On a Dark Wing

  The choices I had made led to the moment when fate took over.

  I would learn a lesson I wasn’t prepared for.

  And Death would be my teacher.

  Five years ago, Abbey Chandler cheated Death. She survived a horrific car accident, but her “lucky”break came at the expense of her mother’s life and changed everything. After she crossed paths with Death—by taking the hand of an ethereal boy made of clouds and sky—she would never be normal again.

  Now she’s the target of Death’s ravens and an innocent boy’s life is on the line. When Nate Holden—Abbey’s secret crush—starts to climb Alaska’s Denali, the Angel of Death stalks him because of her.

  And Abbey finds out the hard way that Death never forgets.

  The black bird lifted off the rooftop. And in my vision, I followed. Only when I got to the ridge, that Raven wasn’t alone. My breath caught in my throat when I saw dozens of black birds perched in the trees that surrounded the clearing.

  I held my breath, trying not to rile them. Taking one step at a time, inching my way back, I kept my eyes on them…until I backed into something that didn’t move. Something warm.

  “Hello.”

  I screamed.

  I fell hard to the ground. The Ravens took off with their wings thrumming the air to a deafening roar. A black swarm filled the sky. I covered my head, afraid they’d attack me, but when that didn’t happen, I looked at the guy standing over me.

  I was staring up at Nate Holden.

  Also by USA TODAY bestselling author Jordan Dane and Harlequin TEEN

  IN THE ARMS OF STONE ANGELS

  Jordan Dane

  On a Dark Wing

  To the many friends I have made in Alaska, then and now.

  Good friends are like stars.

  You don’t have to see them to know they’ll always be there.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Palmer, Alaska

  I had countless excuses for missing the bus that afternoon, five years ago. In the grand scheme of the universe, what was five minutes? I could have carved out five minutes from talking to my friends after school or taken five minutes off my stop at the 7-Eleven. Three hundred lousy seconds to grab a Pepsi and a bag of Cheetos. No big deal, right? When I saw the school bus pull away from the curb from across the street, I didn’t even run to catch it.

  In the endless dreams I’ve had since then, I never run for that bus. Not once.

  Even in my sleep, I couldn’t change what I did. It felt like my feet were stuck in cement. It had been way too easy to reach into my backpack and make a call on my cell phone—a call that changed my life forever. The choices I made that day, all of them led to that one moment when the school bus drove off and fate took over. I would learn a lesson I wasn’t prepared for.

  Death would be my willing teacher.

  All the strangest parts of my memory lingered to taunt me. Not the pieces I needed most. Guess that was my punishment. My memory had holes, a damaged and wounded thing. No amount of therapy or hypnosis or father-daughter talks has ever shed light into those dark corners.

  Dad says he doesn’t blame me, but I can’t see how that’s true. I blame me. I can’t even look at him without feeling my own guilt and shame. I’m stuck where I am, unable to move on. I sure as hell can’t go back and fix it. So I did the only thing I could.

  I quit talking about it. I had to.

  I should’ve been the one who died. It should have been me. I cheated Death and lived past my expiration date, but my lucky break would come at a price. I’d become obsessed with what happened the day I got my mother killed.

  Guess you could say I was dying to know the truth.

  Five years ago

  “This is the third time this month that you missed the afternoon bus, Abbey.”

  “But, Mom, it wasn’t my fault.” I strapped the seat belt across my chest as my mother pulled our SUV from the curb and headed for the Parks Highway. “I was reading in the library and I lost track of time. I swear.”

  The sun had already gone down for the day. A steady chill settled into the night air. In Alaska, that’s how the dark side of the year happened. The days were short, making everyone crave sleep. The long summers made up for it, but in the dead of winter, it felt like life had been put on hold. If you didn’t get outside at lunch, you missed any hope of seeing daylight before darkness played the bully and took over.

  “Oh, yeah? You were reading, huh?” Mom gave me that look—the one that said she wasn’t buying it. “What were you reading, hotshot?”

  When Mom turned onto the highway that headed home, I rattled off a book title that I knew she’d never read. I guess lying came naturally, like a rite of passage or something.

  “How were the Cheetos?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Your fingers are a dead giveaway, Abbey. You were at the 7-Eleven, weren’t you? Is that why you didn’t make the bus?”

  I looked down at my hands. Even in the dim glow off the dash, I saw my fingertips were colored. Like, seriously neon orange. My mind raced with what I’d tell her, but I never got the chance. I looked up a split second before it happened.

  I never even screamed.

  On pure instinct, my body grew rigid. When I braced a hand against the dash, Mom looked at me. An eighteen-wheeler had crossed the center lane veering straight for us. I couldn’t even warn her. If Mom hadn’t turned her head in time, and yanked the steering wheel right, we would’ve hit that monster truck head-on.

  On impact, the high-pitched grind of tearing metal punished my ears. Our SUV flipped and rolled. As our windshield caved and shattered, shards of glass cut my face and hands. All I saw were flashes spiraling in front of me like I’d been strapped into a roller coaster barreling straight down a dark track, twisting and turning in agonizing jerks. My seat belt pinned me. When the dashboard crushed into my chest, everything else caved in, too. The crash happened so fast, yet went on forever. When the SUV finally came to a dead stop, an eerie quiet settled in.

  My ears were ringing and when my eyes blinked open again, I saw the blur of the dash, fogged by wafting smoke. The headlights off the eighteen-wheeler caught smoldering debris and suspended it in the rig’s beams. I felt a sudden urge to move, but I couldn’t. When the warm taste of blood filled my mouth, something felt seriously wrong.

  Momma. Please…help me.

  I searched for her, but couldn’t move my head. I didn’t even sense her next to me. I felt alone, cocooned in pain and deepening shadows. How long I lay there shivering, I didn’t know, but eventually I sensed something that, to this day, I have never forgotten.

  A strong presence filled the SUV.

  Soothing heat replaced the numbing cold that had settled in my bones. It made me want to close my eyes and sleep, but a strange urgency woul
dn’t let that happen. I strained to stay awake and searched the shadows, waiting for a glimpse of something…anything to explain the eerie feeling.

  After an intense light stabbed my eyes and sent a shock of pain down my spine, I saw movement. Something eclipsed the truck’s headlights. It drifted toward me, inching closer until it hovered over my body. The brilliant glimmer swept over me and through me. Even though I could see through it, the light took shape and substance. The ghostly flicker turned into a body with arms and hands…and finally a face.

  A boy’s face.

  I was only ten, but he looked older, like a high-school boy. He had the most intense eyes that I’d ever seen. Beautiful. They were deep blue and reminded me of the frigid depths of the ocean. His eyes were the only real color on his face, but that wasn’t the most incredible thing about him. White tufts undulated and billowed within the boundaries of his filmy body, beautiful and peaceful. He conjured memories of a perfect summer day with me lying on my back on a grassy hilltop, picturing animal shapes in the drifting white clouds.

  When I shifted my gaze back to his eyes, I saw a long tunnel with a glimmering light at the end of it, a light eclipsed by the vague shapes of bodies undulating on a watery surface. Those wavering images calmed me. At that moment, I felt a part of them, as if I belonged. He comforted me in a way no one ever had.

  The boy fascinated me. I must have had the same impact on him. He stared at me with such concentration that it looked as if he was memorizing my face. Who are you? I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t make my lips work.

  When he reached out his hand, a strong impulse made me take it.

  “A-Abbey?” My mother’s choked whisper broke his spell over me.

  I pulled from his grasp and shut my eyes as the haunting sound of her voice held me without even a touch. Oh, Momma. In the many nightmares that would follow, her voice would punch through the illusion of that strange boy and slap me with the harsh reality of what I’d done. That would be the last time I ever heard my mother’s voice.

  She died that day because of me and I had a hollow ache deep inside that left me grieving over something I could never change.

  Five minutes.

  Five minutes would have meant everything.

  Chapter 1

  Palmer High School—Alaska Present day

  Although the last five minutes dragged on for an eternity, I watched the final few seconds tick toward the top of the hour and braced for my edge. If I got out first, I might stand a chance of beating the crowd. When the period ended, the bell rang and I made a mad run for the door, but my social-studies teacher, Mrs. Akkerman, raised her voice above the noise and royally jacked me up.

  “Abbey Chandler, please stay after class.”

  Damn it! She nailed me, solid. With all eyes on me, I turned around. I couldn’t even pretend that I hadn’t heard her.

  “Ha. Loser,” Britney Hartman mumbled under her breath as she shoved me aside. She rolled her eyes and heaved a sigh, like I cared about the added drama.

  I could’ve totally come up with something cool to say, but Britney had already turned her back—the coward—and she got swallowed up by the horde of mindless zombies that crowded the hall. Okay, I admit I may have instigated her resentment from elementary school.

  In Girl Scouts, she had all the badges and her mother ran the show, making sure her precious suck-up daughter got more than her share of recognition. Me? I’d never been a joiner, but that didn’t become apparent even to me until I hit Britney over the head with a confetti egg in front of the whole troop. Pieces of colored paper stuck in her hair and she bawled like a baby. What can I say? She egged me on.

  Even her mother got into it and expelled me from the scouts, stripping me of the one badge I’d earned for Food Power. (I made a food pyramid of healthy food groups out of junk food. Oh, the irony, but what the hell. It tasted good after.) Britney hated me for my project, too. She begrudged me the one badge I had. I caught her grinning when her mom stripped it off my sash in front of the troop. Our feud had deep roots.

  After my chance to let loose my inner smart-ass on Britney had come and gone, I slouched against a wall near the classroom door and waited for the room to clear as I chipped the navy glitter polish off my stubby fingernails. Pretending to be busy, I avoided catching the smirks I knew would be there if I looked up.

  Being the second to last day of school, you’d think Mrs. Akkerman would lighten up and cut me some slack, but forget about it. Teachers never had a concept for how bad it felt to single a kid out, especially on Taco Thursday. I didn’t care about much. Most days I felt invisible, totally forgettable with no special talent. But damn it, give me my tacos.

  Now there’d be a long line in the cafeteria. I’d be late and my best friend, Tanner Lange, would be pissed for making him wait. Adding to the suck factor, the other kids stared at me as they left, like I had an epic defect or something.

  In elementary school, kids knew about the way my mother died and they treated me different, but it didn’t take them long to see I didn’t need their pity. I didn’t want it. When the classroom cleared, Mrs. Akkerman called me over with a wave of her hand.

  “I just wanted to ask you…” When she stopped, I looked up. Big mistake.

  She looked down at my clothes. My hoodie and jeans were more than a little wrinkled. They were clean, but I had to pull them from a cold dryer. I’d left them overnight and didn’t have time to run them on hot that morning.

  “How are you doing, Abbey? You getting enough sleep? Are things okay at home?”

  I hated looking at her. She had a sickening expression on her face, like I had something majorly wrong with me. But I knew why she bombarded me with questions. Guess I’d brought it on myself.

  Earlier in the year, she assigned a project to keep a daily journal of everything we learned in her class. I know, sounds lame, right? Well, it was crazy lame. I bought a notebook just for her class and started that journal, but on day one, I got drool on the first page from where I’d fallen asleep. After it dried, I wrote one line.

  Fell asleep today. Will try again tomorrow.

  By the time I turned in the assignment, every page had the same entry and enough dried spit to keep a CSI team busy for weeks. When she saw my journal, my teacher called my dad in for “a talk.” She told him she worried about me being depressed and possibly suicidal. If you haven’t guessed, Akk the Yak had been a former psych major.

  After my dad blew past any concern he had over my mental state, he embraced his dark side and went parental on me. I had to put up with a lecture about my work ethic, but Mrs. Akkerman ended up giving me a B+ anyway—for doing nothing. I knew other kids had gotten worse grades, despite filling their journals with enough excrement to fertilize the Matanuska valley. That confused me until I figured it out. If she thought I intended to slit my wrists, she didn’t want to put me over the edge with the stroke of her red pen. I milked the whole suicidal thing for the rest of the term.

  “I’m doing…better. Really.” I had to say “better” to stroke her ego. “And things are good with my dad.” I lied again.

  Of course, that wasn’t the end of it. Once she opened her mouth, she spewed strange stuff that I only half heard. I stood there and took it, but the whole time, I screamed in my head, “I’M NOT LISTENING, LA, LA, LA, LA, LA, LET ME FRICKIN’ GO, ALREADY!”

  By the time she was done, I had to navigate the crowded halls like salmon swimming upstream to get my rocks off on some eggs. Out of my way… No, left… Walkin’ here. I kept my head down, clutching my book bag to my chest to hide my wrinkles, but dead ahead a pod of jocks took up half the hall. Where there was one, more would follow and aggregate in mass quantities, like an unspoken rule or something. Everyone put up with their sense of entitlement to the halls before lunch. When these guys were ready to chow down, some
pathetic dick weed would always let them cut in line.

  I had to get in front of them…pronto.

  Normally I walked around them and held my breath. Some of them stank, but since I was late, I shoved my way through the wrestlers. They were like a solar system of varsity letter jackets with the smaller guys hanging out on the edge in a circle around the bigger, no-neck dudes. Making eye contact in this planetary system had always been verboten in my rule book, but when I saw Nate Holden, I stopped dead.

  At that moment, I had two really good reasons to forget how much my life sucked and Taco Thursday paled in comparison to the reason standing next to me. Nate Holden stood talking to his buddy Josh Poole. His deep voice tingled in my ear and made my belly twist into a major knot, the kind of thing that felt terrible and amazing at the same time.

  Even with his back to me, every side of Nate Holden was excellent. I loved how his dark hair curled at his collar and he always smelled good, but with a full frontal, his hypnotic blue eyes made me forget to breathe. Whenever he talked, his lips could mesmerize me for hours, too. Being next to him felt like getting sucker punched—and liking it. He’d always be out of my league, an unreachable boy from an alternative universe who came to me in my sleep and tortured me. Sweet torture.

  Nate Holden had been a constant reminder of how messed up I was. He was the complete opposite of me, someone I had no business even wanting. We had absolutely nothing in common. Brownie points for him. But that didn’t stop me from practically stalking him. Deduct said brownie points. I played scenarios in my head, where he needed me as much as I wanted him. How sick was that? That would never happen. My fantasies were the only way I’d ever get close to someone like him.

  “Where the hell have you been?” A voice came from nowhere and intruded on my fantasy like cold water dumped on my head.