Dark Angel (32 page)

T
he heavens opened and the rain poured down.

I heard the drone of an engine overhead and looked up through the black smoke, heard more engines following on – a heavier tanker following the lead plane. No, this wasn’t rain. I listened again and felt relief flood through me as I realized that the Carlsbad County firefighters had arrived.

They flew over the canyon, waiting until they were directly overhead before opening up their massive water tanks and releasing their cargo. Retardant fell like rain – thousands of gallons hit the ground. All around I heard the hiss and pop of flames as they died.

Flames hissed and steam rose. For a while the forest fire flickered and fought back, tried to regain its hold. Then another tanker flew low and did its job, killing the wall of flame in the tree canopy behind the barn.

‘You lose!’ I turned to Zoran in triumph but he was gone.

A figure ran from the barn swathed in hissing steam. More aircraft flew low, and now it was helicopters coming to help, chugging over the ridge above Black Eagle Lodge, blades churning, bringing more water to put out the fire. The figure raced towards me, emerging from the smoke and steam. ‘You’re safe, thank God!’ Orlando said as he gathered me in his arms.

‘Grace? Jude?’ I asked.

‘I got them both inside the barn. They’re not hurt.’ He dragged me back across the arena to join them. ‘What happened to Zoran?’

‘I don’t know. He disappeared when the fire crew arrived.’ Feeling the cold water on my skin, watching the flames die out, I was overwhelmed and sank against him.

Orlando hugged me back into action. ‘OK, we don’t stop to find out where he went. We collect Jude and Grace and we’re out of here!’

I nodded. It was still hard to breathe and talk – the hot, moist air had turned the barn into a sauna – and everywhere was so dark that we had to grope our way forward and call out.

‘Grace?’ Orlando yelled above the drone of the choppers’ engines.

‘Here!’ she called through the darkness. ‘Hurry – Jude’s not doing well!’

‘Keep talking – we’ll find you!’ Orlando promised as we struggled through the clammy air.

‘This way. Please hurry!’

We kept our heads down, stumbled into boxes stacked against a wall, sent them crashing.

‘He can’t breathe. You have to help me!’ Grace pleaded.

At last we found them huddled in a corner – Jude slumped against the wall, Grace trying to revive him. She was bent over him in her torn black dress, loosening the collar of his robe, begging him to wake up. When she saw us appear out of the sweaty darkness, she broke down completely. ‘Don’t let him die!’ she wept.

‘No one’s dying.’ Straight away Orlando raised Jude’s limp body from the ground. He slung one of his arms around his shoulder then told me to take the other. Then he ordered Grace to stay close behind as we made our way back towards the door. ‘They have the fire under control, so we can head straight for my car, drive the hell out of here.’

Together we made it out of the barn and were halfway across the arena, still fighting for breath when a tall, terrifying figure confronted us. It emerged out of the clouds of white smoke, brandishing a flaming branch. It was Ezra, carrying fire. His face was blackened and burned, his eyes staring directly at Grace, who sank to her knees the moment she saw him.

Orlando and I saw her collapse. Jude was semiconscious, groaning and slumping forward, his arms still hooked around our shoulders. ‘Grace, stand up!’ I begged, trying to reach out for her.

But Ezra strode towards her, a hellish figure with his burned flesh and flaming brand shedding sparks as he came. He thrust it close to her face and with his free hand he seized her by the arm, his sooty fingers leaving marks on her pale skin. In the background the blades of the fire service choppers whirred and a mist of cold retardant hung in the air.

‘Let her go!’ I yelled as Ezra raised Grace to her feet.

‘This isn’t over. No one walks away,’ he sneered, standing with his feet wide apart in the hissing dirt.

She winced then shuddered as sparks fell on her skin. But she didn’t struggle.

‘We’re still strong,’ Ezra vowed. The fire that had blistered his face hadn’t weakened his willpower. ‘We will always rise from the ashes.’

‘No, no – you lose!’ I raised my voice so that everyone could hear – those ghostly, unidentifiable figures in the distance who staggered through the smoke, bent double like soldiers gassed in the trenches, lungs shredded, coughing up blood. ‘You can’t take Grace with you. She’s coming with us.’

He didn’t loosen his grip and his hand was steady as he thrust the torch closer still. ‘Who do you choose?’ he snarled at her. ‘Me or them?’

She was on her knees again, cowering away from the flame and from his mutilated face, trying to shield her eyes.

‘Me or them?’ he repeated, jerking her to her feet. Shadows flickered across his features. His eye sockets were dark and hollow.

I knew I had to act. ‘Hold on to Jude,’ I muttered to Orlando, stepping free and tugging at the chain around my neck. It broke easily but, before I could grasp it and give it to Grace, the gold crucifix slid away from me and dropped to the ground.

Out of the corner of his eye, Ezra saw where it landed. He gave a hollow laugh as he put his boot on it and stamped it into the dirt. ‘You believe this can defeat me?’ he sneered. ‘The power of the cross – it’s childish superstition!’

No – wrong! I kept to my first thought, gritted my teeth and ran at him, avoided the flaming branch as he swung it towards me, felt its heat against my cheek. And I charged into him with all the strength I could gather – enough to make him stagger backwards to reveal the gold cross in the dirt.

The power of the cross that my dad had given me, a gift from my great grandmother through the generations – the ancient power for good over evil.

I stooped to pick it up and give it to Grace, placed it in her palm and closed her trembling fingers over it.

‘Go with Jude and Orlando!’ I gasped at her as Ezra sprawled on the ground. His flaming torch had fallen against the arena fence. ‘Go – now!’ I meant everyone – Grace, Jude and Orlando. ‘Get out of here!’

Orlando shook his head. He didn’t seem able to take his eyes off Ezra rolling in the dirt, writhing there as if he was still burning in the flames that had disfigured him. He was visible in the guttering light of his torch, arms flailing, trying to beat back the invisible fire, rolling against the fence, gasping, shrieking, crying out to be saved.

‘Make Grace keep hold of the cross,’ I told Orlando. ‘Ger her and Jude to the car.’

‘I’m not leaving you!’ Buckling under Jude’s weight, he took Grace’s hand and drew her away from Ezra.

‘I’ll be right behind you,’ I promised above Ezra’s screams as the chopper blades whirred and a fresh bank of black smoke rolled off the mountain and hid Orlando, Grace and Jude from view.

The only thing visible in the dying light of the flaming torch was Ezra himself lying in the dirt. He fought an enemy he couldn’t see, groaned and rolled on to his stomach, tried to crawl away, collapsed again. For as long as Grace held the cross in her hand he was powerless.

The smoke rolled on across the arena. Orlando had escaped with Jude and Grace but now a new force swept down from Black Rock. I felt it, I knew it in every atom of my being – dark angel Zoran had come back for me.

He swooped and gathered me up, lifted me from the ground and flew with me above the smoke, above the helicopters and the rising steam into the dark night. A million light years over our heads stars shone, while down on Black Rock sporadic fires still burned. I heard the beating of Zoran’s great wings, up-down, up-down, glimpsed the sliver of moon in the sky, stared down on the dark western mountains, the white summits covered in snow – on and on.

I shivered in the dark lord’s grasp, in his terrible airborne power, as he carried me away.

We came to rest in a white wilderness, high on a dizzying slope – a place of ice-bound, violet crevasses, of shadows, sunset and silence, except for the thudding of my heart. This is where Zoran set me down.

He stood three paces away, his black wings spread wide – him and me alone on Carlsbad Mountain. Somewhere deep inside, I had known from the moment I first saw him that it would end like this, face to face.

‘Now you have no one,’ he said calmly.

I closed my eyes, opened them again. The ice crust creaked underfoot; my heart beat as though it would break out of my chest.

‘No one will save you, Tania Ionescu. How does it feel to be alone?’

‘Like I knew it would.’

‘There is no power stronger than me,’ he said slowly. ‘You see now how it works?’

‘You’re weaker than you were,’ I replied. Minus Ezra, Cristal and Daniel. And without Jude and Grace in your ranks. I held my head up – I could be proud of this at least.

‘There will be other times, other places,’ he said without blinking. ‘A million other willing souls.’

I stood defenceless on the silent slope, my heart racing, my head held high. ‘You didn’t fool me,’ I told him. ‘You thought you did but you didn’t.’

He smiled. ‘Correct. I underestimated you.’

‘You used Daniel to trap me. You wanted me to fall in love with him. It didn’t work out.’

‘Almost,’ he said, still smiling. ‘All I needed was one more day.’

‘Never.’ I trembled from the effort of standing tall in front of him. ‘What do you know about love?’ I challenged. ‘For you it’s all on the surface, skin deep.’

‘That’s the story for many others too. Remember Oliver, and Grace and Jude.’

‘Not for me and Orlando.’

His smile mocked me, while the silence of the white mountain crowded in. ‘Poor Tania. You held out longer than the others, but where did it get you? In the end, you suffer the most.’

I shook my head. In my mind I was saying goodbye. I saw the future – my mom and dad clearing my closet, packing away the paints and canvases in my studio then sitting in silence in an empty house. I saw Orlando cycling by Prayer River without me.

‘The others go on with their lives.’ Zoran’s voice was scarcely more than a whisper and his dark eyes glittered.

I envisaged my last moments under those black, beating wings. And I saw everything like a drowning man, every detail right back to the first time Zoran came onstage at the Heavenly Bodies party – his rock-star strut under flashing lights, the way his voice soared and his lyrics carried their secret threat. ‘You don’t know me, you never will/ Shadows fall, voices kill.’ The way he mesmerized us and grasped power – Zoran Brancusi, shape-shifting soul-stealer, brutal dealer in death.

‘Here is where it ends,’ he confirmed.

Black, nameless shapes rose from the blue crevasses. They flapped their wings and circled against the setting sun.

‘You don’t know me/ Though you see my face …’ The haunting words flitted through my head like the black creatures in the blood-red sky. I remembered Maia’s promise – knowledge is power – and I totally realized that I had nothing left to lose. ‘I
know
you!’ I said out loud and with all the defiant force I had left in my bruised and breathless body.

Zoran frowned as he took a step towards me. My words seemed to make him hesitate.

‘I know that you’re a fake. You’re not who you pretend to be.’ Keep in mind what Maia told me, then quickly, quickly deliver what I learned from Stefan. ‘Zoran Brancusi is dead. He really did die in the hospital in Bucharest.’
Catch the devil by the throat
. ‘What I say is true, and truth will bring you down.’

But no – it only made him falter then grow more angry. He knotted his brows, he spread his wings and drew down the creatures from the sky. They flitted through the darkening air, half-bat, half-bird with flapping, leathery wings. They would claw and peck at me, would cling to my face and smother me.

‘You use Zoran’s corpse,’ I screamed, hitting out with words – the only weapon I had in my final armoury. ‘You stole a dead man’s life. I
know
you!’

‘You don’t know me/ Though you see my face/ My name is lost in time and space.’

The dark angel’s lips stretched but no way was it a smile. It was arrogance on his face as he took the last steps. ‘Who am I?’ he taunted.

‘My name is lost …’

Think. Drag it out of the recesses of memory. There was a guy at the Floreascu who claimed the body. He signed the form. Who was he? What was his name?

‘Malach!’ I cried. The answer sprang from me. I said it three times. ‘Malach! Malach!’

‘
Malach, angel of death. Brutal spirit of the underworld, creator of war, destroyer of infants.’ Maia’s voice is in the dying light, in the glistening ice beneath my feet
.

‘Your name is Malach,’ I repeated quietly.

In the end I find the key. You lose, I win.

The name entered his poisoned heart like a spear. Before my eyes it ripped him apart. He staggered backwards, fell with arms flailing, scattering the dark, flitting creatures in all directions. He sank into the snow.

Angel of death. Destroyer of the innocents. Malach
.

I watched the demon die without pity. He sank, the flesh melted from his bones, he decayed. The dark eyes stayed alive until the end, glaring at me in rage. Calmly I witnessed this last transformation, saw him dissolve in torment. His eyes flashed in angry, bitter defeat until he was skull and skeleton, mouldering into the ice, returning to dust.

‘My child, my angel!’ Maia lifts me and carries me from the mountain. Stars light our way. I don’t see her but I hear her voice.

‘He vanished. I looked and there was nothing left.’

‘Back into darkness,’ she murmurs. She bears me high through the heavens; we are one and the same, entwined.

I don’t look down. I look up at the moon. A million souls rejoice and travel with us through the night.

O
rlando was the one who took longer to get over it. He said he couldn’t forgive himself for leaving me alone on the mountain.

‘You didn’t,’ I argued. ‘I wasn’t by myself up there.’

We were two days into the recovery period. Jude was out of hospital and we were at his house, courtesy of an invite from Dr and Mrs Medina, which in itself was a small miracle. It was meant to be a party to celebrate.