“Our guards are trained in combat, but many of our other men are not fighters,” Jarem said. “We’ve followed Gabriel’s pacifist ways since the 1700s. We’re out of practice.”
“I can help Jude give them a crash course in fighting,” Talbot said. “They’re going to need all the help they can get.”
FRIDAY, MIDAFTERNOON, THIRTY-THREE HOURS UNTIL THE CEREMONY
Gabriel made the call for the rest of the Etlu Clan to join us, and we divvied up tasks and went to work. Daniel and a few of the Elders continued to debate strategy, while I sent Zach and Slade to the sporting-goods store on Main, to buy up as many crossbows and hunting knives as they could. Unfortunately, since the Death Howl last night, the mayor had upped the bounty on any wolf’s head to ten thousand dollars—which meant there weren’t very many weapons left in the store to begin with. I just hoped since our new farm was on a sixty-acre parcel of private land, we wouldn’t get any unexpected hunting visitors tomorrow night.
Bellamy supervised a stake-carving committee on the front porch. Talbot and Jude set up a boot camp out in the barnyard for anyone who wanted to brush up on demon fighting. April took it upon herself to buy up all the tiki torches at her favorite costume shop in Apple Valley, and she and Lisa staked them in the ground at regular ten-foot intervals around the boundary of the challenging ring.
Brent drew up his plans for his explosives, and then we sent runners to three separate hardware stores in the county—so as not to raise any red flags—to get supplies. He set to work on constructing the bomb in the barn, with Ryan as his only slightly disgruntled assistant.
I tried to keep myself as busy as possible, rotating among the groups and assisting where I could, in order to stave off my growing anxiety about the ceremony, and my deep worry for James’s well-being. Every time I felt the wolf’s voice creeping into my head, I stopped for deep-breathing exercises while I held the moonstone we’d found discarded in Jude’s cage.
Mom and Charity provided a lunch big enough to feed an army—Mom had thoroughly sanitized the haunted farmhouse’s kitchen and whipped herself into a cooking frenzy in order to “keep up the morale of the people who were going to save her baby.” I stuffed myself with food, mostly in order to keep my hands busy, and then rotated out to the barnyard to check up on Talbot’s and Jude’s progress in training a small group of the Sirhan’s youngest pack members.
But from the looks of it, it wasn’t going as smoothly as I’d hoped.…
“No, not like that!” Talbot barked at one of his students—a young Urbat with a closely shaved head. “Never try to stab someone while holding a knife with the blade pointing downward.”
Jude and the others looked over at them. I leaned with my elbows on the rickety railing of the back porch as I watched.
“If you hold the knife like that, it’s too easy for someone to take it out of your hand.” Talbot’s hand shot out, and, in almost a blink of an eye, he’d captured the knife from his pupil. Talbot turned the knife so the blade angled up and thrust it at his student. The young Urbat jumped back with a yelp.
Talbot sent another sparring thrust in his direction. “See! You can’t grab this out of my hand, can you?”
The student shook his head. Talbot looked up then and saw me standing on the porch. He handed the knife over to the young Urbat and positioned it correctly in his hand. “Give it a try.”
Talbot backed away as the guy started thrusting the knife awkwardly into the air.
He grabbed something off the top of a hay bale and jogged up the porch steps to join me. He leaned his backside against the porch railing so he was facing me and flashed one of his warmest smiles, like he was about to present some sort of peace offering.