Noah’s jaw clinched, and so did Ridge’s. Danielle looked pale, and more beads of sweat had formed on her forehead.
“Are you okay?” I asked Danielle.
She seemed embarrassed. Charmagne answered for her. “She’s been a little ill lately. She’s recovering from a virus. Now, as I was saying, Ridge is a pure nephil. He does not have the paladin blood you have, Noah. He is quite effective, though. Very strong, and he flies very fast. More importantly, he has provided us with more information on the gathering Nephilim. If they knew he was on our side, they would no doubt tear him to pieces.”
Ridge continued to stare at the table cloth, but I could see the field of tension around him. He looked like he just wanted her to shut up, but he also stole worried glances at Danielle.
“Tomorrow I’d like to get together with Felix and see what we can come up with,” said Miles. “I’m sure he’s doing a good job of looking for her, but we might find some things he’s missed.”
“I don’t see how that would be a problem,” said Charmagne. “I’ll phone him tonight. He actually wanted to be here tonight to greet all of you, but between looking for Gretchen and recruiting, it just wasn’t in the cards. I believe he and Gretchen have found some beneficial paladins who will join forces with us. Even an old friend of yours, Noah. You remember Aimee, no?”
Noah seemed caught off guard for a moment, and a hint of a smile twitched in the corner of his mouth.
Charmagne continued: “I hope to have them all over for dinner one night while you are still here.”
“Splendid,” said Miles.
“If you’ll excuse me,” said Danielle, her voice meek and shallow, “I think I’ll get ready for bed now.” She pushed her chair back and, as soon as she stood, she collapsed to the dining room floor. Ridge scooped her up quickly and rushed her upstairs to her bedroom.
We all followed and arrived in time to see him place her under the covers and tuck her in. Charmagne sat on the bed beside her, stroked her hair and whispered, “Ma belle fille.”
“What virus did she have? Was it the flu?” said Noah.
Charmagne sadly shook her head, got up from the bed, and beckoned us into the hallway. Ridge stayed behind, kneeling at her bedside, and held her hand as Charmagne gently closed the door behind her.
“I didn’t want to say this in front of Danielle at the dinner table,” said Charmagne in a hushed voice. “I told her she had the flu, but I believe she’s been cursed.”
“Cursed?” said Miles. “Who would do such a thing to a child?”
“I believe it is the very witches who are responsible for Gretchen’s disappearance. They know I am the leader of the paladins here, and they are trying to send a message. And they are using my daughter to do it. I’ve tried healing her, but it cannot be done. She grows weaker every day.” Her voice caught, and tears formed in her eyes. “Miles, please help us. She is my only child. And Gretchen … she is like a daughter to me as well. Danielle thinks of her as a big sister. We are a family here, just as all of you are. We must find that coven and destroy them.”
“We will, Charmagne,” said Miles, putting his arm around her, and she wept into his shoulder.
***
Later, I called home to check on Clothilde. Cee Cee said she was fine and just about ready to come out the hospital. Lyla was excited to hear about Paris. I told her I mostly just saw the airport. She made me promise to eat a croissant for her. I wanted to talk to Carrie, but she was in the shower. Later, I got an incoming text from her in reply to the picture of the dining room I sent earlier: What a dump! I giggled, used to her sarcasm.
Before bed, I showered in the bathroom across the hall. When I came out, I saw the door opened to Danielle’s room. A soft glow came from a little lamp on a night stand. Charmagne sat beside the bed, holding Danielle’s hand, whispering something. I tried to tip toe across the hall so as not to be intrusive, but she heard me anyway.
Charmagne craned her neck around to see me. “Leigh. Come in, dear.” She gestured for me to sit in a wingback chair near the balcony window.
For the first time, I noticed how charming Danielle’s room was. She was a teenager, but her room still echoed the magic of childhood with carousel horse figurines here and there. The walls were papered in pastel blue with a hint of sparkle. A small chandelier hung over the brass bed, and French doors opened onto a small balcony. It was a room fit for a modern princess.
“How are you feeling?” I asked her.
“Much better, thank you,” said Danielle, smiling.
“She’s very strong!” said Charmagne, holding her daughter’s hand tightly, beaming with pride. “She will make a strong paladin, too.” She looked at me. “And you will, as well! I hear you are quite the healer.”
“I’m not as good as Miles.”
“Maybe not yet, but you will be. Not just a healer, either.”
“What else, then?”
“You have seen Miles perform feats other than healing, no?”
I had to think about it. “Once in battle. He raised his hand at one of the Watchers who was coming toward him. It stopped and sort of … it’s hard to explain. It was like …”
“Like all the life left its body?”
I nodded.
Danielle, uninterested, yawned and turned over in bed, pulling the covers over her head.
“That’s because it did,” said Charmagne, eyes fixed on mine, waiting for my reaction. When she saw the quizzical look on my face, she continued, “Miles drained the life from the Watcher’s body.”
“How?”
“It is part of our gift. That particular part of our ability lies dormant unless you become a dark paladin. It is a war we are fighting. When you choose to fight on the front lines, you get better weapons.”
“How do I learn to do that?”
She smiled, pleased. “I see that you are eager to learn. That is very good, but draining someone’s life force is not as easy as you would think. And by that I mean you can never fully prepare for what it does to you the first time. But if you wish to learn, I will teach you.”
“I thought my teacher had to be a male. My grandmother told me that was how it went, that you’re supposed to be taught by the opposite sex.”
She smiled politely but seemed to be amused at the same time. “That is an old superstition in your part of the world, I’m afraid. It makes no difference if I teach you or Miles. You are certainly free to ask him if you’d prefer that.” This time her smile dared me to ask Miles. I got the feeling she knew I wouldn’t ask him.
“How long do you think this will take?”
She shrugged her gaunt shoulders. “That depends on you and how quickly you can pull the power from inside of you and adjust to the feeling it brings.”
She reached over to the small table next to us and lit a white candle. “Are you familiar with Reiki?” I shook my head as she took my hands in hers. “Reiki, loosely means ‘life force energy.’ It is, essentially, what we do as healer paladins. Your grandmother calls herself a Traiteur in your Cajun-Creole area. In the Far East, it is Reiki, and if I am not mistaken, is becoming popular in your United States. Certain witches practice the same thing, though instead of being applauded in places such as Salem, they were murdered because the simple-minded could not understand what a blessing it was to have these witches there to help them. Of course, some of them turned bitter, performing curses on those who persecuted them. They, unfortunately, became Dark Ones.”
She waved her hand. “And here I am, rambling again. The point is that it does not matter how you choose to heal. What you are doing is putting some of your life force into the other person, giving them your energy. That is why we often feel drained when you perform these tasks.” She leaned closer to me, her voice dropping barely above a whisper. “In order to do what you saw Miles do, you must pull the life force from that other person and into yourself. You know the feeling you get when you heal? How your hands heat up?”
“Yes,” I sa
id.
“It is the polar opposite of this, for you and the other person. Watch. I’ll show you.” She held my hands tighter. “Now, I will drain a little of your energy.” I arched an eyebrow, and she smiled. “Only a little. The worst side effect you will have is probably a yawn or two.”
I nodded for her to continue and then braced myself.
Her eyes focused on mine, and a slight smile worked the corner of her mouth. Rather quickly, a chill went through my body, like I had suddenly stood under a cold shower. That would certainly wake someone up, but I became tired, and my arms went limp. I felt like I had several glasses of wine in one shot—a feeling of falling into a cold abyss. After closing my eyes and rolling back my head, Charmagne reversed the process, putting her energy back into me, and it was like a quick shot of caffeine and B-12.
All I could do was stare at her in awe. She shook my hands and smiled. “Are you okay?” she said.
“I thought I was going to pass out.”
“I’m sorry,” she laughed. “It was a little more forceful than I had intended.”
“And this really helps when we’re fighting the enemy?”
“You’ve seen it for yourself, no? If you wish to learn, I will be more than happy to teach you as I have taught Miles. But, I caution you to keep this between the two of us.”
“Why? Wouldn’t Miles be glad that I’m learning?”
“Quite honestly, I do not think so. I know the two of you don’t have a normal father-daughter relationship, but I do see that he cares for you a great deal. What we are doing here is very dangerous. It presents a great temptation to the Dark Side. The more powerful you become, the more you are tempted to cross over. He trained with me and fought at my side for several years. You are, in a sense, just beginning. He would not want you to gain so much power so quickly.”
“Okay,” I said at last. “I want to learn.”
For the next two hours, Charmagne helped me harness my power. I found that my senses were heightened when I harnessed someone’s energy. Colors seemed brighter, sounds clearer. She said I was catching on quickly, even more quickly than Miles had. That was our first training session.
7
Crash
The next morning, Noah and I met up with Felix while Miles and Charmagne did some research about area covens. Felix was glad to see both of us. He said he couldn’t stay long, but gave us the key to Gretchen’s apartment. He assured us that he searched it thoroughly, but he was happy to get a couple more pairs of eyes to go over anything he may have missed. More importantly, Noah could possibly pick up on a scent.
Gretchen’s apartment was tiny but cute, and it was three floors up from one of the charming Paris streets, the kind tourists flock to, with bakeries and boutiques and sunny flower carts. I smelled bread baking from where we were, and the window wasn’t even open. My stomach growled, and I reminded myself to ask Noah if we could stop for a quick bite when we left.
There was a small crack in the middle of the wooden door. It didn’t strike me as odd, but Noah regarded it curiously. Nothing seemed out of place inside, but then again I barely knew her. Everything was nice and neat, no overturned furniture or pictures askew on the walls. It was at this point I realized that I watch too many movies.
“Look around for a note pad or something she wrote on,” said Noah.
We split up. I found myself in the kitchen, and I assumed that my hunger was taking a bigger toll on me than I thought. On the side of the refrigerator, there was a single word written in haste with an erasable green marker: Hecate. I took a picture of it with my phone.
“Got something,” said Noah from the living room. When I joined him, he was putting down the waste paper basket near the desk against the window. He had a crumpled piece of paper in his hand, and he held it up for us. “A note. With a slit in it. Which I’m guessing …” He picked up a small dagger from her desk and then went to the door, opened it, and compared the blade to the slit in the door. “Yep.”
“What does the note say?”
“It’s in French. Yours might be better than mine.” He handed it to me.
“It says, Give it back.”
Noah grinned. “Pretty good.”
“What do you think they were talking about?”
He shrugged. “Did you find anything?”
“On the fridge there’s the word Hecate, but I’m not sure what it is or even if it’s important. It looks like she wrote it down in a hurry, though.”
“That’s an ancient Greek goddess. I’m not too good with that stuff, but Miles can probably tell us when we get back.”
We went downstairs, and the smell of the bakery hit me again. “Hey, do you mind if we get something to eat? I’ve been craving a genuine French croissant since we got here.”
Noah rolled his eyes and laughed. “You’re such a tourist.”
“I don’t care what I am, I’m still hungry. And besides, Lyla made me promise I’d eat one.”
Noah pulled the door for me, and just as we were about to go in, someone with a helmet and motorcycle jacket ran up to us and slammed into Noah. They both tumbled onto the sidewalk. The guy in the jacket got up, ran across the street, hopped on a motorcycle and sped away.
“You okay?” I said, helping him up.
Noah reached into his back jeans pocket. “He took the note!”
“What?”
“The note from Gretchen’s apartment!” He took off after the guy. I followed for about a block, but Noah was so much faster because of his ability, and they cut off into a side alley.
Giving up, I went back to the bakery and waited for Noah to return. Before I could enter, I was accosted by another guy in a jacket and helmet. He wrapped his arms around mine, put a hand over my mouth, and dragged me to the alley where a guy with dark sunglasses and a skull cap waited with a car door open. All of my kicking and screaming did no good. The guy with his arms around me threw me into the back seat and the other guy sat beside me.
I found myself in between a woman with dark sunglasses, long red hair and a black fedora on my left, and the guy with the skull cap on my right. The one who took me climbed into the front passenger seat and removed his helmet. He was identical to the guy next to me. Another woman in dark sunglasses and wearing a long, purple wig sat in the driver’s seat. She was white as a ghost, most likely had albinism. They all looked to be in their mid-twenties to early thirties. As soon as the doors were closed, the driver sped off down the alley and out onto the street a block away from where I was taken. She kept going, casually driving past the little tourist areas, and no one knew that I had just been kidnapped.
“Who are you?!” I demanded.
With a thick Irish accent, the woman in the fedora said to me, “What were you doing in that apartment?”
“You always kidnap people to ask them a question?” I said.
The guy in the skull cap cupped my chin and turned my head toward him. Speaking slowly and clearly, with an American accent, he said “What were you doing in the apartment?”
“Why do you want to know?”
He put his hand out in front of him, palm upward, and a small ball of fire formed in the center. “We are asking the questions. Now, tell us what you were doing there.”
His twin in the passenger seat told the driver in French, “Keep driving. Cross the bridge. Don’t attract attention.”
These kinds of situations never end well. I summoned up my power through my core and focused on the driver, draining her energy. As I felt my insides turning colder, she slumped in her seat and passed out.
The guy in the passenger seat managed to say, “Olivia!” before the car veered off its path just as we were about to get on the bridge. He grabbed the wheel and turned it right before we could hit the barrier. Instead, we crashed into a tree, narrowly missing several screaming pedestrians.
The car crashed on its side, and the twins got most of the impact. They were dazed, and the driver was still unconscious from me draining her. The only c
oherent one was the Irish chick, whose fedora was now somewhere in the front seat. I acted quickly, knocking her head against the window a couple of times. I reached over her to open the door, but when I did, she screamed so loudly I felt my ear drums would shatter and my head would explode. It wasn’t a scream like that of a normal person. It was more of a high frequency sound. Whatever it was, it roused the others. I couldn’t focus enough to drain her energy, so I knocked her into the window again. That did the trick. I got the door open and pushed her out.
Running across the streets, I was almost run over twice. Lost, I didn’t stop to ask for directions. I ran back in the general direction from where we had come. It couldn’t have been more than a few blocks, but the little streets all looked the same to me. Soon, I was able to follow the smell of the bakery. Noah was there when I rounded the corner.
“Where did you go?” he said, scowling.
“I was just kidnapped, thank you very much.”
“What? Who took you?”
“Like I know that?”
“What did he look like?”
“It was four of them. Two girls, two guys. I’m fine, by the way. Thanks for asking.”
“What did they want?”
“To know what we were doing in Gretchen’s apartment. And you’re not even interested in how I was able to get away from them? Because I’ll tell you right now, it was pretty cool, and I’m pretty damned proud of myself.”
He ran his fingers through his hair and cursed.
“Why are you upset?” I said. “What happened to that other guy?” Noah cursed again. “Oh! He got away, didn’t he?”
“Come on,” he said, headed for our rental car, his eyes narrowed and jaw locked.
“We know what the note says, so it’s not that big a deal, is it?”
“It’s not the note that I wanted back. I wanted him—them. I want to know why they wanted that note so badly and how they knew we had it. And what they have to do with Gretchen.”
Nancy K. Duplechain - Dark Trilogy 03 - Dark Legacy Page 16
