‘Mist,’ I said. It clung to my skin, was cold in my lungs.
‘And what do you hear?’
‘Water.’
‘Rising. How will it feel to drown, Tania? To be dragged beneath the surface into the dark depths, to meet Death. How many times have you imagined what it will be like?’
‘The same way it felt for Conner.’ I might be close to the end, but I wouldn’t let her forget what she’d done.
‘And you know what lies beneath the water? Of course you do.’
A town, a church, a graveyard, a thousand serpents. And a giant beast with the head of a snake and cold green eyes, carrying a corpse. He rises and sloughs off mud and weeds. He bears a victim that before long will become me.
‘Yes.’ Aurelie smiled. She enjoyed the moment. ‘The water rages. Are you ready?’
To say goodbye to Orlando, who stood with me and fought so hard. To my mom, who always believed, and my dad, whose world would forever feel empty without me. ‘No,’ I said, holding them in my mind and seeking a key that would unlock Aurelie’s dark angel power and disarm her.
Know your enemy – search for her until you find her. Name her.
The key forged itself out of the love I felt for Orlando, stronger than the terror of this moment. It gleamed and gave me the psychic strength I needed.
‘You don’t win! Your name is not Aurelie Laurent. She’s already dead. She drowned with her mother, off the coast of India.’
‘Ah!’ My dark angel didn’t deny it. In fact, she was amused, as if I’d risen in her estimation and had at last grown into a decent opponent. In other words, this was a game which had suddenly become worth playing.
‘You circle the planet,’ I went on. ‘You wait until someone dies then steal the body. This is how it worked with Zoran, and it’s the same with you!’
‘That poor girl,’ Aurelie sighed. ‘She was on deck when the boat began to sink and she could easily have taken to one of the lifeboats, but she was a loving, loyal daughter and so she went back to find her mother. She took the stranger child – the one Juliet was trying to save. But it was useless. Juliet, Aurelie, the child – all drowned.’
‘You stole her body, climbed into one of the lifeboats then appeared to Antony Amos as if you had survived.’
‘Almost,’ she agreed through the icy mist and thundering water. ‘But not quite.’ She waited for me to fit the final piece into place. ‘No?’ she queried.
‘Yes!’ I cried. All around us, water crashed against rock. I couldn’t see land. I knew I needed to understand more.
For the first time a small doubt crept across Aurelie’s expression – was I clever enough to find that still-missing piece?
‘That wasn’t all.’ I queried everything, asked myself who at New Dawn could have deceived me the most – more than Jarrold and the other Explorers, more than Ziegler or even Aurelie. The answer came to me at last in words he himself had spoken. ‘She’s my twin. We’ve always been close.’
I whispered the crucial words: ‘Jean-Luc is part of this.’
And as I said his name I looked up into the mist and saw a shape gradually materialize – another wolf man with a pelt around his shoulders, lowering himself on to the rock.
Jean-Luc stood beside his twin sister, swathed in mist but stripped of all fakery and lies. He wore the wolf-skin cloak, the lean grin and hungry eyes.
‘You died in the shipwreck along with Aurelie,’ I told him.
‘Correct,’ he replied. He didn’t care that I knew. In fact, he seemed proud and disdainful.
‘It was your mission to throw me off track,’ I challenged.
‘And I did an excellent job, you must admit. I charmed you with my talk of Paris and I took pleasure in deceiving you.’
‘You made me blame Antony.’
‘Yes – to gain time, to give Channing more opportunity to seduce Holly. It worked better than even I expected.’ Turning to Aurelie, Jean-Luc invited her to share in his victory.
‘Don’t say any more,’ Aurelie said quickly. She was on edge now as the water roared at our feet and I moved closer to discovering the whole truth.
Breathe. Breathe again. Aurelie and Jean-Luc – twins, inseparable in life and in death. Dark deceivers. I was almost there, at the heart of their lies.
But Aurelie and Jean-Luc hadn’t finished their games of deceit – they held back one more shape-shifting shock.
‘Shall we show her?’ Jean-Luc wondered, switching between playful and sinister. ‘Does she deserve to know?’
‘I think she does,’ his sister decided.
My skin crawled at the idea that they were about to reveal a final secret and I watched in terror as the evil twins turned and took each other’s hands. Devil-eyes locked, they shrouded themselves in shadow, and I had a misty, stomach-churning image of two bodies fusing into one; of a female face and a male face merging and of a new, non-human body forming – a melding, a collapsing, an ultimate shape-shift. And when the shadows dispersed, cruel Aurelie and proud Jean-Luc were gone and in their place stood a devil wolf.
They were one and the same creature, neither male nor female – pure evil. My shape-shifted dark angel crouched low, its gleaming eyes fixed me with an evil stare. Its stillness terrified me.
I had time to take in the cruel features surrounded by thick grey fur – the small ears, the large, gleaming eyes, the sawing, tearing, grinding teeth. Saliva trickled from its mouth, its ribs heaved in and out.
It didn’t move. At my feet, the torrent roared.
Nowhere to run or hide, only moments to go before the wolf leaped for my throat.
Be brave. Have the courage not to run from the wolf in the blizzard. Know your enemy.
It crouched, it raised its hackles.
Know your enemy.
The flood water pounded at the rock and sucked at my feet, sending spray high in the air. Then there was a roar in my ears, the water parted and the beast rose, black and covered in gleaming scales, its jaws wide open. Flickering its snake’s tongue, it emerged from the sucking, foaming flood.
My devil wolf rose from its low crouch. It padded forward to deliver me to its overlord. The beast climbed out of the water. It spread its wings, reached out its empty arms.
Standing in the black shadow, I faced my wolf spirit.
Know your enemy. Name him.
The wolf – cruellest of all animals, dealing in death and madness, pitiless. And the tribes had a name for this most brutal of spirits. I sought in the darkest corners of my mind and tried to remember.
‘Ahriman!’ I cried into the mist, above the roar of the rising lake.
Ahriman, witch in wolf’s clothing, child killer, creature of nightmares who brings death to the plains and mountains. The spirits of the lost tribes gather in the snow and wind. They are there to see me defeat my enemy. I am the cunning coyote, saviour of the world. I say the name and I jump down Ahriman’s throat to saw up his wicked heart. I show no mercy.
Ahriman – the name halted the lumbering overlord of the dark lake.
‘He is revealed!’ Zenaida murmurs her approval.
Ahriman – it pierced the wolf like a knife to the heart. It stole its strength, robbed it of the power to exact revenge against me – the retribution that it had planned for so long. Anger and self-loathing blazed in its amber eyes – after all it was Jean-Luc, my twinned dark angel himself, who had told me this story, handed me the flint which would rip him apart.
Now its wolf-body was spent, its wolf-spirit defeated. In agony it threw back its head. It howled into the mist.
I heard the howl and saw blood ooze from its mouth. It bubbled through its killer teeth and dripped on to the snow. It howled again then sank low on the ground. I had torn away its last disguise.
And as my dark angel sank in defeat, the beast from the lake turned away, empty-handed. He lowered his giant bulk beneath the foaming torrent and the waters closed over him.
I stood trembling on the last scrap of land watching the demon wolf bleed
. It whimpered and tried to crawl away but there was nowhere it could go.
It crawled and slithered, rolled in agony, reached the water’s edge. The current licked at it, swirled around the spent body, lifted it and carried it away.
I watched it go.
Light wins. Darkness loses.
I am raised from the scrap of land. Angels of light carry me above the flood. It feels like I am surrounded by a thousand fluttering, whistling wings.
We are above the snow, above the clouds. The sun shines brighter than you could believe.
‘The water took him,’ I tell my mourning dove. ‘He vanished.’
‘Forget him,’ she says. ‘He is nothing now.’
I fly to safety. The clouds below are golden. I soar with my angels.
20
The disaster at Turner Lake destroyed the entire New Dawn Community. Not a single structure remained, and a total of fifty-three lives were lost. It made the international news.
What the journalists didn’t say and the video footage didn’t show was an army of dark angels being driven back, a valley being cleansed.
No – they reported that engineers were to be brought in to construct a new, high-tech dam, and already a permanent memorial to Antony Amos and his doomed enterprise was planned.
‘He won’t be forgotten,’ Mom vowed. She was home from the hospital, able to wiggle the fingers of her left hand, religiously performing the programme of exercises her physical therapist had given her. ‘Amos was a great man with a good heart. We have to make sure his work goes on.’
Dad smiled and told her to take things easy.
Orlando and I laughed at him for being so naive. Mom never relaxes, not even after brain surgery.
Orlando and me. He’d escaped from the wolves at Spider Rock. He and Aaron had got Holly off the mountain. Aaron had used Orlando’s truck to drive her home.
‘I never left you,’ he’d told me. ‘I swear on my life I was coming to find you.’
I knew it. There was no need for him to explain. ‘Zenaida took care of me,’ I whispered. And Maia, Conner and Regan.
Orlando and me. We were in my garden on Becker Hill, warmly dressed, sitting on a bench holding hands.
Grace and Jude had visited earlier and together we’d gone next door to see Holly. Aaron was on guard duty, letting in only one visitor at a time.
‘It’s cool; she doing good,’ he’d assured us. ‘Apart from the fact that she’s exhausted and she says it feels like she got run over by a truck.’
‘I remember that feeling,’ Grace sighed.
I was the first to go up to her room and knock.
‘Yeah, who is it?’ Holly called.
I found her propped on pillows, hair loose, i-Tunes playing. She looked thinner, paler, with dark shadows under her eyes.
‘Don’t say it – I look like crap,’ she said.
‘You look better than I thought you would.’
‘The wolves nearly got me, huh?’
‘It wasn’t the wolves I was worried about.’ More Channing and the rest – Spider Rock, the ceremony, the edge of darkness.
‘Don’t let’s go there,’ Holly sighed. She’d flicked the switch, come out of the New Dawn trance and definitely didn’t want to revisit. Except there was one thing she wanted me to clear up for her. ‘So anyway, Tania, was I right?’
Now I knew that she was back with us, working on her surge power. I smiled as I sat on the edge of her bed. ‘About what?’
‘About Conner, of course.’
‘What about Conner?’
‘They killed him, didn’t they? Come on, admit it – I was right!’
‘I wish it was summer,’ Orlando told me as we sat on the bench in the snow. The sky was blue, the temperature was minus four. Tomorrow Ryan and Natalie would drive him home to Dallas.
‘Why is that?’ We held hands, fingers intertwined, my head on his shoulder, gazing out towards Carlsbad.
‘Summer is our best time – long, lazy days, no pressure, midnight swimming.’
‘Yeah, give me a piece of that.’ It was the same for him as it was for me – that first precious memory of diving into the cold, clear water in the moonlight.
‘College is over, I’m back here in Bitterroot; we’re together.’
‘It’ll happen,’ I promised.
Tomorrow I would stand in the drive and watch him leave. Today, right here, right now, my head rested against him, my hand was in his.
‘I wonder what happened to Jarrold,’ he murmured.
‘The water rose; he got swept away with the others.’
‘We don’t know that for sure.’ Gently Orlando kissed the top of my head. ‘You don’t mind me talking about this?’
‘Jarrold’s gone,’ I insisted. Until the next time, the next place when someone like Jarrold, but not Jarrold, would rise again. Right now I didn’t want even to think about it. I wanted to feel the wintry sun on my face, to breathe in and out in time with the guy I loved.
‘What he said – about you weakening and going over to him, leaving me …’
‘It wasn’t true,’ I said quickly, and I squeezed his hand. ‘Forget him. He’s nothing now.’
All night I lay in Orlando’s arms, my dreamcatcher swaying above our heads. I slept soundly and woke early as the sun filtered through the blind.
He was still asleep. In and out, in and out, his chest rose and fell. Soon I would wake him but not yet.
‘I know you have to leave,’ I whispered as he slept. ‘Drive away but leave the precious part of you behind – your love, your steadfast, beautiful self. Go and stay.’
Tania’s story concludes in
BROKEN DREAM
coming soon …
Starry, starry night. I’m with Orlando in New York.
Repeat slowly – I’m with Orlando. We’re together again after two months apart.
The picture we’re staring at shows a whirling, swirling, magical night sky. The midnight blue is like nothing you’ve ever seen, the stars are crazy, the painter is Vincent Van Gogh.
New York in December. Two days ago Orlando flew into Bitterroot from Dallas and from there we took a plane to JFK. We gave ourselves five beautiful days to explore the city – time for me to attend a three-day film workshop and for us both to Christmas shop until we drop, watch movies and walk, walk, walk these bright, buzzing city streets.
Fourteen days before Christmas and outside the gallery it’s snowing.
Earlier today the flakes froze on my eyelashes.
‘How did Vinnie V do that?’ Orlando murmured. The colour, the texture, the light.
Especially the light. I agreed that this painting was awesome beyond words.
We weren’t alone in MoMA, obviously. Everyone who visits what must be the world’s biggest collection of modern art wants to stand in line to see Starry Night, buy the postcard and go home to tell their friends. But the painting lifts you out of reality – the shuffling crowds, the air con and the uniformed security guards. You’re in a dream, it really feels like it’s just you and Vincent’s stars.
‘Let’s go.’ In the end Orlando had to take me by the arm and steer me away.
‘Aww!’ I sighed.
‘I know, but it’s time for lunch. We need to eat.’ He led me through the museum. I floated past magenta, cobalt blue and chrome yellow paint dribbled, splashed and thrown on to white surfaces, plus multi-million dollar contemporary canvases that were pierced, slashed, scrunched up and scrawled on. I didn’t care about any of them, only Vincent.
‘Wow!’ Orlando kept hold of my hand until we reached the exit.
‘I know.’
Starry skies, midnight swimming in Turner Lake – that was how he and I first came together, in the mountains near our home. It was when he first told me he loved me and wanted to be with me always – under the stars in the cold, clear water. And now here we were in the heart of Manhattan, in a totally loved-up dream.
Where do the ideas for your books come from? r />
My ideas come from a mysterious region of the brain – the ‘What if ’ part which must have a neurological label, but which works something like this: ‘What if the world really is split between supernatural good and bad forces? What if we can all be tempted on to the side of shape-shifting, terrifying dark angels to fight against the angels of light?’ With this basic idea, I can create a setting, a heroine and a whole cast of characters, plus a plot so full of twists and turns that even I don’t know how it will end until I get there.
Who would your dream cast be if Dark Angel was made into a film?
Actors in a film of Dark Angel? Most of the ones I can think of are a few years too old (sorry!), but how about Natalie Portman for Tania (she’s the right physical style and can play sensitive, tormented souls) and Robert Pattinson for Orlando (dream on!).
What have you enjoyed writing the most – Dark Angel or the Beautiful Dead?
The answer to which of my books I enjoy the most is always, ‘The one I’m writing now.’ So it has to be Twisted Heart (more on that later).
Who do you relate to more – Darina from the Beautiful Dead or Tania in Dark Angel?
I think Darina has more of the rebel in her – something I can relate to from my own teen years. I don’t have Tania’s psychic powers, but do share some of her thin-skinned sensitivity.
If you could invite five people to dinner who would they be?
Top of my list for ideal dinner guests are: Marilyn Monroe, Shakespeare, Catherine Earnshaw from Wuthering Heights, John Lennon and Atticus Finch from To Kill A Mocking Bird.
Where is your favourite place to write?
I can only write in one place and no other – it’s my first storey office overlooking a river and a wooded hillside. No other room will do.
Who is your favourite author and why?
Favourite author is so hard – this time I’ll choose one who is alive – it’s Annie Proulx who wrote the short story Brokeback Mountain which they turned into a great film. Everything she writes is strong and disturbing.
What advice would you give to aspiring young writers?