The cultists must have seen it too, but they kept running, faster than should have been possible. The power which had raised the hairs on her neck intensified. She couldn't tell if it was a consequence or the cause of the Croatoans' inexhaustible energy.
Coby was laughing. He sounded disbelieving and Alex wondered if he'd planned this all these years but never quite thought it could happen. Morgan gazed around him with a soft smile on his lips. He looked entirely relaxed, and she didn't understand how he could be until she realised she was smiling too, as flowers bloomed among the blades of grass, pinpricks of blue and the occasional daisy, like a child's drawing of the sun.
Something larger disrupted the grass as the grass had disrupted the sand. It grew like a piece of time-lapse photography, first a slender sprouting stem, then a sapling and finally a tree. Green fruit inflated on the tips of its branches and she tensed until the fruit darkened to purple and she realised it was a plum. To her left, another sapling grew, and the sweet smell of lemons wafted from it.
The circle of Croatoans finally broke, pushed apart buy the wildly growing plants around them. There was an explosion of sound, musical but discordant. A second later a flock of birds swooped towards the trees. The flock moved as one but was composed of a hundred different sorts of bird. She saw the common brown of starlings, a red-breasted robin and a bluetit. Before it was lost in the foliage, she glimpsed the pink feathers and long, insectile legs of a flamingo.
She looked at Morgan. "Did I do this?"
"Well, it sure as hell wasn't me."
She laughed. She knew she should be worried, but something about this place seemed to stifle dark emotions. She felt joy and gritted her teeth to fight it. She'd let Coby get very close to his goal and she had to make sure he didn't reach it. She looked for him among the branches - and heard the first scream.
They were in an orchard now, the other people lost in the dappled shadows of the trees. It took a moment for her eyes to make out the shapes of the nearest Croatoans and the black holes of their open mouths. She ran towards them, propelled by an instinct to help someone in pain that overrode who these people were and what they'd done. But when she reached the nearest woman she stopped and stared. It was Maria - her body, at least.
Maria shrieked as her hands clawed at her face. It had changed. She was still the same person, with the same gap between her front teeth and the same soulful dark eyes, but now small furrows radiated from them and her skin was no longer perfect. It looked a little dry and weathered. Older. Coby's transformation had happened to her too, but Alex didn't think it had the same cause.
"What's happening to me?" Maria said.
"The spirit world hates lies," Alex said. "You being young and pretty was a lie. This place is correcting that."
A small coyote slunk forward and whined when it saw Maria. Alex's righteous satisfaction faded into nothing. "Oh god, I didn't think."
"It's their bodies, isn't it?" Morgan said. "Think this'll reverse when we get out of here?"
Alex shook her head helplessly as Maria continued to age in front of them. Her body twisted, stooping as her bones lost density and grew brittle and her tendons tightened. Her face was a mass of wrinkles, her hands liver-spotted and gnarled with arthritis. And she still kept aging.
"In her real body she had cancer," Alex said. "She would have been dead by now if she hadn't stolen Maria's."
The woman in Maria's body understood what Alex was saying. Her screams trailed into whimpers and she held out her wizened hands imploringly towards them.
Alex shook her head and backed away. "Everyone ages and everybody dies."
The old woman's eyes narrowed and her almost lipless mouth twisted. "See if you feel that way when your own time comes." She looked as if she intended to say more, but only a dry rattle emerged, terrible and terminal.
As the body slumped to the ground it kept aging. Skin stretched tight over bones as the flesh beneath melted away. By the time the corpse lay on the perfect green grass it looked weeks dead.
"We have to find PD," Alex said. Her chest felt so tight she could barely breathe.
Morgan looked at her and she knew he thought it was already too late. She turned her back on him and walked between the trees. More bodies lay beneath them. The musk of decay wafted on the breeze but the ripe smell of the fruit quickly overrode it. Alex didn't think this place liked death or unpleasantness. It wanted you to forget them. She had to concentrate very hard not to let her mind drift into a formless daydream of happiness.
Some of the Croatoans were still alive, though barely. They passed an old man on his knees beside a cherry tree, dry retching into the grass. When he raised his head at the sound of their passage Alex saw that he was blind, his eyes eaten away by disease.
"I'm sorry," Morgan said to her.
"Don't be sorry!" Alex snapped. "PD's body could still be alive."
"But in what kind of state?"
They reached the centre of the orchard, a small clearing where the sun shone down brightly. Alex realised that, impossibly, it had returned to the height of its daily arc. In this perfect place it must always be noon. The clearing was on a slight rise, allowing a view over the trees to the landscape beyond. They were still in the Mojave. She could see where the greenery gave way to the brown of desert. Bare mountains ringed them.
Coby stood at the other side of the clearing. His head turned from side to side. For the first time since the ceremony started, he looked less than completely composed. Among all the fruit hanging from the branches around them, Alex couldn't see a single apple.
"Where is it?" he said to Alex. "You didn't finish it. Finish the fucking summoning."
"Where's PD?" she asked.
He shrugged and looked down at his feet. A body lay there, spine arched in the final agony of death. The skin was thin and mottled and the hair gone, but Alex recognised the shape of cheeks and nose. She felt a pain in her chest that might have been either grief or guilt.
"Once I got here, they were surplus to requirements," Coby said.
Alex glared at him. "You don't even care, do you?"
"I just don't like to share, especially something as important as immortality."
"But you
should
care," Alex said. "What can you threaten me with now?"
She enjoyed his look of consternation. It was transmuting into anger when the ground beneath her shifted. She staggered back and watched the earth gape open. There were two holes and her heart stuttered when she saw the thick bole of a tree push through each of them. Coby smiled triumphantly.
The ground rolled beneath her as if the roots of the trees ran very long and deep. The trunks were already full thickness when they emerged from the ground and the branches tore out of the soil with them, buds sprouting into leaves as they rose. The apples which grew beside them were green with red cheeks. They looked like they'd be crunchy and sweet.
A figure sat beneath the trees, cross-legged.
"Raven," Alex said bitterly. "Trust you only to show up once it's too late."
"I don't know why you're acting all surprised," he said. "You invited me here."
"I didn't," she said and then remembered. When she'd thought of the Garden of Eden she'd imagined the serpent. She'd thought she understood what Raven was, but she'd made the mistake of taking the spirit world's metaphors for literal truth. She knew of the trickster god called Raven and that was how he'd appeared to her, but he was a far more universal principle.
"You're real," Coby said to him. "I always wondered if the dreams were just dreams."
"Real
ish
," Raven said.
"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."