Wildefire Series: Wildefire Part 17

"Ade!" Lily shouted over the gunfire. "Can you corral some of them toward the ferns?"

She'd barely finished asking the question, when a wave of his hand sent three of the mercenaries nearest them tumbling across the ground until they collided with the canyon wall. Rather than the men bouncing off, several green tendrils sprouted from the wall and wrapped around their torsos. The men screamed as the vines pulled them flush against the earth and rock. The ferns continued to germinate around them, and before long their faces vanished behind the curtain of green.

Meanwhile the winged light wraiths were beginning to dissolve as Rolfe's concentration fizzled. He lunged for the nearest soldier and caught the barrel of his rifle. Right as the mercenary pulled the trigger, Rolfe jerked the barrel so that it pointed at one of his comrades, who had just unholstered his pistol. The dart caught the other soldier in the Adam's apple, and he dropped face-first to the rocks. Rolfe's hand fixed around the scruff of the other mercenary's neck and hurled him into the canyon wall, where he met a similar fate at the hands of the ferns.

"Ashline!" Ade shouted, and paused long enough to send a wave of thunder at a rogue soldier, whose head 205 slammed into the rocks before his rag doll body rolled into the stream. "Get going!" He pointed down the canyon.

Ash hesitated, feeling entirely impotent and helpless for the first time since that night with Eve and Lizzie on her roof. But a tranquilizer dart whistled by her face, and Raja gave her a hard shove, screaming, "Haul a.s.s, Wilde!"

With a last glance at Colt's body, still resting undisturbed in the stream under the logs, Ash stumbled in the opposite direction from which they'd come, trying to put as much distance between herself and the darts and bullets and mayhem as she could.

The canyon blurred through her tears. Wasn't she supposed to be a G.o.ddess? While the others had thunder, and the forest, and light, and death under their control, what did Ashline have to protect her? Just soft, mortal flesh and an ever-shrinking life span.

After a minute of full-on sprinting that would have made Coach Devlin proud, Ash stopped to catch her breath. She had made it around a bend in the canyon, effectively separating herself from her four cla.s.smates and the small army of mercenaries. Ade's thunder had ceased to rumble the canyon floor, and she could no longer hear the battle cries of the mercenaries. Either her friends had overcome the soldiers, or . . .

Something clicked to her right-a revolver, as its hammer snapped into place. The barrel pressed against her temple, and she had no doubt the ammunition waiting within was not a venomous dart but a true-blue bullet.

206.

Wolfe, out of breath, grinned triumphantly at her, though his eyes darted fearfully back down the canyon.

"At least I'll leave here with one bounty," he said. "The coward of the bunch, if the way you ran crying from battle says anything about your character. Fortunately, the price on your head isn't adjusted for bravery."

Deep within her skull, summoned by the cold of the steel barrel against her skin and the stab of the word coward, something ignited. She could feel the flames kindle within her like an unattended bonfire. "Hunting down high school students?" she snarled. "You call that making a living?"

"I call it early retirement, actually," he said. "Now get walking."

But Ashline remained immobile. The flames of her inner torch leapt higher, and higher still, their fiery fingers grasping at the cracks and searching for escape, for anything to kindle with. Her palms itched. Some distant force commanded her to turn and let her fingers constrict around his thick, veiny neck. In fact, the more she considered it, the more it sounded like a mighty good idea, even if he did have a gun. Her fingers curled, her nails bared- Before she could act on the impulse, a tanned hand- not Ashline's-fastened itself around Wolfe's wrist.

Raja's eyes narrowed at Wolfe. "You should have p.i.s.sed off when you had the chance."

Wolfe made like he was about to turn the gun on 207 Raja. But a low, guttural groan slipped out of his mouth, weak at first, from the throat, then bellowing straight up from his belly. His fingers trembled, then his entire hand, until the gun dropped harmlessly out of his grasp and onto the canyon floor. Ashline watched in horror as his arm withered. The muscle and fat dissolved right out from beneath the skin. The hair fell out from his knuckles, then all the way up his wrist, forearm, and bicep and right up to his bare shoulder, replaced with an ocean of age spots that soon leprously freckled his arms. He tried to jerk the arm free from her clutches, but Raja's grip held true.

His face was next, as the poison of age spread through his body. His neck, thick with muscle, now wilted, thinning, thinning until Ash was sure she could fit her entire hand around it. Both eyes recessed into their sockets. His cheeks withdrew into the cavity of his mouth, and as his drying lips parted, she could see his teeth grow brittle and then rain down onto his tongue like icicles falling from the gutter.

At last Raja released him, and the aged man, sobbing explosively between rasping breaths, dashed toward the mouth of the canyon as if he had somewhere to go.

But he didn't make it far. Lily had appeared beside them, her expression grim. She held out her hand just as Wolfe limped over a patch of soft earth.

A nest of roots penetrated up through the soil and coiled around his ankles. Wolfe dropped to the earth 208 and tried to claw his way forward. His fingers left trails in the dirt as he struggled to tear himself free. Vines sprouted around him, long green ropes that lashed themselves over his body, pulling him facedown into the soil. His screams sounded through the canyon mouth, and as the three girls watched in silence, his entire body sank into the earth until the soil swallowed his m.u.f.fled cries, the dirt crumbling and filling his open mouth. In a last-breath attempt to rebel against his fate, Wolfe's hand shot up through the surface, but it was too late.

His wrist muscles tensed one last time before going slack completely.

Soon his hand slid into the depths like the prow of a sinking s.h.i.+p, the last vestige of the man called Wolfe.

There was no trace that he had ever been here in this canyon, except a slight disturbance in the earth, as if it had recently been tilled, but Lily fixed even that. She c.o.c.ked her head to the side, and a small patch of ferns blossomed from the soil. In their center sprouted a single blue orchid.

"Well, that was gruesome," Ashline said, feeling more than a little nauseous. She pointed at the flower. "Do those even grow in Northern California?"

"No." With a closed-lipped smile, gentle but s.a.d.i.s.tic, Lily stared at the small mound in the earth. "But I just needed to see something beautiful emerge from something so ugly." She turned and walked back down the canyon.

209.

"I don't even know you people anymore," Ash said to Raja, only half-joking.

Raja shrugged. "Or maybe you're just finally getting to know us. Maybe we're just finally getting to know ourselves." She gazed at her hand, the same hand that had grabbed hold of Wolfe's wrist, and she turned it from side to side. Then she jogged away, back to rendezvous with the others.

Alone in the clearing Ashline cautiously approached Wolfe's grave and knelt down beside it. With some hesitation she extended her arm and played her fingertips over the ferns, soft to the touch, as if she were running her fingers through her own hair.

A sudden weariness fell upon her like a blanket, and she was tempted to place her head on the pillow of ferns and rest, just rest. . . . But then she remembered Colt, presumably still unconscious down the canyon, and she managed to seize hold of her own puppet strings and manipulate her tired joints until she could stand up.

When she reached the other four, they had gathered around Colt, whom they hadn't moved from the stream.

In the canyon around them there were no signs of any soldiers, any rifles or handguns, or any signs that struggle had ever occurred at all. After watching Wolfe succ.u.mb to his fate, Ashline decided it was better not to ask questions to which she didn't want the answer.

"Remember," Ade was saying, "when he wakes up, we 210 tell him he slipped off the log and hit his head. With any luck he won't find the puncture wound."

Rolfe pursed his lips at Ashline as she approached.

"Or maybe he'll find it and think it was a love bite."

Ash crouched down beside Colt and ignored the water running through the s.h.i.+ns of her jumpsuit. "He seems to be breathing fine." She slapped him a couple of times on the cheek, but he didn't so much as bat his eyes.

"I already tried that," Raja said.

"Yeah, I didn't actually think it would work." Ash dipped her hand in the stream and splashed some water onto his face. Still no dice. "Can someone carry him back to the truck? There might be a first aid kit there."

Everybody looked at Rolfe, who deadpanned back at them. "Sure, sure. Of course the Norse warrior G.o.d should be the one to carry the unconscious mortal." But he dipped down, and as though Colt's body were made of papier-mache, Rolfe effortlessly lifted him out of the stream. "Sorry, Prince Charming," he apologized to the unconscious park ranger cradled in his arms. "Normally I'd buy you dinner first. But on the bright side, there will be no photographic evidence of this to haunt you later."

"That's what you think." Raja trained her cell phone on the two men, and the camera snapped before Rolfe could look up. "Don't worry," she said afterward, and grinned at the image on her phone. "The look you're giving him is very tender."

211.

After a hike that seemed far longer than their original trek to the canyon, Rolfe plopped Colt down in the back of the truck. Lily climbed behind the wheel-she was the only one who knew how to drive stick-with Ade in the navigator seat. The truck rumbled to life, and as Lily grabbed hold of the stick s.h.i.+ft inside and switched gears, the vehicle lurched forward onto Davison Road, heading south.

It took some rummaging in the lidded tool chest, but Ashline finally unearthed the first aid kit. Inside, sure enough, she found several ampoules of ammonia. With one in hand she knelt in the sawdust next to Colt, for once grateful to be wearing the orange jumper and not a pair of designer jeans. "When you wake up with sawdust and dried deer blood on your back," she whispered to him, "you're going to really wish you'd taken this truck to the car wash." She snapped the capsule of smelling salts directly beneath Colt's nose.

The ammonia took all of three seconds to kick in.

The odor was pungent and tangy, easily overpowering the stink of the truck's rubber lining, and even Ashline had to lean away.

Colt stirred, and shook his head from side to side, until his eyes flickered open. He gagged. On the discomfort scale, waking to a foul smell in the back of a moving truck was probably equivalent to a painful hangover. But he swallowed, and his eyes, which had been staring up to the sky, settled on Ashline in the foreground.

212.

"Hey," she said softly. She tossed the vile of ammonia out onto the road. Her fingers tenderly pushed aside the hair on his forehead. "You hit your head in the canyon.

We're headed back to school now."

He opened his mouth, some question perched on his lips. Oh, G.o.d, Ashline thought. He's going to remember the tranquilizer dart.

Instead, when he finally found the cognitive function to piece together the words he wanted to say, what came out was: "Pick you up at five on Tuesday?"

After dinner Ash set up the new alarm clock that Jackie had pilfered from the supply closet, then dragged her sore a.s.s down the hall and into the shower. She slapped the showerhead a few times and cursed the dormitory for its flaccid water pressure, just one of the many "benefits"

of living on an eco-friendly campus. Even with the k.n.o.b wrenched as far clockwise as it could possibly go, the stream was lukewarm at best. She resigned herself to the tepid shower and closed her eyes, letting it wash away the day's debris- The odor of death from the back of Colt's truck- The cold of the stream water as she knelt beside him- The flash of terror as she watched him fall from the log- The nauseating sight of Wolfe being sucked down into an early grave . . .

She felt grimy inside and out. Why had she forgotten 213 the d.a.m.n loofah back in the room? A thorough scrubbing was in order.

Then there were the larger questions. The distrac-tions of school, and new friends, and lame but entertaining boyfriends had always provided enough background noise to keep thoughts of her birth parents at bay, but now that she was alone and saddled with a new "divine"

ident.i.ty, the curiosity had found her again.

Ashline and Eve had, for obvious reasons, been aware from an early age that they were adopted. The story that the Wildes had shared with them growing up was brief but satisfying: They had been the only two siblings in the island orphanage, an infant and a girl who couldn't have been far past her first birthday. Even though neither of them would have been old enough to have more than a fleeting memory of ever having a sister, Thomas and Gloria couldn't bear the possibility that someone would adopt one without the other.

Maybe it had been the comforts of growing up upper cla.s.s, or maybe it had just been selfish ignorance, but Ash had never probed her parents for more information.

Now, as her mind traveled halfway around the world to an island she couldn't remember, she felt lost in the yawning abyss of one question: Where the h.e.l.l had she come from?

With three half-apologetic beeps, the water shut off. The Blackwood showers were all set on five-minute timers, and Ash often found herself wondering whether 214 this was another green feature, or whether it was simply intended to cut down on the shower lines in the morning.

Either way, it sucked.

When she returned to her room, she was ready for a nap. She was ready for a daylong spa treatment. But above all, she was ready for a familiar face, so she did something fairly atypical for her: She followed her umbil-ical cord to her cell phone, texted her mother, and waited on her laptop for her to sign on.

When Ashline was first struggling to convince the Wildes to let her attend Blackwood for the rest of soph.o.m.ore year, one of the final bargaining chips that she'd played had been a solemn pledge to remain in communication. The promise of a weekly phone call was not enough for Gloria Wilde, so Ashline had had to improvise.

Her solution? Two web cameras, purchased with the final vestiges of her bat mitzvah money, and a guarantee that they would set aside time every Sunday for long-distance face-to-face chats.

Her mother's face appeared on the laptop screen, as eager and darling as Ashline remembered her. She must have been sitting out on the porch, because Ashline could make out the dark street in the background-it was three hours later in New York-and the porch light backlit her blond curls with a gentle glow. A smile crossed her mother's face as Ashline's image materialized on her screen as well, and Ash experienced a twinge of guilt for wondering so feverishly about her birth parents. This was her true mother.

215.

"Only a minute to log on and set up the camera,"

Ash said. "You're becoming a real technological wizard, Mom."

"Oh, you know," her mother replied bashfully. "I've got the step-by-step directions you wrote out for me taped to the back of my laptop. You lead a busy life over there. I wouldn't want to keep you waiting while your mom fights with her Mac."

Ash cringed. "Sorry I haven't had time to chat in a few weeks. Life around here as been kind of-"

"What is that?" her mother interrupted, squinting at the computer screen. "Did you go shopping for an orange dress?"

It took Ashline a moment to realize that her mom must have been staring at something behind her. When she looked over her shoulder, she discovered her orange jumper, draped over the back of her reading chair, fully illuminated under the floor lamp. "s.h.i.+t," she mouthed.

She turned back to the camera. "Yeah, it's a . . . sundress.

Weather's warming up a tad around here, and I didn't have much in spring colors, so Jackie and I took a day trip up to Crescent City."

Gloria wrinkled her nose. "In last year's tangerine too. I hope you got that on clearance."

"Trust me," Ashline said, "It was practically free.

How's Dad?"

Her mother glanced both ways on the porch to make sure the coast was clear before she let out a sigh as long 216 as the March wind. She leaned closer to the microphone.

"He's maddening, is what he is." She threw up her hands.

"I always figured he'd have trouble living in an empty nest one day, when you would eventually go off to college, but his coping mechanism is completely busted. It's like he's grasping at anything he can stuff in here to fill the s.p.a.ce. First he takes up yoga on Sat.u.r.day mornings, which was fine, because-this is going to sound awful-at least it got him out of the house. But then just last week, he suddenly decides to become a vegan, and since he does most of the cooking, that means now I'm a vegan too.

It's been nothing but soy and tofu and asparagus ever since. This morning I opened the Times after he read it and found two red circles in the cla.s.sified sections, one around salsa dancing lessons at the Y, and another for a toy train collector set for sale. When I asked him about the trains, you know what he said? 'It's for the Holidays.'

It's only May, Ashline. May!"

Even with a hand over her mouth, Ash couldn't stifle her giggles. "Breathe, Ma," she said. "Maybe there are some yoga relaxation techniques he can teach you."

"I'll breathe however he wants me too, but if I have to go one more week without a steak, I'm going to crack.

I swear, it's like he thinks that if he flaps his wings hard enough, he'll forget that it's been almost a year since he heard from-"

Gloria stopped, her sentence derailed. It was a frag-ile thing, and Ashline knew that well. Ash had left Eve's 217 name back in New York when she'd boarded her flight at LaGuardia four months ago, and she hadn't said it aloud since. Eve's memory was like a thawing pond: The sound of her name could send them all cras.h.i.+ng back through the ice.

They were all just trying to forget about her in their own ways.

Her mother lifted her eyes from the screen and gazed directly into the camera, searching, pleading. "You haven't . . ."

"No," Ashline said firmly. "Not once."

"But you'd tell us if you did?" Gloria looked tired, and for the first time since the conversation had started, Ashline noticed how much weight her mother had lost in the months she'd been away. Even her face had changed shape, as if the bones had rearranged beneath her skin.

The face of silent grief.

"Of course," Ashline said, when what she was really thinking was, But not if it would break your heart.

When the break in conversation was too much for her to bear, Ash started to say, "I really miss-"

But it came out at the same time her mother said, "I should get back to- I'm sorry, honey. What did you say?"

Ash bit her lip. "I was just saying I've got some work I've got to do. Econ reading."

Her mother reached out and touched the side of the camera, like she was trying to brush Ashline's bangs out 218 of her face. "Okay, sweetheart. Let's do this again next Sunday?"

"You bet," Ashline said. And then she closed the laptop screen down to the keyboard, severing the connection.

She was grateful her roommate was still three thousand miles away so there was no one to see her cry herself to sleep.

She woke up clutching her pillow to her face, with only the knowledge that it was most certainly too dark for it to be morning already. In fact, there was no way to immediately know how long she'd been out, because the digits on her brand new alarm were unlit. She flicked her desk lamp a few times just to be sure, and, yup-the power was out.