Criminal Beware: The Lykanos Chronicles 1

Chapter Two

I headed west over the next week on four separate trains, but always in a private box. It was a splendid way to travel, and I marveled at all I saw through my window. The views were at times the most beautiful vistas imaginable—an endless natural wilderness that I'd only seen in paintings. But even the finest museum painting, enhanced with the color and emotional resonance of its artist, couldn't do wild America justice. The civilized parts of the country that were still rough still held an intense fascination for me. They bore an austere beauty that underlined just how unique New York City really was. Knowing I would be away from her indefinitely became dreary at times. I couldn't shake the feeling I was riding in a police wagon, being transported out to a hard prison sentence in the wastes of southern California. And the days spent aboard those tight little cells only served to worsen my anxiety, the emotion compounding with each stop or carriage change.

After a daunting push up through the tight, snowcapped mountains of the Sierra Nevada, I arrived in California. We pulled through Los Angeles, a city with an unfathomably wide footprint where there was currently no snow on the ground at all. Bewildered, I looked down from my seat to see that spring had come very early to this place. It was only days into February, and I couldn't quite reconcile the dry ground and cloudless sky. I considered walking outside as we sat at the L.A. station awaiting our final stretch. However, by the fifth day of my journey, I didn't have the nerve to explore yet another unobtainable land. Within the hour, the train was on its way again, headed south for San Diego.

I'd had quite enough of the nomadic sentence aboard a moving cell. I was ready to be done with trains forever and decided to embrace my new home with open arms, whatever disappointments it might hold.

When the tracks eventually led the train up to and along the coastline, the unexpected beauty of the vista took my breath away. The ocean was obviously not new to me, but I'd never seen its majesty quite like this. The tracks moved along a small terrace only ten feet above the white, sandy beaches of the California coast for miles and miles. We rode along thin stretches where tidal waves crashed not a hundred feet from the train's iron tracks. The mighty Pacific, a stunning azure expanse, with its many small islands lying just off in the distance on this clear day, stole my imagination and my heart. The sight lasted for only half an hour before the train moved back inland as we neared San Diego, but something about the unexpected grace of that view changed my sour disposition.

When we reached our final destination, I waited patiently in my compartment. Not wanting to be rushed through, I waved off the attendant and asked him to first tend to the people in the units around me. When another attendant finally came for my luggage, I was standing calmly, my mind set to begin.

Stepping down from the narrow stairs to find the unmoving land of the Santa Fe Depot felt different from how I'd imagined it would. I'd only walked a couple steps before I involuntarily paused to feel the sweet air that filled my lungs. The sensation of this warm, salty breeze baffled me as I looked up to find massive Queen Anne palm trees swaying gently underneath a cloudless sky. I felt the harsh sunlight on my fair skin, beaming down past the rim of my hat to reach my face.

"We don't really do winter out here," a man remarked with a smirk, apparently certain that he'd correctly identified his new charge. "It's part of the bargain we make—trading the hassles of New England for this latitude. Got to give up those miserable winters for all this tiresome perfect weather, I'm afraid," he said, smiling.

The man stood handsomely in the noon sun, his finely crafted hat casually holding the frame of his face. He later revealed that I'd been easily marked by the long, woolen coat that I'd bundled myself in when it was seventy-three degrees outside.

"I'm joking with you, of course. I'm from L.A., but I've been to New York and know painfully well what you've just come from. I suppose you expected to find yourself stepping into more of the same winter you're accustomed to?"