Eternal Hope (The Hope Series) (42 page)

Farley froze. She had no idea which ‘things’ he was referring to, but she was suddenly panicked. Kayden let out his breath and squeezed her tight.

“God, I hate that she was right. I hate…” he sighed, tightening his hold around her. “Actually, don’t worry about it.”

“I worry,” she breathed. “You hate that
who
was right?”

“Agatha, she said something about me that I didn’t want to be true. I…I just have terrible luck is all.”

Farley clenched her eyes closed. She could kid herself all she wanted, but she knew what he was talking about even if he didn’t say the words. “That’s all it is, Kayden… bad luck.”

He laughed silently and pressed his lips against her temple. His voice was a whisper when he said, “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, letting him go and get you.”

Come and get me?

“But I love him. He would never have forgiven me, so I let him go get you. You ought to know, though. It took everything I had.”

Kayden dematerialised right out of Farley’s arms and left her holding onto herself like he’d never been there in the first place. She rocked from the pressure of her own arms clasped around her for a second, suddenly alone. It took a minute to figure out that he’d meant when Daniel had pulled her out of the ocean. The heavy way in which Kayden had spoken left a lump in her throat. Why did he have to tell her that? He could have simply left and everything would have been okay again. That would have been safe.

Now those words were out there and there was no taking them back. No way in hell could she think about what that meant- that he apparently felt something for her; that Agatha knew; that it made her stomach twist anxiously when she thought about his arms wrapped around her only seconds ago. Half of it felt like a betrayal to Daniel, letting him hold her like that, but the other half… the other half felt like it was completely normal. The one question blazing in her mind, the one she really didn’t want to answer, was had she liked the way it felt? She shook herself and pinched her arm hard. Anything to prevent the response forming in her head. She wasn't ready to deal with that
.
 

There were more important things to worry about right now, anyway. Seriously important things. She went over to the counter and unwrapped the folded parcel Kayden had left there. When she opened it out, Farley felt the world shift.

Inside was the Pax blade.

If Cassie minded Farley borrowing her phone, frankly it was tough luck. The seed Kayden planted in her head had already taken root and flowered. If only she could pull this plan off, she wouldn’t need to go to the Tower at all.

If.

It was a stupid plan; she was smart enough to know that. It was even more reckless than the plan she’d had before. At every juncture over the past few months, she had known when to ignore the ridiculous voice in her head suggesting she act against her better judgement. Believing that this crazy, half-baked idea
would unfold without something going wrong was monumentally stupid. Maybe that’s why her hands were shaking. But she had to try. Even the faintest hope that this might work was worth the risk.

She fumbled with Cassie’s flip phone, scrolling through the contacts until she found Anna’s number. It didn’t take long. Anna was tenth on the list, right underneath Allied Pest Control. The cabin had probably had an infestation at some point, but good old Allied had obviously neglected to exterminate Anna along with the rest of the roaches. Farley typed in the text rapidly, lik
e she expected Daniel might appear out of nowhere and catch her in her duplicitous act.

Anna, Daniel’s left me guarding Farley back on Point Dume beach. Do us all a favour- tell Simeon, get her out of our lives once and for all. C x

She hit send and th
e phone buzzed instantly, making her jump out of her skin. In her surprise, Farley fumbled and dropped the phone. It landed on the counter and made a profound crack, the screen shattering into a fractured spider web. Farley peered at it, barely making out a delivered message notice. It was done.

Point Dume beach was a fair trek away. It didn’t take long to stuff a sweater and a flask of coffee into her rucksack and hurry out of the apartment. Tess and Grayson’s conjoined room was on the sixth floor at eye level with the steam vents from a Chinese laundry across the street. It was a miracle Tess hadn’t complained about it yet; she was probably too busy worrying about Oliver. Farley rapped on her door, praying Grayson didn’t stick his head out of the one right next to it. He had this sixth sense when she was lying and he no doubt knew Daniel had asked her to stay in the apartment.

Thankfully, Tess’ door was the only one that opened. Well, almost opened. An almond shaped eye appeared in a crack in the door, more green today than blue. The door chain was pulled across the gap. “Hold on.” She drew the door closed and rattled the chain for a full twenty seconds before appearing in all her dishevelled glory. Her hair was electrically big today. “Hey, Farls. Why do you look like that?”

Farley looked up and down the corridor, nervous. “Like what?”

“Like you’re up to no good.”

“Tess!” Farley shoved her back into the room, pulling the door closed. “I
am
up to no good. Care to join me?”

For the first time in the history of their friendship, Tess looked at Farley like
she
was the reckless one. “What do you have in mind?”

“I’m going to kill Simeon.”

“Oh.” Tess pulled the corners of her mouth downwards, nodding her head from side to side while considering this. “Okay.”

*****

The Griffith Observatory out past Glendale sat directly on top of one of the oldest entrances that led to the Tower. It was also one of the busiest, which was ironic because the observatory was always packed with tourists and stargazers. Probably had something to do with the fact that whenever people went there it was for the specific purpose of looking up. No one ever really bothered looking down.

Daniel weaved his way through the hordes of people vying for position to get into the main building. The Gotleib Transit Corridor lay off to the right, the Samuel Oschin Planetarium to the left. There was no queue to gain entry to the maintenance corridors (surprise, surprise) and Daniel slipped through the unlocked door without a problem. No one approached or challenged him; he’d discovered a long time ago that as long as you looked confident, people rarely questioned you. It was only when you acted like you were breaking the law that they got uptight.

The service hallway stretched out in both directions before Daniel, stark and brilliant white. It smelled like grease and machine lubricant back here, familiar smells that made him feel at home. In the distance to the right, an exit sign indicated the door down the corridor led to the parking lot outside. Daniel went left. The access point he was looking for was via a maintenance hatch in the main observatory. If his luck was in, there wouldn’t be a show in progress. The sound of his shoes echoing down the corridor grew louder as he picked up speed and started a slow run towards the planetarium. It didn’t take long to realize his footsteps were echoing in duplicate. Daniel pulled up sharp, listening with pricked ears. Sure enough, when he stopped, a second set of footsteps kept on going. The whispers inside Daniel started hissing all at once, but Daniel ignored them. He knew who it was.

“Come to take a closer look at your constellation?”

“Actually,” Cassie said, breathing hard as she pulled up beside him, “I wanted to check out that Leonard Nimoy exhibition, but the tickets were all sold out.”

Daniel scowled. Why did no one ever listen to him? People expected him to come up with a solution to everything, and then, when he told them what to do, they blatantly disregarded it. This was a prime example: he’d told Cassie to go back to her room and wait there until he got back with Oliver. Somehow Cassie had interpreted that as,
wait until I leave and then follow me all the way across Los Angeles
. He grabbed her by the arm she hadn’t been shot in. “You have to leave.”

Cassie’s brown eyes went round, unblinking as she stared up at him. “I’m not going anywhere, Daniel. If you don’t let me come with you, I’ll just go in via another access point. Like I said before, Anna is kind of my responsibility, so it’s my fault she was able to do this to us. We have a score to settle. Now, you can either let me come with you where I’ll be that little bit safer, or I can go in on my own. What’ll it be?”

Daniel growled, letting go of her arm. “Fine. But don’t even think about wading into a fight. We’re going to be covert, okay? That means no shooting at people, no shouting or hollering, no big acts of heroism. We’re going to sneak in and get Oliver and then we’re leaving. If we see Anna on the way, we’ll consider how to proceed then. Agreed?”

Cassie touched her hand to her head in a stiff salute. “Yes, sir.”

Daniel shook his head and set off running again. This already felt like a very bad idea. When they came to a maintenance exit in the corridor marked
S.O.P,
Daniel gently cracked the door and peered inside. His luck wasn’t in. Over two hundred people sat in the Samuel Oschin Planetarium, staring slack-jawed up at the domed ceiling as a narrator swept them through the Horsehead Nebula. Daniel rested his head into the edge of the door, cursing. Time to test the no-one-ever-bothers-looking-down theory. He pulled the door back and strolled into the planetarium, doing his utmost to exude the aura that he was meant to be there. When he casually threw a glance over his shoulder, Cassie was following close, calm and collected. At least she wasn’t tiptoeing.

The maintenance hatch was a two-foot square trapdoor in the very centre of the room, carpeted like the rest of the floor except for the metal skirting around it, and the groove where it could be lifted up. Thankfully there was no light on in the maintenance room below, and not a single person noticed their shadows dropping silently down into the hole. Once the trapdoor was closed, Daniel got busy pushing back the server towers blocking the grid he wanted beneath them. They needed to go deeper, and that grid was their ticket in.

Cassie was blind in the dark, and she clearly couldn’t see what he could see: the consoles bearing scores of dials and switches, the metal shelves, thankfully on wheels, that housed computer equipment, decked out with hundreds of multicoloured cables that were plugged from one machine to another. She fumbled her hand over the surfaces around her, looking like she was trapped in some techno-spider’s bio-organic web. He guided her back to a wall.

“Stand there. Don’t move. I have to get this grid up.”

It took but a second. This place was used all the time by the Immundus, and the grid slid back with ease. He tugged her forward and carefully lowered her into the hole. Daniel drew the grid back and entombed them in the narrow tunnel. Cassie frowned in the dark, holding out her hand. “Can you smell popcorn?”

“No.” Daniel pushed her ahead of him, steering her as quickly as she could go. “That’s burnt gunpowder. Someone’s been shooting down here.”
And recently
. That really wasn’t a good sign. All of the Immundus should have been over on the east side of the tower, hovering around an exit that originated from an alleyway out the back of a McDonalds in Larchmont. He rushed Cassie forwards, hoping upon hope that when they got to the corridor encircling the Tower, everything would be clear.

Again, luck was not their friend. As they turned a sharp left, a spear of bright light javelined into the pitch-black tunnel, revealing that the door to the corridor was open. Two loud pops rang out ahead of them, the unmistakable sound of gunfire. Daniel instinctively dropped low, pulling Cassie with him. It was only when two shadows raced across the lit doorway and one stopped, turning to fire off a round behind him, that Daniel realized the shots weren’t aimed at them. The Immundus were shooting at each other.

“Holy crap,” Cassie hissed, scuttling forwards. “These guys are certifiable. What are we gonna do?”

Daniel crouched low, pressing his knuckles into his scrunched up eyes. Clearly the Immundus weren’t where they were supposed to be. This was never going to work. He blew out a long breath. “We’re going to have to go back.”

Cassie spun on him, the side of her face bronzed by the soft glow of the corridor in front of them. She narrowed her eyes. “No way.”

Before he could stop her, she leapt forward and started running towards the sounds of gunfire. Under ordinary circumstances it would have been no contest: Daniel would have caught her in five seconds flat. But his complete surprise and disbelief left him staring after Cassie five seconds too long, and by the time he kicked himself into gear she was already at the lip of the entrance.

Stupid, stupid...
Daniel buried the horrific name he wanted to call her in the back of his throat. The whispers, souls, every one, leapt into a riled chorus, unhappy about their location. Most of them had died down here, after all. They shouted over the top of each other, demanding he turn around and go back. They knew how unwise this course of action was, even if Cassie didn’t. She wasn’t acting like a sane person. The madness down here must have been infectious, because by the time Daniel reached Cassie’s side, she’d pulled out a gun and, unbelievably, she’d started firing.