by Eden Maguire
www.hodderchildrens.co.uk
Also by Eden Maguire:
Dark Angel
Coming soon
Broken Dream
BEAUTIFUL DEAD
1. Jonas
2. Arizona
3. Summer
4. Phoenix
Also by Hodder Children’s Books
Dark Heart Forever
Dark Heart Rising
Lee Monroe
Sisters Red
Sweetly
Jackson Pearce
Copyright © 2011 Eden Maguire
First published in Great Britain in 2011
by Hodder Children’s Books
This ebook edition published in 2011
The right of Eden Maguire to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form, or by any means with prior permission in writing from the publishers or in the case of reprographic production in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency and may not be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A Catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 444 90531 1
Hodder Children’s Books
A Division of Hachette Children’s Books
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH
An Hachette UK company
www.hachette.co.uk
For Anne McNeil, who was in at the birth
It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood. Stones have been known to move and trees to speak …
William Shakespeare’s Macbeth
1
I sleep with a dreamcatcher above my bed. I use it to filter out bad dreams – I had enough of those earlier this summer. Flames eating up the forests, leaping across canyons, shooting firebrands through the night sky. Plus the visions and psychic connections and the dark angel voice slithering through my brain with a warning – ‘We will all rise. There will be other times, other places – a million other willing souls!’
I travelled halfway across the world to get a break from all that flesh-creeping stuff and if my good angel isn’t around any more to protect me, which she doesn’t seem to be, I’m not too proud to rely on old superstitions, ancient beliefs, whatever.
My dreamcatcher is a circle of slender willow branches about thirty centimetres wide, wound with a narrow leather strip and with cotton threads woven across the centre in a geometric petal pattern. A pendulum of turquoise beads and white and black feathers hangs from the bottom of the hoop. Good dreams find their way through the net but bad ones can’t get past. It works some of the time, I guess.
Since the last big burnout on Black Rock, I also avoid going up on to the flame-seared slopes whenever possible. And it’s not just me – my best friend, Grace, and all the traumatized kids in Bitterroot, if I’m honest.
I prefer valleys and water – cool streams, white-water rapids, Prayer River and Turner Lake.
I mean, I love the lake, totally adore the light sparkling on its surface and the way your feet and ankles turn pale and distort when you wade in from the pebble shore, the icy feel of the water between your toes. It’s where Orlando and I first fell in love.
It was midnight, and just remembering it makes my soul soar. The night sky was huge, the Milky Way streaming across it – a glittering banner made out of a million stars. We were tiny and unique. We took off our clothes and swam in the lake.
‘You’re my midnight swimmer,’ he tells me even now.
Or he would do if he was here.
It’s Saturday and he promised he would be home Friday. What the hell happened to his afternoon flight out of Dallas, I wanted to know. I had to fly across the whole freaking Atlantic and I still made it on time – Friday, 8.00 p.m., my parents’ house on Becker Hill. They were in Denver so we would have the place to ourselves. A chance to celebrate after two whole months of love famine.
‘They oversold tickets,’ he explained. ‘The airline gave me a three-hundred-dollar credit for transferring to a later flight.’
I almost tossed my phone out of the window. ‘Jeez, Orlando.’ Words failed me, as you can see. In my opinion, our romantic reunion was worth more than three hundred lousy dollars any day. Evidently not to him.
‘I’m out of here first thing tomorrow,’ he promised.
‘I won’t be here,’ I snapped back.
‘Why? Where will you be?’
‘At the lake.’
‘What for?’
‘The New Dawn thing – the triathlon.’
Silence while he computed this. ‘You’re not – I didn’t know …’
‘I’m not competing!’ Insert the word ‘Stupid!’, tag it on the end of the sentence, hear it in my tone of voice. With me, disappointment turns to anger in a flash. I drew breath then spoke more calmly. ‘Yeah – maybe the swimming. I’m OK with that. And cycling. But can you see me running 10k?’
‘Gotcha,’ he mumbled. A pre-recorded warning to keep your bags with you at all times sounded in the background, so at least he’d made it to the airport and that bit of his story was true.
Two grey doves flew across my view and landed in the red-gold aspens behind the house.
My old buddy Paranoia (worse since my bruising encounter with the whole dark angel thing) lay in wait on the back porch, ready to pounce – I figured that Orlando had spent two months in Dallas and found someone new to love. A girl on his fashion design course; a catwalk model; a fabric designer. He was finding an excuse not to leave, to stay with her for one more night. I was absolutely certain. Then, get a hold of yourself, I thought.
The doves took off in opposite directions as I tried again to take the edge of fear and anger out of my voice. ‘No, I’ll be at the lake rooting for Holly.’
‘Oh yeah, Wonder Woman,’ he joked. And then to break the tension; ‘To be honest, she scares the shit out of me.’
‘Me too.’ When I last spoke to Holly on the phone from Paris, she’d been in the gym for weeks performing single-leg dead lifts to strengthen her glutes.
Plus, her dad had bought her the best Boardman performance bike on the market and she’d borrowed a seven-hundred-dollar Speedo Tri-Elite wetsuit from a girl who competed at trials for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. So I knew she was serious about this New Dawn triathlon.
‘So you’re OK if I join you lakeside?’ Orlando checked. ‘I’ll drive straight from the airport.’
What could I do? What could I say? ‘I missed you so much.’ My anger dissolved and my voice broke. A sigh escaped.
‘Me too.’
‘I love you.’
‘See you tomorrow.’ Click. End of.
And now tomorrow was today and my night-time dreamcatcher had let me down, had allowed through a glimpse of hell: a water snake emerging from the dark depths of a lake, bearing a snarling, hissing head at each end of its body, surging to the surface, bringing black rain, floods and disaster. These visions of mine shook me to the core. They chewed me up and spat me out. I wonder all this time – is it worth having these psychic powers if they leave you feeling this wasted and weak?
‘Hey, Tania.’ Holly’s boyfriend, Aaron, found me standing by Lake Turner, my back turned to the knot of early arrivals in the car park at the entrance to the New Dawn Community. ‘Orlando didn’t make it, huh?’
> ‘Later,’ I muttered.
‘Good to see you after all this time,’ he said shyly, as if a two-month trip to Europe had turned me into a total stranger. And he quickly ducked out of any more conversation. ‘Come and talk to Holly; wish her luck.’
Aaron led the way across the pebbles, his boots crunching, the back of his black sweatshirt reading ‘Never trust anyone below 14,000 feet’ in white letters. He was a climber, a mountaineer trained since the age of ten by his dad who worked for the National Park Service. The training had given him broad shoulders and strong thighs, plus nerves of steel, which you had to have to handle a relationship with my next-door neighbour, Holly Randle.
‘Tania!’ She stood next to Aaron’s grey truck, raised her arm and yelled at me above the rumble of other vehicles pulling into the parking lot. Then she ran at me and held me in her Brunhilda hug. Brunny, by the way, is a legendary princess of the Visigoths who offered to marry any man who could defeat her in a trial of strength and courage. It’s amazing what random information sticks when you’re in Paris, Rome, Berlin.
Holly hugged me in her black and gold Speedo wetsuit, glutes duly strengthened, corn-blonde hair hidden under a small white rubber helmet, a bold, black competitor number 85 stencilled in waterproof ink on to her upper arm.
‘You look different,’ she accused.
‘No – same old.’ I blushed as she held me at arms’ length.
‘Oh yeah, Tania – look at you! Skinnier, for a start – if that’s possible. And paler.’
‘I travelled between cities; I stayed out of the sun.’
‘Wow, I love that little red purse. Where did you buy it – Paris? How much did it cost?’ She didn’t wait for answers, just zapped through every item of my clothing from head to foot, wanting to know where I bought it, what size it was and not believing me when I told her European sizes were different than ours.
‘No way. Size six is a size ten – that’s gross!’
I smiled and shrugged. ‘I almost got my hair cut by a top London stylist.’
‘No way!’ she shrieked. ‘You’ve had beautiful long hair ever since I’ve known you. You can’t chop it off.’
‘So I didn’t,’ I pointed out. Me and long hair go together – something to hide behind, or to brush and style and occasionally be vain about, I guess. ‘So you’re ready?’ I asked, gesturing towards the gathering crowd of triathletes, a mix of toned guys and girls, all with stencilled numbers and swim goggles strapped around their white swimming caps.
‘This is a regional championship event.’ Holly put me in the picture. ‘No elite athletes are taking part, but Amos invited coaches from the national camps to take a look at the talent.’
‘Amos?’ I quizzed, without too much genuine interest. If I’m honest, I had one eye on the cars pulling into the lot, looking out for you know who.
‘Yes – Antony Amos, the Antony Amos!’
‘The movie director – yeah.’
‘Come on, Tania, pay attention. Amos is sponsoring this whole deal.’
‘I guess he can afford it.’ From the profits of his endless gore-fest movies. It was well known, mostly taken for granted in Bitterroot, that the locally born director was a money-making machine, which was how he’d come back home and spent gazillions setting up the New Dawn community – giving something back if you like.
‘Half the New Dawn kids here have entered the event,’ Holly went on. ‘They’re going to be tough to beat.’
‘Do they divide the guys and girl into two groups?’ Aaron looked concerned that his girlfriend was about to plunge into the lake with a hundred guys bulked up to the size of your average Super League player.
Meanwhile I was finally paying attention – not to Holly but to the dozen or so figures in wetsuits, numbers stencilled on their arms, strolling down from the row of log cabins set against the rocky hillside – a distance of maybe two hundred metres. Again, they were a mixture of boys and girls, and obviously residents of New Dawn.
‘Here come the juvies,’ Aaron muttered, looking even more worried.
‘Explorers,’ Holly corrected. ‘That’s the name they give them here.’
‘Yeah, everyone knows they’re kids in rehab, whatever fancy label they stick on them.’
Holly didn’t agree. She stared Aaron down. If she hadn’t been conserving her energy for the competition, she might have given him an even harder time.
The juvies, the explorers, the boot-camp/brat-camp residents of Antony Amos’s New Dawn log cabins – whatever you want to call them – approached the lake in their sleek wetsuits, bare armed and bare calved and, I had to admit, looking downright Neanderthal. That’s the reason they grabbed my attention.
Especially number 102. He came down the hill, between some tall junipers, out of the long shadows on to the beach. The top half of his wetsuit lay in folds around his waist, leaving his chest and shoulders exposed to the early morning sun. And, wow, I’m talking serious muscles. They bunched up around his neck and shoulders then smoothed out over his chest and abs in sleek, undulating curves. There was no body hair on view – did he wax? But the hair on his head was long and blond – kind of Viking. Anyway, primitive and strong was the overwhelming impression.
Then there was number 98. He was taller, more basketball than football, rangy and loose-limbed. His dark hair was cut short, his skin was mixed race, maybe more white than black in his family history but anyway beautiful. His wetsuit fitted like a second skin, and actually yeah, I admit I was looking at these guys like objects. Then again, I’d just spent part of my two-month escape to Europe in artists’ studios attending life classes, looking at naked bodies and trying and often failing to make the appropriate marks on paper and canvas.
Two girls followed through the trees, carrying their swimming caps and goggles in their hands. One wore her dark hair in two thick braids and looked scarily serious, like she didn’t ever smile. She scowled and didn’t make eye contact with anyone as she reached the crowded beach and gave off don’t-mess-with-me signals, which the other girl had to heed.
Her buddy wasn’t like the others, I noticed. She was more delicate and nervy. There was no strutting her stuff, no guard up against the curious stares of the Bitterroot crowd. I mean, we were all staring at the juvies and not necessarily in a friendly way, with a fair amount of suspicion in the ether.
‘Whose idea was it to make the event this big?’ Aaron sighed. ‘Why not limit entries to regular college kids?’
‘Because the New Dawn team want to push the envelope,’ Holly told him.
‘This is part of a new reintegration programme. From what I hear there’ll be a lot more so get used to it.’
‘I’m not … I didn’t mean it that way.’
‘I know you didn’t,’ I sympathized, preferring to think that Aaron was worried about sheer volume of entries, envisaging all the athletes sprinting together into the lake, jostling and shoulder-charging for the best starting point to give them the shortest distance to the finish line.
‘So where’s Orlando?’ Holly asked as she spotted Grace and Jude climbing out of his red Cherokee. She waved again and beckoned our buddies over.
‘On a plane somewhere …’
‘I thought you said he’d be here Friday.’
‘Yeah,’ I spoke over her. ‘That was the plan.’ And he wasn’t here, was he? All for the sake of three hundred dollars.
Just then my phone buzzed with a text message. Orlando. ‘He’s in the airport as we speak,’ I reported through gritted teeth as Jude and Grace joined us.
‘Look at you – you look so cool!’ were Grace’s first words. She looked like the old, pre-dark angel Grace – soft, fair-haired and curly with wide grey eyes, all over golden, as if evil had never touched her on Black Rock and there’d been no Ezra, no seduction, or any attempt to drag her on to the dark side and steal her soul. I can’t tell you how happy this made me feel.
Grace’s hug was gentle, her open smile told me how glad she was to see me
back. Likewise Jude.
‘Where’s Orl—?’
‘Don’t ask,’ Holly warned.
‘So tell!’ she invited, her eyes still smiling.
‘Tell you what?’
‘How come you didn’t stay away until the year end? Was it Orlando? Did you miss him too much?’ Joined-at-the-hip, loved-up Grace obviously couldn’t imagine being apart from Jude for two days let alone two months and again I took this as a good thing, given what they’d been through at Black Eagle Lodge earlier this year.
‘Actually it’s my mom,’ I told her. ‘She’s in hospital for tests. The neurology department at Denver General – a brain scan, other stuff.’
‘Oh, Tania,’ Grace sighed, and she slipped her arm through mine.
‘No results yet, but I wanted to be home with them.’
‘Europe can wait,’ Jude agreed.
Gulping back my emotions, I switched topics. ‘I did have an awesome time, met some amazing people.’
‘Went shopping, bought some fabulous clothes,’ Holly added, quieter since I’d dropped in the news about my mom.
‘Visited the Louvre, saw the Mona Lisa. It’s so small – no bigger than this!’
‘So you’re still planning on being an artist?’ Grace asked as I sketched out a small rectangle in the air. We huddled together to let the stencilled competitors pass on their way to the starting point, skull caps on, goggles down, wading into the water.
‘Wish me luck.’ Holly took a deep breath. Her goggles made her look like a sexy aviator.
‘Go, girl! Good luck! Get out there and whup ass!’ we said non-ironically. We all really wanted her to win.
‘Right now I’m more into film,’ I told Grace. ‘The early experimental stuff – Andy Warhol, Gillian Wearing, Stefano Cagol.’
She looked at me like I was an alien. ‘Stop, my brain hurts.’