Nancy K. Duplechain - Dark Trilogy 03 - Dark Legacy (11 page)

My phone rang.
Jolted out of my sleep, my eyes flew open to see my bedroom bathed in soft blue
light and my phone vibrating on the night stand. Hardly conscious, I closed my
eyes again, but the ringing persisted. I stumbled for the phone. It was 3:18
AM. The caller ID read
Unknown
.

I pressed the
answer button. “Hello?” I mumbled.

A tiny, panicked
voice from so far away. “You have to come to Paris!” it pleaded.

“Who is this?” I
said, now more alert.

“Please, Leigh!
You have to come. You have to save her!”

“Save who?”

“You
have
to
come!”

“WHO IS THIS?” I
yelled into the phone.

The connection
sounded like it was breaking up. “You … come … save her!”

“WHO IS THIS?!
WHO DO I HAVE TO SAVE?! WHO IS THIS?”

The sound of my
own voice woke me up. I was shouting in the dark. It was pitch black and
deathly silent in the room, and that somehow terrified me. It felt like there
should be someone in the room with me, but I was alone.

With a shaking
hand, I turned on the lamp on the night stand. The soft white glow relieved me
somewhat. I reached for my phone. It was 3:19 AM. I brought up the call list,
but I hadn’t had a call since that afternoon.

That voice again
…

For some reason,
I found myself wanting to call Noah. I looked down at the phone in my hand and
was surprised to see that, without realizing it, I had brought up his name in
my contact list. My finger lingered longer than I wanted it to over the call
button. I put my phone back on the night stand and went into the living room to
turn on the TV. Wrapping myself in a throw, I watched almost an hour’s worth of
Night Court
reruns until I felt better and fell asleep on the
couch.

***

Late that
afternoon, there was a knock at the front door. I opened it to find my best
friend Carrie standing there, looking hesitant. She had dyed her hair; it was a
fiery dark red now. She met my eyes for a moment and then looked away.

“Oh, Care! Your
hair is gorgeous!” I could tell she wasn’t convinced by my fake enthusiasm. I
hadn’t even convinced myself. It was pretty, but I wasn’t exactly in a chipper
mood. Of course she saw right through me.

“Hey, can I come
in?” From the sound of her voice, I could tell that she wanted to have a
serious chat.

I already knew
what this was about. She was feeling neglected by me, and she was right to feel
that way. Ever since I became a dark paladin, I had been avoiding everyone I
loved. I had convinced myself that it was because I loved them that I did this,
because I didn’t want them to get hurt, but lately I’ve been seeing the toll
it’s taken, especially on Lyla. But at least my family and Lucas knew why I was
being distant. Carrie knew nothing of paladins and the Dark Side. She was
vaguely aware of strange things that happened in my life sometimes, but she
didn’t pry.

I held the door
open for her and motioned for her to come in.

“What’s up?” I said,
trying again to sound pleasant.

She sat on my
couch, eyes on the glass-top coffee table, while her finger nervously played
with a lock of her wavy hair. Her other hand picked up the large decorative
candle she got me as a house-warming present. She absentmindedly rotated it,
the sequins glimmering off the fleur de lis.  

“You want
something to drink?”

She shook her
head.

“Um … I have
some leftover spaghetti from last ni—”

“Did I do
something to upset you?” Her eyes were on me now, pleading, bordering on anger.

With a heavy
sigh, I sat in the recliner adjacent to the couch. “No, Care. You didn’t do
anything to upset me.”

And, almost in
one breath, she let me have it: “Then why are you avoiding me? You let your
phone go straight to voice mail, and you never call me back. You don’t reply to
my texts, even though I know you see them because I have an app that lets me
know when someone reads my texts. I go to see you at the store to invite you
for lunch, and you just say that you’re too busy for lunch, but maybe another
day. I even called Lucas, but he was acting weird, too, but just said it’s
probably nothing.”

She stared at
me, awaiting my response.

“I know. And I’m
really, really sorry, Care. I … I can’t explain it, though.”

“Why not?”

“I just can’t.
Please understand that.”

“Well, I don’t.
And I deserve better than that, Leigh.” She furiously slammed the candle down
on the edge of the table. A big chunk of glass broke off of the edge, it and
the candle falling to the floor.

“Oh, shit! I’m
sorry,” she blurted, moving to pick up the broken glass and the candle, but in
her haste, her leg scraped the jagged edge of the glass top, making a huge gash
in her leg.

“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.”