The Lost Saint

  The guy took a second and a third step.

  Do what? Run? But I was frozen to that spot. Except, I wasn’t technically frozen, since every cell in my body seared like Fourth of July sparklers under my skin.

  The man had only half a dozen more steps to take to close the gap between us, but I still couldn’t move. My stomach clenched into a fiery knot.

  “Damn it, Grace!” Talbot shouted. “Do something. I know you can.”

  “Do what?” I shouted back.

  “That feeling in your stomach? That’s anger. That’s power. Grab on to it and kick that guy’s ass!”

  How would he know …?

  “Shut up.” The gunman smacked Talbot on the head with the gun. A trickle of red ran down his forehead. “Grab the girl, now!” he ordered his crony.

  Talbot was right. That knot in my stomach had become a flaming rage. Daniel would tell me to push it away. Find balance. But as the large masked thug reached for me, I let that rage wash over me, and my fists went flying. I socked him in the gut, and he went sailing back several feet. I’d had no idea I was capable of hitting that hard.

  He hit the brick wall of the adjacent building, but it didn’t seem to faze him. He caught himself and charged in my direction. I countered out of his way, but then he swung around and snatched at my shirt. One of his fists had tattoos of the letters S and K between his knuckles. This guy reeked, and the smell—like two-month-old milk—only aggravated me more. I grabbed his hands and twisted them away from me, then pulled his body down closer as I kneed him in the groin. He grunted with pain. His tongue lolled out of his mouth. I pushed him, and he stumbled back. I kicked him in the left kneecap while he was unstable, and he buckled under his own weight and fell to the ground. I glared down at him, my hands up in fists.

  “Hey!” the gunman shouted. “You’ll pay for that.”

  Watch out! I heard inside my head, and I looked up just in time to stare down the barrel of a gun.

  “No!” Talbot shouted, and in a lightning-quick move, he wrenched himself out of the guy’s hold and then had the man’s gun-wielding hand in his. Talbot slammed the guy’s arm down and against his knee. I swear I heard the cracking of bones.

  The guy dropped the gun and pulled his arm in against his chest, moaning. He took a wild swing at Talbot with his uninjured arm. Talbot blocked the blow and smashed the palm of his hand into the guy’s ski mask, presumably where his nose would be. The guy sputtered and coughed.

  “What the hell, man?” He gasped and pulled at his ski mask, but before he could even yank it off, Talbot took a running leap, bounced off the cement wall like it was a springboard, and sent a flying kick right into the guy’s chest.

  The gunman crumpled to the ground. Talbot landed in a crouching position next to him. There was just enough light left in the dim alley to glint off his green eyes, making them look like dazzling emeralds.

  I gasped. “You’re a … You’re a …”

  “An Urbat.” Talbot straightened up. He crossed the alley between us, then placed his warm, callused hand against my arm. “Just like you.”

  BACK AT THE VAN

  The thug I’d knocked down got away during the skirmish, and Talbot wanted to make sure the other one didn’t escape when he regained full consciousness. I couldn’t help watching the large muscles in Talbot’s forearms ripple as he used his belt to hog-tie the gunman next to the Dumpster. He did it with such ease I pictured him roping a calf on whatever farm he presumably came from. Talbot then emptied the gun of its bullets and tucked them into the front pocket of his flannel shirt. Then he wiped the gun clean with his shirttail and tossed it next to the semiconscious guy’s head. “For evidence,” he said.

  “Should I call the police now?” I pulled out my phone.

  “Let me do it,” Talbot said. “My phone’s a prepaid, so they won’t be able to trace it.”

  “You mean we’re not sticking around?”

  “What would we tell them? Besides, I gotta get you back to that bus before they think I’ve run off with you. I can’t afford to lose this job.” He pulled out his phone and motioned for me to follow him out of the alley.

  “We’re just leaving him here like that?” I looked back at the guy, lying on his side, groaning with pain. “It seems a little inhumane.”

  “That guy tried to kill you, Grace.” He flipped open his phone. “Besides, he isn’t human. That there is what you call a demon.”

  At first I thought he was being metaphorical, but then his meaning clicked. “A demon? A living, breathing, bona fide demon?”

  “What? Don’t tell me you haven’t seen one before.”

  I shrugged. “Well, not really. I met one at a party once. She did this little mind-control trick with her eyes.”

  “Ah, an Akh. They’re a terrible sort.” He clucked his tongue. “This one here is a Gelal. They prey on young women. That girl would have gone through all sorts of hell if we hadn’t shown up.”

  “How can you tell?” I asked. The guy still seemed like a person to me. I was itching to go over and take off his mask to see what he really looked liked underneath.

  “The smell.” Talbot crinkled his nose. “You really are a rookie, aren’t you? I bet you haven’t even figured out how to track someone yet.”

  I looked down at the ground. The masked demon let out a loud, angry groan.

  “We better go,” Talbot said. “I’m just hoping the police get here before he comes to enough to break free.”

  Talbot hit a button on his phone and put it to his ear.

  “You have 911 on speed dial?”

  “I told you I make a lot of deliveries.”

  I followed him out of the alley. “Wait, you mean you do this a lot?”

  But Talbot didn’t respond. He was too busy telling the operator on the other end of the line that a young woman had been attacked near Tidwell Library and that they’d find the perpetrator behind a Dumpster near Tidwell and Vine. He hung up before they could ask him any questions.

  “You still got the keys?”

  “Um, yeah, I hope.” I patted down my pockets and found the keys.

  Talbot unlocked the passenger’s-side door and held it open for me. Sometime between Talbot’s shutting my door and his climbing in through the driver’s side, the shock of everything that had happened finally hit me. My hands shook so hard I could barely fasten my seat belt.

  “Are you okay?” Talbot asked. “You did awesome back there. Just like I knew you would.”

  “But how … how did you know that I could even do anything? How did you know what I am?” I’d already asked how he’d known I was an Urbat earlier, but he’d insisted on taking care of the gunman before we talked about it. But now I wanted answers.

  “Your necklace.” Talbot reached over and touched the cracked moonstone pendant that hung from my neck. “Kind of a dead giveaway, if you think about it.” He brushed one of my curls against my neck with his fingers as he pulled his hand away. “And I saw you fight back at The Depot. Most girls can’t pull off a roundhouse kick like that on a guy that big unless she’s packing some serious paranormal heat.” He crinkled his nose again. “Plus, you kinda smell, too.”

  “What?” I sniffed both my arms. I smelled perfectly normal to me—okay, kind of sweaty from fighting, but not at all like those guys in that alley.

  Talbot laughed, his cheeks dimpling with his smile.

  “You jerk!” I punched him playfully in the arm.

  He grabbed my hand. “Hey, watch it, kid. You’ve got a mean right hook.”

  Talbot’s hand, wrapped around my fist, seemed huge by comparison. I could see the veins stretching along his tendons. He squeezed my fingers, and a pulse of tingling energy ran up my arm and down my spine. It felt like the connection that had passed between Daniel and me when we first held hands in the Garden of Angels. The tingling sensation turned to a shudder. I tugged my hand out of Talbot’s grasp. It wasn’t right to feel that kind of energy with anyone other than Daniel.


  I crossed my arms in front of my chest. Talbot shifted his gaze away from my face. He coughed slightly and started the van. We pulled away from the library. After a moment, I asked the question that had been nagging at the back of my mind.

  “If those guys were really demons, then why did they need a gun?”

  Talbot shrugged. “I don’t know, Grace, but it worries me. Gelals don’t even usually come out until well after midnight. They’re completely nocturnal, you know? And the fact that they were even here in the city is a mystery. That’s the third pair of them I’ve come across in the last two months, but before that I hadn’t even encountered one since I was last on the West Coast.” He shook his head. “There’s something going down around here. Used to be I had to go looking for demons, track them for months before one came out of hiding, but now the city seems to be crawling with them. And I keep hearing rumors that someone’s gathering werewolves, Gelals, Akhs, and all kinds of other paranormal teens into some sort of gang. They supposedly call themselves the Shadow Kings.”

  “A gang of paranormals?”

  “You know those ‘invisible bandits’ they keep talking about on the news?”

  I nodded.

  “You don’t think humans are behind all that?”

  “No. Not at all,” I said. “They hit a grocery store in my town. Ransacked the entire place in less than five minutes. My … boyfriend and I were saying that a gang of superpowered teens had to be behind it all. And I think my brother may be mixed up with them. He said something to April about finding a new family.”

  Talbot’s eyebrows arched up. “Your brother is like you?”

  “Kind of.” I didn’t know what I should say to Talbot. I mean, we’d known each other only for a total of a few hours—yet in those few hours he’d saved my life twice. And he was the only person I knew like me. Someone who had powers and actually wanted to use them for good. At least from what I could tell. You can trust him, that voice whispered in my head. “Jude’s turned into a full werewolf. I haven’t. He bit me when he first turned, and then he tried to kill his best friend—my, um, boyfriend. I think that’s why Jude left home.” I breathed out a sigh. It felt good to tell the truth to someone who could really understand.

  Talbot nodded. “So who’s this boyfriend you keep mentioning? Sounds like your brother dislikes him just as much as I do.”

  I cocked my head and looked at Talbot. What did he mean by that?

  “Sorry.” Talbot flashed me a smile. “Just thinking that this boyfriend must be pretty special to warrant having a girl like you. But what’d he do to tick off your bro?”

  “Oh. Daniel—my boyfriend …” Ugh. It was like this conversation couldn’t go ten seconds now without one of us dropping the B word. Daniel and I didn’t even like to call each other boyfriend and girlfriend. It just sounded so trite compared to how we felt about each other. “Daniel, my boy—” I cleared my throat. “He used to be a werewolf. He’s the one who infected my brother a few years ago. My brother kind of hates his guts now.”

  Talbot gave me a quizzical, yet amused look. He shook his head. “What do you mean Daniel used to be a werewolf? I was under the impression that being an Urbat is a permanent condition.”

  “I cured him.”

  Talbot’s eyes widened. He slammed on the breaks just before almost running a red light. “How did you do that?”

  Unfortunately, I was too tired to tell that much of the story. “True love’s first kill”—I waved my hand in the air—“yada, yada, yada … It’s really a story for another day.”

  Talbot blinked. He let out a short laugh and then gazed into my eyes. “I do believe, Miss Grace Divine, that you get more and more interesting by the minute.”

  The tone of his voice when he said the words Miss Grace sent another flutter of warm familiarity through my body. What is it about him?

  The light turned green, and we drove through the intersection. I turned my head and stared out the passenger’s-side window. “You should talk. I mean, I assume this is something you do a lot. Track down demons and investigate gangs of paranormal thieves? Is this Good Samaritan job just a front for your vigilante superhero quest?”

  “Guilty as charged,” he said.

  “Seriously?”

  “Got infected when my parents were killed by werewolves, swore I’d use my powers to protect the world from demons … yada, yada, yada … It’s really a story for another time.”

  “Oh, come on, you can’t do that to me.”

  “Yes, I can, because we’re here.” I followed his pointing finger toward the lit-up bus in front of the rec center. Students filled the bus, and Principal Conway paced out in front of it with his cell phone pressed to his ear.

  “I guess I gotta go,” I said. “Thanks for the … um … adventure?”

  “I’m glad you were up to it.” He grinned at me, all dimply and warm. “Actually, I’m glad you got partnered with me. I’m not sure what I would have done if any other student from your school had been with me today. It kind of feels like fate, don’t you think?”

  I smiled. “Yeah, I guess it does.”

  I pulled on the door handle and pushed on the door. I was about to jump out when Talbot said, “Grace?”

  “Yeah?” I looked back at him.

  He held something silver and sparkly in his hand. At first I thought he was giving me a present—which would have been weird, but sweet—but then he said, “April’s bracelet. She dropped it at the club.”

  “Oh.” I took the bracelet from his warm fingers. A narrow slip of paper was wrapped around it.

  I looked up into Talbot’s glinting emerald eyes.

  “That’s for you,” he said. “Call me if you need anything. Anything at all.”

  “Okay,” I said, and got out of the van.

  “Tell April I said hi,” Talbot said before I shut the door.

  I shoved the slip of paper in my pocket and trucked toward the bus in the dark, wondering how best to explain my lateness when another person fell in right beside me.

  “Dude, took you long enough to get back here,” Chris said. He had half a sub sandwich in his hand, and his pockets jangled with what sounded like coins as he walked.

  “Where have you two been?” Principal Conway asked when he saw us approaching. “We were scheduled to leave twenty minutes ago. I was beginning to worry that you weren’t out in one of the vans at all.”

  “Sorry, Tom,” Chris said to his dad. “I got all hypoglycemic, so I made our driver pull over so I could get something to eat. I don’t think this volunteer stuff is good for my health.”

  “Nice try,” Principal Conway said, and led his son up the steps of the bus. “Next time, answer your phone when I call.”

  I stopped on the top step of the bus and looked back at the parking lot. Talbot flashed the lights of his van and then drove away.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  A Normal Life

  ON THE BUS

  “Holy crap!” April slid her silver cuff bracelet onto her wrist. “Number one: I can’t believe Talbot found my bracelet at the club—it’s supposed to be the feature item in my new fall collection, but there’s no way I was going to go back there looking for it. Number two: I cannot believe he’s your driver. Number three: I can’t believe you guys stopped a freaking mugging together. And number four: The fact that he’s an Ur—”

  “Shhh!” I tried to throw my hands over her mouth. We sat alone at the back of the bus, but her voice had risen in volume with each number on her list of things she couldn’t believe. I suddenly wondered if I’d done the right thing by telling her the truth.

  April squealed and wriggled away from my hands. “Number four,” she loudly whispered, “the fact that Talbot is a freaking Urbat demon hunter is, like, blowing my mind!” Her voice rose on the last word so it was almost a shout. I pounced on her again, practically knocking her flat on the bus bench, and tried to cover her mouth. She giggled and pushed me off her. “Okay, okay. I’ll try to be quie
t. But this is, like, too awesome. You have to let me be all girly about your secret rendezvous with Talbot for a moment.”

  “I know,” I whispered. “But if Principal Conway or Gabriel … Pastor Saint Moon, I mean, find out that I went out with Talbot alone, don’t you think they’ll have a problem with that? I don’t want them to find out I was working with him one-on-one—let alone what we were doing.”

  April waggled her eyebrows at me.

  “It’s not like that …,” I said. “Besides, I don’t want Chris to get into trouble for ditching out.”

  “You’re a terrible liar. I can see those splotch marks on your neck.”

  I rubbed my neck. “I’m just hot.”

  “I’ll bet you are.”

  “April, seriously. It’s not like that. Talbot’s just a new friend. You know how I feel about Daniel.” I meant what I said, but my neck still felt all hot and itchy. I pulled a water bottle out of my backpack and took a sip.

  “Yeah, but how is Daniel going to feel about this? Any boy is going to have a problem with his girlfriend being all one-on-one with a hot guy—especially if you’re getting all hot and sweaty. Don’t you think Daniel will be jealous that he’s not the one doing it with you?”

  I choked and almost spat water at her.

  “I meant doing it as in Daniel wanting to kick bad-guy butt with you … not … you know … not you two ‘getting it on.’ ” She made a weird gesture with her hands that I assumed had something to do with “getting it on.” “Unless, you and Daniel are. You know … Um, you’re not, right? Because I heard—”

  I coughed and cleared my throat. “No, Daniel and I aren’t ‘getting it on.’ No matter what anyone says.”

  Thanks to my superhearing and all those lovely rumors Lynn Bishop spread last school year, I knew there were plenty of people who thought Daniel and I were “getting it on.” But we most definitely weren’t. Not that we didn’t think about it or want to—just the sight of Daniel most days made my heart race and my legs ache with anticipation.