The Revolt (The Reapers: Book Two) (30 page)

I threw my head back into his face with
everything I had and flailed my legs, kicking my heels into his
legs. I don’t think I hit anything vital, but this guy was no
fighter, because he let me go and fell back. I spun to face him,
but he had both hands on his knee and was on the ground. I barely
had time to celebrate that victory when the big guy lumbered over
to re-join the fight. Luckily he made enough noise to let me know
exactly where he was and I spun again to face him. I aimed the heel
of my hand for his nose, but he grabbed my arm before I got there
and twisted it behind my back. I screamed at the pain, but no one
emerged from the hotel. Thad’s face looked like it’d been through a
meat grinder, but he had his guy at his feet, unmoving, and he
grinned at me like a demented kid at a carnival.

He started toward me, but stopped at the
sound of a click that echoed through the empty parking lot. We both
turned to see the only woman of the group pointing a gun at
Thad.

“Walk away if you want to live,” she said.
“We’re just here for the girl.” The big guy still on his feet
walked over and started pushing me toward the car.

Thad snorted. “Don’t bother putting on a show
for her sake. You’ll kill me as soon as she’s out of sight and we
both know it.”

“You’ve been watching too many movies, tough
guy,” she said, as she stepped aside, so the big guy could put me
in the back seat. “Unlike you and your crew we value life and we
have no interest in leaving a trail of bodies for anyone to follow
back to Briarton.” The big guy started pushing me into the car,
twisting my arm even more and making me cry out again. She smiled
at my pain. “Besides, you’re a pretty boy. We’ve got several
reapers in line already for your body.”

“You don’t have a single one strong enough to
take me,” Thad said, but I heard a waver in his voice that made it
clear he wasn’t as sure as he sounded.

“Ooh, I love a challenge.”

I was still struggling with the big guy. He
didn’t seem to be willing to break my arm, so I pushed back against
him enough to get my feet up and braced against the side of the
car.

A truck roared into the parking lot, kicking
up dust and rocks. It swung to a stop, and a rough-looking guy with
a shotgun popped out. I recognized him as the bartender from across
the street.

He pointed the gun at me and the big guy, and
my heart danced with fear. Maybe he’d recognized us at the bar and
called in his friends here. Then a second guy, small and old enough
to be somebody’s great-grandpa, stepped out of the passenger side
with another shotgun and pointed it at my female would-be
captor.

“I don’t know what’s going on here, and I
don’t wanna know,” the bartender said. “What I do know is that the
girl you’re trying to stuff into your car spent the evening with
that fellow there of her own accord, and I’ve never thought four
against two was fair odds. I’d say you better let her go back to
him and leave, before we start shooting.”

“And we really don’t want to have to shoot
anyone, ‘cause the cops’ll be here in less than five minutes,” the
old guy said.

The big guy let go of me and backed away, his
hands in the air. I ran over to Thad, and we walked backwards to
our own car.

“You two wanna stick around and press
charges?” the bartender asked.

“We’d love to,” Thad said. “But we’ve got
somewhere we need to be.”

The bartender frowned, but he nodded. “We’ll
tell the cops you were too scared to stay and we couldn’t hold you.
You won’t have to worry about these four for a while.”

“Thank you, sirs,” Thad said.

I waved, and we got into the car and took
off.

Thad drove, while I quietly freaked out and
rubbed my arm to try and alleviate the pain that throbbed there. I
couldn’t do anything about the ache in my cheek and jaw. Thad’s
face was swollen and bloody, but it wasn’t dripping blood. “We
should stop somewhere and get you cleaned up.”

“I’m good,” he said. “It’s Rooster and Isobel
I’m worried about.”

“Thad’s help arrived while you two were
fighting and took them somewhere they can recover in safety,”
Tucker said from the back seat. “Going to a hospital is usually a
bad idea when things are normal – being unconscious in a place so
public and unprotected is never a good idea.”

I shuddered at the thought. “So, what are we
going to do now?”

Thad thumped the steering wheel. “I’m all out
of good ideas.” He sighed and pulled onto the interstate heading
toward Utah. “Would you consider calling Briarton a loss and holing
up somewhere like… I’m thinking Varius… until we get our team back
together.”

I was tempted, oh so tempted. The idea of
being safe, as safe as I could ever imagine being, appealed to the
small, cowardly child in me. “We don’t have time. If we wait for
the others to heal, we’ll miss the ceremony.” Thad’s hands clenched
the steering wheel tighter. “You don’t have to go with me. I can do
this myself.”

“Do what, Kelsey? Get yourself killed?
Because if you’ve got some sort of plan that’s going to mean you
can stop the ceremony and rid Briarton of reapers all on your own,
I’d love to hear it. I’d blow a ghost for a plan like that.”

“I don’t have a plan, but I’m not ready to
give up. Find a place with a secure phone where we can stop for
tonight. I’ll call Jed and see if he can get anyone out here to
help us and you call everyone you know who can fight and who you
trust.”

“And who I wouldn’t mind asking to throw away
their lives on a suicide mission?”

It hit me with a heart-sinking dismay that
Thad hadn’t agreed to fight beside me. “Just find a hotel near a
car rental place and leave me there. You can go hole up
somewhere.”

“If I had any sense I would,” he said, his
face drawn tight with stress. “But I’ll fight beside you, because I
think someday you’ll be taking Len’s place and because what’s
happening now, the reapers taking over territories like they are,
scares the shit out of me. If we let them succeed, we’ll all be
reaper puppets. We might die trying, but at least we can slow them
down a little.”

The smile he gave me broke my heart. In the
dim light of the rising sun, it made him look younger than I knew
he was and he was trusting me with that young life. I didn’t want
to be a leader, I didn’t want to have to make choices that might
get someone killed and, if I was going to do it, I was going to
make damn sure I was doing everything in my power to keep him
alive. For the first time, I accepted I might have to let go of
Briarton and of Angelica. She had made her choice and I couldn’t
risk any more lives trying to save hers.

I looked at Tucker, and he just smiled and
nodded. I knew he would go wherever I went and I wasn’t sure why.
He had someone he loved who was waiting for him, and I didn’t want
to be the one who separated them. I wanted to be the one to bring
them closer together. If Tucker was killed, I couldn’t live with
myself.

“Tucker—” I started.

He shook his head. “I believe in you, Kelsey.
I’ll fight beside you, no matter what you decide.”

“But why?” I asked, wondering if Tucker was
crazy. “Len’s gone, you don’t have to stay.”

“I want to stay. I have a feeling about you,
just like I had about Len. I’ve seen too much bad in my time and
I’ve lived too long to turn away from all the good I believe you’ll
accomplish.” He shrugged. “Besides, Len’s still out there
somewhere. He’s probably laying low and building his strength and
the smart place to stay is on his good side.”

I nodded. I still didn’t understand or
believe he was sane, but I couldn’t say anything else. He’d made
his decision, and I wasn’t going to talk him out of it. Instead I
asked a question that I’d been thinking about since he’d told me
Len was killed. “Do you think he’ll reap someone when he has the
chance?”

Tucker shook his head. “What good would he be
if he did? Unless he reaps another medium, he’s more useful as a
reaper.”

“So why doesn’t he reap a medium?”

Tucker looked away for a moment considering.
“Len has built his life and his team around his absolute certainty
that reaping the living is wrong. He’d lose a lot of his followers
if he turned his back on that philosophy.” He shook his head.
“Death does funny things to people, though, and I’m not going to
rule out the possibility entirely.”

“Len is a hero to me and to most of the
people on his team,” Thad said. “I love him, but I know he enjoys
playing the hero too much to do anything that would lose him that
status. He’ll keep fighting this war as a reaper.”

I wasn’t sure I believed in their opinion of
my father. To me, he was the man who’d walked away from his wife
and his daughter. He might have had good reasons for that, but no
amount of logic and reasoning was enough to justify his actions as
far as I was concerned. A man who could walk away from his family
could reap someone if he wanted to live badly enough and convinced
himself it was the right thing to do.

Thad cleared his throat. “Did Rooster find
out anything?”

“Not much,” Tucker said. “Apparently, the
anniversary of the date a curse is first set in motion is a
powerful one. It would make sense Caleb and the reapers would
choose to undo the curse on that date, since power is what they’re
after.”

I did a quick calculation and figured
if
we got an early flight, and
if
the bigwigs at
Varius were willing to listen to us without wasting everybody’s
time, and
if
they agreed to help us, we could get back in
time to stop the ceremony. Convincing them to help us would be a
problem, but I had an idea that might persuade them.

“Do you have any money?” I asked Thad.

“I’ve got ten dollars and a maxed out credit
card. I was kind of hoping you had something.”

“You kidnapped me,” I said. “Luckily, I had
my ID, credit card, and cash in the pocket of the bag Jed packed
for me. I’ve got twenty dollars cash, $300 in savings, and about
$800 on my credit card. Do you think that’ll be enough to get us a
flight to Varius?”

Thad almost ran off the road, he turned his
head so fast to look at me. “What happened to the three of us going
to Briarton, guns blazing in a valiant suicide mission? I was kind
of getting accustomed to my life ending so gloriously.”

“I’m sure this won’t be your last opportunity
to die that way, but I think we need a better plan than I’ve got
and more people on our team. We need to go to Varius and talk to
them in person.”

“Can’t we just call them and ask them to send
in people?”

“According to you and Tucker, Jed’s been
calling Varius for days trying to convince them to send people
here, and they’ve refused. If he couldn’t convince them over the
phone, I won’t be able to do it. If we can get a flight quickly
enough, we can be there and back before the ceremony.”

“We just have to be sitting ducks on an
airplane for two hours.”

“God, I hate flying.”

“Me, too.”

As soon as we stepped into the airport, a
buzzing hub of people and the occasional reaper, I doubted my
decision to go to Varius in person. Thad and I shared a look, and
he nodded. Together we stepped further into the airport.

“I could use some coffee,” Thad said. We had
taken turns driving the six hours to the Salt Lake City airport so
we could get some sleep, but Thad looked as tired as I felt. He
also looked like he’d beaten up and run over a couple of times.
We’d cleaned and bandaged him up in a gas station bathroom, but he
was bleeding through a couple of the bandages and he had some nice
bruises. I had a bruise on my jaw and bruises on my arm, but
neither of us was broken or in danger of bleeding to death, so we
kept going.

“Yeah, but I’m too tired to deal with the
reapers.” There was something about coffee that attracted reapers
like moths to a flame.

We found a soda machine and downed a can each
before heading to the ticket counter, trying not to shamble like
zombies. Tucker had gone to see his boyfriend, just in case our
mission to save Briarton ended up being a fatal one.

People in a hurry to get home after the
holiday, or heading out to visit relatives or take holiday
vacations, or whatever it is normal people do, rushed around us.
Everyone we saw seemed to be in a desperate hurry and miserable. I
don’t know about Thad, who was calmly scanning the airport as we
walked from the ticketing area through security and to our gate,
but I was so tired I kept hallucinating angry reapers in the crowd.
My heart was pounding so hard I felt like it might explode out of
my chest, and I took long, slow breaths to try to calm myself.

Thad put a hand on my shoulder, once we
settled into seats at our terminal. “Thanks again for getting my
ticket. I’m sure Varius will reimburse you for both of them.”

He thought I was hyperventilating over a
ticket? “What are the odds they’ll attack us in such a public
place?”

He shrugged, looking at the people around us.
“Two months ago, I’d say they wouldn’t risk drawing the attention
or the possible arrest. Now…” he shrugged. “The rules have changed,
but I think they’d be happy to be rid of us at any cost.”

“Except that they want me as their energy
bank.”

He looked at me, eyebrows raised. “Caleb
wants you and they want whatever Caleb wants until they get that
power over the town. I’m not so sure they really want you.”

“Why not? I’ve got superpowers.”

He smirked and resumed his scan of the crowd.
“Superpowers that make you a demi-goddess to those of us fighting
on the side of the living, but aren’t much use to them. Other than
draining your energy, which will kill you pretty quickly, what can
they get from you?”