The Savage Grace

  He was young. Maybe my age or a little older…

  I concentrated my superhearing beyond the high-pitched alarm so I could hear what was being said by the small army of medical personnel in the room. “I don’t understand it. He was fine last time I checked on him,” one of the nurses said frantically. “His cousin was just here to visit.”

  “Clear!” someone else shouted.

  I stood and watched in shock—no one noticing me at the window—as the guy in the bed was jolted twice more. His face looked like a bloated mask, but beyond the bruises and bandages, recognition finally clicked in my head.

  “It’s been too long. It’s time to call it,” one of the nurses said.

  The doctor pulled off his latex gloves and placed them on a metal tray. He looked up at the clock above the bed. “Time of death: eight twenty-three p.m.”

  I stumbled away from the window and ran down the hall, down the empty stairwell, and out of the hospital—knowing I’d just watched Pete Bradshaw die.

  Chapter Ten

  TENDER MERCIES

  A FEW MINUTES LATER

  By some small miracle, he was outside the hospital. The white wolf lingered in the grove of trees beyond the parking lot. He watched me as I watched him, my eyes locked with his glinting ones in the evening moonlight. Did he know what had happened? Was he here because I needed him? Did he know I had the moonstone now?

  I took a step in his direction. He turned and disappeared into the grove. I wanted to shout to him to stay, but I couldn’t draw attention to him in such a public place. I was about to take another step to go after him when April’s red hatchback pulled up in front of me. Slade and Brent waited for me inside. I hadn’t seen Slade since he’d refused to follow me into the fire. I wondered how many hours he and Brent had been sitting out here in the parking lot.

  “He wants us to take you home,” Brent said solemnly through the open window.

  I tucked the moonstone into the small pocket of my scrub shirt, just over my chest, before approaching the car. After Talbot’s betrayal, I was hesitant to let anyone know I had the stone now.

  I slipped into the backseat and could almost taste the dark mood that radiated off the two boys in the front. I gathered that they knew what had happened to Marcos. They’d known him so much better than I had, and I didn’t know what to say. So nobody said anything, and Slade started the car and headed back toward Rose Crest, driving much slower this time.

  Their pack mate had died because of me.

  Two people I knew had died today, and my dad was in critical condition.

  And it’s all your fault, growled the wolf inside my head.

  We drove in awkward silence until we pulled into my neighborhood and I noticed something strange. Even though it was after dark, almost all my neighbors were outside of their houses. Some sitting on their porch steps. A few standing in the street. They looked like they were waiting for something. Almost like they didn’t know what to do with themselves until it happened.

  I rolled down my tinted window to get a better look, and peered out at the Headrick family, sitting on their porch, just staring out into the night. When Jack Headrick saw me pass by in the backseat of April’s car, he stood and motioned to his wife and kids. Much to my surprise, they started following the car as we drove down the street. Other neighbors followed in a quiet procession.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Slade seemed to flinch at the sound of my voice breaking the silence.

  “They know,” Brent said, speaking for the first time since I’d gotten into the car. “Reports about the explosion have been on the radio all afternoon. I imagine the television, too. Someone must have leaked your dad’s name to the press. They all know what happened to him.”

  Slade pulled into the driveway of my house. The long line of people following us suddenly felt like a funeral march. I sat there, unable to get out of the car yet. I wanted to shout at them through the rolled-down window to go away. I didn’t want them here. I didn’t want to see the concern on their faces. Didn’t want to answer their questions. They’d all want news. They’d want to know why my dad had been at that warehouse in the first place. They’d want someone to tell them what they could do for us. They’d want someone to care that they cared.

  He’s your father. What right do they have to invade your space, acting like they’d almost lost him, too?

  I opened the car door and bolted toward the house, careful not to run unnaturally fast, though. Not with so many people watching. I just wanted to get inside, away from all these people. But as I approached the porch, the front door opened and April stepped through the doorway. She shook like a nervous cocker spaniel, and her puffy face was splotched with red tearstains. So much for keeping this from April. Before I could react, she padded down the porch steps and threw her arms around me in a bear hug so tight it reminded me of my old friend Don Mooney.

  “Oh, honey, are you okay?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said, tearing up over the fact that her first question had been about me. “But I just want to go inside. I need to get away from them.”

  The moonstone pulsed in my pocket between us as April rubbed her hand up and down my back. It felt so reassuring—the first real hug tonight—that for the first time this evening I didn’t feel quite so alone.

  “They’re here because they need to be,” April said.

  I turned my head and looked out at the yard. By now, most of the neighborhood had converged on my lawn, although a few people hung back in the street. It reminded me of when Baby James had gone missing, the way practically the whole parish had shown up to help search for one of their own.

  I realized then that the wolf in my head had been wrong. My dad belonged to these people, too. He was their pastor—their father, too. They had every right to feel like he belonged to them. They had every right to be concerned. If this were a werewolf pack, Dad would be their alpha.

  No, they were more like a flock without their shepherd.

  I mustered up my strength and let go of April. I turned and faced my neighbors. I could see the same question forming on all their lips. “Thank you for your show of support,” I said in my best impersonation of Dad’s authoritative-yet-reassuring voice. “I am truly moved by your love for my father. His condition is still critical, but he has improved some in the last hour. I will make sure someone spreads the word whenever I hear something more.”

  I was immediately bombarded by a string of questions about how it happened, and I told them the same lie I’d told the police who had questioned me in the ER: that Dad had been scouting out a new location for a rescue shelter in the city, but I had no idea what had caused the explosion.

  More questions followed, and then at least three of my neighbors offered to bring over dinner.

  “Thank you for your offers,” I said. “However, someone else in the parish needs your help more than I do. I was at the hospital just now when Pete Bradshaw unfortunately passed away.”

  April gasped next to me, along with several others in the crowd.

  “I am sure his mother could use your love and goodwill more than I can at this moment. Please, put your energy to use for her.” I knew that was what my father would want them to do. Pete had his problems, but his mother didn’t deserve to lose her only son.

  I thanked everyone again and then turned to go inside. April followed me up the rest of the porch steps. We ducked into the house, and as I closed the door behind us, I watched a few of my neighbors slowly head down our street toward Rose Drive, where Ann Bradshaw lived.

  “You almost sounded like a pastor,” April said. “Maybe you have a future in public leadership.”

  “I doubt that,” I mumbled.

  “I do not,” came Gabriel’s voice from the kitchen. I peered down the hallway and saw him rise from his seat at the table. “And that future may be sooner than you think.” He set what looked like a sketchbook on the table and looked at me. “We need to talk, Grace.”


  FIVE MINUTES LATER

  April made her excuses to leave, as if by a prearranged cue from Gabriel. I knew exactly where she was headed.

  “Is someone with Jude now?” I asked.

  “I sent Ryan and Zach.”

  “Does he know?”

  “He knows there was some sort of accident, but I told the others not to say anything yet.”

  I sighed with relief, but then I knew what needed to be done next. “You should tell him. But keep Ryan and Zach there with you, in case.… I don’t know how he’ll react.”

  I knew I should be the one to break the news to my brother, but I just couldn’t do it. What if he didn’t react at all? What if he didn’t care? I just couldn’t bear to see that happen.

  And I have something more important to do now, I thought as I patted the moonstone in my pocket, just to reassure myself that it was still there.

  As April went out the front door, Gabriel beckoned me to the table. The sketchbook I didn’t recognize sat in front of him, and he clenched a charcoal pencil in a white-knuckled grasp. I wanted to tell him that I didn’t have time to talk—that I needed to focus all my energy on figuring out how to use the moonstone to bring Daniel back now that I had it—but the grave look in Gabriel’s eyes, and the way April had bugged out of here, told me that whatever he had to say was serious. And honestly, I still didn’t know if I was ready to trust anyone else with the truth that I had the moonstone.

  I pulled up a kitchen chair and sat next to Gabriel.

  “First of all, I’m sorry,” he said. “As your father’s junior pastor, it should have been my responsibility to address his parishioners outside. However, considering the circumstances, I did not think it was wise with all of this.” He indicated the bandage on his face that covered the cut that had reopened during our failed healing session, and the bruises that painted his jaw. It had been a couple of hours since I saw him last, but they looked just as dark and painful. I wondered how long they would take to heal.

  “I am the one who is sorry. I was just so desperate to help my dad. I should have known I wasn’t ready.”

  “It is my fault. I should have been aware of how much anger you’re holding inside of you.”

  I stared at him.

  “Are you familiar with the story of the unmerciful servant?”

  I really wasn’t in the mood for a Bible story, but I could tell Gabriel’s mind was set, so I nodded my head.

  “Then you know that a merciful king forgave his servant’s great debt when he could not pay. But when that same servant went to collect a lesser debt from a fellow countryman, and found that he could not pay, the servant was angry and threw him into prison. When the king heard of this, he was wrothful with the servant for not showing the same compassion he had been shown, and the king threw the servant into debtors’ prison as well.”

  “I’m not sure what that has to do with anything right now,” I said, with more frustration than I had intended.

  “You are so full of anger, Grace. I could feel it when we were connected. All that anger swirling inside of you—it will eat you alive if you do not deal with it. It is a power just as strong as love. You channeled it instead of your positive energy. It is like letting your inner wolf attack somebody else—but from the inside. That is what caused this.” He indicated his damaged face. “You reopened my wounds. I just hope I took the brunt of the attack, and not your father.”

  I dropped my head. So I was the reason those monitors went off in Dad’s hospital room. “You mean, I can hurt people—literally—with my anger?” I clasped my hands together. They felt like dangerous weapons.

  “Not as much as you can hurt yourself. We have discussed this before, but the wolf inside of you feeds on your negative emotions. You must recognize your anger and get rid of it before you give your wolf more power. I know you are strong enough to withstand an attack from the outside—you proved that in the warehouse. Yet letting the wolf attack you from the inside is much more insidious.” He picked at the bandage on his face. “Tell me, Grace, who are you angry with?”

  “I don’t know. No one.” That wasn’t true. “Everyone.” They’ve all let you down, and now he’s giving you a lecture? I concentrated on the stone in my pocket to help regain some control. “I’m angry at my father for not letting me go to the warehouse and insisting that he go instead. I’m angry at Talbot for letting Dad get hurt, and for being a lying son of a…” I let the sentence drop off.

  “But your anger runs deeper than that. The anger I felt in you stemmed from before today.” Gabriel took a deep breath and looked me right in the eyes. “Are you angry with Daniel?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure about that? It would be easy to resent him.”

  “Resent him? How could I be angry with someone who sacrificed everything for me? He was the one who was supposed to get away. I made him promise to escape the warehouse if he got the chance, but instead he tried to save me. How can I resent him for not being here?”

  And there it was, just under the surface. All Gabriel had to do was scratch at it, and it came oozing up, like blood from a scab. I was angry with Daniel. Part of me resented him for not being here. He was the one who had left me alone. He should have been with me in the hospital today, wrapping his arms around me, reassuring me that my father was going to be okay. It was irrational, I know. He couldn’t control the fact that he wasn’t there.

  Your father wouldn’t have gone to the warehouse if Daniel were here. It’s his fault your father got hurt.

  Hell.

  I knew it was the wolf who had said it, but only because it had uncovered the idea buried deep inside my subconscious. How could I have thought something so terrible? Tears pricked at the backs of my eyes.

  “Why am I so angry at him? It isn’t right. He sacrificed everything for me.”

  “Because he was not supposed to sacrifice himself for you. He was not supposed to try to save you.”

  “I made him promise to escape if he had the chance. He was supposed to let me die so he could save himself and my family. But he broke that promise. He threw himself over that balcony to save me, and he was turned into the white wolf.”

  “And now he is stuck that way.”

  And that’s why I’m so angry with him. “Does that make me a horrible person?”

  “It makes you human.” He reached out and placed his hand on my shoulder. “But you must consider this, Grace. You and Daniel are connected—deeper so than we were at the hospital. You feel what he feels. You know that he needs a moonstone, and that part of him is leaving. But have you considered that he may feel what you feel? Perhaps your anger is what is driving him away.”

  Gabriel might as well have stabbed a silver knife into my heart for how much his words pained me. “Do you really believe that?”

  “It is just a speculation. Yet I think you need to find a way to forgive him—before it is too late. Find a way to forgive everyone before you find yourself alone with only the wolf inside your head for company. Daniel.

  Your father. Your mother. Your brother…”

  I looked away.

  “God.”

  “God?” I glanced back at Gabriel. “I never said anything about being angry with God.”

  “You did not have to. I could feel what was in your heart at the hospital, and just now, you said that Daniel ‘was turned into the white wolf.’ Not ‘he turned into the white wolf.’ As if you blame someone else, some outside force, for turning him. You blame God.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Had he really seen that in my heart?

  “Tell me, my child,” he said, sounding very much like a priest questioning a sinner at confessional, “with all of these challenges you have been facing this week, have you prayed for guidance?”

  I blinked at him. It was an intrusive question that made the wolf inside me snarl evil insults. I shook my head again to get rid of it. “No,” I admitted softly.

  “Do not forget who you are, Grace Divine. You
r father is a pastor, and you are talking to an eight-hundred-year-old monk, but He”—Gabriel pointed up to the heavens—“is the one you need to turn to now.”

  “But what if I can’t? What if I’m … afraid?”

  Gabriel tilted his head with curiosity. “Afraid you will not get an answer? Have you lost your faith … ?”

  “No. I know God is there. I just don’t understand him anymore. I don’t get why he created the Urbat in the first place. I don’t get why he let them be corrupted like they were. Why would he create this curse? Why would he do this to us? To me? Why would he turn Daniel into the white wolf and trap him that way? That’s not what I wanted. It’s not what I asked for.”

  “Asked for?”

  “The last time I prayed—in the warehouse—I asked God to find a way to spare Daniel. A way to save him and my family. I told God he could let me die, but I begged Him to spare the others. I was ready to die, but then Daniel jumped from the balcony and was transformed into the white wolf, and then everything turned out the way it did. Everyone was spared, in a way. My plea was answered, but not in the way I expected. The price was not what I was ready to pay. I don’t want that to happen again.” I bit my lip, and we both sat in silence as my thoughts finally started to come together. “I guess deep down I really am angry at God.”

  “There are times I have doubted. Times I have lost my way—without my anchor I would probably be lost still. Yet I know there is a purpose in all of this—even if after almost a millennium, I still do not know exactly how God works. But I do know that you need to work out this anger, find your own anchor, and—unlike the unmerciful servant in the story—learn to forgive in order to be forgiven. Even if God is the one you need to forgive. Even if it is yourself.”

  I dropped my gaze. Perhaps I was the one I was the most angry with in all of this. I laughed uneasily to break the tension that was thick inside of me. “Remind me to never do a mind-meldy thing with you again. You’re far too perceptive.”