A Lower Deep

the river to Magee Wails island. It was the inaugural trial, the first lesson. To enter the mount one had a duty to autonomy-crossing the waters with conviction and purpose if not wisdom. The surface of JamesLake had frozen in spots and ice floes floated past. Hands would be torn on the thick hemp rope, and more sweat and blood shed into the mouth of the river.

I collapsed hauling the ferry halfway across the lake. I shivered uncontrollably and stomach cramps like spear thrusts kept me curled with my knees to my chin. Some kind of an unbinding had started that needed to finish.

Memories twisted with fantasies and we were all there on the ten-by-ten raft as I dry-heaved through the remainder of the night. The cold rope occasionally cracked me across the face like the whips the monks used to beat in their own humanity. I didn't want to die. My eyelashes became fat with ice crystals. For a moment I thought I saw Self praying.

I went blind from time to time and woke up in the dawn with Self sitting hunched over my brow licking my tongue. My shirt and coat were torn open, and my running blood hissed where it hit the freezing wood. The stink of seared flesh filled my nostrils as his foul breath eased down my throat, sweet and horrible. He'd jabbed two of his burning claws through my chest bone to massage my heart and slowly resuscitate me.

Archangel Azreal hovered at my feet with a hopeful expectation, waiting. I weakly fluttered my fingers at him. Self caught stray wing feathers and crushed them to powder, turned to the seraph, and said, Get lost, you prick.

I sank back into sleep.

That squeal of the pulley dragged at my consciousness, the slow rhythmic motion of the ferry jarring me awake as it was pulled back to the mainland shore. Self had rebuttoned my shirt wrong and my collar tugged at my neck. I turned over and lifted my head.

Three of them stood on the bank staring at me: the mother who was white as a fish belly with two blots of windburn on her cheeks, the pregnant teenage girl, and the boy with dozens of suffering dead faces leering like balloons tied around his neck. The mother watched me closely, and her ire crawled through her eyeballs and launched at me while her children pulled on the rope together.

'Don't touch him, Catherine,' the woman barked. Her voice was too moist and her tongue slid around in her mouth like a sea snake. 'Leave him there.' Her nose had been broken several times so that it tilted in every direction. Her lips had been sewn back together not quite properly aligned, and the matted gray scar tissue around her eyes had trenches of crows' feet. Whoever had beaten her must've busted his fist on her chin. That jaw set the entire bottom of her face at a strange and ugly angle, showing nothing but antipathy.

'We can't just leave him,' Catherine said. It took the kids time to haul me back to shore, and they were out of breath when they carefully climbed aboard the ferry. I tried to sit up but couldn't make it all the way.

At least eight months pregnant, Catherine had to squat down before she knelt to put her ear to my chest. A low growl worked at the back of Self's throat, and he twisted tightly against my throat, sniffing, glancing side to side. My brain ached for Danielle, and whenever Catherine hung against me in a certain fashion, trying to help me to my feet, Danielle's face stood out above her own features.

'Eddie, help me with him,' she said. The boy moved onto the ferry, but he was smart and didn't come near. The wind jerked at those ghastly heads that hovered above him. 'He's broiling with fever, Morn.'

'He won't die,' the woman insisted, wanting me to die. Shadows swarmed around her hips, all of them bearing her own face. 'We could roll him in the river and he wouldn't stay down. Take your knife to him, go ahead, just try to cut his throat.'

'Don't talk like that.'

'The devil takes care of its own. Me, you, your brother, we might be killed here, but look at him, out in this freezing weather all night with nothing but a summer jacket, and he's still alive. Of course he'll live, and so will that freak you're carrying. Put rocks in his pockets. Kick him over.'

I'm taking this bitch out, Self said.

Inside my nightmares my coven ringed around me again, standing with us on the raft. Herod dipped close and I saw his giant, cheerful, stupid face. Danielle spun in front of my eyes, afraid, and drifted off as if running.

Self listened hard for a moment and snarled, He's back.

What?

He's come back.

Who?

My skull throbbed as if Self were using his fangs to dig out infection, or jab it in. I rested my face against Cathy's belly and heard malignant chortling rumble deep within. I knew that laugh, and the sound of it sobered me immensely, slashing through my daze like a billhook. It was Elijah.

Self crooned, wanting to peel the scar tissue from around the woman's eyes and drop it down his throat.

Cathy said, 'Lie back, don't try to get up. We'll get you there.' She began to unbutton her own coat and place it over me, but I shook her off and nearly made it to my feet. I tried again and managed to stand.

'Who are you people?' I asked.

Shivering, she blinked twice, her notably thick eyelashes swiping the air. 'I'm Catherine Kinnion. This is my brother, Eddie. And my mother, Janice. Don't listen to anything she says.' She couldn't help looking around at the heads circling her brother and dangling in the air, sensing they were there. She had no idea about what she was carrying. 'We need to get to the monastery too.'

'Take your hands off him, Cathy,' her mother said. 'Before his stench gets on you.'

'Stop talking like that, Mother.'

'You won't die,' I told them. 'None of you will die here.'

Kinnion. The name didn't mean anything to me, but somehow she was carrying Elijah, who still wanted me dead. He was now closer to Danielle than I was. I wondered if this would upset Jebediah's plans. As a reincarnate Elijah might care more about raising himself than raising Christ, and it might take years for him to grow into his skills once more. He whispered threats in my ear as he sought to be reborn, and I could almost see his fingers scratching on the other side of her uterine wall, greedy to get at me, hoping to steal my love.

'My uncle is the abbot,' Cathy said.

'John.'

'Yes.'

Self pressed his nose to her navel, the milk in her breasts already curdled, and said to Elijah beneath the skin, Hey, buddy, two words for you and your resurrection: diaper rash.

There are no coincidences. Even in the icy breeze the air stirred with the hint of ozone, the drawing of threads of power.

The poltergeists perched on Eddie's head and slicked back his hair. He and his mother worked well together, heaving on the rope hand over hand like sailors hoisting sail, hauling us across. The boy said nothing, and I couldn't get a bead on him. He didn't seem troubled, upset, or flustered, and smiled pleasantly when I caught his eye. Cathy rested beside me, patting my knee.

Kill her now before Elijah takes over completely. My second self's jaws worked in a frenzy, the stink of nuns and monks everywhere. That's what they're going to want you to do.

Why should the order care about him? What does Abbot John have to do with this?

He shuddered with impatience and sneered at me, looking so much like my father that I reached out and put my palm to the side of his face. Abbot John will call for blood. Kill her.

And prove the woman right? We're getting out alive.

No, we're all dead and always have been.

Chapter Seven

The Opus Dei choir chants of the daily services drifted in the wind: part song, part plea. The brothers often lapsed into several esoteric languages preserving their rites and secrets. When we'd almost