“WHOOOOO!” Sage laughed triumphantly. “Check it out!”
I spun around, and out the rear windshield I caught a glimpse of the steaming wreckage of two smashed cars receding into the distance. Other cars pulled around them, picking up the chase. I ducked back down into my seat.
“Not bad, right?” Sage asked.
He was grinning. The chase fueled him. Adrenaline lit up his eyes, and his muscles tensed as he pushed himself and the car to their limits.
I had never seen him look hotter. In a sick way, I kind of didn’t want the chase to end.
“Hold on!” Sage cried. We were out of the alleys now. He raced the car to top speed before whirling a three-sixty, sending three more cars piling into one another.
Sage caught my eye. “Heart pounding yet?”
It was … and I got the sense that he knew exactly why. He smiled—then gunshots brought his attention back to the chase. I breathlessly watched him through several more minutes of death-defying driving until we’d lost every car that was after us.
We were speeding up a mostly clear expressway now, not a tail in sight.
“Um, Sage?” Ben finally said. He still looked sick, but the color had started to return to his face. “Where are we going?”
“Kujukuri Beach,” he said. “About forty-five minutes away, and pretty secluded at this hour. We’ll stop for some wood and a lighter … put us there about eleven thirty.
” Sage said it lightly, but I knew better. I wasn’t surprised, but it still made my blood run cold.
“Really?” Ben asked. “Shouldn’t we just stop somewhere and figure out our next move?”
Clearly, Ben was still thrown from everything that had happened. He didn’t understand.
“Sage has figured out our next move,” I said.
“Okay … what is it?”
“Release,” Sage and I said at the same time.
“Release like … the dagger?” Ben asked.
“It’s why we came,” Sage said.
Ben opened his mouth, but he didn’t object. Instead he looked at me and raised an eyebrow, asking for my reaction.
“It was his plan all along,” I said.
And if all went according to Sage’s plan, he’d be dead in almost exactly an hour and a half. I’d have thought that would be dramatic enough to spur a long conversation, filled with drawn-out good-byes and sad stories about what could have been. Instead we just sat in silence.
“You guys,” Ben finally said, “I can’t stop thinking about what we saw … what I did …”
“It wasn’t you,” I said.
“It was, though,” he argued. “It was.”
It was. It was him, and he’d done horrible things to me lifetime after lifetime.
“I betrayed you every time,” Ben went on, “and what happened to you …”
He choked up, and I seized on the one thing in Magda’s vision that made it a little better.
“You didn’t ask for those things to happen,” I said. “Remember? You didn’t know how bad it would get.”
“But that’s worse! It means I can never trust myself. Even when I think I’m doing the right thing, I’m not.”
He was right. Even when he was trying to help me, his actions always led to my death.
Would it happen again?
No. This was Ben. My Ben. Whatever he had been before, in this lifetime he’d die before he’d do anything to hurt me. I knew it absolutely.
Nagging doubt still itched at my brain, but I pushed it aside.
“What happened then doesn’t have to happen now,” I promised him. “Those people weren’t you. They may be part of you, but they’re not you.”
“How can you be sure?” he asked. I could hear in his voice how badly he wanted to believe me.
“It’s all part of the cycle,” Sage said. “It ends tonight.”
He pulled into a market.
“I’ll just be a minute,” he said.
“Can you leave me your phone?” I asked. “I need to text Rayna, let her know we’re alive.”
Sage raised his eyebrows at my choice of words, but he handed me the phone before heading into the market.
“I’ll be right back,” I told Ben, and slipped out of the car. I brought my camera case with me.
I had a plan.
I didn’t text Rayna. Instead I reached into the case and pulled out the web address and pass code I’d found in my dad’s office: the forum site for the Saviors of Eternal Life. I wrote quickly and simply who I was, that I was with Sage, and we were on our way to Kujukuri Beach. I said that if they wanted the Elixir, they had to get to us by midnight, or it would be too late.
Sage was already on his way back to the car. I didn’t have time to look over the other posts on the site, to see if it had any recent activity. I could only throw the information out there and hope someone would come for us before it was too late.
I was reaching out to one of our worst enemies, but it was my only option, and I felt like it could work. The only thing I could do now was wait.
“Rayna says hi,” I said, handing Sage back the phone.
We climbed back into the car and continued on to the spot he’d chosen to end his own life.
We pulled up at Kujukuri Beach with about thirty minutes to go.