Dark Angel 03: Broken Dream (27 page)

I had a sickening, split-second tectonic flash – a vision of him in his black costume towering over Macy and pulling her strings. She was his puppet; he was the evil puppet master. He was a dark angel; she was his victim.

I couldn’t believe how slow I’d been. Why hadn’t I seen it earlier – the infatuation, the manic behaviour, the total submission?

I stared at Owen with an ice-cold shiver running down my spine. Though I tried to disguise my terror with a fake smile, I was sure it didn’t fool him and he straight away made his way towards Macy and me, his face still concealed behind the bird mask.

‘Come to my room in an hour,’ I managed to whisper to her. I was thinking on my feet, working out a desperate plan to get Macy away from Owen and out of his control. ‘Come alone and I’ll tell you all about what we found in Gwen’s bag.’

‘We have to pray that it’s not too late.’ I shared my latest discovery with Grace and Holly as soon as we’d each quickly chosen a costume and hightailed it back to my room.

‘You’ll still be here for the party,’ Lucy had convinced Grace and Holly. ‘The snow’s so bad no one will leave before Monday.’

So they’d picked their costumes and now the bed was piled high with silver and gold dresses, stiff petticoats, big headdresses, masks and matching shoes.

‘You’re sure?’ Grace quizzed. ‘You’re certain it wasn’t just Macy being Macy?’

‘Yeah, manic is Macy’s natural mode,’ Holly agreed.

‘Not this time,’ I argued.

‘So you had one of your visions?’

‘I saw Owen literally pulling her strings – you know, like she was a little puppet dangling. Just for a moment, but it was enough. He’s definitely on their side—’

‘The dark angels?’ Holly interrupted.

‘Yes, and he’d sent her on a mission to get information out of me. She was scared that if she didn’t get it she’d be punished.’

‘Did he say anything?’ Grace wanted to know.

‘Not a word. He came straight over and snatched her away from me. I just had time to tell her to meet me here.’

‘What did he do then?’

‘He raised his mask and stared at Macy. I guess he was mind-reading to find out if she’d carried out his orders. She kind of crumbled – her face looked white and terrified. Then he grabbed her and dragged her away.’

‘So what if he locks her up or doesn’t let her out of his sight?’ Holly ran through some options. ‘Or maybe he’ll zombify her, just zap her willpower so she has to do everything he tells her.’

‘That’s already happened,’ I pointed out. ‘Owen is in total control.’

‘So why are we sitting here waiting for her to show up?’ For once it was Grace who wanted to spring into action. ‘I think we should go look for her.’

‘Then we have the same problem as we have with Gwen and Orlando.’ My instinct was to agree with Grace, but my head told me no. ‘We can’t free Macy from the dark angels by using force. We have to figure out a smarter way.’

‘But from what you said we don’t have time,’ Holly argued. ‘Owen was using her as a pawn in his game – trying to find out what we knew about Gwen. You didn’t give her the information he wanted so in his eyes Macy failed to carry out orders.’

‘He was angry,’ I admitted. ‘When he pulled off his mask his eyes were intense – burning with anger. She was more scared than I can tell you.’

Trembling, white-faced with terror, weak-kneed with fear, breathless, out of her mind as he dragged her away. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘Let’s go find her!’

Our feet made no sound on the thick hotel carpets. We trod the corridors without any firm plan in mind – only that we knew it was vital to track Macy down before her dark angel exacted his revenge.

We turned a corner and – whoosh! – the wall lights suddenly broke out in flames, like burning torches on castle walls.

Two worlds clash. Reality melts.

The torches cast dark shadows along the corridor; footsteps ring out on stone floors. We flee from the footsteps and come to some steps – a spiral staircase with cold stone treads, taking us down, down into a dripping cellar, a dungeon with a vaulted roof, where the torches flicker and die. A single, weak shaft of light falls from on overhead grille.

We grope our way across the dungeon until we reach the far side. My fingers grasp an unseen metal handle, which I pull. A door opens on to a dark tunnel, nothing like the hotel corridors we have left behind. The floor is cold, hard and uneven. The walls are of rough-hewn rock, with narrow niches containing kerosene lamps. The lights come at regular intervals – I count my steps as we stumble forward up a gradual incline, twenty-five paces between them. We pass five before faint voices start to whisper.

‘The way ahead is blocked.’

‘Rockfall in front and behind.’

‘What now?’

Then silence except for the soft popping of flames as the lamps go out. Soon we are in total darkness.

‘Did you hear that?’ Holly whispers. Her voice echoes down the tunnel. ‘The voices – who’s down here with us?’

‘We’re trapped. We’ll never get out of here.’

‘Dear Lord Jesus, help us!’

‘Nobody,’ I told Holly. ‘Ghosts. Dead miners, workers on the subway. Anybody, everybody in this whole world who was ever buried in a rockfall, an earthquake – whatever.

The voices multiply. They wail and cry for help. We’re suffocated by the lost souls around us.

‘You mean this isn’t real?’ Grace asks in a small, scared voice. ‘We’re imagining all this?’

‘Not real?’ The idea offers bold, gutsy Holly our lifeline.

‘Help!’

‘Help us get out of here!’

‘Dear Lord, I don’t want to die!’

‘Ignore them,’ Holly orders us. She focuses and forges ahead through the tunnel. ‘Concentrate on what we have to do, which is to claw our way back to reality. Come on, Grace, and you too, Tania. I can see daylight!’

We scramble and fight – the three of us together are strong. All for one. We stumble and cough the dust from our lungs as we break out of the tunnel – Holly first, then Grace, then me. By the force of our combined wills we overcome the nightmare
.

‘Fire Exit.’ We were back in the muffled corridor, confronted by a green sign over a door leading out into the parking lot. I took over from Holly, pressed a metal bar and heard the door click open. We stepped out into the snow. A hard crust had formed over the drifts, thick enough to support our weight. Gingerly, with the snow creaking under our feet with every step we took, we made our way past the rows of buried cars towards the avenue of pine trees lining the driveway.

‘Why are we doing this?’ Grace wanted to know. ‘Even Macy wouldn’t be crazy enough to come out here in these conditions.’

The multicoloured Christmas lights in the trees winked. I followed where they led – towards a silver glow outside the gates which hung with thick icicles almost a metre long. Looking up at Carlsbad, I saw that the peak was hidden by thick grey cloud and that great swirls of snow were blowing in from the west.

‘What can you see?’ Holly asked me.

‘A light. I connect it with my good angels. We have to follow it.’

We walked through the gates out of the hotel grounds, our feet crunching over the frozen crust of snow, a wind howling in our ears.

‘Where? I can’t see any frickin’ light,’ Holly protested. ‘We’re being tricked here; led by the nose until we get lost.’

‘It’s like searching for Adam all over again,’ Grace sighed. ‘Only this time I don’t think we get a good outcome.’

The wind blew and the snow fell, silent and white, soft and cold, covering our footprints. The silver light beckoned me on.

‘Tania, maybe Holly’s right.’ Grace overtook me. ‘We didn’t fall for the dark angels’ fake dungeon and tunnel trick, so now they create this new illusion – the “good angel light” – because they totally know you’ll follow it.’

‘You two don’t see it?’ I asked her and I pointed to where the light was leading – up towards the ski lift terminal.

‘No, but I do see a light switched on inside the terminal,’ Grace replied.

‘Not that. I’m talking about more of a silver glow.’ It was the glow that had surrounded Maia when she first explained to me the battle for power between good and evil, the light that accompanied the armies of good angels when they came to do battle against evil and darkness. Zenaida, my mourning dove, had brought the same soft, pure light out of a clear blue sky. She’d perched in the aspens at the end of my garden and told me who she was – my guardian spirit who would always be there for me. And now Adam, with his own pure spirit and a child’s wisdom was leading us to Macy.

As I began to run up the mountain, the snow crust beneath me gave way and I sank to my waist. I struggled out of the drift and on up the hill.

The electric light in the terminal went off then on again and the chairlift motor started to whir.

‘You were right, Grace. There’s definitely someone in there,’ Holly cried.

An empty gondola left the terminal and started up the mountain, hardly visible through the thick snow. A second followed – still empty. Holly had reached the foot of the steps leading up on to the platform when Owen appeared at the top.

‘Where’s Macy?’ Holly yelled. She took the metal steps two at a time, closely followed by Grace. But I could see what they couldn’t – a third gondola emerging from the terminal, containing a small, slight figure dressed in a bright-red cloak. Macy. It jerked, hesitated then carried her up the mountain out of our reach.

Owen laughed as he stopped Grace and Holly from entering the terminal. He kicked out and landed his foot against Holly’s shoulder, forcing her backwards into Grace. Together they slid down the steps.

‘Macy!’ I yelled her name, got no response. The red figure in the ski lift was turned away from me, gazing up at the white blizzard howling down from Carlsbad peak. The covered chair swung and tilted dangerously. ‘Macy!’

Now she heard me and turned.

‘It’s me – Tania. Stay in your seat. I’ll follow you up the mountain on foot!’

She took no notice. Instead, she unlatched the safety bar, and as the gondola swung wildly in the wind, she released the catch, lifted the bar and stood up.

‘Macy, don’t!’ I cried.

She stood and spread her arms. The carmine cloak billowed, the chair tilted to one side.

‘Sit down!’ I begged. My voice was lost in the howling wind.

The red costume looked like a splash of spilled paint on white canvas as she kept her arms spread wide and tilted forward. She waved her arms like a kid pretending to fly then stepped out of the gondola into the whirling snowflakes.

She plummeted to the ground.

I struggled up the slope and was the first to reach her where she lay on her back, arms flung wide. Her body and legs were twisted like the torso and limbs of a discarded puppet when a child has finished playing. Her eyes were still open.

‘Tania, did you see?’ she breathed, a smile playing on her lips.

‘Don’t talk. Don’t move,’ I begged.

Snowflakes settled on her white face, eyeliner and mascara streaked her cheeks. ‘I flew through the air,’ she whispered. ‘Truly, I did.’

I was there holding her hand when she closed her eyes. ‘Yes,’ I murmured.

No more breath. No more broken dreams. Macy was dead.

^‘
I
 couldn’t stop her.’ Owen kept his story short and not very sweet. ‘I don’t know what cocktail of drugs and alcohol she’d been taking, but she was out of her mind on something. Dude, she was crazy.’

He told everyone how hard he’d tried to talk Macy out of going outside. ‘She wouldn’t listen. She was wearing the stupid cloak and the mask, said she could fly through the air. I told her no way.’

‘Did you actually try to stop her?’ Holly asked, her face conveying disbelief.

We were gathered in the main hotel lobby. Macy’s broken body had been carried down from the mountain and taken to the medical centre behind the spa and pool, waiting to be driven to the mortuary in Mayfield once the weather broke. Larry and Ryan were part of a large group, plus Rocky and his girlfriend Lisette, Gwen, Charlie and Angela – everyone except Natalia and Jack congregated in the lobby once the news broke.

‘I tried everything I knew to straighten her out, but the second I turned my back she was gone – no jacket, nothing except the costume – running like a crazy girl out into the snow.’

‘Owen, it’s OK,’ Charlie said. ‘You’re not to blame.’

‘You’re a big, strong guy. You could have restrained her,’ Holly argued, but she was quickly overruled.

‘Charlie’s right,’ Larry decided. ‘This was traumatic for you, Owen. Even though you two only just met, you obviously had feelings for her. I guess we all should have realized how unstable she was. We didn’t pay enough attention.’

‘What about you, Tania?’ Charlie turned the spotlight on me. ‘You knew her better than anyone. Did you ever imagine she was irrational enough to do something like this?’

I shook my head. ‘Macy was a big personality but I never thought she was crazy.’

‘So Owen’s right – substance abuse is involved and the autopsy will identify the exact cause.’ Ryan James cut to the chase. ‘Amber, do we have a contact number for Macy? Who should be informed?’

No one, I wanted to tell them. Macy was alone in the world. But the words sounded too stark and final so I kept my mouth shut.

There was an uneasy silence as the receptionist checked her records. ‘Macy has family in Idaho,’ she reported. ‘An address and phone number for Mr and Mrs Osmond.’

‘No, that’s not right.’ Now I was forced to explain about Macy’s recent family history. ‘Macy hasn’t seen her dad since she was eight years old and her mom passed earlier this year. She died of cancer.’

‘Call the number,’ Ryan told Amber with steely determination.

She dialled and we waited for what seemed like an age for someone to pick up the phone.

‘Mrs Osmond?’ Amber began. ‘Am I speaking to Macy Osmond’s mom?’ There was a short pause while Amber listened then spoke what is every parent’s worst nightmare. ‘Mrs Osmond, I’m calling you from the Carlsbad Lodge in Colorado. I’m afraid I have very bad news.’