Beautiful Dead 04 - Phoenix

by Eden Maguire

  'I'm OK,' I gasped, looking round for Phoenix, who had slumped against the barn wal , head back and staring at the starlit sky.

  Dean stood a few paces from him, watchful and stil silent.

  I ran to Phoenix and led him into the barn, wil ed him to bring his attention back to me as I took his hands in mine. 'Talk to me!' I whispered.

  This is how it ends,' he murmured out of the musty darkness of dust and spiders' webs, a century of planting, harvest and toil. 'Not how we wanted, but how it was.'

  'I am so sorry!' I breathed. 'I see now why you were afraid. And if I could alter it ... if we could wipe it from our minds.'

  But his brother's name was branded there for ever.

  I put my trembling hands to Phoenix's ice-cold cheeks. There was one more thing I needed to be sure of. ' Did you know this from the beginning?' I asked.

  There was no light in his dark eyes, no spark of comfort. 'No,' he insisted. ' After I left the house with Zak, there were a thousand fragments -

  faces, sounds, voices cal ing but no clear knowledge.'

  'Did you suspect?'

  He sighed. 'A fight like that, a feud I knew that anything was possible.' 'Did Dean know?'

  'He was a cop so he saw the files, he understood the background.'

  The overlord came into the barn with Iceman, watchful and stil keeping his distance.

  'Was Brandon's name on the list?' I asked Dean.

  'Everyone who was there that night was a possible suspect, Brandon

  included.' His answer fel heavily into the silence. 163

  'And so what do I do now?' I demanded, turning in anger on Dean for the way things had worked out, hating the whole world for leaving me with

  the one answer I didn't expect. 'Do I name Brandon? Do I say, "Here's the guilty one"?'

  The overlord stepped around us in a wide circle, his footsteps muffled, walking in deep shadow. 'It's a tough cal ,' he said quietly.

  'Do I?' I asked Phoenix as gently as I could.

  He sighed and shook his head. 'We could have stepped back from the brink,' he reminded me. 'We could have let it go.'

  I saw again the death heads that had spun towards us in the time tunnel, desperate souls in a limbo of doubt, and I knew that stepping back from an answer would have meant that Phoenix would have joined them for ever.

  'No.' I held onto the belief that I'd always had. 'We needed to know.'

  'Darina's right,' Iceman agreed. 'Sometimes the truth hurts, but without

  it we can't move on.'

  We stood for a while in silence, except for the creak of hinges as the door swung open and closed. We were al waiting, holding our breaths.

  Phoenix was rapidly fading from me.

  'So what do I do?' I cried again.

  Dean took me on one last journey, promising me that Phoenix would stil be at Foxton when I got back.

  'Wait for me,' I begged in the midnight barn.

  Phoenix's spirit was ebbing, was withdrawing from the far side like the tide pul ing back from the shore. When he embraced me, I couldn't be sure how much longer his arms would have the strength to hold me.

  'Be here,' I pleaded.

  Then Dean surrounded me in gentle light and carried me away from Foxton, across the dark mountains to Deer Creek where he set me down under the stars. 'Talk to Brandon,' he told me. 'Make your decision.' 164

  The overlord left me at the water's edge.

  I waited where I had waited for Phoenix a year ago, by the big boulder in the middle of the creek. Stars shone over my head and in the stream at my feet.

  In the dead of night Brandon rode out to meet me.

  ' I got your text,' he said, laying his bike in the tal grass, standing

  uncertainly beside it, his jacket zippered to the chin, hands in pockets.

  'What's so urgent that it couldn't wait until tomorrow?'

  'This couldn't,' I murmured. I wanted to look into the face of the man who had kil ed his brother.

  Brandon narrowed his gaze and walked down the steep bank towards me.

  ' So?'

  I stared at him, at the face of a guy whose suspicious eyes permanently said: Don't come near me. Don 't try to understand or fix me.

  The creek ran at our feet. We stared down at the shimmering reflection of

  the stars. 'There's something I have to tel you,' I murmured.

  He looked away, the barrier stayed up.

  *I know what happened a year ago.'

  Stil no reaction. The water flowed on.

  Say it quiet and clear in the electric midnight air. You kil ed Phoenix.'

  If Brandon had made excuses, said it was a mistake, if he'd asked me how I knew or had tried to blame the Thornes or the confusion of that night, I might have had a clear idea of what to do next.

  'It was you,' I said again. And I saw Phoenix stumble across Brandon's path, I saw the blade go in. Again and again.

  Brandon stared at the black boulder and at the water rushing over rocks, splashing, churning, whirling on.

  Talk to Brandon, Dean had said. Make your decision.

  You don't deny it?' I asked. Guilt didn't look the way I expected, shored

  up by excuses and anger. 165

  Brandon shook his head. His voice seemed to be lost and swept away in the current.

  'Why didn't you tel me?'

  He gave me a dul , weary look then shrugged. 'How does it feel? Talk to me.'

  Walking away, crunching over the pebbles, walking back - it feels like hel ,' he said.

  Make your decision.

  Brandon waited a long time to speak again. 'Hel . I never leave it behind. I stay home, I hang out in town - it's with me every second. I ride into the mountains and it's there. I sleep and dream it. I want it to work out different. I wake up and it's the same.'

  Make your decision.

  I looked at Brandon and saw that he, not Phoenix, had joined those death heads, spinning through a dark universe in eternal torment. I understood this and felt the first pang of pity.

  'What about Sharon?' I asked. I compared her with Bob Jonson who had lost Jonas, with the Taylors grieving over Arizona, and with Jon and Heather Madison accepting that Summer was gone for ever. 'Doesn't your mom deserve to know?'

  'How would it help?' Brandon muttered. He'd considered it a mil ion times, never reached an answer.

  I thought again about Bob Jonson. 'I hear you.'

  A death wish sat heavy on Bob's shoulders after Jonas died, and the truth didn't lift it. It ended astride a Dyna in a soaring arc over the cliff edge, a plunge into white water and oblivion.

  And how did it help Sharon to have Brandon stand in front of a jury? To know that if it had worked out a split-second differently Phoenix might have lived?

  Then again, 'This is to do with justice,' I sighed. 'The others - Jonas, Arizona and Summer they got it, whatever it cost.'

  'Show me a way out,' Brandon pleaded. 'I mean it, Darina. An exit o0§6 of this is al I'm asking.'

  'I don't know that you get to ask for anything,' I said more harshly. 'That's not how it works.' Because of Brandon we had al lived through twelve months of agony.

  And suddenly, unexpectedly and out of nowhere, I was back for a delirious moment, here by Deer Creek with Phoenix, under the stars. It was our place, our precious time. I whispered his name. 'Phoenix!'

  Brandon heard me. He stood so stil for so long I thought he'd stopped

  breathing.

  I cal ed Phoenix's name but it was Dean who came to me. 'I can't do this

  alone. You have to help me to decide.'

  Dean stood on the far bank surrounded by light. He was tal , unbending in the moonlight. 'Explain your thinking, Darina. But hurry - we have very little time.'

  'I feel sorry for Brandon. I didn't expect to.'

  'His is not a common suffering,' the overlord agreed.

  We gazed at him standing a little way off, a lonely figure under the stars.

  'What happens if the kil er wal
ks free?' I asked Dean. 'Wil Phoenix stil get to move on?'

  'I understand - you need justice for Phoenix to secure his journey's end, but now you have to be prepared for things you didn't expect, to open your eyes to the fact that justice takes more than one form.'

  'I long for Phoenix to be free,' I whispered. 'It's al I ever wanted. I'm scared that if I don't name Brandon, Phoenix wil be trapped in limbo.'

  'Does the world have to know the truth?' Dean asked. 'Darina, I'm not sure. I don't have the answer.' And he looked kindly at me, surrounded by his halo of light.

  I walked up to Brandon with a big weight stil on my shoulders and I looked straight into his eyes.

  He gazed back at me across a barrier of total, unending misery. 167

  'You took a life and you saved one,' I said softly, knowing clearly and

  precisely now why Brandon had shown no fear as he ran into the flames.

  'Without you, Zak would have died.'

  A brothers life taken. A brother's life saved.

  Brandon heard me, walked a little way along the bank, turned, and when

  he came back I saw that he was crying.

  The weight lifted from my shoulders. A life taken, a life saved.

  I've kept the secret of the Beautiful Dead for twelve whole months, so carrying to my grave the knowledge of what Brandon did shouldn't be too much of a stretch.

  'Tomorrow morning at dawn, ride out to Foxton to find me,' I told him. 'I'l need you then.'

  He wiped his tears then walked up the bank, rode off on his Harley. I waited until the sound of the engine died.

  'Come with me,' Dean said, inviting me into his silver glow.

  We found Phoenix stil in the barn, sitting on the hayloft steps with Iceman by his side.

  'He only has a few minutes,' Iceman warned, touching Phoenix lightly on the shoulder as he and Dean left us alone together.

  And as I sat beside Phoenix, I knew we'd reached the moment I dreaded. Every minute, every hour, every day of the last year had been leading to this. Now it was here.

  'I can't find the words,' I whispered, a tight band of sorrow around my

  chest.

  Phoenix put his finger to my lips. 'What's left to say? Except, we lived our whole lives for each other.'

  'And you'l be free?'

  'Like Jonas and the others.'

  'Wil you see them again?'

  'No one knows. Al I'm sure of is that I leave the far side and go

  forward.'

  Out of the darkness into light, free from doubt. 168

  I took his trembling hand in mine, felt the dampness of my own tears on

  his cold fingertips. 'Wil I join you in the end?'

  Phoenix smiled and the crooked curve of his lips caught at my heart. 'Let's risk a yes on that,' he murmured. 'And I know that we'l never be apart. Remember as long as you live, when you need me I'l be there.'

  'Any time, any place?' I moved my lips but no sound came out. 'In a heartbeat,' he promised.

  He leaned forward and his lips touched mine - not a kiss exactly, only a brief, brushing contact before those searching, al -knowing eyes looked into mine one last time.

  Then Dean and Iceman returned. They stood in the doorway, waiting for

  Phoenix to rise slowly from the step. I held his hand and I was the one who led the way out of the barn into the starlight before his time final y ran out, to the sound of the creek running through the val ey and the sight of the crescent moon in a jewel ed sky.

  Phoenix walked slowly past the silver-grey ranch house, glancing at the shadowy porch and the securely bolted door. He smiled at me again.

  In Hunter and Marie's time, at different place in history, this is where we would live.

  'I know.'

  Dean and Iceman hung back until the very last moment. They let us reach the water's edge together.

  'You are everything to me,' I told Phoenix.

  He kissed me on the lips, soft and cold. He spread his white wings and his hand slipped from mine.

  And he walked away with his two companions, never turning back as

  they made their way out of the val ey towards the ridge and the aspens, silver in the moonlight. Three winged creatures walked into the shadows.

  The barn door swung closed. The Beautiful Dead departed.

  Epilogue 169

  Brandon came for me at dawn and I drifted through days.

  Sharon Rohr heard that Laura, Jim and I were moving out of El erton, and visited our house before we left. She said that Zak's burns had healed and he would soon be back in school.

  'Thank you,' she told me, and our own deep wounds continued to heal. Zoey heard through her dad that Michael Rohr was definitely sticking around for a while.

  I didn't care. I was drifting, sinking, letting go of the world.

  'Brandon sold his Harley,' Hannah told me. ' He bought a plane ticket to Europe.'

  I nodded. Maybe it would help him, but real y, no - he and I both knew

  that. I didn't try to see him before he left.

  Danny Kors found Oscar and Nathan Thorne holed up in the fisherman's shack at Forest Lake. His 'clean up El erton' campaign was making real progress. People started to relax.

  Henry Jardine drove out to Foxton and nailed planks of wood across the barn door to keep out intruders. Kids camped out at Government Bridge undisturbed.

  After Brandon brought me home from Foxton that Friday morning, I didn't step outdoors until the day we moved house.

  Our new porch overlooked the lake. The water was smooth and sky b1uE170

  Stil I was sinking beneath its surface and nothing would stop me.

  I feel I 'm drowning. Igo down in the clear, cold water without a struggle

  - this time no one holds me under, I am letting myself sink. Above me bubbles rise to the surface and beyond that is a bright, quivering light that must be the sun. It's far away. My hair spreads like weeds, my legs and arms are weightless, water al around. My eyes are wide open, staring at the light.

  A current catches me and turns me face down, staring into darkness. It plunges me deeper, twists me again until I glimpse the dappled, liquid light further and further above me.

  And suddenly, without knowing why, I strike out. I forge upwards, my arms cleaving the icy water, its whisper in my ears. I kick and fight back.

  I choose life.

  'I want you to take this.' Michael Rohr showed up at our new house with the picture he'd once shown me of Brandon and Phoenix. 'It belongs with you.

  I took it and put it in my bedside drawer.

  Who needs a picture on show when you have memories like mine to bear

  you up and carry you through life?

  Any time, any place? I ask, gazing out across the glittering lake.

  A breeze disturbs its silver surface. In a heartbeat, Phoenix promises.

  1 7'

  What would your dream cast be if Beautiful Dead was made into a film? My dream cast for a film version of Beautiful Dead Would be any of the main actors from the Harry Potter and Twilight films - why not aim for the very biggest stars?! I also wish Johnny Depp was stil nineteen years old, so he could play Phoenix!

  What songs would be on a Beautiful Dead soundtrack?

  I have an idea that the soundtrack should be made up of songs from the top

  female vocalist - not mainstream, but more edgy artists like Laura Marling.

  You can see a whole Beautiful Dead playlist on my Facebook page

  www.beautifuldead.com

  Which character do you most relate to in the series?

  I'm closest in character to Darina in the books, mainly in the way she always feels a bit on 'the edge of things, a bit misunderstood, but very focused and determined. I'm not as brave as she is, obviously.

  If you could invite 5 people to dinner who would you invite?

  Top of my list for ideal dinner guests are Marilyn Monroe, Shakespeare, Catherine Earnshaw from Withering Heights, John Lennon and Atticus Finch fro
m To Kil A Mocking Bird. They don't have to be alive or real, do they?

  Where is your favourite place to write?

  I can only write in one place and no other - it's my first storey office overlooking a river and a wooded hil side. No other room wil do.

  Who is your favourite author and why?

  Favourite author is so hard - this time I'l choose one who is alive - it's Annie Proulx, who wrote the short story Brokeback Mountain which they turned into a great film. Everything she writes is strong and disturbing.

  What advice would you give to aspiring young writers?

  People who real y want to write don't need my advice. They're driven by some inner compulsion. It turns out right if they stick to the truth of their imaginations.

  What book do you wish you had written?

  A book I total y admire is The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. I wish I could write something so moving and powerful and true.

  How does it feel when you see your books in a bookshop?

  When I see my own book on a bookshop shelf I have a mixed reaction.

  There's a big temptation to position it so that customers can see it more

  easily, but there's also an unexpected panic and a need to run and hide!

  Tel us one thing your readers won't already know about you.

  I once fel off a horse high on a mountain with no other riders around. M373 horse didn't run off he stayed and waited for me to get back on my feet, thank heavens. Not many people know that!

  What projects are you working on next?

  I've moved onto a new project cal ed Dark Angel - about a shape-shifting, powerful, demonic character intent on destroying the lives of young lovers by drawing them into a dark, alternative reality. He's an angel, but not the kind you'd want to meet ...

  Fol ow Eden Maguire at

  www.beautifuldead.com

  Look out for

  DARK ANGEL

  A stunning new book from Eden Maguire

  Coming soon in 2011

  Dare to believe in a fal en angel.

  His mission?

  To tear young lovers from each others' arms ...

  Tania's heart belongs to Orlando.

  Nothing can rip them apart.

  Until the seduction begins in a flurry of glamour and magic, music and parties al orchestrated by the mysterious and mesmerising Zoran, an iconic rock star who has retired to a remote ranch in the nearby mounains. And there Tania meets the dark side.