Dark Angel (6 page)

‘OK, I get it – you’re only the messenger,’ I muttered. My heart was racing, my palms sweating.

‘Just follow, OK?’ As he turned, Daniel’s eagle wings brushed my shoulder and for a split second I had the image of him actually soaring across a pure blue sky. I saw his cruel, curved beak, his huge wingspan, heard the beating of wings. I was his prey, cowering below. ‘Follow,’ he said again.

And sun god took me to meet Zoran.

I
t was a lonely walk, pulse racing, knees weakening. I felt like a moth metres away from a scorching flame.

‘Tania Ionescu,’ sun god said as he delivered me to the master then quietly backed out of range.

‘Ionescu,’ Zoran repeated.

‘I-O-N-E—’ My gut reaction was to spell my name, like always.

Zoran cut me off with a nod. ‘You’re from Romania.’

‘My dad,’ I corrected. ‘I was actually born here.’

‘A citizen of the United States.’ The eyes were fixed on my face, the voice was mostly expressionless though I thought I picked up a small hint of amusement here. ‘So where in Romania were your dad’s family?’

‘In Bucharest.’

‘During the Ceauşescu regime?’

I nodded. ‘Dad escaped with his family and came here in eighty-six.’

‘And remained.’ The gaze stayed on me, pinning me to the spot. ‘I guess he could go back home now.’

‘I guess.’ The legend talked banal family stuff like anyone else – how bizarre – while fellow guests jostled for his attention.

A girl held out a pen, bared her arm and begged for an autograph. ‘But he married an American?’ Zoran asked.

I nodded. ‘He says that here feels like home now. He reads American history.’

How many gawky, geeky, lame remarks can one girl make in the space of an evening? Keep on counting.

‘I left the country when I was five years old,’ Zoran told me. ‘My family spent time in the former Czechoslovakia. After my dad was assassinated, my mom and I kept on moving west – Switzerland, Spain, eventually Mexico.’

Assassinated is not a word you expect to be dropped into casual party conversation. It throws you off balance and begs a thousand questions, which I somehow couldn’t shape up into proper sentences. ‘Jeez, I’m sorry,’ I breathed inadequately.

He shook his head. ‘It happened a long time ago. I don’t really remember my father. And that kind of childhood – always moving on – it gives you an independence, a strength. I guess what I’m saying is that I learned early on not to need people.’

‘I guess.’ A few gossip-mag details flitted through my head – the fact that Zoran had a zillion rock chick girlfriends through the years but had never married or had children, that he owns homes in New York, Italy and the Bahamas.

‘I’m a wanderer, born and bred. But the counter side of that is that I’ve developed a strong nostalgia for my homeland.’ Zoran steered me through the crowd, ignoring the bustle and clamour around us, making sure his stewards kept the autograph hunters at bay.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw that Ezra and Grace were following in our wake.

‘It’s highly romantic and completely illogical,’ Zoran continued. ‘Here am I, living this rootless, privileged existence, achieving what everyone would recognize as the impossible American dream, but still yearning to be in contact with little old Romania, to be part of a big family, to know the language, the culture of my forefathers.’

I nodded, flattered by the confession, by his assumption that I was on the same wavelength, that I was even worth talking to. I mean, he was way up there; I was nobody. By the way, unlike my dad’s, Zoran’s English was perfect. Maybe a little formal and quaint for a rock star, but grammatically right on.

‘Which is why, the moment I saw your name on the guest list, I said, “Find that girl.” ’ He stopped now, glancing over his shoulder to check that Ezra and Grace were close by. ‘They tell me you almost didn’t come.’

‘To the party?’ I stammered. How the hell did he know that? ‘The fire – I guess it spooked me.’

‘I’m glad you made it. And you know it wasn’t an easy decision. I had my office contact Tony West’s family – the firefighter who died – and they said to go ahead, Tony died doing what he loved and anyway that’s what he would have wanted. I’m making a donation to the forest service so they can upgrade their equipment.’

I nodded, though I wasn’t sure that a donation, however generous and well meant, balanced out the family grief quite the way Zoran implied.

‘Not that one thing cancels out the other,’ he added, looking me directly in the eye and making me feel as though he’d read my mind. A security guy opened a door for us and I found myself out of the main party gathering and in the cinema room I mentioned earlier. ‘Do you believe in miracles, Tania?’

I assumed I was alone with him until I saw that Ezra had brought Grace along too. ‘I never thought much about it,’ I confessed.

‘But you’re a sensitive person – I can tell that.’

How? How can you tell? Do I have the word “sensitive” tattooed on my forehead? Up went my defences and I turned to Grace for help.

‘Tania’s real creative,’ she told Zoran unhelpfully. ‘She’s hoping to travel to Europe to study the history of art. But her big thing is painting. She’s actually a great artist.’

‘I see that. It comes through in your costume – you have a strong visual sense, an eye for colour. You’re used to looking beneath the surface; you try to work out reasons.’

‘That’s still not the same as believing in miracles,’ I argued.

‘Watch this,’ Zoran told me, turning towards the giant screen on the wall at the same time as someone, presumably Ezra, pressed the button for a video to play.

It was a home-shot sequence, filmed the previous day when the fire on Black Rock was at its height.

‘It was shot on a mobile phone so these are not high-quality images. Also it was filmed from the helicopter and the pilot had trouble navigating through the smoke, which is why it’s unsteady,’ Zoran told us. ‘See Turner Lake in the distance? And that’s the old burnout area, and the dirt track you just drove along. The summit of Black Rock is hidden behind the main smoke column.’

I held my breath as the video played out, hearing the chopper blades churn, seeing the images blur as they flew through smoke clouds.

‘So now the pilot is steering upwind of the blaze – you can see the flames sweeping through the trees. That’s Black Eagle Canyon, that’s the house – see!’

All too clearly I saw the black pall of smoke, the flames racing across grassland and brush, travelling so fast it left trees only scorched but not consumed. And I spotted the one-storey modernist buildings set against the bare rock of the canyon, standing right in the path of the raging fire.

‘Watch!’ Zoran said.

A wave of flame approached the canyon. It ate up scrub and young aspen trees, reached the edge of the gorge and seemed to pause.

‘Look at the direction of the wind, see how the flames leap clean over the house,’ he murmured.

He didn’t need to tell me; I was already hypnotized. Firebrands jumped skywards ahead of the inferno, streaking red and gold through the black smoke, clearing the gorge and landing on the far side, igniting the land beyond. Then the flames themselves leaped and arched, carried by a mighty wind. They left one side of the gorge and landed on the other, danced and raged on as before. Zoran’s house was spared.

‘Now do you believe in miracles?’ he said.

‘Tania hates fire. She has a kind of phobia,’ Grace explained.

I must have passed out for a few seconds, gone blank, sunk to my knees, because Ezra was offering me his hand, my head whirled and I had trouble recalling exactly where I was.

I was so weak that the dreamcatcher guy had to hold me upright and lead me to a chair. Though the screen was blank, I could still hear the chopper blades churning above the whoosh and blast of furious flames.

Zoran was nowhere to be seen.

‘Do you need water?’ Ezra asked, leaning over me.

I nodded and he went away, leaving me and Grace alone.

‘Don’t do that to me, OK!’ she murmured, taking the seat next to mine.

‘What did I do?’

‘You just dropped to the floor – I thought you’d had a brain seizure or something. One minute you’re standing watching the screen, the next you’re flat out. I thought you’d never open your eyes ever again and wondered how I was gonna go back and tell your folks!’

‘Sorry.’

‘It’s OK, I understand. I told Ezra how it started – how you most likely connected it with the old fire on Becker Hill. He said Zoran had no idea you would get so spooked.’

‘He seemed to know everything else about my life,’ I muttered, remembering our back-to-roots conversation. ‘If anyone else calls me sensitive without really understanding the first thing about me …’

‘Zoran didn’t plan for you to pass out,’ Grace advised as Ezra came back with a glass of water. ‘Actually, he went to look for a medic to check you out.’

‘I don’t need one,’ I said, taking sips from the glass and waiting for my head to stop spinning. ‘I’ll be fine.’

‘Seriously, he was worried for you. He’d really been jazzed about meeting you – isn’t that right, Ezra?’

‘You were top of his list,’ the dreamcatcher confirmed. ‘People don’t realize, a guy in Zoran’s situation rarely makes a connection with the man in the street. It can be pretty lonely. So when he saw your name he grabbed the chance to have a conversation because he knew you two would have things in common.’

‘He should talk to my dad,’ I sighed. Then again, Dad wasn’t into Zoran’s music and I figured he would disapprove of the luxury lifestyle. My dad camps out and fishes in ice-cold creeks, remember. ‘Actually, meeting him was an amazing experience,’ I admitted.

To sum up, now that my head was clearing, Zoran the rock god was everything you would expect – vain, arrogant, in love with himself, all those things. But he had an unexpected side too – a willingness to share family experiences, plus the sheer, close-up charisma: the sculpted face with no sign of age lines, the tall, lithe body with the angel tattoo from shoulder to elbow, and above all the glittering sharpness of his gaze.

‘Wasn’t it though!’ Grace was totally caught up in the whole experience and especially in Ezra. She hovered around him the way a bee is drawn to a flower. ‘And the night isn’t over yet. Zoran plans to sing again.’

‘Cool.’ I was standing unaided and definitely didn’t need the doctor who showed up in Zoran’s team colour of black from head to toe. Black T, black jeans, thick-soled black boots with zippers up the side. ‘I can find a driver to take you home,’ he offered, once he’d checked my pulse and shone a small flashlight into my pupils.

‘No need, honestly. I want to see Zoran’s second set.’

‘Are you sure? It can get pretty wild.’

‘Sure,’ I insisted. Ezra spotted my intention to head out into the corridor and was there at the door before me. ‘Thanks,’ I murmured, resisting a strong urge to whisper Jude’s name into Grace’s ear as I passed by. Who was I to stand in her way? Plus, beneath the red and white streaks of war paint, Ezra was drop-dead gorgeous, there was no denying.

He led us to the main party room and soon we were back among the whirling lights and drumming, driving beat, shoulder to shoulder with costumed kids whose tunics were now creased and wrinkled, wings drooping and masks beginning to slip. It was hot – way above thirty degrees in the packed room, I guessed.

‘Missed you!’ Holly exclaimed, eyes wide under her tilted helmet. Before I knew it she’d rushed up to me and grabbed both my hands, dragged me along the corridors into the elevator then out of the building back into the huge amphitheatre. ‘Where did you go? Never mind, don’t tell me. You have a bad case of bed head and I don’t want to know why. You gotta dance, Tania. Don’t just stand there.’

‘Where’s Aaron?’ He should stand out in his male version of the Mercury outfit – bare to the waist except for the straps criss-crossing his chest, and in his helmet standing head and shoulders taller than most of the guests.

‘He already left.’ Holly shrugged then dragged me into the middle of the crowd.

For which I read, We had another fight, he made an involuntary exit. Poor Aaron.

‘Dance!’ she ordered.

The band broke into a new number and a shout went up as Zoran strode back onstage, dressed once more in the black-plumed headdress and dark leather trousers, with silver cuffs around his wrists and this time wearing an unbelievable pair of glittering, gossamer wings more impressive and convincing than anything you ever saw as a special effect at the movies. These wings had a span of two metres or more and they reflected light from a million tiny silver discs. He came into the spotlight and dazzled us, standing there, waiting to open his mouth and sing.

‘You spoke my name, I came.’

We all yelled and clapped. It was Zoran’s first ever number one from way back.

‘I stand by your side … your side … your side.’

He threw back his head to sing the words we’d had in our heads seemingly for ever.

‘My love for you cannot be denied.’

‘You spoke my name!’ We joined in the chorus, our voices loud enough to reach the stars. I was dancing with Holly, thinking about Orlando and remembering the moment by Turner Lake when we went swimming at midnight and I fell in love with him, missing him so much it almost felt like a knife plunged into my chest. I gazed at Zoran and for a moment he seemed to beat his iridescent wings and actually rise from the stage.

‘On the ocean shore/ In the mountain shadow/ Search for me.’ Once more that soaring voice, the speaking from the heart to you and only you. ‘In the dark, dark valley/ You call my name.’

Someone came between me and Holly – Zoran’s guy with the gold collar and feathered cloak, Lewis the loincloth-clad god of youth. He grasped her around the waist and slow-danced her out of sight. I danced on alone among the sweating bodies. Bare shoulders glistened around me, face paints melted and lip gloss smudged, dark eyes went blank.

The stage lights seemed to make Zoran float; a girl beside me covered her face with both hands, somewhere between agony and ecstasy, and when she dragged them clear, mascara smeared her cheeks. I glimpsed Grace again, still dancing with Ezra, arms wrapped around his neck, and now my own heavenly creature came and swept me off my feet, turned me slowly, dreamily, towards the edge of darkness.