She nodded, reaching up to kiss him again. His tongue tasted sweet like those pears he loved so much. A fire started burning inside her, making her lips tingle and her head throb. She was ready. He was, too- she could tell. His finger traced across her closed eyelids and down the bridge of her nose. It finally rested on her lips; she kissed it gently, knowing what it did to him.
When she spoke, her voice caught in her throat. “Promise me this is forever.”
“Forever,’ he agreed. “Always. My heart, my life, my soul. Every part of me is yours.”
“And I, yours.”
The pain was immediate and severe. It knocked the wind out of her and scrambled her mind, making it hard to think. Somehow she managed to open her eyes. He was sitting over her with a tender look on his face, watching as she jackknifed and flailed. Her limbs writhed without her permission, thrashing on the bed. A memory of a similar unbearable pain fluttered like a ghost on the outskirts of her consciousness, trying to push its way in. There was something about a light… a light filling her whole and bursting through her body in hot, jagged forks. Something about… her father?
Farley bucked on the bed, her eyes wild, roving around the room as her body convulsed. There was a guy kneeling over her, and he looked like he was really enjoying whatever it was he was doing to her. She fought to raise her hands up and shove him away, but as he she did so something about the blinding pain charging through her nerve endings changed. The pain was still there, but a hot, euphoric feeling began to build alongside it, clouding her head. The sensation was slow and languorous, sweet and irresistible. She gasped and lunged forward, fighting for breath. She had to stop whatever was happening before she got too lost and that was no longer an option. Her palms slammed into the guy’s chest and he fell backwards onto the bed, looking stunned. A hurt expression materialized on his face.
“Aria?”
Farley froze, staring at him like he was the devil. He studied her face for a moment before sitting back up onto his heels and reaching out a hand towards her. It was shaking.
“Aria,” he repeated, harder this time. More forceful.
“No,” Farley hissed, scrambling away from him. Her back hit the wall behind her and a candle toppled over, spilling molten liquid wax all down her arm and onto the floor. She sucked in sharply through her teeth, feeling it burn her skin. He looked startled, more scared than her.
“What’s going on?” He gently wrapped his hand around her left ankle in a familiar way that sent a hot pull through her body. She kicked free of his loose hold and panicked, pulling down the non-existent silk nightdress she wore so it covered at least part of her thighs.
“I don’t know. Where am I?”
His face crumpled into a mask of confusion. “The north Quarter. Is… is everything alright? Aria, was it too much?”
“Too much?” Farley swallowed, remembering the sinking feeling of ecstasy that had bathed her body. She shivered. “I told you. I’m not Aria.”
The guy clenched down on his jaw. “Who are you, then? What are you doing to my wife?”
Wife? He seemed a little young to have a wife. “I’m Farley. And I’m not doing anything to her. We were being attacked by Simeon’s men. The next thing I know, I find myself here with you electrocuting the crap out of me.”
The guy froze, the front of his shirt all rumpled and creased. He ran a hand back through his hair. “What did you say?”
“I said I was somewhere else. I was being attacked, and then wham… you looked like you were getting your rocks off while I was getting my hair permed for life.”
He leaned forwards, resting his hands on either side of her legs. “But who? Who was attacking you?”
There was something very unnerving about the way he looked at her, piercing through her with his eyes. She tugged at the bottom of the silk nightdress, feeling naked in more than one way. “By Simeon.”
The guy flinched, pulling back. “Impossible. I am Simeon.”
A thousand things ran through Farley’s head: should she scream? Should she try and make a run for the door? Should she throw a candle at him and hope the wax seared his face right off? In the end, she didn’t have time to do anything. Her mind barely had a chance to stop spinning before the room began to tilt for real. The candle flames leapt a foot high without any warning, and the fire immediately caught on the gauzy, fairytale material that hung from the walls around the bed. The flames literally made a whoompf sound as they leapt upwards, lapping hungrily towards the ceiling. Farley screamed, terrified, while the room was devoured by smoke and the hellish red blaze.
Simeon sat on the bed staring at her, apparently oblivious to the fact that the room had morphed into a roaring inferno. She swung around searching for a door but the smoke made seeing impossible. It was then that the walls began to melt- the bed, the floor, the furniture- everything started to soften and liquefy. Even Simeon began to puddle. The sight of his skin blistering and falling away was too traumatizing to watch. She clenched her eyes closed and crouched into a ball, choking on the acrid air. As she rocked back and forth, a piercing shout cut above the ear-popping rush of the fire.
“Get out! Get out! GET OUT!”
Twenty Eight
In Flagrante Delicto
When she woke, Daniel was reading, his voice a hushed murmur. The words were melancholy, filled with sadness. She held her breath and listened.
If I found a rhythm
The cold, dead beat of the sea
Crushing, breaking, rushing sea,
Found metronome
Amongst the weeds and wares
Of a timeless force of nature,
Would there be sense?
A sense of longing?
Brittle hopes for a labored soul
To conceive
On this light dawn.
It hits your jaw.
A gentle, lonely kiss.
Met with shadow
Without rhyme
Remains hidden, whispers of
Original things
Lost along the way
This life of light and sound.
The sound of a book snapping closed filled the room, too loud after the muted words of the poem. Farley kept her eyes closed, knowing the tears behind her eyelids wouldn’t stop flowing if they were allowed to fall. It wasn’t the poem. It was everything.
The vision was too horrendous for words. Had she inadvertently stepped back and caught a glimpse of Simeon’s past? How would that have even happened? Or was he just playing with her, affecting the vision somehow, showing her things he thought would make her feel sorry for him. Because she did. She felt so, so sorry for him. And that was the most terrifying thing of all.
The Simeon she’d met in the vision had been incredibly in love with the girl in his bed. Farley had felt a disjointed connection to everything that had happened before she pushed through and took control. It was almost like she had been Aria for those few minutes, and she had loved Simeon, too. It was a pure, happy love only tainted by their weird sexual practices. But even that was confusing, because Simeon really hadn’t wanted to do it. Aria had him twisted around her little finger.
That whole memory was something Farley really didn’t want to examine too closely. If she did, she was going to have to relive it, which meant admitting to herself that the latter part of the experience had felt pretty damn good. She shifted in the bed, trying not to remember the worried look on Simeon’s face when she’d freaked out and pushed him away.
“She’s waking up,” a voice said. It was Kayden.
“Alright. Give her some room.”
Farley let her eyes flicker open. Faded sunlight washed in through the window of her bedroom, falling in thick bars across the wall. Kayden sat at the foot of her bed, peering forward anxiously, wearing what could only be described as concern across his forehead. Daniel lay on the floor on his back, staring up at the ceiling, clasping a closed book to his chest. His hair fell back to the floorboards, messy and wild. After a
moment he gave her a careful look out of the corner of his eye.
She smiled at him, and he closed his eyes and exhaled. It seemed the simple fact she was alive gave him permission to let go of the worry strangling his body. It fell from him like a shed skin. Kayden inched closer on the bed.
“He’s been reading you macabre poetry for four hours. I trust you remained comatose on purpose?”
Farley cracked out a smile- one that required considerable effort on her part. “I like macabre poetry.”
Daniel blew out a half laugh and sat up, his hair sticking up a little crazily. He must have been lying there for some time. “She was unconscious, Kayden. She couldn’t hear me.”
“Well, then, why did you spend all that time prattling on about death and origami and the sea?”
“Because I know how much you enjoy it,” Daniel said sweetly. He got to his feet slowly and went and opened her bedroom door. For a second Farley thought he was leaving. “You wouldn’t go until you saw she was okay,” he said, “but now she’s awake, your presence is no longer required.”
Kayden cut him a foul look. “Fine.” He got up and paused at the door, looking back at Farley. “I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”
She smiled and nodded, pulling herself up into a sitting position. Daniel closed the door and walked silently over to the window. He sat down on the bed and stared at the book in his hands for a moment before placing it carefully on the floor and curling up beside her. “I thought you were going to die,” he murmured. His voice was controlled, flat. The fact that he used that voice said many things: that he was scared; that he was wound up tight; that he was hurting inside. She rolled onto her side and faced him, lacing her fingers through his.
“What happened?” she asked.
He blew out his cheeks, letting the air escape them slowly. “There were Immundus hiding in the trees. I wanted to go straight out there and kill the one in the road, but he said his men would kidnap you before I had chance.”
Farley drew in the smell of him, letting it ease away her fear and confusion. She lifted her hand and stroked the hair back from the side of his face. There was a deep gash on his temple where the Reaver had pistol-whipped him, slightly crusted with blood. Daniel winced when she traced her fingers over it. She leaned forward and kissed him just above the cut.
“And then what? He was at the door when I blacked out.”
“Then he lifted you out of the car and tried to run off with you into the woods.”
“And?”
“And…I went crazy.”
“You fought them?”
“I killed them.” He let his head loll to the side so he could look her in the eye. “Are you mad?”
She frowned. How could he think that? He’d saved her. She’d never imagined being the kind of girl who went gooey over guys hurting people for her, but this was different. This was real, not some jealous punch-up in a bar. Daniel was prepared to do anything to keep her safe, and that knowledge filled her with relief. She kissed him by way of a response, letting her lips do the talking.
“And then?”
“Kayden came and pulled me off one of them and drove us home.”
She let out a small laugh. “You let Kayden drive your car?”
He pulled his lips into a tight, bemused line and nodded.
“I don’t know if I should laugh or be offended.”
“You shouldn’t laugh and you shouldn’t be offended.”
“Why not? I’m willing to bet you’d never let me drive it.”
“I would,” he said, all prickly, “if I knew you could drive properly. The last time I saw you behind the wheel of a vehicle, you’d just gotten into a fender bender with the Immundus.”
Farley sucked on her teeth, choosing to ignore the dig. “And so I’m guessing the poetry was punishment for him mistreating the Viper?”
Daniel pulled a face. “He drives really well.” The resentment in his voice was tangible.
She laughed, cringing when her ribs spasmed with pain. “Well, I liked it, anyway- the poetry. Who wrote it?”
“Me.”
Farley did a double take and then looked down at the book on the floor. It was a hardback, properly bound with gilded lettering running down the spine. “You wrote the whole thing?”
“I did. It’s really depressing.”
“Can I read it?”
“No.” Daniel rolled his eyes, wincing slightly under her horrified gaze. “You can’t read it. You wouldn’t like me anymore if you did.”
“I won’t like you anymore if you won’t let me read it,” she said, trying to reach across him. Her head swam and she collapsed, sprawled across his chest.
“Maybe later.” He rearranged her into the space at the side of his body. “First, you need to tell me what happened to you.”
This was the part she’d been dreading. How did she tell him what had happened without it sounding really, really weird? After all, she had been making out with another guy. Technically it hadn’t been her, she’d just been inside someone else’s head while it was happening, but it had felt incredibly real. Maybe skipping out on how it had felt would be a good way to go.
“I saw Simeon again,” she whispered. Daniel tensed underneath her. “It was like a flashback, though, like I was reliving part of his past. I was trapped inside the body of his dead wife. A little.”
He peered down at her and hitched his eyebrow towards the ceiling. “A little?”
“Well, a lot. Very definitely trapped. I managed to break through, though. I talked to him. He seemed so… normal.”
“It was probably before his wife died and he accidentally turned her into a whyte. He wasn’t out of his mind then.”
“Yeah.” It did make sense. “He… they…” She took a deep breath. “He did something to her. He touched her, and this massive pain ran through her body. She was kind of enjoying it.”
Daniel drew a shaky laugh. “Oooh, in flagrante delicto.”
“Is that a Harry Potter reference?”
“Ha ha, no. Definitely not a Harry Potter reference. Unless people got busted having sex a lot in the book?”
Farley shook her head. “Not so much.”
Daniel smirked and planted a kiss on top of her head. “So Simeon was definitely a Reaver when you saw him, then. He wouldn’t have been able to do that otherwise. Sadistic bastard. You remember when I told you back in the hangar about how Reavers hook their human subjugates? By riding the lightning?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s what you witnessed. Means his wife was doped up on his power half the time. More than a little sick.”
Telling Daniel that Simeon hadn’t wanted to do it felt a little awkward; it would be like defending him, and there was no way she was ever going to do that. She snuggled deep into Daniel’s chest. “After that the room caught on fire and everything melted. I started screaming like a banshee and then everything went black for a very long time.”
He brushed his fingers lightly against her hair. “Yeah, you were screaming in the car most of the way home. It was quite discomforting.”
She could imagine how frayed his nerves must be after experiencing that. She buried her face into him and hid there for a while, trawling through the disaster of the day. Agatha. The Immundus. Simeon. Their conversation in the car about the possibility of returning to school when all this was over seemed even more unlikely now than it had done before.
“How do you think they found us? What are we going to do?”
“No idea on both counts,” Daniel said. “We’re having a meeting in the morning about it. We might have to leave.”
“Leave?” A surge of anxiety reared its ugly head. Farley had just started to feel comfortable at the cabin. “Do we have to?”
“It’s just an option at this stage. Don’t worry about it now. We’ll weigh everything up tomorrow.”
Saying, don’t worry about it now was as pointless as saying don’t breathe or don’t blink
. Worry was about the only thing she was capable of at the moment. She closed her eyes, trying to block everything out. “I’m tired,” she whispered. “Will you stay with me?”
“Mmm-hmm. Forever,” Daniel whispered back, “Always.”
The sleep that Farley had felt creeping up on her disappeared in a puff of smoke. His words- the ones designed to make her feel safe and protected- were startlingly close to the promise Simeon had made to Aria. As she lay there, listening to the air rushing in and out of Daniel’s lungs, she realized Simeon felt the same way about Aria that Daniel did about her. That was a frightening thought; if Daniel ever lost her, she knew there’d be no lengths he wouldn’t go to in order to get her back. Simeon was going to do the same.
Twenty Nine
Leaving
The kitchen smelled like burnt toast and coffee. Not a rich, warm, roasty smell, but acerbic and bitter. The combination of the olfactory assault and the crappy night’s sleep she’d had was making Farley antisocial.
“Jeez, it stinks in here. Can we open the window?”
“Ooh, sensitive nose? You’re not pregnant, are you?” Anna said slyly, chomping down on a piece of blackened toast. Totally unsurprising that she was responsible for the foul smell in the air. She was usually responsible for most bad atmospheres in general. Farley scowled and took a seat. There were eight of them gathered around the kitchen table, and every one of them looked pissed off. She couldn’t help but feel like this was, yet again, all her fault.
Tess had bags under her eyes the size of suitcases, and Oliver looked like he was hopped up on so much caffeine he couldn’t sit still. Grayson surveyed each of them critically, as though voicing a caustic narrative to the gathering in his head. Anna and Cassie whispered to each other behind their hands, occasionally shooting Farley the odd glance. The efforts of two days ago were swiftly being forgotten. Operation: Be Nice To Cassie was going to have taken a severe hit after this morning’s meeting, that much was clear. Back to square one.
Eternal Hope (The Hope Series) Page 17