Dark Angel 03: Broken Dream (16 page)

Luckily it wasn’t long before the elevator door opened and Jack stepped out. I could tell it was Jack, not Charlie, by the shaking hands and a complexion the colour and texture of uncooked pastry.

‘What time is it?’ he growled at me as he walked unsteadily towards us.

I looked at my watch. ‘Eight thirty.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ he groaned, running a hand through his unwashed hair. He hadn’t shaved either and was as far away from his suave and sophisticated movie persona as it’s possible to imagine. ‘I asked for a seven a.m. wake-up call. Where the hell is Charlie? Has anybody seen him?’

‘On one of the chairlifts,’ I told him. ‘He’s rehearsing a stunt for a scene later today.’

Jack tried to shake off the alcoholic fug inside his head by striding out into the fresh air. Adam, Phoebe and I followed slowly.

‘This is all down to Charlie,’ he complained. ‘Part of his job is to fix my schedule and get me in the right place at the right time and I pay him plenty to do it.’

‘Even Charlie’s not perfect, I guess.’

My comment struck a chord with Jack – so much so that he turned on me and laughed. ‘Oh yeah, Mister Charlie Speke – everybody’s favourite guy, including my wife’s.’

Wincing, I began to walk off with the kids but Jack didn’t let us go.

‘In the beginning – you know, like they say in the Bible – in the beginning there was no Charlie. It was just me and lights, camera, action. I did it all by myself, clawed my way to the top of this lousy business without him. When I first met Charlie, he was an out-of-work catwalk model, a nobody.’

‘He admits it,’ I said, hoping to calm Jack down. Phoebe clamoured to be carried so I picked her up. ‘He’s the first to say that he owes you everything.’

Jack came close, breathing stale whisky over me and his daughter while Adam stood as close to me as he could get. ‘Let me tell you something, Sharon, Marcia – what the hell’s your name?’

‘Tania.’ I tried not to back away, to hold my ground.

‘Let me tell you something, Tania – with Charlie, what you see is not what you get. You all think he’s the good guy, don’t you?’

I nodded, holding tight to Phoebe, whose little arms were clasped tight round my neck.

‘The guy who stands in for me in action sequences, who’s there to pick up the pieces when I fall apart.’

‘That’s what Charlie does – he helps people. He’s been there for me a couple of times,’ I told him, editing out my previous night’s experience on the red satin bed throw.

Jack snorted with laughter. ‘Sweet! Didn’t it occur to you that Charlie is part of the problem here?’

‘How?’ I wanted to know. For a severe alcoholic, Jack was talking coherently for once and following a strong, anger-fuelled train of thought.

‘Suppose I was a drug addict,’ he went on. ‘An addict has to have a supplier – you get what I’m saying? Likewise with a whisky drinker with a wife and a whole team of people dedicated to keeping him off the booze – it only needs one member of the crew to break the don’t-give-Jack whisky rule.’

‘Charlie wouldn’t do that,’ I protested.

Again Jack laughed. ‘That’s what I mean – Charlie fools everybody. And you want to know why he buys me the frickin’ whisky whenever I ask him? Well, it’s obvious – the more Jack drinks, the more work Charlie gets. Jack ruins a scene and Charlie steps in. Jack’s too drunk to show up to a movie premiere, frickin’ Charlie’s right up there on the red carpet with Natalia. Speaking of which…’

He caught sight of someone approaching from behind and I turned to see Natalia hurrying out of the hotel towards us.

‘I called Rocky,’ she explained to Jack. ‘Charlie’s working on an action sequence right now so Rocky will come and take you to where you need to be.’

‘Charlie, Charlie,’ Jack sighed, crouching down to Adam’s level. ‘Everything’s about your Uncle Charlie, right?’

Adam screwed his eyes into narrow slits and bunched up his mouth.

‘Hey, I’m kidding!’ Jack laughed. ‘Go skiing with your sister. Have fun.’

Natalia looked as if she was going to lay into him then bit her lip. ‘Let’s go,’ she told Adam and Phoebe as Rocky strode down the hill.

‘Dude, we need you,’ Rocky called. ‘If we don’t get you on set within the hour, Larry swears he’ll kick you off this movie for good.’

I didn’t go back on set. Instead, I went to my room and took time out to think about what Jack had just said.

True, Charlie wasn’t perfect – I knew that all too clearly now. But I found it hard to believe that he was Jack’s drinks mule. Jack’s paranoid, I thought. Never believe an alcoholic.

Then again, I could see Charlie’s motivation for acting the way Jack said he did. Be needed, be the rock that everyone could rely on – it was a good route to the number one spot.

It was no good – I couldn’t work it out. But following my gut feeling, it was still Charlie’s word that I trusted. After all, as far as I was concerned, until last night he hadn’t put a foot wrong.

As I sat on my bed, I happened to glance out of my window and catch sight of Adam and Phoebe on the mountain. Natalia was standing at the top of the nursery slope. I saw Phoebe in her bright-red ski suit set off, travel a few metres then fall over. Then Adam started his downhill journey. He gathered speed, overtook his little sister then shifted his weight and curved off track. He disappeared over a low ridge in a spray of sparkling snow.

I blink. I am in a white wilderness under a pure blue sky. Sun’s rays sparkle on the pure, untrodden snow.

‘I am here,’ a woman whispers. Her voice takes me back to a room with pink walls, butterfly stencils, the scent of soap. A baby’s mobile toy tinkles above my head. I lie asleep as the
sun shines through the slats of the blind, wrapped in silence
.
I hear the whistling wings of a dove. She is white, pink and grey as she alights on a sunlit branch. More doves fly in a wide arc across a blue sky. ‘I am here,’ she whispers. ‘Don’t be afraid
.’

I am alone in the snow but I am not afraid, hearing the voices of my good angels. My angels of light are with me – Maia and Zenaida, shifting from woman to bird and now into the shape of an innocent child. They lift me from the snowy slope. I am weightless, I shine like them.

And now another voice – the child’s. ‘You are in danger,’ he says. ‘Be sure of one thing – the dark forces are gathering.’

‘I know it,’ I whisper. I see devils rising from the centre of the earth with human faces and bear-like limbs. They explode on to the surface, jaws snapping, claws swiping the air. They gather in the frozen wastes to fight to the death with my angels of light.

‘Be ready,’ the child warns. ‘Anger and bitterness sit in your dark angel’s heart. You are his chief enemy.’

Maia and Zenaida support me as a pure light shines on to the snow beneath us. It sparkles. At its centre a child stands with arms raised. His face is full of hope. For the first time I whisper his name: ‘Adam
.’

Natalia swept on her skis down from the top of the slope and over the ridge. She brought her eldest son back into view – a blue-clad boy carrying skis, trudging through soft snow, leaning forward as he bore the weight of his parents’ bitter battles on his small shoulders.

‘Orlando, please come back.’ I muttered my mantra out loud as I walked slowly up the mountain. I was at an all-time low, asking myself what love was worth in the enormous chaos of the world we live in.

What does it really mean when someone tells you they love you? Is it any more than a trap – something that shackles two people and keeps them in prison until the next temptation comes along, until lust forces open the door of the cage and lets one of you out? Cynical me says, ‘Forget Vincent’s stars and the dream of loving for ever until death do you part.’

I hadn’t walked far before I glimpsed Orlando and Gwen sitting together in a chairlift, inside the terminal where we’d argued the night before. The cab swayed as Orlando stepped down from the platform. I watched in mounting dread as he made it to ground level then stumbled across my path.

I gasped his name, put out my arm to stop him from falling. ‘You didn’t drive to Aspen? For God’s sake, where have you been all night?’

He sank to his knees.

‘What’s wrong, Orlando? Are you sick?’ I was scared by the paleness of his face, the lack of focus in his eyes.

He looked up at me in total confusion.

‘It’s me – Tania. Have you been out on the mountain all this time? What is it? Speak to me.’

But he didn’t get up, just knelt in the snow as if all his strength was gone and it was all he could do to keep on breathing.

‘Here, take my hand,’ I told him.

His eyes closed then flickered back open. He was trembling and groaning as if every movement hurt.

‘You’re sick. You need to see a doctor.’ Maybe pneumonia or hypothermia. Desperately I tried to fix a label on it so that I could delay thinking the worst. Again I offered him my hand.

Then Gwen came down the steel steps. Orlando heard her footsteps. He leaned forward to brace his arms against the ground and gain enough leverage to haul himself upright. He was on his feet by the time Gwen reached his side.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ I begged.

She stared indifferently at me – that same cold, dark stare I’d seen last night, so different to the gentle, generous impression she gave when we first met her in the make-up trailer in Central Park.

‘Orlando, it’s time to leave,’ she told him quietly but firmly.

He took a deep, shuddering breath then tried to follow her down the slope. But he could only make a few faltering steps before his knees buckled and he fell again.

‘Let him be,’ Gwen ordered as I rushed to help. She concentrated hard on Orlando as if she was conveying a message via telepathy, or as if she was a hypnotist and he was her subject.

My eyes widened and I felt my stomach flip in panic. Still I couldn’t bear to put what was happening into words.

‘Good!’ Gwen coaxed as Orlando stiffly raised himself. ‘You see, it’s easy when you listen to me.’

I close my eyes, the mountain range tilts, two worlds collide inside my brain. First one black creature creeps out of the entrance to a cave, then two, three, four – until they’re too many to count – bears on hind legs with shaggy limbs and human faces.

Then a loud roar and a beast three times the size of the bears bursts from the cave. His coat is matted with ice; he is more human than bear, with a savage, snarling face. He crouches then leaps towards me, towers above me, ready to seize me and squeeze my final breath from me
.

The blindfold fell from my eyes at last. I saw Gwen and recognized what she was.

‘Come with me,’ she told Orlando.

‘Don’t go!’ I begged, tearing at his jacket. ‘You see what she’s doing, who she is!’

He turned his vacant gaze on me.

‘She’s a dark angel. You’re in her power.’

He heard without understanding. He followed her siren voice.

‘That’s good, Orlando. You’re leaving your old life, stepping with me into a glorious, shining future.’

I ran after them. She turned her gorgon stare on me and stopped me dead. I was like stone.

I opened my mouth to cry out for help. No sound came.

Black snakes slither from a white crevasse. They writhe out of the frozen depths and wind themselves around me
.

I stood paralysed. My whole body felt crushed and bruised.

Gwen led Orlando back to the chairlift terminal. With all the willpower I possessed I fought my inertia and ran up the steps after them, my feet ringing on the metal treads. They went in together, stepped into a gondola. The machinery started to whir.

Inside I was screaming for him not to go, to stay with me, but no sound emerged.

The lift jerked and jolted forward. It rose up the mountain. Sunlight blinded me. My face felt scorched. Still I couldn’t move even to shield my eyes until the lift carrying Orlando and Gwen reached the shadow cast by Carlsbad. I saw it rise higher, grow smaller.

‘He’s mine,’ Gwen’s voice whispered. Seductress, leading him through hell’s gates.

She deals in death. She stands at the right hand of my dark angel.

‘Be brave,’ Adam’s voice says. He comes to me on the cold wind gusting down the white slopes. ‘Keep a hold of my hand and believe in me. When the mountain cracks and the avalanche sweeps down into the valley I will be there. Look for me in the sky above Carlsbad, in all the wild places. Do not be afraid.’

‘I believe in you,’ I whisper. One evil spirit rises from hell and a good angel is released from heaven. Bright day and dark night are evenly matched in the eternal battle for our souls
.

T
hey say you can die of a broken heart.

But I was still alive to feel the pain of losing Orlando.

I saw Gwen take Orlando up the mountain. My heart broke, my dreams lay shattered at my feet. By some miracle I went on breathing.

At lunchtime Macy came to find me in my hotel room. ‘You have visitors,’ she said. ‘They’re in the lobby outside reception, looking for you.’

It was as if she was speaking to me through a heavy veil that had settled like a shroud. ‘Who is it?’

‘Grace and Holly. The girl on the desk is trying to tell them the whole hotel is closed to the public. They need security passes even to come through the door.’

I roused myself enough to go down and see them. By the time I got there, another member of staff had arrived to back up the receptionist. I recognized the good-looking Nordic bartender whose name badge read Owen.

‘Hey, Tania – explain who we are!’ Holly exclaimed as I came into the lobby. You could practically see the sparks coming off her. ‘Tell them they can’t stop us visiting you.’

‘This is private property,’ Owen said for probably the tenth time. ‘The hotel, the grounds, all the ski slopes you see up there – they belong to Xcel.’

‘Oh yeah, they also own the air we breathe?’ Holly in full flight is unstoppable.

‘Who exactly is Xcel?’ Grace asked the receptionist, who looked like she’d just stepped out of a beauty salon – dark hair impeccably straightened, nails professionally manicured. Her badge read Amber.