Ghost Dance Read online

  "And you've got it. Or you know where it is."

  "Yes," Coby said. "That's why my life is in danger."

  Morgan nodded. "Except it's all bullshit, isn't it? Because if Dee had the secret, he wouldn't be dead in the first place."

  For the first time, Coby didn't seem to have a ready answer. He covered his hesitation by taking a sip of coffee, but Morgan wasn't fooled. "You're sort of right," he said eventually. "Dee did find out how to achieve immortality. But knowing and doing are two different things. And the same people who are trying to stop me now were trying to stop him then."

  "The Mossad? Right."

  "You're closer than you think. Have you read the Bible? Not all of it, really, just Genesis."

  Morgan laughed. "Funnily enough, that hasn't been high on my list of priorities."

  Coby didn't smile. "Well it should be, especially for you. Even so, you must know the story of the Garden of Eden, the apple that Eve picked that got us all kicked out of paradise."

  "Yeah. So?"

  "The popular understanding is that we got kicked out for eating the apple - for disobeying God. But that's not it at all. There was another apple tree in the Garden, you see. Another forbidden fruit, and this one gave you eternal life. God kicked Adam and Eve out so they couldn't eat that second apple too. He couldn't risk it, because that apple would have made them just like him - immortal and omniscient. God didn't kick us out of Eden because he was angry, he did it because he was afraid. And his agents are still afraid and they're willing to do whatever it takes to stop mankind finding a way to rival His power.

  "You're saying Dee found the Garden of Eden," Morgan said.

  "Finding it isn't the problem - it's getting in. God left a guardian behind, the archangel Uriel. To enter Eden you'd have to defeat him and that's something no mortal man should be able to do."

  Morgan took a deep breath. "Listen, you're talking about it like this is literally true: Eden, guardian angels. I've seen a map of the world, and the Garden of Eden isn't on it."

  "No, it's not literal truth - it's metaphor. But there's a world beyond this one where metaphor has physical form and the Garden is more than an idea. And Uriel isn't standing outside Eden holding a flaming sword for all eternity. Here's here, hunting down anyone who gets too close. Angels and demons can enter this plane if they find a human body to carry them. They're parasites. It's why they're so hard to fight. If you destroy the host body the parasite just finds another."

  Morgan remembered Belle and nodded. He supposed it made sense that the same rule applied to both sides in this supernatural conflict. "So you're saying Lahav's an angel? Or that he's got one inside him?"

  "Probably. That's why I didn't come to you straight away - there was always a chance the spirit had jumped bodies into yours. The Israelis are definitely working with the forces of heaven. I'd say there's some kind of mutual back-scratching going on. The spirits they're dealing with must be able to tell them where all sorts of interesting things are hidden. And they're powerful allies and dangerous enemies. They're not completely invulnerable, though - not even Uriel, who's one of the most powerful. You've probably seen The Exorcist, but that's Catholic tradition. Do you know how Jews perform exorcisms?"

  "I guess not with a bell, book and candle."

  "No. They use a horn, a ram's horn called a shofar. It's the same horn they blow every New Year and on the Day of Atonement. The sound is said to drive the possessing spirit out of its body."

  "And Uriel's just another possessing spirit," Morgan said. "But you'd need a pretty powerful shofar, wouldn't you, to drive out a being that strong?"

  "Yes - there's only one shofar in the whole world that could do it, the shofar Hagadol. Legend says it was part of the Temple treasure, lost when the Romans sacked the place two thousand years ago. Interesting, isn't it, that the ancient Israelite priests made it? Almost like they wanted an insurance policy in case God fucked them over the way he fucked over so many other people. Anyway, Dee spent his whole life and fortune tracking the shofar down." Coby studied him, eyes squinted as he tried to puzzle out the expression on his face. "You believe me, don't you?" he said. "You know I'm telling the truth."

  Morgan nodded as he strode towards him. "Yeah, I think you might be. But there's something else I want to know."

  Coby was still smiling encouragingly when Morgan grabbed him round the waist, pinning him against his body, Coby's back to his front. "I want to know," Morgan hissed in his ear, "why you don't want me to see you in that mirror."

  As soon as he spoke, Coby started struggling. There was a wiry strength in his slender limbs, but Morgan was a trained soldier and there wasn't really any question of the outcome. Coby's feet scrabbled against the carpet as Morgan dragged him towards the armoire and the mirror above it.

  When they were in front of it, Coby wrenched his head aside, eyes closed. It didn't matter. The spirits were there whether Coby looked at them or not.

  Morgan saw a woman with frizzy ginger hair and an older black man with a kind face and tired eyes. But mostly they were children, so many of them that they crowded the glass, leaving nothing of the room behind them. Their mouths moved soundlessly, screaming or shouting, it was hard to tell.

  "OK, OK" Coby said. "You can let me go - the cat's out of the bag, right? Before you ask, they're bound to me, though I've never been able to see them. "

  Morgan held him a moment longer, then let him struggle free.

  "Who are they?" he asked. "Did they die here?"

  Coby shook his head. "Not here."

  "But you killed them."

  "Yes." For a long moment, the only sound in the room was Coby's laboured breathing. Then he sighed and looked up. "What you should really have asked is why am I so interested in immortality?"

  Morgan looked back at the mirror, but the shades were gone, only the after-image of their accusing eyes lingering in the glass. "You're going to hell," he said.

  Coby nodded. "When I was a stupid, angry kid, I did a terrible thing. And when I die, I'm going to pay for it. If I die."

  Suddenly, it was Morgan who couldn't look Coby in the eye. What happened to a man without a soul after he died? It was the question which had haunted him for months. But if Coby was right - if Dr Dee's research was as successful as he claimed - he might never need to find out.

  "OK," he said to Coby. "Tell me where the mirror is."

  The day had warmed up by the time they reached the river, the sun burning through the thin clouds. The colleges looked golden and the grass still green with the last vitality of summer. It was a peaceful scene but Morgan felt none of it. There was a knot in his stomach that he didn't want to identify. He told himself it was only fear, but it felt like guilt too. He should have phoned Kate to give her a progress report and he hadn't.

  Coby scrambled down the riverbank and Morgan followed, trainers squelching in the mud from yesterday's rain. There were two punts tied up there and Coby began to loosen the rope holding the less battered of them.

  "You're kidding, right?" Morgan said.

  Coby turned to look at him over his shoulder as his fingers kept working at the rope. "It's hidden in the river. Running water foxes magic and stops anyone trying to scry a location. We could hire a motorboat somewhere, I guess, but a punt's the least conspicuous form of transport in these parts."

  The boat rocked alarmingly on the water when Morgan climbed in and he sat down hurriedly on the narrow wooden seat. He scowled when he saw Coby smiling at him.

  "I'll drive, shall I?" Coby said. He seemed to know what he was doing. The punt sluiced soundlessly through the water, overtaking the other, slower boats which crowded the river.

  Morgan leaned back on his elbow and raised his face to the sun.

  "Never been punting before?" Coby asked. With his wide pale eyes and loose curls he looked the picture of boyish innocence.

  "What did you do to them?" Morgan asked.

  Coby looked at him a long moment. It occurred to Morgan that he nev
er did anything without considering it, and that this was both his weakness and what made him dangerous. You'd never know what Coby really wanted, because he didn't act on what he wanted, only on what he thought was best.

  "I killed them," Coby said. "That's all that matters. Dead is dead, right?"

  Morgan couldn't argue with that. He'd been an assassin once and he hadn't spent much time agonising over how his targets died. People talked about a painless death, but only those who'd never seen someone die. The pain could be brief or drawn-out, but it was always there.

  "You knew what I'd see in your mirror," he said instead. "How?"

  Coby's lips twisted into something that wasn't quite a smile. "You're a minor celebrity in the occluded world, Morgan - surely you must have realised? You can't do what you did in St Petersburgh and not have people notice. Interested parties have been keeping an eye on you ever since. Granger dying was convenient, in a way - I mean horrible and a waste, obviously, but at least it drew you here. If you hadn't come to investigate, I'd have had to find some other way to get you involved. I need you to finish this. If I could see the spirits that hide in mirrors, I'd know Dee's secret already."

  So Coby knew exactly who he was and what he could do, despite his dissembling earlier. Morgan nodded, unsurprised, and watched the water ripple around the pole as Coby plunged it to the bottom of the river. He'd never liked water, not since he'd watched his sister drown as a child, but this river was so tame it was hard to be afraid of it.

  So when he felt the prickling in his shoulder blades, he knew it was something else that was prodding his animals instincts awake. He'd lived on his nerves long enough to trust when they told him he was in danger.

  The punt rocked as he stood too rapidly. Coby shouted in alarm and the occupants of a nearby boat snapped their heads to watch, laughing as they saw Morgan wobble on his feet. He took in their fresh, happy faces and instantly dismissed them. The river was crowded with punts, tourists leaning on the stone bridges to watch them pass beneath.

  Lahav crouched low in a boat twenty feet behind. His face was shaded beneath a cap, but Morgan's eyes were drawn to him in an instant. A wolf couldn't hide among sheep. His aura betrayed him, the signal of a predator.

  "He's found us," Morgan said.

  "Shit! How? That cross should have protected me from scrying." Coby's voice was too loud. It echoed across the still water and their pursuer's head snapped up.

  "Maybe he just followed us," Morgan said. "He's a spy, isn't he? He doesn't need to rely on the supernatural to do his job."

  Coby looked shocked, as if this hadn't occurred to him. He punted harder, his strokes less elegant now, as his pale eyes darted nervously back to Lahav.

  "I'll watch him - you watch where we're going!" Morgan snapped.

  Coby scowled then jumped as the prow of their punt jostled against a boat he hadn't seen ahead of him. The man in blazer and boater smiled lazily at him, but Coby didn't meet his eye, twirling his pole to take their boat between the two ahead. The punts he left in his wake rocked unsteadily and the man in the boater yelled but they were past and now Lahav was five feet further behind.

  Morgan blinked when light switched to damp darkness as they passed beneath another bridge. The splash of the pole echoed loudly and he could hear his breathing too, as laboured as if he was the one punting their boat.

  He felt useless. There was only one pole and even if they'd had a second he doubted he could have done much to help. Why hadn't it occurred to him that Lahav might find them? That by going straight for the mirror, he'd lead his enemy there too?

  But he hadn't been thinking about much of anything, had he? Only getting his hands on the mirror for himself. If he'd told the Hermetic Division and got their back-up, he wouldn't be in this situation now.

  He blinked again, blinded, as the punt glided back into daylight.

  "We need to get out and get away," Coby said. "We can't risk leading him to the mirror." He held the pole immobile as he talked, only turning it a little to steer them round a rowing boat full of sunburnt tourists.

  Morgan closed his hand around the wet wood, jerking it back to the bottom of the river. The punt rocked unsteadily, but Coby got the message and kept pushing them forward.

  "It's too late," Morgan said. "We've already led him to the river - he must know why we've come. Do you really want to give him the chance to search until he finds it?"

  Coby's already pale face paled further. "But can you take him on? I know what you are, but that knife of his is lethal, even to you."

  It was a good question. I know what you are... What he'd once been. But he'd given that up, along with most of the power he was heir to. The secret of immortality wouldn't do him any good if he died before he could use it.

  He looked behind them, but the gloom beneath the bridge hid their pursuer. "How much further?" he asked Coby.

  "Three more bridges, maybe ten minutes," the other man said. "It's under the Mathematical Bridge. Urban legend says Isaac Newton built it, but that's bullshit. William Etheridge designed it to be an occult focus: oak above, water below. The mirror's mystically invisible there."

  "But not actually invisible," Morgan said, and Coby grimaced and shook his head.

  A second later, they were nosing between two more punts and Lahav was powering from beneath the bridge. He wasn't punting his own boat. A broad-shouldered man leaned on the pole behind him, teeth gritted as he put all the power of his back into each stroke. Was he another Israeli agent, Morgan wondered, or just a hired hand?

  He realised it didn't matter as Lahav's eyes hunted and trapped his. This man alone was dangerous enough. There was another boat in front of the Israeli, a punt overloaded with drunk teens. It drifted sideways, the steering left neglected as the pudgy blonde holding the pole took a swig of champagne straight from the bottle. Morgan saw her throat work as she swallowed. And he heard the crunch of broken bone as Lahav drove an elbow into her nose, knocking her out of his path as his boot swung out to shove the boat clear.

  The other people in the boat swore and screamed, but Lahav's expression of grim resolve didn't flicker and he was now only fifteen feet behind Morgan. Morgan could see the knife in his hand glowing red. "What the fuck?" he said to Coby. "The police took that off me. How the hell did he get it back?"

  "It's not the blade that matters," Coby said. "It's the hand holding it."

  Another bridge was approaching, two low stone arches spanning green banks. Stone spheres lined the railing above. Morgan didn't have time to think as the prow of their punt slid under it. He bent his knees and jumped.

  Only his fingertips hooked over the top of the bridge and they took all of his weight. His arms screamed with the strain and his heart pumped too hard. Above him he could hear laughter and he imagined he had an audience. His fingertips dug as hard as they could into the rough stone. His T-shirt rucked up, leaving his stomach exposed as he pulled himself up an inch, then another, but there was no leverage and just no way he could get himself any higher.

  All the breath huffed out of his body as it dropped and his nails scraped a millimetre nearer the edge of the stone. His feet swung, searching for purchase, but there was nothing except the empty air of the archway.

  When he felt the clasp of a hand around his wrist he flinched away from it, almost falling into the water beneath. Another hand closed around his other wrist, fingers tight against the bone, and he made himself relax. It hurt like hell when they jerked upwards, tearing something in his shoulder that he knew he'd feel for days. Then a hand was under his armpit and the pressure on his arms was gone. There was another heave, his legs helping this time, pushing against the stone of the arch, and he was over. He lay on the bridge and stared up at his rescuers.

  They grinned down at him, young and pleased with themselves. "Nice one, mate," the redhead said.

  Morgan nodded as he stood. He managed a smile and a mumble they could interpret as thanks, but he didn't have any more time for them. When he looked ou
t over the railing he saw that Lahav was almost at the bridge. The Israeli was staring up at him, frowning. His knife was white hot in his hand, brighter than the sunlight.

  Morgan pressed a hand against the nearest stone sphere. It didn't move, didn't even rock, probably cemented in place. He'd been expecting that. The bridge was crowded with tourists and a small group of schoolchildren gave him an ironic round of applause.

  He shouldered his way through them and ignored their protests. When he'd given himself a fifteen-foot run-up, he turned back round. The two men who'd rescued him were eyeing him curiously. They must have realised some of what he intended to do, because they started to clear a path for him, shoving the onlookers to one side of the bridge or the other. They grinned at him, like this was all a bit laugh, and he supposed for them it was.

  He'd always been a strong runner and his thighs tensed and flexed easily as he pushed himself forward. When he was five feet from the railing he leant back and leapt forward, feet outstretched. He saw a brief flash of his helpers' faces, mouths open in shock. And then the shock jarred through his legs as the soles of his feet hit the stone sphere on the brink of the bridge.

  His knees flexed and for a second he thought he'd failed. Then there was a crack, a grating of stone, and his legs straightened again as the sphere flew over the edge of the bridge.

  He ended almost as he'd begun, hanging by his arms from the edge of the bridge. This time no one rushed to help him, but it didn't matter. He had a better purchase with his elbows hooked over the top, and it only took a moment to pull himself up.

  The crowd which had smiled at him backed away, faces white and shocked. He could see several running away, others with their phones to their ears, probably calling the police. He looked back down at the river. The boat was still there, but Lahav was no longer in it and there was a bright spatter of blood across the punt's wooden side.

  He wasn't the only one to notice it. His former rescuer leant against the railing beside him, eyes wide. "Bloody hell," he said. "I think you killed him."