After the Ending (47 page)

Jake blinked, and his eyes slowly found mine, relieved
but disconnected as he resumed cleaning his rifle. I could feel his uneasiness
and wondered if he was thinking of Harper’s prophecy about Clara.

When Jake excused himself to talk to Harper, I left my
post by the blazing fire and headed for the barn. I situated myself in the
sleeping bags in the corner of our stall, knowing they wouldn’t be the only
things keeping me warm for long—Jake had slept beside me every night since we
left Sarah’s house. Remembering the images of Harper and Sanchez having sex, I
blushed. I wished we were still back at Sarah’s so Jake and I could find someplace
to be alone—the barn was far too cozy for intimacy.

When Jake finally crawled into our joined sleeping bags,
I savored the warmth of his body. After only a moment, he sat up, and his hands
wandered down the length of my leg. “What are you doing?” he asked.

The feeling of his fingers moving over my sweatpants made
my eyelids spring open.
Please have sex with me
. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what are you doing with your feet?” His strong
fingers closed around my toes as they wiggled back and forth.

“It helps me fall asleep,” I said, realizing I’d been
rubbing my feet together.

“Cute,” he said quietly, lying back down and wrapping his
arms around my waist. “And when did you start wearing a beanie to bed?” he
whispered, his breath brushing gently across my cheek.

I giggled reflexively, smoothing some flyaway hairs back
into place before pulling the knit cap over my ears. “It’s freezing…my ears are
cold.”

“Really?” I heard a purr in his voice, and as I opened my
mouth to reply, his lips were on the sensitive skin behind my ear. I welcomed
his hands as they traveled over my hips and down to my thighs, pulling me back
against him. His arousal was obvious, and feeling it made me want to rip my
clothes off…I suddenly felt way too hot.

“Are you warming up yet?” His voice was husky, saturated
with the same desire that smoldered within me.

“You’re killing me,” I groaned.

He playfully bit the side of my neck, and his mouth
lingered near my ear for a moment. “’Night, Zoe,” he said. Under the covers,
his grip on my thighs loosened, and he ran his fingers over my hip like he was
memorizing its contours. I shuddered.

Hearing Harper and Biggs’s hushed voices only feet away,
I knew nothing would really happen.

Taking a long, deep breath, I sighed. “Night, you tease,”
I said and pressed my backside against him, eliciting the exact response I
wanted—a deep groan.
Two can play this game.

Dani

“Oh…
ooooooh
!” I screeched as I
dumped frigid river water over my head to rinse soap from my naked body. The purple
bar of lavender-scented suds had become my all-in-one body wash, good for
everything from my hands to my hair. Salon shampoo and conditioner, specially
designed to control my wild curls, were a thing of the past.

I poured a second canteen full of water over myself and
nearly slipped off my platform—a two-foot-wide, smooth, flat river stone. It
was large enough that I could stand comfortably, and low enough to the water’s
surface to make my bathing needs possible—and my bathing needs were
needs.
Since the disastrous encounter with Mistress Mandy nearly eight weeks back,
we’d been avoiding nearly all houses and buildings…and the people they might be
sheltering. It had been four days since we’d last seen piped-in water, and I
was out of patience—thus the part where I was bathing in the Arkansas River…in
the Rocky Mountains…in winter.

“
Ooooh
!” I exclaimed one last
time, doing a little dance to shake off as many of the chilly droplets as
possible.

Hearing a deep chuckle from the creek bed, I turned and
glowered at Jason. “This isn’t funny! It’s cold! Like, COLD
cold
!”

“I just liked the shimmy. It was a
really
good
shimmy.” His eyes glinted in the rich afternoon light as he reclined against a
mossy, fallen tree.

“I’m sure it was,” I grumbled.

“Hmmm…much as I’m enjoying this, you’re turning blue.
It’s fire time. Let’s go, Red.” Jason stood, crunching the underbrush, and held
out the towel he’d been keeping warm under his shirt.

I hopped from stone to stone across the river, slightly
hunched over with my arms crossing my chest. It was sunny and unseasonably warm
for Colorado in early March, but I was still frozen to the core. I would’ve
been embarrassed about being in front of Jason, naked and shaking with cold, if
he hadn’t already done the same. Cold water could turn even the toughest man
into a whiny, little boy.

Plus, the weeks of hard travel and living off the land
had trimmed and hardened my body—where once it had been petite with soft
curves, my body was now a composition of lean muscle and smooth lines.

“I think…I’m ready…for spring,” I mumbled through
shivering lips as Jason wrapped the towel and his strong arms around me. Like
me, living in the changed world had altered him, making his body more compact
and lithe, quickening his reflexes, and sharpening the angles of his face.
Though he’d lost much of his excess, bulky muscle mass, he was far more lethal
than he’d ever been before.

“No kidding,” he said. He dried me off quickly while I
trembled, then tossed item after item of cold-weather clothing at me, enticing
me to dress. I didn’t complain. “You’re lips are purple,” he said, leaning in
for a slow kiss.

“I’m not surprised,” I said when he pulled away. “I think
I have permafrost.”

“That’s not a medical condition.”

“Thank you
so much
for that enlightening information.”

“You know what’d warm you up?” Jason slipped his hand
under my layers of tops to tease the chilled skin of my lower back.

“Stop it! I just got dressed!” His touch made a brand new
set of goose bumps cover my skin.

Jason laughed. “What? I was thinking jumping jacks. Damn
Red, get your mind outta the gutter.”

“You’re a huge butthead, you know!” I wasn’t the least
bit ashamed of my immature insult. He’d earned it.

All he did was chuckle.

“Oh shut up. C’mon,” I said, grabbing his hand. “I’m sure
everyone else wants their chance to wash up.”

“You’re bossy…I like it.”

I laughed softly. “That’s what Zo says. It was one of the
first things she told me when we became friends.”

“That she likes you being bossy?” he teased, and still
smiling, I shook my head. When he was around me, and only me, Jason shed some
of his austere shell…
some
.

“Just that I’m bossy.”

“Yeah?” he asked, evidently interested. “How’d that
happen anyway…you and Zoe? I mean, one day you were just…there.”

It seemed an odd question, like he should’ve already
known how Zoe and I began. But then I remembered that Jason had always been
distant, and that the story of Zoe and me and the fortuitous start of our
friendship wasn’t something we’d made public knowledge. In fact, it was a
little embarrassing.

Groaning, I said, “It’s no biggie…just a little
playground incident.”

Jason grinned and his eyes lit up. “Come on, Red. Spill.”

I cringed and readjusted my hand in his. “Well…it was in
fourth grade. I’d been cornered by a couple of girls behind one of the soccer
nets during recess. They were teasing me about my hair, calling me ‘carrot
head’…it was
oranger
back then…”

“I don’t think that’s a word,” he commented.

I glanced at him sideways. “It was
oranger
…and
I was too small to do anything but glower and try not to cry. Zo found us and
yelled something like, ‘What the hell are you doing you fat trolls?!’ I’d never
been good at standing up for myself, so I was completely in awe of her. I
remember thinking that she looked like
Xena
with her
long, straight, black hair and angry, blue eyes.” I smiled at the memory.

“Anyway, the other girls got mad, and one tried to push
Zo, but she was too quick—maybe because she’d had practice dealing with you.
She dodged, and the girl stumbled and fell flat on her face and started crying.
Zo and I ended up getting in trouble—the other girls tattled, saying we’d
pushed and bullied them, but it was worth it.”

After I didn’t say anything else for several breaths,
Jason pointed out, “That doesn’t explain the bossy thing.”

I flushed. “Oh, right. I…um…made Zoe take me home with
her after school that day so I could tell your dad what really happened. I
thought it was the most unfair thing in the world that
she’d
been
punished for helping me. Then I made her play a game we invented and eventually
called ‘Beat the Bully’. So dorky, I know. We practiced being the bully and
coming up with insults so we’d be prepared next time. I think we ended up
crying and laughing hysterically like a million times doing that. But anyway,
it was after that second demand that she told me I was bossy.”

Laughing softly, I looked askance at Jason. “You know,
when I got offended by what she’d said, she told me it wasn’t really a bad
thing. She said her brother was
way
bossier.”

Jason shrugged, accepting the decades-old judgment with
little concern.

“Ever since that day on the playground, we’ve been
inseparable…more like twin sisters than just friends. I’m sure a psychologist
would say it was because we both have ‘mommy abandonment issues’ or something.”
I held up our clasped hands and nudged my sleeve to reveal the black tattoo on
the inside of my wrist. “That’s what this is all about—the bond between
sisters, not the abandonment thing. We got ‘
em
on
Zo’s
eighteenth birthday.”

Jason looked at me with an odd expression on his face,
like he’d just solved a complex puzzle. “Huh,” he grunted. “I thought it was
just something to do with your grandma. Since she was Irish and all that…”

“You didn’t know your sister has a tattoo?” I scoffed.

He shook his head. “We’re not exactly close…we haven’t
been for a long time.”

Yet again, I mentally noted how similar Zoe and Jason
were, and they didn’t even know it—they barely knew each other. I also thought
again about how Zoe was going to react to finding out about me and Jason. She’d
known about the first kiss…but things had progressed
way
beyond that.
Will
she be confused? Happy? Disbelieving? Worried? Jealous? Pissed? Disgusted?
I
was unsure about the rules for getting romantically involved with friends’
siblings. Sometimes, when we were younger, my infatuation with her brother
would really irritate her.
How’s she going to feel about it now?

Seeing my frown, Jason asked, “What is it?”

“Nothing important,” I told him, forcing away my frown. “You
have a second chance now, you know, to get to know her.”

“Yeah. If we could figure out where the hell she is.” The
frustration in his voice amped up my own worries—we’d been camping in the same
spot, a mile or two east of
Salida
, for two days,
unsure of Zoe’s exact location. Cell phones, landlines, and Internet were
non-options—all routes of communication were completely and utterly dead. On
top of that, trying to use my telepathy to find her mind had proven akin to
searching for a needle in a haystack, except each piece of hay weighed a
hundred pounds and shuffling through even a handful left me exhausted.

I chewed on one side of my lower lip for a few seconds,
and then took a deep breath. “I have an idea…but you’re not gonna like it.”

“What?” he asked flatly. Good old Jason, not one to
pussyfoot around uncomfortable issues.

“Well, if I could talk to MG, I could ask him where she
is. He’s the only person I know who can definitely find her. But…”

“But you need me to let him in.” He didn’t sound happy.

“Jason—”

“I don’t like it. I don’t like him being in your head. I
don’t like him being somewhere I can’t protect you.”

“He’s not gonna hurt me.”

Jason grumbled, “I don’t know if I can even make myself
turn it off, not if I really don’t want to.”

“Don’t you want to find Zo?”

His sideways look told me he thought the question was
ridiculous—not even worthy of an answer. Jason and Zoe may not have been close,
but he’d always been protective of his little sister.

“Well then, he’s our only shot, aside from combing every
square inch inside and around Colorado Springs. You should
want
to stop
blocking him so I can talk to him. He can find her for us…I know he can.” My
voice was tight, reflecting the edge I was teetering on with Jason and his
jealousy and protectiveness.

With a deep, angry sigh, he growled, “Fine.” Relief
relaxed my shoulders and loosened my grip on his hand.

Later on, when the full, golden moon glowed near the horizon
and nocturnal predators sang their eerie, lonely melodies, Jason and I lay
entangled in our joined sleeping bags, panting and completely satisfied. Over
the past two months, the mountain sounds had transformed from disturbing to
comforting—they currently mingled with our heavy breathing to create a
peaceful, hypnotizing lullaby.

“Mmm…,” Jason rumbled softly. His body still covered
mine, slick with sweat despite the cold, and I basked in the warmth the
moonlight illuminated in his eyes.

“‘Mmm’ is right,” I purred.

After a slow, lingering kiss—one that made me wonder if
he was starting round two—Jason said, “If you’re going to talk to this guy, we
should probably call it a night.”

A few minutes later, I was clothed in sweats and falling
asleep in the safety of Jason’s arms.

“Are you sure this’ll work?” I mumbled, momentarily
shaking off the lure of sleep.

“Yes, Red, I’m sure. As soon as I can control it, I won’t
block the bastard at all.” For some unknown reason, Jason always lost complete
control of his Ability after we had sex—nulling every nearby Ability for a good
fifteen minutes. Teasing him about it amused me to no end.

“Hmmm…” I snuggled against him happily and succumbed to
unconsciousness.

I was sunbathing on
my favorite stretch of Northern California beach. I’d been dreaming of something
else—something that worried me. I thought maybe I’d been swimming, looking for
something under violent swells of frigid ocean water. I was also sure that I
was still dreaming, and confusion overwhelmed me as I thought about dreaming
while I was dreaming.

Suddenly, my
confusion cleared. MG.

It had been so long
since I’d seen him—since I’d experienced the odd feeling of sleeping
awareness—that it hadn’t made sense at first.

Where is he?

“Dani,” his smooth
voice intoned as a long shadow suddenly shielded me from the sun. “Long time,
no see.”

I stood and faced
him, allowing a small smile. I really was glad to see him. “Uh, yeah. Sorry
about that. I’m back with my people, and one of them can sort of block other
people’s Abilities. I think you guessed that before…you were right. Yay for
you…” My words sounded lame—even to me.

“Right,” he said
dryly. “I tried to get through. Can’t your friend control his Ability at all?”

“He’s getting
better at it. Stronger.”

“So has the wall
that’s been keeping me out,” MG retorted.

I didn’t know what
to say. I couldn’t really tell him that my boyfriend was blocking him on
purpose and that, until tonight, I hadn’t asked him to stop. I just hadn’t
thought…

“It’s nice to see
you,” I said sincerely.

MG sighed
dramatically and then grinned. “You too, Dani.”

“So…how’ve you
been?”

He glowered for no
apparent reason. “I’ve been better.”

My eyebrows rose of
their own accord. “
Okaaaay
…Um, MG?”

“Yep?”

“I was wondering if
I could ask you a big-
ish
favor.”

“Which would be…?”

“I’m looking for
someone. We just reached Colorado Springs, and we’re trying to meet up with a
friend…we don’t know exactly where she is.” Or if she even made it, I thought
sullenly.

“And what exactly
do you want me to do?”

“Well, you can find
pretty much anyone’s dreams, right? Something about finding them based on the
type and strength of their Ability?” I asked hopefully.