The Savage Grace: A Dark Divine Novel (7 page)

But as much as I’d grown and changed recently, no matter how strong my powers made me—I knew now that I still needed her.

But would she still want me?

It took what little strength was left inside of me after the failed power transfer to muster up the courage to do what I did next: I stretched my fingers out to push the Up button, then waited for the
ding
of the elevator doors. As much as I dreaded what was about to happen, I knew what needed to be done. It was time to tell my mother…well, everything.

UP THE ELEVATOR

An old beige phone hung on the wall outside the locked psych-ward door. A sign instructed me to pick it up and dial a number for assistance. “I’m here to see Meredith Divine,” I told the nurse who answered. I hung up the receiver as the door buzzed and swung open on a mechanical arm. I took a few steps into the ward and was greeted by a wide hallway with pale green walls, the smells of stale vending machine candy and ammonia, and another sign that read, high flight risk area. ensure door closes completely.

I did as I was told and watched as the large door closed behind me. I felt a sudden impulse to pull it open again—and make a run for the parking lot.

I can’t do this.

The handleless door locked with a heavy click. It was too late to turn back now. I’d have to visit the nurses’ desk to get the door opened again. I might as well ask about my mother.

I made my way down the hallway, passing a young woman perched on a bench that looked like it should have been replaced sometime in the 1980s. She braided a long lock of her hair in front of her face, rocking back and forth. I entered the main area of the ward and signed in at the desk. I could see a glassed-in room where a group of people sat in a circle of chairs. A man dressed in khakis and a button-up shirt seemed to be leading some sort of discussion. Everyone else was dressed in plain gray sweats, like the woman I’d passed in the hallway. Patients, I assumed.

“You said you’re here for Meredith Divine?” asked the woman behind the desk. Her name tag said latisha. Her eyes held a look of recognition in them when she said my mother’s name.

Before Mom started to lose it, she’d been a nurse at an outpatient psych clinic in Apple Valley, but sometimes she’d filled in here at the main treatment center, whenever Dr. Connors needed substitute staff. I’m sure there had been a lot of talk among the ward nurses about one of their own being a patient now. That kind of gossip would have killed my mother if she were fully with it. Reputation had meant everything to her.

I nodded. “I don’t have to see her, though … if this is a bad time. It looks like there’s a group meeting going on.”

“Nonsense, girl,” Latisha said. “Meredith isn’t in group, and a visitor is just what the doctor ordered.”

“Indeed it is,” Dr. Connors said as he came up to me. He held a clipboard in his hands and wore a long white coat over a sweater and slacks—the same sweater he’d worn to our family’s ill-fated Thanksgiving dinner last year. He smiled warmly down at me, but his eyes told a much graver story. “How’s your father doing? I called down to check on him earlier, but I’ve been unable to make it down there personally.”

“Same as earlier.”

“I see.” He cleared his throat.

“Has she asked to go down to see him?”

“No. I was hoping that…” He cleared his throat again and tucked a pen into the top of his clipboard. “Walk with me, Grace.”

I took a few strides in the direction he led me, until I realized we were headed toward the patient rooms rather than the visiting area. I still wasn’t sure I was ready for this. Dr. Connors glanced back at me expectantly. I swallowed my apprehension and fell into step with him.

“Normally, we’d have you meet with her in one of our visiting rooms, but I think in this case … it would be best if I were to take you to her.”

“What…” I bit my lip. “What exactly is wrong with her?”

Mom had always had OCD-like tendencies that amplified whenever things got stressful at home. Like, the worse things were, the more she had to make everything seem perfect. Then after Jude ran away, she really started to lose it. Like she’d developed her own designer brand of bipolar disorder—going from a manic overprotective mother bear when it came to me and my siblings to slipping into a zombie-esque state in which she was obsessed with doing nothing but watching news reports in hopes of spotting my missing brother in the background. She’d refuse to do anything else for days, and she’d totally lose all consideration for her children who were still home. Who still needed her. Dr. Connors had advised my father more than once that she might need more than counseling and medication—might need to be admitted—but she must have really snapped when I disappeared for my dad finally to have brought her to the main clinic. He’d known that she’d probably never forgive him for it.

Dr. Connors stopped in front of a patient room. A little card under the door number had my mother’s name on it. “I’ve known your mother for a long time. She was a godsend during my residency. However, as you’re probably aware, she’s always had a tendency to create a facade of perfection around her—a false reality, so to speak. It’s a coping mechanism. Yet as I gathered from our counseling sessions over the last year, that facade has been crumbling—and now, something, whatever it is, has torn apart her fake reality so completely, she can no longer cope at all.”

He pushed open her door and I saw her for the first time in over a week—yet I barely recognized her. She sat up in her bed, staring at what seemed like a black smudge on the wall, wearing gray sweats like all the other patients—but without a drawstring in the pants waist, I realized now—and slippers on her feet. Both items she wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing outside of the house in the past. Her normally beautiful hair hung stringy and unwashed around her face, which was so hollow looking, I wondered just how long it had been since she’d eaten anything at all.

“She hasn’t voluntarily left that spot since she got here,” he said. “She won’t go to group or eat with the others. She won’t even say a word to me.”

I swallowed hard. I’d lived through many of my mother’s bad days in the last year, but now she just seemed … vacant. “Will she ever get better?”

“Not until her mind can come to terms with her new reality—the true one—whatever that may be. What is it your father is always saying, ‘The truth shall set you free’? That’s what your mother needs to process: the truth. Whatever happened that caused this—it’s rocked her off her foundation. Until she can find her footing again, both mentally and emotionally, this is the only way her mind knows how to function.” He indicated her catatonic stare.

I nodded, as if I actually understood. So what Mom needed to do was tell her doctors she’s accepted the fact that her oldest son is a werewolf and her daughter is a superpowered demon hunter?
Yeah, I don’t see that earning her a ticket out of the psych ward anytime soon.

“I’ll give you ten minutes alone with her. Short visits are best.”

I checked my watch, pretending I didn’t have much time anyway. A short visit was all I had the energy for.
Maybe I don’t have the strength at all.…

“It’s good you came,” Dr. Connors said, and gave me a nudge into the room. He closed the door behind me. I felt trapped all over again.

Three eternal minutes ticked by on my watch as I stood there, not knowing what to do. Or what to say. Mom didn’t move. She didn’t even try to glance at me.

“Mom?” My voice sounded so awkward. I felt like I was talking to that smudge on the wall. I took two small steps closer to her. “Mom?”

No acknowledgment.

But maybe I didn’t want her to look at me. Dad had told her what had happened to me … about the curse … and maybe now she’d see me only as a monster. Maybe that was what she couldn’t accept.

“Mommy?” Tears pricked my eyes. “I don’t know what all Daddy told you, but it’s true. I know it’s hard to believe—what happened to Jude … and me. But I’m still your daughter. And Jude’s still your son. And he’s back now. And he needs you. We all need you.”

Nothing.

“James and Charity are staying with Aunt Carol—but they can’t stay there forever. And Dad’s been hurt. Really hurt. He needs someone to take care of him. But I have so much on my plate. I’m trying to find a way to turn Daniel back into a human. And Jude needs someone to help him, too. There’s a madman with a pack of demons that wants me dead, and another werewolf pack that wants me for heaven knows what reason. And then I’ve got my own pack of five—four—werewolf boys, who keep looking to me to be their leader … or mother … or something. But I don’t know how to do it all. And I can’t do it by myself. We all need you.” I stepped even closer. What I wanted to do was throw my arms around her and bury my head against her like I did when I was a child. Instead, I placed my hand on her thin fingers. “I need a
mother.
We all need one.”

She didn’t move. Not even a twitch of her fingers.

“Please, Mom. That’s who you are. That’s who we need you to be. That’s your reality, no matter how crazy any of this is. Be my
mother.
Please.”

Tears stung my face as they slid down my cheeks. Mom hated public crying just as much as I did, but I let them flow. She didn’t notice. She didn’t react. Just kept staring at that damn smudge. I don’t know how I’d thought this was going to play out, but in my imagination I thought she would at least care.

My muscles ached as I felt a deep rumbling surge up from a dark place inside my heart. The wolf in my head whispered for me to lash out at my mom—or at the shell of the woman who sat in front of me now. The impulse made me sick. I clutched at my stomach and took deep breaths, focusing on purging those emotions from my mind. I hadn’t come here to get angry. I’d come here to get my mother back.

I let go of her hand and left her room. Covering my tear-streaked face with my arm, I passed the nurses’ station and asked Latisha to buzz me out the door.

What I needed now was to get away.

I almost ran into an older couple waiting outside the elevator when I exited the psych ward. The woman leaned her weight into her husband, and he clasped his arm around her for support. I noticed she bore a striking resemblance to the young woman I’d seen when I’d first entered the ward. I wondered if these were that patient’s parents, and I couldn’t bear the thought of sharing the confined space of the elevator with them. Like I might absorb their pain on top of mine.

Instead, I pushed open the heavy stairwell door and let it slam closed behind me. I darted down a couple of flights of stairs, my echoing footsteps chasing behind me. I made it all the way to the landing that would take me back out to the ICU floor before I fell against the wall.

Sobs quaked inside my chest and sounded even louder in the isolated stairwell. I hated myself for thinking I could make my mother understand how much I needed her. Like I could snap her out of her catatonic state just like that. I hated the horrible thoughts that had raced through my head when I’d failed. Deep down, I knew I couldn’t blame her for being mentally incapacitated, just like I couldn’t blame my father for being unconscious in his hospital bed.

But all the same, it still meant I was completely alone.

I let myself cry until the ache inside of me was replaced by a deep fatigue that pulled at my body, filling my muscles with the strain of everything that had happened in this harrowing day. It felt like I’d completed an Ironman triathlon—without my powers.

I closed my eyes with a heavy sigh. It took only a few moments before one of my dreams of Daniel trickled into my brain.

This one was different from the usual dream. I was standing rather than sitting on a bench, and Daniel stood in front of me. His almost devious, playful grin edged on his lips for a moment, then his face shifted into a look of deep concern. It all felt so real, it was hard to remember the image of him was purely an invention of my sorrow.

“Are you okay?” Daniel asked.

I tried to take a step closer to him, but my body swayed dangerously. Even in my dream I was exhausted. Daniel reached out and steadied me with his strong hands. I knew I shouldn’t indulge the dream—I’d only regret it when I fully realized it was fake—but I could feel his warmth so close to me, I couldn’t help grabbing him around the middle and nuzzling my face into his chest.

Daniel’s arms wrapped around me, engulfing me in his warmth. He rested his head against the top of mine, his breath tickling against my hair and scalp. The sensation was so wonderful and needed that I sighed out loud.

“I love you,” I whispered against the fabric of his shirt.

He took in a sharp breath. “I love you, too,” came a whisper so quiet I could
feel
the words spoken against my hair more than I could actually hear them.

I slid my hand up his chest and let my fingers linger on the warm skin exposed at his collar. “Why are you trying to leave me, Daniel?”

The arms holding me stiffened. I heard a throat clear, and even though the sound was familiar, it didn’t belong to Daniel.

And the fabric nestled against my face felt very much like flannel.

Oh no!
My eyes shot open, and I stared up at the face that belonged with the arms that held me—in the real world, not in my dream. He looked back at me with bright green eyes almost hidden under the brim of a red baseball cap.

“Talbot?” I pushed myself out from his grasp. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?”

“Hey.” He held up his large hands defensively. “I just came into the stairwell and saw you standing here, looking like you were about to fall over. I asked if you were okay, and
you’re
the one who hugged me.”

“I did not!” My neck burned with the red splotches that formed there whenever I was lying. Which I wasn’t! “I was asleep. I thought you were someone else. You took advantage of me.”

“Took advantage? How about saved you from collapsing?”

“I’m fine! No thanks to you.”

“No thanks to me?”

“You said you were going to meet me here, like, five hours ago. Do you have any idea how alone and afraid I’ve been? Where were you?”

“I had to pull a disappearing act with those paramedics, who tried to force me into the ER. You should see how freaked out medical people get when they hear two hearts beating in my chest. I had to lay low for a while, and then the ICU nurses wouldn’t let me in there to see you guys because I’m not related. So I went home to clean up and change my clothes. I lost my lucky blue hat today, by the way. And then I had to take care of something before I could—”