Бри Деспейн - The Dark Divine

"It just came last night," Dad said. "I'm sorry. I tried to get it before ..." Dad balled up the wrapping paper. "I thought I had to wait until I had it... I'm sorry."

"What is it?" Charity asked.

"A graduation ring," I said.

Jude's eyes were like glass, sedated. He didn't speak. He hadn't said a thing in almost a week.

Later that evening, the phone rang. I listened for a minute until the nurse's voice on the other line said, "He's gone. There was nothing we could do to stop him from leaving. ..."

I dropped the phone, left it dangling in midair, and ran to my room.

Early in the morning of the seventh day, I awoke at my desk with a paintbrush stuck to my arm. There had been another note in the box Daniel left in my room. He'd written out instructions on how to use linseed oil and varnish with my oil paints. I'd fallen asleep at my desk while finishing my portfolio piece of Jude fishing at Kramer's pond.

It was the brightness from the window that awoke me. I peered through the blinds. The early-morning moon reflected off the six inches of snow that had fallen during the night. It looked so different outside than it had a few days before. Now the crusty brown lawn, the leaf gunky gutters, the neighbors' houses, and the ghostly walnut tree were all covered with a thick layer of pure, white, undisturbed snow. No cars or plows had been down the street yet to throw mud on the curbs or leave black tracks in its perfection. It looked like someone had come along with a brush and painted the world white, making it a giant blank canvas.

Then I saw him. A large wolf that looked almost black in the shadow of the walnut tree. It stared straight up at my bedroom window.

"Daniel?" I gasped, even though I knew it couldn't be, I drew open the blinds, but the wolf was gone.

I must have drifted off to sleep again because I awoke, several hours later, to my mother's screams. Dad and I finally got her to calm down enough to tell us that Jude had left during the night, leaving behind only his bottle of prescription sedatives and a note on the kitchen table.

I can't stay, I don't know who I am anymore. I need to go.

But I knew Jude had been gone long before he ran away.

Mom was practically catatonic--expressionlessly rocking Baby James in the front room--when I slipped out of the house. I knew where I had to go, and I was glad she didn't stop me. I drove for miles down the newly plowed streets and parked the car a little ways off from my destination. I trudged up to the open gate. A man with silver-streaked red hair nodded as I passed him.

"Nice to have a visitor on a day like this."

I tried to smile and returned his wish for a happy new year.

A narrow path had been dug out along the walks, but I preferred to walk in the snow. I let my feet sink in the icy cold, leaving my tracks in the perfect whiteness. I held my dress coat closed over the wooden box, protecting it from the drifting snow and the nipping wind. I sat on a stone bench in the memorial and pulled the book of letters from the box. I opened it to the last marked page and read the letter again.

To Simon Saint Moon, I found these letters sealed and addressed to thy wife, among her brother's effects after his disappearance. I have carried them with me these last two years, in hopes of giving them to Katherine in person.

I am saddened by the news of her death. To leave such a young son motherless is a tragedy. I would say it is strange for a wolf to travel so far into a village, yet there have been several other attacks in populated cities such as Amiens, Dijon, and, most strangely, Venice. Last, all the cities that sent men on our ill fated campaign

Have been plagued by these vicious killings. Perhaps god punishes us for our sins where the Pope fails to fulfill his threats of excommunication.

I do not know what these letters contain. I have left them thy brother in law went mad before he was lost to the forest. His writings may reflect the illness of his mind.

The Dagger was found with his letters. It is a valuable relic. Perhaps young doni can inherit it when he comes of age. He should have something to know his uncle by.

Brother Gabriel was a good man. He was one of the few voices of reason against the bloodshed until the madness took him.

Regards, Brother Jonathan de Paign knight of the templar

I closed the book and held it to my chest. Katharine had no idea what killed her. She hadn't known it was her own beloved brother. I walked up to the statue standing in the garden in front of me. It was the tall angel who stood with the wolf entwined in his robes. I brushed the snow from the wolf's head, from the angel's wings.

"This was you," I said to the angel. He was the man who helped Daniel--the one who gave him his moon stone necklace and sent the ring for Jude. "You wrote these letters. You are Brother Gabriel." I looked up into his eyes, almost expecting him to answer.

Brother Gabriel was still alive after all these centuries.

Would Daniel have lived for as long if none of this had happened?

I felt like Fd lost everything. Daniel and Jude were gone. My mother was lost in her sorrow. My dad blamed himself. Even April avoided me, like she was too freaked out by everything she'd seen in the sanctuary.

I took off my gloves and knelt in the snow. I undid the button of my coat pocket and pulled out the little carved-wood angel Don had made for me. I brushed its crudely shaped face and the words Fd scratched into the bottom of the figurine: Donald Saint Moon.

I imagined Simon Saint Moon getting those letters and the silver dagger possibly only a few weeks after his wife had died--a few weeks too late. I imagined his sorrow at discovering that Katharine's own brother had killed her, his anger at knowing he could have prevented her death--if only they'd gotten that package sooner. I pictured

Katharine's son, Doni, growing up with the legacy of his mother's death.

Was it Simon or Doni who took up the quest to destroy werewolves first?

For some reason, I think it was Doni. He must have passed that silver dagger and his mission on to his own son, who then passed to his, and then on and on through the years, until it came to Don Mooney--the last of the Saint Moons. But Don was different from the others: mentally challenged and alone in the world, with only that knife and his grandfather's stories. He died trying to be a hero like his ancestors. He died before I had a chance to thank him for trying to save me--before I ever told him I forgave him for hurting my father all those years before.

"You belong here, too," I said, and placed the tiny wood angel next to Gabriel in the snow. It seemed a far better memorial for my friend than being planted in field like a rutabaga or a tulip bulb. "You are a hero."

"People will think you're nuts if you keep talking to inanimate objects."

I almost fell over as I turned to the voice behind me.

And there he sat, on the stone bench where I'd first held his hand, balancing a crutch between his knees.

"Daniel!" I ran to him and threw my arms around his neck.

"Whoa." He winced.

I noticed the bandage across his throat, and I loosened my grip.

"They said you left. They said you got up and walked out in the middle of a shift change. I thought I'd never see you again."

"But you came here?"

"I hoped ... I hoped you'd come here, too."

Daniel kissed my forehead. "I told you Fd stick around as long as you'd have me." He smiled, all crooked and devious. "Or should I have taken you stabbing me through the heart as a sign you wanted to break up?"

"Shut up!" I punched him in the shoulder.

"Ow."

"I'm sorry." I took his hands in mine. "I didn't do it to hurt you," I said, referring to that night in the parish. "I did it because I promised to save you."