“Farley, don’t. It’s been a million years. Just leave it, okay?”
There was no way she was going to just leave it. She was going to tear his head off. How could he have befriended her and painted her freaking pictures after what he’d done to Daniel? When she pitched up in front of him, she shoved him so hard he toppled backwards into the sand. He didn’t even try to stop her. He sank back and looked up at her, sand dusting his face, and for the entire world it looked like he wanted her to beat him senseless. At that point, she’d have been okay with killing him if he wasn’t already dead.
“You’re sick, you know that?’ Farley spat.
He dragged his hands through his hair. “You’re right. I was sick.”
Daniel was closing in on them and a bunch of people had gathered on the boulevard to watch the domestic go down. “Get us out of here, Kayden,” she demanded.
Kayden hung his head for a second and then dragged himself up, brushing away the sand. Farley turned and faced Daniel. He didn’t look sad anymore, just angry. She quickly kissed him on the lips.
“Can you take Tess back to the hotel?”
“We’ll all go.”
Farley stepped back and glared at Kayden. “No. I want to talk to him.”
Kayden held out his hand sadly, and she closed the gap and took it. The beach disintegrated around them like it really was just so much sand, and Farley found herself standing next to Kayden on a dark street. A metallic scent filled the air. It probably had something to do with the rain, which bucketed down on them so hard it actually stung her skin.
“Where are we?” she yelled.
“This is where the Interrogator took me.” He looked around as though reminiscing over a fond memory from another lifetime, and then locked her in his sights. “This seemed like as good a place as any. I’ve already been torn apart here once before.”
“You shouldn’t have brought me here, then. You should have brought Daniel.”
He smiled a humorless smile. “I’ve let Daniel destroy me a hundred different times, in a hundred different ways. It never makes either of us feel any better.”
“Well, it’s going to make me feel better.”
“Good.” Kayden stepped towards her and produced something from behind his back. The ebony handled knife’s blade was curved and wickedly sharp. The glint of it sent a chill racing down her spine.
“Great, so you plan on carving me up now, do you?”
He looked down at the knife and turned it over in his hands, contemplating it. The last thing she expected him to do was hand it over to her, but that is exactly what he did.
“It’s a Pax blade. Take it.”
Farley flitted her gaze from the knife to Kayden. She reached out carefully and took it from him, confused. He nodded and came closer.
“You remember what I told you about the Pax blades? They’re the only things that can hurt something the Quorum has created.”
“The Quorum created you?” she seethed. “You let me think you were some kind of angel. But you’re not, are you? You were normal once.”
“I wasn’t normal. I was from the Quarters. I’d been alive longer than anyone had any right to be, and I couldn’t face that. And as far as humans are concerned, I am an angel. At least what they perceive to be, anyway. They see a human figure and a bright light, the outline of wings, and they believe what they want to believe. This was my punishment.”
The rain came down in hatchets, driving harder against the concrete. “Punishment?”
Kayden collapsed onto his knees so that the rain bounced off his back and ran in rivers down his face. “The Quorum don’t take kindly to people throwing their lives away. My status, everything I do for them, is a punishment. I heal people who are desperate to live; I save people from drowning; I lift people up out of the darkness. Every day I’m forced to do the things that I knew Daniel wouldn’t be able to do, and I pay for what I did. I have to comfort them and help them when all I want to do is burn.”
“Sounds like a fitting penance,” Farley snapped. Holding onto the knife, she used the back of the hand to scrub her hair out of her face. Kayden gave a bleak smile and nodded.
“I know you think what I did was selfish, and you’re right. It was the worst thing I could ever have done to Daniel. But it wasn’t a conscious thing. That makes it even worse, I know, but I wasn’t thinking about anyone else when I did it. I was thinking of a way out. You can glorify the idea of living for a thousand years all you like, but you know nothing about it. It isn’t some romantic teenage dream. It isn’t something to desire or covet. Living that long is unnatural. It’s a curse.” He clenched his hands into fists and pounded them into the concrete. “It’s a prison.”
His blood ebbed out into the rain, bright red and stark. The words she had been about to say caught in her throat. She’d never really considered how lonely an existence like theirs would be, but it wasn’t an excuse. He needn’t have been alone. There were hundreds of people from the Quarters.
“And what about Cassie?”
“Cassie never even knew I existed. She always loved Daniel.”
“So you thought you’d force this awful burden on his shoulders as payback?”
“No! Of course not. I wanted them to be together. I wanted them to be happy. I just…” He trailed off, finally breaking down. “I just didn’t want to be there to see it.”
Farley looked down at the knife and froze; the reflection of her own eyes stared back at her, hard as rock. She dropped it at her feet and gasped, startled by the stranger looking back at her. “I think living really is a fitting punishment for you, Kay. You shouldn’t get to die after what you did. Maybe the Quorum had that bit right at least.” She kicked the knife back towards him, and he stared down at it. The rain pummeled at the silver blade, making it rattle against the ground.
“You’re right.”
“Don’t agree with me!” She stormed over and shoved him again. He fell back onto his elbows, miserably letting the rain pour into his eyes. Farley choked back a sob. This wasn’t right. A storm raged inside her, so furious at him for what he’d done. There was another part of her, though, that felt like breaking down. He’d felt so utterly desperate once upon a time that he’d ended his own life, and now he was still suffering for it. The only reason she wasn’t helping him up and consoling him was because the fiercely protective part of her that loved Daniel so much wouldn’t let her. Such a mess.
She looked up at the blackness overhead that didn’t seem to be a sky at all, just a deep void stretching out into eternity, and felt like howling. The sound of footsteps brought her back to the abandoned street. Kayden didn’t appear to have noticed someone approaching; he still stared at her like she might change her mind and literally put him out of his misery. The footsteps grew nearer- louder. The figure that emerged out of the darkness made Farley’s heart pick up and race away like a freight train.
“Agatha?”
She stood side on in the scruffy boots and jeans she always used to wear, watching the two of them. Her hair was pulled back into that knot at the back of her head that made her look so severe. Her unnaturally dark eyes flickered over the Pax blade laying on the ground between them. “Why have you come here? This place isn’t for you.”
It was impossible to tell who she was addressing. Agatha looked equally as displeased with the both of them. Farley cleared her throat, praying that her voice wouldn’t betray her by cracking. “I needed to talk to Kayden.”
Agatha nodded, considering this for a moment. “You need to talk to someone, you take them out for coffee. You don’t come here.”
A pulse of anger ripped through Farley’s nerve endings, making her vision blur. “So very sorry, Aggie. I apologize. Next time I need to air my trivial grievances I’ll bear that in mind.”
“See that you do.” Agatha made to move towards them, and Kayden flinched. “Still so troubled, Messenger. Your penance is nearly complete.” She tilted her head in a way that reminded Farle
y of the old Agatha, and for a heartbeat she was back. Softened somehow. The moment passed by in a flash. “All this will be a distant memory soon enough. You will have paid your debt.”
Kayden sagged forwards, his wet hair tumbling into his face, made darker, more bronze than gold, by the rain. “My debt to the Quorum, maybe. The debts that matter will remain.”
“So it goes.” She studied him thoughtfully. “Some stains aren’t so easy to rub out, are they?”
“Impossible,” he breathed.
Agatha’s haunting smile played over her lips. “So it goes.” The way she paced around them with such indifference was like a bored predator. The reality that sweet, gentle Agatha had been swallowed by this cold creature was too much to take. How was this a calling? A service? It felt like she’d been sacrificed simply so this thing could utilize her body. There was no sense of fairness to that. If she were just a shell, then the Quorum could have picked anyone. They could have chosen a serial killer or a petty criminal or anyone else. They needn’t have chosen the one person that was a balm to all the hurt and suffering that they’d been through. It was a calculated move.
“Did Agatha know what she was agreeing to when she came running to the Quorum?” Farley called over the roar of the charging rain. “Did she have any idea that she was going to lose her identity?”
Agatha froze in the same way cats do when they find something irresistible to stalk. She angled her body towards Farley and formed a smile that flashed too much teeth. It was a grimace, a display of dominance, a threat. “I have retained my identity in every way. My eyes have simply been opened. I see more now than the petty trifles that affect the few, and I have adjusted accordingly to incorporate the many.”
“I don’t believe you. Agatha would never speak the way you do. She’d never be so remote and cold.”
A roil of thunder rumbled overhead. Agatha looked towards the sound dismissively, like it was nothing more than furniture being shifted in a room above them. Her face was still tilted toward the sky when she said, “You can choose to believe what you want. I see into you, Farley. You know the truth. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t make it any less true.” Her gaze dropped, eyes piercing and emotionless. “It is time you both left.”
It really was time to leave. This place felt like the darkest corner of the earth, where even darker things happened. Agatha stepped back into the void, leaving both Farley and Kayden staring vacantly after her. Kayden got to his feet, his movements stiff. “I’ll take you back to the hotel.”
Farley accepted his hand, filled with sorrow. The blind rage that had bubbled through her entire being was gone. All she wanted to do was comfort Kayden, but she couldn’t. The undeniable damage he’d caused all those years ago was like a rift in time, still sending out wave after wave of destruction in a blast radius that threatened to carry on forever.
When she opened her eyes, she was back in the hotel room and Kayden was gone. Daniel stood leaning against the doorframe with his hands in his jeans pockets, watching her. He gave her a profoundly sad smile, made even sadder by the way the subdued mid-morning light cast shadows across his face.
He came and stood in front of her, less than an inch between them, and they stayed like that for a long time. By the time it felt appropriate to speak, Farley couldn’t find anything to say. Between them, a pool of water gathered on the marble where the rain’s crystalline tears dripped out a heavy grief from her fingertips.
Thirty Five
Nothing Remains
Farley couldn’t get warm. All that rain had penetrated her core, and no amount of blankets seemed to make a difference. She was going to turn into an icicle in the middle of an LA summer. Tess came to join her on the sofa and demanded they put on a cheesy romance DVD to make themselves feel better. Farley didn’t bother reminding Tess that she wasn’t a huge fan of chick flicks. Not that it mattered- fifteen minutes in when the guy and the girl shared their first kiss, Tess went crazy and practically ripped the disc out of the machine. They’d been watching the UFC ever since. Tess stole a foot of blanket and shunted closer, resting her head on Farley’s shoulder.
“Do you ever wish you were a dude? I sometimes think having huge fists to pound the crap out of other people would be a massive plus.”
Farley wrinkled her nose. “Nah. Think about all that hair and the weird places it grows.”
“Ugh. You’re right. So, Daniel’s pretty hairy, then?”
“No! He’s…he’s none of your business, thank you very much!” she spluttered, yanking the covers back.
“Ooh, I like a guy who waxes.”
“I did not say he waxes.”
The sound of a throat being cleared interrupted them, and Daniel, at the other end of the sofa, made a show of turning the page in his book. “I’m right here, y’know.”
Tess stifled back a hail of laughter. She was incorrigible but at least she was smiling. “Sorry, Danny. Blame my social inhibitions on my hippie upbringing.”
Farley arched an eyebrow at her. “Your parents are both doctors. They’re Presbyterian.”
Daniel ignored them both and submerged himself in his book. Seeing him with a book in his hand reminded Farley she hadn’t had a chance to read any of his poetry. And for that matter, she hadn’t been able to look at the photos in his room before they’d left the cabin, either. Both were pieces of him that helped tell his story, and they’d been dangled under her nose like a carrot and then snatched away.
The monstrously big guys on the television were wrestling around on the floor when the elevator buzzed. Daniel hit the button to open the doors and Grayson stalked in, pulling a face at the TV. His hair was a little crazy, like he’d been conducting scientific experiments all morning and a few of them had backfired. He kept wringing his hands nervously. “Daniel, I was wondering if I could talk to you for a moment?”
“Sure.” Daniel pulled him into the kitchen, and the two of them bowed their heads together while Grayson whispered and made shapes and wild gestures with his hands. At one point it looked like he was drawing an air diagram with his index finger. Tess twitched restlessly, making the leather squeak.
“Do you think it’s about Oliver?”
“Yes.” Lying would be a fruitless exercise, and besides, if Grayson was this worked up, that had to mean he’d discovered something. Or so she hoped. “Maybe Cassie and Anna found him while they were driving Grayson’s Jeep here?”
The girls would be arriving late in the afternoon. Farley was looking forward to seeing them about as much as she looked forward to one of her pulverizing migraines.
Tess chewed on her lip and stared at the back of Grayson’s head like she could read his mind. “If they know something, they’re going to tell us, right? I mean, he’s my boyfriend and your brother. They wouldn’t keep something important from us, would they?”
Farley weighed up her response, comparing logic with past experience. “They probably wouldn’t tell us.”
“Damn it!” Tess flung back the blankets over her legs, throwing them onto Farley so she had to flatten them down to see. “You two! Hey! Get in here and tell us what’s going on. Right. Now.”
Grayson halted his murmured diatribe mid-gesture. His glasses slowly slid down his nose as he took in one angry-looking Tess. “I don’t,” he said, “know how wise that would be.”
“I don’t care about wise. I care about my boyfriend, now where the hell is he?”
Grayson looked at Daniel, who pinched the bridge of his nose. The action was fast becoming a habit.
“Okay, fine,” Daniel said, “but you can’t freak out or start screaming. We don’t know anything for certain yet.” He pulled Grayson back through to the sofa and threw himself down. “You’d better explain. It’ll make more sense coming from you.”
Grayson laced his fingers together in front of him and then unlaced them. He seemed to need a comfortable position for his hands before he could begin speaking. Eventually, he went with cupping his left hand arou
nd the balled up fist of his right, which was a good thing because it looked like Tess was about to lean forward and slap him. He blew out a shaky breath. “Okay,” he said. “Simeon has Oliver.”
Silence.
Tess went white. “What?”
Grayson’s shoulders hunched, like he was unsure how to proceed.
“Extrapolate,” she growled.
“Well, it’s like I was explaining to you the other day, Farley, remember?”
Tess and Daniel turned to her like she’d been holding out on them. She gave them a baffled shrug. “Don’t look at me. I’ve got no idea what he’s talking about. Be more specific, Gray.”
He nodded. “Right, specifics. Farley asked me the other day how I thought Simeon intended to reincarnate the soul of his dead wife into her body. I told her I suspected he would make her to turn into a Reaver. After that, he would locate his wife’s soul and force it into Farley. Then it would be a simple matter of employing various torture methods until she agreed to hand over control of her body to that specific soul.”
Tess held up her hand. “Wait a minute. Why would he be turning Farls into a Reaver? That’s not possible. She was supposed to destroy them, not become one of them.”
“Farley’s of their bloodline. There is no reason why she couldn’t become one of them.”
“So she could have powers like them, perhaps?”
Grayson shrugged. “Sure. She’d have to undergo her rites, though, just like they do.”
A panicked look swept across her face. “Are you sure? It just doesn’t happen, does it? She’s different from them, after all.”
“I don’t think so. I mean Farley has shown no signs of changing.”
The awkward look on Tess’ face made absolutely no sense. It lasted barely a second, but long enough for Farley to register it. Tess started chewing her fingernails. “Why would Simeon want her to become a Reaver?”
Eternal Hope (The Hope Series) Page 22
