04 Last (40 page)

“I’ll go,” Eli said. “I’ll heal who I can.”

“I’ll take you,” I said.

“I’m coming, too,” Daniel said.

“Me, too,” Alex said.

“The more I take, the more we will stand out,” I said. “Besides, Eli is the only one who can heal others.”

“What are we supposed to do, then?” Alex asked. “Twiddle our thumbs?”

“Only if you want to,” I said.

“Well, we could deal with that,” Jackson said, pointing out the window.

He had moved to the window. I wasn’t sure what had drawn him there, but I knew he was rewarded with a different kind of view than the cityscape. We all moved to see what he saw. On the roof of the building across from us, there was a group of a hundred Watchers. I counted them in a glance.

In front of the group was the dragon-girl. The mask was gone, and I saw that the scales extended far beyond what I had thought. They almost covered her entire face. Even her eyes looked more reptilian than human. Beside her was another Watcher – this one was wearing a cloak that covered the person from head to foot. It was a cloak with a familiar emblem of the red snake on the front; it was the same cloak the Seekers in New Orleans and Alaska had worn. The figure reminded me of New Orleans – my necklace burned at the reminder. A Seeker in a cloak just like the one in front of me had stolen my necklace from me and had sold it to Sevier. Was this the same Seeker, or another one? It was impossible to tell. There were no distinguishing features beyond the cloak.

I focused beyond the front of the group and saw that their small army consisted of more than just ‘normal’ Watchers. They had Watchers who looked as if they had died and come back. Two of them were the Seekers Daniel had killed on the street. They had zombie-Watchers as part of their fighting force. The sight of them was enough to make me shiver.

“Do we fight?” Jackson asked eagerly.

“We don’t,” I said.

Jackson was disappointed. “You’re supposed to be lusting for murder as the new you. You’re not supposed to be reasonable…that doesn’t happen for a couple of decades.”

“I’ve got Daniel in my head,” I replied.

I touched my necklace subconsciously; it was still burning from anger at the sight of the hooded Seeker. I also had the necklace to remind me of what needed to be done. People needed help. Fighting a group of Seekers just because we could was not as smart as running away. We would fight when we could face them on better ground…when they didn’t outnumber us so completely.

I held out my hands to the group. They took my hands without hesitation, though Jackson sighed audibly, and I allowed the dark to take us in to its fold once again. The woman’s reptilian eyes stayed with me as I pulled my friends away from the certain danger of a fight we could not win. The look in her eyes told me I would be seeing her again.

I landed us back at the train station. There was no fire, no explosion. The bomb had done its dirty work. That fact did not improve the scene in front of us. People were in a panic. They screamed and searched for organization in the chaos. Clouds of dust circled the air; the night was darker with the dust. People with injuries sat in dazed confusion, while those not injured did their best to help where they could. Other people were beyond help – they remained motionless on the floor, their blank eyes questioning what had happened to them. Seeing the people in pain was beyond upsetting. I felt a swirl of anger – not just at the person who had set the bomb, but also at myself. I should have stopped this. Daniel noticed the anger and put a calming hand on my arm. He wasn’t prepared for what he found – the guilt. He took a moment to take in the guilt, wanting to understand where it came from. I didn’t hide it from him – I wanted him to understand how I had failed.

This isn’t your fault,
he tried to assure me.

His words were the last thing I wanted to hear. I pulled away from his touch and focused on the damage around me – I wanted the images embedded in my brain forever. I wanted to remember.

I finally turned my head away from the damage. I knew the truth. I could not help as much as Eli could. We would just get in the way. There was another task that needed to be done.

“Eli can stay here and help, but I think we should search for Reaper,” I said. “He wouldn’t just fall off the grid without a reason. Something has to be wrong.”

I wasn’t sure what had me wanting to leave the platform – the analytical part of my brain or the guilt-ridden part. Serenity was also looking around the platform with guilt in her eyes – I wasn’t sure where her guilt came from. I wasn’t eager to ask.

“I’ll stay with Eli,” Serenity volunteered.

“Me, too,” Alex said.

I eyed Alex carefully. I was worried about her; worried there would be another attack and she would be in the middle of it. I couldn’t protect her. I had only barely managed to get her out of the way the first time. She saw my worry.

“My choice,” she added.

I accepted that choice. She had a right to it.

“I’ll be back soon,” I promised.

She smiled. “I thought those words were supposed to be some kind of curse,” she said. “At least, according to you.”

“We’ll find Reaper then come back,” I corrected.

“Alright,” she agreed.

Alex moved away from us and went to a woman who was holding a towel to her injured head. She bent down and started to try to give the woman comfort. Eli was already doing the same with others on the platform, though his comfort was more of a healing kind. He was skilled, only healing the life-threatening injuries and leaving the superficial cuts alone.

Knowing no one would pay attention to us with the chaos that had descended I held my hand out to Daniel, Margaret and Jackson. They were also incredibly affected by the scene in front of us. Their uncertain touch reflected their emotions. I saw a lot of anger in all of their eyes. I sighed and pushed my own emotion out of my mind long enough to focus on a visual of the interior of the boat. The pull to the ship was difficult when all I wanted to do was stay and help.

For the second time in an hour, I felt a sense of déjà vu, which was followed quickly by ultimate terror.

When we landed on the familiar hall of the boat – the one directly outside the galley – I was immediately struck by the difference from the last time I had seen the ship. For one, it was totally empty. There was not even dead bodies to suggest there had been a horrible struggle. It was simply abandoned. It was as much of a ghost town as the historian’s home was.

Daniel, Margaret, Jackson and I shared a look of questioning fear, and without discussing it, we allowed our training to take over our bodies. We were cautious, prepared for a fight, as we separated and searched for signs of life. As I walked in to the galley, I was aware of another difference. It was silence. The engine of the boat was not working. More than that, there was no subtle rocking of waves against the hull of the ship. There was nothing beyond stillness. The boat was no longer on water. The image of seeing it in the desert came back in to my mind. I was not the only one who had the same thought. Daniel had moved to the exterior door to look outside.

“Clare…I think you had better see this!” Daniel called.

I moved to the exterior door. Daniel was in the middle of the door. His body was full of surprise and wonder. He turned at the sound of my footsteps and pointed. He didn’t have to say a word. I moved past him and saw the reason for his shock.

We really were in the desert. It was everything my imagination painted of deserts, not the cracked, rocky kind I had grown used to in my travels. This was the Sahara, or something similar. It was the desert all other deserts dreamed of being. I looked at the rolling sand dunes that stretched out for miles feeling confused. Why was the ship in the desert? Why not in the ocean where it naturally belonged? Why was it abandoned? More importantly, where were the others?

“What do you think?” I asked Daniel.

“I think that we are in the desert,” Daniel replied.

“Thanks, really,” I said.

“Notice how ‘really’ makes everything sound either sarcastic or ambivalent?” Daniel asked playfully, though his eyes were consumed with the landscape in front of us.

“Not really,” I said.

Margaret and Jackson had finished their search. They had come up empty and had come looking for us. They stepped around Daniel to look outside.

“We are in the desert,” Jackson said helpfully.

“Yes,” I agreed.

“Where is everyone?” Margaret asked.

“I have a theory,” Daniel said.

“What?” Jackson asked.

“Marcus was prepared for us to be in New York,” Daniel said. “He used Clare to draw us out. It’s possible he also knew where the boat was. He could have waited for us to leave then attacked the boat. Sara and Shawn might have been forced in to drastic action.”

“Define ‘drastic action,’” I said.

“Moving a whole boat through the place in-between, as you call it, and landing it in the desert,” Daniel replied.

“Thar,” Jackson said.

“Bless you,” I said.

“No, I think this is Thar. A desert in India. I met a girl here once who could…” He glanced at Margaret, who had an eyebrow raised. “Well, never mind.”

“Sara and Shawn are from India, so that makes sense,” Daniel replied.

“But where are they now?” I asked. “Maybe they weren’t as successful as you think.”

“Maybe they were,” Daniel replied.

His expression had changed. He moved to the edge of the boat, and his eyes narrowed as he looked at something in the distance. I followed his gaze and saw movement. It was difficult to make out more than that, but the shape of the movement felt familiar.

“Do you think it’s them?” I asked.

“Let’s go ask,” Daniel said.

Without hesitation, he jumped over the rail and took the fifteen-foot fall as only Daniel could take it. Jackson and Margaret followed after him without hesitation. I followed after them, trusting my new body to protect me from the fall. The way down was amazing, it was a sense of freedom unlike any I had ever felt. It was the rush of wind in my ears and the slight fear that the ground was more solid than I was. As I fell, I got the strange sensation that I could defy gravity if I wanted to, rise back up against the forces pulling me down. I didn’t try, but I was certain all the same.

I hit the ground with a roll and fluidly got back up to my feet. The others were already moving toward the horizon. Daniel led the group in a swift run I had no trouble matching. The sand moved and shifted as our feet created a pattern of determination in the folds of the dunes.

We ran until we found the cause of the movement.

Sitting on the crest of one of the dunes, looking as if she were waiting on the train, was Moira. Her red hair was pulled back in to a braid and her feet were bare, like normal. She wore a black dress and had her legs crossed casually as she read from a romance novel. I realized the glint of light had come from her chair. She looked up when we were ten feet from her.

“There you are,” she said, as if she had been expecting us for some time.

“Were you expecting us?” Daniel asked.

“Reaper said you would be along…” Moira said. “Though I didn’t think it would take you a whole day.”

“What happened with the boat?” Daniel asked.

“Got attacked by Seekers in the middle of the ocean, of all places. They had a walker and a weatherman with them. We almost didn’t make it.”

“Wait, how we’re you attacked?” Daniel asked.

“By a Watcher,” Moira said.

“No, I mean, how did Marcus find the ship?” Daniel said.

Moira shrugged. “Marcus has the answer to that, not me. I just know that a storm came out of nowhere and suddenly we were surrounded by Seekers. It was a hell of a fight…before Sara and Shawn saved us.”

“Okay, fair enough,” Daniel said. “Where are Reaper and the others now?”

“A secret place,” Moira said.

Daniel frowned at Moira. She was being too coy to for it to be normal. I saw him trying to figure out why. A thousand reasons to doubt the Moira I saw in front of me flashed in front of my head. A Seeker by the name of Grace was one; she had been able to mimic the appearance of others and had tried to take over my identity after Lorian had been killed. New York blowing up was another reason. Everything was sideways. Our world had been shattered. Could we trust in the same way? I knew that Moira was loyal to Reaper. But what if she was being controlled or the Watcher in front of me wasn’t Moira at all? We couldn’t take the risk. She couldn’t take the same risk, apparently. Daniel had come to the same conclusion, though he was careful to keep his expression neutral.

“Does he have his phone?” Daniel asked politely.

“No,” Moira admitted. “He ordered us to drop all of our phones. They are easily traced. He could be how Marcus found us.”

“Explains why we couldn’t get in contact with him,” Jackson said.

“But not why we can’t see him now,” Daniel said, eyeing Moira carefully for her reaction.

“How do I know you are who you say you are?” Moira asked. “It is a question that is more important now than ever. You could be a skillfully crafted illusion. One that could help the Seekers track us back to our location…you could be a group of Watchers specifically picked for your ability to look like others – Clare looks changed enough to be a Watcher now, which is not how I remember her…if I fail at protecting my people, I fail at more than just a duty.”