Out Of The Ashes (The Ending Series, #3) (18 page)

15

DANI

APRIL 28, 1AE

Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, Nevada

I ran a curry
brush along the curve of Wings’s back, over and over again. The rest of the
horses were already rubbed down and turned out in the field of wild grasses
that spanned the acres between the highway and the sprawling forestland to the
south. It was the first time we’d been somewhere so green in weeks, let alone
near a creek that held enough water to actually clean ourselves. I didn’t know
where the others were, but I assumed the creek had captured their attention.

Not that I really
cared, other than being glad they weren’t nearby. It was a relief to finally be
alone with Wings and Jack. I planned to stay with them until the sky darkened
and I was too tired to keep my eyes open, and then I would slip into their
minds and spend the long hours of the night with them as well. I basked in the
comfort only they could provide, because only
they
understood what I was
going through. The others—my
human
companions—they tried to comfort me,
but all of their pitying eyes and concerned expressions only made me feel
worse.

And then there
was Chris. She’d volunteered for “Dani duty” this morning so she could ride in
the front of our caravan and meddle with my brain chemistry. Usually, I
appreciated the brand of soothing that was unique to her, but this time I
didn’t. I’d let her take the pain away after Cam died, mostly because for days,
weeks even, neither of us realized what she was doing. I hadn’t been able to
mourn Cam, not fully and not while the feelings were still raw, and I was
determined
not
to let the same thing happen with Ray. I didn’t think I
would be able to continue on with another burden of half-closure looming
overhead like a thundercloud, always on the verge of bursting and showering me
in misery.

“I’ll talk to
her tomorrow,”
I told
Wings and Jack, knowing they would understand my meaning. I’d looped them in on
my inner monologue, not wanting to keep any unnecessary barriers between us.
Because one day, I would lose them, too.

I stayed with
them while the sun slipped behind the tree-lined hills, while the sky turned orange,
then red, and then darkened, and while the stars winked into existence
overhead. I stayed with them until Jason showed up and pulled me toward our
tent, where he tucked me in before heading back out for first watch. But even
then, while I lay alone in the tent, I stayed with them.

~~~~~

My eyelids
snapped open as a strange blip appeared on my telepathic radar.

“What the hell?”
I murmured, closing my eyes to make focusing easier. I was used to random
animal minds flitting here and there, coming closer and moving away on the
ground,
under
ground, and in the air, but I could always recognize what
sort of creature I was sensing. But this mind…it was completely unrecognizable.

It wasn’t overly
close, maybe a mile to the south, but it was heading in our direction.

I opened my eyes
again, sat up, and crawled out of my sleeping bag. Jason wasn’t tucked in his
sleeping bag beside mine, which meant it was still first watch, still before
two in the morning. I slipped my feet into my boots and unzipped the tent door.
As I exited, I telepathically called Jack to me.

He trotted
through the darkness, Cooper right beside him.

“Quiet, boys,”
I told them both as they drew closer.
“We
don’t want to wake everyone.”

The German
shepherd and husky sniffed my legs and wagged their tails while I took a moment
to scratch each behind an ear.

“Where’s
Jason?”
I asked them.

Jack grunted and
yawned, his version of a whisper, before turning and trotting toward the wagon
and cart, which were parked just outside our circle of tents.

I rarely had
watch, considering I was
on watch
via the animal minds pretty much all
day and, to some degree, all night anyway; that alone nearly exhausted me, so
I’d never had the chance to sit with Jason in the wee hours of the morning,
guarding our slumbering companions. I didn’t know his patterns, his favorite
lookout spots, his strategies for staying awake.

Splitting my
consciousness between my own mind and Jack’s, I could make out a person’s
silhouette on the wagon’s bench seat a short ways ahead. I allowed my
consciousness to become whole again as I neared the wagon, and the shadow that
was Jason became visible to my own, less sensitive eyes.

“Jason,” I
whispered. “It’s me. Don’t shoot me.”

“I saw you get
out of the tent,” he said, his voice low, dry. “
And
heard you stomp over here. I know it’s you.”

“I didn’t stomp.”

Jake, who I
hadn’t noticed sitting beside Jason, leaned forward. They looked like two heads
coming out of the same body. “You didn’t tiptoe, either.”

I glared at them
both, not that they could tell.

Chuckling, Jason
hopped down from the wagon. “What’s up?”

“I felt
something…” I focused on the strange mind again. It was closer, maybe a
half-mile away now, and still headed toward us. “But it doesn’t feel like any
animal mind I’ve ever sensed…and it’s coming our way.”

My eyes had
adjusted to the darkness enough that I could just make out Jason’s frown. “Any
guesses?”

I answered with
my own frown and a shake of my head.

And then I felt
another of them—no, two more. They, too, were heading toward us, a short way
behind the first one but closing in quickly.

“There’s more.” I
squinted, concentrating. “Two of
something
chasing another of their own
kind.” Again, the corners of my mouth turned down, and I shook my head. “I
don’t know what they are. They feel sort of familiar, like—”

A horse screamed,
and I instinctively slipped part of myself into Wings’s mind. She was standing
in the grassy field with a handful of horses from our herd, all sniffing the
air and tossing their heads.

“What is it?”
I asked her.

“Danger,”
she said.
“Two-legs. They hunt other
two-legs.”
She focused her eyes on a shadowy shape rushing across the
field, then on the cluster of similar shapes several dozen yards behind it. “
They
hurt herd-mate.”
She lowered her head and sniffed the writhing body of one
of the pack horses, who appeared unable to stand.

Eyes wide, I
reached for Jason, my fingers digging into his forearm. “It’s people.” I didn’t
waste time wondering
how
I was able to sense some of them. All that
mattered was relaying the message. “They’re coming here…chasing another person,
and there’s more of them than I can sense—maybe six? Or seven? They hurt one of
the horses.”

Jason’s eyes
searched mine. “Where?”

I pointed to the
portion of the field Wings had shown me.

Jake jumped down
from the wagon and whistled three times, paused, then repeated the sound. It
was our holy-shit-we’re-under-attack signal. We’d sounded it before, but it had
always been a false alarm.
This
wasn’t.

“Get under the
wagon,” Jason ordered, pushing me in that direction. I could hear the others
moving around in their tents and the sound of zippers in the suddenly restless
night.

“I’m not hiding!”

Jason dragged me
toward the chuck wagon despite my protests. “You can do more from under there
than you can do out here, so get under the fucking wagon.” It took me an
especially dull moment to understand what he meant—the animals. He meant I
could call in outside help, raise an army of teeth, claws, and talons.

Staring into his
eyes, I nodded and whispered, “Don’t hurt the one in the lead. It’s their
prey.”

“I’ll do what I
can.” Jason kissed me, hard, then more or less shoved me under the wagon.

I didn’t resist.
I was already searching the forest to the south and the desert to the north. If
this had happened during daytime, my resources would have been limited, but not
at night. Night was when the most dangerous creatures came out to play. Of
course, it didn’t matter how dangerous they were if they weren’t close enough…

A female mountain
lion was hunting in the desert, about a half mile north of our camp, and a pack
of coyotes were hunting a few miles to the east. The coyotes were too far away
to bank on, but the mountain lion’s location was a lucky break. And just beyond
Wings’s field, several bobcats were watching the pack of not-quite-humans stalk
after their prey. A human who, like the other two I could sense, could
communicate with the bobcats. Like me.

A second was all
I could spare to be utterly dumbfounded, to wonder if that was why I could
sense these three humans’ minds—because they could mind-meld with animals like
I could. I was getting the impression that my Ability was the only similarity I
shared with this roving pack of wild humans.

The mountain lion
hissed when I told her what—or rather
who—
was attacking my camp. She was
already sprinting toward me, her leaping strides consuming the distance with
astonishing speed. I just hoped she made it in time.

Flat on my
stomach under the wagon, I took a deep breath. Reinforcements were on the way.
I rolled onto my side and reached for my gun. Which wasn’t there. I no longer
had to wear the sling for my broken forearm, but the cast made it almost
impossible to don my shoulder holster by myself. My only weapon was the combat
knife in my boot sheath, which I never went without—
not
ever.

I reached down to
my calf and drew the half-foot blade just as I felt the first like-me mind—the
prey—reach the outer circle of our tents. I squeezed my eyes shut and hoped
that Jason had found a way to alert the others that
that one
wasn’t the
enemy.

Footsteps, short
and quick, rushed toward my hiding spot. My eyes snapped open and my muscles
tensed, ready to strike. Except I couldn’t sense the mind of whoever was
approaching, which meant it was more likely a friend than a foe.

“Dani,” Zoe whispered.
“I’ve got Sarah. Can you help me get her under there before—”

There was a
gunshot, closely followed by a screech from Sarah.

Another gunshot.

I could feel the
prey in the center of our circle of tents, stationary but unharmed, as far as I
could tell.

Sarah wiggled
under the wagon so quickly that I didn’t have time to even think about trying
to help her; all I had time to do was move out of the way. Zoe followed, and
within seconds, the three of us lay side by side, Sarah on her back, cozy to
the point of being claustrophobic.

“What’s going
on?” Sarah asked, her voice thready and too high. “Jason sent us here…” Though
I couldn’t actually see much of her face, shielded as it was from the dim
moonlight by the wagon overhead, her terror was palpable.

“He said we’re
under attack,” Zoe added.

“Shhh!” I hissed.
Because at that very moment, the other two human minds I
could
sense
neared the edge of our camp.

There were a
handful of them; I’d gleaned as much from the horses as the strange humans had
passed through their pasture. And tapping into Jack’s and Cooper’s keen senses,
I could tell that these intruders were hanging back several dozen yards,
staying low and hiding in the tall grasses and behind stray boulders and trees
around the outskirts of camp. If they continued to move like that, slow and
incredibly quiet—like wolves—they’d be almost impossible to find in the
moonless night.

Another pair of
footsteps crunched closer, coming from the circle of tents. More of our people,
I assumed, but I still gripped my combat knife tightly, preparing to strike.

I watched the
darkness as they neared. Knees landed on the ground by the front left wheel
just before Ky’s face, a mask of silvery light and shadows, appeared less than
a foot from mine. “D—you under there?”

“Shhh…,” I
repeated. “They’re really close.” 

“We can’t get a
lock on ’em,” he said, lowering his voice to the barest whisper. “Ben’s on the
other side of the wagon. We’ll keep you safe.” Ky paused. “Any chance of some
wolves or something…?”

“No, but a mountain
lion’s on her way.”

A low-chorused
growl started from right beside Ky. Jack and Cooper had arrived, and feeling
their mind signatures so close was immensely comforting. Abruptly, the dogs’
growls intensified, and both moved around the back end of the wagon.

“Shit!” Ben
shouted just as one of the strange minds rushed straight toward us.

There was a loud
thud, and the wagon creaked and groaned overhead. I heard a wet, tearing sound,
and then a thump.

Ben was lying on
the ground on Zoe’s side of the wagon, his limbs floundering and his neck
glistening in the faint moonlight. Blood as black as tar gushed out of a gaping
hole in his neck.