Nancy K. Duplechain - Dark Trilogy 03 - Dark Legacy

by Nancy K. Duplechain

  “Ow!” she yelled, as blood cascaded down her skin.

  “Oh, God! Sit down,” I said. I ran to the kitchen, got a clean wash rag and pressed it up against her wound. She looked like she wanted to pass out.

  “Care, are you okay?”

  She nodded, avoiding looking at the blood.

  “Can you hold this in place while I get the first aid kit?” I said.

  “Um …” was all she could say.

  I removed the rag, hoping that the gash wasn’t that deep, but I was wrong. More blood pooled and then fell in a steady stream. I put the rag back in place.

  “I think you need to go to the hospital.”

  She didn’t answer me, and she looked white as a sheet, her head tilted back, looking at the ceiling.

  I removed the rag and placed my hand on her wound. I closed my eyes, concentrating all my power, my hand beginning to heat up, hotter and hotter, but as always, it didn’t hurt. Soon, the blood congealed under my palm. The bleeding stopped. I opened my eyes and saw Carrie staring at me, her mouth agape, eyes questioning.

  “I need to tell you something,” I said.

  ***

  I spilled everything about the paladins, the bloodlines, the Dark Side, and dark paladins, and I told her all about what happened in New Orleans.

  “Please say something,” I begged, after a very long minute of silence where all she did was look at me, her mouth slightly open.

  “Um … I don’t really know what to say.”

  “I knew it was a mistake to tell you,” I muttered.

  “Leigh. I believe you. If I hadn’t seen you miraculously heal me a couple of minutes ago, maybe I would have thought you were lying or something, but I saw that with my own two sexy brown eyes.”

  That made me laugh a little.

  She smiled. “I wish you would have told me all of this from the beginning. Or at least last year when I had that crazy dude walking on my roof and leaving bird feathers all over my lawn.”

  “Sorry about that. I just didn’t want that to happen again. That ‘crazy dude’ used to be a paladin named Walter Savoy. He killed most of my family, and he tried to kill me and Lyla. And even he was pretty mild compared to some of the stuff I saw in NOLA. So you see why I don’t want to be around anyone I care about?”

  She scooted next to me on the couch and hugged me. “You know I’m always here for you, girl. Cray cray mo-fos or not.”

  I laughed.

  “’K, this might be a dumb question, but why aren’t you getting paid lots of money to be on TV? Why aren’t you traveling the country on a miracle tour?”

  “We don’t accept money. And we don’t advertise. That’s a good way of letting the Dark Side know where you are. Technically, our abilities are supposed to be used to fight evil, but when we can help, we do, but we have to be hush about it. Miles sees people a few nights a week at a convent in New Orleans. It’s mostly a word-of-mouth thing. People just know to go there if they need to be healed. The nuns screen them to make sure they’re regular people. Sometimes they give Miles a form of payment, like food. He just gives it to the sisters, and they usually give it to the homeless shelter.”

  “Got it. Now, I’m a little confused about the good and bad paladins.”

  “Okay,” I said. “You have Light Paladins and Dark Paladins, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay, both are the good guys.”

  “Right.”

  The Dark Ones, or Les Foncés, as the older generation calls them, are the bad guys. The Dark Side.”

  “Right. And they can be anything, like monsters and what not?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “And what’re the Line Walkers again?”

  “That’s just what Cee Cee calls dark paladins. She says they walk a line between light and dark. They have stronger powers, but they’re tempted more by the dark side.”

  “And you are …?”

  “Dark pally.”

  “And all of these paladins are descendants from that guy and his knights or whatever.”

  “Yeah. Charlemagne and his holy knights. From what they tell me, I’m a pure healer because my mom and Miles are both descendants of Charlemagne.”

  “So … you’re inbred.”

  I glared at her. “Nice.”

  She mimicked the banjo part of “Dueling Banjos.” I threw a couch pillow at her face.

  “Sorry. So, what are the different powers or whatever that the paladins have?”

  I had to think about it for a minute. Miles had told them to me before. “Let’s see, there’s healing, which is what Clothilde, Lyla and Miles and I have. Strength—Jonathan has that one—, fire, ice, electricity, roar—they can yell really loud or something—, prophecy, shadow, magic—that’s Cee Cee—, impression—that’s knowing someone’s or something’s history by touching it—, shield, plants, and animalistic abilities—that’s like running really fast, heightened senses, strength, stealth, that sort of thing.”

  “Plants?”

  I shrugged and laughed. “Yeah, I have no clue what they do.”

  “I’m sure they have a hell of a green thumb. Maybe they can help me with my tomatoes. Ooh! Do you think they can get rid of aphids? Every year, without fail. My poor tomatoes.”

  She stayed with me all afternoon. We ate leftover spaghetti and caught up on our lives, and I told her about Lyla’s suspension. She agreed that she needed therapy, and she cheered when I told her that Lyla kicked her bully’s butt.

  Just after 6:00, my phone rang. I checked the ID but hesitated to answer it.

  “Who is it?” said Carrie.

  “Noah.”

  “The one you were telling me about? That fine guy I saw at Mardi Gras?”

  I nodded.

  “Girl! Answer that shit!”

  What I hadn’t told Carrie was that Miles had asked me to go to Paris. I was sure this was Noah calling to convince me. Carrie persisted, so I went ahead and answered.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey, Leigh. You have a minute?”

  “Well,” I started.

  “I won’t keep you, but I need to know something. Did you have a dream last night? About someone calling you or trying to talk to you?”

  I tensed up.

  “What’s wrong?” whispered Carrie.

  “Tell your friend I said hi,” said Noah. For a second I wondered how he could have heard her, but then I remembered his abilities. “You still there?” he said.

  “Yeah. I had a dream like that.”

  He let out a frustrated sigh. “So did I, and so did Miles. He told me he was going to visit you, to talk to you. I told him it was a good idea. I’m sorry if it caused you any problems.”

  “Why did you think it was a good idea for him to come?”

  “Him who?” whispered Carrie. “Does he have a hot friend?”

  I waved for her to be quiet.

  He continued: “All these dreams, Leigh. We’re being called.”

  “Well, you guys enjoy yourselves. I have no intention of going to Paris. I have more important things to worry about here. And next time you want to convince me to do something, don’t get Ruby to play her cheap tricks by making me dream something. Bye, Noah.”

  I angrily hung up, feeling like I was being manipulated. It had to be Ruby doing that. I turned to see Carrie with her mouth hung open. “What?” I snapped.

  “That guy invited you to go to Paris with him, and you turned him down?!”

  “It’s not just him. Miles asked me to go, too.”

  “Oh, this is for some of that paladin stuff?”

  I nodded. “And do you know what Miles had the nerve to do? He paid off my student loans! Like he can step in and be my dad all of a sudden, when he never cared about me before.”

  “Oh, yeah, the nerve of that guy! I’m so glad I don’t have anyone stepping up to pay my student loans. I mean, really, how dare anyone pay off my debt?! How rude is that?! Oh, oh! And then to offer to take me to Paris a
long with one of the hottest guys I’ve ever met? Well, if someone did that to me, I’d just be beside myself with misery.”

  I glared at her. She gave me a quit-being-a-dumb-bitch look. “Okay,” I admitted, “you’re right. I’m being ungrateful and stupid about this.”

  “If you don’t want to go because of the nature of the work, then don’t go. But if you don’t want to go just to spite Miles, then you need to do some soul-searching, girlie. I don’t blame you for being angry with him or Miss Clo or even your mom for not telling you that he’s your bio dad, but they probably had a good reason not to. And your dad, Mr. Jerry, was awesome, and you had a pretty good life as a kid. I’m not saying you have to start calling him Daddy, but maybe you can be a little more accepting of Miles since he’s trying to make an effort.”

  I sat quietly in my recliner, staring at the spot where the glass broke off of the coffee table. I felt very small at that moment, because she was right. I just didn’t know why it was so hard for me to let go of things.

  “Is all this paladin stuff why you and Lucas aren’t together?”

  “Yeah. Pretty much.”

  “Honestly, I think you aren’t giving him enough credit. He’s not some foolish guy who falls head-over-heels in love with someone and doesn’t care about the consequences. He’s a dad first. He wouldn’t get himself involved with you—not in that way, anyway—unless he really knew what he was getting into. He wouldn’t do that to Jon or to himself.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  “But if you get together with Lucas, then you have another problem to deal with.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “What to do about Noah.” She grinned. “I can take him off your hands for you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “He’s not on my hands.”

  “Good! Then I can put him on my hands. And he can put his hands on me. And we can have our hands on each other. And can you put the fan on, because it’s getting a little warm in here.”

  I laughed.

  “Can I say something else?” she said. “Can you please go to Paris with Noah? I want to live vicariously through you! Please!” She knelt down on the carpet. “Ouch! My leg still hurts. You probably need more training.”

  I laughed again. “Sorry. Yeah, I do need a little more training. I’ll think about going, okay?” She sat back on the couch and giddily bounced up and down, and I just laughed again. “I love you, Care Bear. Don’t ever change.”

  By the time she left that evening, I was in a great mood, but that didn’t last for long.

  ***

  No one called me in my dream, but that would have been a welcomed relief compared to the nightmare that left me shaking when I woke up a little after 4:00 AM.

  There was nothing chasing me. No one was out to get me. But it was the worst dream I had ever had. I was in a cold room with no windows and only one door. The floor and walls were made of dark gray stone that were bathed in cold, dim light from a source I could not see, like the light in winter just after dusk. Lying beside each other on the floor in front of me were the bodies of everyone I loved: Lyla, Clothilde, Lucas, Jonathan, Carrie. They hadn’t been attacked in any way that I could tell. It was as though the life had been completely drained from them, nothing left, just an absence of consciousness and thought, of breath and blood. Their very souls were gone, and all that remained were shells, vessels that looked like them but contained nothing of the people they ever were.

  It was the most alone I had ever felt in my life.

  3

  The Ties That Bind

  I finally got back to sleep just after 6:30 and didn’t wake up until almost noon. I was still in my T-shirt and pajama shorts when there was a knock at my door. I opened it to see Noah smiling with a light rain falling behind him, and his dark hair glistening. I rolled my eyes and let him in.

  “I haven’t made up my mind yet,” I told him, and then plopped down on the couch, put the TV on mute, and resumed eating my bowl of Coco Krispies.

  He took off his jacket and draped it over the arm rest of the couch and sat near it and then looked around the room. “No Halloween decorations?”

  I let out a dry laugh. “Please. Every day is Halloween for us.”

  He chuckled. “Pretty much. How was your summer?”

  I shrugged. “Working for minimum wage at a clothing store downtown. Nice and uneventful. Just how I like it. What about you?”

  “Uneventful. Except for running around the world, killing Watcher Angels, that sort of thing.”

  “Nice,” I said, shoving a spoonful of Krispies in my mouth.

  “Yeah. Gretchen and Felix came back to help us. We finished off the last of the Grigori in South America.”

  “Yep. Uneventful summer vacation.”

  “We still have a slew of Nephilim to hunt down, though.”

  “What’s after that?”

  He shrugged. “Turned paladins, demons, monsters … you name it.”

  “Jesus, it never stops, does it?”

  He shook his head, his eyes distant. “Nope.” He looked me up and down, and I started to become self-conscious about my appearance.

  “What?”

  “Rough night?”

  I glared at him. “How would you know?”

  “Told ya. We’ve all been having weird and bad dreams, even Ruby. And, no, she’s not the one doing it.”

  “Like I’m supposed to believe that? She’s had it in for me since I met her.”

  A wicked gleam shot across his eyes as he tried to hide a grin.

  “What?”

  He raised his eyebrows, and a huge smirk crept up in the corner of his mouth.

  “What?”

  “I probably shouldn’t be the one to tell you this, but … she’s your sister.”

  He told me while I had a mouthful of cereal. I stopped in mid-chew and said, “What?”

  “Yeah.” He was trying really hard not to laugh.

  “Oh, come on! You’re so full of it!” I managed to say with my mouth full.

  He shook his head, full on laughing now. “I’m dead serious. She’s your sister. And she knows it, too. That’s why she, uh, doesn’t exactly get along with you.”

  “You kidding? She hates me. How?! How is she my sister?”

  “Miles. He had a thing with Ruby’s mom back in the day.”

  I swallowed finally. “I can’t believe that.”

  “It’s true. Cee Cee told me a long time ago that he’s her dad. Ruby never talks about it, but she accepted it years ago.”

  I stupidly stared at him.

  Still laughing a little, he added, “That’s where she gets her blue eyes. It’s recessive on Miles’ side.”

  After a moment of shocked contemplation, I said, “My God that man gets around.”

  That had Noah rolling.

  “Un-believable!”

  “Hey, if it makes you feel better, I think she’s come to accept you a little more now.”

  “Oh, yeah. That makes me feel so much better. Thanks.”

  He laughed at my obvious sarcasm as I shoved in the last spoonful of cereal. I caught his eyes for a second, and he started laughing again.

  “What?”

  “I’m lying.”

  I just stared at him.

  “She’s not really your sister. She just doesn’t like you. I just wanted to break the tension.”

  I was speechless for a moment. “Seriously? None of that was true?”

  He shook his head.

  I punched him in the arm.

  “Ow! That actually hurt,” he said, rubbing his arm.

  “Good! I can’t believe you just did that to me!”

  He laughed again, and I playfully punched him. We tousled on the couch, and before I knew it, he was on top of me with my wrists gently pinned above my head as we explored each other’s eyes. It was a feeling like two magnets on top of each other, an invisible, almost tangible pressure between our bodies, and it magnified as he inched closer to me, his
mouth nearing mine.

  There was a knock at the door.

  He stopped. Our eyes latched onto each other for a second, and then we separated. I had to the shake the cobwebs from my mind in the few seconds it took me to walk to the door. When I opened it, Lucas was there. He looked frustrated. When he saw me still in my sleep clothes and then saw Noah on the couch, his eyes changed to hurt.

  “I’ve been trying to call you.”

  “Oh, sorry. I started turning off my phone at night.”

  “Save the battery?”

  No, I just don’t want any more mysterious calls from a stranger telling me I have to do something. “Yeah.”

  “Well, I wanted to tell you that your grandmother is in the hospital.”

  My heart sank into my stomach. Seeing the look on my face, he added, “She’s fine right now. She was having some chest pain this morning. Lyla called 911 and then tried calling you from the hospital, but she couldn’t get you, so she called me. I went straight there. They stabilized her, and they were waiting for the doctor to see her when I left to come get you.” He glanced at Noah. “But I see that you’re a little busy right now.”

  “Stop it,” I whispered. “We weren’t doing anything.” I left the door open and headed for my bedroom. “Let me change really quick and I’ll come with you,” I called over my shoulder.

  “I have to pick up Jon at my neighbor’s house. I told the hospital to call me and tell me what the doc said. Lyla’s still with her.”

  Noah got up from the couch and put on his jacket. “I need to go, Leigh. Let me or Miles know your plans, okay?”

  I came out of my bedroom in flip flops, a fresh t-shirt, yesterday’s jeans, and my hair in a messy pony tail. “Okay,” I said to Noah.

  As he passed through the threshold he and Lucas brushed up against each other. “Plans?” said Lucas.

  Noah stopped and looked at him. “Can’t really talk about it. Sorry.”

  “Figures. You’re all trouble for her, and I don’t like it one bit.”

  The corner of Noah’s mouth twitched like it wanted to smirk. “Really?”