Eternal Hope (The Hope Series) (37 page)

Occasionally, a jolt of Daniel’s light was bright enough to illuminate the scene, and the shapes of many dark figures appeared in still shots and frozen poses before disappearing again. Daniel had been right about nobody noticing. If nothing more, it looked like a strobe light was going off a couple of hundred feet away, with people dancing around it. Tess and Grayson were both washed out, ash-colored. All three of them stared anxiously back towards the fracas, where Daniel was hopefully killing a bunch of people.

Hoping for something like that didn’t feel right. And yet Farley had never wanted anything more. Tess’ hand grappled at her arm, momentarily drawing her attention away.

“I thought I saw something,” she hissed. Pointing out to the side of the beach close to the boulevard, Tess angled Farley until she saw what she meant: a dark shape hobbling towards them.
Anna
. Had to be. Farley set off, intending to meet her halfway. Grayson didn’t even try and stop her. Neither did Tess, which was a good thing. Farley was intent on smashing her fist into something, and it would be a shame to waste the violence on them.

As she stormed towards Anna’s scurrying shadow, her elevated heartbeat fell into sync with the bass line and the pounding of each step she took. Every thrum of the music, every throb of her heart, every jarring thud travelling up from the soles of her feet was a countdown. A countdown to something bigger than just beating the crap out of Anna. A chain of events were about to be set in motion, and Farley knew in the pit of her stomach that those events would change everything.

Anna actually had the decency to look surprised when Farley ducked out of the shadows in front of her. Maybe it was the fury on her face or the fact that her fists were already clenched and twitching with their pent up desire to
hurt
. Whatever it was, something about the way she looked had Anna cowering. Satisfaction poured through Farley.

She should be afraid. She’s gonna need surgery after I re-break that nose for her.

“Farley, wha…what are you doing?” she stammered. Farley didn’t pause in her head-on march. She pulled back her fist and swung, ploughing straight into Anna’s face. The girl slumped to the floor, whimpering. She doubled over, holding her face in her hands. Farley reached down and grabbed a handful of the skin-tight black material that made up Anna’s one-piece and yanked her upright. Slapping someone in the face really degraded them so much more than punching them. Farley really leaned into it, putting her whole bodyweight behind the open-palmed strike. The sound when her hand made contact was a harsh crack. Anna tumbled backwards and gasped, bringing a hand to the side of her face.

“Farley, this isn’t
my
fault!”

“Oh? It’s not your fault that you’re a traitor and you think of no one but yourself?” Farley stretched out her fingers, enjoying the pain in her hand. It must have hurt Anna ten times more. She stalked towards the girl on the ground, considering her next move. Anna scuttled backwards like a crab.

“This is your fight, Farley,” she said hurriedly. “Simeon’s obsession with you had nothing to do with me or any of us at the cabin. You showed up and brought this nightmare to our doorstep. Of course we’re going to want to protect ourselves.”

Farley let out a harsh laugh. In Anna’s mind, she was entirely justified for turning them over to the enemy. It was almost hard to hate her for what she’d done; she was so self-absorbed that she’d carried out her actions based on a warped form of logic, and not out of spite. Yes, it was hard to hate her, but not impossible.

“I never asked you to help me fight anybody. I never asked any of you. But you don’t see Grayson or Cassie making deals with the devil, do you?”

A shaky, wild laugh escaped Anna. A bubble of frothy red blood formed on her lips before she licked it away. “Cassie would do anything for Daniel. Grayson, too. You really think they’re here for you? You really think if Danny dumped your ass tomorrow they’d be here, putting themselves in danger for
you
? No, they’d be at home at the cabin- the place
you
made unsafe for us all. It’s no wonder Oliver agreed to go to the Tower. You put everyone around you in jeopardy.”

The sound of Farley’s enraged growl was partially blotted out by a roar going up from the crowd behind them. The DJ changed tracks, much to the delight of the dancers, and a new pumping beat charged from the speakers and down into the sand. It rose up like a living thing through Farley’s feet to rattle her bones. Up ahead, flashes of blue light whipped through the air displaying a body flying backwards; a man crouched and ready to spring; a silhouette with a gun, arm locked and ready. With each new flash came a new kind of fragmentary threat, the outcomes of which remained unhappily incomplete, thieved away by the intermittent blackness. Farley’s rage had almost disintegrated by the time she realized Anna had gotten up and was running towards the ocean.

“Get back here, you coward!” She burst after her, running as fast as she could. The one advantage she had over Anna was that the redhead was trying to run in her ridiculous thigh high boots and Farley was barefoot. Nature hadn’t evolved human beings with spikes growing out of their heels for a reason. It took all of ten seconds to catch Anna, but that was still enough time for her to make it to the water’s edge.

Farley rushed her from behind, slamming her palms into her back. Anna’s head whipped around with the force of the impact, and her arms were flung wide, completely failing to block her fall as she face-planted into the surf. Farley fell on her, grabbing a handful of long hair. She wasn’t going to pull it. That sort of fighting was for weak girls who didn’t know any better. No, she was going to use it to hold her under the water until the malicious cow turned blue. When that happened, she was going to drag her back onto the beach and revive her so she could do it all over again.

Anna was spluttering and thrashing when Farley realized what she was doing. An image of Jacob standing nonchalantly on the beach, while his men hauled the box that held Daniel in and out of the water, flitted through her mind. He had drowned Daniel for sport and not out of anger, but this was too close for comfort. Farley released Anna’s hair and toppled back in the water, the waves storming up and crashing over her body. Salt and brine flooded her mouth and rushed up her nose, making her splutter.

Anna dragged herself upright and started choking, bring up lungfuls of water each time her body bowed and purged itself. She was crying in between. She ran the back of her hand across her mouth, swiping a slurry of wet sand over her lips and up the side of her cheek.

“You’re a psycho!” she gasped. “You and your brother, you’re both psychos.”

The insult was nothing special, but it still filled Farley with rage. So, she wasn’t going to drown Anna. That didn’t mean she wasn’t going to make her wish she’d never been born. Getting to her feet was difficult. Her limbs were like lead from running and, honestly, from beating someone up. Water saturated her dress and made what little of it there was heavy. It took a couple of attempts to stand without falling back down into the rushing surf, by which time Anna had gotten up and was trying to run through the breakers further out into the water.

Maybe she was a champion swimmer and thought she’d be able to escape that way. Farley wasn’t a champion swimmer by any stretch of the imagination, but there was no way Anna was giving her the slip. She charged into the water after her. Each time a wave rolled in it crashed against her bare legs, throwing white foam up her body, pushing her back. Anna’s red hair was slowly disappearing into the distance. She’d stopped trawling against the tide and was swimming now, which meant deep water. Farley surged after her, determined. There was nothing else but the forceful pull of the water around her and the back of Anna’s head. No way was she losing sight of her.

A huge wave formed a few feet ahead of Farley just as the water got too deep to walk, and she dove underneath just as it broke. The water was ink black and cold, squeezing the air out of her lungs. She tumbled with the motion of the wave, spinning endlessly like she was trapped in a washing machine. By the time she broke the surface, her lungs were needling and her eyes burned with the salt.

Anna was just up ahead. Farley dove early for the next wave, pushing low under it to avoid being caught up in its momentum. The world was black down there, the only visible light emanating from the silvery shine on the bubbles slipping free from her mouth and nose. There was no way to tell how deep the water was or what was out there. Farley had no problem swimming out of her depth at the pool, but this was different. This vast, abyssal feel of the ocean stretching out around her was terrifying, and made her feel scarily insignificant. She kicked towards the surface, breaching right next to Anna.

Surprised, Anna started flailing and slapping her arms against the water in her haste to get away. Definitely not a champion swimmer. Farley lunged towards her. It was a toss up between bitch-slapping her until she passed out, or hooking an arm around her neck and pulling her back to shallow water.

Anna definitely looked like she was going to need saving any second now. She kept dipping under the water and pulling in oxygen in deep wheezes when she came back up again. Farley wasn’t so sure she was in the best frame of mind to be offering rescue to anyone. Her arms and legs felt like jelly, and she was pumping them a little too hard in her efforts to tread water. The ocean was just too
big
. It was overwhelming, and the onset of a panic attack was twisting its fingers in Farley’s gut. She swallowed hard, trying to pull back the calm.

“Anna! Anna, we should go back!”

Anna looked over her shoulder in a panic, probably thinking Farley was on the verge of tackling her right there in the water. She started kicking frantically in the opposite direction, further out to sea.

“Anna, stop!” Farley screamed. Water poured into her mouth as she did, saline and bitter, making her gag. She coughed until her throat was raw, and then set off after Anna. It didn’t take long to reach her; she was panicking so much she was barely making any progress, and Farley slipped her arm around her neck and started stroking backwards.

It was the first time Farley had looked towards the shore, and when she did, a bolt of fear rippled through her. The lights from the party reflected on the surface of the unsettled water, red, green, purple and orange. It was so far away. And there was no blue light reflected on the water. For better or worse, Daniel was done fighting, and the aftermath of what had happened was waiting back there for her on the beach. The question was, how was she going to get there?

Exhaustion laid claim to Farley’s arms and legs, making it gradually harder to swim. The fact that Anna was fighting against her, making frightened squeaking sounds while she struggled, wasn’t making things easier. “Anna, quit-”

Farley gasped in sudden pain. Anna’s wrestle for freedom took on a fevered energy, and the girl started kicking backwards with her foot, trying to skewer Farley. The heel of her boot made contact with Farley’s leg, scraping in a burning line down her calf. A lump rose in her throat and she drew in a sharp breath, wincing against the pain. She instinctively let go of Anna, reaching for her leg.

In the time it took to do so, Anna twisted around and started floundering again. Farley clenched her jaw and cautiously approached her. They
had
to get out of the water. That scrape on her leg was undoubtedly bleeding, and right now she wasn’t overly thrilled about chumming the water for any sharks that might be in the vicinity. But being eaten by a shark was unlikely; what was likely was that she’d be too tired to swim soon, and then saving Anna would be off the cards, because there’d be no saving herself.

She edged closed to Anna, who sank beneath the water once more, her hair spiraling around her as she submerged. Making ready to grab her when she came up, Farley waited. When Anna did break the surface of the water, the explosion of her crazed limbs took Farley off guard. She’d been expecting her to gasp for air and maybe cling onto her, trying to stay afloat. What she hadn’t been expecting was for Anna to come up swinging. She hadn’t expected the velocity with which Anna’s elbow slammed back into her face. And she hadn’t been expecting the starburst of pain that blinded her, or the blackness that flowered like a stain after.

“How could you let her go like that?”

Daniel paced up and down the shore, staring out into the seething swell, trying to catch sight of them. There was nothing but shadowy outlines, even with his near-perfect night vision. The waves gave out a splitting roar as they crashed against the sand. Daniel spun on Tess and Grayson, wringing his hands together.

“How long have they been out there?”

“Only a few minutes,” Tess replied.

Grayson cleared his throat. “Uh…eight and a half minutes.