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 vo
ice 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.
As he’d done the last time, Jason acted as the grounding wire to my telepathic lightning rod. Using half of his Ability, he boosted mine, giving me back the control I so desperately needed. The magnetic lure of the minds around me waned, fading into the background.
I took a deep breath, then another. Smiling, I filled my eyes with as much warmth as I could and placed my hand over one of Jason’s, giving it a gentle, grateful squeeze. “Thank—” My voice caught in my throat, and my chest clenched. Something was wrong.
I couldn’t sense Jason.
I looked at Zoe, feeling my eyes widen. I couldn’t sense either of them. I could sense the animals all around, but I couldn’t sense any human minds at all.
“Red…?” Jason’s voice was soft, cautious.
“You’re gone,” I whispered, feeling like I’d been kicked in the stomach. “You’re all gone.” I looked into Zoe’s piercing blue eyes. “Gone.” My voice sounded hollow.
Zoe’s grip tightened on my arm. “Um…”
Jason swiped the pads of his thumbs under my eyes, wiping away the tears of strain streaming down my cheeks. “Do you have control of it?” The concern filling his eyes intensified, and his calm expression cracked. “I’ve got to stop boosting you. Zoe…”
Oh God. No. Reality slammed into me like a punch in the gut. Jason’s Ability had two parts: he could amplify others’ Abilities, like he was currently doing for me, or he could nullify them completely, but he couldn’t do both at the same time. If Zoe’s empathy kicked in as violently as my telepathy just had, and if she started feeling other people’s emotions and seeing their memories without knowing how to control it…
I nodded vigorously. “I’m good. Help Z—”
Without warning, Zoe gasped, and her hand clenched. Her fingernails dug into my arm.
We were too late. The floodgates had opened.
4
ZOE
MARCH 28, 1AE
San Juan National Forest, Colorado
I gasped as an unused part of my mind sparked to life. It seemed to shift and realign, jumpstarting my true consciousness as if I’d been running on autopilot, but was now finally in control. Everything changed in the blink of an eye…I felt whole. At least more “myself” than I had since the others found me.
For a brief moment, among the torrent of feelings and memories flooding my mind, I thought the old me might resurface, too. “I think I’m—” Getting my memories back? It was almost too much to hope for.
As my mind spun, so did the onslaught of conflicting emotions—too random and unrecognizable to have been my own.
“Dani,” I breathed. My eyes met hers, and I used the comfort I found in them as my anchor amid the impressions of foreign lifetimes competing for space in my mind. “Something’s…not right.” Dizziness enveloped me, and I gripped Dani’s arm more tightly, automatically reaching for Jason, too.
“It’s your Ability, Zo,” Dani said, composed and reassuring. “Don’t fight it—you’ll only make it worse.”
Images of Jason and Dani flickered in my head, but instead of trying to push them away, I let them come, vivid and countless as they were.
With what felt like a breath of life, I inhaled, and everything in my mind’s eye sharpened. As unsteady as I felt, the clarity brought a sense of relief I hadn’t expected, and the dark recesses of my mind filled with colors and shapes and sounds—recollections of the past. Dani and Jason’s pasts, but not mine.
“I’m so sorry, Zo,” Dani said, her fingers brushing softly over the back of my hand. “This is all my fault. Stupid…so stupid…”
I could feel her guilt, and I shook my head, only vaguely aware of why she felt that way. Dani’s concern replaced my confusion, her curiosity and hope quickly following. Although I didn’t necessarily understand the onslaught, I welcomed it. Everything I saw—everything I felt—was new and unexplored; my mind, once an empty cave, suddenly housed echoes of the past, assembling them into an irrefutable truth that seemed to lighten the darkness and partially fill the lingering void inside me.
But as abruptly as the emotions assaulted me, they vanished, and I felt empty again—the images and feelings were nothing more than fading memories.
Disappointed, I turned to Jason. “You’re taking it away?”
He exchanged a skeptical glance with Dani. “Yeah?” he said, sounding unsure.
No longer needing to steady myself, I loosened my grasp on his arm and looked at him beseechingly. “Please don’t,” I said, self-conscious but needing this other part of me. “It feels…right.”
Jason frowned. “Well…it’s your choice,” he mumbled, and although he seemed baffled, he nodded.
In an instant, another flurry of guilt, frustration, and despair swirled around in my mind. I blinked, once again focusing on Dani as memories and feelings poured out of her. Like a camera shutter opening and closing, I saw Dani for the first time. Yes, she was a fiery, red-haired pixie with bright green eyes and a seemingly carefree nature, but she also felt lost and afraid and confused. I could feel everything—her undeniable love for Jason, and the relentless shadow of a not-too-long-ago broken heart. Inexplicably, I shared her longing to see the woman who’d raised her, her grandma who was gone, and her yearning to speak with her one last time. And then I saw an image of the dead little girl, haunting Dani and flooding her with guilt.
My best friend, who I only knew from her coalescing memories and our stilted conversations over the past week, stood in front of me, and now I understood why she seemed to cry at the drop of a hat. Her emotions were so raw, rampant, and fierce that they almost brought tears to my eyes.
Enthralled by the insight I felt bringing me closer to Dani, I vaguely registered Jason walking away.
I blinked again.
“Zo?” Dani’s hand rested on my shoulder, sending acute waves of anxiety and eagerness rippling through me. “Are you alright?” Her voice teetered between panic and remorse, and I could feel the questions practically jumping off her tongue. She was hoping that my memories had returned, but felt guilty for thinking it, and she was worried she’d accidently and irrevocably hurt me.
Forcing myself, I smiled, if a little weakly, and refocused on her imploring eyes. “Yeah, I am. I’m fine. Better than fine, actually.”
“Are you sure?”
Nodding, I tried to reassure her. “I can see and feel it all so clearly.”
“Like you can feel what I’m feeling?” A burst of apprehension flared inside her.
I bit the inside of my cheek, trying to articulate it. “It’s more than that,” I said, my voice tinged with excitement. “There are images…like memories, too…”
Dani’s eyes lit with hope. “You remember?”
Crap. I sighed and shook my head, feeling a tidal wave of excitement recede between the two of us. “No, I don’t remember,” I admitted, watching the light in her eyes dim. “I still don’t remember anything from before the golf course…but I see you, Dani. I see you and me…my dad and Jason.” I shook my head. “It’s the strangest, most horrifyingly amazing thing I’ve ever experienced.”
Although I had no attachment to the memories themselves, Dani’s profound intimacy with each impression made me feel like I’d found a small piece of myself within them. “It’s like I was there…when you were sick and Jason found you…and then when you were alone and at Grams’s house.” I tried to shake away the overwhelming fog in my hea
d. “There’s so much…”
Dani eyed me curiously, her fingers stroking the sling cradling her injured arm.
“I can feel your pain,” I said, studying her black removable cast. “I can see what happened at the Colony. I feel like I finally understand what’s going on.”
Dani’s eyes widened as fear replaced her curiosity, and the jumble of images focused, a tumultuous memory flashing prominently through her mind.
Dani stood in a stark office, a perfectly organized desk separating her from Dr. Wesley, who was sitting behind it.
The doctor eyed Dani warily. “So you know?”
Dani felt a pulse of rage. “That Zoe and Jason are your kids? Yeah…”
Another more vivid memory immediately followed.
In the same office, Dr. Wesley still seated behind the desk and Dani standing opposite her, the doctor’s features hardened into a frown. “If your actions kill my children, then everything I’ve done to keep them safe will have been for naught. That’s on you.”
Dani shook her head, so much hurt and anger filling her that she could barely speak. “Zo and Jason might blame themselves for everyone’s deaths if they knew about you, but I don’t. I blame you,” she seethed and stormed to the door.
“Would you rather I’d killed myself, thus killing the two people you love so dearly? Gregory would have found another geneticist to engineer his virus, and everyone would’ve died anyway.”
The memory faded, leaving in its place violent emotions tangled in my gut, nearly bringing me to my knees.
Dr. Wesley is my mom… I’d completely forgotten that.
Dani took a step closer. “We can’t tell him,” she whispered as her eyes darted around us. “He can’t know about your mom, Zo, not yet.”
I hedged. “But she’s our mom, Dani. He’ll be furious if we don’t tell him, won’t he?” Lacking any tangible connection to Jason, I still wanted to do what was right, and I’d seen enough of his silent tantrums in her memories to know this instance would be no exception.
“She’s your mom and she killed nearly everyone to keep you guys safe.” Dani closed her eyes and took a deep breath, her eyes pleading when she reopened them. “Please, Zo. Don’t say anything. He’s not ready. Can’t you see…can’t you feel it?” Dani’s acute panic and desperation were nearly overwhelming.
Out Of The Ashes (The Ending Series, #3) Page 4