Eternal Hope (The Hope Series) (6 page)

That had been on Oliver and Grayson. Farley had sunk down onto the floor and been left there, staring at the odd patterns made by all of their shoes, slipping and sliding in the blood when they’d tried to get him up off the ground. There was just so much of it. It didn’t seem possible that there could be any blood left inside Kayden’s body.

The cabin was silent for the longest time, only disturbed by the high-pitched buzz of a fly droning in and out of the open front door. Some part of Farley’s brain focused on that oscillating hum and wouldn’t let go. The rest of her brain focused on the streaks in the blood.

At some point, a scream ripped through the house- a terrible, animal kind of scream that made her heart rate thunder in her ears, and she almost got to her feet. But the house fell silent again, and the fly came back inside, and she stared down at her sneakers, tracing the way the blood had infiltrated the cracks in the white rubber of the toe. It looked like her sneakers had veins of their own. Those veins were probably never going to wash off.

“What the hell are you doing?”

The voice pulled Farley unwillingly out of her daze. She looked up from her sneakers to see another pair of shoes, kitten-heeled, fawn ankle boots with black ribbon laces, pressed close together on the doorstep.

“What?”

“What the hell are you doing? Why is there blood all over the floor?”

“I didn’t do it,” she mumbled.

“I never said you did,” the voice answered. “My first thoughts were of that mouthy friend of yours. She’s killed Gray, hasn’t she?”

“No. Kayden.”

“She killed
Kayden
?”

Farley frowned. She couldn’t find the words to make sense of anything. “No. She… Oliver found Kayden on the doorstep.” She shook her head. “He was bleeding. He lost a lot of blood.”

“I can see that.”
The kitten-heeled boots picked out a careful path around the bloody pool, and a hand descended into her field of vision. “Do you need help getting up?”

Farley looked at the pale, manicured hand for a moment before accepting it; there was dried blood underneath her own nails, and her fingers were all tacky with it. Anna made a disgusted sound.

“Are they upstairs?”

“Yes.”

Once Anna had heaved her up, Farley followed her through the lounge and up the staircase, where the other girl paused and shouted Grayson’s name. Unnecessary, really. It was obvious which room they had take Kayden into. A pile of soiled towels were abandoned outside one of the doorways, and a crazy trail of footprints led between there and the bathroom.

Oliver appeared, holding a basin filled with warm water, looking a little pale. “Oh, thank goodness,” he breathed. “Here.” He held out the basin to Farley. She took it mechanically but then stood there, not sure what to do next. “I can’t clean any more wounds,” he said. “It’s like some World War II triage centre in there, and Grayson’s turned into this crazy mad doctor who keeps telling me to shove my fingers into holes that frankly shouldn’t be there. Can you do it?”

She nodded. Heavens knew why, though. She’d only snapped out of some weird mental fugue two seconds ago, and this was probably going to tip her back over the edge. But something inside her was beginning to regain control, forcing her to get a grip. She could not deny that
this
, what had happened to Kayden, was probably her fault. Only the Quorum could have done this to him. And the only reason
why
they would have done it was because he had helped them back in the Tower. Because she had shamed him into it.

“No. No, I can do it. I’ll be fine.”

Anna was already in the room when Farley walked through the door, the water gently slopping over her fingers as she tried to hold the basin steady. Oliver came in behind her with his hand on his forehead in a weird expression of shock that Farley had only ever seen before on her mom, when she’d accidentally ran over this dog one time.

Grayson knelt on the bed, where Kayden lay spread-eagled out on his front, unconscious. The sheets were ruined.

“Holy crap.” Anna whistled, sounding faintly impressed. “Is he alive?”

“Only just,” Grayson grunted, throwing another saturated towel onto the floor. He picked up another from a neatly folded stack beside him and began stuffing it into a fist-sized hole in Kayden’s side. “He’s not going to last long. You’d better call Daniel.”

“And what’s he going to do about it?”

“Just do it,” Grayson snapped.

“Okay, okay…” she muttered, stalking out of the room.

“You can put that down here on the floor,” Grayson said to Farley, using his shoulder to push his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. She obeyed, realizing the basin was only half full now, since she’d spilled a considerable amount of its contents on the floor.

Grayson pulled the towel out in a sharp movement, and suddenly Kayden bucked on the bed, letting out a strangled yell.

“Grayson!” Farley cried.

“Uh… go hold his hand. Go!”

She scrambled around the other side of the bed so she was face to face with Kayden, gingerly picking up his hand. Even his fingers were bruised and cut open.

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” she whispered. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t going to be okay.

A strange gurgling noise emanated from Kayden’s throat, and she realized he was laughing. It turned into a yelp when Grayson applied another towel. “I apologize… for all the theatrics,” he gasped through gritted teeth.

Farley looked to Grayson.

“Just talk to him.”

She turned back to the body on the bed, trying to pick out some part of him that looked familiar. The hair. She focused on his hair. “I wouldn’t be sorry, considering. I’m surprised you’re even awake right now.”

That elicited another hard laugh. “It’s Grayson. He’s punishing me for bending back the pages in his National Geographic world atlas.”

Grayson laughed a stony laugh. “I loved that atlas.”

“See?”

Farley inched closer and sat on the edge of the bed, willing herself not to cry. “Where have you been, Kayden?” she whispered.

“Never mind that.” He struggled to swallow. “How am I looking?”

It seemed harsh not to answer, but she couldn’t think of anything to say
. Like butchered meat
was just too cruel, and there was no way she could pull off a convincing lie right now.

“I know, I know…” he wheezed. “This is gonna leave a scar. If any of you say chicks digs scars, I’m gonna die right now out of spite.”

Farley bit back the manic bark of laughter that threatened to burst out of her. Anna returned with her cell phone in her hand, looking mildly put out.

“They’re coming back. Should be here before dinner.”

“Who, Daniel?” Kayden choked. “I’m definitely… gonna make sure I’m dead before
he
gets here.”

Anna spluttered, “How?! How is he talking right now?”

No one answered her, Kayden included. Farley leaned forward so she could look at him closer. No movement. No pressure from his hand on hers. A bolt of panic shot through her. “He’s not breathing. Grayson, he’s not breathing.”

Grayson froze, staring at Kayden’s body, presumably looking for signs that his ribcage was moving. There was nothing. He picked up the towel he had been using to staunch the wounds and threw it on the floor so that it made a wet slapping noise against the floorboards.

“Son of a bitch! He literally
has
done this on purpose!” he yelled, picking up the whole pile of fresh towels so he could throw them across the room. Oliver flinched as they sailed past him to hit the wall by his head.

Then something happened. The sight of Oliver suddenly triggered something inside Farley. Of course! How could she have been so stupid? She looked down at Kayden’s body. Was it too late?

“Oliver. Oliver, look at me. You have to help him,” she said.

On the other side of the room, Oliver blanched. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.
Help him
.”

Both Grayson and Anna looked at her like she was crazy.

“He can’t, Farley. He’s gone. There’s nothing we could have done,” Grayson told her.

She shook her head. “
Oliver.
”

“I can’t,” he murmured under his breath, staring at Kayden’s body.

“Yes, you can. You know how to do it. You saved Tess.”

Anna clapped her hands to get their attention. “What are you two talking about?”

“Oliver can help him,” Farley rushed out. “He’s an Immortal.”

Grayson and Anna froze in identical poses, each one staring at her like she’d just said the sky was falling down.

“You mean,” Grayson whispered, “he’s a Reaver?”

“You can stop celebrating. You were on the wrong side of the three-point-line. That means you only scored two points. Ergo, I’m still winning.”

Kayden wasn’t a very humble opponent when it came to basketball, as Farley had been learning for the past hour. He seemed to make rules up as he went along, too, which generally confused matters, and there was no telling him he was wrong. Ever.

For someone who had been on the brink of death only hours before, he was in extremely good spirits. He’d shaken Oliver’s hand until it looked like his arm might fall off, at which point Oliver slunk off to find Tess, looking suspiciously like he felt tainted. Farley could see it a mile off: he was never going to get over the fact that he now possessed powers capable of bringing a man back from the precipice. Probably because that power meant he could also take life too, and oh-so-easily to boot.

Grayson and Anna had watched with grim fascination when she’d finally persuaded Oliver to save Kayden. They hadn’t said a word afterwards, just exchanged gunmetal glances and disappeared in silence, like they wanted to say something about what had transpired but the experience had robbed them of all linguistic ability. No doubt Anna would recover her sense of speech well before Grayson.

Their absence had left Farley alone with a newly recovered Kayden, who, underneath all of that blood, had been completely naked. Getting him to shower and into some clothes had been problematic. He wouldn’t stop pacing around the hallways of the cabin, running his fingers over the counter surfaces and ornaments like a dazed mute from outer space. She’d followed him from room to room for a while, concentrating on the strange glyph tattoos that swept across his back and up over his shoulders, in order to avoid accidentally looking at any other part of him. That included the ghosts of scars that marked his skin where it had been torn to shreds. He’d been perfect before, and now he was marked. After forty minutes she’d let him wander off on his own, hoping h
e’d snap back to reality soon.
It’d taken three hours for that to happen.

He eventually turned up freshly scrubbed and appropriately attired of his own volition, demanding a game of one-on-one on the courtyard out the back. Having just had a shot of the immortal good stuff, he was full of pent up energy. This, coupled with Farley’s lassitude courtesy of her crappy night’s sleep, meant he was running rings around her.

“I know which side of the line I was on, buddy. I can count. That was three points,” she said.

Kayden brushed his pale hair out of his face with the back of a hand and bounced the ball hard on the tarmac. It sprang high over his head, and he squinted up at the sky. Farley expected him to catch it out of the air, but when the ball dropped back to earth, Kayden remained still, his head craning back, mouth slightly open. His face held intrigue and a hint of something else- confusion.

She followed his gaze up; a faint, wispy contrail stuttered across the sky, looking like morse code where the wind had disintegrated it into dots and dashes.

“Have you been on a plane, Farley?”

“No, not yet. My mom was going to take me to Spain as a graduation present, but…” she hadn’t graduated. And Moira was dead. It felt like a cloud rolled over the sun, and yet the sky was brazenly clear. Farley tucked her hands into the back pockets of her shorts. She studied the blades of grass that had worried their way up through the cracks on the court. “Have you?”

The blond boy closed his mouth and rolled his head around to look at her. He smiled, flashing teeth and a little arrogance. “Why would I have been on a plane?”

“I don’t know. You’re a lot older than me. I would have thought you’d have tried everything at least once by now.”

His gaze fell to the basketball where it had rolled to a stop against the chain link fence edging the court. He paced over to it and thoughtfully prodded it with his toe. After a few attempts he managed to flick it up onto the top of his sneakered foot and then into the air, where he caught it. “I haven’t had time for trying things. I’ve been very busy.”

The sound of a plane- maybe the one th
at left the contrail in the sky
- hummed somewhere off in the distance. Its low drone underscored the lazy chorus of the birds that occupied the forest surrounding them; they sounded drunk or half asleep, like the heat was making them drowsy. Farley sympathized. The sun was intent on trying to melt the court and was succeeding for the most part. It felt a little spongy underfoot, and the air was thick with that burning, heavy aroma that always accompanied tarmac and freakishly hot days no matter where you were in the world.