Eternal Hope (The Hope Series) (45 page)

             
It had been a risk, sure, but the idea Kayden had planted in her head was the only thing that made sense. Simeon’s body trembled one last time before falling still. The material of his robe swamped his slight frame, making him look small and breakable. His eyes stared vacantly up at the night sky, but the weird sense of longing remained in them- a look similar to the one he’d worn when he’d shown her his beautiful wife running through the surf. Suddenly, it was all Farley could do not to cry.

She buried her face into her hands and took a deep breath. This was what he’d wanted; he’d made her promise him she would do it. So then why did it feel so bad? A single tear escaped her, feeling way too hot as it fell into her hands. Her arms and legs started to shake. Shock was coming on quickly. It was time to get back to Daniel before she broke down and couldn’t even drive.

“Farley?” Tess whispered.

Farley couldn’t answer. Her throat was burning, signalling it wouldn’t be long before she started bawling. It wasn’t just that, though. Her heart rate had trebled and her hands were so hot. They felt like they were on fire.

“Farley?” Tess was more insistent this time, but Farley couldn’t answer. She needed at least a few minutes to pull herself together. The weird, unbalanced, panicked feeling inside her was spreading with every passing second. It felt like she was moments from passing out. She held her hand out, tipping her head back to try and get a lungful of air into her body. When her eyes met Tess’, she found her friend frozen, staring wildly.

“What’s wrong?” she breathed out. Tess didn’t say anything, just shook her head with her mouth open. Oliver dropped to his knees beside her.

“Don’t freak out, okay.”

Why was he telling her not to freak out? Why were they both staring at her like she had one too many heads? Surely they couldn’t be mad that she’d killed Simeon. There was no way they’d…

Oliver grabbed hold of her wrist and yanked it up so she could see why they were so stunned.

Oh.

A welter of feelings exploded inside Farley: Fear. Shock. Adrenaline. Tess started manically twisting the hem of her t-shirt. “Farley! What the hell? What are you doing?”

Farley blinked down at her hands. They were wreathed in flames. Cobalt, burning blue flames. Her heart thudded to a stop. It took a moment to process what she was seeing. Her fingers, her wrists, her palms- her entire hands were consumed with fire. She looked up at Tess and let out a loud, startled sob.

Tess took a step back. “Not again. Please, no…”

Farley lifted her hands to her face and turned them over, blinking as though she didn’t recognize them. But they were hers. Farley’s throat constricted, making her words a hoarse cry. “What do you mean,
not again
?”

Daniel narrowly missed driving headlong into a telegraph pole when it hit; a vivid burning pain ignited in his chest, so hot it felt like his very bones were on fire.

“
CASS!
”

The car fishtailed when she grabbed hold of the steering wheel, the tyres screeching as he slammed his foot down on the brake. The Viper whipped around in the street, screaming at being treated so poorly. It slammed into the curb on the wrong side of the street, startling a young kid badly enough that he dropped his soda onto the sidewalk. Daniel slumped forward, clutching at his chest, trying desperately to breathe.

“Danny! What the hell? Danny, are you okay?” Cassie shouted.

He couldn’t answer. Only wheeze.

“Daniel!”

The voices inside him were roaring louder than ever. They were angry, upset, panicked, scared. He clenched his eyes shut tight and focused on remembering how to breathe.

Open mouth

Expand diaphragm

Deeper

Deeper…

Exhale

“Calm…” he whispered, over and over. Who was he talking to, though? The angry souls, or himself? Nothing like this had ever happened before. He pulled in an uneven breath and let go of his t-shirt where he’d grabbed hold of it over his heart. When he opened his eyes, Cassie was staring at him, horrified.

“What’s going on?” she whispered.

“I don’t…know.” The voices scattered, splintering from one another like a startled shoal of fish. Daniel could finally hear the two words they were shouting, screaming, calling:
The girl! The girl! The girl!
Frantically, he swallowed down the crippling pain shooting through his chest and looked up and down the street. There was no traffic. He carefully drove the Viper off the curb and parked at the side of the street, gritting his teeth the whole time.

“Something’s wrong,” he groaned.

Cassie made a sharp hissing sound as the breath left her body. “I can see that!”

“No, something’s
really
wrong!”

“You think it’s Farley?”

Daniel nodded. “I know it is. We have to find her.” He was about to fire up the engine again when his phone started ringing. The tone was abrasive and way too loud in his ears. His hands wouldn’t seem to work as he fumbled in his jeans pocket. He eventually leaned back and let Cassie reach in and get it. She answered it, staring at Daniel.

“Yeah?” Her face stilled as she listened. “
What!?
”

Daniel leaned forward again, bending double with the pain and the nausea washing through him. “Tell me.”

Cassie swallowed. “It’s Farley. She’s… she’s…”

He reached over and snatched the phone out of her hand. “Farley?”

“No, it’s Tess. You need to get here right now. We’re down on Point Dume beach. You need to leave now, she’s-”

“WHY THE HELL ARE YOU ON POINT DUME BEACH?!” he yelled, sucking in another painful breath. “Put her on the phone.”

“I can’t.” Tess made a choking sound. She was crying. Daniel bit down on his jaw and tried to keep calm.

“Do it. Now.”

“I literally can’t give her the phone, Daniel. Her hands are on fire. She’s freaking out!”

The voices inside him went deathly silent. Daniel stared out of the windscreen, listening to his heart rate race away. It took him a while to blink. “Hold the phone for her, Tess.”

She sniffed and started mumbling words he couldn’t hear. A second later he heard her voice.

“Daniel…” Farley sobbed.

His eyes pricked. She sounded terrified. “Remember what I said. Everything’s going to be okay.”

“It’s not, though. You don’t understand… Simeon’s dead. I think I… I think…”

“It
will
be okay. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Tell me what happened.”

Farley sobbed some more down the phone, utterly ruined. Daniel pressed his head into the steering wheel and tied to ignore the threads of fire rushing through his veins. “Baby, you have to tell me. Come on.”

“I killed Simeon…” she wheezed. “I stabbed him! Now my hands are on fire. Tess said I was sleepwalking back at the cabin and they were glowing then, too. She said it wasn’t Oliver that hit her, Daniel.
She said it was me!
” She grew incoherent at that point and started sobbing again. Tess came back on the line, her voice small and scared.

“It’s true. I found her walking down the stairs and her hands were glowing. Not like they are now, but similar. I thought she was awake because her eyes were open, but when I tried to talk to her she lashed out.”

“
What?
” No way was that true. He would have known. He heard every little sound in that house, knew at every single moment of the day and night where Farley was. If she’d been wandering around in the wee hours of the morning with glowing hands, he would have known about it. He shook his head. “That’s not possible.”

“I wouldn’t lie,” Tess said quietly. “Oliver’s here now. He was only helping the Immundus because Agatha told him to. He thought they’d kidnapped me.”

Great. Oliver had somehow shaken the Quorum and was hanging out with Farley and Tess, when Daniel had just promised the freaking Emissary they would all stay the hell away from him. “Put Farley back on.”

Farley sniffed heavily down the line. “Do you think I took Simeon’s power?”

“No. No, I don’t. Whatever this is, it’s something else. Don’t worry, it’s all going to be okay.”

“You can’t… you can’t see what I’m seeing,” she wailed.

“No,” he replied, “but I can feel it.”

She went silent for a second. “What do you mean?”

“I can feel it. Whatever’s happening to you is affecting me. I can barely breathe.”

“Oh God, Daniel…I’m sorry!”

He heard Tess trying to soothe her in the background. “It’s okay. Where’s Oliver now?”

“Right here.”

Damn. That was going to cause massive problems. “Okay, listen to me,” Daniel said, pausing when a fresh surge of blinding pain tightened around him like a vice. “We’re going to get through this together, right? You need to make the fire go out. You need to calm down.”

“I can’t!”

“You have to. I can’t come to you like this, and you…” he bit back the bile in his throat, “you can’t leave the beach until you’re back to normal. Okay? We’ve got this.”

“How?” she moaned.

“You’ve just got to breathe, that’s all. You’ve just got to calm down.” The words were easy enough to say but he could hear the terror in her voice. He closed his eyes. “Can you do that? Can you breathe with me?”

A long pause stretched out down the phone. After what felt like forever, she whispered, “I’ll try.”

“Good. Close your eyes. Now, ignore your hands. Concentrate on drawing oxygen into you. Think about it travelling into your body, filling your lungs. Feel your chest rise and fall.”

“It’s not working!” she wept.

“Shhh…it’s okay. Give it a second. Just concentrate on breathing. In and out, nice and slow. Nice and slow.”

“I can’t. I can still feel it. It’s too much!”

Daniel knew what she meant, because he was living through it too. This amount of power was something he’d never dreamed of experiencing. It felt like it was tearing him apart. He had absolutely no control over it; the only way this was going to end was if she made it go away. “Shhhh…don’t think about it. Think about us. Think about our reflections in the window that day at Gun Creek. Everything’s normal. It’s just the two of us. Breathe…”

She continued to cry for a few seconds before he heard her draw in a deep breath down the phone. “That’s it. You’re gonna be fine.” Another jolt stabbed at him and he clenched down on his jaw. “You’re so much stronger than this,” he whispered. “You can do it. I love you. I love you so much, Farley. Come on.”

“I’m sorry,” she moaned. “I’m trying.”

“I know.” She really was. Daniel could feel the fierce heat throbbing in his chest dim a little. “It’s working. Just keep focusing.”

Cassie remained totally silent as he sat there, breathing with Farley. Ten full minutes passed before she stopped hyperventilating and the bands around his ribcage loosened. It was like an impossibly heavy weight disintegrating inside him when he somehow felt the fire had gone out. An exhausted, relieved sigh echoed down the phone.

“Can you come and get me now?” Farley whispered.

Daniel straightened himself out and finally leaned back, wiping his hand down his face. “Yes. I’m coming to get you.”

******

The last thing Farley wanted to see when headlights came into view was
one
headlight. She’d assumed Daniel would bring the Viper, but she’d assumed wrong. He tore up on a mean-looking red motorbike that growled like a demon straight out of hell. Her legs tingled just looking at it. He leapt off the bike and ripped the helmet from his head, running over to where she was collapsed in the sand.

“Hey… hey are you okay?” His hands were on her face, in her hair, running over her arms, searching for injuries. She leaned into his chest and shut her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I feel so stupid.”

Daniel shook his head. His eyes shone a little too bright, like he was on the verge of tears. “I’m never leaving you alone again. What were you thinking?”

Farley let her gaze fall to her hands; they looked the same as they always did, but they didn’t feel like they were hers anymore. All she could see was the bright blue flame that had engulfed them.

“I promised him, Daniel. I promised him. I couldn’t go back on that. And now I’ve ruined everything.”

Daniel gathered her up in his arms and guided her to her feet. He cupped her face in his hands and forced her to look at him. “I’m going to ask you a question, okay? Think about it carefully before you answer.”

A thunderbolt of panic fired through Farley. What was he going to ask her that made him look like that? He was petrified. She squirmed, shooting a look at Tess. Her best friend was clinging onto Oliver like he might disappear into thin air. She couldn’t remember doing it, but Tess would never lie about something as serious as Farley hitting her. Something really bad was going on. Farley drew herself up straight.