The Survivors: Body & Blood (book 3)

Noah Knows The Truth, pt. 2

THAT AFTERNOON, SADIE AND I GATHERED THE WHOLE CREW IN THE GIANT LIVING room and told them the long story of what we had learned. Of Red-woman and Raven's potential Crow history. Of Pretty-shield and Abigail Williams. Of the Salem documents, our theory on the Sorcerers. Of Tituba dead and Sam trackable by GPS. Of Lizzie's indecipherable cipher. Of a plan to track Raven via Sadie's power.

And of the Pretty Girl legend. "I've heard of it," my mother piped in. "The story of a warlock of some kind whose power is threatened by a beautiful girl from a witch town. I suppose there are a million different versions, but in a weird way it all fits. I never thought it mattered before because it's so general. If Tituba knew a more specific version that spoke of a Sorcerer from Salem, it's not all that hard to believe the whole reason he was really mad about losing the Salem Survivors was not because of the 165 powers but because of losing Lizzie, whom he perceived as a threat."

Sadie chimed in. "But that's just it. He never talked about Lizzie like she was a threat, more that she was a disappointment."

"Maybe she was," I said. "She wasn't evil. If he values power above all else, and she really had the potential to be more powerful than he was, then of course she was a disappointment if she used those things for good."

Noah was sizing us up in an odd way. I wanted to know what he was thinking. I caught his eye, and he spoke up. "Is that everything, or is there more?"

Sadie and I looked at each other. I knew what we'd left out: the fact that killing a Survivor would make you an indestructible immortal. Or the fact that Sam had implied as much.

I wondered why Sadie didn't tell them. I wondered how she planned to fight in a war against Survivors when she planned to never kill one. Because she would never kill one, would she? Not if it took her further from mortality.

"That's it," Sadie said, and for some stupid reason I let her get away with it. I told myself it was only because we didn't know it as fact. But, in all seriousness, was a single thing we had just told them really fact? Or just our best guess at the truth?

We disbanded, and I got angry quickly. Maybe irrationally, maybe not. I was mad at her, seeing now how hard it could be to be her person. On the flip side, I was hungry. So I took myself to feed, hoping I'd calm down. I took off, heading east away from the reserve. But fifty miles later, Noah caught up to me.

"What is it?" I asked, as he grabbed me. I noticed then that his hair was cut and he was wearing something on his skin to make him look less dead. He'd gotten the Ginny treatment indeed, whether he wanted it or not.

"I told you we needed to talk. Do you remember?" he asked. I scanned back in my mind. He had said that. In Leeds. I had totally ignored him.

"Yes, I'm sorry," I said. "What is it?"

"I think there's something you should know about what happened with me and Peter . . . the real Peter. The one I killed," he said.

This sparked my interest in light of the truth we'd just omitted in our account to the group. "I have something to tell you about that too."

"What?"

"You're the only one of us who's killed a Survivor, right? I don't know this to be true first-hand, but I have it on pretty good authority that once you kill a Survivor, you can't be killed yourself," I said.

"Are you serious?" he said. "As in . . . I'm indestructible?"

"We think so," I said. "But we don't know for sure. I just thought I should tell you."

"We never knew if we could die. It shouldn't be weird to hear now that I can't," he said. He just hadn't thought through the rest of it. Immortality in its unchangeable form. The hell Sadie always said immortality was, only in its actual, eternal form. "Man, this would just about kill Sadie, wouldn't it?"

"Nothing she would want less in the world," I confirmed. "What did you have to tell me about Peter?" I asked.

"You have to promise you won't tell anyone," he said.

"I promise."

"When I did what I did to Peter . . . it wasn't exactly as simple as he was alive and then he was dead," Noah said. He looked nervous.

"Okay . . . so what did happen?"

"I went for his weakness, and it worked. It was susceptible. But then color flooded his face, blood poured out of him, and his heart began to beat."

"Holy shit," I said, my voice a ghost of itself. "You're telling me that before a Survivor dies, there's a moment when . . ."

"He becomes human."

Panic coursed through my steeled veins, engulfing me. "You can't tell anyone," I said to him.

"I know! That's why I made you promise," he said. "I know how bad this would be. I know that . . . if Sadie . . . knew she could be a human . . ."

I put my hand up to silence him. "We're never talking about this again. Understood?"

He nodded.

We didn't know Sadie's weakness yet, but we were getting closer each time we figured out someone else's weakness. Soon enough, she'd know how to die. And if she found out that before death, she could be human, then the stakes would change. She wanted humanity more than all else. She wouldn't hear the part where you had to be dying to make it happen. She wouldn't think of the risk. She would just hear that she could be human, and that would be enough to ruin all we'd built, all we'd fought for.

"Noah, you need to do your best to forget that you know this. She can read you, unprotected. You know that, right?"

He nodded again. "I'll try."

"You better do more than try, Noah. If she thought she could be human, even for a second, she'll try. She'll convince herself she could survive it. Now you know the truth, and you have to protect it with every fiber of your being. It was one thing when she just wanted mortality but . . . if she could be human then . . . then . . ." I couldn't catch my breath. I felt lightheaded, a sensation I'd actually never had before. "Then she wouldn't fight. She wouldn't try. Then . . ." I couldn't finish my sentences.

Noah finished it for me. "Then it would all be over."