Fractured Truth (2 page)

“See you inside,” Arik said. A few seconds later they
disappeared into the light. They left the door open for me.

I felt Liam’s eyes on me. “Are you going in?” he asked.

I was about to answer when something else caught my attention: the darkened forest rising beyond the wall surrounding Lucent.

“You’re not going in, are you?” Liam said, following my gaze.

“I’m going to go running.” That’s exactly what I felt like doing right now.
Stay busy.

Liam stuffed his hands in his pockets, and I wondered if it was because of the chill in the late fall air or something else. “At some point you’re going to have to face what happened.”

“I know.” Instead of going to the rear of the school, I turned toward the open front gates. There was a trail I’d discovered several weeks ago just off the main road. I’d also discovered a new friend there too. Someone who liked the night as much as I did.

“It’s good for you to be around people who love you,” he said.

“Is that what you did when your family died?” I felt a little bad for mentioning this, but he’d backed me into a corner. Two centuries ago Liam’s life forever changed when he was forced to watch the death of his family—and the girl he was to marry—by a Vyken, the same one who also tried to turn him.

Liam glanced away. “I stayed busy like you.”

“And there you have it.”

“But it caught up to me.”

“I’m a fast runner.”

He took hold of my arm, stopping me from going forward. His hand was warm. “You need to rest.”

“I’ll rest when it’s over.”

He stared at me intensely, moonlight making his eyes brighter than they really were. “It’s never over. There’s always some evil out there, lurking in the shadows. You can’t stop it all.” He searched my eyes. “You need to grieve, Llona.”

And there’s the elephant. I pulled away. Liam’s hand fell from my arm, and I was cold again.

“I’ll come with you,” he said. “We’ll run together.”

I smiled. “Thank you. For everything. But if you don’t mind I’d like to run alone, burn off some energy or something.” As much as I liked Liam’s company, I needed to be alone right now despite the late hour. Catching Jackson was a big deal, and I wanted to sort through my thoughts of how I might get him to talk.

“You know where to find me.” He walked away, his long coat billowing in the wind behind him, until he disappeared into the same doors the twins had gone through moments before.

I turned and headed toward the open gates. By the time I reached them, I was running, spurred on by all the terrible things the Vykens had done, not only to me but to Liam too. The Vyken who had bit him wanted to turn Liam because Liam was an Enlil, a supernatural human with a rare ability to change into a powerful wind. He hoped Liam would become like him and other Vykens who thirst for the Light in an Aura’s blood, thereby helping in their desire to rule the Auras. But so far Liam had yet to succumb to the darkness coursing through his blood, and for centuries he was the only one to ever do this. That is, until he taught me.

It wasn’t easy, though. The Vyken’s poison was always there, hovering on the fringes of my mind as if searching for weaknesses in my resolve. Sometimes, when I was alone at night, and I thought of Christian’s death and Sophie being trapped who knew where, the temptation to give in to the darkness was overwhelming. All my pain could be taken away. It was torture, like offering a recovering alcoholic a tiny sip of wine when no one was looking.

My feet slapped against the pavement. The narrow road in front of me stretched long, cutting through the dense forest of oak and maple trees. A fall wind stung my cheeks, but only a little. It was the smells that mostly drew my attention.

I tried not to, but I inhaled deeply as if smelling freshly baked cookies, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I was smelling blood. The blood of every living creature roaming
the night. I wished I didn’t smell blood, but this was my life now. Ever since a Vyken bit me. Since then, my life had felt like it’s been spiraling out of control.

A branch on a nearby tree jutted into the road. I snapped it off. Spinning around in two great steps, I tossed the broken limb hard toward the sky, angry at Sophie for not listening to me, angry at Christian for going after Cyrus, angry at Cyrus for manipulating everyone . . . but most of all I was angry at myself.

I dropped to my knees against the cold pavement. Every part of me wanted to run into the forest and kill every living thing. I looked into it. The darkness seemed to be staring back at me, daring me to try.

Just then my cell phone vibrated from within my pocket. I removed it and looked down. A text from Liam:

“Practice turning invisible longer. You suck at it.”

I chuckled. Liam seemed to always know when I was in need. He denied that he could hear things miles away, but I often wondered.

I stood up and stretched my arms as I prepared to use my ability to “go dark.” It used a lot of my Light, which was the only thing that kept the Vyken poison at bay. I swirled my hand; a light the size of an apple appeared hovering softly above my palm. I leaned toward it, felt its warmth against my face, and smiled.

It was only a year ago that I had learned to use Light, not only as a weapon, which went against the Auran way of life, but also to help and comfort others. However, after Mr. Steele, my math teacher in Utah, bit me, I stopped using Light for good and only used it as a weapon, which only fed the darkness inside me. If it hadn’t been for Liam teaching me how to control it, I probably would’ve eventually killed someone, thereby becoming a full Vyken. But as long as I was diligent, I managed to stay in control.

I extinguished the ball of Light and instead focused on the Light inside me. After a few seconds of intense concentration,
my insides began to warm to the point where I felt feverish. I took a deep breath and imagined the Light expanding all around me. A searing pressure left my body, and I glanced down. I was invisible, clothes and all.

I only made it to about three minutes when I became too hot to continue. My body was still exhausted from earlier. I was about to turn around when I heard a sound, like a woman gasping. I glanced up at the full moon’s placement in the sky. It was probably about two in the morning. Who would be out this time of night?

I jogged forward until I was on the edge of the forest, just before the small road gave way to a much bigger one. Eventually it led to a new subdivision just outside of Cold Spring.

The opening to the trail was to my left. I avoided it and instead walked toward a small blue house set back from the road. A row of trees hid the structure from people driving by, but if someone drove slowly enough, they’d see the home’s white trim and shuttered windows. The best part of the home, in my opinion, was its front yard. It was full of various rose bushes, all different colors. A woman with long silver hair was hunched over a yellow bush, wearing a black robe.

“Hi, Rose,” I said. I’d giggled inwardly when I first learned her name was Rose and that she loved roses.

She looked up at me and smiled warmly. “What are you doing out here, Llona? This is late even for you.”

“I could say the same for you.”

She smelled a cut rose in her hand. “Ah, but you know how it is. Everything is more vibrant at night.”

I agreed, thinking how beautiful she was beneath the moonlight. I wondered if she was this pretty during the day. I met Rose the same night I went running on the road for the first time, the same night Christian had died, in fact. I’d seen her several times since, but it had been awhile.

Rose was an eccentric old woman who spoke mostly of her roses, but sometimes she spoke of a graveyard she played
in when she was a child in France. Her stories were so strange (once she claimed she’d met Isaac Newton) that I wondered if perhaps she had dementia.

“You look tired, dear,” she said.

I looked up from the rose in her hand. “A little, maybe.”

“You should sleep more. When I was your age, I slept ten hours every night, plus I’d often take a nap on my mother’s grave.”

This was a new development. “How old was your mother when she died?” I asked, feeling instantly connected to her. My own mother had died when I was young.

“Barely thirty. She died giving birth.”

I tightened my lips and frowned. “That must’ve been hard.” Poor woman, living all alone. I glanced at her house, wondering how she managed to take care of herself when she was clearly confused.

Just then I noticed something I’d never seen before—the silhouette of an oddly shaped figure peering out the front window. For a fraction of a second, a pair of eyes, wider than they should be, glowed the way a cat’s does when exposed to light. A shiver crawled up my spine, too slow for comfort.

“Who—or maybe what—is that?” I asked.

Rose glanced behind her. “Nothing you should concern yourself with.”

“I thought you lived alone.”

“I never said that.”

“No, I guess you didn’t. I just assumed.”

Rose took hold of my arm, startling me. The blue from her eyes was gone, leaving only two all-white eyeballs. The chill that was still slowly going up my back now raced up my spine.

“You should never assume a rose is just a rose,” she said. “Look past the appearance.”

“I really want to keep my skin,” I said and looked down at her tight grip. Her nails were clawing at my wrist.

She let go and giggled, an odd sound for an old woman. “I can be so strange sometimes.”

“Are you okay?” I asked but stepped back carefully. This woman was all kinds of strange.

“I’m wonderful. Why wouldn’t I be?” She returned to working on the rosebush in front of her.

“Um, maybe because of the whole white-eyed-trance thing?”

“Nonsense. Now you run along. It’s late.”

I looked back at the house. The odd figure was gone. “Right. Okay.”

“Don’t be a stranger,” Rose said as she snipped at the base of a dying rose.

“Uh-huh.” I turned away, wondering what had just happened. Rose had always acted a little off, but not that much. And what had I seen in the window?

I decided to walk back. Whatever energy I did have left was drained by Rose’s awkwardness. All that was left now was a sort of dread about returning to Lucent Academy. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see my friends, especially May, but it was more the memories the place held. The many Auras who had died, the ones who had been taken. And Christian. His death was always on my mind.

The night was quiet. With winter approaching, the crickets had lost their song, leaving only the sound of my footsteps against the road. I wrapped my arms around me, but not because I was cold.

“I miss you, Christian,” I whispered to the voiceless crickets.

“Llona.”

I froze and slowly turned my head to the side, to where I had heard my name being called. The voice was familiar—too familiar.

I stopped breathing.

Not far away, a figure
stood next to a tree, and by its height, I’d guess it was male. He was bathed in darkness, the moon’s light unable to penetrate through the heavy canopy of trees. Although I couldn’t see him, there was a stillness to him that disturbed me.

But the voice.

I took a hesitant step forward.

“No,” the voice commanded.

I gasped. “Christian?” It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be. I stumbled forward, not caring if I wasn’t supposed to or not. I had to know.

I kept my eyes on the figure, afraid to look away for even a second, but then I blinked, and he was gone.
Huh?
I hurried faster toward the spot where I’d seen him, but when I reached the tree, no one was there.

“Christian?” I whispered.

I strained my ears, using my sensitive hearing, an ability I’d inherited from my Guardian father, but heard nothing. Just a forest, as cold as it was silent.

I stayed there for several minutes, wondering if I had imagined the whole thing. I must have. I saw Christian get buried by a wall of dirt, thanks to Cyrus and his power to control earth. And I was at Christian’s funeral.

But that voice!

Even the way he had said my name, so full of emotion. It had to be him! I instinctively reached up to touch the necklace he had given me. The Greek word etched into the metal pendant meant “Endure to the End.”

When nothing else happened, I decided to head back to Lucent. A few hours of sleep would give me a better perspective on what I’d seen and heard.

Before I walked through Lucent’s front doors, I took a deep breath. My chest felt tight as I stepped over the threshold, but when I saw May asleep on a couch in the lobby, I relaxed.

I went over and sat next to her. May had been my best friend ever since a lab accident during our junior year. A beaker had exploded into a ball of flames, catching my hair on fire. It was then that I learned May was different, because I saw her cause the fire, and she had seen my hair grow back, a strange DNA mutation from being an Aura.

It was later revealed that May was a Fury, a person who could create and manipulate fire. When Sophie found out, she invited May to Lucent Academy too, because Furies were extremely rare. Plus, we had Dr. Han, who was a Fury himself. He trained May daily on how to control the Fury’s fire, which he always insisted was power hungry, but May never exhibited the qualities he was worried about. May was good. And my best friend.

I nudged her on the shoulder. “May?”

She moaned and moved to turn over, but then froze and opened her eyes wide. “Llona?”

I smiled. “I’m back. You really didn’t need to wait up.”

She threw her arms around me, squeezed me hard, then pulled away. “But today was special. You got him, Llona.”

“Took forever, but, yeah, finally.” I sank farther into the sofa.

“We need to celebrate. First thing in the morning with Kiera and Tessa. Finally, our best-friend foursome will be reunited.”

“So, anything new since I’ve been gone?” I had left two weeks ago to go to Jake’s wedding. Afterward I met up with Liam in New York City to follow some leads, which led us to Jackson.