Free A Lower Deep - A Self Novel About 3300 wds by Tom Piccirilli Page A

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,