by Bree Despain
“There’s a first-aid kit in my dad’s office.” It felt like a lame thing to offer, but I didn’t know what else to do.
“Go,” he said. “Lock yourself in the office. Call the police, whoever.”
“I won’t leave you.”
“Please.” He slowly stood, still panting. “This isn’t over.” His eyes reflected everything he feared.
I turned to go.
“I’ll love you always,” he said.
“I lo—”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Daniel jut forward. The door behind him burst open, pushing him out of the way. A massive silver-gray wolf filled the doorway. It growled and snapped and lunged at me.
“No!” Daniel tried to grab its hindquarters.
He missed, and the wolf sank its teeth into my arm, piercing my skin. I fell, knocked my head on the side of a pew, and bit my tongue. The wolf stood over me, snapping and growling like the alpha in that movie. My blood dripped from its teeth. It reared back, about to lunge for my throat.
Then it squealed, and another wolf was on top of it. It was black and sleek, with a diamond patch of white fur across its sternum. Daniel. The black wolf snapped and nipped at the other—almost like it was trying not to truly hurt it.
The gray wolf bucked the black one off. Its eyes looked positively feral as it sprang at the black one, biting and tearing. It ripped at its legs, its sides. The black wolf rolled away, yelping and whining. Its white patch of fur was slashed with red. The gray wolf licked its teeth. Black fur fell from its mouth.
I could taste my own blood. It slipped down my dry throat. The wound in my arm pulsed and flamed. It took everything I had to choke back my screams. The gray wolf slinked toward me, its teeth bared, its eyes hungry.
The knife was just out of reach, next to what looked like scraps of Daniel’s clothes on the floor near the door. I scrambled for the dagger, but the gray wolf chomped down on my foot, wrenching off my shoe. The wolf shook it in its massive jaws until the shoe snapped and fell to the floor. The wolf snarled and bore down on me.
The black wolf pushed itself up. It growled, its lips pulled back from its long sharp fangs and jagged teeth, and crept toward me. I stretched for the knife and wrapped my fingers around the hilt. The two wolves circled around me. Their eyes locked on each other like they were partners in some horrible dance—and I was caught in the middle. Spit rained on my skin as they snapped and snarled. The heat of their collective breath made it impossible for me to think. Their claws scraped my legs. They danced, weaving back and forth, anticipating each other’s attacks. Then the gray one feigned to the left, and when the black one countered, the gray wolf lunged over me. It ensnared the black one by the throat and knocked it to the ground. The two rolled across the floor.
They slammed into the balcony’s railing, which overlooked the rest of the chapel. The old wood creaked with the impact. The black wolf lay on its back under the gray one’s feet. It whimpered. The sound was pained. Desperate. Afraid.
It knew it was going to lose.
The hilt of the knife slipped in my sweaty hand. I’d told Daniel I would be there when he needed me. I’d be there to save him before he died. I’d free his soul. But I’d thought that would be years away. Not today.
Not now.
Pain seared from the gash in my arm—like fire spreading through my entire body—engulfing me. This was no ordinary wound. It was the bite of a werewolf, the bite of my brother. I was infected.
I carried the wolf curse now.
The same curse that dictated that if I ever tried to kill someone—if I killed Daniel now—the wolf would take me over, too.
I would lose myself.
The choice is yours to make, my father had told me. But he had no idea what an impossible choice it would be. I could save Daniel’s soul or preserve my own. I could be his angel and become a demon.
The black wolf’s chest sank. It lay so limp. The gray wolf backed up across the balcony, readying itself to deal the ultimate killing blow.
I could not break this promise.
I am grace.
I flew at the black wolf, raised the knife, and plunged it into the diamond patch of fur on his chest. I will be the monster for you.
The gray wolf came barreling right behind me. It rammed its head at the black wolf’s body, and the two crashed through the balcony railing. A gruesome smacking noise echoed through the empty sanctuary below.
“No!” I ran down the ancient stairs and tripped at the bottom. My knees slammed into the stone tile of the chapel floor. I scrambled on hands and knees to the prostrate body of the black wolf—to Daniel. I laid his furry head in my lap, and stroked behind his ears. They felt too cold. The knife was still stuck in his chest. Blood spattered the floor all around us.
Where’s Jude?
My gaze followed a smear of blood across the stone floor. Jude—human, naked—stood trembling behind the altar in the shadows of the sanctuary.
“Don’t just stand there,” I shouted at him. “Go for help.”
But he didn’t move. He stood like a pillar of salt in the dark.
I couldn’t leave Daniel. I told him I’d be there when he died. I slid down on the floor and lay next to his furry body.
Why didn’t he turn human? Did I fail? Did I hesitate too long? Was I too late to save his soul before …? Did I trade myself for nothing?
A cold wind blew over me. Snowflakes encircled us. One landed on the wolf’s nose and melted. When did it start to snow? I thought as I laid my head on Daniel’s bloodstained chest. I listened to a solitary heartbeat grow softer and softer until it was nothing, and waited for my wolf to come—to take me over for what I’d done.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Redemption
IN THE SANCTUARY
I heard a yelp from somewhere beside me. I looked up and saw April quavering in her pink dress in the open chapel doors. The snow blew in from behind her.
“What hap—?”
“Don’t ask questions.” I sat up. “Please, just go call an ambulance.”
I looked at the Daniel wolf. It lay too still, lifeless. The silver knife protruded from his chest. Maybe I didn’t ram it in hard enough? Maybe I didn’t pierce his heart? Or maybe I needed to take it out. The book had said silver was poison.
I tentatively wrapped my hand around the hilt. It didn’t burn my skin.
“What on earth are you doing?” April asked, still in the doorway.
“Go. Please get help.”
I gripped the knife tighter, and pulled with all my might. The blade slid out with a sickening sucking sound. Blood spurted from the wound, spreading across his chest, staining the white patch of his fur. But then, instead of flowing out, the blood stopped. It curled, rolling back into the wound. The puncture matted over in scabs, then healed into white flesh.
White skin that matched the rest of his body—his human body. Daniel was with me now, not some furry beast. He lay on his side in a fetal huddle like he’d just been reborn. His naked body was ripped and bloody in several places, including his neck. But he was human, mortal. I’d saved his soul before he died. And that’s all I thought mattered … until he coughed.
“Grace,” he rasped.
I slid my hand down his arm and entwined my fingers with his. “I’m here,” I said. “I’m here.”
“Um …” April said with more than a hint of shock. “I think I’ll go for help now.”
Moonlight spilled in from the doorway when she moved, casting its ghostly paleness onto Daniel. His hair looked almost white.
“Daniel, I’m so sorry.” I cupped his face in my hands. “But you better the hell not die on me!”
His wry smile slid across his face. He opened his eyes. They were dark as mud pies and more familiar than ever. “Bossy as ever,” he said. He coughed and closed his eyes again.
“I’ll love you always,” I whispered. I kissed him on his cold lips and held his hand until I heard the sirens, and someone pulled me away
from him.
LIFE AS I KNOW IT
It snowed for seven days straight. After the first day, the police released Jude and me into my parents’ custody. They couldn’t find any witnesses who could ID us as the ones who ran from the school. And since none of us seemed to “remember” what exactly had happened, all they could determine within any sort of reason was that we had been attacked by a pack of wild dogs—the same elusive pack they were blaming for what happened to Maryanne and Jessica—and had run into the parish for safety.
Daniel’s wounds were consistent with a wolf attack—no one could explain the no-clothing part, though—but Jude and I looked untouched by the next morning. My bruises were gone, and the bite mark in my arm had healed over into a pink, crescent-shaped scar.
Jude was just as unharmed physically. But the doctor reported that he was suffering from some sort of post-traumatic stress or something, and prescribed a heavy sedative after Jude had a violent episode when Dad finally got to the station from the airport early in the morning. I realized now that the only thing that probably kept Daniel from coming after my family when he first became a werewolf was all the drugs he was using.
My feigned amnesia faltered only with the details of what happened in the alley. Strategically, I remembered how Pete had attacked me, and how Don had saved me. Pete was the one who went to the police after he stumbled from the alley—leaving me behind—but the police decided to hold him, and his thirteen stitches, for further questioning. I’d forgiven him for what he’d done to me, but that didn’t mean there shouldn’t be consequences for his actions.
The second and third day I spent in the hospital, pacing up and down the corridor outside Daniel’s ICU room until the nurses told me I had to leave. “Go home,” they said. “Get some rest, child. We’ll call if there’s any change.”
On the fourth day, my father’s phone calls finally paid off, and we found out what had happened to Don Mooney. He was discovered on a park bench near a bus station in Manhattan. The police said his heart had just stopped beating. He had no money or ID, and from the way he looked, they decided he was homeless. So Don had been buried in a trench, three pine boxes deep, in a place called Potter’s Field, two days before Christmas.
The fifth day, I went back to the hospital. I spent all of Christmas Eve standing outside the glass window, praying. Dad came to collect me late that evening. “The storm’s getting worse,” he said. “Your mother doesn’t want you to get stranded here.”
The sixth day was Christmas. Nobody was in the mood to be festive except for Baby James, who played merrily with bubble wrap and curling ribbons. My parents gave me a cell phone. Dad gave Jude a gold ring inlaid with a large black stone.
“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 Katharine 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. Alas, 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 sealed out of respect. I must warn thee, however, 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 moonstone 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 I’d 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 I’d 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.