The Savage Grace: A Dark Divine Novel(34)

Later, I thought and went back to homework.

I picked up Daniel’s chem book and settled onto my bed, thinking that if anything were going to help me fall asleep, it would be chemistry. Besides, I figured I could successfully tackle a few of those assignments since I’d had that class last year. The only problem was that as soon as I flipped the book open to chapter ten, the memory of studying this assignment with Pete Bradshaw at the library last year overtook my thoughts.

I’d all but forgotten that Pete and I had not only been chem lab partners, but also friends, before things changed between us. Before I realized what kind of violent person lurked under his letterman’s jacket and that “triple-threat smile.” Before he agreed to help Jude try to turn me against Daniel. Before the night my car broke down in the city and he tried to trick me into thinking I was being stalked by the Markham Street Monster—just so he could pretend to be my hero. Before he attacked me in the alley between the school and parish the night of the Christmas dance.

But it wasn’t my fault he’d lost control. I wasn’t the one who made him an entitled jerk who thought he could have whatever—or whoever—he wanted. I wasn’t the one who made him get drunk and attack me the night of the Christmas dance.… And he obviously hadn’t learned his lesson very well. He and his friends had jumped Daniel a couple of weeks ago. And who knows what he would have tried to do to me that night I ran into him at the Depot.

The night he was later brutally beaten into a coma.

But he deserved it.

“No,” I told the wolf’s voice. There had been a moment when the wolf had succeeded in convincing me that what had happened to Pete was perfectly deserved. But it was the same afternoon that I had almost lost complete control myself—when the wolf in my head propelled me to Daniel’s doorstep and I practically attacked him in my frenzy.

You’re no better than Pete. Daniel should hate you for what you almost did to him. No wonder he wants to leave you.

The wolf was overwhelming sometimes in how quickly it could change its tactics, glomming onto any doubt that flitted through my mind. Clawing me apart from the inside.

Pete and I are different, I tried to tell myself. I’d almost lost control because there was a beast inside my head driving me to hurt the ones I love. Pete didn’t have that excuse. He was perfectly human.

Yet he was still a monster.

The image of Pete lying on that hospital bed, being jolted with electricity by the doctor, flashed in my head. His face had looked so different today. Like a distorted mask of who he used to be. So lifeless and pale. Pete did the things he did of his own accord, but he still didn’t deserve to die. For the last year, I’d told myself that I had forgiven him for all the things he’d done to me, but had I really?

And now it was too late.…

What would happen if I waited too long to forgive everyone else?

NIGHTMARE

I must have fallen asleep eventually in the stack of books and papers on my bed, because one moment I was reading, and the next I found myself standing in the alley where Pete had attacked me the night of the Christmas dance. I wore my white dress with the violet sash, and I could feel the cold night air on my skin, even though I knew I was just dreaming.

It wasn’t one of my pleasant dreams of Daniel. It was a nightmare, I realized, when I saw that I wasn’t alone in the alley. Pete was there, just as angry and dangerous as he’d been that terrible night. The fear and desperation to get away from him felt just as real, too. The dream progressed, and I relived more of that horrific night. Don Mooney stabbing Pete, then almost suffocating me in an effort to quiet my screams. Daniel coming to my rescue, and then the two of us trying to hunt down Jude and lead him away from the school dance before he was overtaken by the werewolf curse. In my nightmare, I was forced to reexperience the moment when Jude found us on the roof of the parish, and I watched again as he pitched Daniel’s moonstone off the roof. I remembered the way Daniel had arched his head back and howled a scream.…

EARLY TUESDAY MORNING

I shot bolt upright in my bed, my legs and arms tangled in my sheets. The sky outside my window was a purply early-morning gray. I thought it was the noise of Daniel’s scream that had awoken me from my terrible dream, but then the noise sounded again, and I realized it was the ring of my cell phone next to my bed.

I had no idea who would call so early in the morning, but I was grateful for the reprieve from my nightmare. Part of me wondered if being forced to relive that horrific night was God’s way of punishing me for neglecting Him for so long. I grabbed my phone and flipped it open without checking the caller ID.

“Hello,” I said groggily.

“Grace,” came April’s voice. It sounded even shakier than usual. “Have you seen the news yet this morning?”

“No, it’s”—I checked the clock—“barely six a.m.”

“I got up early to make some breakfast for Jude. He was really upset last night, and I thought if I brought him something homemade, it might help him feel better. But I turned on my mom’s radio in the kitchen … and I heard a report about something that happened at City Hospital…” She sounded too upset to finish her sentence.

“What?” Something about my dad? Please don’t let it be something about my dad!

“A woman was found dead in the parking lot of the hospital. Near that grove of trees on the west side. An ICU nurse.”