A Lower Deep Read online

  Get me out of here.

  I hadn't moved an inch. There was no place to move. The trapdoor opened.

  My second self said, Well, that was a stupid-ass waste of time. What did you forget in that place?

  Not a thing.

  I was stiff and sore, but I finally knew why Gawain was here.

  My father put his whole head into the stoup and blew bubbles in the holy water. It reminded me of when he taught me to swim in our backyard pool, and our dogs paddled beside him and his skin was bronzed by the sun. No amount of blessed water could wash the harlequin stains from his face.

  Self thought it looked kind of fun. He clambered up the stoup and tried to do it too, but my father hogged the bowl. They giggled and splashed each other. The tiny bells tinkled until my brain rang with them.

  I said, Are you sure the baby's safe?

  Pop's a pretty fun guy! Not like he used to be.

  Sometimes the despair came in too low and fast. It slid under my guard to skewer me so deeply that I didn't know if I was dead or alive anymore. A moan started to ease up my throat but I managed to swallow it in time. My body bucked as if making a stab for a life that no longer-and might never have-existed. My legs went wobbly and then the surge of grief crested and passed.

  The girl?

  As safe as she can be, he said.

  Gawain, as ever, stood patient and relaxed, free from the turmoil of dull sentience. His parents had prepared him from birth for excursions like these. They'd trained him by driving him out of his mind. They'd punctured his eardrums, put out his eyes, and sliced his tongue apart. By detaching him from himself they'd loosed him from the sensual world and left him to explore that enormity beyond the common touch. He lived in that darkness, disassociated from the rest of us.

  A part of me had always been intensely envious of him. He remained the paragon in repose. He was blessed because no blessing would ever matter to him.

  He gazed at me with those blank eyes, awaiting my resolve.

  "All right, Gawain. You lead, I'll follow."

  I pried the jar with Eddie's heart in it from the boy's arms and hid it in the vestibule. I set seven charms with seven locks and seven wards around the pottery. I wasn't going to make it easy for the mount to take this particular pound of flesh.

  I opened the oubliette. Gawain stepped inside it easily, without bending or ducking. He slipped into the blackness of the dungeon box and faded until I couldn't see the back of his white hair anymore. I pulled my father's dripping face from the stoup and urged him toward the murder hole. He got down on his hands and knees and stuck his head into the trap. He made funny noises and did something he could never have done in life-he laughed at himself. Self snickered and prodded my Dad in the ass with a claw, and my father shot forward and fell inside. Self held his nose and jumped into the hole as if he were snorkeling in the Bahamas. I heard one of them go "Wheeeeeeeeeee!"

  I took Eddie's hand and led him down into the forgotten place.

  We were instantly consumed, as if the earth had heaved on top of us. This time I could feel his assent. It was like slipping through regions draped with cobwebs. I could feel the return of my own oath's affirmations. Maybe John wasn't that far off. Gawain's robes flapped against my belly exactly as they had when we'd stood around the covene tree. Even then he had no self-doubt or fractures of fear or buried half-stifled desires. Before the wedge of his purity the black curtain flinched aside, parted for him, and let us pass.

  Dad chortled in the shadows. In a space not large enough for even one broken man we walked for miles. Self said, Damn, my feet hurt! I could hear him and my father tickling each other and tittering in turns. I kept a firm grip on Eddie's wrist and prayed that when this was all over they could make him whole once more.

  He whispered, "I forget. I keep forgetting."

  Let it be true, I thought. Forget everything, even in your dreams and your most awful nightmares, cleave yourself from your visit here. Do what the rest of us can't.

  Chapter Twelve

  MountArmon welcomed us into the belly of its granite keep, where the crags trickled shreds of a hopeless heaven.

  Hearth fires burned and stoked altars lit our way. Millennia thinned. My pledge didn't matter here and my back straightened with relief. Promises dried up and flaked off like dead skin.

  Two hundred angels who willfully turned away from God had given up divinity in order to put on the shackles of mortality. On this spot they had sworn their testimony before shedding eternity and taking their wives.

  Gawain's lavender robes held the firelight and cast a purple glow against the rock. Water lapped in the distance, and the air turned much colder. We came to Jakin and Boas-the names of the two pillars originally erected in Solomon's Temple. They were supposed to be black and white, symbolizing good and evil, but both were so dirty with grime that it was impossible to tell which was which.

  My father crept forward and waved a friendly greeting. Dust flew upward as an immense weight shifted. The stone grumbled and the ground swayed.

  So, this was their sired legacy.

  I beheld the Heir of the Mount, the offspring of Armon.

  It lived upon a heap of ash and bone.

  The mammoth mutant, a human-Seraph hybrid-child called a Nephilim, laid on its back rubbing its colossal feet together. It drooled down its massive silken neck. More unborn than born, without umbilicus or navel or fully formed digits, its murky eyes never settled anywhere too long and they fathomed nothing. It had no genitalia. Not only would it be sterile, but even an imitation of the act of procreation would have been intolerable to the universe.

  That mouth had been opened in a perpetual silent cry for centuries. The hybrid seemed carved from shale and marble. The skin was even paler than my father's white-face. It had needs but didn't know them.

  A grotto yawned open beside it. Currents of the twin rivers dragged corpses in from the bottom of JamesLake, depositing bodies here where the Nephilim could dip in a hand and sup on the suicides. Heir of Armon swallowed their despondency and licked out the marrow.

  In one fashion the gargantuan Nephilim resembled Gawain-separate, unique, removed, and altogether abstract. It stared blindly at him, and he stared blindly back.

  Uriel's idolatry ran around my legs and he stepped free from the dark to stand proudly in front of the hearth fires. Nip sat curled, hiding his face in shame and vainly attempting to stifle his sobs.

  "Glory of God be unto you," Uriel said. "Oh boy."

  Is there any myth that isn't real? I asked.

  No.

  Abbot John had been more right in his tenets than I'd given him credit for, and also more mistaken than he'd ever accept. Maybe the two hundred fallen angels had become men no uglier or noble than any other, but their progeny had devolved into parasites sponging off the penance of others. Those angels who'd torn off their own wings had given up too much in becoming men, and yet they hadn't gained enough to make the cost worthwhile for the rest of us.

  Mankind found immortality in the thread of their blood.

  Armers, Ramuel, Sanyasa, Saneveel, Batraal, and all the others-from their own ashes-must have found only remorse in the irony of their woeful living child.

  It had the reverence of rock.

  The Nephilim had no soul.

  "I don't want to kill you," Uriel said.

  "Why not?" I asked, genuinely curious. "Where is Catherine's child?"

  "Hidden," I told him.

  "You can't contain the holy prophet of God."

  "Uriel, I'm telling you, the reincarnate is not the prophet Elijah."

  He didn't believe me. He could not distinguish between piety and fixation. For that, at least, I couldn't completely blame him. The prophet Elijah had taunted the four hundred and fifty priests of Baal into a battle of burnt offerings they could not win. When they finally admitted defeat the prophet Elijah personally beheaded them all in the name of Yahweh.

  My former coven brother had dreamed of doing the same. T
he wrath that had been loosed from Cathy's womb would once again become the man who tried to steal my love and castrate me in the moonlight. He would be a pawn that Jebediah would use as the harbinger of a hell to come.

  Uriel had no rage, but his deranged passion added up to the same. He thrust his spells into my face. They were filled more with devotion than aggression, majiks of arrogant sincerity rather than applied arcana. My fists burned black with my hexes, and I swiped aside his ridiculous sanctity and watched it skitter and pop against the walls. His plastic saints started chewing on my ankles.

  My father, always the fool even when he wasn't a clown, wanted to entertain and play with the offspring of the mount. The Nephilim, sensing his damnation, reached down and plucked my dad up in one of its monolithic hands. My father gave a strange painful cry that was still tinged with his laughter.

  Uriel found strength in his dedication to stone and the stone's love for him. I grimaced and tried to put an end to this encounter by letting my angry instincts take over, but the bedrock of his faith scattered my spells.

  To hell with it. I brought a roundhouse left all the way up from my knees and aimed for his jaw. Nip let out another groan and flung himself away. Uriel merely frowned at me, disappointed and appalled, and dropped back into shadow. I wheeled through the gloom and ran to save my father.

  If the hybrid found flavor in damnation, then my dad would be a cuisine for discriminating tastes. He didn't thrash or cry out as the mutant offspring lifted him in its tremendous fist. I dug in and rushed across the banks of bones, arcana discharging from my eyes and mouth, but the Nephilim completely ignored me.

  Nip blundered into Self and Eddie, who both went over backward and lay sprawled on the cave floor.

  I heard the unmistakable sound of tearing flesh and turned.

  Oh, you-

  Hey now…

  You maniac!

  Hey now, you wanted her to be safe.

  Two buttons on Eddie's shirt had popped open and his flayed flesh had flopped aside to reveal the pink infant with her thick brown head of hair. Self had nestled the sleeping child within Eddie's emptied chest cavity.

  Fane's daughter began to slide free as if being born a second time within a few hours, her tiny lips quivering as she screwed up her face. Covered with blood and mucus, her matted hair stood up in rusty clumps. Eddie's heart might have burst if he'd still had one, as the utter horror hammered him. The kid's eyes bulged out so far I thought he might have a seizure. I hoped he'd faint but he merely watched the grisliness of his own violated body.

  Fumes of Elijah's madness packed the width of the cavern. I hesitated, listening to my dad's laughter as the Nephilim tousled him closer to its gritty, rigid mouth. I was torn between moving and watching Fane's daughter slip like a snake from the boy's hollow chest and slap down into the sand at his feet. I started back for Uriel.

  But my own damnation must've been appetizing enough, and before I got ten feet the Nephilim rolled aside atop the crushed bone and ash and scooped me up like the hand of God. Its hungers, like all of ours, incited its mindless actions. I was hefted twenty feet in the air and shrieked as it squeezed me tightly in its giant fist.

  I could barely breathe and couldn't think clearly enough to provide a proper incantation. Flames spit back against my throat as I dug trenches in its reef-like bulk with my burning hands. Its oily fluids geysered in thin streams before its wounds closed. The Nephilim appeared content to raise us high up in the cavern and sniff at us, the scent of my family's destruction whisking like smoke.

  Smiling hideously, Self's eyes rolled up in his head as the first wave of Seraph blood stench washed across him. Ropes of saliva lashed his fangs. His ragged laughter sounded like chips of obsidian rubbing together. In the same manner as Eddie, he seemed to fall in and out of trance. Elijah's envy, insecurity, and mistrust, like poison, splashed onto my second self.

  "Now!" Uriel screamed. "Kill the baby!"

  Me? Self said.

  "Do it now! You too are a servant of the Lord! You cannot deny your responsibility. Slay the flesh and release the prophet!"

  Self wanted to do it, he was always eager for innocence. We gritted our fangs. We bit our tongue. His ugly thoughts pealed in my brain and I pressed my own hexes over my ears while the hybrid's flinty tongue jutted against my chest. Self went down to one knee, snarling, and managed to growl, Boy, do you have a case.

  Uriel turned.

  Aaron disengaged from the darkness, having followed the path Gawain had cleared. He moved out from the shadows with his back wet from a recent flogging, determination in his scowl.

  He rushed past the hearth fires until he faced his own brother and said, "So this is where you come to pray? To that abomination?"

  "What do you think has guided our hand these last twenty years?"

  Aaron didn't have much to argue with, and he hung his hands weakly. "No, not this, not like this." The amends he'd made hadn't been enough, and he tore out gouts of his beard in some useless display of contrition. "And all the wasted lives? All our pain went to feeding this creature?"

  "Don't be so self-important."

  "How could you, Uriel? How could you allow us to continue in this manner?"

  "What else would you have us do with our lives, Aaron? Here is proof that our devotion is acknowledged."

  Aaron's torn back spilled blood until it pooled at his feet. "Acknowledged by this?"

  "The prophet Elijah's soul returned to earth to herald Christ's second coming. We are only the instruments of God."

  "Uriel," I shouted when I could take in enough air, "you're being used by Jebediah. Even Nip knows it."

  Aaron couldn't truly bring himself to fight. He never drew his sword. Together they had planned to battle their brother Jebediah when the time came, and now instead he found himself alone once more, staring into the face of his hated DeLancre heritage.

  They clasped hands as though wishing each other well on a long voyage, and their grips continued to tighten until their fingernails splintered and the witchery oozed under their chins. Uriel's icons and tiny saints ran around in a frenzy, shaking their plastic fists. Aaron had no resolve in confronting this sort of betrayal. Not only had he been deceived by his brother, but also by his own faith. He buckled and bent forward, and Uriel reached with his free hand to slowly tug the sword from where it was strapped to his brother's back.

  The grave sound of metal slipping from the sheath made even the hybrid look over. Fate unfolded and Aaron knew it as plainly as anyone. His last seconds were nothing but humiliating. He realized that somehow all the millions of steps, unendurable pain, and reparation leading up to his death could have been avoided at any other moment except this one.

  Lowly Grillot Holt, Aaron's own familiar, spurted free from the hilt of his sword, plucked the weapon up, and ran its master through.

  Oh my Christ.

  Self shouted, I told you that little bastard cheats! He grabbed the baby and made a run for it, scampering over the rocks and leaping crevices. Uriel howled and Lowly Grinot Holt and the idolatry gave chase.

  The Nephilim kept tightening its fists until even my father stopped laughing. The harlequin glanced over at me and I thought I saw the hint of recognition in his eyes. The heir of Armon drew its hands closer together, brought my dad and me face-to-face, and pressed us to its immense lips.

  Nip sprang onto the mutant's cheek and struggled to get the gigantic fists open, but we couldn't manage it. I didn't have enough air to tell him what to do, not that I had any ideas. Nip spun and charged up one of its nostrils, his claws kicking out and throwing sparks all over. The Nephilim cooed and eased its grip some.

  Nip ran around inside its mountainous skull, giving it the intoxicating taste of doom it craved. Its hands opened farther and my dad and I fell onto the hybrid's unyielding belly. We barreled over the side and took a fifteen-foot header to the cave floor. I tumbled hard and my father landed on top of me. A couple of ribs on my left side broke as my shoulder
dislocated. I screamed and Dad went "Woooo!" The Nephilim gave a stony sneeze and Nip came flying free.

  Lowly Grillot Holt and the plastic saints had Self pinned upon the rocks. Elijah too, from inside the infant, fiercely fought against him. I knew he was having difficulty grasping tightly to the baby when all he could feel were barbs of malice from it.

  Hold on! I said.

  Stop telling me that in these kinds of situations! You ain't helpful at all!

  I shoved my father off me and lurched to my feet, feeling my left lung puncture. I grabbed his arm and pulled him along with me, afraid that he'd just start playing with the hybrid again.

  Lowly Grillot Holt, bathed in the blood of his master and caught up in Uriel's zealotry, vaulted forward and managed to hook the infant's wrap in his talons. Self sank his fangs deep into Lowly Grillot Holt's throat, his tongue working inside the wound and gathering sustenance and power, sucking out the familiar's life, but it was already too late. Fane's and Catherine's daughter fell through the air. Only then, despite everything else, did the baby start to cry.

  I dug in and sprinted toward them, listening to that single keening wail echoing around us. I watched the beautiful newborn bundle floating for an instant, as the nun had floated before spiraling to earth.

  Eddie, showing no emotion, put his hands out, and the child almost landed safely in his arms. Almost.

  Uriel's cloak flashed upward as he seized the girl, and held the baby over his head ready to hurl her down to the ground.

  Gawain was close enough to clutch her, but he stood in his blind muteness, smiling in his pleasant manner, letting our world play out around him. Events, even matters like these, unfolded around him with equal value. Uriel closed his eyes in prayer and I shouted, "Don't!"