Tremble (Denazen #3)(42)
Kale shifted from foot to foot. “Who I am?”
Penny smiled and rested her hand on his shoulder. “The fabled Reaper. The young man who will one day be responsible for bringing the Denazen darkness to its knees.”
In all the chaos of the last few months, I’d forgotten the story Kale told me when we first met. The Reaper. The man Mom told him to find if he ever managed to get outside the Denazen walls. It’s what brought us to Ginger and the Underground, and ultimately to the truth: Kale was the Reaper. Seen through Ginger’s ability and spread to the people to give them hope for the future during dark times. We’d looked for someone who hadn’t taken his place in the world. A foretold hero.
That story alone should have given me comfort. Kale was destined to take down Denazen and that meant he would eventually see that Dad and Kiernan were the bad guys—but it didn’t mean he’d recover his memory. Or that the damage done along the way wouldn’t destroy us all.
“I know they’ve darkened your world, but your love for this girl—for Dez—was enough to make me take a chance. If you let them, I believe your true feelings will show you the way home.”
“I—” Kale froze. One minute he was standing beside me, and the next he was on top of me. The breath whooshed from my lungs on impact and we landed in a tangle of limbs and shooting stars on the carpet at Penny’s feet as something behind us shattered.
The picture window.
Penny dropped to the ground, too, and I kept trying to twist to see what had broken the glass, but Kale was too heavy and wouldn’t let me up. “Penny, is there a back door?”
The only response was the sound of more breaking glass and voices outside getting closer.
Finally managing to twist around, I grabbed her shirtsleeve and tugged her closer. She coughed and grabbed my arm, squeezing until I thought it might pop off. “Penny?”
All the air in the room was gone. Sucked away, right along with any hope for the future.
“No,” I whispered. “Nonono!”
Spilling to the floor from an ugly hole in her gut was Penny Mills’s life—as well as my own. Bullets. They were using real bullets.
She raised her arm, cradling the bracelet in her left hand. “If you want to get out alive, run for your life.”
Kale cursed and tried to drag me off the floor, but I pushed him away. “No! We can get you out of here. The hospital—”
She ignored me and, with shaking fingers, popped the small red gem from its prong. Even with the chaos all around us, I could hear the tiny plinking sound as it hit the hardwood and bounced away. Beneath it was a tiny button, and before I could stop her, she pushed it.
“You have sixty seconds. Back door. Through the kitchen,” she wheezed. “G-Go!”
There was no telling Kale twice. Despite my struggling, he hauled me from the floor, threw me over his shoulder, and barreled into the kitchen and out the back door. We got several feet from the house before I managed to wriggle free. It was stupid and pointless, but I started back anyway. I had a better chance risking an explosion than I did getting my hands on whatever blood Denazen had left.
But it was no use. Kale tackled me before I got three steps. A deafening roar split the air and a tremor shook the ground beneath our feet as a bright flash of red and orange swallowed the house—and everything inside.
Including my last hope of survival.
17
I hadn’t said a word since Kale dragged me to the car. Agents had swarmed the backyard as we climbed to our feet, but Kale, who must have had a moment of clarity, fought them off with practiced ease. Now, with the trees zooming by in a blur of green and brown as my foot fell heavily on the accelerator, I went over the important moments in my life.
The first thing I’d mimicked—a stupid Barbie doll at the toy store with Brandt and Uncle Mark. The time Brandt and I smoked our first—and last—cigarette. The moment Dad told me Brandt had been killed. The first time I saw my mom. The moment Sheltie confessed to being Brandt. And Kale. Thousands of freeze-frame moments with Kale. There were some in-between things. Alex, scenes from parties, holidays with friends… None of it was enough.
When Able poisoned me, I’d been terrified of dying. Still, somewhere in the back of my mind, I’d always believed there’d be a way around it. No matter how low I got and how hopeless the whole situation seemed, I believed in my soul I’d make it through. And I had. I’d gotten the antidote and lived to see another day. This time was different. For the first time in my life, I truly felt like I had no hope.
“I’m sorry,” Kale said as we crossed the border back into Ben’s town. He peeked my way every so often but remained silent the entire ride.
“Are you?” I intended to ignore him, but the words slipped from my mouth regardless. I swiveled in my seat as we pulled up to a stoplight, stomping down hard on the break and slamming it into park. “And what exactly are you sorry about?” I unfastened the seat belt and threw open the car door.
It was late—or early, depending on how you looked at it. The road was empty, and the storefronts lining the sidewalk were dark. The world was slipping away. I didn’t care about manners and niceties. The fact that the engine was still running or that I was standing in the middle of the road in a strange town and nearly blocking a four-way intersection was of no consequence.