Eternal Hope (The Hope Series) (40 page)

Farley rocked back on the bed. Agatha had said Simeon’s wife came down with a fever- that it overcame her in less than a day and she had died in his arms. Surely the fever wasn’t because of that? Because she’d been strung out and jonesing for a fix?

“Do you… Do you remember what happened to her, Simeon?”

He bowed his head, lost in a memory Farley had no desire to visit. He glanced down at his fists, studied them intensely. “She died.”

Farley blew out her cheeks. At least she didn’t have to explain that part. “Do you remember what happened after that?”

“No. I remember feeling like the world was over, and then it
was
. I was trapped here.”

“This may come as a surprise to you,” Saying
surprise
sort of made it sound like her news was a good thing, but Farley couldn’t think of any other way to put it, “but you somehow managed to bring Aria back.”

Simeon halted in his pacing, zeroing in on her. “What do you mean,
bring Aria back
? She was dead. I physically felt her soul leave her body.”

He’d
felt
her soul leaving her body? Farley frowned. “Your anger and despair took form somehow. The force of those feelings contaminated her body. It reanimated her, but she wasn’t the same. She wasn’t human. There was something dark and unclean inside her and she infected you with it. That’s why you’re here.”

A blank look took over Simeon’s face. “How can she have infected me?”

This was part of the conversation Farley really hadn’t been looking forward to. A part of her suspected Simeon remembered, but there was no way she was going to try and force him to admit it. “She bit you.”

Simeon sank down heavily into his chair, causing the candles at his side to gutter from the displaced air. “I don’t understand. So, she bit me and I fell unconscious?”

“No.” Here went nothing. “You went mad.”

A silence fell over the room as Simeon considered this. His head didn’t implode right off the bat, which was a good sign. “And Aria?”

“She was ahh… they…killed her. Again.”

Simeon nodded, gazing at the floor. “How long has it been?”

“I’m not sure exactly. A really long time. They locked you away but now you’re free. You’re… you think you can reinstate Aria’s soul into another body.”

Something in the way Simeon looked at her made Farley guess he was putting the pieces together. Like the gravity of everything she’d said was drawing all of the clues into one place.

“I think I can put her inside you, don’t I? That’s why you said you were being attacked by my men the first time you came to me.” Farley let her silence speak for itself. Simeon came forward and sat beside her on the bed. “I don’t see how I can possibly think I’ll succeed in drawing Aria’s soul back into a body. Once someone moves on, that’s it. They’re gone.”

“My friends think perhaps it’s because of the whyte.” Farley screwed her face up, shaking her head. There was no need to go into the finer points where the whyte was concerned. If he didn’t remember Aria like that, then it was a kindness to leave it that way. “My friends think you might suspect whoever killed Aria the second time around took her soul, and that it was passed around over the centuries. That you could draw it out of that Reaver and push it into someone else capable of housing souls. I guess I’m the logical option because I can technically become a Reaver, and, of course, I’m a girl. The
only
girl.”

A distraught look fell over Simeon. “
Centuries
? This is madness.”

It really, really
was
madness, but there was no sense in pointing that out. Farley took his hand. “I don’t know what to do, Simeon. You have thousands of Immundus working for you. They’re all over the city. If they find me…”

“I won’t have taken their souls,” he said abruptly. “Even if I am mad, I wouldn’t have done that. If that many people are helping me, it can only be because they’re addicted. I won’t be controlling them, not really. You can use that.”

Farley hid her surprise. He wanted to help her? Daniel’s words leapt into her mind- telling her the Immundus he’d encountered were different. And then there was the way they were all fighting and shouting at one another back in the Tower when she’d accidentally returned to the Great Room. It all made perfect sense: these Immundus were different, because they weren’t controlled like Elliot and the other Reaver’s guards had been. Those Immundus almost had their souls drained away and were only shadows of people. Daniel called them puppets once. Simeon’s men were regular people, hopped up on some insane high and operating under their own steam. A dangerous combination. Farley processed this, working the information over in her mind.

“I think you’re right. I don’t know how I’m supposed to use that, though.”

“It means I’m weak. They have no real loyalty to me beyond the need to satiate their thirst for the power I contain. If you can get me away from them, you’ll be able to do it.”

Farley studied the way Simeon’s shoulders locked, along with every other joint in his body. He really was serious about helping. “Be able to do what?”

He sat straight, turning to face her head on. “Kill me.”

“What?! You actually
want
me to kill you? This wasn’t your fault, Simeon. You didn’t want this, you didn’t want any of this. How-”

Simeon held up his hand, cutting her off. “And what else do you propose? I’m a danger to you and everyone else. There’s no coming back from the dark place I’ve gone. I’ve been dead for a very long time. I just haven’t been able to rest. It’s time for me to be free, and Saxon along with me. If I die, he’ll be released.” Tears welled in Simeon’s eyes, their deep chocolate brown filled with pain. “I want to be with Aria again, Farley. Please. You have to help me.”

“You’re out of your mind. There’s no way I’m letting you try and kill Simeon.” Daniel braced himself against the window, staring out over Los Angeles and the millions of people below. “If anyone’s going to do it, it’ll be me. Maybe Kayden can help.”

Farley had missed the pivotal moment where everything changed; all she knew was that Kayden’s name no longer came out of Daniel’s mouth without a bucket load of malice attached to it. She had no idea what to make of that. The promise she’d made to Simeon took precedence in her head, though, and she was going to have to think about their apparent ceasefire later.

“Look, he’s a Reaver. You can’t kill him without me. I can’t kill him without you. It’ll be a team effort. I told him I’d make it happen, okay?”

Daniel huffed and leaned closer to the window. With his arms raised up over his head, his t-shirt hiked up exposing a narrow strip of his back. “You can’t really be serious? You’ve never killed anyone, Farley. You don’t know how hard it is.”

Farley threw herself backwards onto the bed and let out an exasperated breath. “Have you forgotten about the Tower? My father and the others?”

“They don’t count. They’re Oliver’s kills.”

“I killed the Immundus that tried to shoot me back on the highway. I shot him straight in the head.” If Daniel expected her to have some hideously traumatic memory of that day when she and Agatha had gone to get Tess, he was sadly mistaken. The Immundus had been a blank shell, and he’d been set on shooting her and everyone else in the Charger. There was nothing left of the human he’d once been, and Farley almost felt like she’d done him a favour. This was an entirely different situation, though. She literally
was
going to be doing Simeon a favour. Daniel stepped towards the bed, framed by the early morning sun stretching its fingers between the skyscrapers and the high-rises.

“You remember the last time we were in the Tower? If you hadn’t been there, I would have been able to take the Reavers on without having to worry about you.”

“If I hadn’t have been there, the Reavers would still be alive,” Farley countered. She took his hand and pulled him towards her. “You don’t understand how sad he is. Simeon deserves to be set free. He’s willing to do anything to be with Aria, and if that means he has to die then that’s what he wants.”

Daniel’s hair tumbled into his face, shielding his eyes. He could look so young sometimes. “I do understand what that would be like. I’d go to any lengths to be with you, no matter which plane of existence you were in. I already told you that.”

“I know. But you don’t have to. I’m right here.” Farley scooted across the bed and pulled Daniel down so she could lay her head on his chest. Nothing in the world was more reassuring than hearing the steady constant of his heartbeat. It was like a metronome, beating out the rhythm of the rest of their lives, promising an end to all this pain with each heavy thud. Daniel stroked through her hair with his fingers.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” he murmured.

No conversation starting with that particular turn of phrase ended well. Farley braced herself, running her finger along the hem of his t-shirt. “What?”

“I did something that might make you unhappy. It involves Oliver.”

She bit down on her lip until the tang of iron and old pennies contaminated her taste buds. “Tell me.”

“I was just so worried about what we were going to do.” His hand brushed down the side of her face. “I wanted…I want to give you a normal life, Farley, and I want to be able to have a normal life too. I want to be able to grow old and watch my children shoot up around my ankles like weeds. It’s all I want in the world.”

The simplicity of Daniel’s dream made Farley’s soul burn with longing- a longing for that life, too. “But what does that have to do with Oliver?”

He cleared his throat, his hand stilling in her hair. “I asked him to take the talisman from me.”

The noises of the apartment filled the gaping silence hanging between them- the low hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen, a tap dripping in the bathroom. Daniel didn’t say anything else. Farley spent a second analysing her emotions before she spoke. “You wanted him to take your power, just like Aldan did?”

“Yes.”

She pushed away from his chest, propping herself up on one arm. “Why would you do that?” she whispered. “You’d die if you gave back the talisman.”

“We don’t know that.”

“Yes, we
do
!” Farley cried. “I watched when Aldan took it from you the last time. You weren’t just a little tired when he was through. You were
dead
. If he hadn’t pushed it back into you, you wouldn’t be here right now.”

Daniel sat up, leaning into her. He chewed on his lip before speaking again. “That could be because he took the whole thing. I asked Oliver to take most of it but leave a fragment behind. That way I would still keep my own energy in tact.”

This was too much. Farley scrambled off the side of the bed, too angry to be close to him. “You asked my brother to siphon the life out of you and
guess
when to stop? He doesn’t have the control Aldan had. For all we know, if he went too far he probably wouldn’t have been able to reverse it. Then what? You’d be dead and I’d be left here on my own.”

Daniel stared down at his hands, clenching his jaw. Sometimes she hated the way he did that. He had no right to be angry, not when he was planning ridiculously ill advised experiments that might kill him, and all without talking to her first. He had no idea how to administrate a relationship- not that she did either- but some things were just common sense. You spoke to the person you loved first before ploughing headlong into some stupid plan that could end your life.

“And when were you planning on doing all of this, Daniel? Were you going to wait until everything was over with Simeon, or were you gonna jump straight in with both feet?”

“Of course not.” The muscles in his shoulders visibly tensed through his t-shirt, making him look rigid and angry. “I was going to wait until the right time. As soon as Simeon’s threat became real, I called it off. Oliver wasn’t prepared, anyway. I could tell even before that argument at the cabin. I wanted to wait and see if he got a handle on the power he already possessed before piling more on top.”

Farley ran her hands through her hair. “You can’t do this to me, Daniel. You can’t roll the dice on whether you live or die just on the off chance it means we get to be together. And you have to talk to me about these things. I can’t deal with you making decisions like this on your own.” At some point, she had burst into tears. By the time she finished speaking she was surprised Daniel could even understand what she was saying. He came and stood inches away from her, careful not to touch her until she fell against him.

“I’m so sorry, love.”

“Don’t be sorry,” she gasped between tears. “Just don’t do it.”

He cupped her face in his hands and placed a soft kiss on her forehead. When he pulled back, he gave her a sorrowful smile. “I won’t. I promise.”

The loud chime of the elevator door in the main room caused Daniel to pull away. “It’s probably Grayson and Tess.”