The Savage Grace

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m not taking the easy way out,” he said. “I do want to be home. It’s just that the full moon starts tomorrow. I can already feel its pull.” He squeezed the moonstone pendant we’d given him in his fist. “I just don’t feel comfortable sleeping in the house with the family yet. I think it’s best if I spend the next few nights locked up. Just as an extra precaution.”

  “Okay,” I said hesitantly. It had been such a big step to get him to want to leave his cage, I worried that locking him up again would be a step backward in his progress. But then again, his wanting to be locked up for the safety of the family seemed like a reasonable request. I just hoped he wouldn’t stop fighting the good fight.

  I walked with him down to the basement. I pulled the gate closed behind him and turned the lock.

  “Take the key,” he said.

  I tucked it into my pocket for safekeeping.

  “See you in the morning,” I said before heading up the stairs.

  Jude didn’t answer.

  ALMOST MIDNIGHT

  Daniel and I decided that it wouldn’t be safe for the lost boys to go back to the Duke house, so when I got back home, I wasn’t surprised to find just about every soft surface in the house occupied by a teenage werewolf. Brent was already asleep on the living room couch; Ryan had made a bed for himself under the dining room table with stacks of pink accent pillows—that must have been donated by Charity because they came from the window seat in her room. Zach snored from Dad’s easy chair, and Slade was staked out on the family room sofa, flipping through channels on the TV. Talbot sat on the floor in front him, sharpening a stake with one of my mother’s kitchen knives.

  I was glad they were here—not that the house was any safer, as far as Caleb’s knowledge of it was concerned, but I guess I just felt comfort knowing where they were if something bad happened.

  “Grace,” Mom called as she came up from the basement. “I just found a few more blankets with the camping gear. You mind running these back over to the church?”

  “Sure.” I sighed heavily, picking up my keys again.

  “I’ll do it,” Talbot said. “I should be getting home anyway.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked, realizing that I had no idea where home was for Talbot. “You can stay here. Strength in numbers, and all that.”

  “I’ll be fine,” he said, lifting his newly sharpened stake.

  Mom handed him the bundle of blankets. “You really are welcome to stay, though,” she said.

  “Thank you, but it’s getting a bit crowded around here.” Talbot’s gaze locked on something beyond my mother’s head. I followed his line of sight and saw that Daniel had just come through the front door. I’d wondered if I’d get to see him again tonight. Jarem, the tall, dark-skinned pack Elder—had insisted on introducing Daniel personally, and individually, to each member of the Etlu Clan.

  I locked eyes with Daniel, and he smiled at me. My heartbeat kicked up a notch, and I barely even noticed Talbot say his good-byes and duck out the front door past Daniel.

  “That Talbot is a nice boy,” Mom said. She must have liked his farm-boy charm.

  “Huh,” I said. I couldn’t take my eyes off of Daniel.

  Something about him had changed. In the way he stood, the way he smiled, even the look in his eyes. He’d finally, fully accepted himself as a true alpha—and Lisa had been right: he wore it well.

  Daniel’s smile grew wider as he came down the hall toward to me. My legs ached with each inch he got closer.

  “Well, I guess Daniel can take Jude’s room in the basement since your brother isn’t coming back home tonight,” Mom said. “The bed is small but comfortable. Much better than the couch.”

  “Yeah, a comfortable bed would be good,” I said. My face grew very hot, very quickly, realizing I’d said that out loud.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Divine,” Daniel said, not taking his gaze off of me. “That’s very kind of you.”

  Yes, it was very kind. And slightly odd, considering Mom’s usually not-so-warm feelings concerning Daniel. I started to wonder if her thoughtful gesture was a sign that her mental health still wasn’t 100 percent, but then she grabbed me by the shoulders and propelled me right past Daniel before I could properly greet him, and ordered me upstairs to bed. That’s when I understood her true intentions for offering Daniel superior sleeping quarters over the other boys.

  Jude’s basement bedroom was the farthest point in the house from mine.

  But it didn’t matter, because even two floors away, even with all the snores and noises of so many sleeping people in the house, I could still feel Daniel’s presence. I found it impossible to sleep knowing he was lying on a bed in the dark somewhere in the same house as I was. There were still so many unfinished things—and unsaid words—between us. We’d barely had a chance even to talk about just us since he turned back into human.

  How do you spend an entire night holding each other, and then let two floors separate you on another night?

  I longed to see him, if just for a moment. Have a few seconds alone in the chaos of our lives.

  I could just sneak down there for a few minutes…

  Yet the idea of it felt downright dangerous as I contemplated it.

  By three in the morning I couldn’t stand it any longer. My body buzzed with so much anticipation and longing, I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep at all unless I could see him.

  Just for a minute. Just a quick, “Hello, I love you, don’t forget that,” and a kiss and then I can go back to my room and sleep…

  I tiptoed down the stairs, past the sleeping boys in the front room. Slade was still awake, watching infomercials in the family room. I almost turned back when he looked up at me.

  “Um, just have to take care of something real quick,” I whispered. “Don’t mind me.”

  “Sure,” he said, and nodded, a little too much knowing in his smile.

  My cheeks grew extremely hot, and for a second I contemplated running back upstairs, but I realized I’d feel even dumber turning back with Slade watching me.

  I held my head high, simply pretending I desperately needed a sweater from the laundry room, and opened the door that led down to the basement. I closed it tight behind me.

  My feet moved on their own accord after that, propelling me quickly but quietly down the basement stairs. Right up to the door of Daniel’s bedroom. My hand rose to knock, just to see if he was awake, but I stopped.

  He was probably asleep. He was probably exhausted from everything he’d been through today. He probably would think I was nuts for waking him in the middle of the night just to say a quick hello.…

  I dropped my hand to my side. It was dumb for me to have come in the first place. I turned, ready to tiptoe back up the stairs so he’d never know I’d been there, when the door opened behind me.

  “Grace?” Daniel asked.

  I looked back at him standing there in a wrinkled pair of flannel pajama pants, no shirt covering his perfect abs and stomach, hair all rumpled like he’d been tossing and turning. Like he hadn’t been able to sleep, either.

  “I hoped you come,” he whispered. “I didn’t think you would. But I’d hoped.”

  “You did?”

  Daniel’s large hands wrapped around my waist, pulling me against his bare, warm chest. Our mouths melted together, kissing in an urgent, almost-frantic way. He pulled me into his room, closing the door behind us.

  “I only came for a quick hello,” I said against his skin.

  “That’s all I was hoping for.” He kissed me hard. “Hello,” he said, and kissed me again.

  “Hello,” I said, and giggled until he cut off my laugh with his searching lips. His hands felt like fire, clasped against my hips.

  “I should go,” I said between kisses, not actually wanting to tear myself away.

  “Yes, you really should.” Daniel trailed his lips down my throat.

  “I’m going to leave now.” My fingers traced th
e muscles in his back as I shuddered against his chest.

  Daniel’s mouth left my collarbone, and he kissed my lips one more time, pushing me away from him in the same moment. “Go,” he said. “Before I can’t resist anymore.”

  I stole one more kiss and then backed away to the door. My hand was on the knob, my mind swimming, trying to recall what else I’d wanted to come down here for.… I’d wanted to talk to Daniel about … something.

  “Wait, Gracie,” Daniel said, but he stayed on his side of the room, as if trying to resist temptation.

  “Yes?”

  “There was something else I wanted to say. Another reason I was hoping to see you.” He took one tiny step closer, the muscles in his body tensing. “Something happened at the hospital. You called me your … fiancé, remember?”

  I nodded. “I was just … the nurse wouldn’t let you in because you weren’t family.…” Should I lie? “I just made that up.…” What was the point of lying now?

  “But when we were doing the healing session for your dad,” Daniel said. “When we were connected, I remembered something. No, not remembered really. But I felt something.… Like what you had told that nurse about us … Like it was just…” He ran his hand through his rumpled hair and bit his lip. He looked like he was searching for just the correct words to say.

  “Daniel, I—”

  “It just felt … right,” he said.

  My heart almost stopped—in a good way.

  “We’re engaged, for real, aren’t we?” Daniel asked, taking two large strides closer to me. “It must have happened at the warehouse, right? That night we spent in Caleb’s dungeon?”

  I took a few steps closer to him, feeling my heart drumming, propelling me forward. “Yes,” I said. “Yes, Daniel…” but my voice was almost completely drowned out by the ring of the telephone on Jude’s nightstand.

  I looked at it, perplexed. Did that really just happen, now, or had I imagined it? Daniel stared at the phone, too. Who the heck would call here at three in the morning?

  That couldn’t mean anything good.…

  The phone started to ring for a second time. My hand shot out, and I answered it before it could even finish its nerve-rattling sound.

  “Hello?” I asked—half pissed off by the interruption, half frightened by what might be on other end of the line.

  Nothing. Absolutely nothing but silence.

  I looked at the caller ID—this whole situation feeling eerily all too familiar. “It was from the parish,” I said. “But nobody is there.”

  “Maybe someone knocked the phone off the wall by accident and it was just a flyaway?”

  “Do landlines make flyaway calls?”

  I put the phone up to my ear again. “Hello?” I strained my superhearing to try to make something, anything, out on the other line.

  What I heard, somewhere in the distance beyond the phone, made my blood run cold: the screeching cry of an Akh, before the line went totally dead.

  “Akhs!” I said. “There’re Akhs at the parish.”

  In a lightning-quick movement, Daniel grabbed the shirt he’d worn earlier off the dresser. He yanked it over his head and pulled it down over his abs. He grabbed the phone from my hand.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Calling my cell,” he said. “I gave it to Gabriel before he headed off into the woods.” He put the phone to his ear and waited a second. “Trouble at the parish,” he said into the phone. “We’re on our way. Meet us there.” He slammed the phone down on its base and grabbed my hand.

  We flew up the basement stairs, through the door, and out into the kitchen.

  “Where’re you lovebirds headed?” Slade asked from the couch.

  “There’re Akhs at the parish,” I said. “Have to get there as fast as we can.”

  “Then let me drive.” Slade was up and had grabbed the keys to the Corolla from the key hook before he was even done speaking.

  I shouted to the other lost boys to wake up and follow us.

  “I’m coming, too,” Dad shouted as he came down the stairs in his pajamas.

  “No! Stay here!” I said. I had no idea what we were headed into, and I wasn’t going to risk putting anyone in my family in harm’s way.

  Chapter Thirty

  FORCED HAND

  OUT THE FRONT DOOR

  We followed Slade to the car, and I was glad for his maniacal driving skills as we flew down the empty streets of Rose Crest and into the parish’s front parking lot. The building seemed quiet and peaceful. No lights shone through the windows, and I started to wonder if I’d imagined hearing an Akh. I started to hope we were acting on a false alarm—but then I noticed that the front door of the building stood wide open, making any thoughts of reassurance fleeting as we dashed into the building.

  I detected the smell of Akh and Gelal, not to mention Urbat, as soon as we entered the foyer. But there was another unexpected smell, like rotten eggs, that filled my nostrils. I wrinkled my nose, coughing. “What is that?”

  “I know,” Brent said, and he took off in the direction of the social hall. Slade and the other boys followed.

  Daniel started to go after them. “No. Let them handle it. Come with me. I need to check on Jude. If someone called, it was probably him.”

  We darted down the stairwell leading to the basement. The air was clearer, and the rotten-egg smell faded the farther down we went. I reached for the light switch in the pitch-black basement, but nothing happened when I tried to flip it. “Power is out.”

  “It’s okay,” Daniel said. “I can see.”

  I concentrated my powers into my eyes until my night vision sharpened.

  We rounded the corner and went straight for the gate of Jude’s cage. Only it wasn’t there—the gate, I mean. It had been ripped from its hinges and cast aside like the lid of a tin can. Jude’s cot was overturned, his blanket splayed across the ground, with the TV set tipped over on top of it.

  Jude was gone.

  “What happened here? A struggle? Has Jude been kidnapped?” I asked.

  “Or is someone trying to make it look like that’s what happened?” Daniel crouched, inspecting the mangled hinges of the gate.

  “What are you saying?”

  “I don’t know … But this gate was torn off from the inside of the cage.”

  “You guys!” Slade shouted down the stairs. “You need to get up here!”

  Daniel let go of the gate frame and picked something up. He handed it to me. The moonstone pendant, tied to a broken string.

  “You guys!”

  I shoved the stone in my pocket without saying a word, and we bounded back up the stairs.

  Slade stood at the top, holding what looked a like burned-up soda can in his hand.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “Homemade flash bomb. We found gas bombs, too. They’re all unconscious—everyone in the social hall.”

  “Are they okay? Are you sure they’re not … ?”

  “It’s just knockout gas. They’ll be fine but pretty nauseated in a couple of minutes. But Grace,” he held up the soda-can bomb. “This is one of Brent’s designs.”

  “What? I don’t get what you mean. Brent’s been with us this whole time.”

  “I mean, this wasn’t just any old Akh attack. This was the doing of the Shadow Kings. They were here. They knocked everybody out.”

  I looked at Daniel. “But why would they just knock out all of Sirhan’s men … ?”

  “Sirhan!” Daniel shouted. He was out the door and around the building in matter of seconds, with Slade and me on his heels. We went down the alley between the parish and the school and almost ran right into Gabriel.

  “I came as fast as I could,” he said.

  “No time to talk,” Daniel said. “Follow me.”

  We ran toward the caretaker’s apartment. I could see the door standing open as we approached. Something large and furry lay in front of it. Daniel and Gabriel didn’t stop to see what it was and leaped
over it in order to get through the door. But something caught my eye—the shredded fabric of a blue robe and the shaft of a broken spear, lying in a pool of blood under the furry thing. It was a wolf—one of Sirhan’s guards, I realized. A dead guard.

  I went through the doorway and almost tripped over another dead wolf.

  “No,” Gabriel cried. “No!”

  My head snapped in the direction of the bed that took up most of the room. A withered, leathery, gray body lay on the bed. A silver spear protruded from his sunken chest. Blood darkened the fur all around the blade.

  “They killed Sirhan?” Slade asked from behind me.

  “No,” Daniel said, leaning over the body, his fingers pressed to Sirhan’s shriveled neck. “He still has a pulse. At least one of his hearts is still beating. He’s not dead yet.”

  “What?” Gabriel felt his friend’s wrist. “Yes, he’s still with us. But not for long.”

  “Quick!” I said. “We have to move him. We have to get him out of here.” I couldn’t imagine holding the Challenging Ceremony in the parish. The Shadow Kings had desecrated it enough with their attack. “He can’t die here!”

  “Keys,” Slade said. “I left the keys to your car in the parish.”

  “Take these!” Daniel picked up a set of keys on the small desk and threw them to Slade.

  “You want me to drive the Aston Martin?” he asked, wide-eyed. I could tell he was trying not to sound too excited, considering the circumstances.

  “Yes. Get us as far away from here as you can,” I said.

  Daniel carefully but quickly broke the shaft of the spear so it only protruded about six inches out of Sirhan’s chest. Then he wrapped Sirhan in the bedspread. He and Gabriel hoisted up Sirhan’s beastlike body, spear and all, and we went running for the limo parked in the back lot of the parish. Slade unlocked the doors, and I held one open as Daniel and Gabriel carefully but quickly hefted Sirhan inside.

  “Hold on, brother,” Gabriel said, holding Sirhan’s wrist.

  I ran around the car and jumped into the front passenger seat.

  “Go!” Daniel shouted, slamming the door once we were all inside the limo. “Drive as far out of town as you can!” He pointed in the direction of the main road.