Grace of Day - BK 4 of the Grace Series

by S. L. Naeole

  You’re stronger than he is. You know how to stop him, just like you did the other one.

  Lark’s thoughts in my head rang out, sharp and clear despite the fog of pain.

  Of course I knew how. This wasn’t just another angel, who only took orders from their call. This was a throne, whose call was to obey me.

  “Put her down; stop hitting her,” I commanded behind a grimace. My legs were quaking and the tips of my fingers were numb from straining against the pain in the rest of my body, but I was not going to let any of that show. “Put her down. You know you have to listen to me; you can feel it.”

  The throne looked at me, its face showing nothing but shock as it reluctantly did as I ordered. Lark fell to the ground, her body shaking from the sudden release.

  “Now, come here,” I gasped as it began to argue with me silently, each word cutting and slicing into my mind. “You can fight it but you won’t win. I’m in control now.”

  You lie.

  I nearly crumpled; each syllable was like being punched in the head. I had to stop it. “You won’t think another word. You will only speak out loud. If you can’t, then you will only respond by nodding or shaking your head. Is that clear?”

  The angel nodded, although each bounce of its head was preceded with a roar.

  “Good. I want you to find all of the monsters that are hiding in the dark and I want you to destroy them. Don’t touch any humans; leave the humans alone. Protect them if you can, but do not do anything that might hurt them.”

  The angel growled at me, its eyes growing dark as its pupils widened. But it nodded and then turned around, running towards the stairs and disappearing. I hurried to Lark, who seemed dazed and in disbelief.

  “Are you okay?” I asked as I took in her disheveled hair and strangely unmarred skin.

  “I’ll be fine. Zarus doesn’t have permission to punish me so he couldn’t really do anything; he just caught me off guard.”

  “Zarus? Really? Thomas too boring a name?” I quipped. “It’s strange; these thrones guys are huge. They’re like the monsters that we see in those really crappy movies, you know? But they’re not as scary as they look; not really.”

  “Well, nothing is scary when you can control them with a single word,” Lark pointed out blandly. “Enough talking; we’ve got work to do.”

  She dashed ahead, finding classroom after classroom empty. I followed and listened as she did, my head held high, tilted slightly towards each hint of sound. I mimicked her as best I could, but each time she moved forward I could see where I fell short. She knew what she was doing – she’d done this before – but I wasn’t so sure of myself.

  I was so busy trying to listen for anything that sounded like someone in trouble that I tripped over my own feet. I fell, landing on my elbow and yelping, the cry carrying down the hallway and distorting the further away it got.

  “Are you okay?” Lark called out, never stopping to look back.

  “I’m fine,” I groaned. “I just need to…pay attention.”

  I stood up and saw that my fall had torn the sleeve on my shirt. I ran to catch up to Lark, who was near the end of the hallway. She was frozen in front of an open classroom door—the first time she seemed unsure of what to do. She turned to face me, her eyes closed, her hands held out with her head shaking from side-to-side.

  “Don’t. Don’t come any closer, Grace,” she warned.

  “Why? What’s in there?”

  “You don’t want to see this.”

  Never tell someone as stubborn as I am that I don’t want something.

  I shoved my way forward, surprising Lark—and possibly myself—with my strength and determination and looked into the classroom, my feet locking in place the moment I saw what she didn’t want me to see.

  “Oh God…”

  It was Madame Hidani’s class. Or what was Madame Hidani’s class.

  The windows had been blown out and all of the French art posters that were on the wall were shredded and spattered with blood. The desks had all been overturned and piled up in the center of the classroom.

  And they’d been set on fire.

  “Madame Hidani?” I called out.

  I heard her respond, but it wasn’t her voice that came out. Instead I heard her thoughts. They were peppered with pain and fear, but my voice, the sound of it calling for her acted like a balm.

  He took my legs. He took my legs, Grace.

  I ran around the classroom but I couldn’t find her. “Where are you?”

  He buried me.

  “Buried?”

  My eyes couldn’t see what my head was saying. She was buried, but how? And where?

  “Grace, over there,” Lark whispered, her eyes staring at the burning pile of desks.

  “No…”

  Lark clapped her hands, and like a candle that had been blown out, the flames disappeared behind an explosion of smoke. Together we tossed charred desk after charred desk to the side until we reached the broken and blistered body of my French teacher. She was weak and pale, her eyes staring out through wide pupils.

  There was no blood, but there should have been. There should have been because she was right—her legs were missing.

  “Who did this?” I asked as I knelt down beside her. “Who did it?”

  “That’s not important right now, Grace,” Lark said softly. “She needs your help.”

  “My help? I don’t…I don’t understand. What can I do to help her?”

  Lark took my hand and placed it onto Madame Hidani’s chest. She needs you to help end her suffering.

  I tore my hand away and stared through shocked eyes at the beautiful angel who looked at me as though she was surprised by my reaction. “You’re crazy. You’re out of your mind if you think I’m gonna-”

  “She’s in pain, Grace. She’s going into shock and if you don’t help her she’s going to die a very painful death; your mother would have-”

  “I’m not my mother and I never will be! I can’t do what she did. I won’t.”

  I fell beside Madame Hidani and held her head so that I could look into her eyes. “I’m going to get you help. I promise—you’re not going to die.”

  “You can’t make that kind of promise, Grace,” Lark warned. She grabbed my arm, yanking it before stopping, her eyes locked on her hand. “Your elbow…it’s black.”

  I looked down and saw the dark webbed bruising that covered the joint like a patch. “I know.”

  “You know? What do you mean, you know? Does Robert know?”

  I tugged at the sleeve of my shirt, trying desperately to cover the slowly spreading blackness. “Yes.”

  Lark’s face filled with panic. “What about Robert? Has the brui-”

  She couldn’t finish. She already knew the answer; the curse of the Innominate had returned, and it was

  “Oh Grace. I’m sorry. I thought…”

  I shook my head and returned my focus to my injured teacher. “It doesn’t matter what any of us thought. What matters is that we end this and we end it now. Help me pick her up.”

  “She’s in shock, Grace. She can’t be moved.”

  “She can’t stay here either. Whoever got to her might still be out there.”

  It was Salsa. Salsa did this to me.

  In any other situation, in any other life, those words would have made me laugh. Instead I didn’t know whether to cry or simply give up.

  “Shawn? Shawn did this to you?”

  He’s not himself anymore. He’s different. He’s dangerous. You have to leave before he comes back.

  “He’s not half as dangerous as I am,” Lark said with a growl before turning on her heel and rushing out of the room.

  “Lark! Wait!” I called out but she was gone. I slipped my arms beneath my teacher’s body and lifted. I was prepared to strain and grunt with the struggle but she seemed to float up without any effort, as though she weighed less than a baby.

  “I’m going to put you someplace safe.”

 
; I’m going to die, aren’t I?

  “No,” I answered with more certainty than I think I was allowed. “No, you’re not going to die. You’re going to be fine. You’re going to be more than fine.”

  I don’t want to die, Grace. I don’t do dying well.

  I ran out of the classroom, sensing more than hearing the footsteps that were heading towards me from the end of the hallway. Robert was approaching, his face emotionless, his eyes focused on the injured woman in my arms. He wanted her.

  “No. No, you can’t have her,” I said before turning around and running in the opposite direction.

  I knew he would follow, but I didn’t care. All I could see was the wall of police officers and paramedics standing outside the school. I moved as quickly as I could, faster than I think anyone believed possible, and didn’t stop until I felt the sun on my skin and hands at my side, reaching and grabbing for Madame Hidani, whose thoughts had grown quiet.

  “Help her,” I said to the paramedic who began working on her the minute she was on the ground. “Help her, please.”

  “Are you alone? Is there anyone else in the school?” a police officer asked as a pinpoint of light passed from one eye to the other. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Are there any more people in there? Do you know what’s going on?”

  “I…I can’t…”

  I backed up, pulling away from the groping and grasping hands, shaking my head as I avoided the gazes of the curious, the fearful, the worried.

  “Wait!” one of them called out. “Don’t go back in there!”

  But it was too late. I was already inside.

  Robert’s hands now replaced those of the officers outside, but it was harder to face him than it was the others.

  “Why didn’t you let me help?” he asked softly.

  “Because the kind of help you want to give wasn’t the kind of help she needs.”

  “Grace, I know you care about her, but she’s not going to survive her injuries. I could have made the pain go away. I could have ended her suffering.”

  I forced myself to look at him, forced myself to confront his words. “Why does it always come to that? Ending someone’s suffering means ending their life? What if they don’t want to die?”

  “No one wants to die, Grace. Even those begging for it don’t want it.”

  “But she wasn’t begging for it. She told me she doesn’t want to die. If she can tell me that through all that pain then why can’t you respect that?”

  “Because that’s not what I am!” he snapped.

  “No it’s not—it’s what I am,” I barked back.

  His face crumbled instantly with remorse over his tone.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to speak to you like that.”

  “I know. You can’t help it…”

  He nodded and then looked down at my arm, noticing the same bruising that Lark had. “It’s moving faster this time,” he said softly, his thumb stroking the darker webbed lines that ran up my forearm, peeking slightly past the end of the sleeve at my wrist, like feelers.

  “We have to hurry,” I murmured, seeing the same darkness covering his entire left hand.

  “Grace, you know that there’s nothing we can do to fight this-”

  “There’s everything we can do,” I argued stubbornly. “I’m not giving up; not this time.”

  I began stomping down the hallway, listening to Robert call out after me but not responding. I headed up the stairs, ignoring the rush of teachers and faculty that ran past me hysterically.

  “Grace-”

  The second floor of the school was covered with sheets of bloodstained paper that lay scattered between tumbled lockers and beneath shattered glass. Screams and shuffling feet bounced off the bare walls as more people ran towards the stairs in a mad dash for their lives.

  Lark could be seen flitting from one classroom to another, sending people rushing out as the sounds of a struggle and then the unmistakable tearing of flesh and breaking of bones that followed answered any question as to what was happening.

  “Shawn?” I heard her call out, her voice and her thoughts acting like a loudspeaker throughout the school. “I know you’re in here. I can hear your crappy jokes in my head.”

  “She’s going to kill him,” I worried as I ran towards the taunting thoughts.

  “She has to,” Robert reminded, his body floating beside me as I reached the math class I’d had my freshman year.

  “No, she doesn’t.”

  “I told you, Grace-”

  “I know what you told me. I know. But this is Shawn. This is Salsa; he’s our friend—he’s my friend.”

  Robert grabbed me, stopping me from going any further and forcing me to look at him. “He was our friend, Grace. What he is now is something completely different, something dangerous and desperate. Those two things will erase any ties our friendship might have formed.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I said defiantly before pulling away. “That girl in Graham’s house…she didn’t want to hurt me. She wouldn’t have, either.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I did; I do. I could hear her thoughts like you can hear mine. She wanted to go back to normal, but not if normal meant being a killer.”

  “Shawn’s already hurt one person; he’ll never be normal after that. No one who survives today will.”

  I frowned at the finality of his words. “I don’t believe that. Not anymore. Normal isn’t something that’s permanent. Normal changes—I’m proof of that.”

  “But you’re different, Grace; you know that.”

  “I know. I know I’m different. But so is everyone else. Everyone is different and everyone is exactly the same and I’m done trying to figure it all out because none of it matters! I’m not going to give up on my friends just because they’re different. They didn’t give up on me.”

  Robert’s face grew serious—ferociously so—before softening, conceding. “You’re right.”

  He disappeared, moving so quickly I didn’t even see him leave.

  “Robert?” I called out, listening for him in the sudden silence. “Lark?”

  Nothing.

  And then came the screams as several teachers burst out of a classroom, their faces covered in blood. I didn’t know if it was theirs or not; I could only see the terror in their eyes as they rushed past me, escape their only concern.

  Lark emerged, furious, her feet floating inches off the ground as she glowed a bright red in the dim hallway. Her thoughts were just as angry.

  You think this is how to save us—save everyone—by sparing him? He’s trying to kill Grace and he doesn’t care who he hurts to get to her.

  Robert appeared, his hand gripping a limp body, his own floating above the ground as well. He’s scared. He’s been turned against his will and thrown into our world without any explanation and with the lies of our grandfather in his head. We failed to protect him as a human—we can’t just give up now that he’s not one any longer.

  Lark’s hand flew out in an exaggerated point. Did you see what he did? Did you see what he did to that woman?

  Yes. Did you see what our grandfather did to him? Robert lifted the body up and I felt my teeth clench over my lips, a poor attempt to stifle the cry that demanded to come out.

  Shawn—or what had once been Shawn—looked like he’d been turned inside-out. He had no eyes, no mouth…no face.

  And yet I knew it was him. I knew it. I could feel it. Sense it. Even without the abilities that I was slowly accepting, I would have known it was Shawn—the carefree spirit that existed in him couldn’t be ignored.

  He can’t exist the way he is. He’s not like the others, who can pass for normal in this world. Look at him—what kind of life are you giving him by letting him live? What kind of future are you giving anyone by letting him live?

  Lark’s thoughts rang with truth, and it was hard to ignore that.

  But Robert did.

  The human world might reject him, but ours shouldn’
t, especially when we’re the reason for this. He’ll never live the life he might have had, but we owe it to him to at least give him a chance. When did we stop being angels and start being demons?

  When we forgot that evil can exist in our kind just as much as it can in humans, Lark responded, her thoughts cold.

  You never forgot. Not after Luca.

  Lark nodded at Robert’s quiet statement. And I never will. Luca’s death should have been taken as a warning of what was coming. Instead we all took it as a warning against ourselves.

  She turned her attention to me, saw my anxiousness mixed with fear and concern, and frowned. “We’re not going to kill him…yet. I only hope you understand the risk to everyone else by doing this.”

  My voice was just as serious when I replied, “There’s no risk involved when it means saving not only the life of someone you care about, but also your own soul.”

  Robert hefted Shawn’s body over his shoulder effortlessly. “Zarus has returned to join the others. He’s destroyed everything that isn’t human; the damage that has been done today cannot be undone by our kind.”

  “No, but it can be by ours,” a woman said in a loud, booming voice.

  I turned to look at her, frowning slightly when I recognized her as Dad’s sister.

  “What are you doing here?” I demanded to know.

  “This is what we do,” she answered simply. “You make messes and we clean them up.”

  She walked casually over to Robert’s side and looked up at Shawn’s grotesque features. “This…this we can’t fix. But we know how to make problems like this go away.”

  This confused me. “What do you mean by that?”

  “We keep the secrets of your kind. We protect you. We defend you because we are the chosen; we are electus patronus.”

  Around her, more faces appeared. They belonged to individuals dressed as police officers, paramedics, fire fighters…

  “What are you going to do?” I asked nervously.

  “What we always do. The survivors will be treated, their accounts taken, and then the records destroyed. There will be no trace of anything evil happening here. The dead will be explained and their families, as well as those that have been injured, will be compensated.”