Eternal Hope (The Hope Series) (9 page)

It was a bad sign that they were talking about her like she wasn’t there. That could only mean one thing: they didn’t think she was capable of responding. Bad. Really, really bad. A fact made more concrete by the sudden explosion of white light in her eyes. She clutched at her head, as though she might be able to hold it together with her bare hands. It was no good. The pressure exerted from the inside of her skull was well beyond her feeble attempts to contain it. She was instantly transported away from the cabin, away from Montana, away from summer and the heat and light.

Here, in this new place, there was only the cold and the dark and the stench. And a pair of eyes. They were reflective in the dark, like a cat’s eyes caught in headlights. They looked less startled than that, though. Almost expectant. Farley’s breath came fast and shallow, echoing off the walls. Bare, frigid stone met her fingertips when she fumbled behind her, trying to figure out if she could back away. She couldn’t. The room felt tiny, like a cell. No window, no external light. The cold seemed to pour out of the stone around her, frosting her breath. It wasn’t content with clawing at her skin. It forced its way down her throat, working its way into the very deepest parts of her. Her breathing grew quicker.

“What do you want?” she croaked.

The eyes dipped a few inches from where they hovered before rapidly moving forward. She couldn’t do anything but gasp. They paused in front of
her, a deep, bottomless brown.
Calculating. “Soul Child,” a voice hissed, inches from her skin. The words were liquid ice. They slipped out of the dark and found their way onto her skin, making every hair follicle on her body object and stand to attention.

“
Sovereign
Soul Child,” the voice repeated. The effect the words had were no more comforting the second time around.

“Leave me alone.”

The eyes, along with the body they were connected to, moved back a foot. Farley pressed herself back against the rough stone at her back, feeling its surface instantly freeze to her skin. It was as cold as a meat locker in the cell and much, much scarier.

“I don’t know what you want, but I want to go.
Now
.” Nothing had ever been normal about these visions, or hallucinations as she’d always thought of them, but this whole experience was wrong. She felt something here in this hidden place that she’d never felt at any other time: she was in danger. Real,
you’re in way over your head and going to die
danger.

She swallowed down the desperate urge to scream for help. Enough sense remained amongst all of the panic to know no one was going to hear her. This was the very oldest of places- she could tell. There was no one living down here in the very bowels of the earth’s forgotten basement. And she wouldn’t be if she stayed much longer. A terrified part of her demanded attention. She let it take control.

“I’m leaving,” she said firmly, feeling each word form like an icicle in the air. The eyes narrowed like regular eyes would if they were attached to a smile. Yet something about their shift in shape made them look sinister and half mad.

“For now,” the voice told her.

“For always,” she shot back. There was no way she was ever coming back here. The thought was paralyzing, if only because the cold embrace of the walls called to her. Like she belonged here. “Just stay away from me.”

A rush of cold air blasted her face, and Farley flinched away from the sudden movement in front of her. The eyes leveled with hers, so close they filled her vision. Surrounding them she made out a sick kind of sallow skin, not white but almost translucent, riddled with fibrous-looking blue veins.

“I cannot.” The breath on her face stank worse than the lilies; it smelt like death itself. “We are one.”

*******

The sunlight was
a brilliant torch shining straight into her eyes. Farley coughed so hard it felt like she might never breathe again. Her whole body was numb, ice cold.

“Jeez, Farley… Farley. Look at me!” Daniel looked more afraid than she’d ever seen him before. His hands clawed at her shirt like she was made of sand and he was trying to stop her from crumbling away. She filled her lungs until they promised to burst.

“Don’t ever, ever do that again. Ever,” he said, yanking her up from the ground where she lay on her back. She felt like a limp rag doll. Daniel crushed her to him, pinning her arms to her sides. She tried to pull back so she could collect herself but she caught sight of Kayden over Daniel’s shoulder and froze.

For a second she thought he was on fire, the same way her mother had been on fire in every vision she’d ever had of her. But Kayden wasn’t
on
fire, he
was
fire. Pure white and burning, he seared at her retinas. Seeing him like that was enough to stun and scare her all over again. She somehow managed to regain her bodily functions and scrambled against Daniel, trying to pull herself away from Kayden and drag him along with her. It didn’t work. She only succeeded in making him grasp hold of her tighter, and when she overcame her panic enough to look up, Kayden wasn’t burning anymore. He was just Kayden. There was a troubled expression on his face when he gave her a worried smile.

Daniel held her face in his hands, forcing her to look at him. “What the hell just happened? You weren’t breathing, Farley. That’s not supposed to happen.”

She frowned at him. There was a green Fruit Loop stuck to his forearm and others crushed into his damp jeans. The bowl must have landed on him when she’d tried to stand up in the kitchen. “I don’t know,” she told him softly. “But I wasn’t safe. I wasn’t
safe
.” The last word cracked as her throat closed up and tears threatened to come. She wouldn’t let them, though. There was still something horrible lurking inside her, like a part of that bitter tomb had found its way back with her. And until that feeling was gone, she
knew she couldn’t fall apart.
It would sense her weakness.

The sunset turned the sky bloody, a violent end to the day. It felt appropriate, somehow. Farley traced her fingertips along the rough grain of the wooden deck listening to Daniel pace around amongst the tall grass. The half light, not bright enough to see by but not dark enough to totally rob the senses, turned the world into flat browns and greys. The dusky air smelled sweet, like crushed pine needles and musk. It was balmy and warm, but Farley was still wrapped in the blanket Daniel had found for her earlier. Her bones were carved ice.

Daniel wandered in and out of the tree line, swallowed for long minutes before emerging again. She had no idea what he was doing but he seemed tense and on edge, like sitting would be an impossible task. His unease was contagious. It was a degree darker when he reappeared and made his way over to the deck. His movements were leonine and fluid, pure animal. The burning miasma of the sky backed him as he paused in front of her, twisting lengths of dry, brittle grass around his fingers.

He scuffed the step of the deck with the toe of his Converse before slowly climbing it and sinking to the floor at her feet. Tentatively reaching up, he brushed a strand of hair from her face. “Hey, beautiful.”

“Hey.” She gave him a muted smile. She still felt like all of her limbs had been pulled in opposing directions.

“I just spoke to Cassie,” he whispered. “She wants to talk to you.”

Farley lifted her head from where it rested against the back of her wicker chair and frowned at him. He’d been out there in the forest talking to Cassie? In the dark? He really didn’t have any idea how to handle this situation. The look on her face must have told him she was upset.

“Don’t worry. She called me.” He showed her the cell phone he held in his hand. “She heard about what happened today. I think she wanted to ask you about the person you saw.”

“Well, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I know. I told her to leave it a couple of days. I just thought you should know she’ll be approaching you at some point.”

“Fine. I hope she catches me in a good mood.”

Daniel gifted her with a bemused look before staring down at his phone. “Do you want to tell
me
any more about it?”

She shook her head. Being with Daniel was the only time she felt safe, but there was someone else she would rather discuss her visions with. Probably because the small woman felt a little like her mother. “You never told me about Cassie’s lead on Agatha.”

“I know. Cassie said it was a dead end. Don’t be mad, but I think the whole thing may have been a ploy to get me away from the house.”

Farley trained her face into a flat look. There was no point losing the plot. She didn’t have any energy for it, besides. “Great,” was all she managed. “So where does that leave us with our Agatha-related clues?”

Daniel bit down on his bottom lip. The light above the jagged horizon the black spruce and tamaracks created was a faded bruise now. His face fell into shadow; she could just make out the soft lines in his forehead where his eyebrows pulled together in a frown.

“I don’t know. Where we were when we left LA, I guess.”

“We have to find her, Daniel,” she said, reaching out to touch his bare arm. He felt like he was wound too tight, too warm. He looked down at her fingers brushing over his skin as though it was someone else’s arm, not his. He took hold of her, slow and deliberate, turning her hand over so that it formed a cup. In her palm he traced the lines of her hand gently, marveling at each one with great concentration. “I miss her,” he murmured.

“Yeah,” Farley replied, as though the word was enough to convey the deep longing she felt in her chest whenever she thought she heard a soft humming. “Aldan, too.”

Daniel stiffened at that, a wild look flaring in his eyes. He clenched down on his jaw. “Yeah.”

His solitary word was enough, too. He was a ruin when it came to Aldan, which was why they hadn’t talked about him since his death. That savage wound was still too deep to probe. They had a silent understanding: both the topics of Aldan and her mother were distinctly off limits.

“It sounds stupid,” he said wistfully, “but in all the years I’ve been alive, I’ve never been truly alone. First there was Aldan, and then Agatha. There was always someone older and more experienced to defer to when important decisions had to be made.”

“And now it feels like it’s you? You’re the one making the important decisions?” It was tough to analyze the look on his face, but he certainly didn’t look happy. He nodded, glancing up at her like he was sorry for something.

“I’m babysitting a human girl and her newly anointed Immortal boyfriend- someone with the combined life force of three incredibly powerful Reavers- and I have no idea what I’m doing. The Reavers are supposed to be the bad guys, but Oliver is nothing like them. And then, of course, there’s you.”

Farley’s heart faltered a beat before knocking like a fist against the inside of her ribcage. “Me?” Was she a massive burden to him? The possibility had crossed her mind. There were still Reavers out there who undoubtedly wanted to see her dead, given that her capabilities as an Immortal killer had been tested and practically proven. She knew that if Oliver hadn’t cut off the heads of the three men in the Tower, the angered souls of the dead travelling through her would have finished the job. Was he worried that she would draw too much attention to him and his friends?

He curled his fingers around her thumb. “I’m terrified, Farley. I’ve been so strong ever since Aldan slipped up and gave me his power all those years ago. The Reavers can’t affect me. I can fight and kill and die to protect you in almost every situation, but what happened today… I couldn’t protect you. I couldn’t do anything to save you from that. I felt like I had no power at all. I felt human.”

He looked up at her, and it was impossible to miss the pain in his eyes. He was a wreck. This was what all the pacing was about. He thought he couldn’t keep her safe.

“It’s okay, though. I’m okay,” she whispered, brushing a stray curl out of his face. He closed his eyes at her contact and shivered slightly, taking a deep breath.

“The only thing worse than having to watch you die is having to live without you afterwards.”

His words rocked her. He was always so careful with the things he said to her, especially when he was being affectionate. It was clear he considered every single word that came out of his mouth, often struggling to find the right ones to let her know what he was thinking or feeling. This, though…this statement had been panicked. It seemed to rush out of him before he could stop it. She waited in shocked silence for him to open his eyes, but he didn’t. He leaned forward and buried his face into the blanket over her legs. She ran her fingers through his hair.

“Don’t… don’t ever say anything like that again.”

He bunched his fist in the blanket, exhaling raggedly through the material.

“
Ever.
”

****

It was black as pitch when they went inside, driven to distraction by the mosquitoes. It appeared the vicious insects were as attracted to supernatural blood as they were to the regular B positive kind. Daniel insisted on carrying Farley in. Tess and Oliver were nowhere to be seen, and Grayson sat in front of a computer in the library, frowning at whatever he was reading. He pointed at the screen, as though tracing the words with his fingertip would unravel them. Force them to make sense. He gave a distracted nod as they passed by the door.