The Dark Divine

by Bree Despain

  Daniel lowered his head even more. He didn’t need to answer.

  “And you were born with the wolf’s essence, too?”

  Daniel reached down and scooped up a few shards of broken plate. He held them in his open palm. “My wolf wasn’t as strong when I was younger—probably because I wasn’t a purebred. Gabriel says there are some descendants of the Hounds who are so mixed in breed they probably don’t feel it much at all.” He closed his hand over the bits of glass and squeezed. He winced and opened his bloody palm. “I didn’t know the truth then about my family. All I knew was that there was something very wrong with my father—which is how I discovered that I could heal faster than normal people. That I could heal myself.”

  He closed his eyes and pursed his lips. It was like the cuts on his hands sucked the blood back in, then healed over into thin, jagged scars. All that remained in his hand were a few pink bits of glass.

  “But as I got older, I felt the monster stirring. I fought it as hard as I could. But I’ve failed. The wolf took me over, too—turned me into a beast like my father.”

  “But if the wolf took you over, that means you’ve …” I thought of Jude, of those scars on his hands and face, of the things he’d accused Daniel of. “That’s when it happened. You tried to hurt Jude, and that’s when the wolf took you over. That’s why he’s so afraid of you.”

  Daniel closed his fist around the glass again. His knuckles went purple, then white. Blood snaked around his wrist. I turned away and studied the puke-pink daisies on the wall.

  “The night I ran away from home,” he said, “I broke into the parish. It was after the fund-raiser for the fire repairs, and I knew your father always put off taking donations to the bank. I was already quite strong then. It only took a second to break the lock on the outside door to the balcony. The plan was to get in and get out with the money, but as I was leaving, your brother showed up. He saw me with the cash box and told me to put it back. He seemed so self-righteous, and it made me sick. The wolf told me that all of this was his fault. That I wouldn’t have even been there if it weren’t for him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I always felt the wolf drive for a pack. But I wanted a normal family. With a mother who put her child first, and a father who was steady and kind and didn’t make me tremble in my bed at night. I wanted a family like yours. I wanted to be Daniel Divine.” His voice faltered. I heard him shift in his chair. “I hated my father. I hated the monster that burned inside of me. Every time I got mad, or jealous, or … Something inside of me swelled, grew, eating me alive. It told me to hurt, to hunt. At first I thought I was going insane. I pushed it away. But somehow I knew that my father was responsible for what was happening to me. I followed him once. I saw what he would become—the things he did. I knew that was what my future held.

  “I thought maybe I could get rid of the monster if I got rid of my father—told someone about what I saw. I wanted to tell. I almost told. But then I thought I had to forgive him. That no matter how bad he hurt me or anyone else, I had to turn the other cheek. You’re the one who told me that. Told me my father hurt me because he was desperate.”

  My knees went numb. I clung to the counter for support. I didn’t understand what I’d said back then—still didn’t really. But that wasn’t what I’d meant. Not at all.

  “So I kept my mouth shut,” Daniel continued. “Sometimes I tried to paint the things I saw, but that only made my father go ballistic. One day I finally tried to tell Jude about the Urbat—what little I’d learned about them by then—but he thought I was making up stories. So instead I told him how my father hurt me. I thought if I told one person, but made him keep it a secret, it would ease the burning a bit, and I wouldn’t be betraying my father. I made Jude promise not to tell. But he broke that promise. He ruined everything.”

  “But you got what you wanted.” The numbness in my knees spread up my legs. “You became our brother.”

  “But it didn’t last. Before I had only dreamed what it would be like to be in a real family, but if your brother hadn’t broken his promise, then I wouldn’t have ever known what it was like. I wouldn’t have known what it felt like to be wanted and then get ripped out of the only warm, loving place I’d ever had. Things would have gone on like in the past, and my own mother wouldn’t have had to choose between that monster and me.”

  Daniel cleared his throat and coughed. “It was easier to control the wolf when I was with your family. But when I left, it started stirring again. But this time I didn’t fight it. I sought out other people who had demons inside—other creatures of the night.” He made a scoffing laugh. “Although, most of their inner demons weren’t quite so literal.”

  Daniel swallowed so hard I could hear him from across the room. I could tell he wasn’t going to make any more jokes.

  “The wolf grew stronger,” he said after a moment. “It influenced everything I did. And then that night in the parish when I saw your brother standing there and he had everything I ever wanted, the monster finally broke free.”

  I cringed, imagining Jude alone and frightened.

  “I raged and wailed on Jude like my father used to wail on me. I wanted to make him feel all the pain I had inside. He didn’t even try to fight back. He just took it like he was some kind of martyr, and that made the wolf fume. I wanted to strip him of everything he had.”

  Daniel took in a long breath. “When I told Jude I was taking the money and his new coat, you know what he did? He got to his feet in front of those stained-glass pictures of Christ, took off his coat, and offered it to me. ‘Take it,’ he said. ‘It’s cold outside, and you need it more than I do.’ He put the coat in my hands, and he was so calm and peaceful and I didn’t understand. I didn’t know this place he was coming from. I didn’t know how he could just offer it to me like it was nothing—like I’d done nothing. That’s when I thought it—I wanted to kill him. And then something seared through my veins, and I started to shake and scream … and I lunged at him.

  “All I remember after that is waking up outside on the parish grounds. My clothes were missing and shards of colored glass were scattered all around. There was blood all over me. But none of it was mine. I had no idea what happened—what I’d become. Gabriel says it’s like that the first few times; you’re not conscious of your actions at all. I was frantic. I didn’t know where your brother had gone. But then I saw him, lying, twisted, in the bushes a few feet away. And I knew I was responsible.”

  I held my hand over my heart. It was racing so fast it felt like it was going to burst through my ribs. “Was it you or the wolf?”

  Daniel was silent for a moment. “The wolf took him through that window. But I was the one who left him there. I saw the blood on his face. I knew he needed help. But I ran away. I took the cash box and I left him there.”

  The chair creaked as he stood up. I heard him moving closer to me. I could see his dark reflection in the cat clock’s shifting eyes.

  “You want to know what the real kicker is?” he asked, only a few inches from me now.

  I didn’t answer, but he told me anyway.

  “That money only lasted me three weeks,” he said. “Five thousand dollars of blood money, and I pissed it away on shit-hole motel rooms and girls who said they loved me until the drugs ran out. And at the end of three weeks, when I’d sobered up enough to remember what I’d done, I started running. But no matter how far or fast I ran, I couldn’t get away from the wolf. So I kept running and drinking and using—anything to numb the memories away—and I ran so far, that’s probably how I ended up back here.”

  He moved closer to me—as close as he was when I kissed him in the moonlight. “Do you know me now? Do you still think I’m worth saving?” His breath burned the side of my face. “Can you look me in the eyes and say you love me now?”

  I shifted my gaze from the clock to my feet. I picked my way through the broken glass and grabbed my backpack, leaving the bottles of linseed oil and varnish o
n the table, and went straight to the door. My hand was on the doorknob when I stopped.

  “Jude didn’t break his promise,” I choked out. “I was the one who told on your father. I’m the one who turned you into the wolf.”

  I wrenched the door open and ran up the stairs to the minivan. I drove aimlessly for at least an hour and somehow ended up at home in my bed.

  I had no thoughts in my head. No feeling in my skin. There was nothing in me at all.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Book of Secrets

  MONDAY

  I woke the next morning, tangled in the bedsheets. My shirt clung to my chest, sticky with cold sweat. My head throbbed. It felt like someone was drilling a hole in the base of my skull, the pain radiating up behind my eyes. I squinted at the alarm clock. It was much later than I thought. I pushed myself out of bed and into the shower.

  I stood in the stream of hot water and let the heat prick at the numbness under my skin, washing away the shock. That’s when the tears came.

  I never cried. Not since I was a baby, according to my mother. I didn’t get the point. Crying never fixed anything. But as the tears started to roll down my face, mingling with the rain from the showerhead, I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I sobbed into the steam, hoping no one could hear me over the somber buzz of the bathroom fan. It was like I finally let out every tear I’d ever held back. I cried for the time Don Mooney held his silver knife to my father’s throat. I cried for the times I overheard Daniel’s father ripping into him. For the time his mother took him away from us. For when Charity and I were sent to our grandparents for three weeks without any explanation. I cried for Maryanne’s death, for James going missing, for Jude.

  But mostly I sobbed for what I now knew about myself.

  I felt like such a fraud. My father told me my name meant mercy, help, and guidance. But he was wrong. All Grace Divine meant was blundering, meddling, disappointment. Everything I touched—everything I tried to help—fell apart and slipped through my fingers.

  Why did I have to press the issue, refuse to stay ignorant? Why couldn’t I go back and stop myself from creating this mess?

  If I had just stayed out of things, if I had just minded my own business for all these years, would everything be the way it used to? Would Daniel still be the blond-haired boy next door if I had kept my mouth shut about his father? Would Daniel and Jude still be the best of friends? Would my brother be undamaged? Would Daniel be human?

  But how could I have not done anything? Daniel would still be living a life of abuse and torture—he might not even be living at all. And how could I have not helped him when he came back?

  He still meant so much to me, even now after I knew the truth.

  But I couldn’t believe I put my need for Daniel over my own brother. I saw the pain in Jude’s face the first time I mentioned Daniel’s name at dinner. I looked Jude right in the eyes and promised I would leave it alone, that I would keep out of his secrets, but instead I went and dragged the only person who ever hurt him back into our lives. My feelings for Daniel caused the pain, the fear, and the anger that were slowly taking over my brother.

  “I hate you,” I said into the water. I pounded my wet fist on the shower wall. “I hate you, hate you, hate you,” I said as if speaking to Daniel.

  But the problem was—I didn’t. I didn’t hate Daniel at all, and I knew I should.

  I had betrayed my brother once again.

  I stood in the shower until it turned cold. And then I stood longer, letting the icy water cut paths across my skin, just to feel something other than my guilt. I stumbled out of the shower, shivering and clutching my stomach. I made it to the toilet and heaved out what little liquid was left in my body. I felt withered, drained, and I crawled back into bed, still wrapped in my wet robe.

  The house was quiet. Everyone else must have left for the day. The silence pressed in on me, making my head pound even more. I closed my burning eyes and let the silence envelop my body. I slept off and on, trying to make up for too many sleepless nights. But each time my eyes drifted closed and then open, I felt more drained than before.

  I stayed in bed for two days.

  WEDNESDAY

  My family left me alone. I was shocked—but grateful—that Mom didn’t try to make me go to school. Every once in a while she sent Charity up with food. Charity would leave it just inside my door, staring at me like I had the plague as she retrieved the untouched plates she’d left hours before. I wondered if my family really thought I was sick, but I feared that they knew what I had done—that they were just as ashamed of me as I was of myself. How could I face my brother again, knowing the pain I’d caused him? How could I show my face to anyone?

  It was midafternoon on Wednesday when I heard my father in his study below me. I wondered what he was doing home. Wednesday was one of his busiest days at the parish, and Jude would be there for his independent study. I thought about Dad surrounded by his books, how he’d seemed lost in them for weeks. What was he doing?

  But then I knew. It suddenly clicked. I wasn’t the only one to blame in all of this.

  DOWN IN THE STUDY

  “You knew,” I said from the doorway.

  Dad looked up from his book.

  I thundered into the room, right up to his desk. “You knew what he was, and you still brought him here!” I grabbed one of his books. Loup-Garou. “That’s what these books are for. You’re helping him.”

  My parents were such hypocrites! All this crap they taught us about not keeping secrets, and here my father was keeping the biggest one of all.

  I threw the book on the desk. It skidded across the wood and knocked over the lamp. “You’re the one who started all this. Not me.”

  Dad pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He closed his book and put it on top of one of the stacks. He looked completely unruffled by my behavior. It made me want to scream at him more.

  “I wondered when you would come to me,” he said. “I hoped that if we left you alone, you eventually would.” He sounded like the perfect pastor dealing with a troubled parishioner. “Shut the door and take a seat.”

  I was itching not to listen to him, but I did what he asked anyway. Once I was sitting, I picked up another book. The words and letters were all unfamiliar, like Arabic.

  “So you want to know why I’m helping Daniel,” Dad said. “The answer is simple, Grace. He asked me to.”

  “When?”

  “Daniel contacted me about six weeks ago. I made the arrangements for his return.”

  “But why would he want to come back here?”

  “He hasn’t told you?”

  I flipped through the pages of the book until I came to an illustration. It was an etching of what looked like a man transforming into a wolf. A full moon hung in the background. “He said something once about art school. He needed Holy Trinity to get into Trenton. But that was just a cover, right? This doesn’t have anything to do with art school, does it?”

  Daniel just used that to make me feel empathy for him—feel connected in our goals.

  “That was the cover story we invented,” Dad said. “But that doesn’t mean Daniel doesn’t want to go to Trenton. He wants to reclaim the life he should have had.” Dad leaned forward, his hands clasped together on top of his desk. “Grace, the reason Daniel came back is he’s searching for a cure.”

  Something fluttered in my chest. “Is that even possible?”

  Dad looked down at his hands. “While Daniel was gone he sought out the colony that his father came from. He asked them for a place in their pack. However, Urbat who have experienced the change—become werewolves—do not procreate often. It is typically against their nature. And in the pack dynamic, only the alpha is allowed to mate. Daniel’s mere existence was an affront to their ways.” Dad clasped and unclasped his fingers. “I don’t think those ancient wolves had any idea what to do with such a young Urbat—especially one who came from a volatile father who had been banished from their colony.
Many of the elders were quite wary of letting Daniel live among them. The alpha granted him a probationary period while they deliberated his future. While there, Daniel met a man—”

  “Gabriel?”

  Dad nodded. “Gabriel is the beta of their pack. Second in command. He took Daniel under his wing—or paw, as the case may be—and taught him many things about the history of their people. And about the techniques they’ve developed over the centuries to help control the wolf. The necklace Daniel wears is quite rare. It helps him keep the wolf at bay, and it makes him more sentient—more able to control his actions—while in wolf form. The pendant is many centuries old. I’ve contacted Gabriel to see if he has another to spare….” Dad rubbed his hand down the side of his face. The dark patches under his eyes had gotten deeper and darker since I last saw him.

  “Although Gabriel has a lot of influence with his pack, after the time of probation, he was unable to convince the other elders to let Daniel stay with them permanently. I think the memory of the damage his father caused to the pack was still too fresh. They sent Daniel away.”

  I bowed my head. Just another set of names to add to the long list of people who had rejected Daniel—a list my name was now on after I couldn’t look him in the eyes.

  “However, before Daniel was removed from the colony, Gabriel told him that there may be a way for him to free his soul from the clutches of the wolf. That there may be a cure. Gabriel said he couldn’t tell him the details but that the record of the ritual could be found if he looked hard enough. He told Daniel to enlist the help of a man of God. He told him to return to where someone loved him—he told him to go home.”

  “And that’s why he contacted you. You’re the man of God.”

  “Yes. I’ve been poring through every text on the subject since. Searching for the cure.” He gestured to the scattered books on his desk. “Then I realized that the answer must be something religious in nature—something only a man of God could obtain. I remembered meeting an Orthodox priest many years ago. He told me about a relic they kept in his cathedral. A book that contained translations of letters written by a monk who traveled to Mesopotamia during the Crusades. Although I thought little of it at the time, the priest joked that he had documented proof that God had invented the werewolf.”