He left the BART at Civic Centre to take the N-Train to Buena Vista Park. The view from its peak swept out towards the mottled green of the Presidio and the Golden Gate Bridge beyond. The sky was a very clear blue, the sea too, and he drew in a satisfied breath of the pine-scented air through his nose. Paradise, he thought, or a pale imitation thereof. If he did this right, he'd see the real thing. A literal Eden - or as literal as anything could be in the metaphorical realm of spirit.
It didn't take him long to find the Croatoan centre in Haight-Ashbury, though he was surprised not to see recruiters loitering outside. There was no bell either, and after a moment's hesitation he turned the handle and pushed the door open.
It was dark inside, shutters over the windows blotting out the sun. And it was silent. When Coby flicked on the light switches he saw that the place was almost empty - just a dark, cavernous space, no tables or chairs. The bulbs which illuminated it were bare, even the shades taken. The place had been abandoned, but not in any kind of hurry.
Damn it. This was the only link he had to the cult. There were recruitment centres in other US cities, but if this one was abandoned those probably were too. And he couldn't waste time rambling all over the country - not with the Mossad agent on his tail.
He had to hope they'd left something behind. He gave the entrance hall a cursory glance - nothing but paint and a few spiders - before heading deeper into the building. It was bigger than it had seemed from the outside, and he realised that the neighbouring houses must be a part of the Croatoan centre too, their apparent individuality only a façade.
The first corridor was lined with rooms, each as empty as the initial hall. They weren't much larger than cupboards and he guessed they'd been used for one-on-one sessions with potential recruits.
The next corridor was featureless, but a smell grew, stale and unpleasant, as he approached its end. It was the scent of an unwashed body - a living smell, not a residue. He heard shuffling from the room beyond and the smell strengthened.
The old man was huddled at the far end of the room, sitting in the centre of a pale rectangle on the dark blue carpet. Coby guessed that something heavy must once have sat there, but the old man's weight barely flattened the fibres beneath him. He looked lost inside his baggy combat jacket and his face was emaciated beneath his worn baseball cap. The smell was coming from him, so strong now it seemed to thicken the air. There was the stink of alcohol too, cheap booze soaked into the old man's clothing and oozing from his pores. He was just a bum who'd made the same discovery Coby had - that the Croatoan centre was vacant property.
Coby smiled. They were alone, and this was a man no one would miss. He shouldn't, he knew he shouldn't, he had more important things to do, but it had been too long since his last. He felt the urge as a tightening in his groin and a hot flush along his neck. He had to do this. He needed it.
The old man's eyes were a little glazed, but there was still an intelligence that the drink hadn't entirely eradicated. He would know enough to fear death. Coby saw that fear in his eyes now as he read the expression on Coby's face with animal instincts that living on the streets must have honed. Animals knew when they were hunted.
"Hey, buddy," the old man rasped. "We're all friends here. Right, pal?"
"I'm nobody's friend," Coby said. He took a step closer and the old man scrambled to his feet, but he could only retreat a pace before his back was to the wall.
"It's the occupational hazard of being a sociopath," Coby said. "We can't form attachments like you ordinary people do. I just don't have it in me to care." He took another step closer, arms stretched to either side in case the old man decided to bolt. "It's not that I don't feel
anything
. They say we sociopaths don't have empathy, but that's not quite right. I understand perfectly what you're feeling. There's fear, and later there'll be pain. If I didn't understand it, I couldn't take such pleasure in it."
He wasn't sure the old man had understood everything, but he'd understood enough. A thin trickle of urine seeped from beneath the man's pant leg and the sharp smell cut through the musk of his body odour.
Coby didn't have a weapon with him, but that was OK. He liked to use his hands. The skin of the old man's neck was unpleasantly greasy and his fingers caught in the tangled ends of his beard. Beneath that Coby could feel his pulse, fast and frantic.
"Please," the old man said. "Please don't."
Then Coby's hands were too tight for him to speak and he watched that lovely red flush of blood colour the man's sickly flesh and heard the helpless sucking of his lungs for breath that wouldn't come.
At the very end, the old man began to fight. Coby always wondered at the strength of the will to live, even among those who had so little to live for. He tightened his hands, using his weight to press the old man against the wall. The frail fingers clawed at his and he knew that he'd have scratches when this was done, but what did it matter? He'd be beyond the reach of any human law very soon.
The old man's lips turned blue and Coby knew it wouldn't last much longer as the fingers clawing at his hand slackened. He felt the usual mingling of excitement and disappointment as he saw the light in the old man's eyes die. He let him go as soon as he felt the body slacken, and it flopped to the floor, drool leaking from one corner of the bloodless lips. Corpses didn't interest Coby. It was death he enjoyed, not the dead.
"Well," a voice said behind him, "You've certainly kept yourself busy, son."
He spun round, almost tripping over the old man's sprawled legs.
The speaker stood a few paces back, one arm loose at this side and the other pointing a gun at Coby's heart. It took him a moment to place the seamed face beneath the yellow-grey hair and then his gut clenched with fear. But what the hell was the detective inspector from Granger's case doing in San Francisco?
Spalding looked down at the dead old man. "I see repentance isn't high on your agenda." Coby glanced at the corpse then back at the policeman. There was no point denying it. He shrugged. "Like the song says - I am what I am."
"You should have taken us up on our offer," Spalding said. "You didn't have to suffer in hell if you served our master on earth. We haven't intervened so far because we trusted the opposition to keep their own house in order. But we can't let you do this, son."
When Coby frowned in confusion Spalding laughed and used his free hand to flick open the buttons on his cheap white shirt. There was a pentagram tattooed on his chest, the lines of it a little fuzzy beneath the wiry hair. Coby grimaced. "Of course. But why should you care? I've been doing your work quite nicely for you so far, and believe me, once I've eaten the apple, you're not going to be seeing a softer, kinder Coby."
"Not good enough. You'll be doing our master's work, but you won't be
his
. Hell doesn't want allies - only slaves."
Which was exactly why he'd turned down their offer in the first place. He felt his heart race but he made himself smile confidently as he said, "What if I've found the emancipation papers? Do you want to be a slave to them - in this life and the next? Work with me and we can both be free."
Spalding hesitated, and Coby felt a moment of hope, then the other man shook his head. "I picked my side. You haven't found the apples yet, son. I'm gonna make sure you never will."
Coby saw Spalding's eyes narrow as his finger tightened on the trigger and couldn't quite believe it was going to end like this. When he heard the volley of shots he waited for the pain, but it never came. A second later, Spalding's body tumbled to the floor, a halo of dark blood spreading around it. Coby stared at it, uncomprehending. Then he saw the curl of smoke in the corner of the room and for the first time noticed the gun turret hidden there and the camera above it which must have guided its movements. Someone had been watching. They'd seen Coby murder the old man, but they'd chosen to kill Spalding.
The flood of adrenaline left him as quickly as it had come and his legs gave out. The carpet cushioned his knees and hands as he leaned forward and emptied the contents of his stomach onto it.
When he was sure his legs would hold him, he stood and made a circuit of the room - the search he should have conducted before, if he hadn't been distracted by the lure of the helpless old man. There was nothing but one rickety table with a CD player in its centre. It was plugged in, a red light blinking beside the play button.
It was such an obvious invitation that he hesitated. But if it was a trap, his head was already inside its jaws. He pressed play.
"Hello, Coby," the recording said. The voice was distorted, clearly disguised, but he thought it was male. "We haven't been properly introduced yet, so you can call me Laughing Wolf. You've got no reason to trust me, I know, but I
did
just save your life. And I've got the thing you're looking for. Of course, neither you nor I can wield it the way we really want - and you almost got the one man who can use it killed back in Cambridge."
There was a pause, and Coby thought,
Morgan
.
"Yes," the recording said, as if it could read his thoughts. "But don't worry, the knife missed, and he's already here. And there's one other player. I'm not sure if you've considered this - no, I know you have - but possessing the power to kill the guardian and eat the apples of life is no use if you can't get into Eden in the first place. So we need a spirit traveller, someone to open the way. And she's been drawn in too. All the pieces are in place, everyone except you. Now I'm going to tell you exactly what you need to do."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The metal of the boxcar burned beneath the fabric of Alex's jeans, but the wind was cool on her face as the engine powered through the desert. She could see the pure straight line of the tracks ahead of her, lost in heat haze before they reached the horizon. The train's form kept shifting beneath her, one moment red and rusted crates, the next wooden and rotting. The engine sometimes ran on diesel, other times puffed out clouds of steam which dissipated into nothing as they floated past her. Sometimes the ghosts of horses galloped alongside them. The railway had been a constant in this empty landscape, and the spirit world remembered it.
Raven sat cross-legged in front of her, his back to their destination. He'd told her he'd know when they reached it and she didn't doubt him, though the desert seemed featureless to her, the cacti and scrubby bushes repeating tediously through the hour-long journey from Roseville.
The wind had dried her eyes, drawing tears that evaporated before they could ease the discomfort. "Well, this is fun," she said.
Raven's bright black eyes fixed on her and she had to look away. She couldn't pretend any longer that she didn't know what he was. She'd missed as many of her Native American History classes as she could, but she could hardly avoid learning about the trickster god who flew through so many of the stories. Legends said Raven stole the sun, moon and stars to provide people with light in their darkness, that he gave fire to mankind, his white feathers dyed black by the soot from the ember in his beak. But it was also Raven who denied humans the second life they'd once enjoyed. His motives were his own and his help was perilous.
"Why did you choose me?" she asked him.
He smiled and nodded as if he'd been expecting the question. "Why must there be a reason?"
"Because you want something from me, I know that. And the things I can do, they're powerful. It's too risky to give them to some random person and hope they'll use them right. It's crazy."
He scratched at the hair around his ear, looking troubled. "You weren't chosen, Alex. You aren't special. Well, no, of course you are. Everyone's special, aren't they?"
"You sound like my therapist."
He laughed. "Evolution designed you humans to be pattern-detecting creatures. You're made to seek out meaning, reason, sense. But the world is senseless and nothing happens for a reason."
She watched the desert for a while, the close blur of yellow sand beneath the train's wheels. The train changed but the sand remained the same. "That's bullshit. Everything happens for a reason. It's cause and effect, isn't it?"
"Ah," he said. "Determinism. Then I suppose the reason I chose you is because millennia ago the molecules of the universe happened to be arranged one way and not another."
She poked his crossed legs with her toe. "You're a pain in my ass, you know that?"
He grinned and she realised that for a moment she'd been treating him as if he was just another person - an irritating one. And maybe that was what he wanted. But she refused to forget what he really was. And she knew he still hadn't answered her question.
"That's a shame," he said. "No more time to chat. We're here."
She scanned the landscape and saw nothing except more sand and yet more cacti. He nodded to her left and when she squinted into the distance she thought she could make out the dark blots of buildings. If it was a town it wasn't a very large one. The train showed no signs of slowing and there was no station along the ruler-straight track ahead.
"Jump," Raven said, pulling her to her feet.
She leaned against the sudden push of the wind. "Are you insane?"
He grinned at her and she guessed that in some sense he was. She resisted only a little as he tugged on her hand. And then they were both flying through the air and for a moment it was exhilarating. She closed her eyes and braced for the shock of impact.
It came far more softly than she'd expected. Her legs folded under her and for a moment she found herself looking into a beak as long as her body and the bright black eye larger than her head. Then she blinked and it was just Raven, smiling and offering her a hand to get up.
Her fingers shook in his and she let go as soon as she was standing. The rumble of the train faded into nothing as it raced to the horizon. In its absence she heard the sounds of the desert, short sharp chirps of birdsong and the distant howling of some larger animal. And there was another sound she'd only recently learned to recognise: the abrupt
pop
of gunfire.