by Frankie Rose
Sovereign Hope
Frankie Rose
Copyright © 2012 Frankie Rose
Copyright © 2012 Frankie Rose
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at [email protected]
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to peoples either living or deceased is purely coincidental. Names, places and characters are figments of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.
All rights reserved.
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For the daydreamers.
CHAPTER ONE
Figueroa
The thing about car chases is this: if you’re traveling through downtown LA at lunchtime, you can forget about them. In that kind of traffic, all you can hope to have in the way of a highway pursuit is a crawling affair where the object of the chase has plenty of time to make a distress call. Phone in hand, I was inching my way down Figueroa with a freak rainstorm pelting the world beyond the windscreen into obscurity when my best friend, Tessa Kennedy, finally picked up.
“Did you know there’s a sale on at Hillman’s? My mom’s buying me the cutest—”
“Tess, I’m being followed,” I hissed. I was alone in the truck, but it seemed necessary to keep my voice down all the same.
A weary sigh rattled down the phone. “Are you sure? Is it another hallucination?”
A growl built in the back of my throat. “Nope. Definitely real. This car was parked outside my front door this morning and I saw it again when I left the dentist’s. I thought I was imagining things but the same car is following me, now, I swear.”
“Is that Farley?” Mrs. Kennedy asked in the background. “Tell her I said hello. We’re all thinking of Moira.”
“Hey, my mom said—”
“Yeah, I heard. Tell her thanks.” Tess wasn’t taking this seriously at all. I could still see the murky outline of the black 1970s Dodge Charger two cars back, making every turn I did, following me from lane to lane. “Can you meet me?”
“Sure, I can, Farley. What else are friends for but swooping in to the rescue when their girlfriends are being stalked by creepy strangers? But listen, if you really are worried shouldn’t you just call Detective Miller?”
I gritted my teeth. “Yes, but I’m not his favorite person right now. He thinks I’m harassing him. He probably wouldn’t even take my call.”
Tess sighed again, a sigh usually accompanied by a crinkled expression of concern that could practically be seen over the phone. “I thought you said you weren’t going to call him anymore?” she said. “You know what they say about the boy who cried wolf.”
“This is not the same! My mom is missing. She’s been missing for six months. I think I have a right to know where they’re at in their investig—” I broke off. “Never mind. I’m by the Friday Morning Club. How soon can you get here?”
Tess arranged to meet me twenty minutes later in the Staples Center parking lot, and I hung up the phone, feeling no better for having spoken to her. The rain was coming down even harder now, and I could barely see anything at all, just the beading streaks of rainwater that caught and refracted the light like a thousand spent fireworks, spiralling and twinkling to the earth in a satisfied sigh.
I was staring into the rear view, trying to catch a glimpse of the Dodge again, when the big black SUV in front of me jolted to a halt. My scruffy, black Chuck Taylors hit the brakes but not quick enough, and my truck rammed straight into the back of it.
Oh. Crap.
The metallic crunch spoke of thousands of dollars worth of damage. I whimpered and slumped over the steering wheel. Had they noticed? Of course they had. A thin grey smoke rose out from under the hood of the truck. Seemed like the force with which I’d slammed into their expensive-looking sports vehicle must have been pretty considerable. I spun around in my seat, looking to see if any of the other stationary motorists were staring. I couldn’t see anyone. My stomach still twisted when I looked in the rearview, though. The Dodge wasn’t two cars back anymore. It was right behind me.
“No, no, no—”
A sharp rap at the window startled me even further, and my blood rushed in a charge from my head to my feet. I blinked and then blinked again, but the tall figure at the window didn’t appear to be going anywhere.
“It’s really wet out here, y’know,” came a muffled voice from the other side of the glass. “Are you going to ignore me for much longer?”
Um, yeah! I thought. But I couldn’t. He obviously wanted my insurance details. I buzzed the electric window down and cringed at the guy standing on the road. Tall, black long-sleeved t-shirt that hid half his hands, black jeans—I couldn’t see his shoes—black hair that curled in a wet mess around his face, sticking to his skin. His strong jaw line was clenched tight, and a pair of startlingly cool green eyes picked me apart with scientific precision. There was something fierce and angry about them that made me tremble a little. Fate was a bitch. He was far too good-looking to be someone I’d just crashed into.
“Look, I’m really sorry. It’s this weather. I’ve never driven in the rain. I have my insurance card here somewhere…” I rifled in the leather messenger bag I usually used for school, but since St. Jude’s was on break it was now filled with magazines and a stack of dog-eared “Missing Person” posters. “It’s here, I know it is.”
“I don’t want your insurance card.”
I ignored him and continued rifling. Burying my head in my bag was way safer than facing him. I would probably start stammering. He looked like some unnaturally perfect Calvin Klein model with his shirt clinging to him like that. I took the stack of posters out of my bag so I could see better. “Here it is.”
I held out the laminated card and he took it from me, all the while piercing me with those freakishly green eyes. He didn’t even look at the card. It disappeared into his back pocket. “Do you know someone’s following you?” His voice was even, yet dangerously sharp.
I swallowed. “Uh…yeah, actually. I—” I looked behind me. The driver’s door of the Dodge yawned open in the rain. I looked back at the guy who was still fixed on me, clenching his jaw, and a spark of panic blossomed in my chest. “I didn’t crash into you, did I?”
He slowly shook his head.
Shit.
I scrambled for the automatic door lock. The resounding thunk that echoed around the car declared the doors were all now locked, but the guy simply reached in through the window and opened my door from the inside.
He stood there, pale and stark in his black clothing, totally drenched from the rain. His gaze never wavered from mine; his fists had turned white, he was clenching them so hard. “You should come with me.”
“What?! I’m not going anywhere with you!”
“You really should.”
“And why would I do that? You just told me you’re following me!”
“No, I didn’t. I said someone was following you. I was following them.”
I scowled and reached for the door handle, but he took hold of the doorframe and held onto it fast. “Believe me,” he said. “You really want to come with me.”
My mom always used to say stubborn was my middle name. If anything, her disappearance had only made me more so. “You still haven’t told me why.”
“Because,” he said, pointing to the pile of “Missing�
�� posters that bore my mother’s smiling photograph sitting on the front seat, “you’re Moira Hope’s daughter. Plus I can only hold them off for so long.”
I looked at the picture of my mom—the same black hair, but shorter and a little wavy in comparison to my own. The eyes that stared back at me were a cool blue, a few degrees warmer than my almost silver ones. That was all it took. My indignation vanished like smoke.
“How do you know my mother?”
“I don’t.”
“Don’t lie! If you know anything about her—” I halted, mid-breakdown. The SUV in front of us was trying to reverse. The guy shot the other vehicle a disgruntled glance and seemed to focus on it. A grating metal screech cut through the air, and the SUV started to slide across the street. The wheels weren’t moving, and yet it somehow jammed itself sideways in between two lanes of traffic. It was like an invisible hand had shoved it in between the other vehicles. On either side, people were screaming and trying to climb out of the windows of their cars.
“Listen! I’ve been keeping their doors locked but I can’t do it forever. You have about five seconds.”
“Five seconds before what?”
“Before… urgh, before that!”
The rear doors to the SUV swung open, and three huge men in long coats dropped down into the rain. Definitely thugs. Only thugs wore trench coats. One of them had a gnarled scar that ran the length of his face from his temple to his jaw, while the other two looked like a pair or Russian twins. All three were headed our way.
“They’re the ones who were following you,” he said.
“What do they want?”
The guy gave me a hard look. “You won’t have to find out if you come with me.”
The other men were close enough to see they were carrying weapons in their hands. The glint of a wet blade. The flash of silver metal. There was nothing in Guy-In-Black’s hands. He was holding one out to me, and a tiny pool of water was gathering in his open palm.
“Promise not to kill me?”
A razor-sharp smile spread across his face. That wasn’t a good sign. “Will you at least try?”
He arched an eyebrow. “I can try.”
The next few minutes flashed by in a blur. I took his hand and stepped down from the truck, only to have him pull me to the ground. A burst of blue flame ripped through the rain, turning it to smoke before the drops could fall to the concrete. The truck’s open door buffered me from the blast. The guy at my side tipped his head back and started to laugh.
“What the hell?”
He ignored me. The heat seared at my skin, and loud tinging sounds rattled around the inside of the truck. The flames kept coming and coming, the sound roaring in my ears. The smell of sulphur and burning hair surrounded us. Car alarms began wailing up and down the stretch of road, and frightened people dashed in every direction, abandoning their cars to flee from the unfolding chaos.
“Wait here. I’ll be right back.” The guy got to his feet, standing directly in the path of the blue flame. A scream ripped free from my throat. He looked down at me, perplexed, the flames licking at his skin and clothes. I waited. I waited for him to start burning, for his clothes to ignite in a ball of blue fire. Nothing happened. He twisted his hand through the roaring blaze that jetted around him, as though toying with the flow of it, and gave me a crooked smile.
“Like I said. I’ll be right back.”
I hunkered down closer to the ground, sweat breaking out across my brow. How could he have borne that heat? How had it not seared his skin right off? I was only left wondering for a moment, though. A second after he disappeared, the stream of fire ended without warning. I looked up from my hunched position to see an old woman peering at me out of the car window opposite. She gave me a disparaging look and shook her head, as though this were all somehow my fault.
The sounds of a fight broke out a few feet away. I ignored the foul look the old lady cut me and stood up. The guy was locked in a wrestling match on the ground with one of the Russian twins. Scar-face and the other twin stood with their backs to me, apparently watching to see if their comrade could handle him on his own. Guy-In-Black twisted beneath the bulk of the larger man and somehow wrapped his leg around his neck. Tightening his chokehold, he squeezed until the twin turned a frightening shade of red, then blue, and then passed out altogether.
At this point it became obvious to the other guys that their friend wasn’t getting back up. Both Scar-face and the other Russian leapt forward and fell upon the black-clad guy still lying on the ground. He was hidden from view for a second before a strange pulse distorted the air, and then the attackers flew backwards. They landed with a bone crunching thump on the scorched concrete. Mr. I-Think-You-Should-Come-With-Me jumped to his feet and froze when he saw me.
“Forget about waiting,” he yelled. “Run!”
His command seemed to remind the other men of my presence. The remaining Russian and Scar-face were rolling onto their fronts in an attempt to reach me when the guy in black lunged forward. I wanted to run but I couldn’t. The sight of my unlikely rescuer froze me to the spot. The usual signs that preceded a hallucination—the heady, overpowering floral smell, like rotting lilies, or a burnt, metallic taste in my mouth—weren’t present, but there was no way any of this could be real.
His hands… his hands were alight. The white-blue glow coming off them was so bright I had to look away, and when I closed my eyelids, the echo of the burning brightness swam and twisted before my eyes. It pushed down against my defences, threading inquisitive fingers into my mind—a sensation so intrusive I physically clawed at my head in order to push it away. It ended in an instant, but the violated feeling set over me like unbreakable cement. The air crackled around me as I stepped back, and the truck’s charred metal sang like it was supercharged with electricity.
“Farley! Run!”
This time I didn’t hesitate. By the time my vision recovered, I’d already run a hundred feet, weaving blindly between the empty cars and trucks and buses. I’d never run so fast in my life, and yet it still didn’t feel fast enough.
I only paused when a thunderous boom ripped high above the sirens and the shouting. A hasty glance behind me revealed a cloud of black smoke spiraling upwards in the rain, and flames, the regular orange and yellow kind, roaring skywards above the roofs of the trapped cars. An undeniable, sinking certainty told me that it was coming from my truck.
Correction.
My mom’s truck.
