“Jude!” April and I shouted at the same time.
He looked up at the sound of our voices. His stumbling walk shifted into an awkward, jerking kind of run as he came toward us. He passed right by April, who looked like she wanted to tackle him with a hug, and kept coming toward me. He raised his arm, and something metallic flashed in his hand.
“Jude—?” I started to say.
His eyes looked completely dead as his arm came swinging down, a knife in his hand, aimed right at my heart. I spun away just in time. April screamed. Jude fell forward, and his knife lodged into the grass.
Had my own brother seriously just tried to kill me? Had I been so wrong about him?
Jude let go of the knife, looking stunned. He stood and started walking in a circle.
“What the hell?” Daniel shouted. He and Talbot made a move to grab Jude, but he suddenly scrambled away from them with jerking movements.
He turned those dead eyes on me and stepped toward me, again with odd jerky movements, like part of him wanted to move in my direction, but his feet were fighting it. I recognized those odd movements. It reminded me of those dancing girls at the trance party. It was almost like…
Talbot swung around, a large rock in his hand, ready to bash my brother in the head with it.
“No!” I shouted. “Don’t. He’s in a trance.”
Jude grabbed the knife out of the grass. His arm jerked back and forth as he swung it at me again.
Talbot grabbed him from behind and held him by his arms. The knife dropped from his hand.
“A trance?” Daniel asked.
Jude’s head jerked back like he was trying to head butt Talbot.
“Yes,” I said. “We have to snap him out of it.”
“On it,” Daniel said. “Sorry, friend,” he said to an unresponsive Jude, and swung his fist right into Jude’s jaw.
Jude’s head turned sideways in response to the blow, and then it lulled forward. He looked like he was unconscious for a moment, but then his body began to convulse, like he was having a seizure, while Talbot held him upright.
“Is he okay?” I started to ask.
Suddenly, Jude’s head snapped up. He looked right at me with his glazed-over eyes. His mouth opened and began to speak, but the words he said were not his own. “Sirhan is dead. The Death Howl is over. The ceremony will go forward tomorrow. You will come. You will fight. The Shadow Kings will lap the blood from your throat.” Jude clamped his mouth shut, his face twisted as if he were trying to stop someone else from speaking with his voice. He shook his head, but two more sentences came out. “There, we will bring the child. You will fight, or he will die.”
Daniel sent another punch across Jude’s face. He slumped out of Talbot’s arms and fell to the ground, in a faint.
“Well, those Shadow Kings could make a fortune writing creepy greeting cards,” Lisa said. “That was some message.”
Daniel scanned nearby rooftops. “Jude was being controlled, which means there was probably an Akh nearby, pulling the strings.”
“I’m on it,” Lisa said. “I’ll search the grounds.”
“I’ll go with you,” Talbot said. He stepped over Jude’s body, and he and Lisa took off on their search.
“Is he going to be okay?” April asked. She knelt in the grass next to Jude. He moaned when she felt for his pulse.
A cold dread had filled me since the moment Jude had stopped speaking. “What did he mean about the child?” I asked. “That they’d ‘bring the child’ with them?”
“I don’t know,” Daniel said.
Jude rolled his head back and forth with a great groan. He blinked up at me, looking dizzy. “Gracie,” he said, and I was sure it was actually him that was speaking. “I tried to stop them. I tried.… They said they were going for him.… I tried to stop them, but it’s too late.”