Tremble (Denazen #3)(23)
A fresh coat of freezing rain had fallen, making the entire forest one big, uneven ice rink. I was running blind, at the mercy of the constantly moving clouds and intermittent moonlight, while doing my best not to fall on my ass. Add a tornado or some other type of natural disaster and my night would be utterly complete. Sometimes I was sure my existence was simply entertainment for some higher power who got off on seeing people suffer.
I stopped beside a thick pine tree for a second and scanned the area to get my bearings, but in the confusion lost my sense of direction. The rock wall was nowhere in sight and I had no clue which way Ashley’s house—or Alex’s car—was. And where was Alex? Please, God, let him be okay.
Something behind me snapped—a tree branch or something—and I started moving again. I dug the cell from my pocket but fumbled when I slipped on an icy root. Going down hard, the phone flew from my grasp.
“Shit!” I hissed, dragging myself off the ground. I thrust my hands through the layer of ice and into the slushy snow to find the cell. After a few seconds, my hands closed around the familiar plastic and I pushed off the ground and kept going.
“You’re fast,” Kale called, voice bouncing off the trees. “But you won’t get far.” There was no mocking in his tone. Only a painfully familiar, matter-of-fact pitch.
Ahead I caught sight of a large clump of rocks. Hoping it would lead me back to the house or at the very least give me a place to hide, I banked hard and turned the corner into total darkness. I got two steps, maybe three, before someone grabbed me, hand clamping down hard over my mouth, and spun me away from the path.
“Shh!” the voice hissed in my ear.
I stopped struggling, my attacker maneuvering us behind the side of the rock as someone else—assumedly Kale—raced by. Then he let go and stepped away. At first a rush of relief flooded me, thinking it was Alex, but then the person spoke. “Are you crazy?”
“I’m getting really tired of people asking me that,” I fired back, slightly surprised. The moon moved behind the clouds so I could barely make him out, but it didn’t matter. I knew that voice. “Is it just you? Or is your creepy other half lurking somewhere?”
“It’s just me and Kale,” Aubrey whispered. “And keep your damn voice down.”
“Ashley Conner. Is she—”
“She’s gone. The parents got her.” He leaned back and crooked his finger at something. Alex stepped out from behind the rock.
Relieved to see him in one piece, I threw myself forward and hugged him. He returned the embrace with a low chuckle. “Jeez, Dez, if I knew this was what it would take to get you to put your hands all over me again, I would have done it sooner.”
“Jackass,” I said, pulling away and turning to our unlikely savior.
The last time I’d seen him, Aubrey had technically saved me from a violent and excruciatingly painful death at the hands of his brother, Able, but that didn’t mean he was now batting for the home team. They were twins, and their ability—a freaky joint thing—allowed one to poison you while the other could heal. Kale had sacrificed himself by making a deal with Dad. Aubrey would be allowed to heal me if Kale went back to Denazen, but Dad never planned on keeping his end of the deal. Aubrey’s orders had been to heal the poison and bring me back—or let me die. Instead, he chose to cure the poison and let me go, leaving with the promise that he would look after Kale.
“What did they do to him, Aubrey?”
“This isn’t really the time or place—”
I grabbed the lapel of his coat and gave a good shake. He was taller than Kale—probably six foot four—and I had to throw my head back to look up at him. “What did they do to him?”
“He’s been given Domination. It’s the—”
“Working version of Supremacy.” Alex rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. I know. I think she means his brain. What did they do to his head?”
“He thinks I’m Kiernan. And he thinks Kiernan is…” I couldn’t finish, the memory of the way he’d kissed her back at the party still slowly eating a hole through my soul. “Was it the drug? Did it have a side effect?”
And please tell me it can be fixed…
Aubrey shook his head, long hair loose and blowing in the breeze. “It wasn’t Domination. A Six did it. They didn’t want to give him the drug unless they were sure he could be controlled. They went in and altered his memories—almost killed him doing it, too.”
My stomach clenched. “What?”
“You, Dez. It was you. The harder they tried to wipe you away, the more he fought the process. In the end, they couldn’t do it without killing him, so they had to swap you and Kiernan.”
In a truly screwed-up way, Aubrey’s confession made me happy. It was exactly like Alex said. If I was that deeply embedded in Kale’s subconscious, then whatever the Denazen Six had done, we could undo. Somehow, it could be fixed. “Anything else? Anything that might help?”
“The only thing I can say is Cross is worried the swap won’t stick. He has Mindy, the Six who did it, working with Kale daily. She tells him she’s trying to help recover his memory when really, she’s ensuring they don’t lose control over him.”
This was great news! “So if we keep him away from this chick, he’ll start remembering?”