Sovereign Hope (31 page)

It was such a
short blast that I wondered for a second if I’d given enough, but
when I looked around I saw with satisfaction that the two men were
lying flat on their backs. They appeared unharmed, but I knew
better. The shock wave would have scrambled their internal organs
and turned their bones to jelly.

A whole lot cleaner than knives and guns
, I thought, as I took a second to look down at the Immundus
at my feet. He had finally stopped wheezing through the red froth
at his mouth and was staring up at the night sky with a look of
gentle surprise on his face.

I stepped over
the body and swung open the door to the van. The woman strained
against the thick rope that bound her hands together, and small
bands of blood ran down her hands as she pulled and writhed.

“
Hey. Hey, don’t worry.” I stepped up into the vehicle,
reaching out to steady her as she rushed towards me. She buried her
face through the hessian sack into my shoulder, and I shushed her
as I tried to undo her bindings. She pushed her face against me
again with increasing force, and I held her back, surprised at how
strong she was for such a small, frail thing.

The rope
finally fell and suddenly the woman leapt forward, clawing at me
with long, filthy fingernails. She knocked me backwards out of the
van and I fell with a huff onto my back on the hard, wet road.
Alarm bells were going off. I managed to roll to the right just in
time as the woman jumped forward out of the van. She landed on all
fours exactly where I had lain.

“
What the…?!” I leapt to my feet and faced the crouching
woman. She looked as though she were preparing to launch herself at
me again.

“
What the hell’s wrong with you? I’m trying to help, okay?
Just take a moment. Breathe.”

The crouching
figure began to rise and my body tensed, something inside warning
me of danger. She was standing at full height now. She didn’t even
come up to my shoulder, yet a thrill of adrenaline burst through
me.

She tilted her
covered head slowly to one side, and then reached her dirty,
blackened hand up to pull the bag away. When it fell to the floor,
I staggered back, repulsed. She began to move forward slowly, like
a prowling animal.

Her filthy,
matted dark hair fell in tangled knots to her shoulders and was
plastered with sweat to her forehead. It hung down in her eyes.
Terrifying, deadly eyes—white, and loaded with malice.

Blackened lips
twisted back into a permanent snarl, and she bared her broken
teeth. The blackness didn’t stop at her mouth. The surrounding skin
was infected by the color, and small, dark capillaries snaked into
the sallow paleness of her cheeks. I shuddered as she snapped her
teeth like some sort of dog. I stepped back. I knew I had to pull
myself together, but I was frozen solid by the sight of that
terrible mouth. A mouth filled with the promise of death.

She inched closer to me and I reeled back, feeling the energy
inside me shying away, too. The energy was a living thing, after
all, and all living things feared death. I stumbled down the curb
and into the road without taking my eyes off her. She snapped her
teeth again, and thick, black spittle sprayed from her mouth. Had
she been trying to
bite
me through the sack back in the van? A vibration
rippled through the power inside me, causing it to break into a
thousand angry, frightened whispers. I tried to quell the chaos
unfolding within me and swallowed hard, readying for her
attack.

A second was all it took. She sprang forward so quickly that
I only just had time to raise my arm and deflect her with a
panicked burst of power. The energy shot out, a blast of blue-white
light so bright it even burned my own retinas.
Too much
, I thought as my eyes
refocused, sure I would find her very dead in the road.

I was wrong. I
regained my bearings just in time to knock her back again as she
flung herself at me like a rabid animal, snarling and snapping.

I’d never used
my energy with such force, and yet she stood again, her head tilted
to one side in that sinister, cold way. I raised both hands, ready
to unleash everything I had on her, but as I took a deep breath she
darted back behind the van, and then she was somehow on its roof. I
ran around the other side of the vehicle, trying to get a clear
shot at her, but she leapt through the air in one fluid movement
and half-landed on the flat roof of the fire station. She hung from
the ledge by her arms with her legs dangling into the void for a
second before she scrabbled up, and then she was gone.

I stood there in the street gasping for breath, too stunned
to do anything other than stare after her. My heart raced in my
chest and a low, sinking feeling took hold within the pit of my
stomach. I had never seen anything like her before, but I knew I’d
seen
her
before.

I’d recognized
the woman immediately, despite the grotesque changes to her face. I
closed my eyes. How could this have happened? How they could have
turned her into something so hideous?

The moonlight
finally returned, slowly emerging from behind the clouds to
illuminate me. There were only the shadows to keep me company in my
confusion, and for a long time I could do nothing but stand there
watching them stretch tall and long, staring into the dark. Staring
after someone I’d never thought I would see again.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Scrabble

“
A. S. S. Triple word score.”

“
You can’t have
ass
as a word,” Tess declared. She picked up my tiles
and thrust them back into my hand. “You’re forgetting the rules.
You’re supposed to put down words that you know relate to Oliver.
Like hockey. Or six pack.”

I pulled a
face.

“
Unless you’re commenting on the fact that he has a really
great ass, in which case
ewww
, but okay.”

I threw my
tiles back into the bag and shook it hard. “You are so
remorselessly gross, you know that?”

“
I’m not the one who thinks her brother has a great
ass.”

“
I did
not
mean that. I meant he has asses for friends. He goes to
Whiteacre, remember?”

“
That’s too tenuous.”

“
I remember Whiteacre,” Oliver broke in. He sat cross-legged
with me and Tess on the sheepskin rug, staring down at the most
unconventional game of Scrabble ever played. There was a wistful
gleam in his eyes. “I remember the sun, too. And football fields,
where you could actually play football. I seem to recall there was
this thing called the ocean…”

“
You don’t have to stay down here, you know,” I told him. He
gave me a look that said, yes, of course he did. It was ridiculous
really. He was the one supposed to become like Elliot. He was the
one supposed to undergo his rites and become a ruthless,
cold-blooded killer. And yet it was me who wasn’t allowed out of
anyone’s sight, much less go home and pretend like none of this had
ever happened. It was pretty obvious why no one was concerned about
Oliver, though. He was an unadulteratedly good-natured and
all-round nice guy.

That was one
of the words related to him that I had put on the board: nice.
Oliver had sucked his teeth like it was an insult. Meanwhile, his
words for me ranged from smart (Tess declared I was, and refused to
be told otherwise), and black (my hair), to odd (because I was).
Neither of us had improved upon his five-letter word as of yet.

I swapped out my tiles and rearranged them on the stand, but
could only make one word out of them, which was
mucus
. I couldn’t really think of a
way that I could associate mucus with Oliver without being rude. I
rolled my eyes. “You’ve made this game way too hard,” I told
Tess.

“
That’s so untrue. You’re just not trying. How else are you
two going to get to know each other?”

“
Hmm…” I tapped my chin with an index finger. “Maybe by
talking
to each other
like normal people.”

“
She’s right,” Oliver agreed. “I can hold up the end of a
conversation like you wouldn’t believe. And it really helps when
you can communicate without the need of a vowel because all you
have are consonants.”

“
You too?” I asked.

He gave me a wise nod. “Oh wait. I
can
make a word that relates to you.
I’ll just use a vowel on the board.” He plucked up two tiles and
deftly slid a D and an N into place on either side of the A
in
black
. The
word sat there on the board like an accusation: a name, or part of
one, anyway.

I cleared my
throat. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Oliver gave me
an uncertain look and then glanced at Tess. “Sorry, I thought…”

“
Don’t worry, baby,” Tess said. “Just because my best friend
here hasn’t told me that she is completely in love with a certain
missing person named Daniel doesn’t mean it’s not true. Fess up,
traitor, or I’ll be forced to take action.”

I gripped hold
of my Scrabble tiles until the edges started to cut into my palms.
I hadn’t had chance to talk to Tess alone since the night Daniel
left, and honestly I really didn’t want to talk about him, full
stop. The pain in my gut whenever I remembered our last encounter
was too sharp to bear. The thought of trying to explain that
conversation to Tess, who believed romance solved all the world’s
hurts, was something I couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

“
Well?”

“
Well, nothing. He’s a friend.”

“
A
friend
?
He looked like he wanted to kill you back when you were leaning out
of that car with a gun in your hand. There’s only one reason
someone would look at you like that. It’s because he’s insanely
protective over you and thought you were going to get yourself
killed. Or I guess he could actually just hate you. So there are
two reasons. Which is it? Soul mate or psycho killer? Does he
really hate you?”

I gave her a
wry smile. “I used to think so.”

“
And now?”

“
Now… not so much.”

Tess broke out
into a beaming grin. “I knew it! Perfect. We can double date.”

A bottomless
hollow inside my chest ached. How could life ever be that simple
for us? Saturday night, ordering pizza and catching a movie? Even
the concept of going on a regular date with Daniel was a dream I’d
never afforded myself. It just wasn’t going to happen. “You might
be waiting a while.”

“
Why? Once this is all over with, we’ll have all the time in
the world.”

The words
stung. They were the words I had wanted so desperately to hear
coming from Daniel’s mouth, but instead he had told me he was going
to die. I was probably never going to see him again. I could almost
feel the color draining from my face. My hands shook when I set
down the tiles.

Tess
apparently noticed. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“
Nothing,” I lied. “I’m just sick of being stuck down
here.”

“
Come on, Farley. Look on the bright side. Your subterranean
incarceration is the perfect opportunity to get to know Oliver. Am
I the only one who thinks you guys being brother and sister is the
best thing that’s ever happened?”

Oliver
groaned. I joined him. “We’re not saying we’re not happy about the
whole thing,” I said. “It’s just easy for you to accept. You’re
dating your best friend’s brother. It’s perfect for you. But you
know and love both of us, and we don’t really know each other at
all. It’s just going to take some time.”

Oliver nodded.
“Exactly what she said.”

Tess scowled
and threw herself back onto the rug so that her uncontainable curls
tangled into the weft of the soft sheepskin rug. She hitched the
neck of her sweatshirt up over her eyes and growled into the
fabric.

“
D’you think she’s annoyed?” Oliver asked.

“
Undoubtedly. She probably thought you guys would get married
and we’d instantly be one big happy family.”

Oliver did
something completely unexpected at that point and blushed. It was
bizarre seeing a guy react so obviously to something.

“
I’m joking, of course!” I told him.

“
I can hear you, traitor,” came Tess’ muffled voice from
beneath her shirt. “Stop trying to scare my boyfriend, or I’ll tell
Daniel about a few of your most embarrassing moments. I’ve been
present for them all, remember.”

She had, too.
I needed to change the subject. If not in an attempt to distract
Tess from imparting all the horrific moments of my childhood, then
because she kept saying Daniel’s name.

“
Is she dead?” It was Beatty. For such a large man, he moved
with surprising stealth. He stood at the back of the sofa, quirking
a curious eye at Tess, who was still submerged in her
sweatshirt.

“
No. Just melodramatic,” I told him.

He gave me a
bemused nod and raised his eyebrows. “Are you ready for your
training?”

“
No.”

“
Good. See you this afternoon.” With that he stalked off
towards the small area close to Daniel’s wrecking ground that we
used for training and started
pummeling
the punching
bag strung from the rafters. The sound of his fists’ thudding
impact was nothing compared to the grunts of exertion he let out.
They sounded like the final death throes of some tortured animal.
Tess slowly inched her shirt down so that her eyes were visible and
gave me and Oliver a worried look.