‘Someone drowned in that lake!’ I yelled after him as he disappeared inside Jean-Luc’s cabin. I started to struggle through the snow after him then stopped.
Or maybe they only wanted me to believe that someone had died – after all, the dark angels were masters of shape-shifting and twisting the truth.
‘Imagine a different scenario,’ Jarrold had said.
Last night as I stood in the doorway of the social centre, Aaron had run up to me in the black native American vest and white shirt that Grace had stitched for him. He’d said he needed my help to split Channing away from Holly. I’d said no, we needed the others – Orlando, Jude and Grace. He’d insisted it had to be me, and quick.
So wait. What if that hadn’t been Aaron after all? What if it had been one of the shape-shifting angels taking on Aaron’s identity? Suddenly it hit me as a new possibility.
And remember how easy it had been for me to persuade Channing to go off into the night on a fool’s errand, how Aaron had failed to get through to Holly on the rock overlooking the lake. What if that had been set up to fool me? The whole fight was fake, and Aaron’s fall from the rock – all one big illusion.
I was tumbling into confusion, into a nightmare of doubt and not knowing – and this was exactly what my dark angel had planned!
These new realizations shot through my body like jolts of electricity. I’d been tricked. If there was a chance that Aaron was alive, I knew I had to tell Orlando! But before I could set off to find him, Jean-Luc came out of his cabin with Jarrold, both lugging Jean-Luc’s heavy bags in the direction of the parking lot. Jarrold called to ask for my help.
‘Take the small bag,’ he instructed, throwing me a blue carry-on, which I caught.
‘You realize the road out of here is impassable?’ I said, then told them about the drift blocking the track out on to the highway.
Jean-Luc groaned and muttered something about the whole world conspiring against his leaving New Dawn – including the Colorado weather. ‘All I want to do is sit on that plane to Paris and get the hell out of here.’
‘So you two wait in the social centre while I fix the snow plough on to the grader,’ Jarrold offered. ‘It’ll take me an hour maximum to get out there and clear the route.’ He abandoned us with the bags and forged ahead towards the service area where they parked tractors and other big machinery.
‘That Jarrold is quite a guy,’ Jean-Luc grimaced as we lugged the bags through the snow. He sneaked a glance my way to judge my reaction.
‘Action man,’ I agreed. ‘Quite scary, actually.’
‘Really?’ We’d reached the entrance to the social centre and Jean-Luc arranged his bags under the porch. ‘I already told you – he’s irresistible to women – those muscles, that Viking look.’
‘Believe me, here’s one girl who can resist,’ I muttered, maybe too forcefully.
Jean-Luc grinned and said nothing, and before long, Regan and Blake and a bunch of other Explorers came out on to the porch to say their goodbyes and I saw the opportunity to slip away.
‘Hey, Tania!’ It was Marta who stopped me. ‘Are you doing OK – after, you know, last night at the party, the accident to your buddy … ?’
Her voice fell away and I didn’t have time to answer before a sudden loud siren tore apart the silence. It started faintly from a distance but soon rose to an ear-splitting wail, bringing everyone, including Kaylee and Ava, running out of the centre on to the porch.
The siren came from the direction of the dam so we all ran to the lake shore and strained to see what was happening. Half a mile away we made out major activity – giant yellow trucks and diggers were chugging along a forest track towards the dam, and still the screech of the siren split the air.
Then Ziegler came running down from Trail’s End, a two-way radio in his hand. He slid and skidded through the snow, kept his balance, kept on coming. ‘They found a crack in the dam!’ he reported. ‘Ice damage – a twenty-metre split.’
My heart thudded to a halt then flickered back to life. A breach in the dam. A wall of water waiting to burst through.
‘Can they fix it?’ Kaylee asked above the general hubbub.
‘They’re doing all they can.’ As usual Ziegler was in control. ‘The engineers out there can’t pour fresh concrete in sub-zero temperatures so they have trucks carrying sand bags to shore up the crack. But there’s massive pressure from the water behind the dam. It depends if they can plug the gap fast enough.’
Desperately I looked along the shore and up the slope into the forest to see where Orlando had got to.
‘The concrete in that dam is decades old. Something like this was bound to happen.’ Jean-Luc sounded resigned. To him this latest emergency looked like part of the conspiracy to stop him breaking free from his stepfather and everything that the New Dawn Community represented. He stood back and watched Ziegler organize a team of Explorers who would drive out the New Dawn tractors to help with the sand-bagging operation.
Quickly Amos’s deputy got his guys together and they headed off to the service area, leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves.
‘What happens if they can’t fix it?’ It was Ava who nervously asked the question that weighed heaviest on all our minds.
‘Yeah, there’s two million cubic metres of water behind that dam,’ Regan informed us. ‘If it breaks, that whole amount of water floods into this valley where we’re standing right now.’
My own heart was already flittering and fluttering, but this new information pressed a panic button in everyone else’s minds.
‘I’m out of here!’ Blake was the first to make the decision. She told Marta and Regan that they could ride with her into town and the three of them quickly headed off.
‘Not yet.’ I yelled after them, raising my voice above the wailing emergency siren to explain that the road was blocked by snow.
‘So what now? Do we try to get out of here on foot?’ Marta turned to Regan, who agreed that the best tactic was to climb to higher ground.
‘If we make it to the ridge above the cabins we should be OK, at least for a while,’ he said. ‘If the dam does give way and the water looks like it’s going to flood the valley, we climb higher until we’re sure we’re safe.’
So that’s where they headed – everyone except Jean-Luc, who decided to set out along the trail to find out how Jarrold was getting along.
The siren scrambled my brain as I watched a dozen figures struggle up the snowy hillside and disappear into the trees.
I hear spirit voices lamenting in the icy wind, see ghost dancers fall exhausted to the ground.
‘Our dream is dead,’ Red Cloud sighs from a high ridge. He is silhouetted against a grey sky. ‘We give up our land to the rising waters, we leave our own country for ever.’
Satanta, Lone Wolf, Swift Bear and Big Tree stand beside him as flood water surrounds them. They lift their gaze to the snow-capped mountains, they dream of the past, of sweeping across the plains on horseback, of living off the land, gathering food, making medicines from the plants that grow. It is over. The mountains they roamed, the freedom they enjoyed, the rivers they fished in and the buffalo they fed from are lost.
A swirling torrent sweeps it all away.
I stood alone by the shore, overcoming the impulse to run with the rest of the Explorers. Then the siren suddenly stopped and deep silence engulfed me. I looked around – which way should I go, what should I do?
Someone came running down the hill towards me, shouting my name. ‘Tania!’ I was in my cocoon of bewildered silence, at first not recognizing Orlando’s voice, not knowing which way to turn, certain because of my latest vision that the crack in the dam would get bigger, that the water eventually would break through. The corpses in Turner Lake would rise to greet us.
‘Tania, come with me!’ Orlando grabbed my hand and staggered on. ‘I found Holly. She’s in Ziegler’s cabin. Come this way!’
I ran with him towards a cabin I hadn’t visited before, on
ly convinced that it belonged to Ziegler when I spotted his black Stetson hanging from a hook in the porch.
‘Holly’s in here?’ I gasped, staggering the last few steps up the hill.
Ziegler’s cabin was isolated beneath a shadowy overhang, overlooking a small frozen pond and hidden from onlookers by a cluster of tall redwoods.
‘Alone!’ he promised. ‘I was sneaking a peek through the side window – when the siren started, Ziegler took a call on his radio, locked the door and left.’
Orlando and I approached without making any noise, stepped into the porch and pushed at the door. It was locked on the inside. ‘Where’s Channing?’ I asked, every nerve stretched to breaking point.
‘I have no idea. Come and look through here.’ Orlando led me to a small window at the side of the cabin.
The blind was pulled low, but by crouching and peering through the gap I could make out a couch and a low coffee table with three glasses, a framed picture of mountains and a door into an inner room. ‘There’s no one here,’ I whispered. ‘Maybe Channing came for her, probably when he learned about the problem with the dam. There’s a big crack in the concrete: they’re scared it’ll split open.’
‘How much time do we have?’ Crouching beside me, Orlando took in the bad news and kept a cool head.
‘Nobody knows. Ziegler took a team to help fix it.’
‘Shh!’ He held his finger to his lips and pointed into the cabin.
I took another look and saw Holly emerge from the inner room. She looked totally out of it – her party clothes were crumpled, her eyes wide and staring. In fact, she hardly seemed to know where she was as she stumbled towards the coffee table. She took up one of the glasses and drank.
‘Let’s go!’ Orlando told me, running round to the front of the low, log building and this time knocking loudly on the door. Through the glass panel we saw Holly recoil at the sound then vanish again into the back room.
‘We have to break in,’ I decided, seizing a log from the wood pile on the porch and using it to smash the glass panel, then easing my hand through the jagged hole to slip the latch and turn the handle. The door swung open and Orlando and I rushed inside.
Holly reappeared carrying a knife – an antique thing with a carved horn handle and a long straight blade. There was a crazy look in her eyes as she pulled the door shut and advanced towards us.
‘What got into you? Stop right there!’ I cried.
She ignored my plea and kept on coming until there was only the coffee table between us. Suddenly Orlando lashed out with his foot and kicked the underside of the table, up-ending it and sending it crashing against her. She staggered back and dropped the knife. I dashed to pick it up.
‘Tania, give it back to me!’ Holly’s hair had fallen loose out of its ponytail, her face was pale, her voice childlike and desperate as she ran to stand between me and the inner door.
‘Who’s in there?’ I asked, feeling the hairs at the back of my neck start to prickle.
‘Nothing. No one. Ziegler and Channing said not to let anyone see!’
‘I don’t care about that, Holly. Just let me through.’ Pushing her forcefully to one side, Orlando opened the door and disappeared into the inner room. I got a glimpse of a bed and a shower cubicle before Holly regained her balance and threw herself towards me.
‘Give it back to me, Tania!’ she screeched, wrestling the knife from me and shoving me out on to the porch. ‘You shouldn’t be here. Channing will be angry with me.’
‘Who’s in that room?’ I demanded, wrenching myself free of her grasp. She was still strong and athletic, despite Channing’s mind-control. And again she wielded the knife.
‘Who do you think is in there?’ she screeched. ‘Aaron, of course!’ Quickly swinging from desperation to manic aggression, her eyes bulged as she jabbed the knife at me. ‘We let everyone think that he’s dead because he’s one of us now,’ she yelled. ‘He’s going to live here at New Dawn, leave his old life behind.’
‘Stop!’ I cried. Ignoring the knife, I pushed her off the porch then ran inside to find Orlando leading Aaron out of the bedroom where he’d been held captive.
‘I don’t know what the hell’s happening,’ Orlando mumbled.
‘They tricked us big-time,’ I gabbled. ‘Aaron didn’t drown.’
Orlando supported a figure that was Aaron but not Aaron. The broken figure stumbling towards me, hands bound and with duct tape over his mouth, had the crazy, wavy hair, the broad shoulders and sturdy figure of the guy I knew, but his face was unrecognizable – almost bloodless and vacant, like a zombie. His eyes were swollen, his head hung forward.
‘Tania, grab him!’ Orlando gasped as Aaron’s knees buckled and he slumped to the ground.
Together we lifted him, peeled off the tape and untied the rope then helped him stumble across the room. Holly was out on the porch, blocking our exit.
‘You can’t take him!’ she whined, confused and desperate. Without being aware, she loosened her grasp on the knife and let it clatter on to the wooden floor. ‘He’ll lose his chance of joining the community. He has to stay here with us!’
The sound of her voice seemed to rouse Aaron from his stupor. He raised his head and tried to speak. ‘Wrong …’ he mumbled. ‘Holly, come …’
‘We all have to leave,’ Orlando insisted as we dragged Aaron to the porch step. He stopped only to pick up the knife. ‘If the dam bursts this whole place will go under.’
The devil rises from the lake. Water breaks over his powerful shoulders. His green eyes glare and he spreads his terrible wings. The dam bursts and a huge column spouts thirty metres into the air. A wall of water thunders down the valley, taking everything in its path.
And before Orlando, Aaron and I could step down from the cabin towards the frozen pond, shadows cast by the cliff behind us started to shift, the trees surrounding us twisted and came alive. Ziegler and Antony Amos stood there before us.
Time stopped. The two men appeared by the pond. Orlando and I supported Aaron. Holly froze in fear.
Branches bent and cracked, shadows deepened. Suddenly day became night.
I was face to face, unarmed against Amos, my dark angel. In my heart I always knew that it would reach this point.
‘Oh, Tania.’ Ziegler sighed. He was the first to move, advancing towards us and bringing the darkness with him. ‘Why not keep on running?’
Terror pinned me to the spot. Ziegler’s face was wolf-narrow, his eyes were the eyes of a hunter closing in on his prey. Behind him, Amos too started to approach.
‘You won’t win,’ I told them, my voice hardly audible against the creaking, cracking pine trees. A wind tore through them, snapping branches and sending them crashing to the ground. ‘You had me fooled for a while but now I know who you are.’
Antony Amos was my angel of death. Ziegler was his lieutenant. Now that we had come this far, I would speak their names and they would be ripped apart, destroyed, sent whirling back into the shadows. I would be saved.
‘Oh, Tania,’ Ziegler sighed again in mock pity. ‘Our power to deceive is greater than you realize. I told you – you should have kept on running. But no, you played the hero, came back for your friends and now look what has happened.’
Cruel and tall, growing taller, towering over me, Ziegler’s eyes glinted in the darkness.
The wind howled, the shadows moved, a hundred wolf eyes gleamed.
Amos stepped up beside Ziegler. My heart lurched. This was the dreaded time, the return for vengeance that my first dark angel had warned me of. The roar of floodwater filled my ears.
‘Richard, what is this?’ As Amos put his hand on Ziegler’s arm, his voice was weak and quavering, almost lost in the wind. Behind him, a tree swayed, groaned and crashed to the ground.
‘Old man, it is time for you to step aside,’ Ziegler snarled as he thrust his boss back towards the pond.
Amos gave a startled cry, staggered and fell to his knees.
I let out a gas
p, expecting Amos to rise again.
But what I saw was not my arch enemy after all. Amos knelt in the shadow of Ziegler the hunter. He saw Aaron and crumbled into confusion. ‘How can this be?’ he whimpered. ‘Richard, you told me the boy was dead.’
Behind Ziegler, a pack of wolves appeared at the edge of the pond. Hackles raised, tongues lolling, they waited.
I looked from Amos to Ziegler, saw a being that was half man, half wolf, with jaws that would crush, teeth that would tear into soft flesh.
‘Your time is over,’ wolf-man Ziegler snarled at Amos. ‘We have no more use for you.’
Antony Amos was on his knees, slumped forward. Yesterday, an hour, a minute ago he was the great philanthropist, the admired movie director, the idealistic founder of the community. Now he was broken, hardly able to raise his head.
‘For a while we let you continue to believe in your new beginnings, your guiding principles,’ Ziegler told him scornfully. ‘You sent us into the wilderness to turn our hearts, to bond and learn how to trust, yet all the time we used you.’
Amos let out a groan. Using all his strength, he got to his feet, made one last appeal. ‘Richard, I don’t understand. What are you talking about? Who are you really?’
Smiling, Ziegler replied. ‘We are your worst nightmare.’
‘But who, who?’
‘Nothing you can invent comes near to us. No movie creation, no figment of your warped imagination – we belong to the dark side, we have power over you all.’
‘I trusted you.’ Amos felt the pain of betrayal. ‘I believed in your redemption.’
The wolves at the edge of the pond stirred. One raised his head and howled.
‘You believed what you wanted to believe,’ Ziegler mocked. ‘That’s what everyone does. But let me tell you loud and clear, there is no ancient spirit, no creator in these mountains strong enough to protect you, no greatness, no harmony, no hearts at peace.’
‘It was all a lie.’ A sudden anger rose in the old man and he grew defiant. ‘You betrayed me, Richard, just like you betrayed all these kids in the community. But you’re not all-powerful. Whoever you are, you won’t escape.’