Dark Angel (17 page)

‘He blames me?’ I thought back and came up with a different conclusion. ‘Actually, all I said to Zoran was that you and Aaron weren’t all loved up like you usually were. In fact, I told him you were taking a break, which is what he passed on to Cristal, because I actually heard him say it. He said Aaron wasn’t a good fit.’

‘How does that figure?’ Holly grabbed back a CD and tapped it impatiently against her knee. ‘Cristal dumps him
because
he doesn’t currently have a girlfriend?’

‘Whereas Grace does have a serious boyfriend in Jude, though you wouldn’t know it to see her with Ezra now.’

‘And you too – you’re a member of the loved-up division. Does Daniel know you’re still hitched up with Orlando?’

‘He does; I told him right at the start.’ My answer was too quick, too definite. ‘Holly, you have to promise me something. Don’t tell Orlando about Daniel – not right now, because we tried to talk it through before and Orlando didn’t understand. We had a big fight, OK?’

‘I promise,’ she said grudgingly. ‘It’s not the way I would handle it, but hey, what do I know? But anyway, let’s look more closely at this! Cristal dumps Aaron because he’s
not
in love. Ezra grabs Grace because she is. Likewise Daniel makes a big play for you.’

‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s coincidence. Can you establish a pattern out of a sample of three?’ I told Holly it wasn’t good science.

‘But say I’m right – just for once.’ Now it was my knee that she leaned forward to tap with the edge of the case. She gave a short, self-mocking laugh then grew serious again. ‘I do have a brain inside this thick skull, so hear me out. Zoran’s guys – the original members of the cult – they only go after people who are currently in a relationship, like it’s a kind of bet they make, a game they’re playing. That’s the reason Cristal dropped Aaron the second she heard he was single.’

I thought for a while and accepted Holly might be on to something. ‘But why?’ I asked. ‘It doesn’t make any sense – unless Zoran gives the order for his followers to wreck as many lives as possible out of sheer boredom.’

‘Spite,’ Holly added.

‘For his weird idea of fun.’

‘Because he can.’

Or because he’s evil and the monsters, the shape-shifting, the nightmares are true.
The green-eyed serpent opens its mouth and hisses. It coils around my body and presses against my heart
.

‘Tania, are you OK?’ Holly asked, laying her hand over mine.

‘One thing’s for sure,’ I whispered. ‘Whatever is happening here, you should let Aaron know he had one lucky escape.’

Second on my list of visitors that morning was Jude. He brought me flowers.

‘These are beautiful,’ I told him, finding a vase and setting them on the kitchen table. ‘Who told you I was sick?’

‘Orlando. We cycled out along Prayer River before breakfast. He told me about last night.’

‘Well, I’m good now – especially when a hot guy brings me roses.’ I could say stuff like this to Jude and he wouldn’t ever take it the wrong way. He just is the sweetest guy. ‘Seriously, you don’t have to worry about me.’

‘Tell that to Orlando.’ Accepting coffee, Jude sat at the table. His hands were shaking, I noticed, and his face looked drawn. ‘You freaked him out, Tania.’

‘I know. But he was amazing – my knight in shining armour.’

‘I told him I wish I’d been there with him.’

‘To rescue Grace?’ I asked quietly. ‘Yeah, right now she needs her own Sir Galahad.’

It was turning into a morning of visitors and pauses. A lot of thinking was going on. ‘This situation is what my parents always warned me about. They said right from the start to watch out for Grace – she’s the type to break your heart.’

I sprang to my friend’s defence. ‘No way! Grace isn’t like that. She’s sweet natured and generous …’ I was halfway through this sentence before I realized the hundred wrong things about what I was saying and particularly my use of the present tense. I stopped short.

‘Well, it looks like they were right,’ Jude murmured. ‘They said girls like her – girls who are too picture-perfect – they have too many temptations thrown in their path. You can’t trust them.’

‘I still want to say that’s not true. I mean, how can you generalize?’

‘Maybe they picked up on something I didn’t. My parents are pretty smart people in their own way. Besides, they’re older. They lived through a lot when they were young.’

‘No, don’t believe it. Grace and you – you were perfect together.’

Jude shrugged and thought for a long time. ‘I
thought
we were.’

‘She does love you, Jude.’

‘Make that past tense.’

‘OK, so she’s going through something right now that we can’t explain, that makes her cut off from the rest of us. But it doesn’t mean we should say, go ahead, Grace – do what you like up there on Black Rock. We shouldn’t abandon her.’

This thought didn’t get through because Jude was fixated on his next question, the one that had wormed its way into his heart and was eating him alive. ‘Did she come right out and tell you she wanted to stay?’

I nodded. ‘But it wasn’t her voice, it was someone else. Do you know what I’m saying?’

Jude was staring at me, his brown eyes begging for scraps of comfort even while his mouth ran away with him. ‘This guy – Ezra. What does Grace see in him?’

‘I’m not going to tell you he’s ugly,’ I said softly, reaching out to put my hand on Jude’s arm. ‘He’s three, maybe four years older than us, he works for Zoran – I guess that’s part of it; the glamour, the guys he mixes with. But it’s more than that.’ Now it was my turn to create the silence, wondering how much more I could tell Jude without freaking him out. Should I even begin to describe the ceremony in the chapel?

‘How – more than that?’

‘I don’t know exactly. Something happens when you’re there at Black Eagle Lodge; you get sucked in.’

‘What is it, some kind of sect? Are we talking weird religion, brainwashing techniques?’ Though I’d run through the possibility with Holly, this idea was new to Jude and he grabbed it with both hands. ‘Zoran is leading a cult. They all have to follow him and do exactly what he tells them. Jeez, Tania, is that what you’re saying?’

‘Anyway, that or drugs is what Holly suspects. Either way, it’s a type of mind control.’

‘God, why didn’t I think of that? It’s obvious Grace would never have acted the way she is!’ Jude was striding around the room, ready to explode into action. ‘I hate myself. I’ve been totally stupid not to see it before now.’

‘Wait,’ I pleaded. I could see him shaking and growing short of breath and recognized the signs of a major asthma attack. ‘We need to stay calm, think this through—’

‘She needs me, Tanya, and I couldn’t see it. We’re running out of time. I have to go up Black Rock and find her, get her out of there!’ Each word came short and jerked out through harsh, shallow breaths as he dug in his jeans pocket for his inhaler. Fumbling, he let it drop to the floor.

Quickly I stooped and picked it up, put it in his palm and wrapped his fingers around it, guided it to his mouth, helped him hold it there. ‘Breathe in,’ I told him.

He swayed then sucked hard. When he tried to speak, I shook my head and ordered him to breathe again.

I heard Dad come in from the garden and straight away he assessed the situation. ‘Shall I call 911?’ he asked.

Jude signalled no, he was good. A couple more breaths through the inhaler and he would be able to speak again.

But by this time Mom had opened her study door. ‘I’ll tell your folks,’ she decided. And she made the call before Jude could stop her. ‘Your dad is on his way,’ she reported back.

I led Jude to the nearest chair and sat him down. ‘Don’t do anything about Black Eagle Lodge,’ I warned as we all fussed and fretted. ‘I know how you’re feeling, but don’t act right away.’

‘What have you two been discussing?’ Mom asked in wary, tiger-mom mode. ‘Tanya, I asked you to stay home today. I especially don’t want you to go back up the mountain, you hear me?’

I turned to her, palms up, with a look of injured innocence. ‘Which is why I’m telling Jude, stay away! If he wants to make contact with Grace, he should try texting, or send an email, set up a meeting …’

‘How is it, Jude?’ Dad asked. ‘You can breathe?’

He nodded. He looked like he’d collided with a truck, but he was insisting he was good.

‘Here’s your dad,’ Mom said, going out on to the porch to meet Dr Medina. Doctor, as in astral physics professor, not medical. Jude’s dad is an expert in black holes. His wife works in federal taxation, which I guess goes some way to explaining their suspicion of their son’s ‘superficial’ relationship with glamorous Grace, which also, I guess, betrays my own prejudices about seriously brainy geeks.

My dad, on the other hand, has a brain but is not a geek. He came to this country as an outsider and he made good. He learned the language, loved the free life and when he found jobs in construction he got made supervisor in every company he joined. Now he works for one of the biggest in America.

Every day he gets out of bed and wants to do something new, to learn something from books, from the landscape, from people.

‘It says here that Zoran Brancusi owns biggest private collection of religious art in America,’ he told me after lunch. He was logged on to Zoran’s website, looking for anything that would help us understand what was happening to Grace on Black Rock. ‘From Mexico, from Europe, from India.’

‘I believe it. He showed me his Aztec stuff. It was stunning.’

Dad read on. ‘Look here – last month interview in
Time
magazine. With pictures.’

I looked at the screen. The photographer, who must have worked his way around the no-pictures clauses in Zoran’s insurance policies, had taken interior shots of the house, with captions that listed gold-inlaid Greek icons and Renaissance pietas among the treasures on show at his ‘isolated mountain hideaway’. The owner was there too, standing next to a fifteenth century painting of the Archangel Gabriel. Our art collector was dark and stern beside the angel with the gold halo and he was staring straight at camera. ‘And this one – this is
Angel of Death
,’ Dad said, stabbing a finger at the final image, a nightmarish painting of a black-winged figure crouching astride the jaws of a burning hell.

‘Creepy,’ I shuddered. ‘What is he thinking when he buys these things?’

‘Says here, he studies myths, says everybody in history needs to believe in higher power. Angels are messengers from God.’

‘I reckon it went to his head,’ I muttered. ‘What’s it called when you identify with creatures in mythology and you start believing you’re actually part of it?’

‘Does it have name?’ Dad asked.

‘Delusional psychosis,’ Mom suggested, appearing suddenly with a jug of freshly squeezed, iced orange juice.

‘Don’t take Tania anywhere near the crazy guy on the mountain.’ Mom had laid down the law to Orlando when he came to visit.

I’d called him and said I wanted to drive, to listen to music, eat ice cream – be normal.

‘How about I take her to the hot springs?’ he’d laughed.

‘Perfect,’ she’d agreed.

If there’s one thing about Bitterroot that I totally love it’s the natural springs that rise from deep in the earth’s crust and bubble to the surface in clear, swirling jets in the valley between town and Turner Lake. They’re incredibly pure and warm, and I ask myself, how can anything so pleasant actually be healthy too?

You sit in a specially constructed pool up to your neck in bubbles. You chat with your friends, you gaze up at the Bitterroot range. It sure beats mountain biking, which is the other health reason for tourists to visit.

‘You and Jude went cycling by Prayer River?’ I asked Orlando as we relaxed in the late afternoon sun.

He nodded. ‘But he couldn’t do the hills. We had to turn around.’

‘He didn’t tell me that.’ And I described Jude’s morning visit, including the roses, and Orlando faked jealousy for about ten seconds, while I thought guiltily and silently about Daniel’s kiss and all the reasons Orlando might have to be truly hurt.

‘Jude’s a fast worker,’ he joked. ‘How many days is it since Grace dumped him? Now he makes a move on you!’

‘No, really – you know Jude’s like a brother to me.’ I moved on quickly to the asthma attack. ‘He wants to go up the mountain and rescue Grace,’ I explained.

‘Did you warn him about the two guard dogs and the security guys?’

A high white cloud drifted across the sun, casting the lightest of shadows across the surface of the pool. ‘Actually, I didn’t tell him much. But now he’s convinced Grace has been brainwashed and he wants to get her out of there.’

‘I’ve been thinking,’ Orlando began in a strained voice. ‘I reckon we should forget the cult and the brainwashing theory. Maybe there’s a different angle.’

‘Do we have to talk about this?’ I sighed. The sun was back out and beautifully warm on my face. Jets of hot water soothed and caressed my whole body. And I’d had enough theories and angles to consider for one day, thank you.

Orlando kissed my cheek.

‘I get it. You want me to “hear you out”?’ I lowered my voice two octaves to imitate his.

He grinned and kissed me again.

‘OK, I’m listening.’ I leaned my head back against the arm he had wrapped around my shoulder.

‘All this flashing light and loud music stuff you describe at Zoran’s parties, and the fancy dress heavenly bodies, et cetera – it fits in with what he’s always been good at, which is performance.’

‘He’s a rock star, yeah.’ I was listening. In the sunlight, far away from Black Eagle Lodge, I was even willing to believe.

‘So, once a performer, always a performer. OK, so he’s retired from the music business – he says.’

‘Yeah, Mom doesn’t believe him either. She reckons he’s planning a comeback.’

‘And he still has the money to stage a big event, even if it’s for private guests instead of thousands of fans in a giant stadium.’ Orlando was in full flow, totally into his own theory. ‘He plans the whole thing – the costumes, the light show, even the hydraulic lifts to raise him up. You know how these stars are into illusions – you just have to download their videos.’