Morgan felt wrung-out after his outburst and strangely weightless. "This is a training camp," he said.
Jimmy nodded. "You got that right. Bad times are coming, brother."
Morgan had been with the Hermetic Division long enough to guess what the other man meant. "You're talking about the apocalypse."
"The end of days. The signs are there for those that know how to read 'em. Satan's forces are growing strong and we intend to oppose them." Jimmy's hand clenched around his brass belt buckle and Morgan saw that he had HATE tattooed on his knuckles. Beneath the collar of his loose khaki T-shirt, another tattoo poked out. It looked like the tip of a bat wing.
"Mate," Morgan said, "don't take this the wrong way, but you look like you ought to be fighting on the other side."
Jimmy laughed, a hacking sound not much different from a cough. It left flecks of saliva in his wild blond beard. "Was a time I woulda been - we all would. Lahav tell you anything about us?"
Morgan shrugged. "He told me you had guns and that you could help us with the Croatoans. I don't know how you know him or why you're working with him. You do know who he is, right?"
"An Israeli agent," Jimmy said, pronouncing 'Israeli' as if it had about seven syllables. "You reckon it's unpatriotic, but there's a higher loyalty than love of country, even this one."
"You mean in the other conflict. The one between heaven and hell."
"The only war that counts, and I was on the wrong side of it for a helluva long time. I got in my first fight when I was 13, beating on some kid just 'cause I didn't like the colour of his skin. By the time I was eighteen I was cooking meth, and when I knifed a man so bad he nearly bled out, I finally got where I belonged - behind bars."
Morgan looked over the dusty desert and the men running and crawling across it under a maze of barbed wire. "And then you what - saw the error of your ways?"
"Not hardly." Unselfconscious, Jimmy yanked his T-shirt over his head, using it to swab the sweat under his armpits. When he turned his back, Morgan saw that a demon spread its wings across the whole expanse of flesh, tail curling round to point its tip at his belly button. It was a crude prison tattoo, and it must have taken hundreds of hours of pain to complete.
"Need all the friends you can get in that place," Jimmy said, "even the bad ones. You're white and you want to survive inside, you join a gang that puts swastikas on your body and tells you you're the master race. That's just the way it is. And it wasn't like I objected to sticking a shiv in some black bastard when occasion required. It was only when I got a shard of glass in my own gut things changed. They say I died on the operating table and I... I saw the flames - I saw where I was going. When they brought me back round I got me a Bible and I read it cover to cover. Then I preached it to anyone in there who'd listen."
Morgan's eyes scanned the private army around him. "These people-"
"The Tribulation Militia. Used to be what I was, till I showed them how to be something better"
"You really think this is what God wants? What happened to peace and love and all that shit?"
Jimmy turned to face him, T-shirt clutched in one meaty fist. "Scripture tells us when the last battle comes, the good will be Raptured right up into heaven to sit at the Lord's right hand. That ain't gonna happen to us. We're so heavy with sin, no way we could lift ourselves into the clouds. But those who remain behind have a task too, to fight the Devil's forces here on earth. That's the battle we're training for, and when we win that war, we'll have earned our places in paradise."
A fire of absolute conviction burned in his eyes, and Morgan found that he wanted to believe him. "But how can you be sure that Lahav really is on God's side?" he asked.
And how,
he wondered,
can I?
Jimmy just smiled. "We're having a prayer meeting later. Join us and you'll understand."
The sun set quickly in the desert, leaving a surprising chill in its wake. Morgan watched it all the way down, standing on the borders of the ghost town and looking out on the nothing beyond.
He could hear the militiamen moving behind him, gathering in what might once have been the town square. He hadn't seen Lahav since he first arrived and he wondered why he'd been so quick to follow him. Seeing Jimmy's blind faith in the Israeli and the God he claimed to represent had forced him to face his own. Lahav had some powers beyond human, but what did that mean? So did Morgan.
When he felt the hand settle on his shoulder, he knew it was Lahav. He turned to face the other man and found his face shadowed, the sliver of new moon not enough to illuminate him. He hadn't realised how dark it had grown, lost in his own thoughts.
"You want answers," Lahav said.
Morgan nodded. "I reckon I'm owed some, don't you?"
"No one is owed anything. But you will get them. Come - it's starting."
Morgan followed him, trainers catching in the loose rocks that littered the sand. There was light up ahead and as he drew closer he saw they'd lit a bonfire. He wondered if they'd pulled down more of the houses to feed it. The flames flickered a playful yellow and the militiamen sat in a ring around it, bottles of beer in one hand, crosses in the other.
He expected Lahav to find a seat on the edge of the circle, but the other man kept walking towards the fire. Morgan followed as far as he could, until the heat was too much and he had to stop, hand held in front of his face to shield it. Sparks floated around him and the flames rose high overhead, and Lahav kept on walking.
Morgan took one step back, then another, as Lahav stepped forward. The flames licked at the Israeli, tongues lapping against his brown cheeks as the fire seemed to seep inside and then blaze out of his eyes. They met Morgan's and Morgan felt the heat of them.
A hand grasped his elbow and he realised that Jimmy was pulling him back, away from the sparks that threatened to set his clothes alight. He didn't resist as the other man drew him down to his knees.
From that angle, Lahav looked huge. Or maybe he really had grown as tall as the flames which surrounded him. He drew what must have been his knife, the blade which in his hands could cut through anything. Morgan was numbly unsurprised to see that it too had grown until it was almost as long as Lahav himself. The Israeli held it in two hands, pointed it upwards, and the militiamen roared their approval as their shadows danced in the desert all around.
Behind Lahav's back, the flames seemed to gather and rise, bunching around his shoulders and flaring out. They looked like wings and Morgan was reminded of Belle, whose shadow had once appeared winged too.
"Do you understand now, brother?" Jimmy said. "Do you see why we follow him?"
Morgan nodded dumbly, watching the figure of the angel against the night sky.
Lahav left, striding into the desert as the flames faded into a red glow around him, but the ceremony went on. The men circling the fire clasped their hands to form a ring. Morgan let his own hands be taken. He felt the other men's calluses rough against his palms and realised his own skin had softened in the months since he'd left the Middle East to work for the Hermetic Division.
He couldn't join in the prayers; he didn't know the words, but he tried to feel something as he listened to them.
"When Satan seeks to rise against me," Jimmy said, "the Saviour rises in my defence."
But Satan had risen against Morgan and through him and there had been no one to save him except Tomas and his own fallible conscience.
"These are the days for reversal, overturning and demolishing," the militiamen said. "These are the days for noise and fighting, when the demolition dust will blind many eyes."
That, at least, Morgan believed. The world was crumbling and he felt powerless to preserve it.
"Do thy friends forsake, despise thee?" they sang. "Take it to the Lord in prayer. In his arms he'll take and shield thee - thou wilt find a solace there."
Morgan scrambled to his feet, releasing the hands of the men to either side of him and avoiding their eyes as he retreated away from the fire and into the empty desert. He could feel Jimmy's gaze follow him, but the man himself didn't and Morgan was soon hidden from their eyes in the darkness.
He saw Lahav when he was still twenty feet away. The light of the fire seemed to cling to the other man, illuminating the sand around him so that every rock and pebble had a small, sharp shadow.
"I know what Belle is," Morgan said. "I don't know why it's harder to believe in you than in her."
"They're stronger in this world," Lahav said. "Evil acts are there for everyone to see. We try so hard and fail so often... It takes faith to believe in what I serve." He looked worn out and more human with it.
"You're possessed by it too," Morgan said. "It's inside you, the way the demon's inside Belle."
"Yes."
"You invited it in."
"Yes. The Shomer Hamikdash thought they could use the
malachim
the way the CIA uses Belle and her
dybukk
. I volunteered to open myself to it, but when Lahav came he wouldn't serve. How could he? It's our place to serve him." The other man looked across the desert, eyes black in the night.
"So what happened?" Morgan asked.
Lahav shrugged. "A truce. The Shomer have always had an interest in the lost Temple treasures. My search for the shofar didn't displease them."
"
Your
search?" Morgan said. "Or
his
search, the thing inside you? Because I'm not talking to him now, am I?"
"No, he rests now. His power is in the world of spirit. To do what he just did in the world of flesh drains him."
"So I'm talking to the real you now. Whoever you are."
"I'm Meir Porat." He drew in a deep, shuddering breath. "Yes. I'm still Meir."
"Are you... do you
want
him inside you?"
The Israeli's eyes slid shut, and when they opened again they were blank. Morgan wasn't sure if the angel had returned or if the other man was simply unwilling to reveal any more than he already had.
"What I want is irrelevant," Lahav said. "You know what I am now, so you know what I say is true. Join
my
side in this conflict, and you can be saved."
Morgan knew he ought to have felt relieved. He hadn't been played for a fool and he really could get what he wanted. But instead all he could remember was Julie's smiling face before Lahav had slit her throat. Maybe she had needed to die - if she'd been involved in Dr Granger's work, she might not have been a total innocent. It was just that he'd expected the other side to be different, an opposite to Belle and her kind, not a reflection of them.
Still, this was war. That was one thing both sides agreed on. And Morgan was a soldier; he knew the acts that war demanded.
"I
have
joined your side," Morgan said. "Just tell me what to do, and I'll do it."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The plane juddered as it landed and Coby gritted his teeth. He'd always hated flying. He liked to be the one in control. When he stepped out onto the tarmac the brightness of the Californian sun hurt his eyes and he felt the clamminess of his skin gluing his shirt to his back and beneath his arms. After six years in Europe he'd forgotten how hot his homeland could be in the Fall.
He examined his own feelings about being back. He'd felt no nostalgia for America in all the years he'd been away, but he was surprised to find a kind of comfort in the familiar signs and signifiers of the place: the shape of the magazines in the newsagents, the fonts on their covers, the brands of candy for sale beside them. An automated voice announced flights and departure gates and for a moment he heard it as accented and foreign. Then something inside him clicked back into an old, accustomed position and the accent was gone. He heard it instead in his own voice, an exile's distortion of his vowels as he told the immigration officer that he was here on holiday and no, he didn't intend to stay long. He couldn't stop himself darting a glance behind him as he walked through customs, but there was no one behind him.
Coby had last seen Lahav standing on the river bank as the knife he'd meant for him had plunged into Morgan instead. Coby had run and hadn't looked back, and every second until he was on the plane to America his shoulders had tensed with fear of the hot blade they expected to feel between them. But Lahav hadn't caught him and soon it wouldn't matter if he did.
The exit from the airport led straight to the BART station, minimalist and unwelcoming. He let one train go by, checking to see that everyone boarded it before taking the next. If he
was
being followed, they were being subtle about it.
Sound inside the train was muffled by the incongruous carpet, an oddly suburban gesture on this city transport. It was grubby and he could see a black scar where an illicit cigarette had been stubbed out on the material. It was nothing like London's Tube with its over-bright lighting and claustrophobic curves.
Coby had sometimes caught the train from Cambridge and then travelled the Tube late at night, hunting. He was careful not to indulge himself too often, but if one or two of London's rough sleepers went missing, who was there to notice or care? The grim network of subways around Elephant and Castle had been his favourite stalking ground. He couldn't imagine a much worse place to spend your last moments on earth.
He didn't like his urge to kill. It was a weakness and it made him vulnerable. But he recognised that it was an addiction he couldn't kick. If he was careful, the only court he'd have to answer to was the one he'd face after he died. And now...
He'd heard of the Croatoans and their claims that they could spirit travel. He'd even intended to check them out, after he'd recovered the shofar. Ironic that they'd had it all along. It was odd they hadn't used it yet, but maybe they didn't understand its true power. If that was the case, he could swap information for the chance to enter Eden alongside the cult's leaders - and they could all pick the apples from the Tree of Life. He'd never have to face that final judgement and neither heaven nor hell would have any hold on him.