by Eden Maguire
No – wrong! I kept to my first thought, gritted my teeth and ran at him, avoided the flaming branch as he swung it towards me, felt its heat against my cheek. And I charged into him with all the strength I could gather – enough to make him stagger backwards to reveal the gold cross in the dirt.
The power of the cross that my dad had given me, a gift from my great grandmother through the generations – the ancient power for good over evil.
I stooped to pick it up and give it to Grace, placed it in her palm and closed her trembling fingers over it.
‘Go with Jude and Orlando!’ I gasped at her as Ezra sprawled on the ground. His flaming torch had fallen against the arena fence. ‘Go – now!’ I meant everyone – Grace, Jude and Orlando. ‘Get out of here!’
Orlando shook his head. He didn’t seem able to take his eyes off Ezra rolling in the dirt, writhing there as if he was still burning in the flames that had disfigured him. He was visible in the guttering light of his torch, arms flailing, trying to beat back the invisible fire, rolling against the fence, gasping, shrieking, crying out to be saved.
‘Make Grace keep hold of the cross,’ I told Orlando. ‘Ger her and Jude to the car.’
‘I’m not leaving you!’ Buckling under Jude’s weight, he took Grace’s hand and drew her away from Ezra.
‘I’ll be right behind you,’ I promised above Ezra’s screams as the chopper blades whirred and a fresh bank of black smoke rolled off the mountain and hid Orlando, Grace and Jude from view.
The only thing visible in the dying light of the flaming torch was Ezra himself lying in the dirt. He fought an enemy he couldn’t see, groaned and rolled on to his stomach, tried to crawl away, collapsed again. For as long as Grace held the cross in her hand he was powerless.
The smoke rolled on across the arena. Orlando had escaped with Jude and Grace but now a new force swept down from Black Rock. I felt it, I knew it in every atom of my being – dark angel Zoran had come back for me.
He swooped and gathered me up, lifted me from the ground and flew with me above the smoke, above the helicopters and the rising steam into the dark night. A million light years over our heads stars shone, while down on Black Rock sporadic fires still burned. I heard the beating of Zoran’s great wings, up-down, up-down, glimpsed the sliver of moon in the sky, stared down on the dark western mountains, the white summits covered in snow – on and on.
I shivered in the dark lord’s grasp, in his terrible airborne power, as he carried me away.
We came to rest in a white wilderness, high on a dizzying slope – a place of ice-bound, violet crevasses, of shadows, sunset and silence, except for the thudding of my heart. This is where Zoran set me down.
He stood three paces away, his black wings spread wide – him and me alone on Carlsbad Mountain. Somewhere deep inside, I had known from the moment I first saw him that it would end like this, face to face.
‘Now you have no one,’ he said calmly.
I closed my eyes, opened them again. The ice crust creaked underfoot; my heart beat as though it would break out of my chest.
‘No one will save you, Tania Ionescu. How does it feel to be alone?’
‘Like I knew it would.’
‘There is no power stronger than me,’ he said slowly. ‘You see now how it works?’
‘You’re weaker than you were,’ I replied. Minus Ezra, Cristal and Daniel. And without Jude and Grace in your ranks. I held my head up – I could be proud of this at least.
‘There will be other times, other places,’ he said without blinking. ‘A million other willing souls.’
I stood defenceless on the silent slope, my heart racing, my head held high. ‘You didn’t fool me,’ I told him. ‘You thought you did but you didn’t.’
He smiled. ‘Correct. I underestimated you.’
‘You used Daniel to trap me. You wanted me to fall in love with him. It didn’t work out.’
‘Almost,’ he said, still smiling. ‘All I needed was one more day.’
‘Never.’ I trembled from the effort of standing tall in front of him. ‘What do you know about love?’ I challenged. ‘For you it’s all on the surface, skin deep.’
‘That’s the story for many others too. Remember Oliver, and Grace and Jude.’
‘Not for me and Orlando.’
His smile mocked me, while the silence of the white mountain crowded in. ‘Poor Tania. You held out longer than the others, but where did it get you? In the end, you suffer the most.’
I shook my head. In my mind I was saying goodbye. I saw the future – my mom and dad clearing my closet, packing away the paints and canvases in my studio then sitting in silence in an empty house. I saw Orlando cycling by Prayer River without me.
‘The others go on with their lives.’ Zoran’s voice was scarcely more than a whisper and his dark eyes glittered.
I envisaged my last moments under those black, beating wings. And I saw everything like a drowning man, every detail right back to the first time Zoran came onstage at the Heavenly Bodies party – his rock-star strut under flashing lights, the way his voice soared and his lyrics carried their secret threat. ‘You don’t know me, you never will/ Shadows fall, voices kill.’ The way he mesmerized us and grasped power – Zoran Brancusi, shape-shifting soul-stealer, brutal dealer in death.
‘Here is where it ends,’ he confirmed.
Black, nameless shapes rose from the blue crevasses. They flapped their wings and circled against the setting sun.
‘You don’t know me/ Though you see my face …’ The haunting words flitted through my head like the black creatures in the blood-red sky. I remembered Maia’s promise – knowledge is power – and I totally realized that I had nothing left to lose. ‘I know you!’ I said out loud and with all the defiant force I had left in my bruised and breathless body.
Zoran frowned as he took a step towards me. My words seemed to make him hesitate.
‘I know that you’re a fake. You’re not who you pretend to be.’ Keep in mind what Maia told me, then quickly, quickly deliver what I learned from Stefan. ‘Zoran Brancusi is dead. He really did die in the hospital in Bucharest.’ Catch the devil by the throat. ‘What I say is true, and truth will bring you down.’
But no – it only made him falter then grow more angry. He knotted his brows, he spread his wings and drew down the creatures from the sky. They flitted through the darkening air, half-bat, half-bird with flapping, leathery wings. They would claw and peck at me, would cling to my face and smother me.
‘You use Zoran’s corpse,’ I screamed, hitting out with words – the only weapon I had in my final armoury. ‘You stole a dead man’s life. I know you!’
‘You don’t know me/ Though you see my face/ My name is lost in time and space.’
The dark angel’s lips stretched but no way was it a smile. It was arrogance on his face as he took the last steps. ‘Who am I?’ he taunted.
‘My name is lost …’
Think. Drag it out of the recesses of memory. There was a guy at the Floreascu who claimed the body. He signed the form. Who was he? What was his name?
‘Malach!’ I cried. The answer sprang from me. I said it three times. ‘Malach! Malach!’
‘Malach, angel of death. Brutal spirit of the underworld, creator of war, destroyer of infants.’ Maia’s voice is in the dying light, in the glistening ice beneath my feet.
‘Your name is Malach,’ I repeated quietly.
In the end I find the key. You lose, I win.
The name entered his poisoned heart like a spear. Before my eyes it ripped him apart. He staggered backwards, fell with arms flailing, scattering the dark, flitting creatures in all directions. He sank into the snow.
Angel of death. Destroyer of the innocents. Malach.
I watched the demon die without pity. He sank, the flesh melted from his bones, he decayed. The dark eyes stayed alive until the end, glaring at me in rage. Calmly I witnessed this last transformation, saw him dissolve in torment. His eyes fla
shed in angry, bitter defeat until he was skull and skeleton, mouldering into the ice, returning to dust.
‘My child, my angel!’ Maia lifts me and carries me from the mountain. Stars light our way. I don’t see her but I hear her voice.
‘He vanished. I looked and there was nothing left.’
‘Back into darkness,’ she murmurs. She bears me high through the heavens; we are one and the same, entwined.
I don’t look down. I look up at the moon. A million souls rejoice and travel with us through the night.
17
Orlando was the one who took longer to get over it. He said he couldn’t forgive himself for leaving me alone on the mountain.
‘You didn’t,’ I argued. ‘I wasn’t by myself up there.’
We were two days into the recovery period. Jude was out of hospital and we were at his house, courtesy of an invite from Dr and Mrs Medina, which in itself was a small miracle. It was meant to be a party to celebrate.
‘I should have stayed,’ Orlando said. He jutted out his bottom lip, hung his head.
‘Then what?’ Grace argued. ‘No way would Jude have made it if you’d stayed to help Tania.’
‘Yeah, thanks, buddy.’ It was all Jude was able to say before he moved slowly out of the house on to the porch looking out on to Black Rock. There was a dark scar on the mountain – the burnout from the latest fire. We heard from the fire service that, despite their planes and helicopters, flames had totally wiped out Black Eagle Lodge and there were no survivors. The problem now was counting the dead – how many permanent residents had been at the commune, their identities, their next of kin.
‘Good luck with that,’ was my personal reaction.
‘Luckily, there were no Bitterroot fatalities,’ Ricki Suarez, the head of the hotshot team had told news journalists. ‘Local families were not affected.’
‘“Luckily!” ’ Holly had echoed as we’d watched the TV news. ‘Hell’s teeth – what did luck have to do with it?’
Quietly Grace followed Jude on to the porch and sat with him. Her mom had told my mom that since Tuesday night she’d never left his side.
‘We need music,’ Holly decided, and Aaron chose a dance CD though none of the rest of us felt up to dancing.
‘It’s a party,’ Aaron reminded us. ‘Everything worked out, didn’t it?’
Orlando had got Jude to the hospital, Grace stayed with him all through the night. They didn’t speak about events at Black Eagle Lodge – about Ezra and Cristal and the whole Zoran thing – and I don’t suppose they ever will.
‘It’s like a black hole,’ Grace had tried to explain to me before the party began. She was pale and edgy, snatching every opportunity to say thanks. And I have to say she still didn’t look like the old gentle, generous, fun-loving Grace, but give her time. ‘My memory has this giant hole and it scares the crap out of me.’
‘Tell me about it,’ I’d replied. I’d squeezed her hand.
Then Holly and Aaron had arrived to party. And now I stood inside the house looking out at Jude and Grace sitting hand in hand with Black Rock in the distance and a ragged, painful gap in their memories that would take a long time to heal, but I knew it would.
Orlando came to stand with me and hold my hand. ‘Are we OK?’ he checked.
‘Hey, still Mister Insecure?’ I smiled and slipped my hand in his.
‘No, really. You don’t hate me?’
I flashed him a look, told him not to be stupid, kissed him.
After a while we all got into the music and the party took off. Holly and Aaron danced, she blamed him for stepping on her foot, we laughed – same old, same old. Eventually Orlando and I smooched in a corner. Grace and Jude came in from the porch, ate snacks, drank beer. To look at us you would think that none of this had ever happened.
At around ten I told Orlando I was tired and would he drive me home. I asked him to stay over.
‘Hey, you two,’ Dad said when we walked into the house. ‘Orlando, you want to come fishing with me tomorrow?’
‘Dumb question,’ Mom told him.
‘Why dumb?’
‘Because!’
‘Tomorrow is Dallas,’ I explained. ‘Orlando’s interview. While you’re fishing I’ll be driving him to the airport.’ Me – not his mom, notice.
That night was special. We talked, we made love. I made sure Orlando knew how much I would miss him.
At the airport the next morning he almost wouldn’t board his plane. They’d called his section and he was still standing at the gate, holding me tight.
‘Go!’ I whispered.
He shook his head, stayed exactly where he was. ‘What if I changed my mind?’
‘No. You can’t. It’s a great college – think Mimi Rossi, Julian Sellars. This is your future we’re talking about.’
‘What about our future, you and me?’
‘This is our future,’ I said. I leaned back to drink in those lovely features – the badly behaved sweep of dark hair, the blue Irish eyes and wide mouth. What a leap of faith, I thought as I eased out of his arms.
The desk attendant called his name. Immediate departure – all that.
‘You know what you told me on Black Rock?’ I reminded him. ‘In the smoke, in the middle of everything.’
Orlando nodded. Slowly he bent down to pick up his bag.
‘Whatever happens, wherever we are, what you said then is still true.’
He kissed my lips, waited for me to say it.
‘This is about love,’ I whispered, turning him towards the gate. ‘Now go!’
Tania’s story continues in
TWISTED HEART
coming soon …
I sleep with a dream catcher above my bed. I use it to filter out bad dreams – I had enough of those earlier this summer. Flames eating up the forests, leaping across canyons, shooting firebrands through the night sky. Plus the dark angel voice slithering through my brain with a warning: ‘We will all rise. There will be other times, other places, a million other willing souls!’
I travelled halfway across the world to get a break from all that flesh-creeping stuff and if my good angel isn’t around any more to protect me, which she doesn’t seem to be, I’m not too proud to rely on old superstitions, ancient beliefs, whatever.
My dream catcher is a circle of slender willow branches about thirty centimetres wide, wound with a narrow leather strip and with cotton threads woven across the centre in a geometric petal pattern. A pendulum of turquoise beads and white and black feathers hangs from the bottom of the hoop. Good dreams find their way through the net but bad ones can’t get past. It works some of the time, I guess.
Since the last big burnout on Black Rock I also avoid going up on to the flame-seared slopes whenever possible – me and my best friend, Grace, and all the traumatized kids in Bitterroot if I’m honest.
I prefer valleys and water – cool streams, white-water rapids, Prayer River and Turner Lake.
I mean, I love the lake, totally adore the light sparkling on its surface and the way your feet and ankles turn pale and distort when you wade in from the pebble shore, the icy feel of the water between your toes. It’s where Orlando and I fell in love.
It was midnight, and just remembering it makes my soul soar. The night sky was huge, the Milky Way streaming across it – a glittering banner made out of a million stars. We were tiny and unique. We took off our clothes and swam in the lake.
‘You’re my midnight swimmer,’ he tells me even now.
Or he would do if he was here.
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 cas
t 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), Robert Pattinson for Orlando (dream on!) and The Wire’s Dominic West as the enigmatic Antony Amos.
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?
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.
