The Rift (35 page)

Her eyes gleamed and she smiled. “I’ve heard
about you,” she said. “I’d love to be the one to end you.”

I tried not to be afraid, but her confidence
shook me and I wondered just how powerful she was. I gathered all
the life force I could muster and aimed a kick at her gut that sent
her flying several feel through the air. When she rose again, she
was no longer smiling and she appeared less substantial. It was my
turn to smile. I charged her, my head low, and knocked her to the
ground. I straddled her and let her put her hands on my chest. I
let her draw out a bit of my life force, let her think she had a
shot of beating me, then I grabbed her wrists, so she couldn’t take
her hands off my chest, and I reversed the pull.

I watched the expression on her face change
from triumph to defeat, and I felt suddenly sick about the way I’d
just toyed with her. I swallowed hard and pushed her away. I
couldn’t destroy her like that. I gathered my life force into my
chest as she rose on unsteady feet. “Go away,” I said, my voice
booming so that it hurt my own ears. “Cross over and never come
back.” She took a step toward me and then she was gone. Without
even trying, I’d discovered what I’d forgotten. I’d banished her
spirit, so that I didn’t have to destroy it.

A sense of relief and joy washed over me as I
dropped back into my body.

“She’s gone.” There was no time to explain to
Jed how I’d banished her.

He hugged me tighter and kissed my temple.
“Let’s keep moving.”

We moved deeper into the woods and I fought
three more reapers, all of whom I beat easily. I banished them as I
had the first and, though my physical body was exhausted and it was
taking everything I had just to keep pace with Jed, I felt more
confident about the future than I had in a very long time. Slade
walked along next to us, silent, but deadly. She helped Jed fight
when he needed it, but otherwise stayed by my side.

“Hello, you must be Kelsey,” a gravelly male
voice said. “I hoped I might get the opportunity to destroy
you.”

We turned and saw a man with greying hair, a
weather-roughened face, a suit, and cowboy boots. He looked like he
would have been more comfortable on a ranch than in an office, but
his swagger and sneer made it clear he was in charge. A plump,
panting man who looked about my age, and a slim, wiry woman with
shiny dark hair that fell to her waist flanked the suited cowboy.
Jed growled low in his throat. “That’s the mayor,” he said. “That’s
Lorelei.”

The mayor smiled a slow smile and sashayed in
a feminine way closer to us. “You’re as smart as you are
attractive,” Lorelei said to Jed. “I think I’d like to keep you
around.”

I was so tired and drained I started to
shake. At least I preferred to think it was exhaustion and not fear
that made my bones rattle. I swallowed and straightened my spine.
It didn’t matter how tired I was, it was time to fight. Before I
could get into my fighting stance, back-to-back with Jed, Slade
shifted. The people around us were mesmerized by her shift. She
leapt away from us long enough to rip the throat out of Lorelei’s
male escort, before she was back by my side. Jed stayed in his
human form, and the woman with Lorelei leapt on Jed and started to
grapple with him, while I watched a spirit rise above the body of
the man Slade had killed. The spirit of a teenage girl rose up next
to the spirit of the plump man, and I hesitated just a moment.
“Go,” Jed said. “If you don’t destroy him now, you’ll be fighting
him
and
Lorelei.”

I wasn’t sure Jed would be able to take out
Lorelei as easily as he seemed to think, but he had a point. I
stilled my shivering body and let my spirit float out, up, and
after the teenage girl who fled the scene. I had almost reached her
when the spirit of the plump man hit me hard in the back and lay on
top of me. “Leave her alone,” he said. “She’s just a kid.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. I almost groaned aloud.
“She’s probably older than you. It’s fine. Just cross over and
leave her to me.” I really didn’t want to destroy him, since he had
never asked to be a party to that mess. He didn’t let me go, so I
pulled as much energy as I could muster and pushed myself up to all
fours, rolling him off me. I leapt to my feet, but the exhaustion
of my physical body was slowing my spirit form. The man grabbed me
by the ankles and pulled me back down to the ground. I used the
momentum of the fall and landed on him with an elbow to his face.
He grunted, but didn’t let go.

I looked up and didn’t see the teenage girl.
I let myself go limp and held my hands up, palms out. “She’s gone,”
I said. “I won’t be able to find her, so you can let me go.”

“Don’t let her go,” a female voice said. I
rolled my head to the side and saw the woman who’d been with
Lorelei. She looked just the same in her spirit form, so Lorelei
must have persuaded the living human to join her.

“You should both just cross over,” I said,
twisting against the plump guy’s grip and getting nowhere.

The woman shook her head. “Lorelei told me
about you. You are a demon of hell and you will lead us into the
land of the damned as gifts for your master, Satan, unless we
destroy you.”

“Seriously?” I asked. I tried to sit up and
catch the plump guy’s eyes, but he was watching the woman. “Buddy,
I’m on your side,” I said. “You’re the victim here, and you’re
going to be a lot happier if you find and follow the light.”

“I’ve known Clara for a long time,” he said,
his eyes still on the other woman, lust obvious. “If she says
you’re evil I believe her.”

Well, damn. I let my head fall back and tried
not to scream in frustration. The plump guy, feeling that he’d won
some progress against me, or maybe just distracted by Clara,
loosened his grip enough for me to sit up straight and punch him in
the face with everything I had. He flew back about ten feet,
clutching his head. I sprang up, fueled by desperation, and leapt
on Clara. She fell beneath me and I wrapped my legs around her
pinning her arms to her sides. She smiled, like she had me right
where she wanted me, but I pressed my hands to her cheeks and
started drawing on her life force before she could move.

She gasped and went still, clearly having no
idea what I was doing and proving that the body in the tangible
world below had belonged to her. I needed to banish her, but I had
so little life force left, that I felt empty. Still, I felt bad
about destroying her when she’d been manipulated into that
position, so I forced myself to stop pulling her life force, even
though it felt so good and I needed it so badly. “Look, I don’t
want to end you,” I said. “If you give up, I’ll let you go and you
can cross over. You can go on to whatever’s next.”

She nodded meekly and I stood and offered her
a hand up. She rose with me and using the momentum of the pull, she
punched me hard in the face. I fell back into the plump man and
felt his thick arms wrap around me. I struggled against him, but I
was weak and tired. Clara punched me over and over in the face and
the stomach and whatever life force I’d gained from her flowed out
of me. I was grateful they didn’t know how to suck my life
completely dry. I knew I didn’t stand a chance against them so I
let the tension leave my body and allowed my spirit go thin and
wispy until I was able to slide back down into my physical body. I
had only a moment to see Jed backing Lorelei against a tree, before
my world went black.

I woke to the sound of rushing water and
tweeting birds. I opened my eyes and saw sunlight dancing through
tree branches over my head. I remembered losing the fight against
the two newbie reapers and groaned. I was getting really sick of
blacking out. A gentle hand squeezed my bicep. I rolled my head in
that direction and saw Jed sitting next to me. One thing was sure,
no matter how many times I got the consciousness beaten out of me,
I’d never get tired of waking up to his face.

“Hi,” he said. His voice was gentle, but
there was a worry line creasing his brow, and his jaw was
tight.

“Hi,” I said, my throat a little raw.
“Everything okay?”

“It is now. You scared us, again.” He helped
me sit up and I saw that we were still in the woods, but the sun
was farther down in the sky and there was a chill in the air that
hadn’t been there when we’d started running. Henry and Thad were
talking in quiet voices and behind them a waterfall crashed down
over boulders. There were wildflowers and blooms on the trees, and
I smiled at the beauty of the place, happy just to be alive and
able to feel the cool air on my skin.

“What happened?” I asked.

“They let us go. All they really wanted, I
guess, was for us to leave town. We were the only ones who were
confronted, so the others ran straight here without any
trouble.”

“Reapers are always happy for an opportunity
to kill me.”

He flinched and stared at the waterfall for a
long moment. “It nearly killed me to find you, so close to death,
again. I’m not sure what would happen to me if you died, but I’m
pretty sure there would be blood and dead bodies.”

I suppressed the urge to shiver. Talking
about my own demise wasn’t exactly fun for me. “So what’s next?
Where are the others?”

He pulled me against him, my back to his
chest, his legs and arms around me, and squeezed me tight. He just
held me like that for several long breaths. “We’ve lost.”

“So, that’s it?”

He sighed. “It’s not a fight we can win, but
that’s not the worst part—”

“That’s not the worst part by half,” Wraith
said. I’d heard him walking up behind us, but I hadn’t wanted to
leave Jed’s warm embrace to see it was him. When he spoke, he
squatted in front of me. “We’ve lost face with the reapers, Varius,
and Harvest One. In wolf terms we are now the lowest rank, the
submissives, the omegas. Any and every one who has any sort of
power will come after us.”

“And the deal you had with Yvonne to get out
of your contract is done. She’s going to expect you to go back to
Varius,” Jed said.

Holly sauntered up and dropped a pile of
sticks on the ground behind Wraith. She turned and met my gaze,
smiling when I raised my eyebrows. “I decided I like y’all better
than anyone at Harvest One,” she said. “Even though we’re probably
all going to die in an amazingly gory and brutal battle one day.
Being the underdogs is only fun in the movies.”

“She was fired,” Wraith said, his eyes
twinkling. “But she likes to think it was her choice to join us, so
we’re playing along.”

Holly threw a stick at Wraith’s head, but he
pretended not to notice as it bounced off and hit the ground.

“If I go back to Varius, would she leave you
all alone?” I asked.

“You can’t go back to Varius, Kelsey, because
I can’t go back,” Jed said. “If we’d gone back before, we might
have been able to bargain with her, but now…Even if she found a job
for me, she wouldn’t care about my discomfort or my desires. If she
saw she could gain any leverage with either of us by keeping us
apart, she’d do it.”

“Plus, I really don’t think you want to go
back to Varius, do you, Kelsey?” Wraith asked with a wicked
grin.

“No, but we can’t fight them. If others are
going to come after us, Varius might be able to protect us.”

“No,” Jed said, and the finality in his voice
soothed any guilt I felt about my relief to be free of Varius. “We
discussed it while you were out and Wraith, Jeremiah, their pack,
Holly, Henry, Tucker, Bruce, and Thad all want to stay with us for
the time being.”

“What? Why?” I asked.

“Because they believe in you, Kelsey, or they
just really like you, or they don’t have anywhere else to go…every
one of them has a different reason, but the point is that we have a
good group here, a strong group. We’ve decided that the best course
of action is to run and find a place where no one can find us,
while I get over this mating addiction and we all get stronger. It
will give us all time to decide what we really want and to make a
plan for the future. We can continue to fight or maybe we can stay
hidden and find some peace.” The reverent tone in Jed’s voice when
he mentioned the last option made me sure what his choice would be
and, as wonderful as it sounded, I realized I wasn’t ready to give
up the fight. I might be scared, but I couldn’t just give the
country to the reapers, especially when Harvest One and Varius both
seemed prepared to do just that. Now wasn’t the time to think about
that future, though. Jed was right, we needed time to heal and make
a plan.

“Where will we go?” I asked.

Thad and Henry walked over while we were
talking, and Jeremiah came up with more wood. “I know a place,”
Thad said. His voice was tight and pain twisted his normally
cheerful expression. “No one will look for us there. We’ll leave in
the morning.”

I studied the faces of my friends and was so
grateful to them for choosing to stay with me and with Jed, but I
also felt an enormous weight drop down on me with such force it
knocked the breath from me. I was responsible for their lives and
their well-being. Every choice I made was no longer just for
myself, it was for all of us. There was a part of me that wanted to
tell them to go back to the safety of their pack, their teams,
their families, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. They’d made
their choice, and it was my job to make sure they didn’t regret it.
“Jeremiah can’t go with us. He can’t be trusted,” I said.

Jeremiah hunkered down to face me. “I’m
sorry, Kelsey, for everything I’ve done to hurt you. Wraith is my
pack now, and I’m not going to leave him.”

“Bullshit, you never do anything unless
there’s something in it for you. If you think you’ve got something
to offer Varius or Harvest One, you’ll turn on us in an
instant.”

He smiled a slow smile and Jed squeezed me
tighter, as though he could sense how badly I wanted to punch
Caleb. “And if you don’t let me come with you? You don’t think I’ll
track you and tell them where you are? You don’t think I’ll come to
you in the night and take you for mine as you should be?”