Help me to keep it.
You can't keep it. You never could.
He crept across to Catherine's bed and sniffed at her womb, then swept her hair from her eyes. I knew he could make one quick incision and give her a cesarean section if it became essential, or if he felt the need to steal the baby.
Elijah's animosity, for once, slumbered too. Self dropped off the sheets and put a hand on Nip's shoulder and whispered in his ear. Nip nodded once and continued to weep. Lowly Grillot Holt approached them for a game of five-card draw and Self screamed, Stay out of my face, you little cheating bastard!
Janice stared at me until my incompetence must've spilled across her feet. Her ghosts trusted me even if she didn't, and they urged me forward to comfort her. I waited until both Cathy and Eddie were asleep, listening to Uriel's murmurs and Self's wonderfully moving singing voice.
Janice Kinnion said, "If you try to touch either of them, I'll kill you."
"I won't touch your children."
"They sent you here. He sent you here… my brother."
"No, he didn't."
"They want her dead. Are you gonna tell me you don't know that?"
"No."
"I came here for help and they've gutted my son and now they're trying to kill my daughter and what's inside her. And they keep pretending this is a home of God."
Sadly, it was, and that proved to be the ugliest irony of all. "It's been a home to many things," I said. I sounded vague and misleading and wanted to nail my tongue to the roof of my mouth.
She chose not to argue. "Can they do what they say? Can they make him whole again?"
That was two different questions. "I don't
know. They can probably heal his body."
"What goes along with the rest of that?"
"I'm not sure."
"Come on, come on, out with it already!"
Reason had its place here, but not as an eternal truth. Discord arose minute to minute, and belief broke its own back from the way men bent it to their own devices. There was always a price to be paid: for every midnight caress or kiss or hastily scrawled poem of infatuation, for each promise made and each disregarded. Greater affirmations had to be found at any cost.
The wars of the Lord could not end in stalemate. Sacrifice was not purity, but it meant more than chicken's blood. There were those who would slay the lamb as sacrifice to God, and there were shepherds who would protect the lamb for either God or themselves or for no discernible reason.
These walls were going to come down. The quandary of the mount made the rock itself lament.
"Something here wants your kids," I said. "Why?"
"I don't know."
She whispered at herself, sounding so much like her brother. "I need to get them out."
"It's too late to run."
"Then I'll fight."
"No!"
"If you get in my way I'll kill you."
The snow was on fire. Uriel's plastic saints glared and skipped along the chantry. I left the room and Self slid alongside me with a pair of aces under his tongue.
At the far end of the hallway, the empty cowl of Fane peered back for a time before straying out of sight.
Chapter Nine
My mother came to me in the night, knowing I was weak. She sang to me the way she sang before the crucifixes cracked in my father's fists, back when the priests still came over for lemonade. I could feel the texture of her presence like the downy blankets of my childhood, when the apples fell in the corner of our backyard. I lay there and couldn't keep from panting like a sick dog. Self ran around the hemp mattress on all fours, yawping and sharpening his claws against one another.
At the foot of the bed, a nun smiled timidly at me. She held up the hem of her robes, showing off the luscious angle of her legs. The great whore burned in her gaze, the harlot gilded her lips. She pulled off her headpiece and let it drop behind her. She winked and winked again, eyelid fluttering while the tic moved across each muscle of her face contorting her features. Tears hung off her chin. She swept forward, trying to throw her hips into it, giving it some Mae West, but she'd been in the nunnery for so long that she couldn't quite remember how to even try to seduce.
Her hair had been shorn to a Joan of Arc pageboy bob, which somehow only accentuated her feminine qualities. She giggled to herself, the glow of moonlight catching her knees. Trails of blood dripped down her inner thighs and speckled the floor. She began to sway and the spatters widened into ugly omens. Those earthy sniggers became even more revolting, and finally they deepened until she didn't sound like a woman anymore. She glanced down to read the warnings in her own blood, and the struggle inside her became more clearly defined.
Self had finally managed to win some money off Lowly Grillot Holt, and he held up a dollar bill. Take it off, baby!
She drew her habit over her head and threw it swirling behind her. I saw that she had the marks of Jezebel on her, the dog bites and the painted face.
Ooh la la!
Self sauntered forward, quivering and clapping. His arousal drove a white-hot spike into my forehead, so that all my barricaded cravings and desires released at once into my veins. The blood lust had always fueled and intoxicated him, but never like this. My pulse ripped at my neck like pincers. I snorted loud as a horse.
Nun ninnies! Mas garbanzos!
Stop it!
I held on to the back of my second self's head with one hand, and clasped the other over his mouth so he wouldn't lick away the portents. I tried to read them but the slate gulped down the blood. The nun crooked her finger at him and offered up her small, pointed breasts. I tightened my grip.
If you're not going to take advantage of this situation, then I am!
What's happening to you? I asked.
I ain't no damn priest!
Other figures flailed on the floor, wagging and heaving like a carpet of snakes as they fondled and masturbated. More hermits, sisters, and penitents drawn into the dream. Elijah's living hatred bulged in the room. The glamour had been cut loose. It latched on to them in their passive state of apatheia even while they sought gnosis, the knowledge of God. Anything could be corrupted.
I spelled out fiery exorcistic rites in the air, but they did nothing except light the room further. Hands and faces were darkly bruised and red with welts, their backs and asses running from the cat-o'-nine-tails. Self broke free and dove away. I arched on the bed with every muscle inflamed. They giggled wildly, and so did he.
And so did I.
Orgy time!
Thoughts of Caligula and the senators' wives packed my head, and the stench from the vomitoriums made me gag. I flung myself forward and tackled Self hard, pinned him down, and bit deeply into his shoulder.
I took some of my blood back and his enraged screams brought me awake a little more. The women coiled around my ankles and knees, but they didn't want me or anything like me.
You bit me, you sick bastard!
Stop your crying.
What're you, crazy?
I had less control over him and he had much less control over himself. I held his eyelids wide open and looked inside him. What's gotten into you?
Me? He mewled. What's gotten into you?
What the hell are you doing?
Hey, they're begging for it, you friggin' prude! Shit, I need stitches!
Quit it!