The Savage Grace

by Bree Despain

  “That’s not what I meant.” Daniel looked me right in the eyes. “I know Pete isn’t really Pete anymore. But we still knew him. You guys were friends once. Killing a demon wearing the face of your old friend, that’s got to affect you differently than just killing some random Gelal. And we both know what happened last time.…”

  I bowed my head. “I know.” The first, and last, time I’d killed a demon, I’d experienced such a power rush that I’d almost lost control and given in to the wolf. “But I think I’m ready. I need to clean up the messes I’ve made.”

  Because deep down, I knew Pete’s undeath had happened, ultimately, because of me. Even if I wasn’t the one who killed him the first time, it was my responsibility to do it now.

  “Either way, I want you to wear this. Maybe it will help you avoid any side effects.” Daniel removed his moonstone necklace and handed it to me.

  “Thanks,” I said, remembering what it had been like to go into battle against a demon without one.

  Daniel opened the weapons pack that April had sent us with. He handed me a stake bedazzled with bright pink and orange gemstones, and he selected for himself a stake that had a gold wolf’s head attached to the end.

  “Sure you don’t want the sparkly one?” I dangled my stake in front of him.

  “I don’t do sparkles,” Daniel said. He cracked a smile for the first time since we left April’s. “But the whole ensemble looks pretty darn hot on you.”

  “Wait.” I pulled down the black mask, adorned with three matching pink gemstones at the temples, over the upper half of my face. “What do you think now?”

  “Cute, but I prefer seeing your face.” Daniel tied his own black mask over his eyes. Luckily, his was free of any sparkles. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

  I nodded. “What about you? How’s your shoulder?”

  The way he’d been carrying himself all day, I’d almost forgotten about the bullet wound. I realized that it might not be the best idea for us to head into battle with one of us injured.

  Daniel rolled his shoulders. “It stings like crazy, but I’ll be okay. I think it’s even started to heal a bit.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Let’s go.” He reached for the door handle.

  I put my hand on his arm. “Thank you.”

  His dark eyes blinked behind the mask. “What for?”

  “For not suggesting that I stay in the car while you go in and take care of things for me.”

  “We’re partners in this.”

  “Good,” I said.

  We got out of the car. The lost boys, wearing various Halloween masks, fell in behind us and we made our way toward the farmhouse through the crowd of teens who were clamoring to get past the bouncers. Some of the partygoers were dressed in costumes, others just in assortments of black, camo, lace, and leather. I wondered if they were eager to get inside the trance party because they knew what was going on in there—or because they didn’t have a clue. Part of me wanted to shout at them to run away.

  “Just act like you belong here, and no one will stop us,” Daniel said, bypassing all the wannabes standing in line. I called on my superpowered balance in order not to wobble in the high-heeled black boots that went with my ensemble as we strode right up to the large bouncers. Daniel gave one of them a slight nod. He let us pass.

  Daniel pushed open the door, and techno music burst into my eardrums. Inside reminded me of the Depot, with strobe lights, dancers, and plenty of foggy smoke wafting in the air. The biggest difference here was the decrepit farmhouse furniture interspersed with garish haunted-house decor, looking all the more frightening in the flashing lights and smoke.

  “Fan out,” Daniel said to the boys. “I want you to act as lookouts only. No engaging with any of the Shadow Kings.”

  I knew he hadn’t wanted them coming along into a potential fight—didn’t want to feel responsible for them if anything went wrong. But I’d convinced him that they should be here. They were his pack after all.

  “This place reeks,” I said, gagging on the mixture of smells in the air: alcohol, perfume, cigarettes, decaying wood from the house itself, the must from yellowed drapes that hung from the blacked-out windows, and an underlying scent probably only someone like Daniel or me could pick out—like garbage that’s been baking out in the sun. The stench of sour milk and rotting meat.

  “Akhs and Gelals.” I covered my nose. “This place is crawling with them.”

  “Feeding grounds,” Daniel said. He looked at me. “You okay? I know this isn’t your scene.”

  The first time I’d been to a party like this, at Daniel’s apartment last year, I’d run away scared. The second time was when April and I went to the Depot looking for Jude, and we’d had to be rescued and dragged out of there by Talbot. The third time, I’d had to leave before I lost control and hurt someone.

  But this time, I wasn’t leaving the party until I’d kicked some major butt.

  “Yeah,” I said, and led him toward a crowd of dancing teens in the family room of the house. “There he is,” I whispered, and nodded my head toward Pete Bradshaw. He lurked in the shadows behind a group of girls dressed in matching red-devil costumes. The girls danced in a circle, close to each other in a fashion that would have been provocative if their arms and legs weren’t moving in a such a weird, jerking sort of way. Almost like someone else was directing their motions. Like puppets on strings.

  “Why are they moving like that?” I scanned the room, noticing more people dancing and moving in that odd way. A girl standing on a tabletop, dressed as a fairy, looked particularly horrible the way her arms moved—like she was trying desperately to get them to stop but couldn’t.

  “They’re in trances,” Daniel said. “If an Akh stares into your eyes long enough, it can keep you in a hypnotic state for quite some time, even without the continued eye-to-eye connection. These people are being controlled by someone else.”

  “And they do this on purpose?”

  “It’s quite the high,” he said in a way that made me wonder if he’d tried it before in his former life. “They feel stoned. But their brains are starting to fight it. Hence the jerking movements.”

  I tore my sight off the gruesome dancers and looked back at Pete. He’d narrowed his sights on a girl in a curly blonde wig, dressed as a sexy vampire. Velvet cape and all. Her back was to me, and I couldn’t see her face, but I watched as she tapped the shoulder of one of the dancing devil girls. “Kristy, I want to go,” I heard her say. The other girl didn’t respond. “Kristy, please? Answer me.” Something about her voice made me cringe. It was laced with so much fear. Her friends had probably dragged her here, and she hadn’t known what she was getting herself into.

  Pete must have heard the fear also. He licked his lips as he stared at her. I knew what he was thinking: easy prey. And I doubted it was just her psychic energy he wanted to feed off of.

  I leaned in close to Daniel and pecked a kiss against his throat, making it look like we were merely on the dance floor to make out. “Pete’s on the prowl,” I whispered into Daniel’s ear.

  “Then he’ll be easily baited.” Daniel kissed me. “What do you think?”

  Our plan had been to find away to lure Pete to a secluded area of the haunted house—in order to kill him without attracting any attention.

  Daniel caressed his finger along my face. He pecked a few kisses behind my ear and then whispered, “There,” turning my head slightly toward an arched doorway, guarded by two more freaky scarecrows. A sign, painted in garish letters the color of blood, read, library of horrors: enter at your own risk. A yellow X of caution tape blocked it off from the rest of the party.

  “See if you can get him to follow you in there,” Daniel said. “I’ll be waiting.”

  “You think he’ll go for it?”

  “He’s a horny, hungry, teenage boy. Believe me, he’ll go for you. Undead or not.” Daniel gave me one last kiss, and then we broke apart. “Just don’t let him ge
t close enough to realize who you are before you’re alone. I don’t want anyone else getting hurt.”

  I watched him quietly maneuver through the party and then slip into the library. I turned my attention back to Pete just in time to see him make a move for the vampire-costumed girl. He put his hand on her shoulder, making her jump. He leaned in close to her face.

  “Don’t look into his eyes,” I whispered.

  But she must have, because only a matter of seconds later, she was holding his hand as he pulled her through the crowd of dancers. She didn’t seem to notice his talonlike fingernails—a classic sign of an Akh.

  I started to go after them, but before I made it more than two quick steps, someone else stepped out in front of me, blocking my path. He wore a long brown trench coat over what looked a Lone Ranger costume: blue shirt, leather pants, cowboy hat, and a black eye mask that was supposed to obscure his identity. But I’d recognize his bright green eyes—and belt buckle—anywhere.

  “Talbot, what the hell are you doing here?”

  “I want to help you.” By the smell of his breath and the whiskey bottle in his hand, I could tell he’d been drinking.

  “I told you I didn’t need it. Daniel and I are taking care of things.” I tried to step around him, but he countered my movements.

  “But there’s more going on here than you think. There’re other—”

  “Yeah, I know. This place is crawling with Gelal and Akhs. You taught me how to recognize their scent, remember?” I looked over his shoulder so I wouldn’t lose sight of Pete and the girl. They were still making their way through the crowd, presumably toward the exit door on the other side of the room that led to the grounds behind the farmhouse. So much for getting a chance to lure Pete to the library.

  “Yeah, I do remember,” Talbot said. “And that’s why I should be the one here with you. This is what we do, you and me. We’re the demon hunters.” He opened his trench coat and showed me his long steel sword taped inside. “Daniel is completely untrained.”

  “Something tells me Daniel doesn’t need training.”

  I pushed Talbot away from me. “Go home.” I marched past him, looking at Pete and his prey as they went out the exit door. The girl was angled so I could see her face for the first time—and despite the curly blonde wig, I recognized her.

  Katie Summers.

  This must have been the party she’d invited me to. The party her friends from the city—who were presumably the tranced-out dancing devil girls—had heard about.

  I swore and tried to go after them, but Talbot caught me by the hand, trying to stop me from getting away.

  “Grace, you need me.”

  I did not have time for this. “I said go home!” I shouted, and punched him across the jaw with all my might. He let go of my hand and stumbled backward into a dancing girl. The two fell to the ground, tangled with each other. His bottle of whiskey sloshed all over them.

  I pushed my way through the gyrating crowd as fast as I could, which didn’t feel fast enough. When I made it to the door, I flung it open and dashed out into the dark farmyard. Even adjusting my eyes to night vision, I couldn’t see Pete or Katie among the hay bales, scarecrows, and other freakish Halloween decorations. The heels of my boots sank into the moist ground as I headed toward the dilapidated barn, and I realized I should be looking for footprints. I scanned the ground and found two sets of prints headed for the wall of cornstalks just beyond the barnyard.

  Great, I thought. They’ve gone into the corn maze.

  I pulled out my cell phone and typed out a text to Daniel: Corn maze. Pete’s got Katie. I hit the Send button, but the text didn’t go through. Crap! Cell-phone reception had always been spotty in the farmland that stretched between Rose Crest and Apple Valley.

  A noise that sounded like either a girl’s laugher or a whimper echoed from somewhere in the maze. I hit Send one more time, then stuck my phone into the pocket of my leather jacket, hoping it would eventually go through. I jogged into the maze. The hay-strewn ground made it impossible to make out footprints, so I had to follow Pete’s smell and the whimper-laugh, which sounded every few seconds, the best I could. I took two rights, two lefts, three more rights, and then rounded another left and almost ran smack into someone wearing tattered, black robes. I jumped back and almost let out a yelp, but then I realized it was just a dummy dressed like the Grim Reaper. A very real spider was busy spinning a web in the curve of the Reaper’s scythe, and some sort of sticky bloodlike substance smeared the dull metal blade.

  I was about to turn back, thinking I’d hit a dead end, when I heard that pitiful laugh again, coming from just beyond the Reaper. That’s when I noticed the dummy was blocking the entrance to a square-shaped clearing in the maze. I ducked under the spider and the scythe into the opening to find more ghoulish dummies lurking in the square. One figurine looked like he was supposed to be both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and an orange-painted knockoff of Frankenstein’s monster loomed in the corner. Just beyond a dummy of a totally inaccurate werewolf, I saw Pete Bradshaw holding Katie in his arms.

  At first it looked like a lover’s embrace, but I knew better. Katie’s eyes were locked with his, and his talonlike fingernails scratched at her neck, leaving row after row of bloody cuts. With each tear of his talons, Katie would start to whimper, only for the sound to shift into a strained giggle. Like Pete was using his psychic powers to convince her that she liked it.

  My stomach already felt ill from the sight in front of me, but as Pete raised his blood-smeared fingers to his lips and licked them—the way I’d relish a spatula covered in brownie batter—I almost lost the stale taquitos from April’s freezer that I’d eaten for dinner.

  I took three deep breaths to keep from hurling, then walked right up to Pete with my hands on my hips. “No fair!” I said in my whiniest voice. “I want a turn.”

  Pete’s head snapped in my direction, his pointy teeth bared and his lips smeared with blood. Katie’s head lolled back over his arms. “Go away,” he snarled.

  “Whatever.” I grabbed Katie’s limp body and yanked her out of the way. “Why should she have all the fun?” I made sure Katie could stand on her own two feet and then pushed her aside. “Get lost, girl.”

  Katie stumbled forward and then started walking in a lazy circle, like she was in a trance—which I guess is normal since she was. Hopefully, she’d stay dazed through what I had to do next.

  “This one’s mine,” I said, stepping closer to Pete.

  “I am?” Pete asked. He looked me up and down, taking in the tall boots, fishnet tights, little pleather shorts, lacy cami, mysterious eye mask, and my tough-girl leather jacket. He cocked his head in appreciation. “I am,” he said.

  “You better be.” I grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and pulled him close like I was about to kiss him. “I was promised a trance when I came to this party. Now give me what I want.”

  “My pleasure,” he said, and clasped his taloned hands on either side of my face. “I always loved the feisty girls.” But just as he was about to look me in the eyes, I clamped my eyelids shut and kneed him as hard as I could in the groin.

  Pete’s hands fell away from my face, and he wailed as he doubled over, coughing—proving that even the undead feel it where it counts.

  I didn’t get much time for satisfaction before Pete roared and came charging at me with his fangs and talons bared. “I’m gonna kill you for that!”

  I swung out of his way, and he tackled the werewolf dummy instead of me. He tore off one of its limbs and threw it to the ground.

  “Really? Are you sure?” I asked. “’Cause I’m pretty certain this is actually the part where I kill you.”

  “What?” Pete asked. His lips dropped over his Akh fangs.

  I pulled out my stake from my jacket’s inside pocket. “Yep. That’s pretty much what’s going to happen.”

  Pete screamed and lunged at me. I twisted out of his path and sent a kick into his back. He stumbled toward the Fra
nkenstein statue. I was feeling pretty good about having him cornered, and my ability to be done with him soon, when a dazed Katie Summers stumbled and swayed right into him.

  “No!” I shouted as he grabbed her by the neck, his sharp fingers wrapping around her throat. She didn’t even try to scream, but I could see the panic behind her glazed-over eyes, as she tried to fight her way out of her trance.

  Pete propelled her forward by his grasp on her neck. “Let me pass or I’ll rip her throat out.”

  I scrambled out of his way—what else could I have done—and let him drag Katie by the neck to the clearing’s exit. He was going to escape into the depths of the maze. I lifted my stake to throw at his back as he crouched to climb under the Grim Reaper’s scythe, but then he stopped and turned halfway toward me, making it impossible for me to aim at his heart.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve got your scent. We’ll find you when I’m done with her.”

  We?

  Pete let out a cackle that sounded more like the screeching of a bird … but then the metal blade of the Reaper’s scythe came crashing down on his head. He screamed and let go of Katie. She sank to the ground, seemingly unconscious, just as Daniel burst out from behind the Reaper’s tattered robes and into the clearing.

  I practically cheered when I saw him.

  Pete screeched with anger.

  Daniel smacked him in the head again with the scythe. It looked painful, but the blade was too dull to do any real damage. Daniel cast the weapon aside and grabbed Pete with his bare hands. Pete clawed at his grip and then went for Daniel’s neck, but Daniel pushed him away just in time. Pete whirled around and made a lunge at me instead. He sent a clawed hand at my face, ripping my mask off.

  It fell to the ground, and my first instinct was to try to hide my face, to keep Pete from recognizing me, but really, what was the point now? Part of me wanted him to know it was me who was taking him down.

  A shrill laugh escaped Pete’s lips. “As if I didn’t know it was you.”