Written in the Blood (8 page)

C
HAPTER
8

Yosemite National Park, California, USA

A
ngel River sat beside her sister as her mom’s boyfriend Ty steered their rental RV through the rock-hewn tube of the Wawona Tunnel. The yellow lights hanging from the granite ceiling threw carnival shadows around the vehicle, twisting the faces of her family into goblin-like leers.

In her lap Angel held her phone. Glancing down, she activated its countdown timer and stared at the numerals on the screen.

Over two weeks until this trip was over. Two weeks of living and eating and sleeping together inside this huge space-age bus.

It’ll be good for us
, her mom had promised back in Oregon, eyes crinkling at the edges as she smoothed Angel’s hair and kissed her forehead.
Good for all you guys. You want to spend some time getting to know Regan and Luke, don’t you?

Yes, she replied. She did. And she said it partly because she knew her mom needed to hear it; and her mom needed a break. But Angel also said it because it was true – in a way. Admittedly, she found Luke a little creepy. But he was fourteen. And most fourteen-year-old boys
were
a little creepy. He didn’t say much, just stared at his phone a lot and listened to his music. A few times she’d caught him looking at her, although not really in a sex way: more with a kind of sad longing. Now that
was
weird. Especially since he was about to become her stepbrother.

Luke’s older sister Regan, conversely, had turned out be funny, confident and effortlessly glamorous in a way Angel could only dream about. She’d expected the girl to be distant – what sixteen-year-old wanted to be friends with a thirteen-year-old kid? – but Regan included her in every joke, every conversation. Angel’s two siblings, Elliot and Hope, had become equally enchanted with their future stepsister.

From the throne-like driving seat up front, Ty raised his eyes to the rear-view mirror, a big dumb grin on his face. ‘OK, Brady Bunch, get ready for Yosemite!’

In the centre of the tunnel a white eye had appeared, rushing towards them. Angel was reminded of the books she had read about out-of-body experiences, reincarnation.

Perhaps this is my reincarnation
, she thought. And then, just as quickly:
Stop being so damn melodramatic.

Moments earlier the white eye had been the size of a coin. Now it had swollen to the size of a grapefruit. Every yard eaten by the RV’s tyres drew them a yard closer to their final destination in Vegas . . . and a yard further from Angel’s old home in Oregon; her old friends; her dad. It felt, in a way, like a betrayal.

Bad shit happened. Let’s get the fuck out.

But it wasn’t like that. Not really. Ty was an OK guy, just about. He annoyed the hell out of her sometimes, and his Brady Bunch gag had tired pretty quickly. He did seem to love her mom, though. Angel knew it was selfish, but she just wasn’t ready for a new dad.

The white eye at the tunnel’s end kept growing, flaring around its edges like a corona. They shot under an illuminated sign hanging from the tunnel’s roof.

PREPARE

Angel felt a rash of goosebumps breaking out on her skin. It chilled her, that sign. Somehow prophetic.

Come on, Ty, make a gag.

But it was her mom, riding shotgun in her cut-off shorts, with flip-flopped feet resting on the dash, who referenced the sign. She swivelled in her chair, eyes shining like jack-o’-lanterns. ‘Ready, gang?
THREE . . . TWO . . . ONE!
’

And suddenly they were through, barrelling into daylight, into blue sky and granite Sierra Nevada peaks and forested valley, and a view Angel had seen on a hundred different postcards and travel guides. She felt her lungs filling, a grin forming. Exactly the reaction she hadn’t expected.

‘Wow!’ her brother Elliot yelled, twisting off the bench seat in the RV’s living space and planting his palms against the window.

There was something prehistoric about the scenery beyond that glass. Something that reminded her of those old movies she’d watched:
One Million Years BC
starring Raquel Welch, and
The Lost World
– not the
Jurassic Park
sequel, but the sixties adaptation of a novel by one of her favourite writers, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

On the north side of the valley rose the granite block of El Capitan, its vertical cliff face climbing thousands of feet. On the south side, Angel saw a waterfall cascading over a crevice high up in the rocks, wind blowing the water out in a spray as it tumbled towards the valley below.

‘Bridalveil Fall,’ Ty said, pointing as if he heard her thoughts. ‘Twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty.’

That was another thing about him. When Ty wasn’t making gags, he was relaying facts. Hundreds and hundreds of them, and always to Angel, as if he believed he’d found in her a fellow trivia addict. Where he got them from, she didn’t know. He didn’t appear particularly cerebral. Certainly not today, in safari shorts that revealed skinny white knees, and the T-shirt hanging from his frame with its depiction of a wizard and the words
THAT’S WHAT I’M TOLKIEN ABOUT
emblazoned across the front.

Thanks to Ty she knew that the Wawona Tunnel was 4,233 feet long, and that it had held the record for the longest road tunnel in California since 1933. She wondered what possible use she would ever find for that information.

‘You heard of the Ahwahneechee tribe, Angel?’ Ty asked.

She shook her head.

‘Original inhabitants of Yosemite. They thought that breathing the mists of Bridalveil would give you better marriage prospects.’

‘Pity Mom didn’t come here earlier, in that case,’ Angel replied. She grinned at his reflection, to show that she was joking.

Ty grinned back, to show her that it was OK. Then his eyes narrowed. ‘They also believed an evil spirit lives by the falls, and you should never look directly into its waters when you leave the valley.’

‘Or what?’

‘Or you’ll be cursed,’ he told her.

‘Fascinating.’

‘Yeee-up.’

They followed the road east, alongside the inky waters of what Ty explained was the Merced River, behind a steady procession of cars, RVs and motorcycles.

It seemed to Angel that half of California had descended upon Yosemite today. She turned in her seat as they passed the waterfall, anxious for one last look.

They reached the campground a short while later. Ty slowed the RV to a crawl before hauling on the wheel and swinging the vehicle in through the entrance. Lining the road, the cinnamon-red trunks of huge ponderosa pines soared a hundred feet and higher, their ancient bark split into thick crusted plates. The forest floor was a field of dead needles, cones and smooth grey boulders.

After jumping out at the ranger station to pick up their camp pass, Ty steered their vehicle around the looping campground road, searching for their site. They found it easily – the only vacant slot – and parked up, swapping the steady rumble of the RV’s diesel for the muted hiss of the Merced. She could see it there, glinting between the trees.

Marked by a half-circle of five giant ponderosas, their site consisted of a flat patch of swept ground for their motorhome, two picnic tables, a fire ring and a food locker. Up front, Ty rotated his driving seat so that he faced the RV’s living space. ‘OK, Bradies. Quick safety briefing. Need you all to be careful about food while we’re here. Why’s that?’

Angel’s brother shot up his hand.

‘Elliot?’

‘’Cuz of bears will eat you,’ he said, puffing out his chest.

On the couch opposite, Angel’s sister Hope picked up her magazine. ‘Just great,’ she muttered.

Ty clapped his hands. ‘Well,
bears
is correct, Elliot. But there’s no need to worry. We treat ’em right and they won’t bother us. There hasn’t been a fatal bear attack in Yosemite, ever.’

‘What about non-fatal?’ Hope asked, eyes never lifting from her magazine.

Ty paused at that, and then he brightened. ‘Well, like I said – we treat ’em right, and they won’t bother us. Most people who get tangled up, it’s because they didn’t follow precautions.’

‘Which are?’

‘It’s our food they want. Smell drives them crazy. They’ll do anything to get their paws on it. And I mean anything.’

‘Ty . . .’ Angel’s mom warned, laying a hand on her fiancé’s arm.

He twitched. ‘You’re right, you’re right. Sorry, got carried away again. OK, simple rules. We keep all the food in the RV, and we keep the door and all the windows shut. You put your uneaten food back in the RV. Don’t drop anything outside or throw anything out. Simple. Let’s hope we’re lucky enough to spot a few.’

‘Did you bring any pepper spray?’ Hope asked.

‘It’s not allowed in Yosemite. If you see a bear too close, you just shout at it to back the hell up. Now, who wants to come outside and barbecue a couple of steaks?’

Later, after Ty had coaxed them out of the motorhome and suffused the forest with the kind of roasting meat smells which, had Angel been a bear, would have driven her into the midst of their camp ready to tear the head off anyone prepared to get in her way, they dragged the two picnic tables together and ate.

It was then that Angel decided she’d discovered another thing about Ty. Yes, the lame jokes and useless facts could get old pretty quick. But the guy could cook. It wasn’t sophisticated and it certainly wasn’t healthy, but it was the some of the best food she’d ever tasted: rump steaks marinated in a homemade chilli sauce and barbecued until they were charred on the outside but so soft you could cut them with a spoon; chicken wings sticky with honey; shrimp in lime; corn dripping in butter; potato salad and coleslaw. They tucked their heads down, all seven of them, and bashed elbows until they were fit to burst. Angel even managed to fill her plastic tumbler with Blue Moon when her mom was looking the other way.

Afterwards, sitting on logs around the campfire, with the evening sun blushing the clouds to pink and setting a flame to the granite peaks, and with the sound of the river like soft applause, Angel looked at the gathered faces and wondered if they might just all work out. Her mom and Ty; her sister Hope and her brother Elliot; her new siblings, Regan and Luke. She’d been sceptical of this trip. Even now, she was unsure of how Vegas would suit her, and she grew tearful when she thought of what she’d left behind. But when she saw Ty put his arm around her mom and saw her mom rest her head against his shoulder, Angel decided that she might be able to do this, would at least
try
to do this. For her mom’s sake if no other’s.

When the stars came out, she asked if she could go down to the river and watch the moon floating on the water. Her mom sat up straight, and Angel just knew she was going to tell her it was too late. But then Regan stood up and said she wanted to see it too.

They walked to the river’s edge in companionable silence. Angel found a flat boulder and they sat, staring across the water at the silhouettes of California black oaks and incense cedar. She felt something pressing against her thigh, and when she put her hand into her pocket her fingers closed on the amber locket the stranger had given her earlier that day.

‘What is it?’ Regan asked, leaning over.

Angel frowned. She hadn’t really thought about the woman since their encounter, which was odd, considering how much she had affected her at the time.

‘Just a locket.’

‘Where’d you get it?’

‘Someone gave it to me. A gift.’

‘It’s beautiful. Kind of spooky, though.’

‘I like it.’

‘Yeah. It’s cool. Looks really old.’

Angel swung the locket like a pendulum between her fingers. Its chain resembled a series of interlinked silver beetles. They’d stopped for lunch at a roadside diner on Route 41, somewhere north of Fresno. And that’s where she had met the stranger.

The diner had a picnic area. Just a few scarred benches and a climbing frame for kids. While Ty and her mom took a table inside and figured out what everyone wanted to eat, Angel came out to check her emails and escape the diner’s piped R ’n’ B. The locket’s owner appeared a few moments later, sitting at the second bench with a coffee and a pastry.

Angel couldn’t help but stare. The woman was, without doubt, the most beautiful creature she had ever seen. Her features were so startlingly perfect, in fact – so
proportioned
– she didn’t seem real: seaweed-green eyes striated with shards of emerald and pearl; pale wheat-blond hair falling over her shoulders in tresses that shimmered with captured sunlight; cheekbones that looked like they had been cut by a jeweller. She wore a white cotton summer dress under a black cardigan, and python-skin cowboy boots. Her bag looked like it was made from snakeskin, too. The amber locket hung at her throat.