The Guardians (MORE Trilogy) (21 page)

They started through the cloak, Ava marveling again at the shimmering landscape around them. “It must have been awful, to be held prisoner all those years. Forced to do things. I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

Emma swallowed, blinking rapidly, and Ava realized she was fighting back tears. “I didn’t mind usually,” she said once she’d regained control. “I just . . . I didn’t like it when they made me change people. Like Caleb.”

They came through the cloak and Ava reached out to place an arm around the younger girl’s shoulders. “It’s not your fault. We’ll find him, and you’ll fix it, right?”

“Right.”
 

She swiped at her nose with the back of her hand, and Ava was struck by how young she seemed. A mark on the inside of Emma’s left wrist caught Ava’s eye, and before she even realized what she was doing, Ava reached out to grab Emma’s hand for a better look. It was a simple tattoo—a thick arc followed the curve along the base of Emma’s palm. It was linked to another arc by a vertical line crossing in the center of both. Ava had seen the mark before but couldn’t quite place it.

“It’s the symbol for Pisces,” Emma told her, tugging up her sleeve so Ava could see it better. “Highly intuitive, yin and yang . . . the chameleons of the Zodiac. Sounds mysterious, right?” She wiggled her eyebrows with a grin.

“I don’t know much about it. It’s the fish, isn’t it?”

Emma laughed. “Yeah, the fish.” She shrugged. “I just thought the tattoo looked cool.” She ran her thumb over the ink before letting her arms fall back to her side.
 

“How do you get it to stay?” Ava asked. “I’d think it would heal, like other injuries?”

“It takes a special talent. Someone who can manipulate the flesh to heal around the ink,” Emma said with a shrug. “I don’t get it completely. Healing’s a bit of a mystery to me still.”

They came around a corner and spotted Tiernan walking ahead of them on a narrow trail through some trees.
 

Emma glanced at Ava as they hurried a bit to catch up with him. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“That thing you did back at the cave. Do you do that a lot?”

“Not a lot. I don’t often have a need to create a landslide.” She smiled, and Emma laughed.
 

“It’s just . . . you’re pretty powerful, aren’t you?”

“I guess.” Ava shrugged. “I still can’t do a lot of stuff, though.”

“Like the running.”

“Like the running. And the heavy lifting.”

“That is kind of weird,” Emma said, her tone all teenage bluntness. “Do you know why?”

“Not really.” They started up an incline and Ava grabbed a branch to steady herself. “I had some kind of psychic block. Caleb thinks some of it might still be there.”

“A block?” Emma said slowly. “I might be able to help you with that.”

“Absolutely not,” Tiernan snapped, glaring back at them from several steps ahead. “You stay out of our heads.”

Ava bristled. “She was only offering—”

“
I
know what she was offering,” he said, his words precise and intentionally enunciated as the tension rippled through his huge frame. “Have
you
forgotten what she did to Caleb?” He spun on Emma, a thick finger in her face. “You’re here against my better judgment because you said you could help with Caleb. But make no mistake, I don’t entirely trust you.”

“Tiernan!” Ava glared at him. “Don’t be such a jerk.”

“No, it’s okay,” Emma said quietly. “He’s right. You don’t really know me. And I did do something awful to Caleb.” She touched Ava’s arm, a light brush of fingers, before she tugged her sleeves down to cover her hands. “But the offer stands. If you want me to try—after this is over.” She glanced at Tiernan nervously, her voice almost a whisper. “Just say the word.”

Tiernan delivered one more intimidating glare—and yes, Ava was getting a bit tired of
those
—before continuing down the trail.
 

“He’s kind of cranky,” Emma whispered.

Ava snorted. “Yeah, I don’t think he was hugged enough as a child.”

“I can hear you,” he called back before a hair-raising shriek stopped them all in their tracks.

“What was that?” Ava said, careful to stay as quiet as possible.

There was no need for an answer because a crackle of branches drew their attention to a gap in the trees off to the right.

“Something’s coming,” Emma whispered, grabbing Ava’s arm in a frightened grip.
 

The noise got louder, the underbrush swaying as something moved beneath it—something growling. They watched, motionless, as a mountain lion slinked out of the brush. It snarled, its lip curled up over curved canines as its tail swished menacingly back and forth.
 

“Don’t move,” Tiernan said, so still it seemed he barely breathed.
 

Ava had never wished for super speed so hard in her life.
 

The cat didn’t advance any farther, though. It simply watched them with piercing black eyes, its ears twitching as it alternated between low, threatening growls and terrifying screams.
 

“What’s it doing?” Ava’s instincts kicked in once the rush of adrenaline had slowed a bit, and she realized something about the lion seemed wrong. Artificial, almost. Ava reached for her gift and used it to pick up a branch a few feet from the mountain lion.
 

The lion didn’t flinch, continuing its growling and snarling.

“What are you doing?” Tiernan asked through his teeth.
 

Ava ignored him and hefted the branch into the air—then hurled it right at the mountain lion’s head.

Nothing happened. The branch clattered into the brush as though the cat wasn’t even there. Because it wasn’t.

“It’s a hallucination,” Emma said with a relieved exhale. “Another layer to the cloak.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
 

The image of the lion wavered and disappeared.

“Sorry,” she said to Tiernan. “Guess I should have asked first.”
 

He just grunted and continued up the trail. “We must be getting close,” he said.

“Thank you,” Ava said in a loud and emphatic voice, grinning at Emma when Tiernan ignored her.

They passed through yet another layer of the cloak—a sheer cliff rising out of the ground before them—and pushed their way through without even slowing. The click of weapons stopped them in their tracks when they emerged on the other side, though, and it took a moment for them to realize a dozen people blocked a wide roadway in front of them—with a barrage of weapons aimed in their direction.
 

Ava hadn’t even felt them through the cloak, which she would wonder about once she was no longer afraid for her life. Her power flared, rocks and branches vibrating on the ground and levitating a few inches up in response to the threat.

“Probably not a good idea,” Tiernan said, raising his hands slowly in surrender as he kept his voice low and calm. “I doubt you’re quicker than a bullet.”

“Try me.” The rocks swirled about them slowly before, thinking better of it, Ava lowered them to the ground and raised her hands as well, followed by Emma, who’d moved just behind Ava’s left shoulder.

“Should I do something?” she whispered, even though everyone could obviously hear her.
 

“No,” Ava replied a little louder, her eyes meeting the gaze of each person in front of them. “We don’t want to hurt anyone.”

A woman about Ava’s size, with close-cropped blond hair, scoffed at that, lifting her rifle a little. “Who are you?” she asked. “What are you doing here?”

Tiernan took a step forward, half blocking Ava and Emma. “We’re looking for Caleb Foster.”

The woman narrowed her eyes on him. “I know you. You’re a Protector.” She pointed her gun at Tiernan’s head. “It’s the Council!” she told the others, eliciting a rumble of outrage . . . or perhaps concern. “Get on your knees.” She gestured with the tip of her weapon. “And don’t try any of your tricks. We have a dampener.”

Tiernan dropped slowly to his knees as a man with shaggy dark hair stepped forward and eyed Ava curiously, his head tipped a little to the left. He continued to stare, and she got a strange, prickling sensation down her back, followed by a kind of constricting feeling, like being wrapped in a blanket. She almost felt like she couldn’t move and was surprised to find she could actually wiggle her fingers.
 

“Strange feeling, isn’t it?” The blond woman said with a wry smirk. “Being cut off from your gift like that?”
 

The dark-haired man continued to stare, his black eyes piercing—as though he could see through her.
 

It reminded Ava of when Caleb tried to blur her memories back when she first started to suspect he wasn’t quite what he seemed, and with a stunned realization, she reached for her gift. It was still there, she noted with relief, flickering around her consciousness, but . . . distant, almost. She called to it, felt it well up a bit, fighting against the dampener.
 

His black gaze narrowed as he focused and drove Ava’s gift back down.

“I think I can stop him,” Emma said under her breath, her fingers brushing against Ava’s.
 

Ava stopped fighting him and reached back to squeeze Emma’s hand in reassurance. She had a feeling she could stop him as well, but that wasn’t their purpose at that moment.
 

“Look,” she said, addressing the blond woman she assumed was in command. “We’re not here for the Council. We’re here to warn you.”

“Warn us about what?”

“It’s complicated,” Ava said. “But you—the whole Colony—could be in danger. We have to know if Caleb’s been here.”

“What do you know of Caleb?”
 

An older man standing at the back of the group stepped forward, and Ava noticed the blonde moved back a little deferentially. The man didn’t carry a gun and stood loose-limbed at the front of the group as though he knew they weren’t a threat. He was tall, a bit broad in the shoulders, but lean in a way that Ava found vaguely familiar, though she couldn’t decide why. His dark hair was cut close to his head on the sides, a little longer on top, his green eyes knowing and intent.
 

“He’s my . . . friend,” Ava responded after clearing her throat nervously. “But something’s happened to him.”

The man took another step forward, darkness falling over his features as his jaw tensed. “What’s happened to him?”

Ava cast a weary glance at Tiernan, who shrugged in response. She turned back to the man and cleared her throat. “He’s been manipulated. The Council believes he’s working with the Rogues.”

“Impossible!” In a flash, he was hovering over her, an angry snarl twisting his lips, and Ava could feel the edge of a blade at her throat, the rough bark of a tree pressed all along her back.
 

She gasped, disoriented for a moment as he twisted the blade, pricking her skin just shy of drawing blood.
 

Tiernan started to get up, but he was shoved back to his knees by two men and the woman she’d assumed was the leader, their guns pointed directly at his head.
 

Emma whimpered, and Ava could feel the girl’s power—feel her wanting to fight back.

“No,” she whispered, locking eyes with the girl over her captor’s shoulder. “Emma, no.”
 

The power receded, tendrils stroking her skin as it departed.

The man pressed the knife more firmly against her skin, his words forced out through clenched teeth. “Now tell me who you really are.”

“Maybe pull that thing back a little so I can talk without you slicing my throat?” Ava barely dared to move her lips.
 

With a quiet grunt, the man slid the knife down a little bit, the tip catching in the cord of her necklace. Her pendant slipped out from beneath her shirt, bouncing lightly against her chest, and his fingers tightened on her arm as he inhaled sharply. In a flash, he spun Ava around and threw her toward another man, who held her arms behind her.
 

Ava tried to catch her breath, dizzy with the quick movement. “What? What was that for?”

The dark-haired man advanced on her and wrapped his hand around the pendant. “Where did you get this?” he asked stonily.

“That’s none of your business!”

He twisted the cord, and it bit into the flesh of her neck. “Answer the question.”

Ava lifted her chin stubbornly but relented. “Caleb gave it to me.”

“That’s a lie.” He jerked her closer, Ava’s face now inches from his flashing eyes. “You stole it!”

“I didn’t! He—”

“He’d never give this away!”

“She’s his girlfriend.” Emma stepped forward and wormed her way between the angry man and Ava. “They’re together.”

The man blinked, and his mouth dropped open a bit in surprise. “But he never said
 . . .
” He seemed truly at a loss for words.
 

Ava seized the moment, thinking quickly. “Look,” she said. “I know people here. Bel? Or Audrey
 . . .
” She searched her mind for the last name of the woman from the safe house who’d trained her. “Collins. Audrey lives here now, right? She can tell you who I am.”