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.
Forty Six
Revelation
There were two figures on Point Dume beach. One was sitting in a ball, folded up as small as they could go, and the other was pacing back and forth, occasionally thrashing a fist and kicking at the sand. Tess held a flashlight to her chest so the beam cast her face in light and shadow. It looked like she was about to start telling ghost stories.
“You think that’s Simeon?” she asked.
Farley had no doubt. “Yes. But who’s that with him?”
“Uh…” Tess screwed up her face, squinting into the dark. “Unfortunately, I think it’s Anna.”
“Perfect.” It wasn’t perfect, though. The last thing they needed was Anna getting in the way. Farley rolled up the sleeves on her shirt, feeling the chill of the night breeze lick across her skin. It was colder tonight, and without the excitement of an illegal full moon party to draw people in, everyone appeared to be giving the beach a miss. A hundred feet away, police tape flapped on the wind, pegging out the area where Daniel had fought the Immundus. It snapped every once in a while where the breeze caught it up in a gust and pulled it taught.
Farley shifted nervously. The heft of the Pax blade tucked through her belt felt unwieldy and awkward. A gun would have felt better. There was something reassuring about being able to stand a good fifty feet away from someone when you planned on killing them. With a knife it was up close and personal. The last time she’d held a knife defensively had been against her mom, and look how that had turned out. If it hadn’t have been for Merv, the motel attendant, and his trusty shotgun, Farley would have been bitten just like Tess had. That memory wasn’t a safe place to revisit right now. Farley placed her hand on the hilt of the blade, tightening her fingers around it. Tess watched with growing trepidation.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing here, Farls?”
Farley felt like laughing. I have no clue whatsoever. “Sure.”
“Good.” Tess pointed the flashlight out across the beach. Simeon’s deadly pale face lit up in the beam as he staggered across the sand towards them. “Because it looks like he knows we’re here.”
Forty Seven
Most Terrible Of All
Five Immundus lay face down on the ground, very, very dead. Blood pooled around their lifeless bodies, and as it sank into the porous ground, the sandstone, oddly enough, turned pink. Cassie was still firing off shots, even though there wasn’t anyone left to kill.
“What the hell are you doing?” Daniel yanked her backwards so hard she fell off balance. The next blast she fired projected towards the ceiling, the bullet burying itself deep in the stone. A shower of dust cascaded down on them, peppering Cassie’s curls like icing sugar.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” she said, sneezing.
“Drawing too much attention! You remember our conversation ten seconds ago about being covert, right?
“Yeah. But they were already shooting each other and no one else came running. It made sense to get rid of them.”
She did have a point, but there was no way Daniel was telling her that. She’d think of it as free reign to start shooting every single Immundus on sight, and that would get them into serious trouble. “Let’s just find Oliver. Kayden said he was in the Great Room when he saw him last.”
“If we spy Anna on the way, leave her to me.”
Daniel raised his hands up towards Cassie’s neck, splaying his fingers while he imagined throttling the life out of her. “Just… come with me.”
The access point from the Griffith Observatory had brought them right out near the stairway leading down to the Tower
- a good thing, too, because the hallways sounded like they were teeming with Immundus. Daniel shoved Cassie behind him so he could descend the stairway first, his palms up and ready in case he needed to toast anyone. His heels skittered down the steep steps, missing their footing in his haste, and he barrelled out onto the landing. With all that noise there should have been a multitude of people waiting for them in the anteroom. There was no one. Cassie stumbled into his back.
“There’s another body down there,” she said, pointing to the stairwell as it continued down. An upturned hand, fingers flexed in, rested on the top step. The arm it connected to was consumed in shadow. Daniel could only assume it was attached to a whole body. He certainly wasn’t going to check.
“Just keep behind me, okay?” He pushed gently at the huge mahogany doors to the Great Room. The wood felt almost supple under his hands, and warm. It swung back and Daniel snuck through, holding it open for Cassie.
Inside, complete carnage awaited them.
“What the…?” Cassie let the gun she’d been aiming drop to her side. “This is ridiculous.”
Daniel could only survey the room in horror. Blood was sprayed up the walls and over every surface. Handprints marked the stonework like macabre cave paintings, except they weren’t artwork- they were the faltering grasps of the dying, whose bodies still lay where they’d dropped. Some were piled on the far side of the room under the dais. Those bodies had obviously been dragged there; the dirty brown streaks of dried blood that swept the floor gave evidence to that. All around, furniture was smashed to kindling and guns were discarded like forgotten toys.
“How many do you think there are?” Cassie breathed.
“Hundreds.”
The single chair on the dais, the High Judgement Seat, was toppled on its side. Not a body stirred. “We should do a sweep for Oliver and then get out of here,” Daniel said.
“I wouldn’t waste your time.” The voice behind them cut through the air like a whip. Cassie reacted by spinning on the spot and shooting without hesitation. She didn’t hit anything, however. The bullet tunnelled into the sandstone, the small round hole it created smoking like a diminutive meteor strike. A small figure in a black cowgirl shirt, jeans and dusty brown boots stepped out from behind a pillar to their right. Daniel’s hands twitched, suddenly wary.
“What do you want?”
Agatha tucked her thumbs into her belt loops and shrugged her shoulders as she delicately stepped over a pile of bodies between them. “It seemed sensible to check in. We heard there was some discord occurring down here.”
Daniel took a look around. “Discord?” Since when did anyone call a flat out killing free-for-all ‘discord’? “Can you just tell us where Oliver is? While you’re at it, you could point us in the direction of Beatty and his family, too,” he snapped. The only person in the world he missed as much Aldan was Agatha, and it was offensive having to converse with this version of her. It was like Agatha had died and someone had hijacked her body. It wasn’t right. Daniel briefly wondered what Nevoi had been like before she became the Emissary. Maybe she’d been sweet and kind once, too.
“Beatty?” Agatha pouted as though trying to recall if she knew anyone by that name. “I believe he and his family escaped to the West Quarter. He’s perfectly safe and sound. As for Oliver, I can’t tell you where he is, I’m afraid.” The pretender made itself known in Agatha’s eyes; they were black and treacherous, deep as pits of tar. Tiny shocks of energy snapped from Daniel’s fingertips, warning him of a threat.
“Why not?”
“Because that isn’t in Oliver’s interests right now. We have to protect him.”
“Protect him from us?”
Agatha gave a slow, considered nod. “We’re going to keep Oliver. It’s not just Farley who has a destiny to fulfil, you know. We must ensure that Oliver has every opportunity to live up to the foretelling of his providence. He is essential to the balance.”
Essential to the balance? When were they going to stop pretending that everything they did hinged on the balance? “How is an incredibly strong Reaver going to tip the scales, Aggie? Aren’t there already plenty of Reavers out there with enough power to weight everything in the favour of darkness? Where’s the light?”
Agatha folded her hands behind her back, quirking an eyebrow at him. A small smile played on her lips. “Why, you’re the light, Daniel. You and Oliver’s sister. If you and Farley had died back here when you were supposed to, Oliver’s existence would mean little to us. As it stands, the power you and Farley hold between you is greater than you can imagine. We didn’t want to play the game this way, but you have forced our hand.”
“This isn’t a game!” Daniel cried. “You’re talking about people’s lives here. Someone like Oliver could kill hundreds…thousands of people. There’d be no redemption for him.”
If Agatha was moved by his words, she didn’t show it. “You don’t think this is a game?” She pursed her lips. “There has to be a balance, Daniel. In helping you survive when you should have died, Kayden fed the light. Now, we must feed the darkness.”
Daniel stepped forwards before he could stop himself. “We won’t let you.”
“You have little choice in the matter. You will leave Oliver alone, or there will be repercussions.”
A cold, dead feeling settled inside Daniel. The whisperers were furious, rattling against his ribcage like they were a solid, tangible force. It was difficult to focus with them reacting so violently. “You can’t threaten me. You can’t make me do anything.”
“Oh?” Agatha smirked. “It’s entertaining that you people always think you have choices. I suppose that’s where all that drivel about free will gets you. Let me clarify for you, Daniel. If you don’t behave yourself, we will release Kayden from his duties with us.”
Daniel glared at her as she studied the dead Immundus at her feet with clinical interest. “And that’s a punishment?”
“Well, once I wouldn’t have thought so, but now I’m not so sure. You seem to have gone a long way to forgiving Kayden. You might be disconsolate if he were no longer around.”
Cassie twitched her hand on the gun; Daniel shot her a warning look before focusing on Agatha. “Why would he no longer be around?”
“He will have completed his task here on earth- paid his penance. He would move on. He killed himself, Daniel. You don’t get magically reinstated after something like that. Life is a precious gift, and he threw his away. He wouldn’t get a second chance.”
Daniel’s stomach boiled like it was filled with acid. “So as long as he has to protect Farley, he stays?”
“Yes. But be warned, if you try and interfere with Oliver in any way, we will take Farley and he will no longer be required as her protector. On top of that, you will never see Farley again, in this life or the next.”
The fear instilled in Daniel by that possibility made him feel weak and exposed. “We’ll leave Oliver to you,” he whispered.
“Good.” A calculated smile pulled at Agatha’s mouth. “I wonder,” she said, “if you realize what you’re getting yourself into?”
“I’m not getting myself into anything.”
“Oh, but you are. I wonder if you knew how things might pan out, would you still be so eager to align yourself with Miss Hope?”
Daniel turned to Cassie and grabbed hold of her wrist. “Come on. We’re leaving.” He pulled her along behind him, and she followed, tripping over her shoes.
“There are worse possibilities than Oliver on the horizon, Daniel. Dark possibilities,” Agatha called after them. “One day, Oliver might be terrible. He might instil fear into the hearts of all those he meets. But there’s always a chance he will be eclipsed. She could do it, Daniel. She could be most terrible of all!”
Forty Eight
Power Play
Simeon’s robes fluttered about his bony arms and legs as he lurched towards them. There seemed to be no real focus in his eyes; he stared straight ahead as though all that matt
ered was getting to her. Farley flinched from the sight of him. Only a few tufts of his hair remained, and they were greasy and pasted to his scalp. His teeth were cracked and broken, black with decay. His mouth almost looked like her mother’s had, only Simeon was missing the blackened lips and sable veins threading through his cheeks. Instead, his veins were blue, clearly visible through his transparent skin. Tess shrieked when he heaved forward and collapsed at their feet.
“Soul Child,” he whispered, his mouth pulling into a disorientated smile. He reached out a hand towards Farley, trying to claw at the bottom of her jeans. She yanked her foot away, horrified. “Don’t touch me.”
“We…” Simeon shook his head, confused, “we are one.”
“We are not one.” She skittered back, clinging onto Tess for dear life. Tess’ eyes were the size of gobstoppers.
“That is so messed up,” she whispered.
Simeon struggled in the sand, trying to get to his feet. He was bent and frail and looked every one of this thousand years. How the Simeon she’d met in his mind had turned into this creature, she had no idea. Too much grief, too much darkness. It felt stupid that she’d ever really been afraid of him in the first place. By the edge of the rushing water, Anna stood watching them. She was out of the black commando outfit and back in a skimpy number that couldn’t possibly be keeping her warm. She took a few steps towards them and then rethought her move. She’d undoubtedly been expecting to see Cassie.
Tess continued gaping down at Simeon as he pulled himself to his feet. “What are you gonna do?” she whispered.
Eternal Hope (The Hope Series) Page 31