Free The Revolt (The Reapers: Book Two) by Katharine Sadler Page A

given the opportunity. You use
everything you’ve got, but maybe while we’re training you should
take your shoes off so I don’t end up with a broken foot.”
    I nodded. Cat had given me the same lecture
about fighting fair and his repeat of it annoyed me. “I’ve pinned
you, so can we go jogging now?”
    “We’re still just warming up,” he said, his
grin big enough to split his face. Then he rolled over and got to
his feet like I wasn’t even there.
    I couldn’t believe I’d ever thought he was
cute. “I don’t like you at all,” I said, regaining my feet.
    We got down to serious sparring. I spent most
of it on my ass.
    After what felt like three hours, but was
more like forty-five minutes, I stayed on the mat when he knocked
me down. “Uncle,” I said.
    He plopped down next to me. “Thank god. I’m
exhausted.”
    “You could have fooled me.”
    He shook his head, but his breathing was slow
and steady while I panted next to him, every breath painful.
    “I guess you get to choose the music next
time,” I said. I wasn’t about to get up and turn off Killswitch,
and he didn’t move either. After a few moments of silence, I asked
a question Cat had never been able to answer for me. “Shouldn’t I
be getting some sort of weapons training?”
    He looked at me and raised his eyebrows.
“It’s not our practice to use weapons. A bullet is too much
evidence and gunshots create too many questions. I’ve never needed
a weapon because—”
    “You are a weapon.”
    He nodded. “The reapers want to stay
unnoticed as much as we do and they come from the spirit world
where everyone fights with their life energy and their fists.
You’ll mostly be fighting in that world, too.”
    “They used a knife on Cat.”
    “Yeah, it happens, but not often. They
probably knew they’d lose if they went up against her in
hand-to-hand. Very few reapers have the time or the resources to
become weapons-trained, unless they were proficient in their
original life.”
    “I’m smaller than most of the people who’ve
attacked me. I’d feel better if I had something.”
    “Yeah, typically you’d be partnered with
someone like me who’d protect your living body, but with everything
that’s happened… I’m no weapons expert, but we can find someone at
Varius who is.”
    I nodded and stared at the wall, too tired to
move. “So what can you do? Could you lift a car?”
    He chuckled. “Maybe, but that would be all I
did for a couple of days. The heavier something is, the more energy
it takes for me to move. It also matters what the object is made
of. I can lift metal with accuracy, but I’m less reliable with
plastic, textiles or humans. If I’m injured, all bets are off. I
might be able to lift something, but I’d be just as likely to hit
an ally with it as I would be to hit an enemy.”
    “Uh-huh. So you’re basically useless if there
isn’t anything metal around.”
    He smiled and flexed his biceps. “That’s why
I have these.”
    I laughed and started to stand.
    “Not that my skills did any good when Caleb
kidnapped you.”
    I sighed and flopped back down, kind of glad
for an excuse not to move for a bit longer. “If I’d been a better
judge of character, or even just listened to my instincts—”
    “You felt something was off?” he asked.
    I lay back on the mat and crossed my hands
over my stomach. I was starving and sleepy, and it took energy to
think back and remember how I’d felt. “Yeah. It wasn’t blatant, but
there were moments with him that felt false, you know? And he was
in such a hurry about everything. He hardly gave me a chance to
figure out if I liked him before he was telling me he loved
me.”
    “Did you?”
    “Did I what?”
    “Did you figure it out?”
    “What are you asking? I’m not pining after
him, if that’s what you mean. I’d just as soon never see his lying
douche bag face again, no offense.”
    “But if he hadn’t betrayed you. . .?”
    I lifted myself up halfway and