Twisted Heart (32 page)

‘Holly’s in here?’ I gasped, staggering the last few steps up the hill.

Ziegler’s cabin was isolated beneath a shadowy overhang, overlooking a small frozen pond and hidden from onlookers by a cluster of tall redwoods.

‘Alone!’ he promised. ‘I was sneaking a peek through the side window – when the siren started, Ziegler took a call on his radio, locked the door and left.’

Orlando and I approached without making any noise, stepped into the porch and pushed at the door. It was locked on the inside. ‘Where’s Channing?’ I asked, every nerve stretched to breaking point.

‘I have no idea. Come and look through here.’ Orlando led me to a small window at the side of the cabin.

The blind was pulled low, but by crouching and peering through the gap I could make out a couch and a low coffee table with three glasses, a framed picture of mountains and a door into an inner room. ‘There’s no one here,’ I whispered. ‘Maybe Channing came for her, probably when he learned about the problem with the dam. There’s a big crack in the concrete: they’re scared it’ll split open.’

‘How much time do we have?’ Crouching beside me, Orlando took in the bad news and kept a cool head.

‘Nobody knows. Ziegler took a team to help fix it.’

‘Shh!’ He held his finger to his lips and pointed into the cabin.

I took another look and saw Holly emerge from the inner room. She looked totally out of it – her party clothes were crumpled, her eyes wide and staring. In fact, she hardly seemed to know where she was as she stumbled towards the coffee table. She took up one of the glasses and drank.

‘Let’s go!’ Orlando told me, running round to the front of the low, log building and this time knocking loudly on the door. Through the glass panel we saw Holly recoil at the sound then vanish again into the back room.

‘We have to break in,’ I decided, seizing a log from the wood pile on the porch and using it to smash the glass panel, then easing my hand through the jagged hole to slip the latch and turn the handle. The door swung open and Orlando and I rushed inside.

Holly reappeared carrying a knife – an antique thing with a carved horn handle and a long straight blade. There was a crazy look in her eyes as she pulled the door shut and advanced towards us.

‘What got into you? Stop right there!’ I cried.

She ignored my plea and kept on coming until there was only the coffee table between us. Suddenly Orlando lashed out with his foot and kicked the underside of the table, up-ending it and sending it crashing against her. She staggered back and dropped the knife. I dashed to pick it up.

‘Tania, give it back to me!’ Holly’s hair had fallen loose out of its ponytail, her face was pale, her voice childlike and desperate as she ran to stand between me and the inner door.

‘Who’s in there?’ I asked, feeling the hairs at the back of my neck start to prickle.

‘Nothing. No one. Ziegler and Channing said not to let anyone see!’

‘I don’t care about that, Holly. Just let me through.’ Pushing her forcefully to one side, Orlando opened the door and disappeared into the inner room. I got a glimpse of a bed and a shower cubicle before Holly regained her balance and threw herself towards me.

‘Give it back to me, Tania!’ she screeched, wrestling the knife from me and shoving me out on to the porch. ‘You shouldn’t be here. Channing will be angry with me.’

‘Who’s in that room?’ I demanded, wrenching myself free of her grasp. She was still strong and athletic, despite Channing’s mind-control. And again she wielded the knife.

‘Who do you think is in there?’ she screeched. ‘Aaron, of course!’ Quickly swinging from desperation to manic aggression, her eyes bulged as she jabbed the knife at me. ‘We let everyone think that he’s dead because he’s one of us now,’ she yelled. ‘He’s going to live here at New Dawn, leave his old life behind.’

‘Stop!’ I cried. Ignoring the knife, I pushed her off the porch then ran inside to find Orlando leading Aaron out of the bedroom where he’d been held captive.

‘I don’t know what the hell’s happening,’ Orlando mumbled.

‘They tricked us big-time,’ I gabbled. ‘Aaron didn’t drown.’

Orlando supported a figure that was Aaron but not Aaron. The broken figure stumbling towards me, hands bound and with duct tape over his mouth, had the crazy, wavy hair, the broad shoulders and sturdy figure of the guy I knew, but his face was unrecognizable – almost bloodless and vacant, like a zombie. His eyes were swollen, his head hung forward.

‘Tania, grab him!’ Orlando gasped as Aaron’s knees buckled and he slumped to the ground.

Together we lifted him, peeled off the tape and untied the rope then helped him stumble across the room. Holly was out on the porch, blocking our exit.

‘You can’t take him!’ she whined, confused and desperate. Without being aware, she loosened her grasp on the knife and let it clatter on to the wooden floor. ‘He’ll lose his chance of joining the community. He has to stay here with us!’

The sound of her voice seemed to rouse Aaron from his stupor. He raised his head and tried to speak. ‘Wrong …’ he mumbled. ‘Holly, come …’

‘We all have to leave,’ Orlando insisted as we dragged Aaron to the porch step. He stopped only to pick up the knife. ‘If the dam bursts this whole place will go under.’

The devil rises from the lake. Water breaks over his powerful shoulders. His green eyes glare and he spreads his terrible wings. The dam bursts and a huge column spouts thirty metres into the air. A wall of water thunders down the valley, taking everything in its path.

And before Orlando, Aaron and I could step down from the cabin towards the frozen pond, shadows cast by the cliff behind us started to shift, the trees surrounding us twisted and came alive. Ziegler and Antony Amos stood there before us.

Time stopped. The two men appeared by the pond. Orlando and I supported Aaron. Holly froze in fear.

Branches bent and cracked, shadows deepened. Suddenly day became night.

I was face to face, unarmed against Amos, my dark angel. In my heart I always knew that it would reach this point.

‘Oh, Tania.’ Ziegler sighed. He was the first to move, advancing towards us and bringing the darkness with him. ‘Why not keep on running?’

Terror pinned me to the spot. Ziegler’s face was wolf-narrow, his eyes were the eyes of a hunter closing in on his prey. Behind him, Amos too started to approach.

‘You won’t win,’ I told them, my voice hardly audible against the creaking, cracking pine trees. A wind tore through them, snapping branches and sending them crashing to the ground. ‘You had me fooled for a while but now I know who you are.’

Antony Amos was my angel of death. Ziegler was his lieutenant. Now that we had come this far, I would speak their names and they would be ripped apart, destroyed, sent whirling back into the shadows. I would be saved.

‘Oh, Tania,’ Ziegler sighed again in mock pity. ‘Our power to deceive is greater than you realize. I told you – you should have kept on running. But no, you played the hero, came back for your friends and now look what has happened.’

Cruel and tall, growing taller, towering over me, Ziegler’s eyes glinted in the darkness.

The wind howled, the shadows moved, a hundred wolf eyes gleamed.

Amos stepped up beside Ziegler. My heart lurched. This was the dreaded time, the return for vengeance that my first dark angel had warned me of. The roar of floodwater filled my ears.

‘Richard, what is this?’ As Amos put his hand on Ziegler’s arm, his voice was weak and quavering, almost lost in the wind. Behind him, a tree swayed, groaned and crashed to the ground.

‘Old man, it is time for you to step aside,’ Ziegler snarled as he thrust his boss back towards the pond.

Amos gave a startled cry, staggered and fell to his knees.

I let out a gasp, expecting Amos to rise again.

But what I saw was not my arch enemy after all. Amos knelt in the shadow of Ziegler the hunter. He saw Aaron and crumbled into confusion. ‘How can this be?’ he whimpered. ‘Richard, you told me the boy was dead.’

Behind Ziegler, a pack of wolves appeared at the edge of the pond. Hackles raised, tongues lolling, they waited.

I looked from Amos to Ziegler, saw a being that was half man, half wolf, with jaws that would crush, teeth that would tear into soft flesh.

‘Your time is over,’ wolf-man Ziegler snarled at Amos. ‘We have no more use for you.’

Antony Amos was on his knees, slumped forward. Yesterday, an hour, a minute ago he was the great philanthropist, the admired movie director, the idealistic founder of the community. Now he was broken, hardly able to raise his head.

‘For a while we let you continue to believe in your new beginnings, your guiding principles,’ Ziegler told him scornfully. ‘You sent us into the wilderness to turn our hearts, to bond and learn how to trust, yet all the time we used you.’

Amos let out a groan. Using all his strength, he got to his feet, made one last appeal. ‘Richard, I don’t understand. What are you talking about? Who are you really?’

Smiling, Ziegler replied. ‘We are your worst nightmare.’

‘But who, who?’

‘Nothing you can invent comes near to us. No movie creation, no figment of your warped imagination – we belong to the dark side, we have power over you all.’

‘I trusted you.’ Amos felt the pain of betrayal. ‘I believed in your redemption.’

The wolves at the edge of the pond stirred. One raised his head and howled.

‘You believed what you wanted to believe,’ Ziegler mocked. ‘That’s what everyone does. But let me tell you loud and clear, there is no ancient spirit, no creator in these mountains strong enough to protect you, no greatness, no harmony, no hearts at peace.’

‘It was all a lie.’ A sudden anger rose in the old man and he grew defiant. ‘You betrayed me, Richard, just like you betrayed all these kids in the community. But you’re not all-powerful. Whoever you are, you won’t escape.’

As Amos moved feebly on to the attack, clenching his fists ready to strike, Ziegler called his pack. The wolves padded forward, slow and deliberate. Meanwhile, their wolf-man leader put up an arm to intercept Amos’s weak punch. He thrust him back down on to the frozen ground.

This was too much for Orlando, who jumped from the porch and ran to Amos’s side. He tried to help him back on to his feet.

The wolves advanced around the edge of the pond. They padded softly, gathered behind Ziegler then waited again.

And I was reeling, locked into my own confused thoughts as I watched the scene unfold. Why did I get this wrong? I asked myself.

‘Because we’re good at what we do.’ Ziegler read my mind and gave me my answer in a voice that snapped and snarled. ‘We were in control every step of the way – it was simple to make you see it the way we wanted you to see it.’

Closing my eyes to calm myself and think, I picked up on the word ‘we’. ‘You and who else?’ I demanded, watching warily as Orlando supported Amos and the wolves moved in.

‘Hah!’ Ziegler’s laugh was more like a bark. He put up a hand to halt the wolves. ‘Tell your boyfriend to stand clear,’ he warned.

I didn’t have time to speak, and anyway I knew Orlando wouldn’t desert the weak old man. As I watched him draw the antique knife from his belt, my heart raced with fear.

Ziegler laughed again. With a quick gesture, he ordered five wolves to close in on Orlando and separate him from Amos. Orlando flashed the blade in their faces, slashing the lead wolf across the muzzle. The wolf whined and recoiled. Then Orlando took Aaron by the wrist and together they darted through the gap and disappeared into the shadows.

‘Let them go,’ Ziegler ordered angrily. He turned back to Amos. ‘You had your uses but your time is over,’ he reminded him.

This time Amos recognized the power of his enemy and didn’t struggle to his feet. As the wolf pack closed in, he made no move to save himself. He waited until the last second, until the snapping jaws were so close he must feel their hot breath on his face, which was drained of emotion. He looked up at the dark sky and raised his arms wide in that gesture he used to summon the Great Creator, only now it was the gesture of a martyr accepting his fate.

Then, instead of waiting for cruel wolves to pounce and tear him apart, Antony Amos flung himself backwards into the black water.

T
he leader of New Dawn sank out of sight while the far-off siren wailed anew. Disappointed, the wolves stared down at their own distorted reflections.

Wolf man Ziegler laughed and barked.

A second emergency siren sounded, a renewed warning.

There was a loud explosion, a sudden boom and then the distant roar of water. Daylight filtered through the tall trees, the wolves lowered their heads and whined.

The corpses of West Point graveyard float free of their coffins, they rise to the surface. This is the time, the place of death, darkness, suffering. I float with the skulls, am flung by sinuous brown water against uprooted trees, driftwood, capsized boats. A current drags me down. I am drowned. The flesh is stripped from my body. I am bone.

As the Turner dam gave way and water poured through, I turned and ran.

I fled to high ground, fearing the wolf’s breath, the swirl of icy water, the black monster rising. Ziegler appeared ahead of me, beside me, behind me, wearing his wolf pelt, fleet of foot, grinning at the chase.

There were five, six, seven of his ghostly images on the hillside, lurking under trees, leaping from rock to rock. Once he came close enough for me to smell his foul breath and see his face – more wolf than man now. He thrust his blunt muzzle into my face and I stared into what should have been his amber eyes. There was nothing – black holes, emptiness. He was a shadow, an illusion. Angrily, I dismissed him from my mind and changed direction. I carried on alone, climbing until I cleared the tree line.

Amos was not my enemy and Richard Ziegler was now my focus – a guy with a colourful history – daredevil stuntman and body double, petty criminal, convert. He was the team leader who’d been in charge of the rescue effort when Conner had drowned, who had driven Holly back to New Dawn after her accident, whose amazing good looks should have rung alarm bells in my head from the start. That’s one of the things with the love thieves that makes them so powerful and deceptive – their unnatural, mesmeric beauty.