True: An Elixir Novel
Read True: An Elixir Novel Online
Authors: Hilary Duff
one
CLEA
I’ve never been so terrified in my life.
I run so hard and fast, my breath scours my throat. I don’t even know how long I’ve been running. Agony spikes my legs with every step, but I can’t stop. I don’t dare.
It’s dark, but I don’t want to see. I don’t want to hear, either, but I can’t help it.
Screams. High-pitched screams. A little girl, tortured—her soul ripped apart. It’s awful, and it goes on and on and on . . . my God, when will it stop? It has to stop!
Another scream. A man. I know the voice, but I don’t want to know it. I don’t want to hear it. I can’t. I keep running.
A face leaps out of the darkness, blocking my path. Its size is impossible—as tall as I am, white-pale skin stretching over bloodshot white-orb eyes and a mouth open so wide it could swallow me. I scream, but no sound comes out. I back up, but I can’t turn away. The blank eyes lock on mine, and bloody tears start streaming down its cheeks.
I step back into nothingness. The last thing I see is the head exploding into scarlet mist.
I fall backward, flail my arms and legs, catch on nothing. The dirt walls of this pit are out of reach, but I can see them, see the twisted faces undulating just under their surface. I see their clawed fingers reaching out to me. Their susurrant voices call to me in a language I can’t understand, but the meaning is clear.
These are my dead, and they’re hungry for my company.
The voices keen louder as I plummet. I try to plug my ears, close my eyes, but I can’t block them out. They fill my senses until a blinding-sharp pain pierces my spine. I raise my head and see it: a massive metal spike impaled through the
middle of my body. I hang on it, twisting helplessly as the dead souls above claw through their dirt coffins and crawl down to claim me as their own. . . .
“NO!” I scream.
“Clea,” a voice says. “Clea, it’s okay. . . . It’s not real. . . . You’re safe now. You’re okay.”
I hear him, but I feel too foggy to understand. The pain in my back is fading, but my face hurts like something’s slicing into it. A rush of cold washes over me, and I don’t want to open my eyes. I’m more afraid now than I was surrounded by the dead, but the reason why floats out of my grasp. All my attention narrows to the strap of pain eating across my forehead, my eye, my nose. . . .
A seat belt. It’s a seat belt. I’m in a car. Of course I’m in a car—I can feel it now, the familiar hum and vibration and movement. I must have fallen asleep slumped against the seat belt.
I sit up and wince away from the sting. The pain in my face ebbs, but other aches and flames explode all over my body. I open my eyes . . .
. . . and see Nico, Rayna’s boyfriend, staring down at me. It’s dark outside, but I can see him in the streaking headlights from cars going in
the opposite direction. He’s so tall and broad, he looks stuffed into the backseat, like it’s a clown car. He’s not belted in; he’s braced over me, one hand on the back of the passenger seat and one hand on the seat behind my head, his body tenting mine. Twigs and leaves mat his blond hair and dirt smears his face, but his deep brown eyes grip me. They’re so filled with worry and—
Brown eyes.
Nico has blue eyes.
I gasp as I remember everything. I see it all—the maelstrom in the woods, bullets and branches everywhere. . . . Nico—the real one—with the dagger in his hand, his moment of hesitation as he held it above Sage’s chest . . . I see Ben tackling him, the horror in Ben’s face when he saw the dagger embedded in Nico’s stomach. Then Sloane, leaping up and grabbing the dagger, plunging it into Sage and killing him,
killing
him, for real and forever.
I stare down at my hands and see the shadowy mess of dried blood from cradling Sage’s body. A bubble of agony rises in the pit of my stomach as I remember his face, vacant and empty, his body lifeless in my arms. . . .
“Clea,” Nico says. “Look at me. It’s okay.”
I do look at him, but only at his eyes. His brown eyes.
“Sage?” I ask.
He smiles, and I see double. It’s Nico’s face, it is, but that’s Sage’s slow, sideways smile, and Sage’s eyes, Sage’s
soul
.
The relief is so overwhelming I can’t breathe. I try to throw my arms around him, but the seat belt catches and jars me backward.
“Here,” he says. He reaches across me to gently play out slack in the belt, leaning forward so, for just a moment, his neck and cheek are by my lips. My heart pounds, and I breathe deep to take in his scent.
But it’s not there. I smell something musky, with a chemical sweetness. And when he pulls the seat belt loose enough that I could easily lean into his arms . . . I don’t.
“Thanks,” I say instead. I don’t touch his hand as I gently take the belt back from him and ease it into place over my chest. “I’m good.”
He smiles, but his eyes betray him. He looks wounded, which hurts like a punch, until another image bursts into my head: Sage wrapped in the arms of another woman, kissing her and tearing at her clothes.
He severed our soul connection to be with another woman . . . so why is he looking at me like he loves me?
“Clea?”
It’s Ben’s voice, and it’s as tight as his hands gripping the steering wheel.
“Are you okay?” In the rearview mirror, I see his eyes dart to Sage. “Is she okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say. It’s not exactly the truth, but there aren’t words to explain how I actually feel. “What happened? The last thing I remember . . .”
The last thing I remember is Nico’s ravaged body healing right in front of me. But how did I get from there to here?
“You passed out,” Ben says. “We carried you back to the car. Nico—
Sage
carried you back to the car.”
“I
passed out
?”
Sage laughs—a low chuckle that reverberates deliciously in my stomach. “Was I right?”
I’m clearly on the outside of the joke, and I don’t like it. “Were you right about what?”
“Ben was worried about you. I told him you’d be fine . . . just furious at yourself.”
I don’t know if I’m angry at him because I’m offended, or because I’m annoyed that he’s right.
“I’m not the passing-out type.”
“You’re human, Clea,” Sage says. “It’s okay.” He puts his hand on my cheek, and my skin vibrates at his touch. I don’t even realize I’m leaning into its pressure until he moves it to slowly brush back my hair. He does it gently, barely grazing my bruises.
His eyes. I thought I’d never see them again, and now they’re looking at me with so much love I want to cry.
“ ‘Human’ is simplifying it,” Ben cuts in. He looks pointedly at Sage between glances out the windshield. “It’s not like she’s Blanche DuBois with ‘the vapors.’ You had a vasovagal response,” he continues, turning his eyes to mine. “It’s one way the body can react to stress. Your heart rate and blood pressure drop, which reduces blood flow to the brain. I have the same thing when I get shots.”
“Really?” Sage asks.
Even in the darkness I can see Ben’s face go bright red, but his voice stays strident. “I’m just saying, it’s not a sign of weakness or anything. It’s normal.”
“Well, that’s good,” I say. “I’d hate to think anything about our situation wasn’t normal.”
Sage laughs out loud. “She’s fine.”
He stretches back as far as he can in the cramped space and closes his eyes.
I stare as each streetlight thrusts him into a momentary glow. A couple of minutes ago I couldn’t bear to move into his arms; now I’m aching to shift next to him and lay my head against his chest.
But what would happen if I did? Whatever I saw in his eyes just now, it doesn’t change what he did. He broke the tie between us. Forever. Didn’t he?
Another car streaks past, and in its light I see him wince. He looks pale, too, but I can’t really tell—even tanned, Nico’s skin is so light it’s hard to say. Then he takes a long, measured breath through his nose and presses his lips together. The muscle in his jaw flexes as he concentrates.
“Sage?” I ask. “Are you okay?”
He nods his head, but barely.
“He’s having some issues,” Ben says. “He’s been like that most of the ride. He perked up when you started talking, but mostly it’s been that. You know, when he wasn’t yelling at me to pull over so he could puke his guts out.”
“What do you mean? What’s wrong with him?”
Through the rearview mirror, Ben gives me the driest look imaginable. “I honestly don’t even know how to begin to answer that question.”
“Okay, fine. But I mean . . . is this normal?”
“Normal for a guy whose soul got torn out of one body and thrust into another one that I’d just killed two seconds before? Gee, I don’t know. It’s not something I deal with every day.”
There’s an edge of hysteria in his voice, and I realize he’s struggling to keep it together.
“You didn’t kill Nico. You didn’t want that to happen. You were just trying to save Sage.”
“Well, I certainly did that, right?”
He laughs, but it’s manic. I don’t like it.
“Ben—”
Sage’s groan cuts me off. “Ben! Now!”
“Crap,” Ben mutters. He looks over his shoulder and cuts to the side of the road. We crunch onto its graveled edge, and Sage staggers out of the car. Bent double, he hurls himself to the guardrail and crawls over it. I get out in time to see him stumble down a steep weeded embankment and disappear into the darkness.
“Sage!” I shout. I start to climb the guardrail after him, but Ben takes my arm. It hurts more
than it should, and I know it must be covered with more bruises.
“He doesn’t want you to see. The last few times he didn’t bother.”
“That’s just stupid. I can handle someone getting sick.”
I try to tug away, but Ben’s grip tightens.
“What’s stupid is
both
of you running around down there in the dark.”
I yank my phone out of my pocket and turn it on so Ben can see its glow. “Better?”
“No. It’s not exactly a floodlight, Clea. Sage is fine. He’ll come back when he’s ready.”
That’s when we hear the scream.
“Sage!” I cry, and rip away from Ben to jump over the guardrail and run blindly down the embankment, trampling through prickly brush until I run into the solid wall of Sage’s chest. He wraps one arm around me, but it’s not a hug—I can feel him leaning on me for balance.
“I’m okay,” he says. “I just stepped wrong and fell. I think I landed on something. My arm . . .”
I press a button on my phone to turn it on. It might not be a floodlight, but it’s more than enough to see what he’s talking about: a thick slab of glass, what looks like the bottom of a beer
bottle, embedded across the inside of his left arm, just above the wrist.
