Dark Angel 03: Broken Dream (32 page)

Gathering together every scrap of mental energy, I resisted and lurched back from the spiritual precipice, stumbling over a decaying branch and falling to my knees. I made contact with something solid and investigated with my fingertips – touched the cold metal line of a zipper, soft fabric, cold flesh.

I jumped. My breath became shallow. I leaned forward again and made out more detail. The flesh I’d come into contact with was a hand, the fingers curled tightly around a small plastic object – a child’s toy, a superhero. Instinctively I tried to ease the hand open to retrieve it.

The fingers resisted. The hand would not let go.

Gasping and trying not to sob, I felt for a pulse – very faint and uneven.

Quickly I took off my jacket and threw it over the injured man. I leaned in to listen for breath. His eyes opened slowly and tried to focus.

‘It’s me – Tania,’ I murmured.

The eyelids fluttered closed then open then shut again.

‘Don’t die on me now,’ I pleaded. ‘Jack, please don’t die!’

Between us Holly and I knew enough first aid to stem the flow of blood from the knife wound in Jack’s arm. He was unconscious as we raised the arm and improvised a tourniquet then talked about how we could get him back down to the hotel without causing more problems.

‘It’s good that I showed up,’ Holly told me, carefully trying to work Adam’s little plastic toy out of Jack’s grasp.

‘No, let him keep hold of it,’ I said quietly, noticing his eyelids flicker open for a moment as if to say thanks.

‘No way could you have done this alone,’ Holly went on.

I worked with numb fingers to tie a knot in the strip of fabric. ‘Yeah, thank God you got here fast,’ I muttered. I’d just had time to discover that Jack was alive and to apply pressure to the wound before I’d heard Holly yelling my name. I’d run out of the shaft entrance to see her plunging down from the overlook, running part of the way but mostly sliding on her ass and raising a wake of powdery snow.

‘I came as quick as I could,’ she told me now, having helped me ease Jack out towards the exit from the mine. ‘I could see from the gondola that no one had been on the overlook in twenty–four hours – no tyre marks, no footprints. So I jumped out and headed straight down to you.’

‘So do we carry him?’ I wanted to know. ‘How do we do it?’

‘We make a stretcher,’ she decided, and went back into the mine to choose two sturdy branches from the bears’ old den-making stockpile. ‘Let’s hope they’ll take Jack’s weight,’ she mumbled as she took off her jacket and ordered me to do the same. ‘We zip them together and use the sleeves to attach them to these pieces of wood, so we have a hammock. OK, get ready to lift him. Easy now.’

Jack groaned as we eased his weight on to the makeshift stretcher.

‘He feels pain – that’s a good sign,’ Holly insisted.

I sighed. ‘We hope.’ There was a hell of a lot more blood on the floor of that tunnel, I’d discovered.

‘Come on, let’s go.’

Holly and I took the strain and lifted Jack. Clumsily we made our way down the mountain – Holly in front, me behind.

‘Tania, you did good,’ Holly told me as we drew level with the ski lift terminal. ‘I know how hard it was for you to step inside that old mineshaft.’

‘You don’t know how close I came to wimping out.’

‘I totally do,’ she insisted. ‘I admire what you did. What are we gonna do when Jack wakes up and the shit hits the fan?’

‘As in, Jack gives a blow-by-blow account of how dark angel Charlie stabbed him in the arm then threw him in the mineshaft and left him to die?’

‘Exactly.’ Sliding and slipping, we carried our heavy load down the final slopes and through the gates of Carlsbad Lodge, where Holly came to a sudden halt. ‘Uh-oh,’ she grunted.

She’d heard it before I did – the churning of a chopper engine. ‘Looks like Grace’s plan didn’t work out,’ I gasped.

The noise of the helicopter’s engine grew louder and soon we could see its blades rotating, preparing for take-off.

‘That sucks,’ Holly groaned.

‘No, no – it’s all good! Quick, Holly, move!’

‘Which way? What are we doing?’

‘Hurry. Carry Jack towards the chopper. This is a big emergency, right? They’ll have to fly him to the hospital.’

‘Out of Charlie’s grasp.’ Changing course, Holly cut between the trees festooned with Christmas lights and across the snow-covered lawn. ‘Look, there’s Natalia and the kids coming out of a side entrance,’ she reported.

I spotted them too, Natalia carrying Charlie with Adam in his sky-blue ski jacket carefully holding Phoebe’s hand and following close behind. The wind from the chopper blades made them bend forward and keep their heads down.

‘Natalia, wait!’ Holly called.

The noise from the engine meant she didn’t hear. We saw the pilot come down a short ladder and shake her hand. Then he stood aside for her to carry the baby up the ladder.

Jack lay senseless as we struggled to heave our makeshift stretcher. We saw the pilot hand Phoebe up into the chopper then turn to Adam.

‘Wait!’ I yelled.

Adam pulled back from the stepladder. He turned, saw us carrying his dad on a stretcher and started to run towards us.

The pilot followed while Natalia reappeared in the doorway.

‘Daddy!’ Adam reached us as we were two thirds of the way across the lawn. His eyes were wide, his face pale under the mop of dark-brown hair. He grabbed his father’s hand – the one that carried the plastic toy.

‘Who’s this?’ the pilot wanted to know. ‘What happened?’

‘This is Jack Kane. He’s hurt bad, he lost a lot of blood. You need to get him to the hospital,’ Holly explained.

The pilot took one look, nodded and quickly retraced his steps, telling us to follow.

‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,’ Adam chanted under his breath, running as fast as he could to keep up, refusing to let go of Jack’s hand.

Natalia descended the ladder and hurried across the helipad to meet us, just as Charlie came striding out of the hotel.

‘Girls, I need you to lift him up to me,’ the pilot instructed as he scrambled up the ladder.

Holly and I prepared to shift position and hand over the stretcher to the pilot. Charlie had arrived, his face set in an expression you couldn’t read – eyes narrowed, teeth gritted, black hair blown back from his knitted brows.

‘Oh, God – oh Jack – what happened?’ Natalia wailed, ignoring Charlie and standing in our way. She reached out to stroke Jack’s cheek with the back of her hand.

‘I’ll handle this,’ Charlie told her.

For once Natalia still wasn’t listening. ‘He isn’t going to die, is he?’ she begged. ‘Tania, please say he’ll make it.’

My hand was shaking as I prised Adam’s fingers away from Jack’s hand. ‘It’s OK,’ I whispered. ‘They’ll make your daddy better in the hospital.’

‘Thank God,’ Natalia breathed, eagerly accepting my promise to her son. ‘You hear that, Adam? Daddy isn’t going to die.’

‘I said I’ll handle it,’ Charlie repeated sternly. ‘Natalia, you stay here with the kids. I’ll go with Jack to the hospital.’

No! I resisted the urge to spring forward and stop this from happening.

‘Why would I do that?’ she asked.

‘Because you two are through and everyone knows it. And because you have to stay for the party tonight to secure the new movie deal with Ryan.’

‘I don’t care about deals right now!’

‘I know – you’re traumatized. And it’s hard to let go when you see Jack like this. The old feelings kick back in. Believe me, I know.’

‘No, you don’t.’ With one final shake of her head Natalia turned away from Charlie and gathered Adam in her arms. She handed him into the chopper. ‘Please help me up,’ she asked the pilot. ‘I’m coming to the hospital with my husband.’

‘Interesting.’ Charlie watched the helicopter rise into the darkening sky. The first stars had already appeared and a full moon sailed from behind the jagged mountains to the east. He swung round towards us and his sinister eyes flashed in the moonlight. ‘That wasn’t on my radar. The plan changes.’

We shuddered as we stood with him on the helipad, partly from fear and partly because we were almost freezing to death without our jackets.

‘So now you’re going to zap us to hell with your superpowers?’ Holly challenged and I remembered never to underestimate Holly’s ability to put on a brave front. I bet any money that underneath she was shaking and trembling as much as I was.

I mean, I was stunned by the strength of evil emanating through every ice-cold pore.

‘Not yet,’ Charlie sneered. He stood tall and powerful as the helicopter disappeared down the narrow pass between Carlsbad and Mount Evelyn. He stared at me with cold, cruel eyes, his good-guy disguise long gone. In its place was a dark, vicious and violent force that made me shudder and stagger back. ‘No, Tania, not yet,’ he repeated with a laugh. He’d done with us for now, turning again and striding towards the lodge. He paused, turned and smiled again. ‘Later, maybe.’

‘We look forward to that,’ Holly muttered. She held the bravado until he’d finally swung in through the side door and disappeared. ‘Why not now?’ she asked me in a sudden show of panic. ‘Why didn’t he destroy us on the spot for spoiling his fun?’

‘It’s not the right time. He’s making us wait until the party.’ I gave a big sigh as I pictured the scene. ‘That’s the highlight. It’s where I lose Orlando to the dark angels. Charlie wouldn’t want me to miss that, now, would he?’

G
race’s costume was pure white, with the silver headdress covered in fantastic scrolls. A silver mask covered her face.

Holly was dressed in a magenta gown and a hat festooned with black ostrich feathers. Her mask was white, with enormous almond-shaped holes for her eyes and a rosebud doll’s mouth painted in red to complete the effect.

They both looked as if they were about to step out of a Venetian palazzo into a gondola that would take them across the shimmering blue lagoon to the doge’s ball.

‘Tania, get dressed,’ Grace urged.

I was sitting on my bed, desperately wishing I could stop time.

‘Put on your costume,’ Holly told me.

It was seven thirty pm. The party was due to start. I wasn’t ready. I would never be ready to face what was about to take place.

Grace held up my dress of black and white silk. She made me step into it and hold still while she closed the back zipper. It had a nipped-in waist and a stiff, corseted bodice. The skirt billowed over a wide, hooped petticoat.

‘Now your mask and hat,’ Holly said.

The black hat had a wide brim and big silk flowers. The mask was white, decorated with delicate pink flowers. It felt weird for my face to be hidden behind a painted plastic shell.

‘OK?’ Grace checked.

I shook my head. This was what Marie Antoinette must have gone through before they carted her through the streets of Paris to the guillotine. She had ladies-in-waiting to clothe her in fine linen, to lace her into her embroidered gown and dress her to impress the crowds as she faced her executioner.

Grace squeezed my hand. ‘The beauty of this is that no one will recognize us. But you know what Orlando will be wearing, right?’

‘Black cloak, black tunic with silver decoration,’ I recalled. ‘White mask with a kind of cowl hood and a broad-brimmed hat.’

‘Good,’ Grace murmured. ‘We pick him out from the crowd and do whatever we have to do to get him out of here.’ When I didn’t respond she grew more insistent. ‘What! You’ve done it before, haven’t you? You got Holly out of New Dawn and me out of Black Eagle Lodge.’

‘That was different,’ I whispered. This time it was Orlando.

‘Right.’ Holly stood by the door in her spectacular red costume. ‘So, Tania, this is it. We really have to go.’

A white screen covered one entire wall of Owen’s bar. Projected on to it were images of Venice – waterside palaces, piazzas, white church spires and narrow covered bridges spanning the canals. The music playing through the speakers was stately and classical.

The plan was for Holly, Grace and me to enter separately and mingle with other guests. That way we wouldn’t be so easy to identify. We’d agreed on a place and time to meet and update – eight thirty in reception. Beyond that, none of us knew what to expect.

‘Find Orlando. Get rid of Gwen.’ Holly’s parting instruction couldn’t have been clearer.

I focused on those six short words to cut out the fear. I reduced it to two – find Orlando. Then I added two of my own: Breathe. Believe.

Find Orlando. Breathe. Believe. In preparation for the final battle, this was my mantra.

I went in and mingled. The music was loud, the room full of Ryan James’s excited guests. Ryan himself was easy to recognize – a tall figure dressed in a long dark-blue velvet cloak with a high collar, his fair hair visible beneath his hat. I guessed that the person next to him was Larry King and the girl to his left must be Lucy Young, listening so intently that she failed to move out of the path of three jugglers who had just entered the room.

The juggler who collided with her was dressed in a green and red tunic with matching jester’s hat, complete with bells. He and his fellow performers darted through the crowd throwing balls high into the air, leaping to catch them, adding more balls, magicking them out of their long, bell-shaped sleeves, even out of their mouths and ears and from under the hats of astonished guests.

People behind their masks laughed in surprise and began to applaud.

Then a team of nimble fire-eaters appeared, all dressed in the figure-hugging, flame-red, sequined body suits that Macy had chosen as her costume. There were six of them, jumping on to the bar and parading along its length. They carried flaming torches, which they threw into the air. The torches twirled, flickered orange and yellow, tracing crazy circles, arcs and zigzags in the air, until the performers caught them and thrust them into their wide-open mouths. There was a series of soft pops as the flames went out.

Onlookers gasped. There was more applause.

The sound of hands clapping. A fire-eater leaps down from the bar brandishing a flaming torch, a red devil. His fingertips are alight, he breathes out fire, flames dart from his eyes as he throws his arms around me to claim and destroy me
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