Wolves surround us, their amber eyes gleaming, jaws drooling. They rear up snarling, and morph again into men with faces streaked red and black, carrying axes. I am back by Turner Lake with ancient, Native American warriors, with black flood water rising.
Wolf man Jarrold wields his axe over my head. I try to escape by rushing towards the lift and I meet no resistance. To my surprise he lets me step over the threshold.
There is no floor and I’m falling down the shaft, dropping like a stone. I am pitched into total darkness, I smell earth and dampness, I hear nothing. And then I hit the bottom with such force that I believe my ribs are cracked and my back broken. I lie in silence.
Please don’t leave me.
Silence except for the slow dropping of water into shallow black pools, the broken sound of my breathing – my choking, sobbing despair.
I wait.
I hear distant screams and falling rock. Earth fills my nostrils, eyes and mouth. I scrape it from my face and more falls. Inch by inch I am buried alive.
And now the unseen, tormented spirits of the underground are with me, crowding in. They wail and cry; they are faceless except for dark, empty eye sockets. They have no colour, no shape.
I close my eyes.
‘Tania?’ It was Macy’s voice that woke me.
She’d pressed for the elevator and found me slumped on the floor. She was leaning over me, patting my face.
I opened my eyes, felt as though the weight of earth had not lifted from my chest.
‘Here, let me help you,’ Macy said. She raised me to my feet.
‘Thank God!’ I sighed. ‘Press the button, Macy. Take us back up to the third floor.’
She did as I said without asking any questions for once. She supported me as we stepped out of the lift.
‘My God, Tania!’ Holly was there, scared out of her mind. ‘Did that really happen? Are you OK?’
I nodded. My ribs were still aching from the effort of drawing breath. ‘Where did he go?’
‘Jarrold? It was weird; he just kind of walked away.’
‘It was a warning,’ Grace suggested. Her normally pale complexion had turned completely white and she was shivering. ‘Next time it’ll be even worse.’
Holly nodded then launched into her next plan. ‘Seriously, Tania, we all need to get out of here. We should get back to Bitterroot and fetch help.’
‘You can’t do that.’ Suddenly Macy sounded scared. ‘I mean, really!’
‘According to who?’ Holly wanted to know.
We were four girls in a hotel corridor. Three of us were shell shocked by what had just happened and the fourth was putting obstacles in our way.
‘According to Gwen for starters. Weller just informed security that you broke into her room. They’re checking right now to see if anything was stolen.’
‘So let them throw us all into jail,’ Holly scoffed. ‘Did security also find out that Gwen Speke is not who she says she is?’
Macy turned her back on Holly and spoke directly to me. ‘You can’t leave anyway,’ she explained carefully. ‘Remember there’s fifty centimetres of snow out there.’
‘Plus, we didn’t find Orlando,’ I reminded Grace and Holly. Still aching and suffering from the vision of being buried alive, I finally managed to refocus. ‘We have to keep on searching.’
Grace took a deep breath. ‘Let’s take a long, hard look at this,’ she murmured. ‘Maybe we have to face a few facts.’
‘Number one – Orlando went missing at midday,’ Holly reminded me. ‘It’s now six thirty p.m. That’s way too long for anyone to survive.’
I felt the hammer blow of each simple word. ‘So maybe he’s not still out there,’ I protested. ‘That’s why we searched Gwen’s room, remember. We think there’s a strong chance that he made it down from the overlook.’
‘But we don’t know that,’ Grace argued. ‘What we do figure is that this time the dark angels have chosen Orlando as their number-one target. So what if they already got what they wanted out of him?’
‘Which was to torment you and keep you here for the final battle. You see what we’re saying?’ Holly asked in the gentlest, kindest tone – so unusual for her. ‘There’s a chance that Gwen sent Orlando up to the overlook and didn’t care what happened to him afterwards because he’d already served his purpose.’
God, no! I wanted to scream and run outside to find him, scream again. Instead, I froze to the spot.
‘Maybe he’s already dead,’ Grace breathed.
Macy shook her head. Her bright-red hair fell forward across her eyes. ‘What are you guys talking about?’ she demanded. ‘Orlando’s with Owen in the bar. If you don’t believe it, just follow me!’
15
‘So Gwen and I are going to get on the next plane back to New York,’ Orlando was explaining to Owen when we reached the bar. From a distance he looked completely normal – so much so that I almost hurried up to him, ready to put my arm round his waist and tilt my head for the special brush-of-the-lips kiss that he always greeted me with. But as I drew close he turned and I saw a manic gleam in his eyes and a blank, mask-like arrangement of his features.
‘Hey, we were worried about you,’ I muttered.
Ignoring me, he turned back to Owen and went on describing his plans. ‘As soon as they open up the roads into Mayfield we’ll drive to Aspen and then we’re out of here, back to the city. Actually, the whole crew is due back there in the new year.’
‘Why is that?’ Owen asked as he stacked clean glasses on a shelf.
‘From what I hear Larry showed Ryan the rushes and Ryan wasn’t happy with some of the sequences in Central Park. Guess whose fault?’
‘Don’t tell me. Ryan didn’t like Jack’s performance.’
Orlando nodded. ‘He put a lot of pressure on Larry to reshoot. And hey, he’s the guy with the money.’
‘So,’ Holly broke in. ‘Now you and Gwen go everywhere together?’
Orlando jutted out his jaw but said nothing so I pulled Holly away from a situation that was leading straight into an argument. ‘At least he’s still alive!’ I hissed as I sat her down at a table. Gwen hadn’t punished him and left him to die out on the overlook and there was still a chance to save him.
‘And what about you and me?’ Macy asked Owen, perching on a stool next to Orlando. ‘Shall we go with them?’
Owen held a glass up to the light then polished it carefully. ‘I don’t work for Starlite, remember – I work for Xcel.’
‘Yeah but wouldn’t you like to be there where it’s happening?’ Macy was chirpy and bright as a little robin, puffing out her chest and singing. Her attention didn’t deviate from Owen for a single second. ‘With the connections you’ve made here, maybe you can get a part in the movie when they reshoot. And in case you’re stressing about the money for a plane ticket – don’t. I’m happy to pay for us both.’
Holly frowned and shook her head. ‘There she goes again. Would you ever do that – throw yourself at a guy you only just met?’
Grace and I shook our heads. I felt more than uncomfortable. I would say I felt afraid for Macy. ‘That’s what she does.’ She’d told me so herself – first Jack, then Charlie, now Owen.
‘Business class,’ Macy promised. ‘And I know a great hotel.’
‘Maybe,’ Owen said after a long pause, placing the polished glass on the shelf.
‘And before that we have the party here at the lodge,’ she reminded him, brimming with excitement. ‘I saw Gwen and she told me the costumes arrived before we all got snowed in. She said I could have first choice.’
‘Speaking of which …’ Owen gestured towards the door, to where Gwen stood talking with Charlie.
With a small squeal Macy jumped down from her stool and ran to join them. She and Gwen had a short, animated conversation then Gwen took her off along the corridor. Charlie gave us a wave and strolled out of sight. Before long, Gwen reappeared and came straight to our table.
‘So you broke i
nto my room,’ she said, sitting down with us. She was laid back and matter-of-fact, not like she was accusing us of a criminal offence.
‘So you stole Tania’s boyfriend,’ Holly said in exactly the same easy, non-aggressive tone.
Gwen smiled across at Orlando, who was watching closely. ‘Orlando has free will. He makes his own decisions.’
I was struggling to swallow the irony of this when Holly came back in.
‘Anyway, we didn’t break in. We used a key,’ she pointed out.
‘What were you looking for exactly?’
‘Not what – who.’ Grace decided to speak the truth. ‘Orlando was missing. We were worried about him.’
‘You thought I was hiding him?’ Gwen found this funny and broke into a high peal of laughter. ‘Hey, Orlando, come over here. These girls are such big fans of yours.’
He came when she called. He sat at our table. He didn’t look at anyone except her.
‘They were so scared for you they broke the law to find you. So tell them where you were this afternoon.’
‘They already know I was at the overlook,’ he reported.
‘Where you lied to us about Tania’s mom,’ Holly reminded him.
‘Somebody’s idea of a joke, I guess.’ Orlando shrugged and spoke as if he’d rehearsed well. ‘Hotel reception gets a phone call from a kid in Bitterroot saying Karen Ionescu is back in the hospital. I think it could be true – she was real sick recently with blood clots on her brain. When I come across you and Grace on the overlook, I pass on what I hear. End of story.’
‘And afterwards?’ I asked. ‘After Rocky came to tell us Adam was missing, where did you go?’
‘I drove down and joined the search. I was with Charlie. Ask him.’
It made sense until I looked at the glances exchanged between Gwen and Orlando – the hypnotic intensity of her gaze and the hooded, drugged submission in his. Then my stomach clenched and my heart hammered. I knew again and with total certainty that she had Orlando in her grasp.
So what now? I’d run out of pleas and arguments, of opportunities to corner him alone and persuade him that he was being possessed by dark forces. I looked across the table at his pale, haunted face and knew that his spirit was draining from him. Soon there would be nothing left.
Then Macy breezed back into the bar in full costume.
‘Look what I chose!’ she cried, twirling on the spot so we could see her red satin cloak and the matching body suit beneath. The suit was decorated with swirls of golden sequins and the cloak had a hood with a grinning mask attached.
‘What the hell is that?’ Holly asked as Macy paraded for Owen.
‘I’m a Venetian fire eater. Ryan ordered costumes from the old movie Carnival, set in Venice. There’s a scene with a pageant with dancers, jugglers and all the rest. Come on, guys, you must remember that.’
‘You look cool,’ Gwen assured her when no one else spoke. Macy had done her usual thing of bursting into a room and clamouring for attention, and in this bizarre fire-eater costume she had no problem holding it.
‘What do you think, Owen?’ She swirled the cloak and paraded some more. ‘I found a matching costume for you, only in black. It has a cloak, a mask in the shape of a bird’s head, with a long, white curved beak – everything. We’ll be a couple. Promise me you’ll wear it.’
Owen kept to his post behind the bar. He went on stacking glasses. ‘I never make promises,’ he said.
By Friday morning, with snow falling and all the roads still blocked, Carlsbad Lodge had turned into a prison and everyone was going stir-crazy.
I hadn’t slept, lying awake listening to the rustling movements of Grace and Holly asleep on my floor. When dawn came, I’d stolen to the window and peered through the blind to see snowdrifts covering the cars in the parking lot and totally blocking the tree-lined drive.
‘We’re never going to get out of here,’ Grace groaned as she joined me at the window.
‘Don’t say never!’ Holly had woken up and was stretching and yawning in her sleeping bag. ‘What are you saying – it snowed again?’
‘Come and look.’ I stepped aside and waited for Holly to unzip then scramble over the bedroom furniture to take in the view. ‘Pretty, huh?’
‘Impassable, huh?’ Yawning again, she scraped back her blonde hair into a ponytail. ‘Grace is right – we’re trapped with a bunch of evil spirits out to get as many of us as possible before the snow melts.’
‘If you put it like that we may as well give up right now,’ I sighed then smiled faintly. ‘Honest to God, Holly!’
‘Yeah, it’s serious,’ she admitted. ‘And the clock’s ticking. But at least there are three of us – one for all.’
‘All for one,’ Grace added.
We got dressed then and swash buckled down to breakfast, passing Weller in the corridor as if he was a normal guest and we were ordinary kids excited to be snowed in halfway up a mountain with movie stars to keep us company. He didn’t even glance our way and we ignored him.
Likewise Jarrold, waiting in line for coffee in the restaurant, though when I took a sneaky look at his wolf-like amber eyes, I did feel myself shiver. And when Daniel joined him in the queue I had a hard time staying in the real world. The shiny surfaces of the metal domes keeping food warm on the hot plates reflected and distorted my image, the conversation of people around me turned into a sequence of disconnected, incoherent sounds and my head swam as the floor tilted and walls closed in.
‘Tania, are you OK?’ Grace asked.
I fought the Alice in Wonderland moment, regained my sense of reality and nodded.
We got our food and sat at a table near the window looking out on to Carlsbad, then Grace took up where my thoughts had left off in my room as dawn had crept into the sky. ‘So as far as Orlando is concerned, we all recognize Gwen is the problem we have to solve before we can get him out of here.’
Holly agreed. ‘There’s no point hoping we can rescue Orlando with Gwen hanging around doing her spirit-zapping, mind-bending routine. But if she’s a dark angel like you say she is, Tania, she’s going to be hard to beat.’
‘Unless we check out her alter ego,’ I suggested, pulling my iPhone out of my bag. ‘The name in her passport was Carrie Hall. I’m going to google it and see what we find.’
Holly drummed her fingers on the table and Grace scanned the busy tables, looking for Gwen and Orlando as I typed and pressed Search. A few options came up in the list of results: Carrie Hall – British gynaecologist based in London; Carrie Hall – marathon runner from Sydney, Australia; Carrie Hall – character in a South African soap opera from the nineteen eighties. I checked out and dismissed each one in turn.
‘Did you find anything?’ Holly asked impatiently.
‘Orlando just came down to breakfast with Gwen,’ Grace reported. ‘Charlie is with them. They saw us but they didn’t wave hello.’
‘Carrie Hall – Jay Fielding’s third victim?’ I scrolled down to a name on the list that looked interesting and brought up the relevant information, contained in a feature from the Denver Post dated six months earlier.
‘Apparently there’s a serial killer called Jay Fielding moving around the state,’ I told Grace and Holly. ‘They’re linking the violent deaths of three women – Alisa Jones in Boulder, Haley Miller in Durango and the latest one last summer in Denver was Carrie Hall.’
‘Forget that,’ Grace suggested. ‘The Carrie Hall we want is still alive and sitting across the room as we speak.’
‘Not necessarily,’ I said slowly. I looked up at Charlie and Gwen chatting easily while Orlando sat in a daze between them. ‘In fact, this might be the proof we need.’
Holly and Grace wanted more. They bombarded me with why, how, when?
I said whoa and went on to explain. ‘That’s what dark angels do – they search for people just like Carrie. Remember Zoran Brancusi and how he was seriously injured in a car crash? Everyone thought he died but it turned out this was the ideal mo
ment for a dark angel to strike – just when a soul is ready to pass into the next world.’
‘And Aurelie and Jean-Luc at New Dawn,’ Grace recalled. ‘They were about to drown when a ferry sank. Two dark angels moved in at exactly the right moment and from then on they impersonated them.’
We all held our breaths and silently read the rest of the Denver Post article.
‘This guy strangles his victims,’ Holly murmured, leaning over my shoulder. ‘He dumps the body and arranges it in a certain ritual position – they don’t say exactly what.’
‘Is there a picture of Carrie?’ Grace asked.
I scrolled down until I found one. There, smiling out at us from a sunnier, more informal photo than the one I’d seen on the passport was the girl we knew not as Carrie Hall but as small-featured, curly-haired, dainty and delicate Gwen Speke.
Holding my breath and staring at the small screen, I remembered my good angel’s promise: ‘Be brave. Out of darkness and chaos comes light.’
To discover the secret of a dark angel’s name was everything – it brought their deadly powers crashing down.
‘Malach!’ I’d confronted Zoran on the frozen wastes of Carlsbad. I’d yelled out his name. Malach – angel of death who’d stolen a dead man’s body. I’d caught the devil by the throat, identified him. Three times: ‘Malach. Malach. Malach.’ Brutal spirit of the underworld, destroyer of innocents.
Then, on the island in the middle of Turner Lake, with flood water rising. Know your enemy, name him. I’d confronted the wolf spirit who meant to destroy me and I’d spoken out. ‘Ahriman!’ Witch in wolf’s disguise, creature of nightmares. ‘Ahriman.’ The name pierced his heart, robbed him of his power, defeated his wolf spirit.
‘This is a beginning,’ I muttered to Holly and Grace. ‘Now we know for sure that Gwen Speke entered the body of a girl who lay dying, but what we don’t know is her true dark angel name.’
‘So it could be anything,’ Grace said slowly.
Holly groaned.
‘We have to believe we can do this,’ I insisted. If I didn’t hold faith in us and the power of good to defeat evil, who else would? ‘From now on we have to listen to every word Gwen says, watch her every move. Somewhere there’ll be the clue we need.’