The Savage Grace: A Dark Divine Novel (30 page)

Then in a move I didn’t expect, and neither did Daniel, Mr. Chain Whips sent a lashing strike of one whip at Anton. It caught the Russian Urbat around the neck, and Mr. Chain Whips jerked his arm back, flipping Anton into the air and then slamming back down again. Anton clutched at the chain that was wrapped around his neck. I’m sure the silver was burning into his flesh. Even from the barn I heard Mr. Chain Whips laugh as he pulled his other whip back, ready to send it lashing into Anton’s face. But as the whip went flying, so did Daniel. He reached out in front of Anton, catching the brunt of the whip’s blow with his arm. The chain wrapped around his wrist, and before anyone could react, Daniel yanked the whip with all his might and sent Mr. Chain Whips flying over his head. He hit the ground several feet away and rolled over onto his back.

Daniel reached out and helped Anton to his feet.

To my surprise, the Russian made a small bow toward Daniel and then jogged out of the challenging ring. I assumed he’d withdrawn his challenge out of respect for what Daniel had done for him.

I was just thinking that not all of these challengers were bad people when Mr. Chain Whips scrambled to his feet and went flying after Daniel again.

I didn’t see what happened next, as a commotion below me caught my attention. Lisa Jordan, going spear to spear, had driven Marrock into the barn. Talbot and one of Marrock’s lieutenants entered behind them, fighting sword versus spear. It was only a matter of seconds before Talbot sent a slashing cut into the lieutenant’s throat with the blade of his steel sword. Not a killing blow for an Urbat, but the man clutched at his spurting artery and dropped his silver-tipped spear.

Lisa and Marrock went at each other with their spears—spinning, jumping, and ducking out of the range of each other’s thrusts in a way that reminded me of a kung fu movie. But Lisa shouted as Marrock sent a kick into her belly. She flew backward into a tower of hay bales.

“Watch out!” I shouted as Marrock raised his spear to stab her.

Talbot heard my call and snatched the fallen lieutenant’s spear and sent it sailing into Marrock’s back. Lisa rolled out of the way as Marrock fell forward into the hay, the spear still protruding from underneath his right shoulder blade. Talbot rushed at him and grabbed the end of the spear—I thought at first for the purpose of pulling it out, but instead Talbot twisted it with hard, cranking motions. Marrock screamed and screamed, and I knew the silver-tipped spear was not only slicing his insides, but also burning them at the same.

“Mercy!” Marrock begged between his shrieks of pain. “Mercy! I submit!”

Talbot twisted the spear again, his foot pinning Marrock down for better leverage. Marrock shrieked.

“Stop!” Lisa shouted at Talbot. “He’s submitted.”

Talbot only twisted harder.

“Stop!” I shouted at him from the hayloft, but he didn’t seem to hear me, either. I took a running leap and jumped from the loft. I landed in a trough of hay and ran to Talbot, shouting his name. A look of complete and utter rage filled Talbot’s eyes as he twisted the spear in Marrock’s back. I was sure the eclipse hadn’t started yet, but was it already having some sort of terrible effect on Talbot?

“Stop!” I sent my open hand sailing and slapped Talbot across his face.

He let go of the spear and stared down at me—that rage burning in his eyes. Then he blinked and clutched his palm over the red hand-shaped mark I’d left on his face. “What was that for!”

“He submitted. Let. Him. Go.”

“Fine.” Talbot grabbed the spear, yanked it from Marrock’s back, and cast it aside. “You’re welcome,” he snapped at Lisa, who gaped at him openmouthed.

“Grace! Grace!” I heard a voice shout. I couldn’t tell where it came from at first, and I thought the wolf was shouting in my head again. Only it sounded an awful lot like Brent.

“Grace! Come in, Grace!”

I realized the voice was coming from inside my ear. I’d completely forgotten I was wearing the earpiece.

I put my hand to my ear. “What is it, Brent?”

“Still no Shadow Kings. What do you want us to do?”

“Stand your ground,” I said. “They’ll show.”

Brent swore so loudly it made my eardrum rattle. “Looks like Slade needs some help!”

I dropped my hand from my ear and went sprinting back out into the barnyard. Daniel and Mr. Chain Whips were still fighting, but I didn’t have time to ascertain the situation because Slade was running straight at us, down the middle of the field, with two giant wolves on his heels. “A little help here!” he called in our direction.

“I thought you were supposed to be handling one of those guys,” I said to Talbot.

“I was a little busy,” he said.

“You want us to stop them?” Brent shouted in my ear.

“No! Do not give up your position!”

Slade went barreling past us. Talbot flew at the larger of the two wolves. Lisa, weaponless now, jumped onto the back of the smaller of the two wolves, pummeling her fists against the sides of its head. I sent my sword into its hindquarters, slicing a chunk in its left hip. It stumbled to the ground. I raised my sword, ready to swing at it again, but the beast lowered its head and tucked its tail between its legs. It whined in submission.

The larger wolf stopped short before sending Talbot flying off its back. Slade punched the beast in the face, but instead of retaliating against him, it spun around and faced Lisa and me. Its yellow eyes narrowed in on me. It scratched at the ground like a bull and then charged in my direction, with great galloping leaps.

I gulped and raised my sword, ready to defend myself against the attacking wolf. But before it could make its final bound, Talbot came flying down on top of it. With a brutal swing of his sword, he sliced into the wolf’s neck. Then a second swing decapitated it completely.

“What the—?”

I stared at Talbot, amazed that he was able to pull off such an attack on the wolf, and revolted at the same time by what he’d done. “You … you weren’t supposed to kill him unless it was a final resort. That was the deal.”

He stared back at me with blood on his hands.

“I told you I’d kill anyone who tried to harm you,” he said.

“Grace,” Brent said in my ear, “the eclipse.”

I looked up in the sky and watched as a red stain crept along the edge of the moon, like blood slowly soaking into a white sponge. The eclipse was just starting, but I could already feel a surge of energy raking down my spine. My powers were magnifying.

“Any sign of Caleb?” I asked Brent. I knew he had a better vantage point than I did from his hiding place.

“No.”

I spun in a circle, searching every face I could see in the crowd. I was so sure Caleb would make his entrance the moment the eclipse started. It would be just like him to want to capture the drama of it all.

A ferocious roar ripped through the air, and I thought the Shadow Kings had finally arrived. But it came from Daniel’s opponent, the Urbat who had lost both of his chain whips. He reached his hands up in the sky, seething and shaking, and I watched as his hands transformed into clawed paws. He fell to all fours, and his body rocked and convulsed. His army fatigues shredded as his body burst into the form of a giant, hulking red wolf at least twice the size of any werewolf I had ever seen.

“Whoa,” Brent said. “Give me whatever steroids that guy’s taking.”

“It’s the eclipse,” I said.

The giant red wolf crouched in the straw ten yards away from Daniel.

“Do you want us to—?”

“No. Not yet.”

Daniel squared his shoulders, standing tall and mighty. He opened his arms, his sword ready in one hand. With the other, he beckoned the wolf to attack with the inward wave of his fingers.

The red wolf reared back and leaped at Daniel. Daniel countered out of the way and sent a hard crack across the wolf’s head with the hilt of his sword. The wolf shook off the blow and ran a few yards in the opposite direction away from Daniel.

I ran toward them, ready to back up Daniel if needed, but before I was even halfway across the field, the wolf leaped high into the air, straight at Daniel’s right side. Daniel tossed his sword into his right hand and stabbed it up into the wolf’s rib cage, then used brute force to swing the wolf through the air and slam it to the ground on its back. Daniel pinned it to the ground with the sword as the red wolf thrashed his clawed paws.

Daniel towered over the red wolf, and I could see the fierceness in his eyes. Not rage like I’d seen in Talbot, but the fierceness and determination of a warrior.

“Submit!” Daniel commanded the red wolf. I could feel the tidal wave of power crashing off his body. “Submit and I will spare you!”

The red wolf crumpled in submission. Daniel pulled the sword from his chest. The red wolf rolled over and crawled from the ring on its belly. That’s when I noticed that many of the guardians around the ring were bowing to Daniel now. As if they’d heeded Daniel’s call for submission also. I looked behind me and saw Lisa and Slade bent on one knee.

Only Talbot still stood. The bloody remains of his kill at his feet.

Daniel dropped his sword in the straw and clutched at his shoulder. He must have injured it again in the fight. He looked at me, his eyes softer now, and I ran toward him.

What now?
I thought. With all the challengers gone, and Shadow Kings a no-show, did that mean it was over?

I was only feet from Daniel when Brent shouted in my ear: “Grace! Stop! The barn!”

I spun around and looked at the barn.

Nothing.

“Look up!”

My gaze flitted up to the roof, and I saw them, perched there like gargoyles. Rows and rows of Shadow Kings.

Caleb stood on the very apex of the barn’s roof, a tin rooster-shaped weathervane spinning at his feet. “Sorry to miss the preshow entertainment,” he called, “but I’ve made it just in time for the main event.”

A horrible chorus of screeches, snarls, and howls echoed into the night as the waves of Shadow Kings charged down the roof of the barn and vaulted onto the battlefield.

WITHIN SECONDS

There were so many of them. So many Shadow Kings. More than I’d ever imagined. They just kept on coming, hurdling over the roof of the barn, filling the challenging ring. Caleb must have spent every moment of the last week creating and recruiting new Akhs and Gelals. I wondered how many of these Akhs had been regular teens at the trance party from earlier this week. I imagined empty homeless shelters and halfway houses. I tried to remember that they were already dead when I took my first swing at an Akh, slicing through its neck with my broadsword.

I could barely see Daniel, who was only a few yards away, just flashes of his gold hair or his sword as he took out demon and after demon that just kept on coming. Lisa, Talbot, and Slade, who had been on the other end of the 150-yard-wide battlefield, were totally lost from my vision. But the spray of Gelal acid and bursts of dust that went up in the air in that part of the arena told me that at least two of them were still fighting.

I took out three more Ahks and a Gelal with my sword, wondering why I had ever settled for a stake in the past.

However, not all the SKs were pure demon, and I had to pull back on one of my swings before I nearly took off the head of an Urbat teen. He growled and almost instantaneously transformed into a great hulking tan wolf right in front of me. He was almost as big as the red wolf Daniel had fought.

More growls rumbled out from Caleb’s forces, and fourteen more boys burst into giant wolves—the speed of their transformation aided by the lunar eclipse.

I couldn’t believe how huge the wolves were, and I knew Daniel would be even bigger if he transformed into the great white wolf. But I also knew he wasn’t going let the white wolf free under the eclipse.

Caleb stood in the middle of it all, laughing like the madman he was.

“Now?” Brent shouted into my ear.

I’d almost forgotten about him in my struggle to keep up with the SKs and wondered how long he’d been shouting at me.

“Now!” I responded as the enormous tan wolf came volleying at my head.

I swung at it with my sword, but at the same moment a great crack resonated through the air. A bullet whizzed past my ear, and the tan wolf yelped. He fell to the ground, his shoulder bloody where the silver bullet had hit.

“Tell Ryan to watch it,” I shouted at Brent. “He almost hit me.”

“These bullets don’t fly right,” I heard Ryan shout in the background in my earpiece.

“Cheat to the left,” I said, remembering what the hunters I’d stolen the guns from had said. “You have to aim to the left of what you want to hit!”

Another gunshot fired, and a Gelal’s head exploded as he came charging at me. His body kept moving for a full five steps until he burst into green ooze. I grabbed the closest Akh and used him as shield. He screeched as the acid hit his skin. I threw the demon at a black wolf; he ripped the Akh to pieces with no regard to the fact that they were on the same side.

I looked back at the farmhouse and saw Ryan, Zach, and Brent in the windows of the master bedroom. Ryan and Zach aimed the hunting rifles out of the broken panes.

“Again!” I shouted.

More gunshots rang out, sending Shadow Kings scattering. I caught sight of Lisa as she grappled with a tawny wolf. An arrow went sailing into the wolf’s hindquarters from the direction of the farmhouse.

I looked up to see one of the Etlu Urbats standing on the roof of the house with a crossbow. Two more archers joined him, just as we had planned. They took out several Akhs with their wooden arrows from their vantage point.

Several more gunshots rocked the field.

“Don’t go hog wild on those bullets,” I reminded them. I’d been able to get only two boxes of silver bullets from Mr. Day because he’d run out of them—having passed them out to all the hunters who’d come into town for the wolf hunt.

“Can you see Caleb?” I asked Brent. He’d disappeared somewhere in the chaos of the field.

“No,” Brent said.

I swore. I heard a scream from somewhere in the crowd beyond the challenging ring, and I watched with great concern as several of the SKs started going after the guardians on the sidelines, not caring that they weren’t supposed to be part of the fight. We’d planned on this contingency, and Jude and Gabriel jumped into action, leading the spearmen in a fight to protect the people outside the ring.

“I see him,” Brent said. “Caleb’s on the far north side of the ring, close to where it edges on the corn maze.”

I looked out, but I couldn’t see him from where I stood.

“Concentrate your fire on Caleb.”

Two more shots rang out.

“We can’t get at him. He’s got too many SKs around him.”

I nodded. Of course Caleb would be using his own men as a shield. “Just keep firing in his direction. Get him mad enough that he sends the SKs into the house after you. That’s what we want.”

I jumped and rolled head over heels to avoid the attack of an oncoming werewolf. I was locked in battle with it, when a barrage of gunfire and arrows pelted the north side of the field. Ahks screeched and Gelals snarled, and I heard Caleb shout his command. The demon hordes turned their attention on the farmhouse, their ghastly eyes locked on the boys who stood in the windows—my boys. Even the demons that had gone after the guardians outside the ring turned their attention to the house, clacking their claws and grinding their teeth.

One of the Akhs let out a great shriek, and fifty or so demons ran straight for the house.

Brent swore as he saw them coming.

“Hold your ground,” I said. “Not yet.”

I could hear Ryan cursing up a storm.

“Almost,” I said.

The demon army jumped onto the back porch of the farmhouse. They crashed through the door and the windows and flooded the house.

“Not yet,” I said.

“They’re coming up the stairs!” Brent shrieked. He, Ryan, and Brent stood in the frames of the windows, ready to jump.

When almost all of the demons had crashed into the house, I shouted, “Now!”

The boys sprang from the windows, clearing the porch below, just as I saw the first wave of demons enter the master bedroom. The boys hit the ground and started running faster than I’d ever seen them move—fueled by adrenaline and the eclipse. Zach had lost his gun in the jump, but Ryan clutched onto his with dear life.

The archers escaped the roof off the other side that led to the front yard of the farmhouse.

“Blow it!” I shouted as my boys neared the center of the ring.

Brent held out his hand and slammed his thumb down on the detonator he clenched in his fist. The boys braced for the impact of the explosion.

Nothing happened.

Brent looked down at the detonator. He mashed it again. Still nothing.

Demons started to claw their way through the second-story window, still intent on their prey.

“It’s been disconnected!” Brent shouted. “I have to set if off manually.”

“Brent! No!”

But Brent had already turned and rocketed back toward the house. He threw open a metal box that was attached to the outside railing of the porch. I knew from the design he’d showed me that there was a lead from that box to the explosives we’d planted under the house. “Don’t worry, I’ll have time!” His fingers moved quickly inside the box.

Ahks and Gelals dropped from the window onto the porch.

Ryan and Zach had made it to me on the field. “Hurry!” We all shouted at him.

“Got it!” He closed the metal box and turned to run from the impending explosion, pumping his fists up in the air like Rocky Balboa. But before he could finish the gesture, a Gelal grabbed him from behind, yanking him up over the porch railing by the neck.

“No!” I shouted.

I ran for Brent, but before I could get halfway there, the farmhouse exploded right in front of me.

It happened so fast, in the blink of an eye. Brent and the house and the demons were there when my eyes closed against the brightness of the blast. When my eyelids fluttered open, it was all gone.

Brent was gone.

Nothing left of him but the flames he’d created.