The Fake Voice (Time Alchemist) Read online

  The Fake Voice

  Book Three in the Time Alchemist Series

  By

  Allice Revelle

  Copyright 2014 © Allice Revelle

  Book Cover Art © Warrengoldswain (Dreamstime.com) This book is a work of fiction. Characters, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or represented fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or locations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  This book may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  DEDICATION

  To my friends Rebekahand Brittany, cause you both rock. 

  CHAPTER 1

  I was twirling, spinning. The room made my mind dizzy, but my heart beat with sweet, intoxicating exuberance. I was flying; free. Nobody could touch me. A warm, large hand held my waist, as gently as one would rock a baby to sleep, and I was twirling again in a crimson soaked room. My black and green dress fluttered around me, brushing against my cold legs like the softest silk in the world. Strands of auburn red hair fell gently over my neck and shoulders, almost like a kiss.

  A hand grasped my gloved one, and I felt the familiar press of a thumb on the back of my hand, felt it being lifted to the man in front of me as he placed a kiss on my knuckles. His cool gray eyes, like smooth, polished stone, glinted like hidden treasure under locks of spun gold.

  I was dancing, and nothing was wrong, even though slowly, slowly, the room turned darker, colder, yet it never lost that reddish hue.

  Then the boy’s eyes shifted darker until it was almost a poisonous black, and he opened his mouth with a Cheshire-like grin…

  revealing teeth. Sharp, jagged, pointy teeth. Inhuman teeth.

  I gave a startled gasp, yanking my hand away, only to discover I

  wasn’t wearing my black gloves anymore, and my beautiful dress—once beautiful, I mean—was scratched and torn, slick with sweat, dirt and blood. It clung to my legs, making any means of escape a hinder. It felt as if I had been thrust into a nightmare—Cinderella’s dream come to an end by the stroke of midnight.

  Except I couldn’t wake up.

  I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t move. Even my heart went still. Dead still. I placed a trembling hand over my chest, but heard nothing; felt nothing. No beat, no tick. Nothing.

  It was as if I was empty.

  This time, instead of me, the room went spinning, faster and faster until the boy’s own face started spinning; melting until Jackson Alexander’s perfect face shifted, molding, but that sinister smile was frozen.

  Then, cool gray eyes changed to black, then melted almost like snow in the spring to a sparkling, deep bottle-green that plagued my dreams and set my heart in motion with just one glance. The light blonde hair changed to a dark brown, almost black in this light, falling in slight waves.

  And I was staring at the face of Leon Raysburg, wearing Jack’s blood-caked clothes. His front tux and crisp white shirt were ripped open, revealing a chest littered in bruises and cuts, and old white scars.

  And on his chest was a familiar pale gray tattoo of a moving clock, ticking closer and closer towards midnight…

  Leon…Jack—I didn’t know who it was anymore—lifted a hand to me, beckoning me forward, yet my feet were glued to the floor.

  “Emery…”

  That one word, that one little word that formed on his lips is what slapped me back to senses. I turned on bare feet, though I swore I had worn a pair of silver heels, and fled, rushing through a narrow hall of swirling crimson red. I burst through a set of double doors, arriving in a ruined library. Books were scattered and ripped, drenched in pools of blood; ancient wooden shelves were scratched beyond repair, consumed by bright, licking flames that didn’t feel hot at all.

  I felt a presence behind me, but I was too frightened to turn around. Fear gripped my insides in ice. But I had to turn around. I didn’t know why—I just had to.

  Taking in any oxygen hurt my lungs, yet my body felt light, like a drifting cloud. How long have I been here—wherever here was? Hours?

  Days? I didn’t know. But at that one moment, it felt as if time had halted.

  Just for me.

  I gathered my courage, sucking a breath, and spun around. A girl, with pale blonde hair, almost white, stared at me with the most

  piercing ice blue eyes I’d ever seen in my life. They were almost unreal—

  unearthly. She wore a soft blue dress, stained with a dark liquid in the front. Her skin was so pale, like snow, yet I knew that was wrong.

  Especially her arms. Long and slender, not a scratch or bruise at all on her pale, pale skin. And it felt wrong. They were…empty, like a canvas missing its master piece.

  But…why? I knew this girl, yet knew she wasn’t the one I was looking for.

  I opened my mouth to speak, yet nothing came out. Instead, the girl…Dove…shook her head, giving me a small smile that looked sad in my eyes.

  Then a shadow loamed behind her, and I opened my mouth to scream as an iron blade pierced through Dove’s flesh, ripping her dress.

  Blood pooled from the open wound, cascading down her legs and pooling at her feet. Yet she said nothing, just kept that silly, sweet smile on her face.

  Then Dove glowed white; a white so pure and bright I thought maybe she had been angel, and disappeared.

  The attacker stood his ground, splattered in Dove’s blood, with a wicked grin on his face; though tears spilled down his cheeks and collected into the river of blood. Leon fell to his knees, and pleaded to me with large, black eyes. His mouth moved in silent words, and I felt

  myself scream, even though nothing came out.

  “Kill me.”

  “NO!”

  I woke with a start; heart slammed in my throat. Sweat soaked sheets were bunched around my legs, and I fumbled for the nightstand, searching for light. One empty glass and phone knocked to the ground plus a bruised hand later, the tiny motel room was flooded in dull light.

  Calming my racing heart, I got out of bed, brushing the sheets off me and stumbled into the bathroom.

  I twisted the metal faucet on and splashed ice cold water onto my face, yet it didn’t stop the flush that had crept into my cheeks. Though I was shaking, my legs felt as if they had run a mile, I couldn’t get cool.

  Those eyes wouldn’t leave my mind. Shadowy gray, foamy sea-green, the purest blue. They stabbed into my ticking heart with such force it made my knees weak and I found myself huddled on the tile floor, rocking back and forth on the cold linoleum, mumbling to myself, anything to calm down.

  They were eyes of people who had depended on me once, and I had failed them. One pair belonged to a boy I had never really known.

  The other two…one left in a deep sleep with the possibility of never wakening up. The other…

  Leon…Dove…

  I shook my head. Get yourself together, Emery! Now is not the time to quit. I’ve made it this far—I can’t go back. I just won’t.

  Even if I was alone in this.

  But you aren’t alone. I had to remind myself. I had my other friends, ones who were willing to help me on this insane mission that even I wasn’t sure I could pull off.

  I was much too awake to fall back asleep. Instead, I went back into the small room and rummage through my messenger bag, pulling out a clean top and underwear. My jeans, folded over a small chair in the corner, were a little wrinkled but it was going to have to do. I only brought enough clothes that I could fit in a bag and as much layers as I could manage…but it wouldn’t last.

  Head pounding, I tromped back into the bathroom and turned the water on as hot as I could stand it, feeling the shivering left by the nightmares slowly slip
away. My motions felt stiff as I washed and rinsed, but my hand wouldn’t stop resting on my chest—where intricate, golden colored tattoos swirled around my heart and over my shoulders.

  In the artificial lights it almost glowed. I didn’t need a mirror to know what the shapes were like: though they were smooth, they still took the shape, almost wire-like, of the insides of a clock. Gears spinning, knobs here and there, and right over where my heart beat was the face of an old fashioned clock.

  They were called Runes. Proof of my power. My alchemy.

  It was alchemy so rare, but it was mine. Time. Almost a year ago, I had no idea alchemists existed outside of history textbooks or movies.

  Yet, they were hidden, living side by side with non-alchemists in the real world, using their “magic” for good. Usually.

  But of course, for every good alchemist there is, there always has to be someone out there be evil. Black and white, right? And I had to find a certain evil alchemist to undo something terrible that had happened to my best friend; a girl that was almost like a sister to me.

  Dove Raysburg. She was the one who introduced me into this world, and I haven’t looked back since. Yet, from the entire time I’ve known her, even though she was powerless—giving up her alchemy in exchange for saving my life—this was the first time in my life that I truly felt so weak and helpless. All because she wasn’t here to help me, to guide me in the right direction or offer a hug that I desperately needed.

  No. Dove wasn’t here, because she was asleep. Like Sleeping Beauty, waiting for the prince’s kiss. Except…she might never wake up.

  Dove was locked in an alchemic-induced coma, the result of being stabbed by another alchemist. I didn’t know the details, but I knew this much: if she stayed like that for too long, she would never wake up again.

  She would die.

  That’s why I had to find the one thing that would act as the prince’s magical kiss: the Elixir.

  The Elixir of Life—yes, just like in the movies—is a substance created a long, long time ago by a Nicholas Flamel. It’s said that this stone, or rather, fragments of this stone, holds enough power to grant its user anything, from curing all illnesses to eternal life. After Flamel’s death, he had entrusted the Elixir to his apprentice, Guinevere de Blanc, in hopes that the Elixir’s power wouldn’t spread over the world and be used for bad.

  Guinevere had sacrificed her happy life, leaving behind a family, in order to grant his wish. But since there was no way to destroy the Elixir, she instead broke it up into multiple pieces—how many, I’m not even sure. It could be in the hundreds, thousands, millions—and scattered them all over the world, hiding them from alchemists.

  But it was a piece of the Elixir that saved my life…though, not directly. In truth, my great-grandmother’s life was saved by a piece of the Elixir, and it had been passed down through the generations until it was left with me. But at the time, I didn’t know what it was, only that it was a small, but very beautiful, red stone nestled in a silver bracelet that I had cherished since the moment my late grandmother had given it to me.

  And that small piece had been used to save the life of one of my

  dearest friends—and…the one boy that I’ve fallen so hard for, it sometimes felt like a dream. Leon, Dove’s younger half-brother.

  The one who almost killed Dove.

  But it wasn’t Leon’s fault—he was being taken over by a wicked soul. Ivan Novak, who had previously taken over my first boyfriend’s body. But nine months ago, I could have sworn up and down that I had taken him out, except he had gotten the upper hand, sneaking a sliver of his own soul into Leon’s body, waiting until the moment came when he could take him over.

  Ivan’s own goal was the Elixir. And like a clichéd villain, he wanted immortality. And to do that, for hundreds and hundreds of years he had taken over the body’s of different people, chasing Guinevere down in hopes of getting a taste of the Elixir, and now he had his stupid claws in my Leon.

  And I wasn’t going to let him get away with it.

  No matter what.

  Because Emery Miller doesn’t quit.

  CHAPTER 2

  There were a lot of hard choices I’ve had to make ever since I was small.

  Living with a single dad kind of forced me to grow up—but for the better.

  I’d have to sacrifice nights of sleepovers to stay home and makes sure that dad got up for his four am shift at the gas station. I’d often have to choose a location of volunteer work (essential for school credits) somewhere close and a little dirty than the library I loved, all to make sure dad didn’t have to drive far. Even deciding to move all the way down to Georgia to attend St. Mary’s was one of the toughest decisions of my life, because that meant I had to leave dad behind. It had all been hard, but had been worth the long run in the end.

  Even when I was “reborn” as an alchemist the decisions never got easier. At the beginning, I was plagued with the thought that my heart would one day stop beating any day: I had to live with the thought I would never speak to my friends or my dad again, and they would never know the real truth behind a girl who possessed a strange, artificial heart that had been fixed—by alchemy—with a golden pocket watch.

  I had to learn—to force myself—to trust the people that had been responsible for my “death”, and force myself to realize that sometimes

  the people I loved the most weren’t who they appeared to be.

  And now, here I was, all alone in Atlanta, the busy capitol of Georgia, trying to find a shred of clues that will point me in the right direction. Honestly, not one of my brightest moments, but I was grasping on thin, thin straws here.

  With one friend in a life-threatening coma and the other somewhere in the shadows trying to fight an internal struggle with evil (literally), choosing whether to “save Dove” or “rescue Leon” had not been an easy decision to make.

  On one hand, logically, saving Dove’s life is the most reasonable choice—because I didn’t know how long she had to live. And I know that’s what Leon would have wanted.

  But on the other hand, though my heart disagreed, the longer Leon was kept under Ivan’s control, the harder it would be for him to fight it off. He had barely kicked Ivan’s soul out long enough not to kill me before…but could he do it again?

  He promised he wouldn’t give up. He wouldn’t just quit—he’d keep fighting!

  And that’s what I have to do. And right now, I needed to fight for Dove.

  Except, trying to find an Elixir is a lot harder than you’d imagine.

  One: because the only alchemist who knows where any more fragments

  are is missing. Two: a certain organization is dead set on making sure I stay safe.

  The Black Crown; short for The Crown of the Black Order, was an old “society” that is made up of both humans and alchemists who work together to make sure the balance of the alchemic world is in perfect order. They basically have to make sure bad alchemists are caught and any sort of accidents related to alchemy are taken care of, away from the public eye. Though I didn’t trust them completely, there were two particular alchemists that I did trust, with all my heart.

  Chrys (short for Chrysanthemum) Blackwell and Ru (short for Rudolph) Chima. Those two were almost like siblings, never straying too far from one another. They both worked under the Black Crown (since the Chima’s were semi-active members, naturally their children would follow in their footsteps), and they were both alchemists.

  But Chrys was a special kind of alchemist. Like me. She could control Dreams, sometimes Memories. It was a talent that was rarer than you can imagine; it fell out of the basic four elements—water, air, fire or earth. And neither of us were Blood-borne (a pureblooded alchemists), or Self Taught alchemists (half-alchemists or people aware of their “core” from an early age and trained the right t way), either. An alchemist was judged first based on the fact if they were Blood-Borne or Self Taught. Blood-Borne’s, like Dove was for example, not only came

/>   from a prestigious line, but their alchemy also went a little beyond the four basic elements. Her alchemy was Blood, and her father’s alchemy was Bone. Blood-Borne’s were the minority of the alchemic world.

  Self Taught’s could be found…well, anywhere. Usually, as long as a person has one parent who is an alchemist (Blood-Borne or not), or is raised in an environment (like the Black Crown) to hone their skills, they can become alchemists. Though I’m not sure how their elements work, but they pretty much stick to the basic four, sometimes stretching out just a little, but it always connected back to at least one. For example, Leon was a Self Taught alchemist of Iron and Metal—earth. Ru, Chrys’s silent companion, was an alchemist of Electricity or Lightening

  —which would be a combination of air and fire, right?

  There was still a lot to learn about alchemy, but the point I’m trying to make is that Chrys and I are in the category that doesn’t even exist in the rulebooks. We’re kind of a separate entity, if you think about it.

  In fact, before we became alchemists, we didn’t have any traces of alchemy in our blood. I know for a fact that my dad is not an alchemist, and neither was my mother, or grandmother. Even though—according to what Dove told me—every single human on earth has an “alchemic core”

  deep inside of them, but with no way to tap into it (like being born in a certain environment), it mostly just stays locked up inside a person…

  forever. Alchemy is basically a “dying art” because nobody really believes it exists anymore. It’s a fine line between science and magic.

  Back to the story. To put it bluntly: Chrys and I became alchemists after we died…and brought back by alchemy, an act that is forbidden in the laws of alchemists, like turning rocks into gold. Chrys was saved as a little girl when she died in a car crash that killed her first family, thanks to the quick thinking of Ru’s mother. I was saved by Dove, when she revived my heart. It was thanks to their selfless actions that we got a second chance at life—and obtained this power.