Eternal Hope (The Hope Series) (44 page)

“Soul Child,” he whispered, his mouth pulling into a disorientated smile. He reached out a hand towards Farley, trying to claw at the bottom of her jeans. She yanked her foot away, horrified. “Don’t touch me.”

“We…” Simeon shook his head, confused, “we are one.”

“We are
not
one.” She skittered back, clinging onto Tess for dear life. Tess’ eyes were the size of gobstoppers.

“That is
so
messed up,” she whispered.

Simeon struggled in the sand, trying to get to his feet. He was bent and frail and looked every one of this thousand years. How the Simeon she’d met in his mind had turned into this creature, she had no idea. Too much grief, too much darkness. It felt stupid that she’d ever really been afraid of him in the first place. By the edge of the rushing water, Anna stood watching them. She was out of the black commando outfit and back in a skimpy number that couldn’t possibly be keeping her warm. She took a few steps towards them and then rethought her move. She’d undoubtedly been expecting to see Cassie.

Tess continued gaping down at Simeon as he pulled himself to his feet. “What are you gonna do?” she whispered.

The weight on Farley’s hip tugged at her like a reminder. The blade was such a cruel looking thing, curved like a scimitar. She tried to imagine pulling it out of her belt and slashing at Simeon, but suddenly it didn’t seem so easy. Simeon finally managed to straighten himself out and whipped around.

“Saxon! Saxon, get back! Get away from me, you dog. You’re all dogs. Where is she?” He pivoted and locked eyes with Farley. “
Where is she
?”

Tess made a strangled, choking noise and backed away, tripping over in the sand. Farley moved to position herself between Simeon and where Tess lay. There was no reason for him to hurt her, but Farley wasn’t going to take any chances. “Aria isn’t here,” she whispered.

Simeon’s already wretched face distorted with anger. “GIVE ME ARIA!” he screamed. “We have to… we have to be together.” His voice fell away to a whisper as he repeated the same thing over and over. The anger seemed to leave him for a moment, but then he twisted around snapping his teeth. “Saxon, get back! Get back!”

It was ironic that in reality Saxon wouldn’t come near Simeon at all, hadn’t said one word to him in a thousand years, and yet in this tortured version Saxon was his incessant tormentor. Pity sang through Farley’s veins. This really was a prison for Simeon. Her resolve strengthened once more, and she drew the Pax blade from her belt.

“Tess,” she said calmly, “You might want to go further up the beach.”

A scrabbling sound behind her suggested Tess was doing as she said, but when it went on for a few moments Farley glanced back to see what was going on. Tess’ feet were off the ground and kicking wildly. Oliver had his hand clamped over her mouth and his other arm wrapped around her body, pinning her arms to her sides.

“Oliver?” Farley took a step towards them. “Oliver, put her down!”

His slate grey eyes were hard as ice. “I can’t. She has to come with me.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“They said they had her. They said they were going to kill her if I didn’t do what they told me to. But now I know. Now I know,” he ranted. “They were lying. Everybody lies. She needs to come with me. I have to keep her safe.”

Tess kicked wildly, squirming in his arms. Her eyes were bulging with fear. Farley held her hand out and Oliver skittered back. “Just put Tess down so we can talk. You’re scaring her.”

A conflicted look transformed his face. His gaze fell to Tess, who was whimpering from behind the hand he had clasped over her mouth. He let out a mortified gasp and dropped his hold on her. She collapsed to the floor and started choking. Stooping down, he bent to her side and took hold of her hand. A frantic, unbalanced energy rolled off him.

He placed a careful kiss on the top of Tess’ head, which seemed to startle her out of her surprise; she straightened up and landed a slap on his cheek with a loud crack. He ran his tongue over his teeth and gently touched his fingertips to his cheekbone. “Good to see you, too,” he murmured.

“Where the hell have you been?” she hissed.

“They took me.” Oliver ran his hands down her shoulders and closed his eyes. “They said they’d kill you if I didn’t go with them.”

“Who?”

“Clay and his men. They wanted me to…” he swallowed, looking disgusted. “They wanted the power inside me.”

“
YOU!
” A wild, animal shout pealed into the darkness, echoing down the length of the beach. In the surprise of seeing Oliver again, Farley had forgotten about Simeon. He had recovered from yelling at Saxon and was pacing towards them.

“You,” he snarled, pointing a skeletal finger at Oliver. “
You-
”

“Dog?” Oliver offered.

Simeon barrelled forward, baring his teeth. “You have Aria!”

Oliver pulled himself up and took a deep breath. “I do.”

“What?” That was unexpected. Surely he should have been denying that? It wasn’t true, after all, and if Simeon thought Aria’s soul was inside Oliver, who knew what he would do. Oliver gave Farley a hesitant glance and drew back his shoulders.

“I have her soul inside me. She wants to be with you.”

“Give her to me!” he cried, lurching forwards. Tess rose to her feet and stepped in between them.

“Oliver, what the hell are you doing? You don’t have her soul. He’s going to kill you.”

“If he can take one soul from me, that means he can take them all. I want him to do it, baby. I can’t do this anymore. I want things to be normal again. We can go home. We can finish school and go to college. Don’t you want that?”

Farley’s stomach twisted. He wanted Simeon to do exactly what Daniel had asked of him, for exactly the same reasons. Simeon reached out and shoved Tess aside, a desperate gleam lighting up his eyes. Oliver nodded and rolled up his sleeves. “I’ll give her to you on one condition.”

Simeon’s skin wrinkled into a thousand lines when he smiled. “Anything.”

“You have to take the others, too. I don’t want them.”

A resolved look formed on Simeon’s face, making him appear lucid. “No. One is too many. You have thousands, I can hear them all.”

“Those are my terms.” Oliver folded his arms across his chest and bit down on his jaw.

“If you won’t give her to me, I will just take her.” A pale glow lit up Simeon’s hands. He reached out for Oliver but he jumped back, holding out his own hands. They burst into a light so bright it illuminated half the beach, the wattage of a cold, blue sun. Simeon flinched, hissing. “What does one soul mean to you?”

“It’s all or nothing,” Oliver growled.

Farley locked onto Tess’ eyes on the other side of their bodies. “Come here!” she hissed. Tess blinked and stepped backwards, skirting the two men glaring at each other.

“He’s going to get himself killed,” she moaned when she reached Farley’s side. But the power pooling in Oliver’s hands said otherwise. A ripple distorted the air around them, twisting the scene so that his body looked all wrong. Simeon saw it, but he was obviously desperate. And desperate people did desperate things.

A pale, thin arm shot out at Oliver, and Simeon gripped hold of the boy’s shirt. As his bony fingers wrapped around Oliver’s throat, his eyes grew round. A pulse of icy blue energy tore through the air and crackled around Simeon’s body, lancing into his skin. It struck him in inch-thick prongs and then snapped away to land elsewhere, blistering at his fragile skin. His throat, his arms, his face: the energy bit at him and made his body shudder violently. His eyes had rolled back into his head when he let Oliver go, tumbling to the floor at his feet.

Oliver stepped forward, panting with what looked like nerves and panic. “Just do it,” he snapped. “Do it or I’ll kill you.”

“You cannot kill a Reaver, boy,” Simeon grunted quietly in the sand. A cobalt fire had ignited at the hem of his robe. Farley stepped forward and kicked sand over his feet, attempting to put it out. Oliver grabbed hold of her arm.

“What are you doing? Agatha told me you were coming here to kill him!”

She looked up at Oliver and froze. “Agatha knew I was coming here?”

“Yes. She’s been coming to me every day down in the Tower. She was the one who told me to vent my power to the Immundus. She said it would make me feel better.”

Why the hell would she tell him to do that? That was essentially giving the Immundus power, albeit very small power, but still… As the Emissary, Agatha was supposed to keep things on an even keel, not tip the scale. And if she knew Farley was down on the beach confronting Simeon, where the hell was Kayden? He was her protector. She would have sent him here immediately. Farley shut down the questions and focused on Oliver. She’d been wrong about him. So, so very wrong. They all had. Everyone apart from Tess. He’d only gone with Clay to keep her safe. “You should have come to us. We could have helped you.”

Oliver didn’t get a chance to respond. Simeon wrapped his hand around Farley’s ankle and a brutal, freezing cold pain shot up through her body. It was similar to before, when she’d felt the penetrating chill turning her bones to ice back in Simeon’s tomb, except this time it was much, much worse.

“
Daniel!
” she gasped. It was sheer instinct to call out for him, even though he was miles away. Simeon staggered to his feet, his hands travelling up her body as he rose, making sure never to lose contact with her.

“You will give me my wife,” he snarled at Oliver, “or I will kill this one.”

Tess let out a strangled yelp and rushed forward but Oliver held his hand out to stop her. “You won’t kill her. You need her to house Aria once you have her soul back. Put her down.”

The cold was stunning; Farley couldn’t think properly. A part of her wanted to try and reason with Simeon, to reach the lost fragment of his old self trapped in his mind. It would be no use, though. He was buried too deeply. He’d been right before when he’d said there would be no coming back for him. Oliver stepped forward and his right hand flared into brightness once more.

“Just take the souls. Do it quickly before I change my mind and blow you into tiny pieces.”

“No.” Another paralysing wave of pain washed though Farley, pinning her to the spot. Simeon growled low in the back of his throat, a primal, dark sound. “I’ve waited. I’ve waited too long. Aria and I must be alone. You must give her to me and take Saxon.”

Not only was he not going to take Oliver’s power, he wanted too add one more soul to her brother’s cache.

“Not going to happen.” Oliver’s eyes flashed starkly, reflecting the moon and the muted glow of Simeon’s power as it flowed from his hand into Farley. Oliver shot her a hesitant look and blinked. He was going to do something. Something stupid, probably. If she’d been able to scream and tell him no, she would have. But hell, she couldn’t even blink back. Oliver inched closer and tensed. What happened next burst through Farley’s head in split second snapshots:

Light.

Tess screaming.

Oliver grimacing, bracing, stumbling.

Simeon’s brown robe flapping through the air.

A connection, a pulsing relay of light joining her with Simeon and Oliver. Both their memories flooding her head, barraging her with information and pain, joy, love, and loss.

Too much.

Way too much.

It was over in an instant. Farley’s spine arched up off the ground as her body spasmed. She hadn’t even felt herself fall but she was on her back in the sand. Her muscles couldn’t be persuaded to un-knot themselves. Out of the corner of her eye. Farley registered Simeon already trying to get to his feet. He may have been weaker than Oliver, but he was way stronger than she was. With a momentous effort she managed to move her hand to her belt before he reached her.

“Aria? Aria, it’s okay. I’m here.” His brown eyes, always the same no matter how much the rest of him had changed, focused on her. “Wait, no. You’re not Aria. Who are you?”

Now! Do it now.
Farley blinked up at him.
Come on! What are you waiting for?!
The voice inside her head was right. She’d get no better chance. Farley thrust upwards into Simeon’s throat, feeling the Pax blade scrape over bone as she did so.

Simeon’s eyes went wide. He frowned, his face suddenly morphing into a look of betrayal. For one horrible moment it was like staring up into the other Simeon’s face. He toppled sideways into the sand beside her just as Tess and Oliver arrived.

“I’m sorry, Farley,” Oliver choked out. “I had no idea it would affect you if I hit him. I would never have done it, I swear!”

“It’s okay,” she croaked, never taking her eyes of Simeon. His mouth worked frantically as he tried to pull oxygen into his lungs. Bubbles of blood frothed up out of the wound in his windpipe where the Pax blade was buried. Oliver reached down and took hold of it.

“Don’t touch him,” Farley wheezed, getting to her feet. “He’s going to die.”

Oliver couldn’t hide his confusion. “You only stabbed him. It’s going to take more than that to kill him.”

Farley shook her head, running her hand back through her hair. “Kayden told me the Pax blade was the only thing capable of harming one of the Quorum’s creations. The Emissary made Simeon, turned him into what he is. He is the Quorum’s creation. The knife can kill him.”