Broken Dream (Dark Angel) Read online

  Unfortunately, Orlando and I hit the rush hour. We stood for ages on the platform, shuffling forward and finding that the doors slid closed on us just as we were about to step into the train. This happened twice.

  ‘Let’s go back up, take a cab,’ I suggested.

  Orlando shook his head. ‘We’ll get on the next train, no problem,’ he assured me.

  The next train rattled by without even stopping.

  ‘Or we could walk,’ I said. This is a rabbit warren. Crazy people throw themselves on to the tracks.

  ‘We’ll definitely make it on to the next one,’ he promised.

  A train appeared and shuddered to a halt. Passengers stepped out then we were carried forward in an impatient, jostling surge. We found standing room inside the coach. The doors closed and the train slid, clicked, rattled onward.

  We were far from the surface, hurtling through a tunnel. There were hundred-storey tower blocks bearing down on us, the ground above our heads was a honeycomb of sewage systems and air vents as well as these snaking subway tunnels and cavernous stations. And bear in mind that the engineering of these subway trains is almost a hundred years old. Shake, rattle, roll.

  When our train slowed down between stations, fellow passengers didn’t even look up. When it ground to a halt and the lights began to flicker, a couple of people groaned at the delay.

  Then the lights went out. We were in total darkness.

  I feel the crushing weight of the earth above. I’m trapped.

  The ground around me heaves with subterranean life. Pale, bloodless beings writhe, neither animal nor human. Their faces are white, the place where their eyes should be are dark holes. They surround me.

  I struggle to get away but I can’t move. It’s the weight of the crumbling black earth. My ribs are crushed.

  What are these silent creatures with empty eye sockets and open, wailing mouths? How long have they been in the earth?

  And I recall the three words that accompany my dark angel wherever he goes – death, darkness, suffering.

  Machines cut through rock, men without safety helmets hack out a tunnel, lay down mile after mile of steel rails, die when the roof collapses. They look up in terror as the rock shifts and splits. Boulders thud down from above. They smash skulls and crush ribs. All is darkness.

  I’m pressed down, there is soil in my eyes, my mouth, my nose. I am buried alive.

  The train lost power for thirty seconds – no more. When the lights came back on, Orlando took one look at me and knew he had to get me off the train. ‘Next station,’ he promised. ‘Can you hang on until then?’

  I could only nod and close my eyes. I heard the click of the wheels on the tracks, felt the coach jerk forward. My skin ran with cold sweat.

  I have no recollection of how Orlando got me off the train and out of the station, up in the elevator on to the street.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘Look, Tania, everything is OK.’

  The streets were lit up for Christmas, frost sparkled on the sidewalks. There was a happy Friday night buzz in the air.

  But everything wasn’t OK.

  ‘He’s back,’ I told Orlando.

  He walked me across the street, out of my nightmare.

  ‘He’s inside my head.’

  There was no longer any doubt in my mind – my dark angel had followed me to New York.

  4

  Who needs words when body language tells you all you need to know?

  The moment I made my dark angel confession, Orlando held back from physical contact, walking towards our hotel with his head down, hands in pockets.

  Meanwhile, I was under a dark shadow, fearing the swoop of eagle wings, the jaws of the wolf man.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I sighed when we reached the safety of our room. ‘This is the last thing I wanted to happen.’

  To be pursued across the country because I was born psychic, to feel that my battle with dark angels would never end.

  Orlando shook his head and went to the window to stare down at the parked cars, the heaps of shovelled snow. ‘I don’t know, Tania. I’m just not sure.’

  ‘What don’t you know?’ I kept my distance, had a prickling sensation at the back of my neck that the axe might be about to fall on our love affair. If you think I’m overreacting, just bear in mind my extra-sensory gift.

  ‘If I can go through this again.’

  Think about it – one, two and now three attacks. The first time my dark angel made me his target was through Zoran Brancusi at Black Eagle Lodge. That’s what the twisted, tormented spirit does – he finds a human form and enters it, builds his power base, prepares to ensnare innocent souls and drag them from their lovers and their families. He’s flanked by fallen angels, also in disguise. He shape-shifts and creates a world of monstrous creatures; he’s into total mind control.

  And with Zoran it was fire. Flames leaping into the night sky, smoke billowing across mountains, and only me with my psychic powers to warn and try to rescue his victims – first my best friend, Grace, then Holly.

  Yes – second time round it was Holly, and not fire but water. On that occasion Aurelie and Jean-Luc Laurent were dark angels in disguise, a twin threat. Their nightmare visions emerged from Lake Turner. Beneath the surface lay a sunken town. Corpses rose from the graveyard to entice the living into the icy depths.

  I saw all this and suffered, fought back against the wolf-man vision until I discovered the double mask my dark angel was hiding behind. Through it all Orlando had been there at my side. He’d believed me, put himself through incredible dangers to protect me.

  Fire and water. And now this third time I was convinced that my dark angel belonged to the earth. That’s where he was hiding – crawling, writhing, emerging from the subways of New York City. And this totally sucked because I was a long way from home and he existed in total, suffocating darkness, so far without any human shape.

  But worse than anything, here in this hotel room on Hubert Street my one and only love, my soul mate Orlando was warning me he couldn’t take it; he’d had enough.

  I sat on the bed and put my hands to my head.

  ‘Maybe you’re imagining it.’ Still with his back turned, he denied the hell that I’d described. ‘This could be some kind of panic attack.’

  ‘So we’re back to the old routine – you’re saying I’m ill and I should see a doctor?’ My voice was hollow. I felt my strength drain away.

  ‘I tell you I don’t know, Tania. I mean, you’ve been through a lot lately. Maybe it’s messed with your mind more than we think. You could ask for help.’

  I groaned because we’d been here before: anti-anxiety pills and sessions with a shrink re-entered the frame. This is what Orlando was saying, though I know he didn’t mean for it to wound me like it did. ‘You don’t believe me,’ I said flatly.

  He let out a long sigh. ‘The truth is, I don’t want to believe you,’ he acknowledged. ‘I want us to be free.’

  Free of destroyers who gather at the shoulder of my dark angel, all driven by malice, all tormented since they fell from heaven. They are part of the cosmic battle between good and evil – an army of fallen angels.

  ‘How can we be free?’ I asked.

  The axe hovered over us all evening but didn’t fall. After we’d undressed and showered then got into bed Orlando relented and didn’t give up on me after all.

  ‘I will be here,’ he promised, digging deep to find the strength he needed. ‘It was my head telling me to back off and get you checked out by a doctor, but you know how I feel in my heart.’

  ‘I wouldn’t blame you,’ I tried to tell him.

  He put his arms around me and drew me to him, skin against skin, smooth and warm. ‘I would. I’d blame myself. Tania, it’s only with you that I feel … like a whole person. Without you I can’t make sense of this crazy world. You know how much I love you.’

  I smiled through tears. ‘You really do?’

  ‘I’m here. I’ll stay. And promise me no
t to fall apart when I tell you this – I’m hoping, really, really hoping that this time you have got it wrong.’

  I breathed out then laughed and caught my lip between my teeth. ‘Wouldn’t that be cool?’

  He nodded and kissed me softly on my lips.

  ‘I’ll call home, ask my mom to make me an appointment with the doctor.’ It would make Orlando feel better and anyway what harm could it do?

  ‘You’re not just saying that for my sake?’ More kisses as we talked, and a falling backwards on to the pillows.

  ‘Yep,’ I confessed with a sad smile. I sank back on the bed and welcomed the weight of his body on top of me.

  We made love, slept and woke early. Then, still snuggled under the warm quilt, we backtracked, talking through our action-filled stay in New York, discussing Jack Kane and wondering why Natalia didn’t file for divorce.

  ‘It’s not the money,’ Orlando said. ‘I read a feature in a magazine: she’s still up there with the top earners. Every time she makes a movie she banks millions of dollars.’

  ‘Maybe it’s better for the kids if she stays.’ I came up with a major reason couples stay together.

  ‘It didn’t look that way. How is it better to see your dad cussing and falling down drunk every day?’

  ‘So maybe Charlie is part of the deal. If Natalia splits from Jack, she loses Charlie too? And you saw how much she depends on him.’

  ‘Yeah, that complicates things.’ Orlando sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed.

  ‘We don’t know from the outside how it really is on the inside.’ I happily fell into the safety of discussing other people’s problems and avoiding our own.

  Orlando agreed then switched to the practical. ‘I spoke to the insurance company about your stolen phone.’

  ‘You did? Thanks.’

  ‘The bad news is, they said we need a crime number.’

  ‘But I didn’t report it to the cops.’

  ‘We still could.’

  I shook my head. ‘I missed my chance. They’ll ask why I left it so long.’

  ‘“Because you don’t have a snowball in hell’s chance of finding the guy,”’ Orlando quoted what he would have told the cops. ‘They’ll say, “We have killers and terrorists to pursue. Why are you wasting valuable NYPD time?”’

  ‘So the insurers won’t pay out. Every day you learn something useful.’ I shrugged then wriggled across the bed, put my arms around his waist and tried my hand at a none too subtle piece of emotional blackmail. ‘So last night I said yes to popping a few pills, right?’

  ‘Ye-es?’ he mumbled. Turning towards me, he twisted a lock of my hair round his finger and for once he didn’t see where I was going.

  ‘That means I’m due payback – I can ask you to do something for me.’

  ‘Anything!’ he sighed recklessly. ‘What do you want me to do – run through fire? It wouldn’t be the first time.’

  ‘Hush.’ I reached up and put my hand to his lips. ‘I’m serious. What I’m asking, it’s not huge.’

  ‘Ask away.’

  I hesitated, pulled back and made him look me in the eyes. ‘I’m asking you: don’t shut me out. Let’s at least keep on talking about the dark angel thing – the possibility that he’s back in my life.’

  Orlando closed his eyes then slowly opened them and held my gaze.

  ‘Say yes,’ I pleaded. ‘Right now I’m so scared, I need you to be with me every step of the way.’

  He nodded slowly. ‘Go get a shower,’ he sighed. ‘We’ll talk later.’

  I pushed too hard – I know it.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ I told Orlando over breakfast.

  ‘Uh uh.’

  In the dull early morning light of a New York winter, Orlando and I were in a small kitchenette across the hallway from Mrs Waterman’s reception desk where we could help ourselves to fresh bread rolls and coffee. ‘I’ve been looking back over the last couple of days and I can definitely identify when I got my first contact.’

  ‘It’s seven thirty a.m.,’ he mumbled. ‘And already you want to talk?’

  ‘Yeah, and you promised.’ After feeling scared and majorly sorry for myself, I’d got my head together and started to run through all the dark angel possibilities. ‘So I’m obsessed,’ I admitted. ‘Fixated even. But you did say we could discuss this.’

  ‘I guess this is later,’ Orlando agreed reluctantly, perching on the stool by the breakfast counter, looking about as hot as it’s possible for any guy to look in a white T and blue jeans, with Timberland boots and a black fleece jacket slung over one shoulder as he sipped his coffee. ‘Shoot.’

  ‘I was by the carousel, and it came to me as clear as any of the other times. Something scary was in the air and I picked it up in a flash. I got the cold sensation that makes my flesh creep. My head started to spin. That’s when the carved horses came to life.’

  Orlando thought it through with me then tried out a theory based on the evidence I was giving him. ‘So it’s the mugger – he’s the dark angel? We’re not looking for the leader of a cult or anyone with power and charisma. This time, he’s totally anonymous.’

  ‘It’s possible.’ I was so deep in thought that I didn’t even see our landlady walk down the hall with today’s New York Times.

  ‘They closed JFK and LaGuardia,’ she commented as she passed by. ‘Fresh snow on the runways. All flights cancelled.’

  Practically ignoring Mrs Waterman, I hurried on with my train of thought. ‘Then there was something else I didn’t tell you about. It happened during yesterday’s workshop.’

  ‘Really?’ Orlando’s one-word question came across as a rebuke.

  ‘I didn’t mention it because when we met up at lunchtime Macy was with us,’ I reminded him. ‘I wasn’t going to say in front of her, “By the way, evil shadows slipped off the movie screen and crept right into the lecture room where I was sitting. They surrounded me and make me shake with terror.”’

  ‘Ssh!’ he warned as the landlady crossed the hall again.

  ‘So now I’m telling you,’ I hissed. ‘The film projector broke down and the shadows came off the screen. It was so scary I almost passed out. Macy asked me if I was OK.’

  ‘So this has nothing to do with the guy who attacked you in the park?’ Orlando checked. ‘There’s no connection.’

  ‘No, totally separate. And then there was a third time when we were walking across the film set, right by the reservoir, just before we met Natalia. I got a vision of the ice cracking and these horrible creatures rising out of it…’

  ‘Are you done?’ Orlando cut right across me. With a meaningful glance towards the landlady he finished with his coffee cup, put on his jacket and led the way out on to the street.

  ‘Actually, I’m not,’ I protested. ‘There was also the time on the subway when I couldn’t breathe …’

  ‘I hear you.’ Stopping at the bottom of the brownstone steps, he took my hand and spoke more gently. ‘And so, as it happens, did Mrs W.’

  I shook my head. ‘How could she hear me? I was whispering.’

  ‘Maybe she can lip-read.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘No. Yes. I don’t know. Anyway, she was tuned into our conversation,’ he insisted. ‘And she was giving us a weird look when we left – like we were aliens or something. Didn’t you see?’

  ‘So now you’re saying we’ll be thrown out of our room, we’ll have to spend our last nights in New York on the street and it’s all my fault.’ I marched angrily down Hubert Street, slipping and sliding as I went.

  Orlando soon caught up with me. ‘Jeez, Tania, what’s eating you today?’

  ‘You know what’s eating me.’ I was seeing dark angels in every shadow, round every corner. I shook when we entered the subway; they were on the train with me, lurking in the tunnels – creatures you only see in nightmares and which wake you up with a scream.

  ‘So?’ Macy stood at the classroom door and greeted me impatiently.


  ‘So this is the second day of our course.’ I grinned, deliberately sidestepping the obvious question and trying to lighten my mood after the early morning, intense conversation with Orlando. ‘Let’s hope we learn something interesting.’

  ‘So, in the flesh…?’

  ‘What? Who are we talking about? Oh, you mean Jack Kane!’

  She blocked the doorway, desperate for details. ‘Come on, Tania, quit fooling. After you and Orlando got through Security, how close did you get to the main man?’

  ‘This close.’ I teased her by showing a distance of about four centimetres between my thumb and forefinger.

  ‘Jeez! Really? That close!’

  ‘Jack sat on the same sofa, right next to me.’ I couldn’t help laughing at Macy’s expression – a mixture of amazement, envy and disbelief.

  ‘Where were you? How come? What did he say to you?’

  ‘We were in his trailer with Natalia. We met his kids. Then we spoke with the screen god himself.’

  ‘Oh my God, Tania! His trailer! Are you for real?’

  ‘I know – totally cool, huh?’ At first I’d planned to play along with Macy’s hero worship of Jack Kane only for a short time, before I gave her the real picture, alcoholic warts and all. But as we got deeper into the conversation, I found I was in no hurry to smash her precious dream into sharp, nasty little pieces. It was her face that stopped me – so shiny, bright and full of little-kid wonder beneath the kohl and mascara – that I knew it would be too cruel.

  ‘So what did Jack say?’

  ‘He asked our names. Yeah, and then he offered me a role in the movie.’ I threw this in casually, knowing her jaw would drop still further.