Grace of Day - BK 4 of the Grace Series

by S. L. Naeole

  I stepped in front of Robert, putting my hands out and touching Bane’s grotesquely large chest with my palms, pushing and yet not because I couldn’t. He wasn’t a wall; he was the house.

  “You don’t take orders from Robert because you can’t. But you can from me. Right?”

  Bane looked like every thought in the world had suddenly exploded in his head. His eyes bulged, his lips curled back over his teeth in rage and confusion. His nostrils—already the size of grapes—flared; hot air blowing out from them onto my face.

  “I was told that I’m part of the first circle. If that’s true then you have to listen to me. Stop.”

  Bane did just that. Everything stopped, like a switch had been flipped and his power had been cut off.

  “You went away because you had to, didn’t you? When you were attacking my friend’s car?” I asked, stepping closer.

  “Yes.”

  “You went away because I wanted you to.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you put me down because I told you to, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then tell me who told you to kill me.”

  “Gabriel.”

  This wasn’t a surprise.

  “Bane, I want you to stop trying to kill me, okay?”

  “I cannot. I was given an order and I have to follow it. It is my call, it is my duty.”

  I looked at him, his face so unnaturally large that every feature was exaggerated in its distortion, and I felt sorry for him. He couldn’t help what he was doing. He didn’t want to die anymore than I did.

  I moved my hand away from his chest and brought it to his face. It was hot, instinct and duty pulsing inside him like blood would. I promise I won’t make you go against your call. I just need you to listen to me.

  I felt Robert shuffle behind me, desperately trying to hear the thoughts I was sharing with Bane, but I wasn’t about to let that happen. Bane wasn’t evil. He didn’t have any ulterior motives like Sam and Isis did. He wasn’t even keeping secrets the way Lem was. He deserved to be trusted, and he needed to know that he could trust in return.

  And keeping Robert out was the only way I knew how to do that.

  Bane left after hearing what I’d had to say, but the chill that Robert had created remained. He was angry with me. He was more than angry. He felt betrayed.

  “You struck a deal with him,” he accused.

  “What I said to him doesn’t matter right now.”

  “It matters when he still plans on killing you. I could see that as clearly as if he’d said it.”

  “Yes, but it doesn’t matter right now. We have to get to the house.”

  “Grace-”

  I spun around on my heel and glared at him, suddenly angry that he was questioning me when it was my life that was in jeopardy here, not his.

  “If you want to stay here and argue then go ahead and do that; be stubborn. I’m going to help your sister and my best friends. They’re facing who knows what because of me and I’m not there to help, so excuse me if the only thing I’m worried about right now is whether or not they’re okay.”

  It hurt to see his face change from angry to disappointed, but I didn’t have time to dwell on it. I didn’t have time to feel any guilt or even any remorse. He would have simply have to understand, the way I had to understand.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize—you’re always apologizing, the way I’m always apologizing, and right now there’s no room for it. We just have to…do. We have to do what we need to.”

  His expression was one of distaste, but he was giving in. He moved quickly, lifting me and cradling me in his arms as he ran, pushing off into the sky just as the sound of sirens reached us.

  “Azor…was that another throne?”

  Robert nodded. “He was Bane’s…companion.”

  “Companion? His friend companion or his-”

  “They were lovers.”

  “Oh.”

  “You sound surprised.”

  I nodded. “I am. I didn’t think…”

  “You didn’t think what?”

  “I didn’t think something like that could want or love anything. He seems so cold, lifeless…even his reaction when you told him that you’d killed Azor seemed like it came up short, especially if that was his lover.”

  It was easy to see the sadness in Robert’s face, even when he tried to appear stoic. It was in his eyes—they always said more than even his thoughts allowed.

  “Thrones don’t have the ability to really feel anything. They were all created to do nothing but punish others—they couldn’t have the ability to love or feel remorse. What you saw in Bane was as deep as his feelings allow.”

  Now I understood the sadness in Robert’s eyes. He knew what it had felt like to not feel anything, and then to be bombarded by it because of me. And despite the pain and heartache he’d suffered, he wouldn’t have given it up for anything.

  “You always were able to understand me better than I could,” he laughed softly before pushing aside my hair with his nose and nuzzling a kiss to my temple.

  “I’m supposed to be your better half; of course I understand you better,” I kidded.

  I looked down and saw familiar streets of my neighborhood. Summer was almost over; kids were out enjoying their last days of freedom.

  “It’s a good thing none of the kids here like to fly kites,” Robert joked.

  “It’s kinda dangerous to fly kites in a neighborhood with power lines over ever house,” I pointed out.

  “So is getting on a motorcycle with a complete stranger.”

  “I knew you weren’t dangerous,” I said unconvincingly.

  “That, my love, is a lie.” We laughed, a final moment of freedom before my street came into view and my house, familiar and comforting in its rundown appearance, welcomed my eyes.

  We approached it like a solitary storm cloud, Robert’s misting camouflaging our arrival. My bedroom window was open, and I climbed in, the quiet that existed there completely unnatural and eerie. I called out for anyone, certain that Lark and the others had already arrived—I could feel them—but even after Robert drifted in, his arrival far more graceful and fluid, I received no response.

  “They’re not here,” I noted out loud.

  “They were drawn out,” Robert said, moving blindingly fast around me and out the bedroom door. I ran after him, finding him in the living room, my voice cracking at the mess that lay there.

  Every piece of furniture looked like it had been hacked to pieces. The photos that had rested on the walls and on the shelves were on the floor, frameless and shredded. Dad’s Christmas albums were in pieces as well.

  “What happened? Did something blow up in here?” I asked, hearing my boots crunch against debris and not caring as I bent down to pick up the only album cover that had not been destroyed: the cat carols.

  “No. They weren’t even here. They never came inside.” He looked away and then the door flew open, and he was gone. I ran to the door and then I heard it. Everyone heard it.

  The commotion next door was louder than anything that should have existed in any neighborhood. Oh God…they weren’t drawn there. Only one person had been drawn there—the other two followed.

  “Graham!” I shouted, rushing towards the house.

  Something had forced him to run home. And I knew what it was. The white truck parked in front of the garage was screaming it.

  Richard had finally come home.

  And so had the first wave of the turned.

  I didn’t care if an audience was crowding around on the street, or if the police and fire department were on their way. My best friend was in this house, fighting to save his dad. After everything he’d done to help save mine, nothing else mattered but making sure he succeeded.

  I ran into the open door, hearing it slam shut behind me, cutting off the world.

  FALLING FROM GRACE

  There’s a certain smell that one associates with hopel
essness. It’s stale, and heavy, like a moldy, wet towel. It clings to you the moment you inhale, and you can’t shrug it off.

  That smell used to exist in Graham’s home. It had taken weeks to air out but eventually it left. The residue had finally been wiped clean when Lark and Graham began spending most of their time together in this house. Happiness and love finally had taken back control and it had showed.

  And even now, with the stench of mutation and death, I could still feel the hope that existed here. The trouble was, hope can be had by anything. It doesn’t matter if you’re good or evil, you still hope for things, and I could hear the thoughts of things inside…and they were evil.

  The living room was a warzone. It was even more destroyed than my own. I could hear the violence in every room taking place. I could see Robert in the kitchen, his hands on the head of a creature that looked half-human, half-rabid dog. It foamed at the mouth and screamed as its hands, with fingers that looked like the pads on a dog’s paw, tried desperately to grab Robert and tear him away.

  I rushed forward and then stopped because I didn’t know what to do. How could I help Robert? I didn’t know how to fight and I didn’t know if this…person was even worth fighting. I looked into its eyes, large and gray like dishwater, and saw recognition there.

  My face had been burned into its mind, and it believed hopelessly that destroying me would return it to its former life, a life that I realized I would have done anything to regain if it’d been me.

  But it was me. My life had been hijacked just as much as this person’s. Everything was dependent upon me surviving. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to die.

  “Graaaahhh!

  Rough hands were around my throat, and I fell—hard—onto the wooden floor. I heard a crack but didn’t know if it was bone or the floor that made that sound. Hot, moist breath that smelled like roadkill swallowed all breathable air around me, while foamy saliva dribbled onto my face, burning my skin.

  I couldn’t see any eyes; I could only see that cavernous mouth hovering above me, coming closer and closer, blocking out the light. The inside of that mouth looked like corrugated cardboard, the teeth that lined lips that looked like wet sponge blackened with gray points.

  This wasn’t my plan. I wasn’t going to be taken out by a giant mouth. I planted my feet on the ground and pushed, my body lifting the creature just enough to fling myself to the side. The two of us rolled across the living room floor, crashing into overturned tables and destroyed sofas. Broken furniture stabbed me in my back, my arms, and my face while shattered glass and porcelain sliced into my clothes, jabbing into me like dozens of bee stings.

  We both grunted, like desperate animals, each one fighting for the dominant top position. I knew what would happen if I lost this fight, but my attacker didn’t. It and every creature like it were fighting for a lie, and in this case, the lie was far more powerful than the truth. So powerful that I found myself on my back again, my neck pinned down by those hands once more, my head cracking against the floor and sending spangles to my eyes.

  I brought my hands up to the creature’s face, its overly large jaw still hanging open above me, and shoved. It barely moved; my fingers unable to find any traction in the wet, slobbery fur that covered it. I brought my feet up against my chest and kicked but the creature was slippery, its body covered in some kind of slime that caused my feet to lose their grip and just slide down its torso. And the more I tried, the more gunked up my boots became.

  The hands circling my throat were squeezing, pressing against my windpipe and forcing me to both gag and choke at the same time, my eyes closing in reflex. This was a mistake.

  The mouth, wide and open and dripping with saliva closed the moment I couldn’t see. Its teeth clamped down with hesitation, surprising me, but even in that hesitation, each pierce of its teeth burned as the saliva entered my skin. I screamed in pain, the only time I made a sound that wasn’t guttural. The minute the cry of my voice left me, the pressure against my head lessened.

  My scream was replaced by shrieks that weren’t my own, and as the pressure around my neck disappeared, my eyes opened in relief. I could see Robert from the corner of my eye, his face frantic as he heard my thoughts and found himself unable to help me, his attacker now joined by two others.

  It was my turn to feel frantic. I called out for him, but a body blocked the doorway and Robert disappeared. I wanted to call out to him, but inside I knew that I would only distract him further, and what he needed wasn’t distraction—he needed reassurance that I was okay.

  I heard a whimper and turned my head. That was when I saw the creature that had attacked me, its body curled up in a corner, cowering from fear.

  From where I lay, I could take in its appearance completely, safely. Its head was almost plantlike, rounded and capped like a mushroom, what I thought had been fur merely a gray velvet cover. The rest of its body was dark and brown, glimmering with slime. Small, white dots marked its body like a trail that showed you where arms and legs were. Its feet were circular in shape, two stumps that didn’t look solid at all. It was shaking, more afraid than I was, and immediately my mind opened to its thoughts.

  I whimpered at what I heard and saw.

  But not out of fear.

  It was out of sadness.

  What had attacked me with such power hid beneath a grotesque shell a girl; a young girl who’d been tormented and abused and thrown away to the wolves like trash. Everything in her life had been pain and suffering, and yet despite the bleakness of the future that lay ahead of her as a human, she wanted it. She wanted it so badly that she’d try to kill a complete stranger.

  She had been led to believe that I was something horrific, something evil and the reason for all of her suffering, both past and present. It, coupled with her desire to be human again, bred in her an incredible resentment.

  This resentment had altered my appearance in her mind, turning me into a monster in her eyes. It was only my scream that cleared away the fog of anger and allowed her to truly see me for what I was. Only she hadn’t expected me to look like me, another girl who’d once felt just as desperate, just as alone. And now…now she felt she had nothing because in her head, killing me would be like killing herself.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I said softly. She couldn’t hear me over her weeping.

  You don’t have to do this.

  Her head flew up and finally I saw her eyes. They were white, fully white orbs in her dark, featureless face. “You speak like he does,” she said in a voice that sounded like it came through water.

  “I’ve had practice,” I said half-heartedly.

  “He told me if I killed you that he’d make me normal again. He said that you were the reason I look like this.”

  I didn’t have to ask who “he” was. I’d already seen his face in her memories, heard his voice and felt his presence. He’d left a mark on her that ran deeper than anything she bore on the outside. He’d taken a fragile girl and broken her when he should have helped solidify her.

  “I wish I could tell you that what he said was true, that you could be turned back into what you used to be but that’s impossible, whether I’m dead or not.”

  “He said he was an angel, and that he couldn’t lie. He said that killing you is the only way to be normal. You don’t understand how much I want that.”

  I crawled over to her, slipping in the trail of slime she’d left, and put my hands on her knees, her name spilling out the moment it became known to me. “I understand that more than anyone, Patricia. I used to want to be normal, too.”

  “You don’t look like anything’s wrong with you,” she said almost snidely.

  “Yeah, well, to the kids at my school, everything was wrong with me. I didn’t look right, I didn’t dress right, I didn’t have the right kind of family, I didn’t have the right kind of past. We suck as people sometimes because we make others feel like crap—like how you felt and how I felt—but you know what? Being normal for so
meone else isn’t being normal.

  “Do you really want to be like all those girls who made fun of you? Who only felt normal because they picked on you? Do you really want to be with a guy who wouldn’t accept you for who you are just so you can say you’re with someone?”

  “Who’s gonna accept me like this?” Patricia cried out in a burst of noise and slime. “Who’s gonna want a girl who looks like snot? Who’s gonna even be able to look at me like this? You can’t even look at me, I’m so ugly.”

  I wanted to argue against everything she’d said, but the fight in the kitchen stole away my attention. I fought against the need to stay with her and the need to help Robert. My mind filled with images that were his, but my heart hurt with the grief and the sorrow that were hers.

  “You have to kill me.”

  My eyes widened in shock. “What?”

  Patricia stood up. She was taller than I was, her head disk shaped like a mushroom, with a rounded point at the top. Her white eyes were focused on me, her unnatural mouth turned down, altering the shape of her head as she spoke.

  “You have to kill me. I don’t know what’s true or not. I don’t know what’s real or not. Two days ago I thought my life was over; I was ready to kill myself. Ten minutes ago, I was ready to kill you. This is all I know now. Killing you is the only thought I can hold onto for more than a few minutes. It’s all I’m allowed to know.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t want to kill me.”

  “You’re right. I don’t want to kill you, but I will. I will if you don’t kill me first. If what you said is true, if killing you doesn’t turn me back into a human being then I’m dead anyway.”

  A body flew past me, crashing into an overturned chair. It was twisted, broken in ways that seemed impossible. Patricia screamed, the kind of scream that came from terror that began deep within you. She had been prepared to die—she had begged me to kill her—but seeing the results of death was more than she could handle.