Beautiful Dead 02 - Arizona (19 page)

Joining Phoenix at the window, I listened hard until I picked up the whine of two engines. I stared up at the black hil side, my heart in my mouth.

'This is serious,' Phoenix decided. 'They're way ahead of Iceman - I don't think he can head them off.'

Suddenly two bright lights appeared on the ridge, their beams dipping into hol ows, then raking up into the dark sky. 'What do we do now?' I asked.

'You wait here. I'l go help Iceman.' 130

'But Hunter said for you to stay here!'

'No, you - you have to stay hidden,' he insisted. 'Keep the door bolted. You'l be OK.' Phoenix slid the bolt then stepped out on to the porch.

'Close the door, Darina!'

I clenched my teeth and forced the bolt back in place. Then I stood

with my shoulder to the door, eyes closed and hardly able to breathe. The two bikes raced into the val ey, yel ow headlamps invading the blackness.

Out in the yard, Phoenix saw a way to stop them. He seized a rol of fencing wire stored by the side of the barn, raised it over his head and tossed it in the path of the nearest bike. The rider braked and skidded,

making a sharp swerve across the track of the second rider. The two bikes col ided and both men fel to the ground. Through the grimy window I saw them land in the dirt. The next moment, Iceman had joined Phoenix by the barn.

Two Beautiful Dead versus two no-brain bikers from Forest Lake - it should have been no contest. I expected Phoenix and Iceman to move in and toss the two guys aside like garbage, zap their minds clean, then send them home with sore heads.

But that wasn't what happened. In the low beam of one of the

headlights I saw the first rider struggle to his feet and lurch towards the house. Meanwhile, his buddy had total y lost it. He picked up the rol of razor wire and flung it back at Iceman and Phoenix. The wire unwound at their feet in a snaking, lethal coil. Now the first guy was blundering on to the porch, reeling against the cabin wal to catch his breath. I saw him close up and recognized his features even in the dark. It was Kyle Keppler

- who else?

Fresh panic washed over me and I went weak at the knees. Phoenix

and Iceman were trapped, the guy I suspected of kil ing Arizona was less than a metre away, coming around from the shock of being thrown from his bike and looking for a weapon to use against his attackers. He picked up a long-handled axe that leaned against the wal .

'Phoenix!' I screamed a warning from inside the house. My face was

at the window, plain to see.

Keppler heard and saw. Instead of running at the original enemy, he 131

suddenly turned the axe on the door, raising it and bringing it crashing down, splintering the wood and smashing the glass into a thousand pieces. Another blow smashed clean through the bolt and the door swung open. 'Here, Jonno - catch this!' he yel ed at the second guy, tossing the axe through the air like a tomahawk.

Jonno ... Jon ... Jon Jackson, Kyle's joined-at-the-hip brother-in-law. Jackson caught the weapon and forced Phoenix and Iceman back towards the barn.

Which left me facing Kyle Keppler alone in the dark. Terror grabbed me and fixed me to the spot. In my own mind, I was dead no question.

'This is it, girl. You got in my way one too many times.' He blocked the doorway, his feet crunched over the shattered glass. 'Whatever is happening here, you're at the heart of it.'

'Nothing's happening,' I protested. 'A few kids from El erton High and me - we hang out up here once in a while.' I fel back against the stove as Kyle towered over me.

He grabbed my wrist and swung me back into the middle of the room. 'These would be the same kids who tossed the fencing wire across the yard? They're going to be sorry they did that.'

I closed my eyes and prayed that Jon Jackson wasn't as good with the axe as Keppler had been. Phoenix and Iceman would handle him eventual y, but it would take time.

'So what real y happens out here?' Stil gripping my wrist, Keppler sat me down in a chair by the table. 'I hear a kid drowned in the creek last night. Who was he? Where's the corpse?'

'I don't know. Don't ask me!' I cowered as Keppler raised his hand

against me. I real y was dead, unless Phoenix came soon. ' Arizona used to come here,' I told him.

Speaking her name acted as a brake. The raised fist didn't come crashing down.

'No one knew about this place back then. She liked the silence.'

'Arizona was here?' Keppler tried to make it compute as he glanced

around the ancient room. I noticed that this time he didn't try to deny the 132

relationship. When was that? She didn't tel me.'

'Typical Arizona she liked to keep secrets,' I reminded him. 'But she told you?'

'We used to talk a lot.' 'About me?'

I nodded. 'She said she loved you. She tried to break free but she wasn't strong enough.'

A disbelieving half-smile crept across Kyle's face. Are we talking about the same girl? I never niet a person stronger than Arizona.'

'On the outside,' I agreed. 'You don't have any idea how much she was hurting on the inside.'

He took a long look at me in the moonlit room, converting my last comment into a harsh criticism of himself. 'She made her choice,' he argued.

I met his gaze. 'She was seventeen.'

Something snapped inside his head. He went back to being psychoman, leaning in so close that I could feel his breath on my face. 'What do you know?' he snarled, unconsciously echoing his dead ex-girlfriend. 'What do you real y know?'

Hunter found us like that - face to face, me helpless, Kyle Keppler

jerking me from the kitchen chair, about to smash the back of his hand against my face. The overlord went in for the kil . In an instant he shrivel ed Keppler's strength to less than a baby, making him stagger back and sink to his knees. Another mind-zap sent him sprawling ful length, clutching his head and yel ing out in pain. Hunter stood over him, calm and impassive, listening to him howl. 'Don't move from this room,' he told me quietly.

I'd been thinking of running out into the yard, and Hunter knew it.

'Phoenix and Iceman have dealt with Jackson,' he told me. 'He's already on his way out of here.'

True - I heard the whine of a Harley engine and saw a single beam of light rake across the hil side.

'You talked to Keppler about Arizona,' Hunter remarked. 'That was

risky.'

'I had to say something. He was so angry - I thought he was going to kil me.'

Hunter blinked, then turned his cold grey eyes on me. 'You need to

trust me, Darina. Keppler is nothing I can't handle.' 133

'But I didn't know where you were!' I cried. 'I thought you were on the ridge with the others.'

'I'm everywhere,' he said, as he hauled Keppler to his feet and gave his mind one more blast of zombie hypnosis. 'I come when I'm needed.'

Then he threw Keppler out into the yard, where Phoenix and Iceman put the brainwashed husk of a guy back on his bike and pointed him up the hil .

'So thanks,' I breathed a word that didn't measure up to the drama of the occasion, I know.

Hunter's back was turned, he was standing in the doorway watching

Keppler leave.

'That's the place - there, where you're standing now,' he told me, as if he had eyes in the back of his head. His voice had turned spacey and distant. 'Rol back the rug, Darina.'

'What do you mean?' I stared at the floor and the faded, patterned rug. 'That's where I fel . Rol it back.'

I crouched and lifted the corner of the rug to see a dark stain on the plain boards - black in the moonlight, but no doubt crimson al those years before.

' My blood,' Hunter confirmed. 'Mentone shot me and I fel right there.'

I shivered. Why tel me this now?

Hunter's gestures were slow and trancelike. 'Marie was standing there,

by the stove. She was in shock - paralysed by what had happened. Mentone drew his gun and fired.'

He hit you in the head, the bul et went clean through your skul - I known!

'I haven't spoken about it to anyone,' Hunter said, his voice weary. 'Year after year I return. I've seen justice done for others among the Beautiful Dead - many times. And every time a restless soul is released I

know my job is done.'

'I don't understand why you're tel ing me this now.' Hunter seemed to have made time stand stil - I was caught in his memory capsule, struggling to break out.

He turned to look at me, catching me in that powerful gaze. 'What is it

about you, Darina?' he asked. 'I tel myself you're not even like her.' 134

'Like Marie?' I was struggling to breathe, caught like an insect on a

pin. So what if I remind you of your wife? Don 't do this to me!

'She was a good woman happy and easy, no dark shadows inside her head, not like you. Marie was ful of life. She dressed real pretty.'

'I'm sorry you don't like the way I dress,' I muttered. 'Things were different then.'

It was as if I hadn't spoken. 'And then I look in your eyes and they're the same,' he sighed. 'The painful memories flood back. They give me no rest.'

'So how come you never found justice for yourself?' I asked. 'You help the Beautiful Dead, but never yourself.'

He focused in on my face even more. 'It's never going to happen. I won't find peace.'

'Maybe one day,' I said, without believing it or expecting him to.

He sighed again. 'Smooth down the rug, Darina. Phoenix and Iceman are waiting. Let's go.'

The Beautiful Dead came down from Foxton Ridge and gathered in the

barn. They'd used up a lot of energy on the Forest Lake intruders so they sat quietly, waiting for Hunter to make his next plan Donna next to Eve, Iceman keeping a lookout from the hayloft, Phoenix standing guard at the door. They were al edgy, reacting to the smal est sound, exchanging uneasy glances.

'So Phoenix gets to stay the night with you in El erton?' Arizona

checked with me. Of them al she seemed most restless and afraid.

I checked my watch and saw that it was almost midnight. 'Yeah, give me a good story for why I'm so late home.'

'For Laura?'

'You got it. Forget the one about my car running out of gas I already

used that a hundred times.'

'Say you were at Logan's house and didn't look at the time,' she suggested. 'That usual y works. Keep her talking while Phoenix sneaks in.

I agreed that it was my best shot. 'Tomorrow I pay your boyfriend one last visit,' I promised. 'I ask him outright - did you visit him at work the day you died? Did you and he drive out to Hartmann together?' 135

Arizona turned away impatiently. 'He'l tel you no.'

But do I believe him?' I stepped back in front of her. 'Think again, Arizona, and think hard. Did you drive to the mal ? Did you corner Kyle and beg him to leave Sable one last time?'

Anger sparked in her dark-brown eyes. 'OK, Darina - let me play it back the way you want to see it. I drive to Mike's Motors, park my car and go inside. Kyle is working. He's not happy to see me. I say, "Please leave your pregnant girlfriend, soon to be your wife, and be with me. We were made for each other - twin souls who can't be parted!" This is too much pressure and Kyle total y loses control. Maybe he has a workshop tool - something heavy - in his hand. We struggle. He hits me - an accident, or on purpose. I fal to the floor.'

'Stop it!' I begged. It felt like Arizona had moved so close to the edge that she would fal into a crazy abyss and never get her sanity back.

'You never asked to see my death mark, did you, Darina? Shal I show

it to you? Would you like to see it?'

'No. Stop. If you don't remember what happened, you don't remember. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to push you this hard.'

Death mark!' she insisted, her gaze almost as powerful as Hunter's. I felt my wil power crumble. 'You expect it to be here on my chest, showing how I fel into the water and drowned.' Her long fingers swept

across her slender upper body. But it's not there, believe me.'

'So where?' I realized she was about to show me whether I liked it or not.

Slowly she raised both arms to lift her long hair clear of her back. She twisted it like a skein of black silk, then turned so I could see her bare neck. The skin was white, every vertebra visible and vulnerable. 'Do you see?' she whispered.

The angel-wing tattoo nestled between two bones in her neck, dark and clear against her skin, very delicate, total y definite.

'Yes,' I replied. 'You didn't drown in the lake. You broke your neck that's what kil ed you.'

136

When I got home, Laura was past giving me a fight. She wore her wounded look OK, so I'm only your mother. I don 't expect you to show me any consideration or respect.

'Sorry, I didn't look at the time,' I mumbled as I sloped off towards my room.

'Jim cal ed,' she told me. He had an accident. His tyre blew and he skidded off the road.'

This stopped me in my tracks. 'Is he OK?'

She nodded. 'The car got towed away. He's spending the night in a

motel.'

'Are you OK?' Obviously not - she was pale, her eyes were red from crying.

'What is it with this family and cars?' she sighed. 'What is it with this family, period?'

'Look, he's not hurt, thank God.' By now I'd given Phoenix plenty of time to climb through my bedroom window and Jim being involved in a minor traffic accident wasn't high on my list of priorities. 'Get some sleep. It'l look OK in the morning.'

'Where have you been, Darina?' She sounded exasperated. 'Don't tel

me Jordan's or Hannah's house - I already checked.'

'Logan's,' I told her, rushing up the stairs. I knew she wouldn't have cal ed his house in case she got Logan's dad and he was drunk as usual.

Phoenix was there, waiting.

To have him in my room, fil ing the space with his beautiful presence,

was heaven. I can never get a handle on how handsome he is, how he lights up my soul every time I see him, and how I feel safe with him even with danger al around. I fel into his arms.