "Jebediah-"

  "I didn't actually bring you back here, you know. You simply accepted your fate as it's entwined with mine. You have the enlightenment and knowledge to aid me in our quest."

  "What quest?" My father shambled along beside me, trying to stroke Dani's hair. "You don't need me," I said. "You have a new coven."

  "Not quite. I've got my eye on a young necromancer who is quite powerful, but remains untested. You'll meet him eventually. Regardless, no one in this age has your skills as a summoner, not even me, and I need your help in raising one other dead man."

  "Who? Who's worth all of this?"

  "We're going to force Christ into returning to earth a little faster than he'd apparently like."

  Self giggled and said, Way cool!

  Insanity like a dream holds its own internal reality. Besides vision one needed belief-truth, if necessary, would follow later. The thought tickled me. Jebediah DeLancre, lord of the djinn and of everyone I'd ever loved-in sheer audacity, if there was anybody capable of being father to God, it was he. Telling Jebediah that he was insane would only be repeating myself.

  He said, "You know it isn't out of the question. He was a man."

  "Ascended bodily to Heaven."

  "I think not. Study my research. There are volumes I own that you've only heard of in rumors and legend. Imagine what comprehension and insight he holds on the Sephiroth and Sephirah, on the Infernal hierarchies and the lowest circles, and God Himself."

  "You don't want to do this."

  "We could force our way into paradise and sit at His left hand." That tooth shone against his lip like the spear point used to stab Christ in the side. "It's why we need to raise our coven again. I need their aid from the other side, to bring Christ closer to us. They're already near. You'll need blood."

  "No," I said, at last understanding what the game was, and who the players were. I moved but wasn't going to make it in time. He'd already drawn his athame from his vest pocket, and with one fluid stroke he cut Bridgett's throat.

  Her eyes widened in shock but there was something else there too as she stared at Jebediah and the knife, fingers coming up to toy with the heaving flaps of slashed flesh at her throat. I suppose she'd been half expecting him to murder her the entire time.

  Bridgett pirouetted and flopped over into Gawain's arms. Blood geysered and spattered Danielle's burial dress. Thummim danced beneath the arching stream, and Self too fed on her arterial spray, gulping loudly. They hugged each other with their mouths open, mother and son sharing quality time, the power of corrupted blood flowing through us all.

  "Why so unhappy?" Jebediah asked. "You would've had to kill her soon enough yourself. She had a few mannerisms that reminded me of Danielle. I'm sure you noticed as well. Odd, wasn't it?
So different but with so many of the same attributes, and her ploy worked. She wasn't particularly adept despite her sensual glamour. Believe me, her sexual promises were exaggerated boasts."

  My back teeth clacked together. It was a setup, all right.

  Would you rather be dead?

  "This isn't about Christ," I said. "You simply want to be with Peck in the Crown again."

  Jebediah ignored me. Gawain held Bridgett and surprised me by actually weeping, his alabaster skin streaked with red. Death he understood but betrayal did not exist in his brutally honest mind. Her sex poured in a puddle surrounding him. Gawain was perhaps the most noble of our coven, or merely the least hampered by being human. He remained something that was both more and less than the rest of us: the child, the beast, and the sage evolved beyond any hint of the commonplace. His seared eyes searched for me, mouth aquiver with tears as he growled his dissatisfaction with these events unfolding. It scared the hell out of me because I knew that if this was enough to make him cry, then we were into something awful.

  Jebediah scribbled symbols before Gawain's face, explaining himself. "She's not the Maiden of the new Coven. I've found someone substantially more talented."

  "I can hardly wait to meet her," I said.

  "You will on Oimelc, the Feast of Lights. Well have the glory we once did. Danielle will live again on Oimelc. Whole, as she was. As you and all of us loved her."

  "That's impossible."

  "I've tracked and collected each portion of her soul. She can be yours, alive, the way she was meant to be, if only you'll rejoin me. Think of it. Your love in your arms, with the chance for true happiness, even a family. That's all you've been dreaming of these last ten years."

  "You maniac, you've no shame at all."

  He pulled back his arm and slapped me with a palm covered with Bridgett's blood, then backhanded me, and did it again. "Now summon them, damn you! That's all you've ever been good for! Call them! Do what you must!"

  I did.

  I summoned myself.

  With my arms outstretched and hands flat against the icy tombs, the waves of energy pounded and revolved about me. My words were clear in an amalgam of antediluvian languages, both human and non-human. Self fell over quivering, caught up in the maelstrom. Thummim rocked him, squealing. I wondered what Christ might actually say to us face-to-face, and how jealous God would become, and whether we'd ever be forgiven.

  So close, my love. Our forgotten youth, the feel of your thigh on my cheek, the way I dragged you into an abyss of my own making. If only my father had possessed a bit more foresight, or been a little stronger, maybe we all would have survived our pursuits.

  I called forth friends and enemies alike. Elijah's ghost had its hands in front of my face trying to show me something that swayed before my eyes. Maybe it was his heart, maybe someone else's. His mammoth rage was red.

  Jebediah had shrouded his soul within the heart of the dead coven, hiding among those he'd destroyed. I shouted, "You goddamned coward!" and snagged a silver cord in my psychic teeth. Janus and his children from Fuceas urged me on. Snapping first one, then another and another, I watched the ghosts kicking and stirring. All the while I made entreaties to Azreal to release their spirits. Jebediah hadn't expected anyone to toy with his own incantations, and he looked startled seeing me snarling in the crypts. Self realized my intent and worked at the tangled spells. Relax, relax, I'm here, he said. Leave this to me. Continue, get on with it.

  I did. Griffin, Keeper of the Salamanders, had forgiven me, and helped unsnarl the souls. I cut the other lines but my coven didn't stray far, no matter how hard I shoved them off toward the afterlife. This wasn't going to work. What a waste. I locked gazes with my father and reached for him, praying that he was still in there and would remember, for a minute, our lives before the madness brought him here to his own murder.

  I held out my hand and said, "Dad?" My father bit me.

  My blood dripped into the pool of Bridgett's blood on the ground. It was my will that coursed here, my resolution and no one else's. Nice thinking, Self said, but are you sure you know what you're doing?

  Let's hope so.

  I am. I do.

  I called forward what I needed. My father guffawed and capered around the tombs. Thummim sat on his head and spun around with him. The sweet scent of maleficia and rage filled the crypt, and in the House of DeLancre I could hear the walking corpses shrieking in fear.

  Far too late Jebediah cried, "Wait . . . !"

  The doorway to the altar filled with shadow.

  And standing before us, smiling in all his sadistic eminence once again, strumming his lute and covered in snow, and with his hatred for witches and family as tangible as the six hundred people he'd once sent to the stake, stood the perverted witch killer Pierre DeLancre.

  Chapter Five

  Self said, Pierre, my man, lookin' dapper. Play us a new tune. Something with a backbeat.

  The witch-hunter had learned from the progeny that had enslaved him all these centuries. He played his lute and all the raped and slain women from the Basque danced to his melodies once more: they remained his captives as much as he was theirs. I shied from his evil, not just the depravity from which he'd climbed, but what had come along with him. Spirits crammed the crypts, so many of Jebediah's line that he sought his face in all of them. The dead governor had followed Pierre from the mansion and now swung arm in arm with my father to deranged ballads. The tombs filled stuffed to bursting with the horrors of Jebediah's family.

  As Pierre approached, Jebediah whimpered, "No."

  I'd have to say that the boy is seriously pissed.

  "Stop the Fetch, Jebediah," I told him. "Release Danielle and my father, and I'll send Pierre on his way."

  His jagged lips crawled. "And you called me a maniac.

  All those wicked thoughts and feelings caged within Pierre DeLancre these hundreds of years now roiled in his burning eyes. For a face that hadn't grinned in centuries his mouth now parted in a distorted smile to show black teeth. The skin of his face snapped and ripped because it had grown so taut over time.

  Only one word escaped him, with the fury and lovingly obsessive passion that had made him a legend across history. His vicious, psychotic laughter rolled crazily in the back of his throat until finally he spat. "Witches!"

  Even as his master I shivered at that voice. Jebediah grew nearly as pale as Gawain, his scars standing out like flames. He wasn't only scared of Pierre's vengeance but also of all those demented souls of his ancestors. What confessions might they drag from him?

  Those dead ancestors that Pierre DeLancre carried on his back wheeled and flowed across the crypt and pummeled Jebediah. They'd watched him, they knew him, and they were privy to every secret and failure and fear. The House railed and roared with iniquity and cruel humor. No guilt was beyond their grasp, no hidden dread could remain concealed. Jebediah might enjoy confronting his victims, and might even delight in defying God, but his own family surrounding him now simply reminded him too much of himself.

  Who's brave enough to face that?

  Self curled around my throat, waiting for the action to really get going, with a witch-killer on the loose again. C'mon, Pierre, let's clean it up once and for all!

  Jebediah handled it better than I would've thought. He held out for another few moments, the cold sweat streaming from his forehead as they approached. His muscles tensed and he wet his ragged lips with the tip of his tongue. His burn scars darkened.

  "Get rid of them!" he cried. "The Fetch is off! Iblees will mark your step no longer."

  "Let go of Danielle and my father."

  "I can't."

  "Then screw off."

  "I can't! Our destinies are too snarled. Take your father with you if you like, he doesn't amuse me anymore. But Dam must stay. She's a part of us. And no matter how much you argue the fact you know I'm not lying to you."

  Pierre DeLancre, killer of hundreds of witches, turned to look at me, and his eyes
were crammed full of hatred. He didn't want to go anywhere. Pierre and his ladies drifted back a step and then another, unfurling as time took its natural course, and he faded to dust in the midst of all the women of the Basque he'd raped, who now stamped on his ashes and cursed me.

  We could find our gods and even speak to them if they weren't too deaf or indifferent; we could hide inside our greatest joys and successes, but no matter how much time went by or how much blood ran we could never extricate ourselves from our own dead pasts.

  "Betrayer," he said.

  "Now that's a good one."

  I backhanded him and he smacked me and I backhanded him to the floor. Despite all our power, all the deaths and dreams having already cut us to pieces, it still only came down to two men slapping the hell out of each other.

  He raised his bloody face and struggled, like Christ. "Oimelc, the Feast of Lights sabbat, is in six weeks. You'll be back."

  "No, I won't, Jebediah."

  "We'll be waiting for you, our Master Summoner. The breath of God has already shown you the way and the truth."

  "We make our own truth. That's why you're so sick." I scrawled fire before Gawain's face and said, "You can come along if you want, Gawain." He looked at me as if I were an even bigger fool than my father. Thummim waved to my second self, black tears dribbling down her coarse face, but that mouth still tilted into a knowing smile.

  Jebediah leaned heavily against Danielle's tomb and spun away, dismissing me without even a gesture. "In six weeks, then."

  I left the tombs and walked to the northeast of the covenstead, working through the thickets on a downhill grade past the pine and sage as my father stumbled along behind me. I grabbed a handful of snow and tried to wash his face, only to realize that the black-and-white harlequin paint was actually a mystical tattoo. It would take me a long time to get rid of it, if I could at all. We stared at each other and he leered and made nipping motions.