The Dark Divine (34 page)

“Jude said we had to keep you away from Daniel. He said all you needed was a good scare. The car broke down, so I used to the opportunity.” Pete clenched my shoulder. “I would have been your hero if …”

That noise. It was a howl. It was Daniel. “If something hadn’t scared you away?”

“I ran,” Pete said. “And then Kalbi came along
before I got back.” His fingers dug into my shoulder. “You’re supposed to want me, not him!” Pete pressed his body against mine, grinding my bare back into the rough brick. His hot breath was a vile mixture of breath mints and alcohol.

“You’re drunk, Pete. You don’t really want to do this.”

“You owe me this,” he said. “I’ve wanted this for a long time. But you told me to be patient—so I was. And then you went off and did it with
him.”

“What—?”

“Don’t deny it. Everybody knows. Lynn saw you leaving his place. She saw him follow you out half naked.” Pete gritted his teeth. “So if you’ll give it up for that piece of filth, then what’s wrong with me? Am I not dark enough? Am I not bad enough for you?” His body crushed me against the wall. “I
can
be if that’s what you want.”

Pete smashed his lips over my mouth. The strap of my dress snapped in his clawing grasp. I slammed my fists into his back. He grabbed my arms and pinned them against the wall. I grated the heel of my shoe down his leg.

Pete wrenched back his head. “I knew you’d like it rough.”

I sucked in a breath and called for help. Pete laughed and smothered my mouth with his. I felt completely trapped under his weight.

Pete’s body suddenly lurched sideways, and he
released me. He sputtered and grabbed his side. His lips made a perfect
O
shape as his hand came up. Blood painted his fingers. He stumbled back. “Monstrrrr …” he said, and fell to the ground.

“Oh, my …” I cast about in the dark and saw it—a great, hulking, bearlike thing—crouching in the shadows of the school’s side entrance. Moonlight reflected off the bloody knife in its giant hand.

I screamed. It was such a shrill, foreign noise I didn’t realize it was coming from me at first. But I couldn’t stop.

The hulking shadow lunged at me.

I turned to run, but I tripped over something lying in the street.

The bear man caught me, crushing me around the middle as it wrenched me up away from Pete’s crumpled body. The beast held my back to its chest, its ragged breath in my ear. I kicked at its tree-stump legs. I screamed louder, even though I knew no one in the school would hear me over the thumping music. A huge hand clamped over my face, covering my mouth and nose—silencing me.

“Don’t scream.” His voice was trilling, almost crying. He was afraid. “Please don’t scream, Miss Grace.” He wasn’t a monster at all.

“Don?” I tried to say, but his hand pressed so hard over my mouth, no sound came out.

“I didn’t mean it. He was hurting you. I thought he
was the monster. I had to stop him. I’m supposed to be a hero just like my granddaddy taught me.” Don’s knife scraped my arm as he held me. It was sticky and wet with Pete’s blood. “But he’s not the monster, is he?” Don’s voice grew shriller. “He’s … just a boy.” His hand tightened over my face. “I didn’t mean to do it.”

I couldn’t breathe. I tried to tell him to let go, but I had no voice. I clawed at his hand.

“You can’t scream, Miss Grace. You can’t tell nobody. Pastor will be mad. He’ll send me away like he almost did after the fire. I didn’t mean it. I was trying to help.”

Blood dripped off the knife—it slithered down my arm.

“You can’t tell nobody!” Don bawled. A hot tear landed on my shoulder.

Stop! You’re hurting me. I can’t breathe!

“I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean it,” Don cried over and over again. His hand tightened around my face as he sobbed, almost as if he didn’t realize I was there anymore.

I blinked, fighting the long wispy fingers of darkness that slipped in behind my eyes. My body felt limp, uncontrollable. I couldn’t fight the dark any longer.

THREE YEARS AGO

I stared into the still, quiet darkness from the front-room window. Watching. Waiting.

Mom paced behind me. “I don’t know where he could be,” she said, more to herself than to anyone else. “The Nagamatsus said he left Scouts two hours ago.”

Dad said good-bye to the person on the phone and came out of the study.

“Who was it?” Mom practically sprang on him.

“What did they say?”

“Don,” Dad said. “There’s a problem at the parish.”

Mom’s breath caught. “Jude?”

“No. Something with the remodeling.”

“This late?”

The keys jangled as Dad took them off the hook. “I’ll be back soon.”

“But what about Jude?”

Dad sighed. “He’s a good kid. If he isn’t home by the time I get back,
then
we’ll start to worry.”

Mom made a noise like she didn’t agree with that plan.

My gaze didn’t leave the blackness of the night. The storm clouds parted, and I thought I saw something moving near the walnut tree. I leaned into the window.

“Jude,” I said. “I see him.”

“Thank goodness,” Mom said, but her voice had that edge to it like she was preparing a lecture.

“You could always get him a cell….” I started in on my favorite topic, but then I noticed that Jude wasn’t walking toward the house from the side yard—he was stumbling.

And why was his face smeared with chocolate syrup?

Jude grabbed the porch railing. His legs folded under him, and he crumpled onto the porch steps.

“Jude!” I ran to the front door, but Dad was already there.

“No, Gracie,” Mom shouted.

I couldn’t see over their bodies that filled the doorway. “What happened?” I tried to squeeze between them.

“Da—” I heard Jude sputter. He coughed like he was choking. “Dan—”

Dad pushed me back. “Get away, Gracie.”

“But—”

“Go to your room!”

And suddenly I was being pushed up the stairs. I couldn’t see anything beyond my mother’s body and her shoving hands.

“Room, now. Stay there.”

I ran to my bedroom and pushed up the blinds. I couldn’t see the porch or anything that was going on with Jude. But something else caught my eye. It was something white yet shadowed in the full moon’s glow, crouching under the walnut tree, watching what I couldn’t see on the porch. I squinted, trying to make out what it was, but it receded into the shadows and vanished.

“I’m sorry,” the darkness whispered, cutting off the forgotten memory in my head. It was one of those phantom voices from so long ago. It was too far away and I tried to reach for it, but something bound me tight—I couldn’t remember what.

“I’m sorry, Don,” the phantom said.

The voice was followed by a
thump
, a metallic
clink
, and half a gasp. The bands that held me fell away, and I felt the rushing of wind, then hardness under my back, and warmth pressing over my lips.

Sweet air filled my mouth, my lungs. The misty darkness retreated from my brain. My eyelids felt heavy as I forced them open.

Daniel stared back at me, his eyes black with anger.

“You didn’t stay home,” he growled.

I coughed and tried to push myself up off of what felt like a table. But my head was as big as a semitruck, so I rolled on my side instead to look at him. He seemed more afraid than angry.

“You didn’t tell me you bit my brother,” I replied.

A FEW MINUTES LATER

“Is Don okay?” I rubbed the sides of my sore jaw as I lay on an art-room table. The pulsing of the music from the gym mingled with the pounding inside my head.

Daniel paced in front of the window behind Barlow’s desk. He hadn’t looked at me since I’d asked about
my brother. “I only knocked him out. He’ll be fine soon.”

“Only
knocked him out?” I said. “And what about Pete? Did he look dead to you?”

“Pete?” Daniel looked back at me. “Pete wasn’t there.”

“Oh. That’s good, I guess.” Pete may have run off and left me to fend for myself, but I was still glad he wasn’t dead. I fingered the broken strap of my dress. Bruises formed under my skin. “Pete attacked me…. He did this to me.”

Daniel’s hands locked into fists. “I thought I could smell him all over you.” His eyes went blacker than before. “Good thing he wasn’t there, I would have—”

“Don beat you to it. Stabbed him in the side with his silver knife. He thought Pete was the monster and kind of lost it when he realized what he’d done.”

Daniel nodded like the scene he’d come upon finally clicked. “I sensed more anguish in him than malice.”

I sat up. Little flashes of light swam in front of my eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me my brother is the monster?”

Daniel turned to the window. “Because I wasn’t sure myself. I don’t remember biting him. I tried to deny that I could have done anything like that until the day James went missing. That was Jude’s blood on the porch—but it didn’t smell normal, his scent was confused.”

“Because he’s a werewolf?”

Daniel gazed out the window at the full moon hanging
over the parish next door. He brushed his moonstone pendant. “He’s not a werewolf. Not yet anyway.”

“But he hurt those people. That was him, wasn’t it? Wouldn’t that turn him into a full-blown werewolf? A predatory act?”

“Not if they were already dead when he found them. Maryanne froze to death. Jessica must have died from something else—overdose, maybe. He must have mutilated their bodies somehow, making it look like a wolf attack. Violence against common animals doesn’t count. That cat that turned up dead was just for show. And he didn’t intend to kill James. He just wanted to scare people.”

“But how could
he
do those things? How could he take Baby James? Didn’t he know James could have gotten hurt or worse? James would have died if it weren’t for you.”

“It was the wolf, Grace. The wolf hasn’t taken him completely over yet, but it has enough control to influence his actions. It feeds off his emotions. The stronger the emotion, the more hold it has. Each time he did something was after we were together….”

“He knew that you fixed my car on Markham,” I said. “And somehow he knew I was at that party at your place. He knew that Jess was there, too. Do you think he followed me, followed my scent?” I rubbed my eyes—they still didn’t want to focus quite right.

“Jess was so wasted,” I went on. “Maybe he found
her. Maybe the wolf made him do something to her body and then he planted it somewhere, but no one found it.” My stomach churned when I pictured my brother with her mutilated corpse. “And he was at the market today. He must have seen us together, and with all those rumors Lynn was spreading … Pete said it took Jude three hours to pick up the corsages.” My throat closed in an involuntary gag. “Do you think he went to the city to retrieve the body—to plant it where you work?”

Daniel nodded. “Here’s the crazy thing, Grace. He probably doesn’t remember doing any of those things. He’s probably only aware that he’s been losing minutes, even hours of his life. But he doesn’t know what he’s done. He really believes
I’m
the monster.”

“And he thinks he has to stop you.”

Daniel stiffened. He stared far out the window. After a moment, I heard it, too: police sirens blaring toward the school.

“Jude wants to kill you,” I said.

Daniel backed away from the window. “Then the police are the last of our worries.”

“We have to find Jude.” I swung my legs over the side of the table. “He’s here looking for you. We need to go find him first.” I felt stronger now so I tried to stand.

Daniel pushed me down.
“We
aren’t going anywhere. You are staying here while I go look for Jude.”

“Like hell I am.” I got right back up. “Stop telling me what to do.”

“Grace, this isn’t a game. Just stay here.”

“But what if he finds me first?” I asked, trying a new tactic. “What if he goes home? Charity’s babysitting James. They have no idea what’s happening to Jude. What if he tries to hurt them, too?”

Daniel rubbed his hand across his face. “So what do you think we should do?”

“Take me with you. We have to find Jude. We have to get him away from all these people. If he sees us together, then we can lead him away from here.” Then what, I had no idea. “Maybe I can calm him down. If only we had another moonstone.” I looked at his pendant. “Could you …?”