Forgotten (The Lost Children Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  Closing my eyes, I waited for that hum to resonate.

  It didn’t.

  I concentrated harder, searching for something, anything that would lead me in the right direction. Nothing happened.

  A car honked. My eyes snapped open, and I jumped back. I’d almost wandered into an intersection. I hurried back to the sidewalk and retreated into an alleyway by a brick building. Pungent scents from a nearby dumpster filled the air. I wrinkled my nose but stayed put. Away from the commotion, I closed my eyes. This time I retreated to that calm place within. The place that always made the instinct hum to life.

  Breathe in, breathe out. It’s got to be in here somewhere.

  Nothing.

  Clenching my hands into fists, I took another deep breath. Hyperventilating wouldn’t help. I tried again. Still nothing.

  “No!” I whispered.

  I dropped my backpack and sank to the ground. Gasping breaths shook me. I huddled on the pavement against the brick building. The ground was cold through my jeans as I drew my knees up. I didn’t care.

  Where was the instinct? Did Little Raven hold nothing for me? Had the instinct been wrong? Had I been wrong? Had there ever been an instinct? Or was it something I made up to give me purpose?

  Tears sprang into my eyes as I cradled my head in my hands. This time, I couldn’t stop them. I had no idea what I was going to do. I had counted on finding something here, feeling something, or at least recognizing something, but nothing like that had happened.

  I began crying in earnest, silently at first but then my whole body shook. I was completely lost. Lost with no answers, no home, and no way of knowing what to do next.

  Wrapping my arms around my shins, I laid my head against my knees and sobbed. Cold tears streamed down my cheeks. A shuffle of feet on the sidewalk sounded, as if someone skidded to a stop.

  “Thank God,” someone murmured. “Shh. It’s okay.”

  The next thing I knew, strong warm arms encircled me. Before I had a chance to react, I was lifted from the ground. I began to flail and opened my mouth to scream, but the sight that greeted me left me speechless.

  Flint’s dark, bottomless eyes gazed down at me. “You don’t need to say anything.”

  I didn’t comprehend his words. I just saw his eyes and focused on his voice. I needed to. My insides reeled. I had nothing, absolutely nothing and I didn’t see any way it would ever come right.

  Flint carried me to the Suburban parked several blocks over. He placed me in the passenger’s seat. I was like a useless doll in his arms, but he folded my limbs carefully and clicked the seat belt in place before tossing my bag in the back.

  We were already driving through the forest before I realized we’d left town. I didn’t know how long it took us to return to the ranch. The entire journey was a blur. When we arrived at Hideaway Hills, Flint parked the Suburban outside the cabin, and before I knew what was happening, he was carrying me up the front steps.

  I vaguely heard voices around me. A mix of male and female voices with different tones and pitches.

  “Lena, are you okay?”

  “Thank goodness she didn’t get far!”

  “Where’d you find her, Flint?”

  Jacinda appeared in front of me. I tried to smile. She looked so pretty in her pink top. I reached out to touch it. So soft.

  “Silk,” she whispered and winked.

  I was set down on something. It was soft but then something hard pressed against my side. I sank into it. An arm encircled my shoulders and pulled me into the hardness. The next thing I knew, a woman was kneeling in front of me.

  “Can you hear me?” Di asked.

  I nodded.

  “Tell me your name.”

  My name? “Lena,” I mumbled.

  “Can you tell me where you are?”

  Slowly, my foggy brain began functioning. The living room was familiar, and I sat on a couch. When did I get back here? “Um, I’m in the cabin.”

  “What cabin?”

  “The cabin on the ranch.”

  “And what day is it?” she persisted.

  I frowned and slowly the wheels in my mind sped up. “Sometime in August?”

  She seemed happy with that answer and glanced at someone beside me. “It’s time.”

  “Yeah,” a deep voice rumbled. “I know. We should have told her last night, even when she pretended to be sleeping.”

  Whoever had spoken was seated right beside me. I slowly became aware that I was pressed into his side, his warm arm around me. I leaned closer. His scent registered. Spice, wood and tangerines.

  Flint.

  His dark gaze met mine. “Everything’s going to be fine. You’ll see.” His arm tightened around my shoulders, but for the life of me I didn’t understand what he meant.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Is everyone here?” Di asked.

  Jacinda, Mica, Jet and Jasper scooted closer. They’d moved the furniture to form a half circle around me. When had that happened?

  “Lena?” Di said. Her dark eyes were so serious. She always seemed serious.

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you doing okay?”

  “Sure.” But I wasn’t okay. I was anything but okay. Everything I’d been working toward for the past four months had been for nothing. Absolutely nothing. My throat tightened.

  “You need to focus,” Di said. “This is important. We have something to tell you.”

  “What?”

  She paused. “Let’s start with this, what brought you to Colorado?”

  What brought me to Colorado? Are they really going to start with the questions again? For a moment, I didn’t answer, but Di’s gaze held mine and she eventually raised her dark eyebrows.

  “I dunno. Just traveling around.” I gave her the response I gave all strangers when asked that question. Soon, I’d be saying things like that again. Just as soon as I figured out what to do, or where to go from here. The tightness clenched around my throat again.

  “So, there wasn’t a special reason?” Di persisted.

  I shook my head.

  Her frown deepened. “I know it’s hard to tell the truth. We all felt like you when we met the group. Untrusting. Guarded. Scared of so many unknowns, but there’s something you need to know. We all came here for the same reason as you. To find something.”

  I stiffened. “What did you think you’d find?”

  “Answers that would explain who we are and what happened to us four months ago.”

  I stared at her. Numb shock crept through me.

  “Did you really come out here to travel? Or were you hoping to find something too?”

  I shook my head, the movement clumsy. How does she know?

  “Trust us,” Flint whispered. His scent swam around me. Something in me calmed. The feeling of being completely safe cloaked my skin, and I floated back to the surface of reality.

  “How did you know?” I asked Di.

  She smiled. “Because you’re one of us.”

  “One of you?”

  Di took her watch off. The others did the same. It struck me how this group seemed very concerned with keeping time. They all wore watches on their left wrists.

  “May I see your wrist?” Di asked.

  I held out my left arm. My thin, white limb appeared ghostly beside Di’s olive complexion.

  Di pulled my forearm into her lap and flipped it over. She traced the tattoo on my left inner wrist. The small symbol a perfect circle divided into quarters, like a pie cut into four pieces. The tattoo I’d had since that first morning. Another mystery I couldn’t solve.

  “Where did you get this?” she asked. The tattoo was small, maybe a centimeter in diameter and done in fine print, dark ink.

  “Um, I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I’ve always just had it.”

  “I’ve got one too.” She flipped her left wrist over, the one she always wore a watch on. Her left, inner wrist revealed a different symbol. It was also done in the same fine print ink a
nd about a centimeter in diameter. Hers was different. Instead of a circle divided into quarters, it was a full circle with a cross attached to the outside circle’s perimeter.

  “You have one too?” I asked incredulously.

  “Yes.”

  “Isn’t that the symbol for a female?”

  “It is.”

  “And I’ve got the symbol for a male.” Flint flipped his left arm over, revealing a tattoo like Di’s, but instead of the cross attached to the circle, there was an arrow.

  “When did you get those?” I asked.

  “We’ve always had them,” Di said. One by one, Jacinda, Mica, Jasper and Jet flipped their wrists over. I leaned forward, shaking my head. They all had tattoos. Tattoos similar in size and ink to mine.

  “Mine’s pretty intricate.” Jacinda leaned closer. She had two brackets, back to back, connected by a cross – the cross had a small circle at the bottom of it. Unlike Di and Flint’s, I didn’t recognize hers.

  Jet and Jasper had similar symbols. Jasper’s was a curly shaped 4, and Jet’s was a curly shaped lowercase H, except the vertical line in the h had a horizontal bar through the top. I didn’t recognize theirs either.

  Mica’s shining brown eyes met mine when I studied her symbol. It was a U with an upside down cross slashed through it vertically.

  “Do you see what I’m trying to tell you?” Di said. “You’re one of us. We’re just like you. We all woke up four months ago in various cities around the U.S. with no memory of who we are or where we came from, and we all had these tattoos. Isn’t that what happened to you?”

  My eyes widened.

  “You felt the pull too, didn’t you? The desire to search for something, ever since that first morning?”

  I sat numbly, too shocked to speak. The pull? Was she talking about the instinct?

  “We all felt that pull to travel here and search for answers. That’s what brought us here,” Di continued.

  I paused and stared at her warily. Was it possible this wasn’t a game? That what she said was true? I glanced at Flint. His dark, solemn eyes regarded me steadily, and I knew, knew to the deepest part of my soul that he wouldn’t lie to me. I didn’t know how I knew that, but I did. What Di was saying was real.

  “But how does that make any sense?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t,” she said. “We were hoping to find answers here too, but so far, we haven’t found anything.”

  I shook my head. “Wait a minute. How did you all find each other? How come I’ve been alone all these months but none of you have been?”

  Di put her watch back on. “We were alone too, at first. When we woke up we were hundreds of miles away from one another, but then we found each other.”

  “How?”

  “Is there something you can do, that makes you different to everyone else?” she asked, ignoring my question.

  “What do you mean?”

  She waved her hand. “Like an ability? Or a gift? Something that’s unique to you, that only you can do?”

  I knew what she was asking. I thought about what I could do, the thing that made me different. I let my gaze go fuzzy. Colorful clouds appeared around all six of them. I snapped my vision back to normal. “How do you know about that?”

  “We all have special abilities, gifts, as I’ve started to call them. It only makes sense that you have one too.”

  “So, what can you do?” I asked warily.

  “I can see the future.”

  “What?”

  “I know, I can’t explain it either, but it’s true. I saw you coming here. Do you understand? I saw you. I’ve been seeing you for months, and I knew that you’d be coming to us, here, in Colorado.” She paused. “I thought we’d find you in Little Raven. Yesterday, when we picked you up on the road, it was sheer luck we found you. If Flint hadn’t suggested we drive around, it may have been weeks before I’d been able to pinpoint a location on you again.”

  My mouth dropped. The image of their Suburban driving on the county road flashed through my mind. That hadn’t been a coincidence?

  “How is that possible?” I asked.

  Di shrugged. “How is anything possible?”

  “And the rest of you can do other things?”

  Jacinda nodded. “For me it’s hearing. I could hear this conversation up at the house if I wanted to.”

  “You could?”

  “Or I could ignore it. I can turn it on and off.”

  “Really? What can you hear now?”

  She closed her eyes, her long lashes resting on her cheeks. “There’s a scratching sound under the front porch. It’s small, maybe a mouse.” She cocked her head. “Several conversations in the cabins across the driveway. They’re talking about tomorrow. A humming sound in the distance, it’s a bird flying–”

  “She could go on all day,” Mica interrupted.

  Jacinda’s eyes flashed open. She shrugged and smiled.

  “For me, it’s sight!” Mica said, pulling my attention to her. “I can see better than any other human.” She grinned.

  “How well can you see?”

  “I can read twelve point font from three hundred yards.”

  I gaped.

  Mica grinned broader. “We tried it.”

  “If it’s Courier she can read it at three hundred and ten yards,” Jet stated in a bored tone. “But if it’s Perpetua, it’s only two hundred and eighty.”

  “And I can see in the dark,” Mica added.

  “And you two?” I asked the twins.

  “Jet and I are telepathic,” Jasper said.

  “Telepathic?”

  “Yeah, we can read each other’s minds,” Jet explained.

  “I know what it means.”

  Jasper laughed, apparently finding my stern expression funny. “Jet and I have always been able to communicate with each other, right from the moment we woke up.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah,” Jasper said. “Imagine how it felt to wake up, not knowing who you are, where you came from, or what you were doing, and to have a voice in your head. Jet even called me The Voice. He wouldn’t believe I was a real person until we met.”

  Jet rolled his eyes.

  I shook my head and thought about that first morning. The cold alleyway, the smells of rotting garbage. I shuddered. I hated thinking about that day. “So what is he thinking right now?”

  Jasper eyed his brother. “Right now, he’s wondering how long this will take since we never ate breakfast.”

  I glanced at Flint. My breath hitched at the sight. “And you?”

  Flint shrugged. “I’m strong and fast.”

  Mica laughed loudly. “That’s the understatement of the year.”

  Meeting Flint’s gaze, my concentration waned. Once again, I wanted to sink into him. Like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole. I shook myself and then remembered that strange feeling of power I’d sensed in him last night.

  “How strong and fast?”

  He smiled, affording me a glimpse of perfect, white teeth. “Maybe I’ll show you some time.”

  I snapped my gaze away. I needed to be in control of my senses right now. It still hadn’t sunk in, though, what everyone was telling me, that I wasn’t alone. That I wasn’t the only one who’d woken up with no memory of who I was or where I came from. That this strange ability I had didn’t make me unique. That there were others like me.

  “What about you, Lena?” Jacinda asked. “What can you do?”

  Di leaned forward. Her short dark hair fell across her cheek. She tucked it behind one ear. “What’s your gift? I’ve been dying to know.”

  I smiled faintly. Had it really only been eight hours ago that I’d left this cabin to walk back to Little Raven? That now seemed like days.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Why was I drawn to Little Raven? That’s where the instinct led me, but when I returned this morning, there was nothing there. I couldn’t feel it anymore.”

  “We were all drawn to this general area,�
� Di said. “Although, none of us know why. Once we all found each other, though, the pulling feeling disappeared.”

  “So, now that I’m in this area and I found all of you, I have found what I was searching for?”

  “As far as we can figure, yes,” Di replied.

  That would explain why nobody in town knew me and why the instinct had disappeared.

  “Well?” Di said impatiently. “What’s your gift?”

  I took a breath. “I see clouds, or at least, I call them clouds.”

  “Like in the sky?” Jet asked.

  “No, around people. I call them clouds because they’re like a haze that surrounds people’s shoulders. They’re not really opaque, more like a wispy fog. It tells me if they’re good or bad, if I can trust them.”

  “Like an aura,” Di said, “And you can see that in all of us?”

  “Yes, but with all of you it’s different. Normally, people’s clouds are white, gray or black. The whiter the cloud, the better a person’s soul is, the darker the cloud, the more evil a person is. But you’re all different. You all have colors.” I remembered my reaction when I’d first met them on the county road. I’d been so confused by it.

  “We do?” Di said.

  “Yeah, nobody else has ever had colors before.”

  “What colors are we?” Mica asked.

  I switched my vision and again marveled at the rainbow display.

  “You all have blue in your clouds, but everyone also has a unique color. You have pink mixed with the blue, Mica, and you have violet.” I turned to Jacinda.

  “What about mine?” Di asked.

  “Gold and blue.”

  “And the guys?” Di asked.

  “Jet’s blue is mixed with red, Jasper’s with yellow, and Flint’s with orange.”

  “So blue mixed with all the colors of the rainbow,” Di commented.

  I flipped my vision back to normal. The colorful clouds disappeared.

  “Interesting.” Di tapped her finger to her chin.

  “What color are you?” Jasper asked.

  His question took me completely by surprise. “My color?”

  “Yeah. What color’s your cloud?” Jet asked.

  I frowned. “Um, I don’t know.”

  “How can you not know?” Jet asked.

  “Because I’ve never looked at it.”