The Dark Divine

by Bree Despain

  “Mind your own business,” I said, and walked away.

  April picked up her backpack as I approached. “Do you think there are CliffsNotes to Leaves of Grass?”

  “I doubt it.” I put my pencils in my supply bucket.

  April groaned. “Jude is going to quiz me on it after school, and I kind of told him I already read it.” She crinkled her nose and put the book in her bag.

  “Nuh-uh!” I teased. “You’re so dead. Say good-bye to the Christmas dance. Jude hates liars.”

  “Oh, no. Do you think he’ll be that mad?” She paused. “Wait, you said Christmas dance.” She pointed at me. “Did he say something to you? He is going to ask me, right? Hey, do you want to go shopping for dresses after school?”

  I smiled, but I couldn’t help wondering if should I say something to April about Jude. She seemed head over heels for him, but I couldn’t help wondering if my brother’s sudden interest in her was his way of rebounding—not from another relationship but from his own emotions. Or maybe it was April who was taking advantage of my brother. She sure did get over her shyness around him the second he seemed vulnerable. But the look on April’s face was genuinely eager.

  “Don’t you think you should focus on studying for the English final before dress shopping?” I asked. “Didn’t your mother threaten to ground you if you don’t pass?”

  “Ugh. Seriously, why did she have to start taking an interest in me now?”

  “Hey, Grace,” a raspy voice said from behind me.

  April’s eyebrows went up in double arches.

  I turned toward the owner of the voice, already knowing whom it belonged to. I looked at his navy-blue sweater with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, his khaki pants, the slip of paper he held in his hands, the top of his hair that seemed to get lighter with every day that passed—I looked anywhere but his face, anywhere but his eyes. My gaze finally rested on his paint-smudged forearms.

  “What do you want?” I asked. My voice came out colder than I expected.

  “I need to talk to you,” Daniel said.

  “I … I can’t.” I placed my drawing on top of my supply bucket and shoved it under my table. “Come on, April. Let’s go.”

  “Grace, please.” Daniel held his hand out to me.

  I flinched. His hands reminded me of the things he’d done to my brother. Would he have tried to do the same things to me if he’d known I was the one who turned his father in? “Go away.” I took April’s arm for strength.

  “It’s important,” Daniel said.

  I hesitated and let go of April.

  “What, are you crazy?” she whispered. “You can’t stay with him. People are already talking.”

  I stared at her. “Talking about what?”

  April looked at her shoes.

  “Hey, you girls coming?” Pete asked from the art-room doorway. Jude stood next to him, grinning at April. “We’ve gotta book if we want a booth.”

  “Coming,” April said. She gave me a pointed look and then broke into a huge smile. “Hey, guys,” she said as Jude wrapped his arm around her waist.

  “You coming, Grace?” Pete held his hand out to me just like Daniel.

  I looked at the three of them in the doorway. April tilted her head and gestured for me to come. Jude looked at me and then glanced at Daniel; his smile faded into a thin, tight line.

  “Let’s go, Gracie,” Jude said.

  “Please stay,” Daniel said from behind me.

  I couldn’t bring myself to glance at him. All Jude had ever asked me to do was stay away from Daniel. I failed in that promise originally, but I had to keep it now. I couldn’t talk to Daniel. I couldn’t be with him.

  I could not choose Daniel over my brother again.

  “Leave me alone,” I said. “Go somewhere else. You don’t belong here.”

  I took Pete’s outstretched hand. He locked his fingers around mine and pulled me to his side, but his touch didn’t make me feel the way I did when I was close to Daniel.

  AT THE CAFÉ

  I was six bites into my veggie burger, Pete was on reason three of his “Five Ways Hockey Could Change the World” lecture, and April was squealing with delight because Jude had just given her a blueberry muffin with an invitation to the Christmas dance when it fully hit me: I told Daniel to get out of my life. I dropped my burger and ran for the restroom. I barely made it to one of the toilets before garlic and seaweed burned up my throat.

  When I came out of the stall, Lynn Bishop was standing at the sink. She stared at her reflection in the mirror, her lips pursed but her eyes wide.

  “Bad veggie burger,” I mumbled, and stuck my hands under the faucet.

  “Whatever.” She chucked her paper towel into the trash and left.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Fears

  THAT NIGHT

  After dinner, I locked myself in my room. Cramming for my retake chem exam had eaten up most of my time last week, and I was still struggling to keep up with my other classes. With finals looming, I knew I was in trouble. I’d tried to study with April and Jude after school, but April had still been so giddy about Jude asking her to the dance, I realized it would be more effective if I worked on my own. But after a few hours of history and calc and a little Ralph Waldo Emerson, my weary gaze kept drifting down from my textbooks to the drawer in my desk.

  I took the key out of my music box and unlocked the drawer. I removed the book from the box, curled up in my comforter and pillows, and carefully turned to the second marked page.

  A little bedtime reading couldn’t hurt anyone, right?

  Dear Katharine,

  I am increasingly convinced that Alexius’s stories of the Death Dogs are not mere myth. I wish to document as much as I can about this phenomenon.

  Father Miguel says I am obsessed. But I fear he is the one with the obsession. He has persuaded large numbers of our campaign that they must punish the Greeks for their murder and betrayal. Even many of the Templars and Hospitalars are convinced by his inflammatory words. I find Alexius’s stories a welcome distraction in all this plotting and persuasion.

  Alexius took me to a blind prophet who taught me more on the subject. While some Urbat, as he called them, are born with the wolf essence, others are created when bitten by an existing Urbat—much like the spreading of some terrible plague.

  It may be that an Urbat created through infection, rather than birth, is more susceptible to the influences of the wolf. The curse may progress much more swiftly in the infected party if he is not vigilant in controlling his emotions….

  Daniel hadn’t mentioned that his wolf condition was contagious. I couldn’t believe that I had actually wanted to be like him, and now it made my mind spin to realize that it was as simple as a bite from his teeth—almost as simple as a kiss.

  I looked at my hands and couldn’t help picturing them covered in shaggy fur. My fingernails grew long into pointed claws that could rip flesh from bone. My mouth suddenly felt like it was full of razor-sharp teeth and long, tearing fangs. What would my face look like with a long snout and muzzle? What if my eyes turned black, with no inner glow—reflecting only the light around me? What if I became a monster, too?

  I shuddered and pressed my hands to my face. My skin was still smooth and hairless. I was still human.

  I picked up the book, hoping to find solace—to find answers. But the letter stretched on for several more pages, and most of it documented how the Dogs of Death had come to exist—how their blessing became their curse. It confirmed what Daniel and my father had told me but didn’t teach me anything new. I skimmed until I came to a portion that mentioned moonstones.

  It is strange, dear Katharine, but the blind man says that the Urbat have much greater difficulty controlling the wolf possession during the night of the full moon. As if the moon itself has power over them. Because of this, I think there may be a way to manage these beasts. Perhaps if an Urbat were to keep a small piece of the moon close to his body, it would act as a
counteragent to the effects of the larger moon, helping him keep the wolf at bay while still retaining its mythical strength. Much like how the ancient Greeks treated disease with the idea that like cures like.

  I have heard tales of rocks that fall in fiery glory from the heavens. What if some of these rocks have fallen from the moon itself? If I were able to fashion a necklace from one of these moonstones—if finding one was possible—perhaps I could help the Death Dogs reclaim their blessings.

  However, such a necklace would be no cure. It would only offer control. I fear that these Urbat have lost their souls to the clutches of the wolf, and unless they are freed of it before they die, they will be doomed to the depths of hell as demons of the dark prince.

  My eyes no longer felt weary. I hadn’t thought of what might happen to Daniel if he died. Would he really be doomed to live in hell as a demon forever? No wonder he was so desperate to find a cure. It would be one thing to live with a monster inside—it was a whole other thing to be damned for all eternity.

  I skimmed a few pages farther, looking for anything that might tell me more.

  The only things powerful enough to deliver a mortal blow to an Urbat are the teeth or hands of another demon, or if he is punctured through the heart by an object of silver. It is believed that silver is poisonous to the beasts….

  I didn’t want to think any more about death, so I turned to a new letter.

  My Dear Katharine,

  I wish to take an expedition into the forest. The blind man says he will find me guides who can get me close enough to observe a pack of Urbat without being discovered. The journey would cost twenty marks—all that I have.

  Father Miguel says the winds are shifting in our favor. He thinks tomorrow the armada will be able to move in closer to the city walls. Perhaps the only good that might come from our forces taking the city is that I might be able to search the books of the great library for more texts on the subject of the Urbat. What jewels of knowledge must lie therein.

  If not from the library, I must know more about these Hounds of Heaven. I will make preparations for the journey. My dear Alexius is reluctant to join me, but I will persuade him to go, for I need a translator.

  He seems to fear the Urbat more than any of the local boys. When pressed about the issue, all he utters is, “The wolf seeks to kill what he loves the most….”

  I dropped the book. It skittered across the hardwood floor. I leaned out of bed and gingerly picked it up. Little particles of yellowed paper sprinkled from the binding. I opened the book and found that the page I had just been reading and a few others had disintegrated under my absentminded handling. But my guilt for damaging the book was nothing compared to the other thought that crumpled my insides.

  The wolf seeks to kill what he loves the most.

  Did Daniel love me? He said I was special. He said I “did” things to him. He said he missed me—sort of. But he hadn’t said he loved me.

  But he’d kissed me like no one ever had. He made me want to tell him how I felt.

  But I couldn’t forget how he shook and the way his eyes glowed when I did. He’d lost his necklace momentarily, and he looked more frightened than I’d felt. Had I been in danger then? Had the wolf wanted to kill me? If Daniel didn’t have that necklace, would I already be dead? Or would he have just turned me into a beast like him?

  I put the book away. I could not handle any more questions—or answers—for a long time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Hopeless

  AVOIDANCE

  Trying to steer clear of Daniel became as difficult as running away from my own shadow.

  Friday afternoon, he came into Brighton’s Art Supplies while I was picking out a new set of hard pastels to replace the ones I’d broken the week before Thanksgiving. I waited until he was finished at the cash register and had gone before I took my box up to the front. When I pulled out my wallet, the girl behind the counter informed me that my “wicked hot friend” had already paid for the pastels.

  “What if I don’t want them anymore?”

  She shrugged and snapped her gum.

  I left the box on the counter.

  “Are you sure?” she called after me like I was crazy. “You can keep them.”

  On Saturday, he was at the parish repairing a broken pew when I brought the bulletins from the copy shop to my father. I set them on his desk and left through the office door that led into the alley between the school and the parish.

  Sunday morning, I saw him staring down at me from the balcony during Dad’s sermon. And by Monday, I realized that running any errand seemed to put me in danger.

  That afternoon, Dad sent me to Day’s Market with a list of groceries. It was his turn to make dinner while Mom took a late shift at the clinic—something she’d been doing more of since Thanksgiving so she wouldn’t have to leave James at day care.

  I rounded the corner into the canned-goods aisle and literally bumped into Daniel as he crouched over a box of canned peas. He stood up and turned around. He wore a Day’s Market apron and held a box cutter—the point of which was smeared with blood. He grimaced, and I noticed the back of his other hand was scraped with a long angry cut.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, and tried to move around him.

  He stepped in front of me and blocked my path. “Grace.” The cut in his skin healed over as he put his hand on my grocery basket, stopping me from stepping away. “We need to talk—alone.”

  I looked at the bloody box cutter he held against his apron.

  The wolf seeks to kill what he loves the most.

  “I can’t.” I let go of my basket, backed away, and ran out of the market.

  Dad didn’t question why I came home without the ingredients for chicken-fried steak. He made mac and cheese instead. Don, James, and I were the only ones who joined him for dinner anyway. And I wasn’t surprised at all when Dad asked Don how Daniel was working out at the market.

  “Real great,” Don said. “Mr. Day’s been so stressed about Jess, he needs all the help he could get. Lucky Daniel needed a job.”

  Or convenient, I thought—but it was Jude’s voice that echoed sarcastically in my head.

  I pushed away my plate. Daniel had cared for Maryanne. She made him feel safe and loved. And now that she was gone, he had a comfortable place to live. Daniel had never met James, but he loved this family. “Saving” James had made Daniel a hero in my family’s eyes, if only for a moment. Daniel and Jess had been in the same grade for many years. She’d lived in Oak Park while he was there with his mom. And then she had moved to the city and lived there until she disappeared. I knew all too well from Daniel’s admissions that I was not the first girl in his life. People always described Jess as “troubled.” Wasn’t that the kind of person Daniel said he’d sought out for companionship? Was it possible that he could have ever loved Jessica Day?

  All I knew was that she was missing, and Daniel had a good job that let him fulfill the requirements for Barlow’s class. Which meant he’d be able to stay in Rose Crest indefinitely.

  Convenient. It was all too convenient.

  But to what end? Were they random attacks on people he cared about? Or did they serve some purpose? Did they point in some direction?

  Did they get him closer to … me?

  Something deep down in my heart told me my doubts about Daniel had to be wrong. Dad had read those letters. He knew that Daniel’s inner wolf would target the people he loved, and still, he kept Daniel here. He helped him get that apartment. He helped him get that job. He wouldn’t do these things if he thought Daniel was hurting people, or if he would hurt me.

  But the thing was, I’d thought the same thing about Jude’s accusations. I’d thought that if Daniel had truly tried to kill my brother, Dad would never let him near our family. But I’d been wrong about that. He helped Daniel, fully knowing what he’d done—what he was.

  Was Jude right? Did Daniel have Dad under some type of spell?

  Or did Dad just kno
w something that I didn’t?

  GETTING OUT OF THE HOUSE

  I didn’t know why, but I felt like I couldn’t read the book of letters in my bedroom that night. Like the words that echoed off of them would be heard by everyone in the house. I drove to the library. It was almost closing time, but I settled into one of the scratchy orange couches, trying to push down the nerves that rumbled inside of me. I figured that if Dad really knew something that I didn’t, then the answer was probably hidden in these letters.

  My Sister,

  They have destroyed it. They have destroyed the great library!

  The knights and their footmen have sacked the city. They have looted and plundered the great treasures.

  They have set fire to the library, destroying all I wished to learn. They call the Greeks heathens, yet our Knights of Christ are the ones who rape the city.

  The smell of smoke and blood permeates my tent. I cannot abide it much longer. My vigor for a journey into the forest is renewed. I fear my writings of the true origins of the Urbat may be the only that exist after the destruction of the library. I must restore the documents of their secrets to atone for the sins of this campaign. Thou may think me foolish, yet I will not be deterred.

  God’s love be with thee and Simon,

  Thy brother in blood and faith

  Katharine—

  We are betrayed!

  I fear my Alexius is killed.

  Our guides led us deep into the woods, and when it was close to nightfall, they took our horses and my twenty marks and left us stranded. Alexius was frightened when the howling encircled us. I do not know what has become of him. I do not recall how I made it back to my tent. My cloak is torn and bloody.