‘One way or the other, it doesn’t really matter,’ he argued as the moon seemed to grow larger and we saw all the craters, the mountains, the dried oceans and river beds. ‘Either way, it ends.’
The moon glows silver. It radiates eternal light. We’re a speck against its pitted surface. We’re surrounded by stars.
‘I trusted you for a while, until I found out the games you were playing with Jack and Natalia.’
‘Yeah, that was fun.’
‘Until I understood Adam and followed my own instincts.’
‘You know what disappoints me about goodness, Tania?’ Throwing up his hands, Charlie lost interest in steering the helicopter. He left the engine on full speed and let it sail towards the moon. ‘Goodness is so predictable. There’s no subtlety.’
A wind whipping off the mountain destabilized us and we lurched to our left then fell into a sudden, deathly drop.
‘Whereas there’s no telling what I will do,’ he laughed. Then, without warning, he leaned across and wrenched open the door.
The helicopter dropped through a layer of cloud. Icy mist rushed into the cockpit.
‘Ready?’ he asked.
Without waiting for an answer he flung me from the helicopter into free fall.
I’m falling through the night sky, spreadeagled. I need wings.
Charlie falls with me. These are my last thoughts.
Who are you? What’s your name? You morph and shift. You’re Daniel, Jarrold and Weller. You’re Gwen. Everyone and no one.
What did you say to me that first time in Central Park – tall, dark-haired, too handsome to believe? ‘I’m Charlie Speke, Jack Kane’s stuntman double.’
What did he tell everyone the first time he met them? ‘I’m not him. I’m nobody.’
We fall through the air. I look up and I see the moon and stars.
You morph and shift. You’re everyone and no one – my dark angel’s last, twisted trick.
He’s a black eagle, soaring on the wind. He’s a beast rising from the water, a monster of rockfalls emerging from his stinking cave.
‘I know you,’ I say. ‘You told me yourself like you always do but I didn’t hear you. I looked in the wrong places.’
We fall together. He doesn’t believe that I’ve learned his final secret.
‘This time you don’t have a name or an identity. You’re everyone. You’re nobody.’
No name. I know I’m right.
We fall and he lets out a long, agonized sigh, as if all the air has left his body. He goes limp, his handsome features start to lose definition and disintegrate. High above our heads there is a bright explosion then shattered glass and fragments of metal from the helicopter rain down. Charlie morphs. I catch glimpses of Gwen then Zoran, of Aurelie and Jean-Luc, Daniel, Owen, Jarrold and Weller – split-second changes as all the dark angels struggle to exit Charlie’s doomed body. He keeps on falling through the black night.
And what’s left after the final transformation? A shapeless, insubstantial being screaming out in terror, burning up, turning to smoke, gas and cosmic dust. Nobody. Nothing.
‘Take my hand,’ Adam says. So simple and inevitable.
He lifts me out of the abyss and carries me from star to star, across the face of the moon. Gently he sets me down on the side of Carlsbad and walks with me back to the hotel.
21
Ours was the calm after the storm.
I returned to Carlsbad Lodge with Adam and handed him over to his relieved parents. Then straight away Holly and Grace took me to see Orlando. Instinct told them that I had finally defeated my dark angel.
‘We’ll talk later,’ Grace said.
Orlando sat in the deserted bar amongst party debris – half-empty glasses, the giant blank screen, abandoned musical instruments. He looked dazed, like a soldier staggering from the battlefield unable to believe that he had survived. Unscathed, but the horror of what he’d been through still gripped him.
I sat facing him and waited.
He took deep, shuddering breaths. ‘Where’s Gwen?’ he gasped.
‘Gone. They’re all gone.’
‘Really?’ He gazed around the room, startled by a guitar propped against a chair when it slid to the floor, by the movement of the drapes as the wind blew through an open window.
‘Really and truly. Charlie and Gwen – all the dark angels.’
‘Gone,’ he sighed.
We cried then and held each others’ hands.
‘We’re free,’ I told him gently. ‘Just like you always wanted.’
Of course, Jack and Natalia kept their promise. We had official invites to the New York premiere of Siege 2 when it launched in the spring, but we chose to stay home and watch it on late-night TV – me and Orlando, Holly and Grace at my house on Becker Hill.
‘Why won’t you come?’ Natalia had argued over the phone. ‘We’d love for you to be here.’
Too many bad memories, Orlando and I agreed.
I stayed away mostly for Macy’s sake. She couldn’t be there and I didn’t want to watch Jack launch Siege 2 without her.
Orlando understood. ‘Besides, we’re enjoying our freedom too much,’ he added.
Eventually Natalia had seen it our way. ‘So, Tania, you’ll visit us in Nassau instead,’ she’d decided. ‘Adam wants you to come. And Jack – he particularly mentioned it.’
‘Tell them I’ll be there,’ I’d said.
So we saw them on the screen – Jack Kane and Natalia Linton, the world’s most glamorous couple and now our personal friends. They walked the red carpet, flashlights popping. We saw Rocky Seaton – one good memory amongst the bad.
‘That guy’s cool,’ Holly sighed.
‘If you ever need someone,’ he’d vowed. And he’d meant it and acted it out, taught me never to lose faith in the goodness of your fellow man.
Now he walked the red carpet with Lisette.
Angela Taraska came alone. She wore shimmery, strapless, cut-away Versace.
Ryan James had a better haircut, I noticed. They filmed him after the show, promoting the next sequel, Siege 3. When you’ve established a global brand, why change the name?
I’m not overlooking Jack’s alcohol addiction and the marriage split, I’m only saying that Jack was four months into a rehab program and he and Natalia were both in long-term counselling. Brick by brick they were rebuilding their damaged lives.
‘For the kids,’ Jack had told me when he and the Starlite team flew into Aspen in February for more reshooting. They hadn’t found a body double to replace Charlie so Jack had to do the scenes himself.
It was a huge deal at the time – the disappearance of Charlie Speke and his sister, Gwen: a forty-eight-hour wonder involving mountain rescue teams and police investigators. Eventually they discovered small pieces of wreckage from a helicopter that had slammed into the side of Carlsbad. No bodies were ever found but the educated guess was that Charlie had been the unqualified pilot and Gwen his passenger.
They never knew the reasons why the brother and sister had made that final tragic journey but there was plenty of rumour and speculation, none of it accurate.
‘We should have been there in person,’ Holly sighed as she stretched out on the couch watching the TV. ‘We should have hired the dresses, walked the walk.’
‘No thanks.’ Grace agreed with me. She chose not to be reminded that she’d once upon a time flown too close to the dark angel flame. And tonight she was the one who suggested to Holly that it was time for them to leave.
‘Orlando flies back to Dallas tomorrow,’ she reminded her.
‘What? Oh yeah.’ Holly raised herself from the couch. ‘Lucky you have one sensitive, socially aware buddy, Tania. Not like me, huh?’
‘I love you both,’ I laughed as they left the room through the French doors and strolled across the garden.
‘This is our last night together,’ Orlando murmured, his lips against my hair, arms around my waist.
‘Yeah, six whole we
eks without you.’ Him at college, me taking a study trip to Eastern Europe and then maybe schmoozing in the Bahamas.
‘I really don’t want to get on that plane.’
‘Yes, you do,’ I kidded. ‘You love what you’re studying. You’re driven by an unstoppable ambition to reach the top.’ It was back to normal, long-distance loving for Orlando and me.
Only, nothing was normal and ever would be again. Everything between us was special.
You know the weird thing, the one tiny detail he got hung up on after the cosmic battle was over and the dark angels were gone?
‘Diazepam?’ he’d queried three days after the party. ‘Jesus, Tania, you gave me enough to tranquillize a horse!’
‘On a need-to basis,’ I’d argued. ‘No time to look up dosages on Wikipedia – what else could I do?’
I promised never to repeat anything like that in the future. I forgave him for Gwen the way he’d forgiven me for Daniel – stuff that was beyond our control.
‘And that’s it – they’re gone for ever?’ It was Christmas Day before Orlando fully recovered from his dark angel ordeal enough to finally believe that it was over.
‘We are free,’ I insisted. ‘Now it’s time to move on.’
I’d been with him constantly since Adam and I had arrived back at the lodge, never left his side, even after my dad drove out to Mayfield to bring us home to Bitterroot.
By mid-January he was fit and healthy again and I could bear to let go of his hand. Four months later we were like we were before any of it happened.
We’d had fun watching the premiere. Holly and Grace were gone. We followed them into the garden, where we walked hand in hand between the aspens.
‘Does the sky look different?’ Orlando asked.
‘No it’s the same.’
‘There are more stars.’
‘That’s not possible – there’s a fixed number.’
‘No. New stars are created, old stars die.’
‘So anyway, don’t look at them. Look at me.’ I turned his face towards me. ‘I need to remember you. When you’re in Dallas, I want you in my mind, just like you are now.’
God, his eyes were beautiful behind those dark lashes – big and clear, totally focused on me. His mouth was wide and soft. The moon cast a silver light.
‘We’ll Skype,’ he murmured.
‘It’s not the same.’
‘I’ll be back in June.’
‘Promise?’
Orlando nodded and held me close. Our dream of loving and living a life together was all I ever wanted – moment by moment, one step at a time.
Where do the ideas for your books come from?
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!).
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?
People who really want to write don’t need my advice. They’re driven by some inner compulsion. It turns out right if they stick to the truth of their imaginations.
What book do you wish you had written?
A book I totally admire is The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. I wish I could write something so moving and powerful and true.
How does it feel when you see your books in a bookshop?
When I see my own book on a bookshop shelf I have a mixed reaction. There’s a big temptation to position it so that customers can see it more easily, but there’s also an unexpected panic and a need to run and hide!
Tell us one thing your readers won’t already know about you.
I once fell off a horse high on a mountain with no other riders around. My horse didn’t run off – he stayed and waited for me to get back on my feet, thank heavens. Not many people know that!
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Eden Maguire, Broken Dream (Dark Angel)
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