Out Of The Ashes (The Ending Series, #3) (4 page)

“Yes, I promise. Thank you,” I
said. With a final nod, I watched him walk back toward his tent, which he had
yet to finish setting up.

Becca unzipped the tent door
behind me and I turned around, ready to follow her inside. But she just stood
there.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, stepping
up beside her. The light from the fire danced around inside, illuminating the
tent enough to see there was nothing wrong with it.

“I guess I will sleep in my
clothes,” she said so quietly I almost didn’t hear her.

“Is that all?” I asked and
snatched up my saddlebags before sidestepping her and heading inside. “I’m sure
I have something you can borrow.”

Becca followed me in, bringing the
sleeping bags and pads in with her.

Fiddling with the ends of my hair,
which were draped over my shoulder, I watched Becca as she just stood there.
“Have a seat,” I said and opened my bag. I rummaged through the haphazardly
folded clothes tucked inside, trying to find something for each of us to sleep
in. “Here,” I finally said, handing her a long-sleeved thermal shirt and a pair
of sweatpants. “These look comfy, and it looks like I packed…yep, two of each.”

Becca smiled, or at least I
thought it was a smile; it was the first time I’d seen her be very expressive
at all. “Thank you, Zoe.”

“Why don’t you have any clothes?”
I asked, zipping up the tent to change.

Slowly, Becca peeled her clothes
off one by one, until her ensemble was piled on the floor of the tent. “I have
only just joined the group, along with Dr. McLaugh—I mean Gabe, Mase, and
Camille. We were unexpected, so we are relying on your friends’ kindness to
take us in. Dani and the clothes on our backs were all we brought with us.”

“Dani was with
you
?”

Becca made a noncommittal noise and
pulled the sweatpants on. They were too long and very baggy on her, but I
figured that meant they were perfect for sleeping. “Yes,” she said. “Dani was
with Gabe and Dr. Wesley…in the Colony.” Becca’s voice was distant, her
demeanor instantly shifting from open to hesitant.

I tugged my long-sleeved V-neck on
over my head. “Did you not want to leave the Colony with Dani?” I couldn’t stop
myself from asking. The more complicated things became, the more my curiosity
amplified. “You don’t seem happy to be here…” I glanced over at Becca in time
to see the bruises on the side of her body before she pulled her borrowed shirt
down.

“I am happy to be away from there.
It is just that things are not simple for me.” She looked at me. “Or for you.”

I shrugged. “Hopefully my memory
will come back tomorrow.”

The look Becca gave me made me
feel nauseous.

“You don’t think it will?” I
asked.

“I do not know everything,” she
said, offering me the slightest of smiles.

“Only some things?” I asked wryly.

Without hesitation, she said, “I
have the gift of prophecy.”

Still unable to fully process the
whole “Abilities” thing, I paused.

Becca bent down and began folding
her clothes so meticulously that I thought she might be in the military. I
looked over at my saddlebags and almost laughed. The clothes I’d changed out of
were tossed on top, no rhyme or reason or organization. Feeling self-conscious,
I gathered up my dirty socks, jeans, and shirt, and after unwadding them, I
folded them as neatly as I could. My attempt was pathetic compared to Becca’s,
but it sufficed.

Becca must’ve been watching me,
because when I looked up at her, her smile turned genuine. “You are very
different from the last time I saw you.”

My eyes widened. “How so?”
I unrolled my sleeping pad, then pulled my sleeping bag out
of its stuff sack and laid it out on top. Unzipping it, I crawled inside to
keep my feet warm.

Becca studied me and did the same
with Jake’s sleeping gear. “You and Jake were fighting.”

“Really?” I hadn’t been expecting
that. “We were fighting?”

She nodded, her eyes fixed on mine
like she was gauging my reaction. “He was going to leave you and your people and
take me away; he said it was not safe. But Father sent a team to retrieve me,
and I escaped during the gunfire.” Becca looked down at her fingers, which were
laced on her knees. “I had to return to the Colony…Jake did not understand.”

“Did Father do that to you?” I
asked, pointing to the bruised side of her body.

After contemplating my question
for a moment, Becca nodded. “I had to get them out of there,” she said to
herself, and I assumed she was talking about Dani and the others she’d escaped
with.

My mind filled with images of a
distraught Mase and newly-conscious Camille. “The others are like you, too,” I
said, suddenly feeling an intense desire to know what had happened in the hours
I’d lost my memory. “Mase and Camille, they’re…different, like you. The way you
speak, and how you see things like it’s for the first time…they’re the same.”

Becca nodded. “Yes. We are called
Re-gens at the Colony, though Jake says I am his sister as well.”

My brow furrowed at yet another
surprising truth. Jake didn’t treat her like a sister—but then Jason didn’t
treat me like one either, at least not how
I
thought a brother should
treat a sister. I was beginning to think that whatever remaining perception of
reality I had was both misleading and impractical.

“I saw things,” Becca continued,
her voice a panicked whisper. “Horrible things. Things that I could not let
come to pass. I had to tell them. I had to get away from there.” Becca continued
to stare down at her hands. “I am not sure what to think anymore.”

“No?”

After a depleted sigh, she said,
“No.”

Pulling the rubber band from my
hair and letting it fall around my shoulders, I ran my fingers through the dark
strands, wading through my limited memories, trying to determine how
I
felt…what
I
thought
.

All I remembered were strange
voices and surprised faces staring down at me as I huddled inside the closet.
Did
I really forget
all
that Becca just described?
It seemed impossible,
and a ravenous emptiness drained any optimism and hope I had left. A sick
feeling settled in my stomach as it dawned on me: every single moment that
shaped me into Zoe was gone.

I am no one.

“You are not ‘no one,’” Becca
said, and I stirred, not realizing I’d been thinking aloud. She rested her hand
on my shoulder. “You are important.”

“You’ve seen this?” My sudden
curiosity to know more of what she’d
seen
was making me antsy; I twirled
a strand of hair.

Becca shook her head. “No, I
haven’t seen your future, nor do I know your purpose, but your mother is Dr.
Wesley, I know that much. If you are her daughter, you are important.” She
paused in thought. “Jake loves you, and he is important…I know that as well.
So, you must be, too.”

Jake
loves
me?
I wasn’t
sure why I was surprised; Dani had told me much the same earlier. “He’s barely
talked to me all day,” I said.

“All day, I have thought about two
things,” Becca began, her voice a bit softer than before. “I considered what I
might do now that I no longer have a home, a place I belong. And I thought
about Jake. If what he says is true, if I
am
his sister, then he has
lost both his sister and the woman he loves. Now, here we are again, and
neither of us remembers him. I cannot imagine how he might feel.” Becca
frowned. “I generally am not so…reflective, I think is the word, but much is
changing…”
She stretched out in her sleeping
bag, staring up at the bouncing shadows on the nylon overhead.

We were quiet for a while, and I
nearly allowed the crackling fire outside and the sound of crickets in the
woods beyond our tent to lull me to sleep. But before I was out completely, I
heard low voices by the fire.

“We’ve got to figure out a way to
fix her,” Harper said, his voice low and thoughtful.

“It’s not like there are rules to
any of this shit,” Jason grumbled.

The sound of wood being tossed in
the fire filled the momentary silence.

“There has to be a way.” It was
Jake’s baritone, followed by retreating footsteps.

I glanced over at Becca to see if
she was awake, but her back was to me, and all I could see was the outline of
her torso rising and falling with each breath. I lay there, listening to my
“friends” discuss my condition like it was simply an infection needing proper
treatment. My mind reeled with questions and mounting fear until their voices
fell silent, and I eventually drifted to sleep.

~~~~~

A slight breeze caressed my
skin as I sat on a dock, gazing out at a lake—its glassy surface was
illuminated with pinks and oranges, like it was set aflame by the sun sinking
behind the rolling hills.

My chest grew heavier, and I
was nearly suffocating under the weight of too many emotions.

“I know what I want,” said a
deep, rumbling voice.

I spun around to find Jake
standing beside me, his luminous, amber eyes peering into the depths of my
soul. He knew me; I could see it in the way he looked at me, those eyes filled
with longing and uncertainty and need.

Like his emotions sparked my
own, I felt the need to weep from the inexplicable love I felt for him.

“Jake, I—” I didn’t have time to
think, to say anything.

In seconds his lips were
pressed against mine, his kiss fierce and blazing. My hands moved of their own
accord, grabbing a handful of his jacket and pulling him closer to me as his
fingers tightened in my hair. An overwhelming, frenzied greed consumed us both
as my arms snaked around his neck and his hands explored my body.

We were panting, and a low
groan resonated deep inside his chest. My body throbbed with a pleasurable ache
I wanted to both last forever and go away, ridding me of my torment.

Jake froze, sending an
unnatural anger and despondency simmering through me. He stepped away,
leaving me to stand there alone, the cool breeze turning icy against my exposed
skin. Panic riddled my nerves, and I tried fervently to grasp hold of him.

He was pulling away from me…

He was leaving me…alone…

With a jolt, I opened my eyes. I
was surrounded by darkness, only the starry sky overhead visible through the
rectangles of netting on the roof of the tent. There was no more campfire, and there
were no more voices. All I could hear was the wind whistling through the trees.

As I lay there, my heart still
pounding from the dream, I felt completely lost and alone. I didn’t like the
dangerous intoxication that settled over me as I remembered Jake’s hot
breath…the thrill that sang through me as I recalled the feeling of his fingers
pressing against my skin…

“Zoe? Are you alright?” Becca
asked quietly.

“Yes,” I said quickly, not feeling
comfortable talking to her about it.

“Are you sure?”

“I just had a strange dream. I’ll
be fine.”

Becca was quiet for a moment. “Was
it a dream or a memory?”

Rolling over, I studied her
darkened outline. “A dream. At least, I think it was…”

“Do not fight it,” she said. “If
it
is
your memory, you should not fight it.”

Had
it been a memory?
It
had been so vivid, so charged with emotions I couldn’t remember ever feeling
before, that part of me doubted it was even possible.

3

DANI

MARCH 28, 1AE

San Juan National Forest, Colorado

Carrying a small
bin of grooming tools under my good arm, I led Wings toward a retention pond
beside the field where we’d set up camp for the night. We passed between one of
the three carts and the replica pioneer chuck wagon that we’d found in one of
the barns back at Colorado Trails Ranch. We’d stayed at the ranch only one
night, wanting to put as much distance between us and the Colony as possible,
as
soon
as possible. That single night was just long enough for us to stock
up on tack and another dozen horses from the area, redistribute our supplies
among the packhorses and conveyances, and convene for a quick strategic
meeting, and for Harper and Jake to attempt a regenerative blood transfusion on
Zoe—which ended up being the most anti-climactic fail
ever
. She still
remembered nothing of her life before the golf course.

Zoe’s memory loss
was proving to be as stubborn as my best friend was…or used to be. This new
Zoe, this
not-Zoe
Zoe, was different; she was less closed off, less
severe, and every time she said or did something that emphasized just how much
Clara’s violent mind-wiping had changed her, the thundercloud that had become
my mood darkened. Just as it did every time I spoke to Jason—
lied
to
Jason—avoided Gabe, or remembered my time in the General’s concrete
interrogation room, or the way the light had faded from the child Crazy’s eyes
as she bled out from the bullet wound I’d put in her chest.

Maybe if I hadn’t
burned out my telepathy
again
, and I could speak with Wings, Jack, and
Ray, as I’d grown so accustomed to doing over the past few months, I would’ve
been able to find comfort in their steadfast companionship and stave off the
looming negativity. But my Ability
was
burned out, and missing my
usually lighthearted, sometimes philosophical conversations with my animal friends
only added to my doom-and-gloom mood.

I spotted Mase
and Camille, sitting at the edge of the pond while they filtered water into
large plastic jugs, and nodded a hello.

Camille’s
remarkable recovery was the only bright ray of hope keeping the thundercloud from
overtaking me completely. She’d woken up five days ago, the night after we
found Zoe and left Colorado Springs, her memory intact but her ability to speak
apparently gone completely. Harper’s best guess was that certain parts of her
brain must’ve suffered permanent damage during her seizure and resulting coma,
and he’d even proposed that she might have had a stroke, though he couldn’t
tell for sure without some pretty high-tech equipment. But she was awake, and
more whole than she’d been since she’d died…the first time. Her recovery, at
least, was something.

I sighed and
shook my head.

Zoe was following
Wings and me, Shadow trailing behind her. The other seventeen members of our
group were moving among the tents clustered around the campfire or through the
scattering of trees lining the field, searching for firewood. Except for Jason;
he was absolutely committed to the task of nulling Zoe, of keeping her Ability
from surfacing and pummeling her shattered mind with foreign memories and
emotions, and therefore had become her ever-present second shadow…or third
shadow
,
if you counted her horse.

I snorted at my
lame silent pun, and blinked rapidly as my eyes started to sting. I would
not
start crying just because I found Jason’s commitment to protecting my best
friend—the sister he’d successfully estranged through emotional and physical
distance—so sweet, so admirable. It was like this tragedy had jumpstarted his
brotherly instincts, making him realize all he’d missed out on over the years. His
renewed devotion to her made me feel like such a crap friend in comparison,
because the more time I spent with this Zoe—this hauntingly familiar stranger,
devoid of everything that had made her my best friend—the less I
wanted
to
be around her.

Like I said—crap
friend.

Reaching the edge
of the pond, I set the small bin of grooming tools on the ground and waited for
Wings to amble closer. She did and ducked her head down to slurp at the water.

Zoe and Shadow
took up a position a few feet away, just on the other side of the bin, and
Jason hoisted himself up and settled on the bench seat of the nearest cart. He pulled
out a pocket knife and his latest whittling project—an as-yet-unrecognizable
hunk of wood about the size of a baseball.

My eyes lingered
on him for a moment longer, tracing the angry red scar crossing his face from
hairline to jaw and the hunched set of his shoulders, before I bent over to
grab a soft-bristled brush and turned my attention to Wings.

“Thanks for teaching
me all this horse stuff,” Zoe said from behind me.

I glanced over my
shoulder to study her and frowned. I’d been doing that a lot lately, both
studying Zoe and frowning. The setting sun gleamed a burnished purple off her
and Shadow’s onyx hair. I’d offered to walk Zoe through the basics of horse grooming,
hoping that doing something
with
her, something
I
always found
soothing, might alleviate some of my infuriating aversion
to
her.

Meeting her eyes,
I forced a tight smile. “No problem. You used to like helping me with grooming
them, back when we were in high school, so I thought…” I shrugged. “I don’t
know.” I returned my focus to Wings, running the brush over a coffee-brown
patch on her shoulder. “I just thought you might still like it.” I didn’t tell Zoe
that I was searching for some remnant of my best friend, some sliver of hope
that she was still
her
.

There was a long
moment of silence, and then Zoe exhaled heavily. “I’ve been thinking about
that…about me before and me now. Do you think—” She paused. I could hear the
sound of soft bristles running over Shadow’s coat as Zoe started brushing him.
The black gelding was still recovering from the neglect he’d suffered at the
hands of a couple of Crazies, and the six-day trek through the southern Rockies
with only a half-day and night’s rest at Colorado Trails hadn’t done him any
favors. Although he was doing better than when Zoe’s group had first found him,
he was exhausted and hurting, much like the rest of us. I didn’t need my
Ability to know that.

When Zoe didn’t
resume her question, I looked at her. “Do I think…?”

She stopped
brushing, turned to lean her shoulder against Shadow, and sighed. “It’s just
that, if I don’t have any memories of what made me
me
,
do you think I’m even still
me
?”

Do you think
I’m even still me?

Zoe’s question
seemed to echo in my mind, burrowing deeply, mostly because it was pretty much
the same thing I’d been wondering since we first found her. Was Zoe still
Zoe
if she had no memory of experiencing the things that had
made
her
the loyal, guarded, and determined person I loved? A dull, incessant ache
spread through my chest, a yawning void created by her mental disappearance.

My eyes stung—
again
—and
I cleared my throat. “You know, Zo…I think knowing who you really are is hard
for a lot of people.”

Yes, I was
avoiding answering her question completely, but I meant what I said. After all,
I hardly recognized myself anymore. My frown reemerged. Anyone who cracked me
open in an attempt to find out what made me
me
would discover a rancid,
tangly wad of guilt. And self-loathing. And plain old misery.

My best friend—thanks
to a psycho with the Ability to alter people’s perception, even erase their
memories—had no idea that she
was
my best friend. And the reason she’d
fallen into Clara’s manipulative little hands?

Me.

I’d been stupid
enough to get ambushed and abducted, and thanks to my bad judgment, Zoe wasn’t
really Zoe anymore. My frown deepened into a scowl. I really hated myself
sometimes.

After a few more
strokes over the paint’s sculpted shoulder, which I was pretty sure soothed me
more than it soothed Wings, I glanced over at Jason. If he noticed me watching
him, he didn’t show it. It was like we’d traveled back in time ten years, to
the days when I’d spend every possible moment stealing glances at him, and he’d
spend just as much time ignoring me.

Before my stint
in the Colony, I’d thought I had him figured out, but now he was even more of
an enigma to me than he’d been during my teen years. He was still a classic
Adonis, all lean muscle and chiseled features, but now his masculine perfection
was marred by an angry red scar slashing across his face. It added a layer of
menace to the confidence and sense of carefully honed power he usually exuded.
He’d always been guarded, just like his sister, but since my abduction, he’d
withdrawn further into himself. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why,
and I didn’t know how to draw him back out. Even though he was never far from
my side, emotionally, he was miles away. I missed him.

I turned around,
facing Zoe, and leaned my head on Wings’s shoulder. My need for girl talk, for Zoe
to listen as I spilled out all of my gnawing worries and offer up her usual,
no-nonsense advice, was becoming overwhelming.
Should I just talk to her
like everything’s normal? Can’t I just pretend she’s
her
?
I really
needed my Zo…

“You’re staring
at me,” Zoe said. She lowered her brush hand and, using her opposite fingers,
tucked a flyaway that had escaped from her ponytail behind her ear. “Are you
okay?”

I blinked several
times, noticing the excessive moisture in my eyes, and forced a smile. “I’m
fine…I think.”

Zoe shifted her
feet and looked down at the dirt. She swiped ineffectively at a dark smudge
staining her jeans. “You can cry…if you need to. I don’t mind. In fact, you can
consider me your official shoulder to cry on.” She shrugged, meeting my eyes
only briefly. “It’s the least I can do, since I’m pretty much otherwise
inept…at everything.”

The thundercloud
thinned, just a little, and I started chuckling. That was something Zoe would
have said; she’d always looked out for me, always been the first to comfort me
when I needed it and the first to defend me when I couldn’t defend myself. Not
that I didn’t try to defend myself. It was just that I was so damn small nobody
was
ever
intimidated by me. And when I
had
made a point to stand
up for myself or—shudder—lost my temper, I was pretty sure people saw me as the
human version of a snarling Chihuahua. Not. Scary. At. All.

From the way Zoe
was watching me, it was obvious that she was unsure how to respond to my abrupt
shift from verge of tears to genuine, if gentle, laughter. Her eyebrows drew
down, and the corners of her mouth twitched. She smiled weakly. It was like she
was trying to figure out how
I
wanted her to react—how the old Zoe would
have reacted. For a moment, the disquiet I felt around her melted, and the only
thing that mattered to me was making her feel comfortable.

I pushed off
Wings gently and stepped closer to Zoe, nudging her arm with my shoulder. “Don’t
try so hard, Zo. Just do what feels natural and stop worrying about the rest of
us and what we expect from you.” I flashed her a halfhearted grin. “We’ll
figure it out as we go.” Empty platitudes for the most part, but from the way
the tension around her eyes relaxed, I could tell the words meant something to
Zoe. Apparently even crap friends could pull through every once in a while.

Just as I was
turning back to Wings to resume brushing her, I heard a dog barking. I craned
my neck to see around Zoe and Shadow and spotted Jack trotting through the overgrown
field beside our camp.
He
barked several more times as I watched him draw nearer.

Without warning, something
inside me snapped. A whoosh, like the most intense ear-popping imaginable,
knocked the air out of me, and I doubled over. My Ability burnout wore off in
an instant, and thousands upon thousands of sparks of awareness burst to life
in my mind’s eye, a glowing galaxy representing all of the life forms around
me. It was glorious. And unexpected. And so far beyond too much that I thought
I might be crushed under the enormity of what I was sensing.

Several things
happened at once: Jack reached me, dancing a circle around me, his tail hanging
low while he whined and chanted,
“Mother? Mother! Mother?”
in my mind;
Zoe’s hand wrapped around my upper arm, the support she offered the only thing
keeping me from doubling over completely; and Jason appeared before me,
crouching and placing his hands on either side of my head.

“Red?” Jason
said. “Look at me, Dani. Open your eyes.” His hold on my head tightened.

I hadn’t realized
I’d squeezed my eyes shut until he told me to open them. I obeyed, clenching my
jaw. Jason’s face, inches from mine, was carefully blank, but his eyes held a
concern so wild and intense that it verged on panic.

“What’s wrong?”
His voice was low and even—too even. “What do you need?”

I swallowed,
despite my mouth and throat feeling unbearably dry. “My…Ability…too much,” I
managed to say through gritted teeth. Something like this had happened once
before; I’d overextended the reach of my telepathy and nearly lost myself to
the collective pull of the minds around me. I should have been stronger now,
especially after the painful but productive electrotherapy session I’d
accidentally experienced back in the Colony. I should have been able to control
my Ability, to pull back, to shut it off…to do
something
. But I
couldn’t.