The Reaping (The Reapers Book 1) (29 page)

“Kelsey, stop smiling or the stitches will be uneven.” Cat said. She looked into my eyes, giving me an excuse to look away from Landon. “What is so funny, anyway?” When I shrugged, she frowned. “Okay, tell me later.”

I knew I shouldn’t look back at Landon, and I tried really hard to look away from him, but the only fun I’d had in recent memory was imagining all the ways I was going to torture him. I let my eyes drift back to his face, and his eyes widened as though he suspected I could see him. He took a step closer to me, and I reached out for him without thinking about what I was doing. Landon gasped and took a step away from me. I looked down, moving only my eyes and saw three arms and three hands connected to my body. The hand reaching for Landon was a wavering, shimmery ghost of a hand, and I marveled at it for only a moment before I stretched for Landon to see if I could touch him and hurt him on my own terms. I felt my hand close around his solid wrist and almost shouted for joy.

“What the hell?” Landon’s eyes were wide with fear.

I took a step forward, and I was no longer on the couch. It was so easy to leave behind my physical body and all of that pain. Stepping out of my body was like stepping inside on a hot day, instantly refreshing and wonderful. I looked back at the couch to see my physical body still reclining there, but I had a second, ghost body on Landon’s plane. I had been sitting so still for the stitches that neither Cat nor Jed seemed to have realized I was gone.

I faced Landon, feeling happier than I’d felt in a very long time until I saw the five other ghosts standing several feet behind him, watching. They must have been screened by the second curtain when I was in the living world. My injury and exhaustion must have made me too weak to penetrate it. I scanned their faces quickly to see if I recognized any of them, but the only one who was the least bit familiar looked like an older, fatter version of my father. The anger that had propelled me into this world faded in a rush that made me dizzy. As I breathed that one word, “Daddy?”, I felt like the seven-year-old I had once been, begging for his help and his attention. Only now, I knew that he had never helped me and probably hadn’t wasted a thought on me in the last fourteen years.

His face softened a bit when he heard me call him Daddy, and all of my rage returned. He was no father to me, and he never had been. Calling him Daddy was a mistake, a reflex, and I wanted him to know it. “I mean, Len. Is that you?”

He frowned at me and nodded quickly.

“Don’t worry about them,” Landon said. “They are just here to watch. I’m the one who is going to take over the body you have left unattended.”

Landon started to move toward my body, but I was closer, and I got there first. I tried to step into it the way I had seen Landon step into Reid’s body, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even touch my body; my hands just passed right through it. Cat looked up at the ghost me when that happened, and her eyes widened in surprise. “Oh, shit,” she said. I could see her mouth move, but her words sounded muffled and burbly like she was underwater.

“What’s wrong?” Jed said, running over to kneel next to Cat. “Did you screw up her stitches?”

By that time, Landon had reached my body and was also trying to enter it without success. “What the hell?” he shouted.

I looked at Cat. “How do I get back in my body?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like this before. I—”

Landon delivered a swift kick to my gut that knocked me on my ass and stopped Cat’s words. The floors in that plane felt like cement, and my whole body rang with the impact. He grabbed my arm and dragged me over to where the others stood.

“I’m not letting her help you,” Landon said.

I looked back at Cat, but she appeared infinitely further away and out of focus. We were behind the second curtain.

One of the other ghosts, a male, tall and lanky with bug eyes, shoved Landon hard. “You don’t have to bring her closer to us. Put up your walls.”

Landon released my arm and whirled on the man. “That takes energy, asshole, and I haven’t got a whole lot of it to spare.”

“I’ll do it,” said a petite woman with silver hair to her waist. Her face looked younger than mine and calmer, despite her hair color. She raised her arms and nodded to Landon. “Take her away from us.”

Landon yanked me back into the center of what now looked like a room, with white walls and a white floor. I could glimpse Cat and Jed, but they were blurry and far away, like I was trying to see them through frosted glass. I couldn’t see my own physical body and that started my heart pounding with a fear that threatened to dissolve me into a useless puddle on the floor. I took a deep breath and focused on Landon. Destroying him was all that I needed to worry about in that moment.

He came at me and I tried to block him, but his fist met my stomach with a blow so hard I fell backwards. I couldn’t catch my breath, and my stomach felt like I’d eaten a bowling ball. I pushed myself up onto my side and tried to get back on my feet, but Landon didn’t give me the chance. He punched me in the nose and I saw fireworks and was back down on the floor. I had what felt like a very long moment to wonder why I had never taken a single one of those self-defense classes Mom had always been after me to take. Then Landon was on me again. He sat on my stomach and got in my face. He was dead, so I didn’t feel his breath or smell him, but his nearness to me still made my skin crawl, and I tried to push him off me.

“Just give up now, Kelsey, and make it easier on all of us.” Landon was actually pleading with me. “I really don’t enjoy beating up girls.”

“You could have fooled me,” I garbled around the blood that was filling my mouth from my broken nose and, possibly, the hole in my cheek.

“I’ll do what I have to do to live again, Kelsey. I’m not going to stop until I have what I want. I won’t let you sleep, I’ll torture you every night in your dreams, and I’ll do everything I can to have everyone in Briarton calling you a freak. I’ll push away everyone who cares about you, until you beg me to take over.” He shrugged. “Although, now that you’re here, I guess I’ll just try to beat the life out of you.”

Any remote inkling of sympathy I had ever felt for Landon left. “You don’t deserve my life. You are a fuck-up, Landon. You’ve always been a fuck-up, and, if you do get my life, you’ll fuck that up, too.”

His face reddened in rage, and I closed my eyes, expecting him to punch me again. Instead, I felt his weight lift from my stomach and, when I opened my eyes, he was offering me a hand up.

“This is going to be fun,” he said. I accepted the hand up and punched him hard in the stomach as I stood. I was aiming for his balls, but he pulled me up faster than I had anticipated. My punch seemed to have no effect on him except to widen his smile. “That’s the best you’ve got?”

“Don’t try to push him away,” shouted a small, feminine voice from the group of reapers watching me fight. “Pull him into yourself.” I followed the voice and saw Alice standing in front of the group. My father’s meaty hand was reaching for her, and she blinked out of sight. “She’ll pay for that,” Len snarled. Pretty obvious whose side he was on.

Landon’s next punch caught me in my damaged cheek while I was watching Alice’s show, and I fell to the floor, clutching the fire that had become one side of my face. I pretended to be immobilized longer than I was and, when Landon’s next punch came, I dodged, grabbed his wrist, and pulled him bodily into me. We collided and knocked heads so hard we both fell to the ground. Clearly, I didn’t understand Alice’s advice.

Landon actually seemed to be a bit dazed by that one. He stood and shook his head as though he were trying to clear it. I wanted to lie on the ground and enjoy a much-needed breather, but I couldn’t afford to miss an opportunity to cause Landon pain. I jumped up and, using all the strength I could find, I punched him hard in the chest. He fell back with a grunt, and I couldn’t help but smile. I was pretty sure I was going to lose this battle, but I could still enjoy hurting Landon. While I was gloating, Landon swung his legs and swept my feet out from under me. I hit the ground hard, and then he was on me again. He sat down on my stomach with a thump that knocked the air from my lungs and blackened my vision for a moment. “You’re going to pay for that, Ice Princess.”

I gasped for air and motioned for him to get off me, but he just smiled. “In case you haven’t noticed, you don’t actually need to breathe on this side of the curtain. You don’t have lungs.”

I considered what he said as I tried not to panic. My spirit might not need to breathe, but my brain was still freaking out about the lack of inhalation and exhalation. Of course, technically, my brain was still in my physical body which was breathing just fine, I hoped. So how was I even having this stream of consciousness? Somewhere in the middle of trying to figure all of that out, I stopped trying to breathe and, though it felt really weird, I wasn’t dying. “Huh,” I said, as I shoved hard on Landon. “I still don’t want you on me. I’d prefer that no part of you touch me ever again.”

Landon ground into me with his butt bones. “You’ve always thought you’re better than me, but you’re nothing. You’re insignificant, and soon you’ll be the dead one.”

His use of the word dead caused me a tiny tremor of fear, before anger rushed in to take its place. I shoved against him with all of that fury and, shockingly, he fell off me and slid a few feet across the floor. I was running on anger and thinly contained panic, so I didn’t waste too much time gawking at my sudden increase of strength. Instead, I ran and jumped on him, sitting on his scrawny belly.

“You might get my body, and I might be the one stuck over here, but that won’t make you a better person. You’ll always be the loser who has to do drugs to get through the day and screws up everything he touches. You had a good friend in Bruce and a decent job at the bookstore, and you wasted them. You left a trail of shit a mile wide to show where you had been, and everyone in your wake remembered you with scorn and contempt, if they remembered you at all.” I tried to think of what I’d said to the ghosts to make them leave when I was a kid, but my brain wasn’t working. “Go from here, Landon,” I said. “Go and never come back.” I put as much command into my voice as I could, but it didn’t work. Landon remained where he was.

At some point during my tirade, I had put my hand over Landon’s mouth to keep him quiet, and I could feel him blowing on my hand. It tickled a little, but mostly, it skeeved me out that his nasty breath was touching my spirit. I pulled my hand away, but it was like pulling my hand out of glue, and when I finally got it far enough away to inspect it, I realized that little bits of Landon were stuck to it. Not his skin or his teeth or anything, but more like a pale blue light the color of his eyes. It was quite possibly the weirdest sensation I’ve ever had, but my hand felt sad and angry, the same expression I saw on Landon’s face. I jumped off Landon and rubbed my hand on my jeans.

I understood now what Alice had been trying to tell me, but I had no idea what I’d done. And I was pretty sure I didn’t ever want to do it again. If that was the only way to keep my body, it looked like I was going to have to take up residence behind the curtain.

“What the hell was that?” Landon roared at the group of reapers, which had now grown to about 20. “What did she just do to me?” When no one answered, Landon kept yelling. “You didn’t tell me she could see ghosts. You didn’t tell me that she could come over here to fight me. You sure as hell didn’t tell me she could do
that
.”

“We didn’t know,” said a young reaper with striking brown eyes.

“Really?” Landon had his back to me now, and I knew it would be a good time to jump on him, but I didn’t want to touch him again and risk getting more of his essence on me. “Because it’s starting to feel a little bit to me like I’m being set up.”

Len raised a hand and glared at Landon. “Enough. If you don’t like it, don’t fight her. But you won’t get another opportunity like this in her lifetime.”

Landon looked at me like he thought I could help him. I shook my head and shrugged.

“Kelsey, girl, you finish him. This is no time to be kind,” Len said to me. I just stared at him, trying to decipher his words. Was he actually pushing me and Landon to destroy each other?

“Look, I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I’d rather not finish anybody if you don’t mind.” I looked at Landon. “If you fight me, and I win, there will be no you left, do you understand? If you walk away now, neither of us will be any worse off than we already are.”

Landon looked at my father and at me, his face contorted in a mixture of anger, fear, and pain. Then Landon met my eyes, and his features smoothed out. He nodded at me and rushed for me, knocking me onto the ground. He pressed my hands onto his chest and let himself sag against me. “Do it now, before they stop me,” he whispered to me.

“Landon, please, just let me go. I don’t want to do this.”

“They aren’t going to let me stop until one or both of us is destroyed. I’ve been thinking about it, Kelsey, and there’s only one way that someone could have killed me and made it look like I’d killed myself.” He looked at me and then slanted his eyes toward the reapers watching us. “Someone else was controlling my body,” he said the last words so quietly that I had to strain to hear him.

“They killed you?” I breathed. It was perfectly believable that he had gotten stoned and shot himself accidently, but what he was saying made sense, too.

“They’ve been lying to me all along. I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I don’t like being anyone’s tool. So screw them.” His eyes were damp, and his unshed tears made them dazzling blue. “Let me do one good thing in my life.”

“Landon, I can’t. Please just cross over and leave all of this.”

He wrapped his hands around my throat and started to squeeze. “I can’t face them without beating you, Kelsey. I’m sorry, but it’s you or me, and if you aren’t going to reap what I’m offering…” He squeezed tighter, and I realized that his aim was not to cut off my non-existent breath, but to sever my head from my body. I wasn’t sure he’d really do it, but as his grip continued to tighten, I started to panic and to fight back. I wanted to live. I didn’t want to have to hurt him, but I didn’t see any other way out.