The Revolt (The Reapers: Book Two) (22 page)

“Don’t fuck with me, Caleb. Where. Is.
She?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think you really
understand, Kelsey. I can only control the reapers for so long. I
promised them you would join us, but they’ve gotten tired of
waiting. They need your full commitment now.”

I wrapped my arms around myself and sat down
on the couch next to him. All I could see was Angelica, her bright
eyes darkened and dimmed by pain while the reapers and their
minions tortured her. Anything they did to her was my fault and I
couldn’t let them hurt her, not even a little bit. “Please, Caleb,
help me get her back. You don’t want me like this. You don’t want
me to be with you because I had no other choice, do you?”

His eyes widened and he took my hands in
his.

“Of course not, Kelsey. I want you to be with
me because you love me. I want you on my side because you believe
in our cause.” He looked sincere and 100% insane. “I can’t help you
if you don’t love me.”

“And you think hurting my best friend is a
good way to make me love you?”

“I already told you this wasn’t my idea. I
don’t want you to lose your best friend, and I don’t want you to
lie to me or pretend to love me just to save her.”

I tried not to roll my eyes. I’d heard logic
like that before, maybe not quite that crazy, but close. My mother
was the queen of twisting facts to suit herself. Caleb wanted me to
love him, and he wanted to believe I really, truly loved him, while
he forced me to love him. The whole argument made me a bit
dizzy.

Jed burst into the apartment and started
toward us. “Kelsey,” he said, his tone warning.

“Jed,” I said, in as calm a voice as I could
manage.

He met my eyes and I shook my head. He
stopped, but his hands were fisted and his face was red.

“It’s okay. I was just telling Caleb that I
love him.” I looked at Caleb so I didn’t have to see Jed’s face. “I
do love you, Caleb.” The lie burned my throat like acid.

“Kelsey, you don’t have to do this,” Jed
said.

“You’re lying,” Caleb said, his smile never
dimming. “I can tell when you’re lying.”

My heart was racing and I didn’t know what to
do, but somehow the perfect words came to me. If it was a choice
between working for the reapers and pretending to love Caleb, I’d
go with option two. I could do that for Angelica. “I like power,
Caleb, and you’ve proven to me just how powerful you’re going to
be, how far you’re willing to go to have me. I see you for who you
really are now, and I’m starting to fall for you. I’ll move in here
with you today, if that’s what it takes to prove my
commitment.”

He stepped to me and took my hand again. “If
you stay with me and keep saying you love me, eventually it’ll be
true. It’s what’s meant to be.” He leaned in for a kiss and I knew
it was some sort of test. I had to kiss him with enough heat to
make him believe I liked it. I couldn’t let him know that the very
idea of kissing him made my skin crawl. He searched my face and I
saw desperation and hope in his eyes. His need might make it easier
for me to convince him, but my kiss had to be real and it had to be
passionate.

I scrambled to picture him as someone I’d
like to kiss, I closed my eyes as his lips met mine and Jed’s face
was the one that popped into my head. It didn’t seem right, but I
didn’t have time to imagine anyone else. I just went with it. I
imagined I was kissing Jed and I thought of all the good things
he’d done for me, all of the times we’d laughed together, and I
kissed Caleb with all of those good feelings. I thought of the way
Jed’s muscles moved under his clothes and the way he’d looked with
his shirt off, and I kissed Caleb with the attraction I felt to
Jed.

I let Caleb pull away first and opened my
eyes. I looked at Caleb, but Jed was who I was really seeing. Caleb
smiled at me and I knew it had worked. “I love you,” he said.

He leaned in to kiss me again, but I stopped
him with a hand on his mouth. “Would you mind calling your friends
first and asking them to release Angelica?” It was a long shot.
Clearly the reapers were acting without Caleb on this, but maybe my
lie would be enough for them to release Angelica.

He leaned away and considered me for a long
moment, his expression shifting from angry to concerned and back to
angry. “Of course. I’ll be right back.” He gave me a peck on the
lips and headed to his room, pulling out his phone as he
walked.

“Why can’t he make the call in front of us?”
I asked.

Jed leaned against the door. He looked calm,
but I noticed a muscle twitching in his cheek. “You don’t have to
do this, Kelsey. We can find her.”

“Before they kill her? Do you even know where
to start looking?”

“Not yet, but Tucker’s on it and he’s really
good. They’d give you more time to make—”

“Am I interrupting something?” Caleb had
entered the room without either of us realizing he was there.

“Angelica?” I asked.

“Unfortunately, my friends need further proof
of your loyalty.” He pulled a gun from behind his back and handed
it to me, grip first. “Kill him.” He gestured toward Jed, without
using his name.

“What?” I stepped away, hands up. I didn’t
even want to touch that gun. Caleb sighed, pulled a second gun from
behind his back and pointed it at me. “I can understand that you
two are friendly. Jed’s a likeable guy, but you’re on my team, now,
so he’s the enemy. And he’s a powerful one. It’s him or
Angelica.”

“But you said you wanted Jed to be on your –
on our side, too. You said you wanted him to be a police officer
under your command.”

Jed didn’t say anything. He stared at Caleb,
his expression blank. I glared at Jed, trying to tell him with my
mind to use his telekinesis, but he didn’t look my way. “Caleb put
the gun down. I’m your brother.”

Caleb smiled. “My brother, yes. My incredibly
powerful brother who should be able to take this gun from me with
his mind, but can’t because it’s plastic. And you won’t risk
hurting Kelsey, will you dear brother? You should be happy when the
girl I love falls for me, instead of trying to convince her to
leave. You’re no brother to me and I don’t want someone like you on
my team.” Caleb glared at Jed. I didn’t see any compassion or
sadness on his face. “Killing Jed will prove your loyalty to our
cause and the strength of your love for me.”

“I don’t know how to shoot,” I said, my voice
shaking.

The gun in Caleb’s hand twitched and Caleb’s
arm swung out wildly, against his control. “That’s the best you’ve
got, brother?” He swung the gun around and fired at Jed. The shot
was so loud my ears rang. I watched Jed collapse to the ground and
for a heart-stopping moment, I believed he was dead. My vision went
white, and when it returned I saw him move and clutch his leg,
blood seeping out between his fingers. He was okay. My chest ached
with a razor sharp pain and I felt like I was going to throw up.
More than anything else, I wanted it not to be real. I wanted to
wake up in my own warm, reasonably safe bed and find out I’d just
had a terrible nightmare.

“You surprised me, brother, but I know you
won’t use your power when you’re hurt, will you?”

Jed looked at me and shook his head. “I could
just as easily hurt you as him,” he said to me like I was the only
person in the room.

“Now, it’ll be easy for you,” Caleb said.
“He’s not going anywhere. Walk over there and pull the trigger.” He
held his gun loosely, aiming it at the floor. He wasn’t pointing it
at me or threatening to kill me if I didn’t kill Jed, but if I
tried to run to Jed and get him out of the condo, Caleb might shoot
one or both of us. I couldn’t take the risk.

A familiar warmth bubbled up under the cold
of my terror. Anger at Caleb for putting me in that situation, for
threatening my best friend and his own brother, who’d been loyal to
him when he least deserved it. My anger didn’t change anything. If
I didn’t kill Jed, Caleb would make a phone call and the reapers
would kill Angelica. And Caleb would probably kill Jed anyway. Me,
too, since I’d let him down.

I took the gun from Caleb and wrapped my
fingers around the grip. I had no idea what kind of gun it was,
just that it was small, black, and lighter than I’d expected. I
touched the trigger gently, raised the gun, and faced Jed. He met
my eyes and nodded, like he trusted me to make the right decision.
He put his life in my hands with that nod and it broke my heart. I
knew that nothing would ever be okay again.

Time slowed. Even my heart seemed to beat in
slow motion. I calmed myself the way Tucker had taught me. I swung
around, and pulled the trigger before I had a chance to aim.
Caleb’s eyes widened in shock and locked on me. I watched a light
fade from them, the light of hope, of love, or of success. I didn’t
know which, and I didn’t have time to figure it out before he
fell.

I dropped the gun. It hit the soft carpet
with a soft thud. I had the lucidity to be grateful it didn’t go
off and shoot me in the ankle, before I went to my knees next to
Caleb.

His eyes were dead and there was a small red
dot in the center of his grey shirt, right over his heart. It was
the luckiest or the unluckiest shot of my life, depending on how
you looked at it. I put a finger to his neck, but felt no
pulse.

“You stupid, little whore, you’ll pay for
this,” Caleb said. I looked up for his ghost but he was already
gone. He was probably worried I’d cross over and end his soul, but
I wasn’t even sure I could stand in my own plane.

“Kelsey,” Jed said, his voice weak. “Kelsey.
We have to move before the cops show up. We have to get
Angelica.”

That snapped me out of it, until I looked up
and saw his face. He was pale and there was pain in his eyes. I
didn’t know if it was from the wound in his leg or the loss of his
brother, but I knew that both were my fault.

“I’m so, so sorry.”

“Not now. Get me out of here and go after
Angelica. If the reapers are waiting for a phone call she might not
have much time. Wipe your prints off the gun and see if you can
find me a pair of ski pants or sweatpants in Caleb’s closet.”

I jogged back to the bedrooms and opened the
first door I came to. It was an explosion of frilly pink lace and
delicate furniture. I shut the door, certain it was the room Caleb
had ‘prepared’ for me. He really didn’t know me at all, yet he was
willing to risk everything to convince me to be with him. I’d never
understand him. The next door led me to Caleb’s room. His closet
was ordered and neat, and I quickly found a pile of ski pants
folded on a high shelf. I hurried back to the living room, used the
pants to wipe off the gun and tossed them to Jed. He pulled them on
without a hiss of pain or even a wince.

I helped Jed to his feet. The ski pants were
a couple inches too short and really tight, but they hid the
blood.

“I can’t put weight on this leg, but I think
we should go now,” he said. “Our story is that I’m drunk and you’re
helping me home.”

“I can do that. Maybe I ought to get you a
shot of something before we head out.”

He squeezed my shoulder. “Shots at home. We
should go now.”

We made it out the door and started down the
two flights of stairs to the parking lot. He was putting more
weight on his injured leg than I thought he should, and I still
felt my back bend down another few centimeters with every step.
Somehow, we made it down and started across the parking lot toward
our condo. I could hear the distant whine of sirens getting closer,
and we picked up the pace. Jed started singing some folk song about
a circle of friends at the top of his lungs, and tried to make his
labored steps look like he was having trouble with balance not
pain. We were about 300 yards from the stairs to our condo, and my
back was screaming, when I saw Thad heading our way.

Jed kept singing as we approached Thad, and
he grinned at us, like we were meeting under completely ordinary
circumstances.

“Hey, Kelsey, need a hand with him?” Thad
asked. He slipped a shoulder under Jed’s other arm without waiting
for a response. Jed’s weight on me eased considerably, and we
continued toward the condo at a much faster rate. Once I wasn’t
holding him alone, I could see the blood on his boots and the drops
he was leaving behind on the dry pavement. If the cops found that,
they could follow the trail back to our condo. I switched places
with Thad, followed the spots back to where they started and
stepped on them, smearing them and spreading them out so they’d dry
faster and, hopefully, not be noticed by the cops.

Thad was just starting up the stairs with Jed
and I didn’t want the blood to drip onto the wood of the stairs. I
grabbed a fistful of snow and hurried toward them. “Hold up,” I
said, in a low voice. “Let me clean off his boots.” Thad stopped
and Jed balanced precariously on one leg while I rubbed the blood
off his boot and the lower part of his leg. I had to hope that
would be enough.

Thad helped me get Jed inside and onto the
couch. I didn’t see any more blood. Holly was there, her med kit
was already out on the table. I hurried back to my room to find the
address for Bruce’s grandmother’s house, which I knew was somewhere
in the paperwork Angelica had given me. I had to get there as fast
as I could.

When I returned to the living room, with the
address and a backpack stuffed with clothes and my basic
toiletries, Jed was in boxers, a bottle of bourbon in one hand.
Holly and Thad were bent over his leg.

“How is he?” I asked.

Thad walked over to me. He looked a little
pale. “He’ll be fine. The bullet went through his leg and it
doesn’t look like it hit any important bones, or arteries, or
anything. She’s just going to stitch him up.”

“Good. I have to go to the reapers. They have
Angelica.”