“What about Ms. Hady?” I asked, interrupting their conversation. “Where was she?”
Mrs. Crawford answered, “She was in the meeting with everyone else.”
“Did you see her?”
She furrowed her brow as if trying to remember. “I saw her at the beginning, and she hugged me at the end.”
“But could she have snuck out?” Liam asked.
Abigail leaned forward and scooted to the edge of her seat. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before, but when I embarrassingly stormed from the meeting, I saw her. She was getting into the elevator.”
“You should’ve said something sooner,” Dr. Han said. He turned to Mrs. Crawford. “I want you to talk to her.”
“But this is Susan we’re talking about,” she said. “This school and the girls are her life.”
“I know, but she was in my office earlier this week and was really upset. I’ve never seen that side of her before. Just talk to her. See what she has to say about that day, but don’t tell her what Abigail said. If she seems at all suspicious, tell her to come see me. Say whatever you need to get her here.”
Mrs. Crawford lowered her head. “I’ll do it, but I want you to know that it wasn’t her.” She left the room.
Abigail tilted her head toward me and in a low voice said, “Personally I’ve never liked Susan. The school is better off without her draconian rules.” She patted me on the knee, then stood up to follow Mrs. Crawford out.
Was Abigail right about Ms. Hady? Of all the teachers, she was the most upset by the recent changes, but enough to work with Cyrus?
“Tonight’s the night,” Dr. Han said, swiveling his chair away from his desk as if he were about to stand.
Liam and I looked at each other. “Did you talk to Rose?” I asked.
“This morning. She’s stronger during the full moon, so she believes this will be our best chance.”
“The moon,” I whispered, thinking of how I used to be at my strongest when it was full too. That seemed like a lifetime ago. Maybe it would help me again.
Liam dropped onto the sofa next to me. “Are you ready for this?”
I nodded. “What about you? You’re not going to go all kamikaze again, are you?”
“Nope. We’ll do this together.”
“Sounds like you two worked things out,” Dr. Han said. “Good. We need everyone focused if we’re going to pull this off. Let’s begin. Llona?”
I removed my cell phone from my pocket and turned it over in my hands several times. No going back now. For better or worse, something had to be done. I turned the phone on and prepared a text message to Christian. “We have the witch. We know you have the ruby. Let’s trade.” I hit send.
Liam, Dr. Han, and I all waited patiently for Christian to respond. After a few minutes, I said, “Maybe they’re not interested.” But before I could finish my sentence, the phone buzzed. I read the message out loud.
“Why would we want to do that?”
I texted back: “Because Cyrus is going to need her if he wants to create another Shadow.” I looked up at Liam and Dr. Han. “He’s not going to buy it. He knows we’d never just give up someone’s life.”
“Make him believe it,” Dr. Han said.
My phone buzzed again. I read aloud: “You would never willingly give up someone’s life.” I gave Dr. Han an I-told-you-so look, then messaged back: “We would for the greater good. If we don’t have the ruby, then we have zero chance of killing the Shadow. Besides, we don’t need the witch who freely and proudly admits to killing innumerable humans. You can have her, just give us the ruby.”
I read it out loud to Dr. Han and Liam. “How did that sound?”
“Good, but let’s see if he bought it,” Liam said.
A few seconds later a message returned; I read it to myself: “So you want me to give you a chance?” Christian wrote.
While I continued to text, Liam and Dr. Han began talking about who all was going to go when we traded Rose for the ruby. I wrote to Christian: “Yes. Please do it for me.”
“Cyrus wouldn’t like it. You need to sweeten the deal.”
I looked up, thinking. Dr. Han was insisting that he come along, but Liam was trying to convince him it wasn’t necessary. He and the twins would be enough. My gaze wandered to Liam. He was sitting upright and freakishly still, but he spoke with such passion that I expected his hands to come up to help drive his point home, but they never did.
“What do you want?” I texted, but even as I wrote it, I knew what he was going to say.
A second later, a message said, “You.”
“What’s Christian saying?” Liam asked.
I kept the phone’s screen tilted toward me so Liam couldn’t read the texts. Do I tell him? I pursed my lips. He would never let me go. “He’ll do it,” I said. “On one condition.”
“What’s that?” Liam asked.
I took a breath before I said, “You can’t be at the exchange.”
He jumped up, his eyes wide. “No way! I have to be there.” He looked at Dr. Han. “I’m going.”
“Is that his only condition?” Dr. Han asked.
“Yes,” I lied.
“I’m sorry, Liam, but we have to take it.”
“No! I’m not letting Llona out of my sight, especially knowing Christian will be there. He’s likely to kill her!”
“I’m sorry, but you can’t. This is the only chance we have to get the ruby back, and we have to take it. But don’t worry. I will go and watch out for Llona. We’ll take Arik and Aaron. And Petros too. It will be good to have a Lycan with us.”
“No Lycans! They can’t be trusted. Why does no one see this?”
While they continued to argue, I thought of May and the others taken by Cyrus. Maybe Christian would take me to them. And maybe I could find a way out. It’s a chance I was willing to take.
I texted back: “Fine. I will go back with you, but only if no one gets hurt and you give us the ruby.” I hesitated over the send button.
“You’re not going,” Dr. Han said to Liam. “And that’s final.”
I hit send.
TWENTY-TWO
“How can you go along with this?” Liam asked me as we walked out of Dr. Han’s office. Any minute now, the chimes would sound, and the halls would become packed with girls hurrying to their next class.
“Because it’s the only way we can get the ruby. Besides, no one’s going to get hurt, I promise.” I hoped that included me.
“You can’t know that.”
“You’ll see. Everyone will return.”
He stopped me. “All at the same time?”
He sensed my deception, a problem of knowing someone too well. I glanced the other way and started walking again. “You know I can’t promise that.”
He came after me. “Something doesn’t feel right, Llona. We’re in this together, remember?”
It was my turn to stop. I had said this, not too long ago either. Did I mean it? The Light inside me said yes, the darkness no. And herein lies the internal battle of two conflicting emotions. “Come with me,” I said and pulled him into an empty classroom.
“What aren’t you telling me?” he said as soon the door closed.
I threw my arms around him, surprising even myself. Going with Christian, with Vykens, was insane. It was like willingly swimming with sharks with two slabs of bloody beef tied to my hips.
After a minute of holding me tightly, he gently pushed me away. “Christian wants you too, doesn’t he?”
I nodded.
“And you agreed.”
“There’s a chance he will take me to Sophie and the others. I need to see that they’re okay.”
“And then what?”
“And then I help them escape.”
“What a horrible plan! What were you thinking?”
“I’m thinking I can manipulate Christian until an opportunity presents itself.”
Sunlight shone through the classroom’s big windows, ill
uminating Liam’s wide green eyes. “By making him think you have feelings for him?”
“Whatever it takes.”
He stepped toward me, squeezing the space between us. “There’s nothing left of the old Christian. You get that, right? Nothing you do or say will make him act like how he was before.”
“I know. I plan on making him think that I’m the one who changed . . . into exactly what he wants.”
Liam lowered himself onto the top of a nearby desk. “Then what? Don’t you think Christian and the others are going to be mad when they figure out they’ve been tricked by Rose and that you knew about it all along?”
I hadn’t thought this far ahead but didn’t tell him that. “I’ll handle whatever happens.”
“I won’t.”
“Either you or I will have to yield, and I’m telling you right now, it’s not going to be me.”
He took my hands in his and held them. “There has to be a way for both of us to win.”
“I don’t dare wear any sort of a tracking device.”
“And I don’t dare send you with one.”
I stared down at our entwined fingers, thinking hard. Maybe I could leave my cell phone on. No. That would be the first thing they’d destroy. Then it dawned on me. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. I looked up. “Can I communicate with you using my Light? I did it before with Christian.”
“But I’m not a Guardian.”
“What if it’s not about that at all? What if it’s more about the connection you’ve formed with someone?”
He shrugged. “It’s worth a shot, I guess. What do you want me to do?”
I slid a desk next to him and sat down. This could work. It had to. “Turn so you’re facing me,” I ordered.
He did as I asked and waited expectantly. I reached up and held his face in my palms. His skin was cold beneath my warm hands, but a good kind of cool, like ice cream on a warm summer day. “Close your eyes and think of me.”
“Easy enough,” he said and shut his eyes.
I watched him for a minute, thinking how hard all of this would’ve been without him. Actually, I would probably be like Christian now, a full Vyken, if Liam hadn’t been there.
He opened his eyes. “Llona?”
I blushed and stammered. “Sorry, I’m just trying to figure out how to do this.”
“Take your time.” His eyes closed again.
I leaned into him until my forehead touched his. I thought of him, of our time together, and of the bond that had been formed. My love for him was that of a friend, the most dearest and most beloved. Did my feelings go beyond that? Possibly, but it wasn’t something I wanted to explore just yet. I just hoped that my connection to him was strong enough for what I was about to do.
What is my favorite color? I thought and used Light to push the question to him.
He sat up as if shocked. “Red,” he said, gasping for air.
“That worked?”
He laughed. “It was as if you had yelled it at me. Do it again.”
I mentally pushed the words: Favorite movie?
He answered out loud. “Underworld.”
“Wow,” I said, surprised at how easy that was. Maybe our connection was a lot stronger than I realized. “I guess we have a solution to our problem.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
I stood up and opened the door. “I would. I’m doing this, Liam, and I don’t want you anywhere near the exchange.”
“But what if that only worked because we were in close proximity to each other?”
“I’ll keep trying it throughout the day.”
“How do I communicate back?”
“If it’s possible, from what I learned you’re supposed to use the same Light I send to you to form words and then send it back to me.”
I left the room. Liam walked beside me down the hall. I could tell he was excited by his footsteps. They weren’t as heavy as they usually were.
“Where you headed after this?” he asked.
“Don’t get upset, but I’m going to find Petros to make sure he’ll come tonight, along with the twins and Dr. Han.”
“Why a Lycan? Especially after knowing how I feel about them?”
I stopped him right there. “Enough already! What did Lycans do to make you hate them so much?”
He didn’t answer right away. His expression was pained, and I almost regretted asking the question, but then he said, “I was friends with Lycans a long time ago, one of them specifically, Jonathan. We fought side by side in many battles together, me an Enlil and him a Lycan. But then something happened. My family was eating dinner one night. I was there with my fiancée, Isabo”—he flinched as if saying her name physically hurt him; it was the first time I’d ever heard her name—“when Vykens stormed our house. They killed everyone while I was forced to watch. I begged them to kill me too, but then Jonathan came through the door. He’d been there the whole time. He could’ve saved my family, but chose to do nothing. And instead of letting them murder me, he convinced them to turn me instead.” He wasn’t looking at me, but more like right through me. “Jonathan said it was necessary to turn me into a stronger being, but I swore to him that I would never become what they wanted. And I didn’t either, thanks to my love for Isabo.”
“I’m so sorry, Liam. I had no idea.” There was still so much I didn’t know about him. With all the trials he’d gone through, and to still not have succumbed to the Vyken’s darkness, made the feelings I felt for him swell. Curses.
His eyes came into focus. “Lycans can’t be trusted.”
“I understand why you feel the way that you do, but only Jonathan betrayed you.”
“No, it was their whole pack. They work together, remember?”
I searched his eyes, wishing I knew what to say. After a few seconds, I gave up on trying to think of inspiring words and said, “Look, I’m really sorry that happened, but it was a long time ago, and that same pack is no longer around, thank goodness. There’s just Petros and the other Lycans, and I trust them. They have done nothing to me to show otherwise. Besides, they can communicate with each other telepathically from great distances, and this may come in handy for the rest of us.”
“You sound pretty confident.”
I glanced at the elevators just down the hall. “You go talk to the twins and Dr. Han and make sure everything is ready. I’m going to go find Rose. This is going to work, Liam. It has to.”
TWENTY-THREE
I glanced over at Rose in the seat next to me as Dr. Han drove a truck along an old highway. I was careful not to touch her. She looked calm, like she did this sort of thing all of the time. I, on the other hand, was shaking inside. Not because I was afraid of the probable fight that would break out at the exchange, but because I would be coming face-to-face with Christian, or more like the demon existing behind the face of the man I once loved.
I pushed a thought to Liam. We’re almost there. Liam had made me communicate with him like this for hours to make sure it worked properly. Eventually he learned to use the same Light to push thoughts back to me, only one or two words, but it was enough that Liam felt comfortable staying behind.
A second later the words came to my mind: Be careful.
The moon was full, like a giant spotlight illuminating center stage before an epic production, the kind with a tragic romance, where the hero dies a fiery death, leaving behind a pathetic heroine who seals herself up in a colonial style home with twelve scrawny cats, thereby forever sealing her fate as the neighborhood creepy cat lady. Man, was I nervous.
Dr. Han looked nervous too, which was unusual for him. His hands were wrapped tightly around the steering wheel, and every few minutes he’d dot his forehead with a handkerchief. The twins were in back, riding in the bed of the truck. Aaron looked especially anxious. I think he hoped May would be there. I knew she wouldn’t.
Petros sat scrunched in the front passenger seat. It took him all of two seconds to communicate with his pac
k about coming tonight. They saw no problems with it and even agreed to send two others to trail the truck in case any problems arose.
Dr. Han steered the truck onto a dirt road. We’d been driving for almost thirty minutes, deep into the country. The ride was bumpy, and I had to hang onto the door to keep from bouncing into Rose. She still hadn’t moved.
“Are you sure about this, Llona?” Dr. Han asked, his gaze meeting mine in the rearview mirror.
“Yes. We need that ruby.”
“We can get it another way. You don’t have to do this.”
It was an odd thing to say, considering there was very little risk to Rose. By the tone of his voice, I guessed he knew what I was planning to do.
“I’m doing it,” I said in the same tone. Petros looked back at me, an understanding look in his eye. Was I that transparent?
“Stop,” Rose said. “They’re waiting for us.”
According to the GPS, it wasn’t the exact spot Christian told us to park, but close enough. Dr. Han slowed the truck to a stop. Rose said nothing else, but in a flash was outside of the vehicle. I joined her, as did the others. I noticed Aaron’s fists were clenched as tightly as his jaw.
“You have to keep your cool,” I said, touching him lightly on the arm.
He nodded but pulled away before I could transfer Light.
“Let’s go,” Dr. Han said. He moved in front of us, barely making a sound through tall grass. Moonlight coated the grass tips, making the landscape look more silver than green.
It wasn’t long before we reached the edge of a forest with trees as tall as they were old. Most of their leaves had already fallen to the ground, leaving twisted and gnarled branches slicing through the night like the antennae of a giant monster. The trail Dr. Han was creating in front of us turned sharply up as we ascended a hill peppered with rocks and fallen limbs. I tripped a few times, almost falling into Rose, but I managed to catch myself on a branch just in time.
“Can you be a little quieter?” Dr. Han whispered back, and I wondered if he was talking to me or Arik and Aaron, who were trudging their way behind me over earth’s debris, sounding like bears across a bed of matchsticks. Petros, despite being just as large or larger than the twins, barely made a sound as he walked.
Fractured Truth Page 17
