"You know him," Alex said to Coby, and then to Raven, "You're helping him. I thought you were on our side."
Raven arched his brows. "Now whyever would you think that?"
CHAPTER TWENTY
Morgan didn't know who the man beneath the tree was. It didn't matter. The apples were within Coby's reach and Morgan had to stop him. Coby must have realised the same thing at the same time. He lunged towards the tree as Morgan lunged towards him - and both of them found themselves inches from a wall of burning flame.
Morgan felt the blaze blister his skin even in the brief second he was near it. He reared back, a hand curled around Alex's arm to pull her with him, when he realised the flame wasn't moving.
He turned to see Lahav approaching through the trees. The angel was still inside Meir's body, only the red of his eyes burning through the other man's hawk-nosed face. As Morgan watched, the light from his eyes spread its glow to the rest of his face. Behind him, the outline of wings took shape. They were flaming too, and so was the dagger in his hand which quickly grew to the length of a sword.
Morgan stared at Coby, expecting the other man to be afraid. He was, a little - but he also looked calculating. When he caught Morgan's eye, he smiled.
Lahav strode on to the edge of the clearing. His bones blazed white beneath his skin and Morgan thought he saw a flicker of pain in the human host's eyes before they burned into steam and only the glowing eyes of the angel were left beneath. His skin sizzled and there was a smell of scorched flesh before it was also gone and there was only the smooth marble of what lay beneath. It was a deep brown shot through with veins of gold. The angel was very beautiful, but inhuman. His hair was flame and his wings stretched high behind him, brushing the tops of the trees and setting the nearest leaves smouldering. There was a sound around him like a musical note from a scale humans weren't meant to hear.
"Uriel," Coby said. "Though I gather you prefer a different name now."
"Did you really think you could escape me?" Lahav said. His voice was melodic too, but the tune was an ominous one.
"I can escape," Coby said.
Lahav shook his head and raised his sword. He took a step forward, then another. On the third, he halted. His smooth forehead wrinkled as he looked down at his own feet. The grass was curled around them and there was a writhing as vines rose and twined themselves around the angel's legs. Lahav's flames singed the greenery and its hold weakened as he pulled himself forward. But more grew to take their place and he was stopped again. His gaze rose and blazed into the man Alex had called Raven.
"I am the guardian of paradise," he said. "You can't stop me, deserter. You have no right to be here."
Raven smiled. "But I can slow you down. And since I made this place, I rather think you're the one who's trespassing."
"You made this place?" Morgan said. "I thought..."
"That God made it? Yaweh? El Shadai? El Elyon? Adoni? Why create something so tempting and then forbid you to take it? I know he's bit of a bastard, but that's beyond the pale even for him."
"Blasphemer!" Lahav said. "Hashem created the trees as a test." His rage seemed to give him strength and he tore his leg from the vines which clutched it and took another step forward.
"You have to stop him," Coby said to Morgan. "That's why I let you have the shofar, don't you see? It needs the most powerful note to drive a being like him away, and only you can sound it. Anyone else... It would drive their own soul out of their body before they could complete it. You can do it, though, Morgan. That's what Uriel didn't understand - he was putting the means of his own destruction in your hands when he sent you after the shofar. And if you get rid of him we can all eat the apples and it won't matter that you don't have a soul. You won't need a second life. Your first will go on forever."
"I made a bargain with you, Morgan Nicholson," Lahav said. "Your help in exchange for a soul. The bargain stands." He dragged himself another step forward, leaving embers and a charred trail of dead vegetation behind him.
"And what about my life?" Morgan asked.
"If you aid me you'll have proved your worth and I will spare it."
"How do I know I can trust you?"
"I never deal in untruth."
"He's right, you know," Raven said. "His kind can't lie, especially not here, where lies have consequences. Well, you've seen that for yourself. Oh - here's a thought. Since he can't lie, you can ask him anything. Why don't you ask what he'll do to Alex here if you don't stop him?"
"Her life is forfeit," Lahav said. There was no regret in his voice, or any other human emotion.
"But she didn't do anything!" Morgan said.
"She summoned Eden."
"I had no choice!"
Lahav turned his burning eyes on her. "There was a choice."
"Only if I let PD die."
"And where is he now?" the angel asked.
"She couldn't know that was going to happen!" Morgan wasn't sure why he was defending her. He hadn't agreed with her decision. But he didn't think she deserved to die for it.
"This is what they are," Raven said. "No compromise. No half measures. No sympathy with weakness. No room for human foibles. Just a terrible and absolute justice."
"You must not listen to the serpent," Lahav said. "He tempted mankind once before, and you suffered for it."
Raven's tongue flicked out to wet his lips. It was forked and he winked when he saw Morgan notice it. "I made the apples to free you," he said. "When you were ignorant, they used you as cannon fodder - conscripts in the pointless war they love to fight. But once you'd gained the knowledge of good and evil for yourselves, they couldn't fool you into fighting their battles any more."
"Lies," Lahav said. "The woman must die and Eden will fade with her." He took another step towards them. His face was beautiful but terribly cold.
Morgan stared at Raven, who was also the serpent. Did that mean he was the devil? But Morgan didn't sense the same evil about him that had drifted from Belle like a rank smell. And his eyes didn't burn with the dull glow of hers or the fierce fire of Lahav's - they were bright and black, just like Alex's had been in the spirit world. "What are you?" Morgan asked him.
"They'll tell you I'm a deserter from their war."
"And is that true?"
Raven shrugged. "I remember it differently, but isn't that the way with memory? We all remember the version of events that suits us best."
"There is a real version, though," Morgan said.
"Is there?" Raven looked at Lahav. The angel held his sword upright in front of him and the barest glow of its heat warmed their fronts as the ring of fire surrounding the trees scorched their backs. "Well, this is the story I choose to tell myself. When mankind ate the fruit of knowledge the armies of heaven needed a new way to force them to obey. If they couldn't rule humanity in this life they could control them with threats of what would happen in the next. They took some of this realm and made heaven and hell from it. And so I made another tree - the tree of life."
Morgan nodded. "Because if people live forever, they don't have to worry about what happens when they die." He looked at Coby and thought that some people should have to worry about that.
"Heaven is a reward for the righteous," Lahav said. "Hell a punishment for the wicked. He twists the truth to suit himself."
"Well..." Raven said to Morgan, as Lahav took another stride forward, more confident now. "Eden is meant to stay in the spirit realm, the realm of dreams. If you eat the apple there, it's your spirit which lives forever. Or rather, it remains bound to the spirit realm and returns there when you die. But once bitten, as they say, and the forces of heaven got the jump on me. They put Uriel here to guard the apple before I could get anyone to eat it."
"My god," Alex said. "That's what this was all about. You were using me to open the way to this place. But what happens if we eat the apples here, while the spirit world is in the real one?"
"Real immortality," he said. "Not an ideal solution, but needs mus
t when the devil - well, you know what I mean."
Lahav took another step closer. Two more and he'd be within reach of them. Morgan and Alex backed away, until they were standing beside Coby. He didn't like that image: siding with the killer against the angel.
"You can't be expected to judge right and wrong," Lahav said to him. "You were made by the Adversary, not Hashem, but you can be made whole. Don't listen to the tempter. Mankind wasn't made for freedom. You need our guidance - or you might all be like Coby."
"Are you like Coby?" Raven asked Morgan. "Do you want what he wants? Or is everyone different? Should you all have the freedom to choose, either good or evil?"
Morgan remembered the choice he'd made, when he'd rejected his father and the path the old bastard had chosen for him. He'd thought that by rejecting them he was accepting Lahav and what he stood for. Now he wondered. Alex had called herself a conscientious objector in their war. That seemed to be Raven's way, but that didn't seem quite right either - an abdication of responsibility. Coby had abused his freedom and there were a million other people in the world who would too, if Raven had his way.
Lahav was moving faster now. Raven's smile had dropped and the hands he'd rested against his crossed legs were twitching. His power was fading and if Morgan didn't act to stop Lahav soon he'd have made his decision by default.
"Tell me," he said to the angel. "What happened to Meir when you came here?"
"He burned. I was too great for him to contain in his place."
"But he helped you, didn't he? He let you possess him. Don't you care that he's dead?"
A single frown line wrinkled the marble forehead beneath its crown of flames. "He did his duty and he will have his reward. You can have it too. All you need do is stand aside. Their deaths will be my doing."
Alex shook with fear as she turned to Morgan, but she raised her chin defiantly. "Just remember, you'll be buying your soul with my life."
Lahav stood in front of her, dead vegetation beneath him and nothing to restrain him. She could have run, but Morgan could see she knew it was hopeless. Lahav was too fast and too strong and Raven's power was spent. Nothing could stop him. Nothing except Morgan.
The angel raised the sword above his head in a quicksilver motion - and Morgan grabbed Alex's arm and pulled her out of range as the down stroke cut into the earth, burying the point a foot beneath the soil.
"Tell me how to stop him," Morgan said to Coby.
Lahav put back his head and roared as he pulled the sword out of the ground. The heat of his breath shrivelled Morgan's hair into cinders.
Coby looked dazed. "Blow," he said. "Tekiah Gedolah."
"What-" Morgan said as Lahav's sword swung. He stumbled back, not quite fast enough. A line of fire open along his chest, the cut cauterised as it formed.
"Just do it!" Coby shouted.
Morgan put the shofar to his lips as the sword rose again. He didn't have enough time - only a second till it fell, but the instrument seemed to understand his urgency. It sucked the air out of him to emerge as sound and something else far more powerful.
The note was deep and mournful and it froze everyone where they stood. Coby's face paled and Alex fell to her knees, clutching her chest as if her hands could keep her soul inside. But Morgan wasn't aiming the shofar at them - not with his mind and not physically. The sound blasted directly into Lahav.
The beautiful features shifted slightly, the eyebrows rising in shock or maybe reproach. And then the note blasted through them and they were torn from his face. Flames swirled and sparks rose and the note went on. The outline of the angel shimmered like a mirage and his proud nose and perfect ears melted as if they'd burned in his own fire. His wings fragmented into fiery feathers. They floated away on the wind as cinders.
And then there was nothing left of him. Only the scorched earth testified that he'd ever been there.
Morgan felt his lips burn and the shofar itself melted into slag and dripped to the earth through his hands. "Is he dead?" he gasped. "Did I kill him?"
Coby laughed. "Who cares?" He reached out and plucked an apple from the tree that was no longer guarded by a ring of fire.
Morgan reached for him just as his teeth closed on the flesh of the fruit. Coby swallowed and Morgan dropped his hand, knowing it was too late. He turned to Raven.
Raven shrugged. "That's a bit of a nuisance, isn't it? Good luck dealing with it." He smiled and was gone.
Morgan watched Coby finish the apple and realised he'd have to do the same. Though he was afraid of what faced him when he died, he wasn't sure he wanted to be immortal. But Coby would need to be stopped, or at least contained, and only someone else like him would stand a chance. Morgan sighed and reached for the nearest fruit.
"Leave it!" a new voice said. It was low and course and for a crazy second Morgan thought it might be God himself. Then Alex said "PD" and he saw who was standing behind Coby.
The creature stood on two legs, but it wasn't human. Its limbs had joints in the wrong places and it was covered in grey-brown fur. The eyes above the black nose held intelligence and a feral rage that made Morgan take a step back as it grabbed Coby and held him tight.
"Get out, Alex," the creature growled. Its voice was unclear, its teeth too sharp and tongue too long to make human speech comfortable. "He's holding the nut flush. You can't outdraw him - only the board can beat him. Send this place back where it belongs and him with it."
Coby struggled in his arms, no stronger than a normal man but dangerous because he didn't need to fear injury or death. The other coyotes stood in a ring around them, growling. Morgan wondered why they didn't also assume more human forms, but maybe it took an extraordinary strength of will. Or maybe they'd been too long in their animal bodies and had forgotten how it felt to be a person.
Alex looked agonised. "But what about..."
"I can't go back," PD snarled. "You saw to that."
"I came to help you!" she said, suddenly sounding angry. Morgan didn't think she was a woman who could sustain guilt for long.
"Too late, kid," PD said. "I'm out of chips. Go!"
Coby was struggling like a wild thing. His nails lashed out at the half-human creature holding him and left deep red scratches behind. One missed PD's eye by an inch as he whipped his head aside. PD was tiring and Coby never would.
"He's right," Morgan said to Alex. "We have to go. We can't let Coby out into the world. Imagine what he'd do."
Alex hesitated and Coby twisted and turned to free his hand. It latched onto PD's thigh, gouging a lump a flesh from it and tearing an inhuman howl out of his throat.
"Oh god," Alex said. She began to back away. "PD, I didn't mean to hurt you - you've got to believe me."
He didn't answer, all his attention focused on the struggling man in his arms. Alex looked at him one second longer, then turned with Morgan and fled across the clearing towards the orchard beyond.
"You're wasting your time!" Coby shouted after them. "I've got eternity to find a way to get out."
His voice faded as they ran between the trees. "Can you do what he said?" Morgan asked Alex. "Can you send Eden away?"
"I'm trying." She was crying and he looked away.
He stumbled as his footing shifted beneath him. It felt like quicksand, but when he looked down he saw that it was the grass. It was moving - retreating.
"It's working!" he said.
"It's hard." A single drop of blood rolled from her nose to her lip. "I don't know if I can-"
"You have to!" Morgan snapped.
They ran on, over sand now rather than grass, but the trees were still there and Morgan heard another howl behind them. It sounded anguished. He was afraid Coby had hurt PD badly enough to gain his freedom. He could be only minutes behind.
"Get rid of the trees!" he yelled. "For fuck's sake, get rid of it all!"
She groaned in agony. Ahead of him, a bough of plums twisted as if it was alive as the fruit turned from purple to green then shrank and disappeared.<
br />
"That's it!" he said. "Keep doing that."
She nodded, droplets of blood flying left and right. Her nose was still bleeding and her tears were red too. He thought this might kill her and wondered what the point of what he'd done had been if she was going to die anyway. But he didn't tell her to stop.
She let out a yell that sounded like it ripped her throat coming out. The tree in front of them pulled itself back into the earth as boughs turned to twigs and the trunk shrivelled into a sapling. It happened to another tree, and another, and they kept running.
Morgan felt the air rasping in his lungs. One moment it was cool and filled with the scent of fruit, the next hot and dry. He saw one last tree ahead of them, a narrow strip of wood plunging into the ground like a nail. They ran past it, and for one moment more the sun blazed above them, and then it went out.
He stumbled to a halt. Alex slowed too, then started to collapse. When he caught her he could feel that she was exhausted and hoisted her into his arms. He turned them both so they could look behind them.
The false sun had gone and it was night in the desert. The moon shone instead, and in its pale light they could see nothing but bare sand for miles in every direction. There was no Eden - and no Coby.
Morgan wiped sweat from his face and smiled a little. "We did it."
Alex was limp in his arms. "Yes," she said. "We did."
EPILOGUE
They made their way back to San Francisco, the last place Alex thought the CIA would be looking for her. She thought about going to see Caesar and Sofia to tell them their daughter was dead, or as good as. She couldn't face it, though - and wouldn't it be better to let them live with at least a little hope? Her body was battered and her mind was aching as if it had taken a beating too. It had used all her reserves to escape from Eden and she wasn't sure she'd ever fully recover the energy she'd spent. Even if she still had all her powers, she didn't dare use them. If she returned to the spirit world, she risked letting Coby out of it.
And she risked facing PD. His fate hurt and she was trying very hard not to think of it as a death. Something of him did live on, but despite what she'd done, he hadn't forgiven her. There was a lesson in that. She was still trying to decide what it was.
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