Age was catching up with it. The heat of its painted sun was undoing it, image by image, tile by tile.
"Eppstadt!" he yelled, "Are you coming?"
But the man in the long grass didn't move, so Todd let him lie there. Eppstadt had always been a man who did what he wanted to do, and to hell with other people's opinions.
Sprawled on the ground, Eppstadt heard Todd's call, and half-thought of returning it, but he could no longer move. Several shoots had entered the base of his skull, piercing his spinal column, and he was paralyzed.
The greenery pushing up through his brain, erasing his memories as they climbed, had not yet removed every last shred of intelligence. He realized that this was the end of him. He could feel the first insinuations of shoots at the back of his throat, and an itching presence behind his eyes, where they were soon to emerge and flower but it concerned him far less than it might have done had he imagined this sitting in his office.
It wasn't the kind of death he'd had in mind when he thought of such things, but then his life hadn't been as he'd expected it to be either. He'd wanted to paint, as a young man. But he'd had not the least talent. A professor for the Art School had remarked that he'd never met a man with a poorer sense of aesthetics. What would they have thought now, those critics who'd so roundly condemned him, if they'd been here to see? Wouldn't they have said he was passing away prettily, with his head full of shoots and colour and his eyes was
He never finished the thought.
One of Lilith's flowers blossomed inside his skull, and a sudden, massive hemorrhage stopped dead every thought Eppstadt was entertaining, or would ever entertain again.
Indifferent to his death, the plants continued to press up through his flesh, blossoming and blossoming, until from a little distance he was barely recognizable as a man at alclass="underline" merely a shape in the dirt, a log perhaps, where the flowers had grown with particular vigor, hungry to make the most of the sun now that it was shining so brightly.
FOUR
Tammy knew there was trouble brewing the moment she set eyes on Katya. The woman was smiling down at them beatifically, but there was no warmth or welcome in her eyes; only anger and suspicion.
"What happened?" she said, straining for lightness.
"It's over," Todd told her, coming up the stairs, his hand extended towards her in a placatory manner. No doubt he also read the signs in the woman's eyes, and didn't trust what he saw there.
"Come on," he said, laying his palm against her waist in a subtle attempt to change her direction.
"No," she said, gently pressing past him so as to go down the stairs. "I want to see."
"There's nothing to see," Jerry said.
She didn't bother to sweeten her expression for Brahms. He was her servant; nothing more nor less. "What do you mean: there's nothing to see?'
"It's all gone," he said, his tone tinged with melancholy, as though he were gently breaking the news of a death to her.
"It can't be gone," Katya snapped, pushing on past Jerry and Tammy and heading down the stairs. "The Hunt goes on forever. How could Goga ever catch the Devil's child?" She turned at the bottom of the stairs, her voice strident. "How could any man ever catch the Devil's child?"
"It wasn't a man," Tammy piped up. "It was me."
Katya's face was a picture of disbelief. Obviously if the idea of a man bringing the Hunt to an end wasn't farcical enough, the notion that a woman-especially one she held in such plain contempt-had done so, was beyond the bounds of reason.
"That's not possible," she said, departing from the bottom of the stairs and heading along the passageway.
She was out of Tammy's view now; but everyone could hear Katya's bare feet on the floor, and the doorhandle being turned --
"No!"
The word was almost a shriek.
Jerry caught hold of Tammy's elbow. "I think you should get out of here -- "
"No! No! No!"
" -- that room was the reason she stayed young."
Now it made sense, Tammy thought.
That was why Jerry had sounded as though he were announcing a death: it was Katya's demise he was announcing. Denied her chamber of eternal youth, what would happen to her? If this was a movie, she'd probably come hobbling back along the passageway with the toll of years already overtaking her, her body cracking and bending, her beauty withering away.
But this wasn't a movie. The woman who strode back into view at the bottom of the stairs showed no sign of weakening or withering: at least not yet.
"That bitch!" she yelled, pointing at Tammy. "I want her killed. Todd? You hear me? I want her dead!"
Tammy looked up the stairs to where Todd was standing. It was impossible to read the expression on his face.
Meanwhile Katya ranted on. "She's spoiled everything! Everything!"
"It had to end eventually," Todd said.
As Todd spoke Tammy felt the pressure of Jerry's hand on her arm, subtly encouraging her to head on up the stairs while there was still time to do so. She didn't wait for a second prompt. She began to ascend, keeping her eyes fixed on Todd's face. What was he thinking?
Look at me, she willed him. It's me, it's your Tammy. Look at me.
He didn't, which was a bad sign. It would be easier to obey Katya if he didn't think of Tammy as a real human being; didn't look into her eyes; didn't see her fear.
"Don't let her go!" Katya said.
She was coming up the stairs now, taking them slowly, her pace casual. Todd just stood there, and for once Tammy was glad of his passivity. She slipped by him without being apprehended, and headed on to the top of the stairs. "Todd!"
The cry was from Jerry, not from Katya. Tammy looked back. For some reason, Todd had caught hold of him, and was preventing him from following Tammy.
From the expression on his face, it was clear Jerry knew he was in trouble. He struggled to pull himself away from Todd, but he was much the weaker man.
"I looked after you, didn't I?" Katya said to Jerry. "When you didn't have a friend in the world, I was there for you, wasn't I? And now you let this happen."
"It wasn't my fault. I couldn't stop it."
Katya was right in front of him now, her palm flat against his chest. She didn't seem to be exerting any pressure, but whatever power she was exercising through her hand was enough to make him sink back against the wall.
"It wasn't your doing?" Katya said incredulously." "You could have killed her. That would have stopped her interfering."
"Killed her?" Jerry said, plainly horrified at the idea; as though he'd not realized until now that the stakes were so high, or that the prospect of murder-casual, inevitable-was so close. Perhaps, most of all, not realizing that the woman he'd obviously fallen in love with should now show herself to be as cold as the Queen of Hell.
"You little fake!" Katya said, putting her hand on Jerry's head and ripping at the hair sewn into his scalp. She pulled, and a flap of skin came away in her hand. Blood ran down over Jerry's face. "Jesus, Katya," Todd said. "There's no need -- "
"No need to what?" she broke in, her face perfect in its fury, those wonderful bones, that exquisite symmetry, finding in rage its best purpose. "No need to punish him? He knows what he did."