Twisted Heart (35 page)

Jarrold broke free from Orlando. On all fours he crawled to the edge and peered over the cliff.

Holly, Orlando, Aaron and I stared in horror. Two bodies had hurtled from the ledge into the rising water below Spider Rock, the place where air, fire, water and earth meet. Howling, they had disappeared beneath the dark surface. The flood water claimed them, dragged them down, would never let them go.

Knowing this, Jarrold whined. His painted face was streaked with blood and sweat. He panted hard.

‘Tania, take Holly away from here!’ Regan said again.

Still I delayed until I saw Jarrold retreat from the ledge and slink between the trees. Who was the coward now? Who but a treacherous, corrupted spirit would see his allies sacrificed and still want to protect his own tainted skin? Jarrold crawled away, head hanging in defeat – wolf man creeping back to his empty lair to lick his wounds, deserting his leader without a backward glance.

Aurelie had waited. She’d watched her lieutenants fail and now it was time to act. With one sweeping gesture, she raised her dead wolf spirits and they sprang back to life. With gaping wounds and jaws trickling with blood, they crept stealthily, menacingly towards Holly and me, herding us and pushing us towards the ledge.

‘We are too many.’ Aurelie’s smile was cruel and unbending. ‘We rise from the dead.’

And as Regan fought the wolves and Orlando and Aaron huddled by the ledge with Holly and me, only centimetres from the drop into the flood water of Turner Lake, Aurelie darted towards me, snatched me up and carried me far away.

She flew me through the whirling blizzard, above the brown torrent, with wind tearing at me and my brain in turmoil, until we landed on the snow-bound island in the middle of the lake. Here she set me down.

‘Now who will help you?’ she demanded pitilessly.

I gasped for air. I had no answer.

‘Look around, Tania.’

I did as she said. We were alone on a snow-covered scrap of rock without trees or any kind of shelter. Heavy clouds clung to the mountains on either side and closed in on us, drifting as ice-cold mist against our faces. At our feet, the flood water raced by.

‘You see. There is nothing to be done.’

‘So do what you have to do,’ I challenged. If this was the end, at least it would be cold and quick.

Aurelie’s blank expression changed. Her dark eyes sparked and she let her anger show. ‘Come, Tania – you’re not usually so stupid. Remember that when we come face to face at last, we go at my pace because I am the one who holds all the power.’

I stared back, willing myself not to give in. ‘Face to face,’ I echoed with a faint smile of satisfaction. ‘All this time I’ve fought to know who will punish me and take revenge – and now I do.’

Aurelie laughed. ‘Poor Tania, we really made life difficult. We tricked you and twisted your visions, we got inside your head so that you suspected my stepfather. You wasted so much time.’

‘But now I know,’ I repeated. No more disguise or deceit – now I was alone with my dark angel.

A smile lingered – it contained mockery and suggested one last secret that she wouldn’t share. ‘You must be asking yourself – exactly what next? Look around again, tell me what you see.’

‘Mist,’ I said. It clung to my skin, was cold in my lungs.

‘And what do you hear?’

‘Water.’

‘Rising. How will it feel to drown, Tania? To be dragged beneath the surface into the dark depths, to meet Death. How many times have you imagined what it will be like?’

‘The same way it felt for Conner.’ I might be close to the end, but I wouldn’t let her forget what she’d done.

‘And you know what lies beneath the water? Of course you do.’

A town, a church, a graveyard, a thousand serpents. And a giant beast with the head of a snake and cold green eyes, carrying a corpse. He rises and sloughs off mud and weeds. He bears a victim that before long will become me.

‘Yes.’ Aurelie smiled. She enjoyed the moment. ‘The water rages. Are you ready?’

To say goodbye to Orlando, who stood with me and fought so hard. To my mom, who always believed, and my dad, whose world would forever feel empty without me. ‘No,’ I said, holding them in my mind and seeking a key that would unlock Aurelie’s dark angel power and disarm her.

Know your enemy – search for her until you find her. Name her.

The key forged itself out of the love I felt for Orlando, stronger than the terror of this moment. It gleamed and gave me the psychic strength I needed.

‘You don’t win! Your name is not Aurelie Laurent. She’s already dead. She drowned with her mother, off the coast of India.’

‘Ah!’ My dark angel didn’t deny it. In fact, she was amused, as if I’d risen in her estimation and had at last grown into a decent opponent. In other words, this was a game which had suddenly become worth playing.

‘You circle the planet,’ I went on. ‘You wait until someone dies then steal the body. This is how it worked with Zoran, and it’s the same with you!’

‘That poor girl,’ Aurelie sighed. ‘She was on deck when the boat began to sink and she could easily have taken to one of the lifeboats, but she was a loving, loyal daughter and so she went back to find her mother. She took the stranger child – the one Juliet was trying to save. But it was useless. Juliet, Aurelie, the child – all drowned.’

‘You stole her body, climbed into one of the lifeboats then appeared to Antony Amos as if you had survived.’

‘Almost,’ she agreed through the icy mist and thundering water. ‘But not quite.’ She waited for me to fit the final piece into place. ‘No?’ she queried.

‘Yes!’ I cried. All around us, water crashed against rock. I couldn’t see land. I knew I needed to understand more.

For the first time a small doubt crept across Aurelie’s expression – was I clever enough to find that still-missing piece?

‘That wasn’t all.’ I queried everything, asked myself who at New Dawn could have deceived me the most – more than Jarrold and the other Explorers, more than Ziegler or even Aurelie. The answer came to me at last in words he himself had spoken. ‘She’s my twin. We’ve always been close.’

I whispered the crucial words: ‘Jean-Luc is part of this.’

And as I said his name I looked up into the mist and saw a shape gradually materialize – another wolf man with a pelt around his shoulders, lowering himself on to the rock.

Jean-Luc stood beside his twin sister, swathed in mist but stripped of all fakery and lies. He wore the wolf-skin cloak, the lean grin and hungry eyes.

‘You died in the shipwreck along with Aurelie,’ I told him.

‘Correct,’ he replied. He didn’t care that I knew. In fact, he seemed proud and disdainful.

‘It was your mission to throw me off track,’ I challenged.

‘And I did an excellent job, you must admit. I charmed you with my talk of Paris and I took pleasure in deceiving you.’

‘You made me blame Antony.’

‘Yes – to gain time, to give Channing more opportunity to seduce Holly. It worked better than even I expected.’ Turning to Aurelie, Jean-Luc invited her to share in his victory.

‘Don’t say any more,’ Aurelie said quickly. She was on edge now as the water roared at our feet and I moved closer to discovering the whole truth.

Breathe. Breathe again. Aurelie and Jean-Luc – twins, inseparable in life and in death. Dark deceivers. I was almost there, at the heart of their lies.

But Aurelie and Jean-Luc hadn’t finished their games of deceit – they held back one more shape-shifting shock.

‘Shall we show her?’ Jean-Luc wondered, switching between playful and sinister. ‘Does she deserve to know?’

‘I think she does,’ his sister decided.

My skin crawled at the idea that they were about to reveal a final secret and I watched in terror as the evil twins turned and took each other’s hands. Devil-eyes locked, they shrouded themselves in shadow, and I had a misty, stomach-churning image of two bodies fusing into one; of a female face and a male face merging and of a new, non-human body forming – a melding, a collapsing, an ultimate shape-shift. And when the shadows dispersed, cruel Aurelie and proud Jean-Luc were gone and in their place stood a devil wolf.

They were one and the same creature, neither male nor female – pure evil. My shape-shifted dark angel crouched low, its gleaming eyes fixed me with an evil stare. Its stillness terrified me.

I had time to take in the cruel features surrounded by thick grey fur – the small ears, the large, gleaming eyes, the sawing, tearing, grinding teeth. Saliva trickled from its mouth, its ribs heaved in and out.

It didn’t move. At my feet, the torrent roared.

Nowhere to run or hide, only moments to go before the wolf leaped for my throat.

Be brave. Have the courage not to run from the wolf in the blizzard. Know your enemy.

It crouched, it raised its hackles.

Know your enemy.

The flood water pounded at the rock and sucked at my feet, sending spray high in the air. Then there was a roar in my ears, the water parted and the beast rose, black and covered in gleaming scales, its jaws wide open. Flickering its snake’s tongue, it emerged from the sucking, foaming flood.

My devil wolf rose from its low crouch. It padded forward to deliver me to its overlord. The beast climbed out of the water. It spread its wings, reached out its empty arms.

Standing in the black shadow, I faced my wolf spirit.

Know your enemy. Name him.

The wolf – cruellest of all animals, dealing in death and madness, pitiless. And the tribes had a name for this most brutal of spirits. I sought in the darkest corners of my mind and tried to remember.

‘Ahriman!’ I cried into the mist, above the roar of the rising lake.

Ahriman, witch in wolf’s clothing, child killer, creature of nightmares who brings death to the plains and mountains. The spirits of the lost tribes gather in the snow and wind. They are there to see me defeat my enemy. I am the cunning coyote, saviour of the world. I say the name and I jump down Ahriman’s throat to saw up his wicked heart. I show no mercy.

Ahriman – the name halted the lumbering overlord of the dark lake.

‘He is revealed!’ Zenaida murmurs her approval.

Ahriman – it pierced the wolf like a knife to the heart. It stole its strength, robbed it of the power to exact revenge against me – the retribution that it had planned for so long. Anger and self-loathing blazed in its amber eyes – after all it was Jean-Luc, my twinned dark angel himself, who had told me this story, handed me the flint which would rip him apart.

Now its wolf-body was spent, its wolf-spirit defeated. In agony it threw back its head. It howled into the mist.

I heard the howl and saw blood ooze from its mouth. It bubbled through its killer teeth and dripped on to the snow. It howled again then sank low on the ground. I had torn away its last disguise.

And as my dark angel sank in defeat, the beast from the lake turned away, empty-handed. He lowered his giant bulk beneath the foaming torrent and the waters closed over him.

I stood trembling on the last scrap of land watching the demon wolf bleed. It whimpered and tried to crawl away but there was nowhere it could go.

It crawled and slithered, rolled in agony, reached the water’s edge. The current licked at it, swirled around the spent body, lifted it and carried it away.

I watched it go.

Light wins. Darkness loses.

I am raised from the scrap of land. Angels of light carry me above the flood. It feels like I am surrounded by a thousand fluttering, whistling wings.

We are above the snow, above the clouds. The sun shines brighter than you could believe.

‘The water took him,’ I tell my mourning dove. ‘He vanished.’

‘Forget him,’ she says. ‘He is nothing now.’

I fly to safety. The clouds below are golden. I soar with my angels.

T
he disaster at Turner Lake destroyed the entire New Dawn Community. Not a single structure remained, and a total of fifty-three lives were lost. It made the international news.

What the journalists didn’t say and the video footage didn’t show was an army of dark angels being driven back, a valley being cleansed.

No – they reported that engineers were to be brought in to construct a new, high-tech dam, and already a permanent memorial to Antony Amos and his doomed enterprise was planned.

‘He won’t be forgotten,’ Mom vowed. She was home from the hospital, able to wiggle the fingers of her left hand, religiously performing the programme of exercises her physical therapist had given her. ‘Amos was a great man with a good heart. We have to make sure his work goes on.’

Dad smiled and told her to take things easy.

Orlando and I laughed at him for being so naive. Mom never relaxes, not even after brain surgery.

Orlando and me. He’d escaped from the wolves at Spider Rock. He and Aaron had got Holly off the mountain. Aaron had used Orlando’s truck to drive her home.

‘I never left you,’ he’d told me. ‘I swear on my life I was coming to find you.’

I knew it. There was no need for him to explain. ‘Zenaida took care of me,’ I whispered. And Maia, Conner and Regan.

Orlando and me. We were in my garden on Becker Hill, warmly dressed, sitting on a bench holding hands.

Grace and Jude had visited earlier and together we’d gone next door to see Holly. Aaron was on guard duty, letting in only one visitor at a time.

‘It’s cool; she doing good,’ he’d assured us. ‘Apart from the fact that she’s exhausted and she says it feels like she got run over by a truck.’

‘I remember that feeling,’ Grace sighed.

I was the first to go up to her room and knock.

‘Yeah, who is it?’ Holly called.

I found her propped on pillows, hair loose, i-Tunes playing. She looked thinner, paler, with dark shadows under her eyes.

‘Don’t say it – I look like crap,’ she said.

‘You look better than I thought you would.’

‘The wolves nearly got me, huh?’