Eternal Hope (The Hope Series) (17 page)

“Stop!” Cassie’s cry cut through the air just as Daniel launched himself at the Immundus, knocking him down to the ground. He pinned the Immundus, snatching the gun away and flinging it across the room. It had been years since Daniel had used his bare hands to hit someone, and yet it was the only way he was going to vent this rage. He needed to smash the guy’s head into pulp.

“
STOP!
” The second time Cassie cried he heard her. There was panic in the word that he couldn’t ignore. He rolled off the Immundus and fell back onto the floor, his chest heaving. The silent Immundus finally made a sound. His manic laughter echoed around the room like a madman’s.

“We can’t kill him,” Cassie groaned. She clutched at her collarbone, where a river of red ran through her fingers.

The laughter grew louder and even crazier. Daniel pitched himself forwards onto his knees, looking down at the damage he’d done. The guy’s face was split open in four different places, notably across his cheekbones and chin, and his nose had exploded everywhere. Blood poured down into his eyes as he rolled on the floor, clutching at his stomach as though he had a stitch from laughing too hard. Daniel drew back his fist and slammed it down into his face as hard as he could. The laughing stopped.

“Ah, you people take everything so seriously,” Clay wheezed. He’d gotten to his feet but he still looked a little shaky. “It’s high time we got back to our master.”

Daniel sucked in a deep breath, trying to push down the wild urge to wipe the smile off of his face too. “High time,” he snarled.

“We’ll be taking this one with us.” He gestured towards Beatty, who automatically got to his feet.

“Oh, no, you won’t.”

“It’s okay,” Beatty said quietly. “I need to be with Nyla and Scout.”

“See,” Clay said congenially. The shining coronas flashed in his eyes. “At least one of you can see sense.”

“We’ll come looking for you,” Cassie warned, gritting through her teeth. This seemed to amuse the Immundus immensely.

“Oh, don’t worry, Sweet. We won’t be hard to find. I wonder if we’ll be able to say the same thing of you.” He snatched his gun roughly out of her hand. Her face distorted with agony.

A boiling, angry sky was waiting when he flung open the door, throwing down sheets of dirty grey rain. The Immundus Daniel had beaten so badly hobbled out first, followed by Beatty, whose thick, dark hair instantly plastered to his head as he gave them one last look over his shoulder. Clay pulled the collar of his long black coat up against the weather. “And you,” he hissed, scowling at Daniel. “You tell Farley we’re coming for her. You tell her that her husband is waiting.”

“Crav Maga is the art of-”

“Getting your ass kicked,” Farley interrupted, rushing Kayden with her blade. It felt good to be armed again, even if Kayden did side step and carry her momentum around, twisting her arm until it felt like it would break. She dropped the knife to the ground at his feet.

“Wanna rephrase?” he asked. His eyes were smiling.

“You cheated,” she winced.

“And by cheated you mean overpowered you because you attacked blindly with poor judgment and little planning?”

“Yes.”

“Thought so.” He stooped and collected the knife. It was dull, but he clearly thought she could do herself an injury just by looking at it sitting there on the tarmac of the basketball court. “You need training. And lots of it.”

“Train me, then.”

A shadowed looked fell over his face. “Daniel will train you.”

“No, he won’t,” she said. “He doesn’t think I should be fighting.” Which was just about the most ridiculous idea in the world given that Beatty and Cliff had both worked with her and said she had potential. Potential to be a ferocious warrior. She liked the thought of that, especially now that death-race-everybody-try-and-kill-Farley was back on, but with newer, creepier rules this time round. Kayden wore a poorly hidden mask of amusement.

“Farley, face it. You couldn’t fight your way out of a wet paper bag.”

“And what would you know? I’ve fought before.”

“And won?”

“I’m standing here, aren’t I?” A tug of anger pulled at her. She shielded her eyes, realizing Kayden was tilting the blade of the knife back and forth, shining the sun’s reflection into her eyes.

“C’mon. Who’ve you fought?” he laughed.

Something snapped inside her and she reached out and snatched hold of the knife, wrapping her hand around its blade. The metal was dull, but it still hurt. She yanked it out of his hands and the smile fell from his face.

“I fought my mother, okay?” she snapped.

“That doesn’t count. Every teenage girl fights with her mother. I mean
fight,
fight,” he boxed at her, “with your fists.”

That was the final straw. Farley sank low into a crouch and leapt forward, pushing into Kayden’s chest with as much strength as she could muster. He staggered backwards with his hands raised, careful not to touch her as she drove him back.

“I
fought,
fought with my mother,” she hissed. “Tobin turned her into a whyte and she tried to kill me. She tried to bite me, and then she tried to drown me, and I used my knife and I stabbed her over and over again!”

“Farley!”

She froze. Daniel stood on the other side of the chain-link fence, his dark hair ruffled, staring at her like she’d lost her mind. It was then she realized she was holding the point of the knife up to Kayden’s throat.

“Oh, crap! I’m sorry!”

Kayden carefully let his hands fall down to his sides. He looked utterly miserable. “No, no. I didn’t realize…” A small shake of his head. “I shouldn’t have said…” he trailed off. “I guess you were right.”

“I was right?”

“That it was only a fluke I hadn’t managed to piss you off yet.”

Farley closed her eyes, gripping hold of the knife handle so hard her fingers began to go numb. How had the morning turned to crap in less than five minutes? She’d gone psycho over her mom and nearly impaled Kayden on a knife that would only kill him by giving him septicemia. And Daniel had watched the whole thing. So much for convincing him she was stable. She hadn’t seen or heard from him in four days, and she’d left him eight voicemail messages before she’d realized she was starting to look a little desperate. Following which she’d refused to text or call him at all, and even made Grayson tell him she was out when he’d called the cabin, simply to counteract her initial crazy. These were not the actions of a normal, well-balanced girl.

She caught Daniel’s eye through the fence, where his face was framed through one of the diamond links. Everything about him was hard and sharp. There were dark shadows beneath his eyes. He moved slowly to the gate and stalked through, approaching them watchfully. He stopped in front of her and surveyed her head to toe before turning to Kayden.

“What did you do to her?” he said carefully.

Farley looked down to see that there was blood dripping from the tips of her fingers. She must have cut herself when she grabbed the knife. It had already dripped onto her sneakers, leaving fat, round circles of crimson on the white fabric. “He didn’t do anything, Daniel. I did it,” she said quietly.

He turned his sharp look back on her, clenching his jaw. “Come into the house.” He turned and walked away without another word, far too quiet, far too poised. The way he carried himself felt dangerous and more than a little frightening. Kayden stared down at his feet, his hair blocking his eyes from view.

“I’m sorry, Farley.”

She jabbed the point of the knife into her finger angrily, wishing she could rewind time. “It’s okay,” she muttered, meaning it. Because it
was
okay. At least things with Kayden were, anyway. He’d apologized. He never apologized to anyone for anything. She trailed after Daniel, wondering how it was that two words from Kayden could make right the fact that he’d caused her lose the plot and try and kill him, when she was probably going to need a dictionary full of words to sort things out with Daniel.

*****

He was waiting for her in her room. At some point it had become her room and no longer Charlie’s. Probably when she’d boxed up the perfume bottles so she could stop from sneezing and removed all of the scribblings from the corkboard. Now the room just housed the bed and her duffel bag. And Daniel.

His eyes flickered to her when she entered the room and then went back to staring at the ceiling. He lay on the bed with his ankles crossed and his hands stacked on his chest. It kind of looked like he was ready to be nailed into a coffin. Farley went and sat on the edge of the bed, trying to figure out what to say.

“When did you get back?” she finally asked.

“Just now.”

“What happened with Beatty?”

A long pause stretched out. Eventually, he said, “You know about Agatha?”

“Yeah, Kayden told me.”

Daniel closed his eyes, his brow wrinkling like he was in pain. He rolled onto his side, facing away from her. He was tracing his finger along the seam where the wallpaper joined together when she noticed his knuckles were bloody.

“Why are you hurt? Daniel, what happened with Beatty?”

His finger stopped moving, paused on the wall where the paper curled away and had ripped a little. “Are you happy with me?” he whispered.

The question took her aback. There was such a stillness to his body as he lay there, not looking at her, that it felt wrong to reach out and touch him. She did it regardless, resting her hand against his shoulder. “Of course I am. Are
you
happy?”

He shook his head, mute. After a while, he murmured, “I’m not happy. I don’t like feeling like this. I don’t like the way he looks at you.”

She didn’t need to ask who
he
was. Didn’t need to be a genius to figure out how much what he’d just said had cost him. He’d never been like this. The fact that he couldn’t look at her spoke volumes. Her heart stammered, actually
physically
hurting.

“Daniel-”

“Promise me you’re not going to fall in love with him.”

The words felt like tiny paper cuts, each one of them stinging brightly. Such a stupid, ridiculous thing to say. Farley collapsed down onto the bed next to him, folding herself against him like he’d done to her five nights earlier. “Of course I’m not going to fall in love with him.” She reached around and tentatively touched his hand, waiting for him to unfreeze himself from prodding the wall. It was a full ten seconds before he allowed her to thread her fingers through his. He drew her arm around him, cradling their joined hands to his chest.

Tensing, he seemed to be readying for something. “Do you think…do you think you might end up loving
me
?” he breathed out, rushing the words together.

Everything tightened in Farley. She couldn’t help but react to his words; they were so utterly unexpected that she found herself gripping tightly onto his hand. He gripped her back, waiting for an answer. She blinked, hoping against hope that the panic in her mind would quit screaming so she could think. “Turn around,” she said.

He slowly obeyed, rolling around onto his back. He went back to staring up at the ceiling.

“Look at me.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, breathing shakily. He turned so that he lay straight on his side and then opened his eyes again. A look of complete misery resided there, shining out of the green depths. Farley drew his hand up to her mouth and kissed the bent ridges of his bruised knuckles, staring him in the eye. “I’m already in love with you. I love you more than anything in this world. I’d die if I didn’t have you. I almost did back in the Tower, when I thought Tobin was going to kill you. I can’t tell you how much you mean to me, Daniel, because I don’t have the words. I wish I did, but-”

The look in his eyes made her break off, uncertain of what she was seeing. It looked like he was burning on the inside. He reached up with his hand until it was an inch away from her face and then he closed his eyes, clenching down on his jaw, fighting something. The light that came out of him startled her. It arced from his fingertips to prick so gently on her skin that it felt like hot pulses burning through her. It filled her with a deep heat, strobing over her face and down her cheeks, tracing lightly over her neck. She knew it without having it ask; this was the most gentle he could be, the most honest.

He looked at her, stunned for a moment, before he swallowed and blinked. “Sorry, I…” he made to draw his hand away but she caught hold of his wrist.

“Don’t you dare.”

The ghost of a pleased smile hovered at the corners of his lips. “Farley, I…” He closed his eyes. “I…”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to-”

He leaned forward, burying her words in his kiss. When his lips touched hers, the light crackled between their faces, connecting them with fine filaments of pale blue energy that vibrated deep down into her skin, making her head swim. She tried to pull back, desperate for a breath, but he drew her in deeper, locking her in his embrace.