The Lost Saint
Page 35

“You mean we’re not sticking around?”
“What would we tell them? Besides, I gotta get you back to that bus before they think I’ve run off with you. I can’t afford to lose this job.” He pulled out his phone and motioned for me to follow him out of the alley.
“We’re just leaving him here like that?” I looked back at the guy, lying on his side, groaning with pain. “It seems a little inhumane.”
“That guy tried to kill you, Grace.” He flipped open his phone. “Besides, he isn’t human. That there is what you call a demon.”
At first I thought he was being metaphorical, but then his meaning clicked. “A demon? A living, breathing, bona fide demon?”
“What? Don’t tell me you haven’t seen one before.”
I shrugged. “Well, not really. I met one at a party once. She did this little mind-control trick with her eyes.”
“Ah, an Akh. They’re a terrible sort.” He clucked his tongue. “This one here is a Gelal. They prey on young women. That girl would have gone through all sorts of hell if we hadn’t shown up.”
“How can you tell?” I asked. The guy still seemed like a person to me. I was itching to go over and take off his mask to see what he really looked liked underneath.
“The smell.” Talbot crinkled his nose. “You really are a rookie, aren’t you? I bet you haven’t even figured out how to track someone yet.”
I looked down at the ground. The masked demon let out a loud, angry groan.
“We better go,” Talbot said. “I’m just hoping the police get here before he comes to enough to break free.”
Talbot hit a button on his phone and put it to his ear.
“You have 911 on speed dial?”
“I told you I make a lot of deliveries.”
I followed him out of the alley. “Wait, you mean you do this a lot?”
But Talbot didn’t respond. He was too busy telling the operator on the other end of the line that a young woman had been attacked near Tidwell Library and that they’d find the perpetrator behind a Dumpster near Tidwell and Vine. He hung up before they could ask him any questions.
“You still got the keys?”
“Um, yeah, I hope.” I patted down my pockets and found the keys.
Talbot unlocked the passenger’s-side door and held it open for me. Sometime between Talbot’s shutting my door and his climbing in through the driver’s side, the shock of everything that had happened finally hit me. My hands shook so hard I could barely fasten my seat belt.
“Are you okay?” Talbot asked. “You did awesome back there. Just like I knew you would.”
“But how … how did you know that I could even do anything? How did you know what I am?” I’d already asked how he’d known I was an Urbat earlier, but he’d insisted on taking care of the gunman before we talked about it. But now I wanted answers.
“Your necklace.” Talbot reached over and touched the cracked moonstone pendant that hung from my neck. “Kind of a dead giveaway, if you think about it.” He brushed one of my curls against my neck with his fingers as he pulled his hand away. “And I saw you fight back at The Depot. Most girls can’t pull off a roundhouse kick like that on a guy that big unless she’s packing some serious paranormal heat.” He crinkled his nose again. “Plus, you kinda smell, too.”
“What?” I sniffed both my arms. I smelled perfectly normal to me—okay, kind of sweaty from fighting, but not at all like those guys in that alley.
Talbot laughed, his cheeks dimpling with his smile.
“You jerk!” I punched him playfully in the arm.
He grabbed my hand. “Hey, watch it, kid. You’ve got a mean right hook.”
Talbot’s hand, wrapped around my fist, seemed huge by comparison. I could see the veins stretching along his tendons. He squeezed my fingers, and a pulse of tingling energy ran up my arm and down my spine. It felt like the connection that had passed between Daniel and me when we first held hands in the Garden of Angels. The tingling sensation turned to a shudder. I tugged my hand out of Talbot’s grasp. It wasn’t right to feel that kind of energy with anyone other than Daniel.
I crossed my arms in front of my chest. Talbot shifted his gaze away from my face. He coughed slightly and started the van. We pulled away from the library. After a moment, I asked the question that had been nagging at the back of my mind.
“If those guys were really demons, then why did they need a gun?”
Talbot shrugged. “I don’t know, Grace, but it worries me. Gelals don’t even usually come out until well after midnight. They’re completely nocturnal, you know? And the fact that they were even here in the city is a mystery. That’s the third pair of them I’ve come across in the last two months, but before that I hadn’t even encountered one since I was last on the West Coast.” He shook his head. “There’s something going down around here. Used to be I had to go looking for demons, track them for months before one came out of hiding, but now the city seems to be crawling with them. And I keep hearing rumors that someone’s gathering werewolves, Gelals, Akhs, and all kinds of other paranormal teens into some sort of gang. They supposedly call themselves the Shadow Kings.”
“A gang of paranormals?”
“You know those ‘invisible bandits’ they keep talking about on the news?”
I nodded.
“You don’t think humans are behind all that?”
“No. Not at all,” I said. “They hit a grocery store in my town. Ransacked the entire place in less than five minutes. My … boyfriend and I were saying that a gang of superpowered teens had to be behind it all. And I think my brother may be mixed up with them. He said something to April about finding a new family.”
Talbot’s eyebrows arched up. “Your brother is like you?”
“Kind of.” I didn’t know what I should say to Talbot. I mean, we’d known each other only for a total of a few hours—yet in those few hours he’d saved my life twice. And he was the only person I knew like me. Someone who had powers and actually wanted to use them for good. At least from what I could tell. You can trust him, that voice whispered in my head. “Jude’s turned into a full werewolf. I haven’t. He bit me when he first turned, and then he tried to kill his best friend—my, um, boyfriend. I think that’s why Jude left home.” I breathed out a sigh. It felt good to tell the truth to someone who could really understand.