The Lost Saint(87)

“But we’re nothing, Daniel. That’s like twenty against two. Gabriel won’t fight, and you’re just getting your powers back. We’re no match for them. They’ll turn me, and then I’ll kill you. And then if they send me home, what will stop me from destroying Baby James and everyone else?”

And the more selfish thought that I didn’t voice was that if everyone I loved was gone, there would be no one left to cure me—if the cure even existed. I’d be a monster for all eternity. A Death Dog at the beck and call of a madman.

“You just have to have faith, Grace. Believe in yourself. Don’t give up now.”

“But I have no more faith, Daniel. No more faith in myself. No more faith in God. He doesn’t care about me. He doesn’t care about us. It’s over. This is the end. Tomorrow I become a monster, and the rest of you die. And God doesn’t give a damn.”

“I don’t believe that. You think you’ve lost your faith, but I know you well enough to know that isn’t true. Deep down, you know you still believe. And I believe in you.”

“Then maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

“Yes, I do, Grace. And I know exactly what’s going on inside your head, because I’ve been there. That voice you hear—those terrible things that bombard you. Thoughts that make you think God doesn’t care about us. Those aren’t your thoughts. And they don’t come from God, either. They’re the wolf. The demon. The devil. It’s testing you. Tempting you. But if you can push those thoughts away, if you can reach beyond them, then you’ll find that there’s a true power deep inside of you, a power God has given you to fight the evil, that’s greater than anything you can even imagine. You found that power inside of you once.”

I shook my head. I didn’t know what power he was talking about. The speed, the strength, the agility, they all came from the wolf.

“The night you cured me,” Daniel said, “what were you feeling?”

Gabriel had asked me that same question before. I didn’t know why it mattered, but I did know the answer.

“Love,” I said. “I loved you enough to sacrifice everything for you. I wanted you to be cured no matter what it meant for me. I thought I’d lose my soul, but it was more important to me to save yours.”

“Then don’t tell me you aren’t strong enough, because that’s more strength than most people could ever dream of having. There is no greater gift, no greater power than that.”

“Than true love?”

“Yes. That’s the difference between them and us. We’re still capable of love. The wolf tries to destroy love, tries to push it out of your heart, tries to make you destroy everything that you care about. But if you can hold on to that love, and if you can hold on to your faith, then you are stronger than any monster out there. No outside power, no force, no evil can make you turn into the wolf as long as you hold on to that love.”

Daniel fell to his knees. His chains clanked against the floor. “I should have never stopped training you,” Daniel said. “I should have never stopped believing in your strength. I should have been there supporting you, teaching you the balance that you need. When my powers started to come back, it scared the hell out of me. I thought that meant the cure hadn’t worked—and I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want you to think you’d sacrificed everything for me and that it meant nothing.”

I moved toward Daniel, closing the distance between us. “But you could have told me. You can tell me anything. Just like I should have told you about Talbot.”


“I know, Grace. We were both being stupid. We should have trusted each other no matter what. But I was also scared that my powers coming back meant there’d be no cure for you, either. No safety net. That’s why I stopped training you when Gabriel told me to. And then I got so wrapped up in trying to find answers that I neglected you. I pulled away. But I shouldn’t have done that. I should have still taught you how to use your powers properly, so you wouldn’t have had to turn to someone like Talbot.” Daniel held up his shackled hands. “But I’m standing by you now. You and me. We’ll fight side by side, and no one will stop us. Nothing is going to tear us apart.”

I was kneeling in front of Daniel now, at the end of my own lead. I tried to cup his face with my hands, but I couldn’t reach him. There was no more give in the chains. Instead, I stared into his deep, dark eyes like I could get lost in them forever.

We weren’t going to walk out of here. There was no way the two of us could fight off these demons. No matter how much faith we had. But there was a way to keep the demon inside of me from winning.

I’d been willing to trade my soul for Daniel once because it was the only way to save him. I’d been willing to become the monster for him. And I’d do it now if I thought it would save him again, but Caleb had other plans. He wanted me to turn into the monster so he could use me to destroy Daniel and my family—and I couldn’t allow that to happen. No, no matter what happened, I wasn’t going to turn. It’s better to die as Grace Divine than to live as a monster.

I leaned out as far as I could toward Daniel, and Daniel leaned out as far as he could toward me. Our lips could barely meet in the middle. I strained against my chains, feeling like my arms were about to dislocate from their sockets, but I gained another quarter of an inch. I pressed my lips against Daniel’s.