Along the left hand side of the wall, bricks and sacks of cement were piled higher than a three-storey building, and pallet upon pallet of sandstone blocks were stacked even higher. Farley hadn’t once considered where they kept their building materials, or that sandstone wasn’t naturally available in the Los Angeles. She hadn’t even considered that the immortals might need somewhere to park their cars. This must have been the place Daniel boosted the SUV from after they had killed the Reavers.
Farley shivered as Daniel slowly navigated his way between the parked vehicles towards a low exit fifty feet away. If Farley had been shocked by the sight of the gigantic hangar, then what lay on the other side of the exit really blew her mind. They came out into a cavernous room…but room wasn’t the right word. The walls were bowed, curved from the ground sweeping up, up, up like they were inside a huge ball. The sheer size of the place was breathtaking.
Catwalks weaved in narrow walkways and ladders, terminating in tiered levels that wound up and around the inside of the walls. Doors, doors and more doors lined the tiers, each signalling someone’s home beyond. And yet the place was empty, totally deserted. Not a single person was visible.
“Where are they all?” Farley breathed.
“Gone. These guys are the lucky ones. They’re closest to the biggest exit, have access to vehicles. They will have vanished the moment trouble really started kicking off. Beatty… Beatty and his family were staying here. They will have gotten out, too.”
That was a small blessing. She tightened her grip on Daniel as the bike pushed forward, leaving the Fourth Quarter behind. The tunnel stretched out before them like a narrow runway, the torches flickering on either side of the walls. The flames never seemed to wane, not even as Daniel opened the throttle on the Ducati and roared down the straight length of sandstone ahead. It wasn’t long before they reached the first body. They’d passed five before Daniel’s body tensed. He slowed the bike to a stop and killed the engine.
“You shouldn’t look,” he said quietly, but it was too late for that. And besides, Farley had seen a few dead bodies by now. Not that it made this any easier. The Immundus lay face down in a pool of her own blood. Her body was small and fragile, arms thrown out in front of her like she’d tried to break her fall. Two small, insignificant looking holes pierced the back of her shirt, which looked wet more than anything. The crimson red of the blood didn’t really show up against the blackness of the material. Her thick rope of chestnut hair tumbled over her shoulder, twisted like it might once have been wound up in a…knot.
Farley’s hand flew to her mouth as Daniel leapt off the bike. Neither of them noticed the figure running towards them from the mouth of the tunnel, where the circular corridor leading to the Tower could be seen.
“Don’t touch her!” a voice hollered, echoing off the walls. It was Kayden. He ran hard towards them, holding out his hand, his eyes wild. Daniel paused, inches away from laying his hand on Agatha’s shoulder. He straightened when Kayden pulled up beside them. “She’s got a seal on her,” he said breathlessly.
“What?!” Daniel’s face screwed up in disbelief. Farley slipped off the bike and stared at the two of them.
“A seal? Is that…is that really Agatha?”
Kayden nodded. There was red in his hair, and Farley knew instinctively that it wasn’t paint. Seeing him after his vague confession earlier made her feel slightly awkward. He didn’t seem to notice; he was wound tight like a bow. “If you touch her, she’ll wake up. The other messengers, they’re coming here to capture her. Something’s going down with the Quorum. They want to kill Aggie. They did the same thing to Nevoi. That’s how the opening came up. The others knew there was something dark inside her so they executed her. They thought they’d ousted the evil, but now they think… they think it could be inside Agatha. They think it’s been shifting from emissary to emissary for the last, well…forever.”
That made a whole lot of sense, but the knowledge made Farley’s throat constrict. “And now someone’s shot her?”
“I did,” Kayden said, his breathing more steady now. “I had to. Don’t worry, she’s not dead. I can fix the bullet wounds.”
“You’d better!” Farley cried, dropping to her knees. She went to reach for Agatha’s outstretched hand but Kayden caught her by the shoulder.
“Don’t! She’s sealed. If anyone but a messenger touches her, she’ll wake up, and there’s no way I can stop her again on my own. I have to get help.”
A sob built in the back of Farley’s throat. “But from who? You just said the Quorum wants to kill her!”
“Another messenger came to me…” He shot Daniel a pained look. “I knew him. It was…it was the interrogator who found me in New Delhi. He told me what was happening and brought me down here to capture Agatha before the others found her. He’s here now.”
Daniel’s eyes sharpened, searching back towards the entrance to the Tower corridor. “Where?”
“Here,” a voice replied, so close behind Farley a jolt of adrenaline made her whole body spasm. She twisted around and gawped up at the person standing behind her, completely and utterly stunned. A pair of cool blue eyes stared down at her watchfully.
“Cliff?!”
Fifty
Old Friend
“You’re Cliff?” There was a strange hitch in Kayden’s voice. He looked like he didn’t know what to do with himself- strained, a little intimidated by the man in front of him. Cliff had always intimidated Farley anyway, and she wasn’t even the one he’d carved into ribbons. Daniel stepped forward and shook Cliff’s hand, ignoring the way both Farley and Kayden were staring at him.
“Good to see you,” Daniel murmured, drawing a tight smile.
“And you,” Cliff replied.
Farley managed to close her mouth. “I thought… we thought you were dead.”
The closest thing she had ever seen to a smile pulled at Cliff’s mouth. “I am.”
“Oh.” Memories of the last time she had seen Cliff flashed through her mind- him shouting at her to leave with Tess and Oliver, to run and get to safety; him vaulting swiftly over the side of the dune in order to go and warn the others that the Reavers were coming; the hangar blowing…blowing up with Cliff and Brynn still inside. Of course he was dead.
“But I thought working for the Quorum was a punishment?” Farley asked, flickering a sorry look over at Kayden. He gave her a look that said it was okay.
“I chose to serve,” Cliff said, dropping to Agatha’s side. “Now isn’t the time to discuss that, though. Are you ready?” He looked up at Kayden, who nodded. Daniel touched his hand lightly on Farley’s shoulder, indicating she should move back. She scuffled out of the way and got to her feet, glancing worriedly at him. He looked just as shaken as she did. Her fears were heightened when Cliff placed a gentle hand on Agatha’s side and turned her over.
There was no question about it: she was dead. A thin stream of blood had run from her mouth and dried against her cheek. Her eyes were open- normal, brown and warm, and completely unseeing. A choked gasp worked its way out of Farley. They’d been wrong. They were too late. Daniel wound his arms around her waist and pulled her back, whispering softly into her ear.
“Don’t worry. It’s only the seal. Shhh… it’s okay.”
The seal? No one had answered her question about whatever ‘the seal’ was. She was going to scream if someone didn’t clear that up right away. But before she could freak out, she saw it. At the base of Agatha’s throat, a single glyph throbbed, pulsing with a bright white light. The lines of the glyph were interlinked, a twisted five point symbol that flowed in a continuous loop around and back on itself over and over.
“It’s a restraint,” Daniel whispered again. “They’ve paralyzed her.”
Farley didn’t say anything, just watched as Cliff glanced at Kayden and nodded. The two of them, Kayden a little wary as he crouched beside Agatha’s prone body, leaned forward together and touched their fingertips to either side of the seal
. It flared for a half a second and then life poured back into Agatha’s eyes. She pulled in a deep, wheezing breath and started to cough. When she looked up, her eyes locked behind Farley, immediately filled with tears.
“Daniel,” she croaked. Farley felt his whole body stiffen behind her. His arms dropped from around her body and he moved forward.
“Aggie?”
Agatha didn’t say anything in return. Her face crumpled and suddenly she was sobbing. Farley looked to Kayden and Cliff to find out what was going on, but both of them were concentrating fiercely on what they were doing, still holding their fingertips to Agatha’s throat. Kayden was shaking.
Was this really Agatha? Was it really her and not whatever had been walking around in her body for the past month? Daniel’s face was a blank mask. Farley recognised it as the one he used when he was trying to hide his feelings. The only feeling he could have been hiding right now was the exact same one she was desperately clinging onto: hope.
Agatha’s body remained frighteningly still while she cried. Daniel took another step forward and Cliff’s head snapped up. He shot him a warning glare, and Daniel held his hands up.
“I’m not going to touch her,” he said. Cliff nodded.
The sound of Daniel’s voice seemed to sober Agatha up a little. She opened her eyes and pulled in a deep breath, holding it in her chest. For a moment she just stared at him.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I am so, so sorry…”
Daniel swallowed and then slowly knelt by her head, careful to shove his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. “It’s not your fault,” he told her softly.
Tears streaked down the sides of her temples. She clenched down on her jaw. “I should have been stronger.”
“You couldn’t have fought it,” Cliff said abruptly, drawing Agatha’s attention away from Daniel. It was then that she seemed to realize there were others around her as well. Her bewildered gaze flitted from Cliff to Kayden and then came to rest on Farley.
“Hey, kiddo,” she murmured.
A strangled sob burst out of Farley’s mouth. She staggered, numb, around the other side of Agatha’s body to sit opposite Daniel. Not reaching out to touch her, to brush the hair, sticky with blood, out of her face, was almost impossible. “Hey, Aggie.”
“How you doing?” she asked, her voice cracked and strained. That was so typical of her- to ask about someone else when she was the one laying on the ground with two bullets lodged in her back. Not to mention the two messengers fighting to control the dark thing inside of her.
“I’m good,” Farley told her, “Don’t worry about me.”
Daniel cleared his throat and said, “Actually, that’s not strictly true. She’s not good. Something’s wrong. Her hands lit up before like one of the Immortals. Blue fire.”
Farley couldn’t bear to face the others as he told Agatha what had happened; she stared down at her hands in her lap, but she could feel Kayden’s eyes on her.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I should have been there. I didn’t sense a thing.”
“Because you only sense when she is in…danger,” Agatha winced. “The power inside Farley is strong, but without Daniel she wouldn’t be able to use it. If she has him, she doesn’t need to kill to undergo her rites in order to gain power. She has access to his power, combines it with her own and magnifies it twentyfold. It’s dangerous…but not to her. Only…” She sucked in a sharp breath, her face contorted in pain, “Only to everyone else.”
Farley didn’t know what to make of that, but she could feel three pairs of eyes on her. She was a freak. A freak of epic proportions. When she looked up, Daniel was staring at her. He gave her a reassuring smile, but she didn’t feel like returning it.
“You two are linked now. Permanently. It won’t make a difference if you try not to use the increased power inside both of you. That will only make things worse. You have to learn to…control it.” Talking looked like it was getting harder for Agatha. Her skin had gone a pale, sickly grey, and a slick sheen of sweat covered her brow. “Make sure you don’t…make sure…” Her eyes went wide. “I can feel it!” she moaned.
Cliff grunted. “We can’t keep it back much longer, Aggie. We’re going to have to put you back under the seal until we can figure out what to do.”
“Do it now,” she cried. “It’s going to kill you all. Do it now!”
At the same time, a strobe of burning light washed over both Kayden and Cliff’s bodies and pulsed down their arms, growing into a bright flash that surged from their fingers, igniting the glyph at Agatha’s throat. It turned to pure light for a second before consolidating and turning black, just like a tattoo. Kayden and Cliff tumbled back in a mirror pose of one another, clearly exhausted from whatever they had just done. Agatha’s eyes were unseeing again. Cliff reached forward and gently closed them, a gesture usually reserved for the dead. It made Farley unreasonably angry that he’d done that; she wasn’t dead. But Kayden’s strained voice stole away her fury.
“Uh, guys… worst timing, but we have a problem. A big, big problem.”
Farley saw Daniel’s expression change when she looked up at him. Despair turned to shock, which quickly morphed into anger. He was staring over her shoulder. She knew if she turned and looked, something terrible would be waiting for her. But she couldn’t help herself. Behind her, at the far end of the tunnel, a line of bodies dressed in black were gathered. There were at least twenty of them, and they were blocking the exit.
Farley instinctively spun to look up the other end of the tunnel; the exit back into the West Quarter was too far away too see properly, but she could definitely make out the movement of people quickly making their way towards them. They were trapped.
******
Kayden’s body felt unsteady, something he wasn’t used to. Not since he’d died anyway. He was used to having plenty of energy at his fingertips, plenty of power to call upon when he needed it. But after trying to pin down the pure seething blackness inside Agatha with his bare hands, he wasn’t feeling too great. Cliff probably wasn’t feeling so hot either, but he was a lot stronger than him. That’s what you got when you volunteered for the gig and weren’t forced into it for fear of heading directly to hell. The pay grade was higher and the perks were better.
“What are we going to do?” he asked. He knew exactly what they were going to do but it was better to check they were all on the same page. Kayden had never known Daniel to back down from a fight. Sure enough, when he caught sight of him, Daniel’s face was carved stone, angry. He shot to his feet, his body tense, as an Immundus stepped forward from the crowd to the left.
“Clay,” Daniel hissed.
“And I bet you thought I’d been eaten by wolves,” the Immundus laughed.
“Well, the last time I saw you, you were running into the woods like a coward,” Daniel snapped back.
So this was Clay, the Immundus Daniel had met in Skykomish, the one that had attacked them in the Viper and tried to kidnap Farley. Kayden glowered at the guy. There was nothing special about him that he could see. Nothing special about any of the angry-looking mob that was closing in around them. Their eyes were different for sure, but that was only because the coronas banding their irises were weak, thready, barely there at all. No one was pulling the strings on these guys. That made them, what? More or less dangerous? Kayden couldn’t tell. All that mattered was that they were human, and regardless of how many there were, they were no match for the three of them.
Clay stepped forward and grinned, flicking over a blade in his hand. “I’m so glad that we get to catch up, Daniel. I need you to know, I was pretty upset when you killed my friends. You see, they were my actual friends. I introduced them to this life, and now they’re dead. Because of you.”
A fine thread of light flickered between Daniel’s index finger and his thumb, making a low static noise. The air in the tunnel prickled against Kayden’s skin. It was starting. Daniel laughed, hollow and dangerous.
�
��If anyone’s to blame, then it surely has to be the person who ‘introduced your friends to this life’? The person who attacked me and my girlfriend without provocation?”
Clay bared his teeth. “We had plenty of provocation. It just didn’t come from you. The old one said he wouldn’t give us any more power until he had his wife back. If you knew… if you knew how this felt, you’d do anything for it, too.”
Daniel’s mouth twitched, hiding his disgust. “You couldn’t be more wrong.”
Clay shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever. You’re still going to die.”
The arrogance on this guy was unbelievable. Kayden stepped forward and felt the glyphs around his neck turn to fire. The power inside him was building, just like Daniel’s. “You have no idea what you’re up against here. You should turn around and leave while you still can.”
Clay turned to Kayden with a smug smile. “And oh look, you brought a back up singer to the party. What an honour. You’re the one who killed himself, aren’t you? She told us about you.”
Kayden narrowed his eyes. “Who?”
Clayed pointed with the tip of his knife over Kayden’s shoulder. At Agatha. “Her. She’s the one who gave me this.” Kayden barely had time to turn around before he heard the knife whistling through the air. A number of things flashed through his head: It doesn’t matter, he can’t hurt you. There’s no chance he’s going to hit you, and so what if he does? But wait, if Agatha gave him that knife…
Eternal Hope (The Hope Series) Page 34