Summer (14 page)

I felt pain all over my body, as if a heavy weight had pressed and stretched me during long hours of medieval torture. These were the symptoms of being zombie-zapped through space between Ellerton and Foxton Ridge.

We were in the barn – me and all the Beautiful Dead; Hunter, Dean, Donna, Iceman and Phoenix. Summer was sitting cross-legged in the centre of the circle and there were four hours left before she had to leave for ever.

‘So, is the right guy dead?’ Dean asked me. ‘Did JakB shoot our girl and kill himself?’

‘I guess so.’ Between Dean’s question and my answer there was a universe of doubt. I gazed at Summer’s face, trying to work out her reaction to the latest event.

‘No signed confession?’ Dean checked.

I shook my head. ‘But it had to be JakB. Who else is still in the picture?’

Hunter turned to Dean, who stood outside the circle. ‘Are we OK with this?’

‘We need more,’ Dean said slowly. ‘That’s why you
brought Darina back here.’

I spread my palms in a gesture of despair. ‘There is no more! What can I do?’

‘She’s right.’ When Summer spoke, her voice was slight as a breeze. ‘Darina can’t do any more. Let it be, Hunter.’

He broke through the circle, swept her up from the ground and carried her to the foot of the loft steps, where he set her down gently against the wall then straightened the hem of her long, dark skirt so that it covered her feet. ‘Is this the answer we’ve been looking for?’ he coaxed. ‘A lonely guy, a twisted fantasist who couldn’t bear to live once he realized what he’d done to the girl he adored?’

‘Yes – I don’t know.’ Summer trembled with the effort of speaking. Her eyes had sunk deep into their sockets, though her hair caught in the sunlight and shone like gold.

‘You’re certain that you want me to let it be?’ Hunter asked.

She reached out her hand to me and I went to join her and Hunter. ‘Thank you, Darina.’

I closed my eyes. Fichtner – not guilty. Thorne and Stone – not guilty. JakB – dead. But guilty or not guilty? Without a suicide note confessing what he’d done, the question was unanswered. I opened my eyes to look straight at Hunter. ‘We need more,’ I agreed.

And now it was Phoenix’s turn to stride across the barn, raising dust motes in the rays of afternoon sunlight. ‘Whatever it is, does it have to involve Darina?’ he challenged Hunter, taking my hand as if to lend me some of his strength.

‘It’s time travel and no way can it include Summer,’ the overlord pointed out. ‘I’ve already discussed it with Darina and she understands.’

I nodded at Phoenix. ‘It won’t work. Summer isn’t strong enough.’

‘So?’ As the tension rose, I felt Phoenix’s hold on my hand tighten. ‘Who gets to time-travel if it’s not Summer?’ he asked Hunter.

The all-powerful Beautiful Dead overlord drew himself up and looked coolly from Phoenix to me and back again. ‘Darina was there when Summer died,’ he reminded us. ‘She’s the one who gets to go back.’

13

I
t was me – Hunter chose me and me alone to save Summer’s eternal soul. She sighed where she sat, surrounded by sunlight and dancing dust, and a slight tremor passed through her body.

‘I’m ready,’ I told the overlord, feeling Phoenix’s grasp loosen as Hunter gave the silent order for him to stand aside.

‘This doesn’t include you,’ Hunter told him. ‘It’s just me and Darina.’

I saw how hard it was for my Beautiful Dead boyfriend – being totally under an overlord’s command, stripped of all power to resist. I read it in Phoenix’s eyes – they opened with a flicker of stubborn resistance, then immediately closed and his expression faded to passive obedience. I re-took his hand but, for once, he refused to look me in the eye.

‘It’s part of the deal,’ it was my turn to remind him. ‘We get to be with each other, but we’re not free.’

‘If I could choose …’ he whispered.

‘You would never let me go alone. I know.’

Phoenix raised his gaze. He looked at me steadily, pouring his love over me as if it was a molten, metallic shield that would protect me in the task ahead.

‘Thank you,’ I whispered.

‘Be safe,’ were his last words.

‘You know what you have to do?’ Hunter asked.

He’d led me out of the barn, across the yard, and halfway up the hill towards the water tower. He’d zapped my mind so that I couldn’t look back.

‘I have to identify the killer,’ I said. ‘This is what all this has been about.’

‘In spite of the risks and the pain. We go back to the mall, to the very spot, the exact moment when it happened. This time you make sure you get a good look at the gunman’s face.’

I nodded. My mouth was dry, my throat constricted. ‘I’m ready,’ I said again.

‘And, Darina …’ Hunter wasn’t looking at me – his gaze was directed up at the ridge, towards the aspen stand and the spring-green leaves fluttering against the blue sky.
‘I respect you for this.’

Life was full of surprises, but none bigger than any compliment from the stern, stone-cold overlord. For a second I thought I hadn’t heard right.

‘You’ve grown – as a person, since you first came out here to Foxton Ridge with your breaking heart and your despair. You’re working through that with courage and loyalty. Now I see strength in your actions.’

‘I’d do anything for Summer,’ was my explanation.

‘And for Phoenix.’

‘He means more than life, believe me.’

‘I see he does,’ Hunter murmured, reading my mind, my heart. ‘After Summer, Phoenix will be next.’

I tried to swallow but couldn’t. Neither could I move one step up the hill, or look anywhere except at Hunter’s strong, impassive features. ‘Were you always this way?’ I whispered.
So stern and suspicious, so unbending
.

He ignored my question. ‘You’ll help Summer through these next, final hours, then you’ll help him. This much I promise.’

‘And will you be here?’
Or Dean, or another overlord?

Hunter shrugged. ‘That’s outside my control. Time will tell. One more word, Darina – you left off your investigations into my wife’s affairs, which shows you are wiser than you were when we first began.’

That’s because I was too scared to go there!
The corners of my mouth twitched into an almost-smile. ‘You sound like my teacher in school, raising my grades from C to B.’

‘Less headstrong.’ He overrode my attempt to brush the praise aside and carried on digging deep below my surface. ‘More generous and thoughtful. You begin to see things from another point of view.’

I smiled, and this time it was genuine. ‘I’m sorry if I ever put you in danger out here. I never planned it that way.’

‘Not a problem,’ he acknowledged. ‘I first chose you as our contact with the far side because of who you are, and that includes your rebelliousness, your impatience, your passionate nature.’

‘Is that me?’ I guess it was. If anyone knew me from the inside out, it had to be the master mind-reader and leader of the Beautiful Dead.

‘So,’ Hunter said, releasing me from his powerful gaze and striding on up the hill. ‘It’s time.’

We stood under the aspens. Sunlight turned the green leaves translucent, the silver trunks stood like sentinels.

Then Hunter brought down the wings from above, made them beat with a fury I’d never felt before, raising a storm, whipping spring leaves from their branches,
making them whirl and twist about our heads.

The wings darkened the blue sky, closed in on us, and I felt myself writhe in terrible pain and fall to the ground as they pressed in on me, beating and beating until they forced entry into my head and my body, with Hunter standing unmoved beside me.

As I raised my arms to cover my head, I felt the stirring of my own angel wings at my shoulders. I crouched. There was a dark tunnel ahead. We were spinning and weightless like astronauts, dragged into the dark. Not like astronauts – we were divers deep in a black sea, arms flailing, flung about by the cold current, out of oxygen. We were rising to the surface too fast; our bodies couldn’t take the pressure. Every muscle, every sinew was shot through with pain. We could not breathe. And then there was a light. Hunter took my hand and pulled me towards it, his own wings beating, an iron look on his face that said he would not be beaten.

The black, whirling force of time resisted him –
Go back! Go back!
He fought on, kept hold of my hand, took me with him.

I wanted to scream – at the power of the black vortex, the agony of the journey, and now at the death heads, the skulls clattering against each other, cracking and splitting, falling away in fragments, while the dark holes of their eye
sockets surrounded us. Death was there in that space, driving down on us, trying to claim us.

No breath. No air in my lungs. I was suffocating and the distant light was too far away. For an instant I knew I would die.

It wasn’t so bad – after all, I wasn’t afraid. Death could have me, I wouldn’t fight it. Then maybe Phoenix and I would be together.

A hurricane of skulls and wings, Hunter dragging me on towards the light, the whole world spinning, me tumbling and beginning to spread my own angel wings, leaving Death behind.

A surprise – I fought against the dark at last. Together Hunter and I flew towards the light.

It grew bigger, brighter. It surrounded us and overcame the darkness. Bright white light, shining, cold. Hunter and I left the darkness behind and welcomed the stillness, the silence of that light. I thought I heard Phoenix’s soft voice saying, ‘
You’re safe, my love
.’ And when I looked around again, I saw a shiny glass-and-metal escalator silently ascending into a huge atrium and beneath it, an expanse of white marble floor.

There was I, sitting reading a book in Starbucks. I wore my short plaid skirt and black, cropped jacket, my hair a
little shorter than I wear it now.

Shoppers came and went across the mall floor, ascended the escalator, disappeared into the atrium.

Angel-me saw that I was restless, turning the pages of the book without really reading, looking at my watch, and angel-me remembered that I was due to meet Phoenix later that day when Summer was shot. I was killing time in Starbucks, waiting, longing to be with him.

There was hardly anyone else in the coffee shop, I noticed. A woman with a small kid – a boy maybe three years old, a man with a newspaper at the counter ordering skinny latte.

Invisible with Hunter at the base of the escalator, angel-me scanned the shops opposite Starbucks. There was a high-end shoe store, another coffee place and the music shop. Sinuous guitars gleamed in the window, automatic doors slid open and Summer walked out. ‘Stop!’ I wanted to yell. ‘Don’t move. Stay right where you are!’

She was carrying a small yellow bag containing CDs. She turned to say something to someone inside the store. Then she waved and walked towards coffee-shop-me.

Angel-me turned to Hunter. ‘Please!’ I begged. I don’t know what I meant.

He got inside my panicking head and redirected my gaze back to Summer.

She was walking towards me in Starbucks, smiling. ‘Hi, Darina!’ she called. She wore a long, dark-green skirt with a sheen like a raven’s wing. Her golden hair tumbled over her shoulders. My angel-pity for her overwhelmed me.

A guy came out of the music store after her. He was calling her name. Still smiling, she turned to speak with him.

The shots sounded like they were fake – a high cracking sound, not a boom. I heard three shots in quick succession, maybe four.

Summer stood until he fired the third bullet. At the fourth, she fell to her knees. She looked up towards the light shed by the glass roof of the tall atrium. The fifth shot, the fatal one, hit her in the heart.

I saw Summer’s look of bewilderment, imagined but could not hear her gasp as people began to scream and run. Then she was lying on the floor in a pool of her own blood.

More screams. Coffee-shop-me sat where I was, shock delaying my gut reaction, which was to run to where Summer lay. Angel-me saw the mother grab her three-year-old and the man with the newspaper beat a retreat behind the counter. Out in the mall, the crowd split and fled, the reverse of iron filings to a magnet. The gunman
in the black T-shirt and white cap still aimed his gun directly at Summer.

Why was the sun shining down through the roof? Why didn’t God or someone, something strike the guy dead where he stood?

I got up from my Starbucks chair and ran towards Summer. She was still alive, her breathing shallow, looking up at me with what I can only call wonderment.

‘You’ll be OK,’ I promised, cradling her head, watching her eyelids flutter closed. I so longed for her to be, pressing my hand against her chest to stem the flow of blood because I knew that’s what you had to do.

The look of wonder passed. She didn’t open her eyes again.

A uniformed security guard ran the wrong way down the up-escalator. The gunman saw him and re-aimed his weapon. He missed the guard but the guy lost his balance and rolled down the moving steps, giving the killer time to choose which way to run.

‘Summer, it’s going to be OK,’ I whispered, until Hunter bent over us, his wings spread wide like a shelter, and made me release her.

‘You have to follow him!’ he urged. ‘Go, Darina!’

Angel-me eased Summer on to the floor, took a second to lift her hair clear of her shoulders so as not to get it
bloody, and to smooth her skirt. Then I was up and running after the killer, who sprinted past the music store towards the exit, past dozens of cowering shoppers. I saw his back view – the slight frame, the dark clothes, and one time a glimpse of his thin face with the aviator shades when he glanced over his shoulder to check if he was being followed.

This time he was, though he didn’t know it.

I flew after him down the marble slope, out through the main exit.

He was on the street, sprinting towards the car park next to a gas station, looking over his shoulder. I was faster, gaining on him though he couldn’t see me. I could hear the soft thud of his sneakers on the sidewalk, his dry, grating breaths.

People took one look at the gun in his hand and pressed themselves to the wall, and this was when Hunter stepped in. I felt him overtake me in a rush of beating wings – they were more powerful than the killer’s fastest sprint. Soon Hunter was ahead, blocking his way. He put out one hand to stop him in his tracks.

The gunman ran smack into the invisible barrier and went reeling backwards. He lost his gun as he sprawled on the ground, then rolled and tried to get up.

Hunter stood back and left the rest to me.

I grabbed the gun from the sidewalk. I stamped hard on the killer’s wrist, pinned him down and heard him yelp. Then I fell to my knees and ripped off that white cap, took off the shades and flung them aside.

His hair was the colour of straw. There was a bruise-coloured birthmark under the left eye.

JakB had hung himself in the janitor’s storeroom. He left a note, which I found folded neatly and propped against the seat of the grass-cutter.

Not so much a note – more a picture of a heart with an arrow through and initials at either end: SM and JB. The drawing was intricate, in the style of a tattoo artist, so that the heart looked 3-D, with a velvety sheen. Underneath the drawing he had scrawled a spidery, almost illegible message, as if all his attention had gone into making the drawing and now he was out of time.
Reunited,
it read. Then something that sounded biblical
: In their deaths they were not divided.

My hand was shaking, I was ready to throw up as I backed out of the store.

The memory of JakB’s dead face, mottled and distorted, will stay with me for ever
.

‘Darina?’ Ezra’s voice was growing louder. Three figures came running – Ezra, Parker and the janitor.

From outside the storeroom the janitor saw the bottom half of JakB’s hanging corpse. He reached for his cell phone and called nine-one-one. Parker turned away, he bent forward and threw up on the grass. Ezra let out a gasp, like someone had punched him in the stomach.