A Lower Deep

by Tom Piccirilli

  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.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I walked the Via Dolorosa at dawn.

  Dominated by the TempleMount, called the Haram by the Muslims, the OldCity was split into separate quarters: Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Armenian. Churches showed the architectural touches of the Byzantine and Crusader eras. Eight gates in the wall of Suleyman the Magnificent opened to the smell of spices and the sound of meuzzins calling Muslims to prayer.

  Along with hundreds of others, I'd spent hours last night outside the hotel watching the firefighters and rescue crews battle the blaze. They carried out the wounded and the dead by the dozens. Someone covered me in a sheet and police questioned me at length. The investigators wouldn't be able to determine that the fire originated in my room. The salamanders had scattered flames all across the building so that it went up simultaneously on several different floors.

  They cared a great deal about my passport. Members of the American Consulate appeared and asked more questions and made assurances. I was given a gratis room in a different hotel. Somebody brought me some clothes that didn't fit and Self handed over his poker money so I could get some that did.

  Now I stood before the Golden Gate, called the gate of mercy, which is situated on the eastern wall of the TempleMount. It was sealed by the Turks hundreds of years ago because of Jewish tradition that the messiah would return through it after traveling from the east over the Mount of Olives. Now it opened toward the mount and the Garden of Gethsemane. Self stared into the distance as if he could see Jesus walking toward us through all of history.

  He sniffed and said, He came this way.

  Christ?

  Herod. And Griffin.

  And Jebediah, I was certain. He wouldn't have been able to pass up this place of murder. King Solomon's Temple stands alongside the Muslim mosque called the Dome of Rock. Archangel Gabriel carried Muhammad to heaven from there. It's also the place where Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son. Jebediah would have pressed his forehead to the ground, dreaming of an exposed throat offered before heaven, the curved blade edging into the child's skin.

  Power calls to power, blood to blood.

  David captured the city from the Jebusites in 1000 B.C. It had been conquered and destroyed by everyone from Nebuchadnezzar to Hadrian. There was more bone in this dust than in any other place in the world, and men like Jebediah could put it to use.

  Men like him and me.

  Israeli flags flew in the Muslim quarter as Jewish Fundamentalist Nationalists gained a foothold by moving into houses in that part of town. The wailing wall comprises the western retaining wall of Solomon's Temple, the only remaining structure still standing from the original shrine. It is the holiest of sites, say the Jews, for it is there where the living God remains.

  I could feel the energy throbbing in the stone, but whether from God or from the shrieking faith of misled men, I didn't know.

  North of the Haram is the Via Dolorosa, the Way of Sorrows, where Jesus dragged the cross into Calvary. It ends at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, erected by Constantine, the first Christian Roman Emperor, and built over the site of Golgotha, the place of the skull, where Christ and thousands of other men were crucified. To the east of the church is Gethsemane, in which he was kissed by a betrayer and the soldiers came for him while his disciples slept. Jebediah would like the idea that the land itself was tainted with treachery. In his own fashion, he had quite the Christ-complex. So did I.

  The bazaars were already busy, the city awake and bustling, selling meat and vegetables, leather, jewelry, pottery, and perfume. The sun was strong and beat down harshly against my fresh pink skin. There was no wind.

  Self kept trying to peek under skirts, the heat working on him as well. His thoughts kept veering, circling through the ages, from hell's bedlam to his growing need to lash his tongue against the succulent wound of a torn thigh. My fingers trembled. Nausea swept in low, and within seconds grew so bad that I nearly doubled over.

  I said, Stop, and he merely looked at me.

  What's that?

  Quit dreaming of blood.

  Say again?

  Of red bellies…

  I'm not.

  … and ripped knees, the taste of pale-

  I'm not, he said, sounding calm and perhaps even concerned. You are.

  My fingers kept twitching as the smiles of women turned toward me and then turned away again. A tic in my neck kept going for another minute as sweat coursed through my regrown eyebrows. The nausea finally faded.

  You all right? he asked, looking so much like me that I didn't know where I was-here staring at him or over there gazing back at someone just as familiar.

  I glanced into my palm and saw that my new hand had a different lifeline that could barely be seen. I wondered how much of this remade body ha
d been born from him.

  Come on, I said.

  Not the stations of the cross. They're so friggin' boring. And besides, Golgotha calls.

  Of course it does.

  I walked the Way of the Cross. Scholars argued the actual path-even if the Via Dolorosa wasn't it, enough blood had been spilled here to make Self overjoyed. He dove and rolled in the streets, licking the ancient stone and drinking eras until his drool was as black as the lost epochs. Like a child let loose in a candy shop, he soon grew sick to his stomach.

  This place gives me the creeps.

  Me too, actually.

  I could almost hear the loud, ugly scraping sound of Christ dragging his cross along these stones toward Golgotha, now the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

  There seemed to be as many tourists as there were citizens of the OldCity. Heads bowed, hands clasped, their song swelled for a moment and then droned on.

  Emperor Constantine the Great had a church erected on this site in A.D. 325. The buildings were destroyed and rebuilt several times through the centuries. Christians-especially Catholics and Greek Orthodox-believed that Christ was crucified on this spot and buried here. Many Protestants conjectured that Jesus was crucified on the hill near the Garden Tomb and buried nearby.

  I don't want to go in there.

  You just said that Golgotha calls.

  It does. For you, not me.

  Are you so sure?

  I'm gonna get myself a latte.

  The church was vast, with many rooms, chapels, murals, and holy areas. I entered the enormous main building, expecting a vast pulse of divine might, or at least a wave of psychic energy, but there wasn't much of either. Perhaps that meant something, or perhaps not. Maybe at its heart this church was no different from any other in the world. I walked along through the chambers and stood before the Chapel of the Nailing on the Cross, also known as the Eleventh Station.

  People roamed and whispered. Tourists videotaped the high walls, the altars, and the other faithful as if expecting them to perform in some way. Here were the meeting of the shallow and the mystical, eyes filled with awe and other vacuous gazes. I didn't know what to expect here or what I might be longing for. Perhaps I'd only come because Danielle had spoken of visiting. It was as honest a reason as any.

  A woman knelt at the altar in the chapel. I was about to leave when she turned to me and said, "Have you no idea where you are?"

  "Yes, I do."

  "Then don't you believe you should kneel?"

  Many others sat or stood in the chapel and throughout the church, but she'd singled me out. Her voice was soft, without an edge despite the rigid words.

  I knelt beside her. It had been a lifetime since I'd truly prayed. Not stating the demands of invocation or the rage of incantations, but offering simple prayer. It felt almost beyond me now. My thoughts were muddled and suddenly my heart began to hammer.

  Prayer never gave me any kind of strength. Instead it allowed all my frailty and weaknesses to surface. On my knees was when I wanted the most from God, and when my greed surged inside me and I felt the most neglected. I deserved something for my sacrifices. I had no need for yet another penance-the last ten years of my life had been nothing but one long atonement.

  She saw I was having trouble and reached out to grasp my arm. It was a friendly but strong touch. She squeezed once and let go. I clasped my hands together until my knuckles cracked and my fingernails drew blood. I could hear nothing but my own empty pleas, begging for the return of my love and a second chance at redemption.

  How could anyone kneel here in the place of the skull, where Christ himself had died in agony at the hands of his enemies, while his screams were ignored by his own father, and somehow expect God to listen to you?

  Red bellies, and the pale taste of-

  Perhaps it was fear or some other force, but I got off my knees with a savage heave.

  "If you don't believe, then why are you here?" she asked.

  "I do believe."

  "Then it must be your pride that makes you so uncomfortable?"

  She spoke with a slight Greek accent. Six Christian communities shared the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The Greek Orthodox were the landlords who rented this holy space by the inch. The Egyptians and Syrians leased a small section by the tomb. The Armenians had been here since A.D. 300, and the Catholics since the Crusades. The Ethiopians lived in a small monastery on the roof, and during Easter, while the others pushed and shoved each other here, they would dance and sing up there, without vanity or pride.

  I was starting to get a little annoyed. "Why are you asking?"

  "In this chapel, you must have no conceit."

  "Believe me, lady, if it's one thing I don't have, it's conceit."

  "The very fact that you should say such a thing proves you are a slave to it."

  She had lengthy black hair held back in a shawl, with cloudy dark eyes carrying the weight of other people's pain. I could imagine she came from a large family that had fought in uncountable wars across endless deserts. She may have buried her brothers or her husband or her father, but someone who had died for his faith.

  Or perhaps I was wrong and she was simply tired of working in the bazaar all morning, as she struggled to gather herself together enough and return home to ill parents or a crying infant.

  She swept aside her hair in a gesture that reminded me so much of Danielle that I felt a painful pull in my gut. She stared at me with a puzzled expression, but not an unkind one. Her head tilted and she blinked once, twice, not quite frowning but almost there. My breath grew shallow and I realized I was blushing. I looked away but she didn't, and after a moment I glanced at her again.

  I wondered if she'd reach to touch me once more, but she didn't. The stirring warmth became an almost soothing sense of arousal, here in the spot where the hammers rang against the spikes being driven into the flesh of Christ.

  She rose, crossed herself, and stared at me a long final moment before she turned on her heel and walked up the aisle and out the chapel.

  I waited for a while as the shadows twined across the floor and flashless cameras clicked and buzzed all around. My shoulders tightened and began to sag. My own dead past had a particular weight all its own whenever something hunted me down and came across me again.

  The scent of fresh-cut pine and sweet balms swept up from behind, and I knew I'd been found.

  "You aren't about to consider starting a romance now of all times, are you?" It was Fane.

  He looked obscene without his robes, so nervous in his identity as a man now, and not a monk, that I almost felt sorry for him. It isn't easy coming back to the world. The martyr played heavily in his face, but now there was a reason for it. He'd been subsumed by the role he'd once played.

  The pine splints around his legs poked out at odd angles beneath his trousers. He'd let his Vandyke grow out into an unkempt bush, but there were still the remnants of the two sharpened prongs hanging off the end of his chin. He'd become gaunt, and walked cautiously as if he might be knocked down from any direction. I knew the feeling. An odd swirl of odors enveloped him. He still enjoyed bathing in heavy oils, and he'd taken advantage of several Middle Eastern balms and ointments.

  Perhaps he'd come to learn that history could not be parceled out. Every breath had its consequence. He still didn't have the conviction of a soldier of God, but I could tell that the events on the mount had given him a new purpose. Of everyone on Magee Wails, he might well be the only one who'd actually gotten something beneficial from the destruction of the order.

  "I was sure you'd go back to selling shoes in Cincinnati."

  "That's why you so often make such significant mistakes. You really have no judgment of character."

  "I'm beginning to believe you're right. How is Cathy?"

  "Doing well."

  "And Eddie? And the baby?"

  "Eddie has fully recovered after his ordeal on Armon. Cathy named our baby Jean, after her grandmother."

  "I'm g
lad everyone is fine."

  He took another step closer and I could tell he wanted to get into it. "A month ago when I saw you last you had a small scar at the edge of your left eye. Now it's gone." He peered at me more closely. "How can you ever learn from your mistakes when you don't even carry your own scars?"

  "Do you really want to get into a conversation about wounds seen and unseen, and lessons that ought to be learned?"

  Despite his failings, Fane was a scrapper and wasn't about to back off. "Your life is full of ghosts."

  "Isn't everybody's?"

  He appeared surprised that I should think so. "No."

  "Enough of this. Is John with you?"

  "He's dead."

  I grimaced and let out a groan. Red lights blinked on camcorders pointed in our direction. I drew sigils and threw a hex so they'd get nothing but static. My anger welled and I reached behind me to scratch at the stone wall of the chapel. I wished for some vision or message to come down through the rock, and to be heard in the murmur of the two millennia since Christ perished.

  "He didn't hang himself either," Pane said. "He left the mount with Janice and me and our family, and we went to Ohio. I don't know what he intended to do there or what kind of life he was hoping to find. I'm not sure I could've learned to sell shoes again, but I was willing to try. His third day in Cincinnati he was run over by a cab. If you laugh I'll kill you."

  He'd drawn a stiletto and had the point wedged under my ear.

  I thought about breaking his arm in three places, but this melodrama only proved that he'd loved the abbot deeply, and I sort of admired him for it. Irony mattered just as much to a witch as symbolism, and it was never anything to laugh at.

  "Your judgment isn't very good either, Fane."

  "I know," he said, pulling his one nice trick so that his voice came down from all around, high near the church ceiling. "It's true." The words swung between us, circling and swimming. Along with them came the distant echoes of his out-of-control Harley, the shattering glass, and a woman's shrieks.