Eternal Hope (The Hope Series)

by Rose, Frankie

  Hands were on him again, this time reaching under his arms. The pain was too big to comprehend; it made itself known in white hot flashes that paralyzed him one second and made his body spasm the next. He felt carpet underneath him- no, a rug, with a spiky, brittle weft that prickled at the ruined skin across his chest and stomach, making it sting. A second later he felt a sharp jab at his thigh, and then everything began to grow soft and muted. The pain lost its sharp edge, but it still tugged insistently on his insides, making his mind spin.

  Another jabbing sensation.

  The pain disintegrated, scattering into tiny particles. They seemed to blow around the inside of his head like sun-drunk flies, batting against a windowpane, more of an annoyance than anything. He raised his hand to try and wave them away but the action unbalanced him. The world pitched backwards and he was falling, tumbling down a deep, dark hole.

  Six

  Not You

  “Hey! Can you stop chewing my phone? If you’re not gonna use it, then give it back.” Cassie held her hand out impatiently. Daniel gave up thoughtfully gnawing on the corner of her flip-phone and gave her a warning look.

  “Y’know what, Cass? You are seriously lucky I’m talking to you right now. If teeth marks on my phone were the only punishment I received for potentially ruining my friend’s life, then I’d consider myself lucky and move on.”

  Cassie let out an exaggerated sigh and let her hand drop. “Look. If you’re going to call her, then great. But just get on with it, would you? You’ve barely said a word for the past five hours. I can practically hear you arguing with yourself in your head. Should I call her? Shouldn’t I call her? Is she still mad at me? Should I have worn a blue shirt today instead of a red one? My name’s Daniel, and I can’t make up my mind about anything. Ever.”

  That last comment seemed a little pointed. Daniel focused on the road, trying desperately not to say something he’d regret. Clearly something needed saying, though. But what? What wasn’t going to offend her? Cass had rocket fuel for blood, which made her liable to go off at the drop of a hat.

  “Cass, I… I didn’t realize any of this was about making up my mind. As far as I understood, what you’d asked me was an ‘if’ kind of thing. If I was single. If you were single. At no time did I think that meant you wanted for us to be together.”

  The public radio station that had been wittering on for hours suddenly turned to static, losing reception once and for all. He flipped the volume dial to zero so silence flooded the car. When he turned to look at her, Cassie was digging her nails into the back of her hand, staring blankly out of the passenger window.

  “Cass-”

  “Don’t worry about it, Daniel. I’m not surprised. Why would you even consider that? It’s not like I’ve been following you around like a lost puppy for the past seventy-five years or anything.”

  “You were hardly following me around. There were always seven or eight of us. We went everywhere together. It was never just you and me.”

  “Well, maybe I wanted it to be. Is that so wrong?” she snapped, turning on him.

  Daniel glared ahead at the road, knife-edge straight in front of him, not wanting to look at her. Not when she looked like she was going to cry. She had always been like a little sister to him. She’d been younger than him mentally and physically when he’d met her, even though she’d had the years on him. He’d never shaken the idea that she was just a little kid.

  “I’m sorry, Cass. I guess it’s not wrong for you to feel that way. It’s just not right for me.”

  “Oh, great…” she groaned, still staring at him. “You think I’m not right for you. Am I not… am I not attractive enough?”

  Daniel’s breath caught in his throat. This was uncharted territory with her, and he wasn’t particularly good at complimenting girls. Or talking to them in general. That’s why things were usually so easy with Cassie- because when he thought about her, he never thought of her as a girl first. He thought of her as family.

  “Don’t be like this. Please. You know you’re really pretty. You-”

  “Really pretty?” She slumped back against her chair like she’d been deflated. “And what about Farley? Does she get told she’s beautiful?”

  “That doesn’t matter. Farley’s important to me, but we would still be having this conversation if she weren’t around.”

  “Do you love her?”

  Daniel wrung the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white.

  “Well, do you?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “Don’t give me that crap. You either love her or you don’t. If you can’t answer me, then you should be asking yourself why.”

  The tires made a screeching noise when he pulled off the side of the road, kicking up a plume of dust that consumed the car, cocooning them in marbled red smoke.

  “I said it’s none of your damn business, now just leave it alone! You’re making this harder than it needs to be. I’m with Farley. End of story.”

  He was seconds away from grabbing hold of her shoulders and shaking her. Being angry with Cassie felt wrong, but she’d never been so difficult to deal with before. She stared at her knees, picking at her fingernails. Her eyeliner had smudged a little in the stuffy heat of the car.

  “Okay, I get the picture. I guess it’s good finally knowing where we stand.”

  “Where we’ve always stood,” he said, resting his forehead against the steering wheel with a dull thud.

  “Can you just tell me one thing?”

  “Cassie.”

  “Please. Just one thing, then I’ll let it drop, I swear. Can you tell me who you imagine me with down the line? Who do you see me with in fifty years or so? Can you tell me it’s not you?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m trying to tell you. I’ve been trying to be nice about it but you’re making it remarkably difficult.”

  “Then who?” she whispered, her voice cracking.

  Daniel turned his head so that his cheekbone propped him against the wheel, finding Cassie’s eyes brimming with tears. They tremored precariously, on the very brink of falling.

  “The same person I always imagined you with. Kayden.”

  She let out a silent laugh and shook her head. “Why Kayden?”

  “Because he loved you. He always did.”

  Her face twisted into an incredulous expression. She didn’t say anything, though. They sat there studying each other in the silence for a long while. Cassie’s phone, resting in his lap, broke the quiet, blaring out an old-fashioned ring as the tone.

  Cassie didn’t look up to answering; Daniel picked up just as her tears finally stopped making threats and streaked silently down her cheeks. She brushed them away angrily with the backs of her hands and went back to staring out of the window.

  “Yes?” he said, hoping to God it wasn’t Farley. He needed time for that conversation. More importantly, he needed to be alone.

  “Oooh, Daniel answering Cassie’s phone. There are so many reasons why this would make interesting gossip back in Chez Gun Creek right now,” a female voice replied. “I might make a hand-out.”

  “Anna, have you ever thought about dropping the bitch act and maybe trying to be a nice person every once in a while? There’s a danger you might make some friends.”

  “Oh, I have friends, Danny boy,” she sniped back. “Just clearly not as many as you. Maybe you ought to start leaving notes for yourself so you remember where you’re leaving all these heartbroken girls. Things will get seriously complicated if you run into any more while you’re out on the road.”

  Daniel closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Fighting the urge to toss the phone out of the window was almost impossible. “What do you want, Anna?”

  “I wanted to ask Cassie to pass on a message to you, but now that I have you live and direct I guess she doesn’t need to. Kayden’s here. Grayson thinks he’s dying. Just thought you might like to know.”

  Daniel’s grip on the phone tightene
d. The plastic protested loudly next to his ear. “How bad is it?”

  There was a long pause.

  “Bad.”

  “Okay, we’re on our way.”

  Seven

  Chicks Dig Scars

  The only thing that had made that bloody mess recognizable as Kayden was the bright silvery hair, and even most of that had been red. His arms and legs were sliced open in a rick-rack of bloody welts, a spider web of shallow cuts, each bleeding into the next. His back was flayed raw. His face was a swollen mess, eyes so puffed up he couldn’t open them. He’d been ruined. Tess had run off and vomited when she’d seen him. She hadn’t come back to help move his body.

  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 bee
n 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?”

  Eight

  Guilt

  “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.