On a Dark Wing

by Jordan Dane

  Tanner explained that with his attack code, he got the FarkYourself administrators’ user names and passwords, plus he gained access to databases used to maintain the site. He permanently deleted our nasty images, even from the backup files.

  For anyone who had linked to the site or embedded code for our doctored photos—to spread the word—that script no longer worked. It was like cutting off the head of the snake, Tanner said. From the sounds of it, he could have been more malicious—to Britney, to the others who joined in and to the website that hosted the abuse—but that would have made him no better than they were.

  Even a hacker (and car thief) had scruples…apparently.

  “Before I stole my mom’s car, I noticed the site posted a message,” he said. “They warned against bullying and said there’ll be new rules posted online soon. They added an 800 hotline for complaints as well as an email contact. Guess they got the message. Even if they found me and wanted to press charges, I don’t think they’d want the bad PR.”

  “I can’t believe you did that.”

  “When I told you about those pictures, I never forgot the look on your face. I couldn’t let anyone hurt you like that, Abbey.”

  I’d left town with my tail between my legs, but Tanner figured out a way to make a difference. He’d not only fixed the problem for the two of us, but he also got a very popular website to see the error of its ways.

  “If Britney and her loser friends try anything like this again, I have access to their computers,” he added. “I embedded code on their hard drives. I’ll have their user names and passwords whenever they update them, too. Anything they do online, I can shadow them.”

  “Good looks and brains, too.” I grinned. “Here I thought you were just another pretty face.”

  “I can live with pretty.”

  At that moment, all I wanted to do was kiss Tanner, but the creak of the cabin door stopped me.

  “Hey, you two. Better get moving. Tanner’s parents will be here soon.”

  My father’s timing had never been great. When he barged through the door, both of us jumped, but Tanner recovered first.

  “Thanks for the hospitality, Mr. Chandler. Your cabin has nice…ambience. I’ll be sure to recommend it to Triple A.”

  “Next time, make sure you’re legal, son.”

  “I better write that down, sir. By the time my parents let me drive again, I could forget that sage advice.”

  Tanner didn’t crack a smile, but Dad did. After my father disappeared into his bedroom, I mouthed the words thank you to Tanner and he grinned back. My alone time with him had come to an end, but I’d have a whole new reason to look forward to going back to Palmer…and home.

  Minutes later

  With Dad inside the cabin with us, Tanner didn’t say much. He packed his stuff and folded the linens on the couch so our living room didn’t look like a motel. After he brushed his teeth, he looked ready to go. We exchanged short glances when Dad wasn’t looking, but I noticed Tanner kept his eyes on the window. He felt the pressure. His parents would arrive any minute.

  After I heard gravel crunching on the drive, I peeked through an opening in the drapes and glanced back at Tanner.

  “Guess my parents are here,” he said.

  “Yep, I’ll go talk to them,” Dad offered. “Get your stuff, but…no rush.” My father shot me a look before he headed out the door.

  Before Tanner got too miserable about the ride home, I stood in front of him and cupped his face. When I felt his hands on my hips, I leaned down to kiss him. His lips tasted like minty toothpaste. Tanner pulled me to him and buried his face against me in a monster hug with his strong hands on my back. After I ran my fingers through his tousled hair, I held him in my arms, completely happy in our silence. The intimacy of holding him warmed me all over.

  “There’s something I’ve never told you,” he said. His muffled voice made my stomach tickle. “Never told anyone, actually.”

  After all we’d talked about, I couldn’t imagine what that could be, but I waited for him to come out with it.

  “I’ve never been on a date,” he said.

  Holding him in my arms, I never let him see my smile.

  “You consider that a defect, Lange?”

  “I did, until I realized one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I want my first date to be with you, Abbey.”

  I don’t know what I expected from him, but that wasn’t it. I looked down, not sure what to say. I wasn’t anyone’s Cracker Jack prize, but Tanner made me feel…special.

  “Yeah, I’d like that.” I grinned and ran my fingers through his hair again, messing up what I just fixed. Considering my best friend would be my first date, too, I had to admit it.

  Tanner Lange would be worth waiting for.

  An hour later

  After Tanner and his parents left, I was alone with Dad and the silence in our cabin weighed heavy on me. Something unsettled had grabbed hold of me. Surrounded by the countless photos of my mom hanging on the walls, she smiled back and her eyes followed me through the room. With every image frozen in time when she was alive, those pictures stirred memories that I thought I’d forgotten.

  Good memories.

  I finally understood why Dad had been adding to his collection. Every photo kept him connected to her…to both of us. It’d been his way of saying, “I’ll never forget you.” Those photos helped me grasp my mother’s final gift to me, too. She’d given me life more than once and she had found a way, through Death, to remind me that I’d been loved. What I did with her love and my second chance would be up to me.

  With the sun going down on our last night at the cabin, shadows stretched across my bedroom as I heard my father packing in his room. Only days ago, I had argued with him about being forced to remember the death of my mother in a meaningless ritual by the lake. Now, with everything that had happened, her birthday had come and gone yesterday. Nate’s ordeal had been a complete distraction. That couldn’t be helped, but with us leaving first thing in the morning, I couldn’t drive away without doing something that would be meaningful for both my father and me.

  I knew I’d never need a reason to honor my mother’s memory, but after I figured out what I wanted, I knew just where to do it. I sent Dad a personal invitation, one that I’d made for him myself. I cut a tree branch, sharpened one end with a knife, and speared a marshmallow with it. I wrote my father a note meant just for him…and it was about time I’d sent him that long-overdue invite.

  Let’s celebrate Mom’s birthday at dusk. You know where.

  After I grabbed my jacket, I slipped out of the house with the stuff I would need for the party of two that I’d have with my dad. I had a smile on my face as I headed up the mountain trail behind our cabin. It was time I started my own memories with my father. The upper-ridge clearing with the fire pit—where he had proposed to my mom—was the perfect place to do that. I was determined not to let Death taint how I felt about the special spot that I’d shared with my mother, and now would share with my dad, but I couldn’t deny that I thought of my dark angel, too.

  In truth—a scary truth—I missed Death.

  I missed how he made me feel. He was an ancient soul, an immortal, who had risked everything to be with me. He may have come to me for his own reasons, but he also helped me deal with the death of my mother in a way that only he could. The time we shared on my mountain had an edge of danger to it. I had sneaked out at night and hidden my trips to the ridge from my father. I don’t know why I’d done it, but something had stirred in me and I knew that I’d do it again.

  I’d spent time with Death—and liked it. No matter how much I loved Tanner, the Angel of Death would always be the first boy I ever kissed.

  Pushing through the switchbacks, I
raced up the mountain one last time, knowing my father wouldn’t be far behind. I shouldn’t have been in a hurry. Roasting marshmallows with my dad shouldn’t have made me anxious, but after I felt the burn in my thighs and realized I was panting hard, it dawned on me why I felt nervous and why I’d wanted a head start.

  I hoped Death would be waiting.

  Chapter 20

  When I got to the clearing, breathless, I stopped near the stone fire pit and stared down at the brittle charred wood nestled in heaps of gray velvety powder. Gusts of the evening breeze swept over the stones of that old landmark and lifted the lifeless ashes into the air with ease. Mounded at the base of the evergreen trees, the lingering snow was covered with a fine layer of soot from past fires. As I stood in that spot, holding a knapsack filled with the fixings for s’mores, I fought to keep memories of my mother in my head, but I couldn’t do it.

  Death had taken center stage and my dark angel was impossible to forget.

  I hugged the rucksack to my chest and let my gaze jump to everything that moved as my breath fogged the air. I looked for Death in the deepening shadows. Every chilly gust of mountain air that swept through the evergreens and each call of a bird grabbed my attention as I searched for him in everything I saw. When I didn’t find him, I shut my eyes tight and listened to each sound that carried on the wind until the crushing weight of my expectation closed in with the darkness.

  What did I expect? What did I need from him?

  I set down my knapsack and occupied my unsettled mind by gathering wood for the fire. Like Dad had taught me, I gathered dry cedar bark that I shredded off trees and I looked for dead branches, dried brush and old pinecones to nest in the fire pit as kindling under the larger pieces of firewood. After I cupped my hand to block the wind, I started the fire with a lighter I’d brought from the cabin. Smoke wafted into my face and stung my eyes as I bent down to breathe life into the growing flames.

  But every crunch of snow under my boots and each crack of a twig that echoed through the trees raced through my mind, too. Those sounds stirred memories of my dark angel from the last time I’d shared a fire with him.

  I remembered his perfect face, Nate’s face, only different. His pale skin radiated the flickering light from the fire. His mesmerizing blue eyes glistened as he stared at me with a preternatural stillness that now I thought I should have recognized as unnatural all along.

  Whatever his real reason for coming here, Death had not forgotten me. He held my mother’s soul in his care and with his need to feel human—even for a fraction of an eternity—he had come to me for answers, answers I didn’t have. Threatening Nate’s life, Death left me with no other choice. No matter how much I tried to justify what I’d done, I had betrayed him to save Nate. I’d made a choice. Although I would make that same decision again and again, I still didn’t feel any better about what I’d done—and how things turned out for him.

  But now that I stood here, and Nate’s life no longer hung in the balance, I came to the clearing for a reason I was only beginning to understand.

  I needed Death’s forgiveness and now I’d never get it.

  As far as I knew, he’d been punished for what he’d done. I didn’t feel him anymore. Not like I had before. If there was a God in heaven, I wanted to believe that my mother and the other innocent souls in Death’s care wouldn’t have been forsaken because of his actions.

  But the emptiness I felt came from my fear that he had not been spared.

  That strange boy—wrapped in Nate’s beautiful body and soul—had given back what he’d taken and denied his obsession with being human for me. He was gone now. I couldn’t get his haunted face from my mind and as I warmed my hands by the fire, I felt the chill of tears on my face. An aching emptiness started in the pit of my stomach and left me feeling numb as I thought about the bargain I tried to make with Death.

  In the end, I had counted on the compassion of Death’s brand-new humanity. Nate’s humanity. And because the Angel of Death had my mother inside him, I gambled on his love for me. Her love, a love I knew I could always count on. I should have been happy at how things turned out, but I wasn’t, not with the flood of memories filling my mind. Old ghosts and new were with me now, bleak memories that I had a hand in creating.

  Death—with his unforgettable kiss—would be one more.

  But when a distant sound carried on the wind, I almost didn’t hear it at first. In disbelief, I stood and searched the darkening skies as I stepped beyond the glow of the crackling fire to see.

  The soft flutter of wings made me turn in a rush. The biggest raven I’d ever seen had found a perch on a branch behind me. It cocked its tufted head and stared down at me, unafraid. Its iridescent feathers caught the reflection off the fire and turned its inky-black wings a striking color of purple and blue.

  I smiled at the creature and almost said something, but another distant sound stopped me cold. My heart leapt as a raspy caw echoed across the valley. One. Two. Then more. When I looked over my shoulder, I stood breathless.

  “Oh. My. God!”

  One by one, ravens filled the skies—hundreds of them. They crisscrossed the horizon, with their slick wings catching the fire of the dying light. When they found a place to land, they squawked and cackled in the trees behind me and with every flutter of a wing, I felt Death with me. Each feather-tufted head with shiny onyx eyes reminded me of him. They were his eyes and ears—his messengers.

  I laughed as if I’d lost my mind. Maybe I had.

  “Poof,” I whispered, fighting back fresh tears as I grinned at a sky filling with ravens.

  “What the hell?” My father’s voice cut through my stunned silence.

  If I hadn’t been distracted, hearing my father would have scared me. I hadn’t seen him coming up the trail, but as he stared into the darkening night sky and the trees that surrounded us, I couldn’t help but laugh harder at his reaction…and mine.

  “Isn’t it amazing, Dad?”

  With my head back, I spun where I stood and laughed until tears came, gazing into the heavens, black with ravens. The elegant, graceful birds gathered in the trees and made lazy circles in the sky, with more coming in the distance.

  “Gawd! Have you ever seen anything like this?” My skin rippled with goose bumps and my voice grew shrill with uncontrollable and boundless joy.

  Beautiful!

  Amazing!

  The Angel of Death came to me now in the only way he could and put on a show meant only for me. He’d sent me a message—on a dark wing—that he would always be with me.

  Death never forgets. And now, neither would I.

  * * * * *

  Acknowledgments

  After living in Alaska for ten years, it’s hard to get the haunting beauty of the land and the endearing qualities of its people out of my blood. I pray that will never happen, but writing about it helps bridge the gap in my soul.

  For his technical help on climbing Mount Denali, I wish to thank Niles Woods, who has made the dangerous trek more than once. Teacher, adventurer and dear friend, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

  For sharing his personal experiences about being wheelchair-bound and breathing life into my character, Tanner Lange, I have David Clampitt to thank. I’ve always admired Dave’s strength in dealing with the challenges he faces every day and his humor always makes me laugh. He works as an Occupational Therapist, getting others back on their feet. Dave is one of my heroes.

  I’d like to also thank my wonderful editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey, who makes collaboration a joy. The emotions she can add to a story make her input invaluable to me. She really knows how to balance the business-minded editor with the passionate heart of a die-hard reader and romantic. And to the team at Harlequin Teen, thanks for everything you do. I heart you.

  To my
agent, Meredith Bernstein, I have nothing but gratitude for your common sense and good humor. You are my guardian angel in designer shoes.

  Special thanks as always, to my crazy family and my loving husband, John (Salsa Boy). And to the latest members of my growing Texas fam-damily—The Supper Club (Gracie & Ignacio, Marta & Kevin, Nelson & Janice, Annie & Patrick, Gale & Mike, Jim & Jeannie, and brave soul Denise)—I want to say: laughing is a vacation where you don’t come back ten pounds heavier. Thanks for the weekly vay-kay. You guys ROCK!

  ISBN: 9781459219106

  Copyright © 2012 by Cosas Finas

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