Nancy K. Duplechain - Dark Trilogy 03 - Dark Legacy (26 page)

I faced the
pond, holding the Heart of Charlemagne before me, and began to pull every bit
of energy from my core. Raising the dead did not provide the same sense of cold
despair that taking a life does. It felt like I was healing, but magnified by a
thousand. The heat expanded from my core, a wild flame spreading throughout my
body, forged by the Heart of my ancestor. I was an untamed phoenix, catching
the wind, soaring above the madness. I could lay claim to the land and seas and
catch the world on fire, if I set off one little spark of my power at that
moment.

The water in the
pond bubbled. Steam rose from the surface. The bodies of the Nephilim ascended,
limp and dripping wet. Before my eyes, they began to move in their suspended
state. Their eyes opened. Their wings extended. They lifted their heads and
looked at me—a small army of maybe twenty awaiting my command.

“What
now?” I whispered to Ruby.

“Order them
to attack!”

I looked out
upon the waiting Nephilim. “Attack our enemies!”

They took off as
fast as their wings would carry them, fully charging at the incoming nephils
over the sugar cane field.

“That is
really cool,” I murmured.

We ran to join
them and watched as the Nephilim fought their brothers and sisters. It was a
chaotic battle in the night sky as they ripped each other apart. We aided them,
taking down a half dozen.

With the aid of
our winged warriors, our side won, leaving over twenty Nephilim dead on the
charred field. About a dozen or so retreated. There were just nine left of the Nephilim
I had risen. They took their places at my side.

“Where are they
going?” I asked one of them.

“To New Orleans.
To wait for Gadriel and Charmagne,” she hissed.

“How many more Nephilim
are there?”

“Many, many
more.” A smile crossed her pale lips. They may have been following my orders,
but there was no doubt they still hated us. “She wanted to make sure to destroy
you all,” she continued, smiling again with a hungry look in her golden eyes.
“There will be no end to your suffering. Our legion will rule this world. Your
kind will die. You will—”

“Go stand over
there and shut up,” I told her.

“We won’t have
much time,” said Ruby.

“Everyone
inside for now,” said Miles. “Except for our
friends
here.”

***

While everyone regrouped, I checked in
on Lyla. She was in her bedroom closet with Smittens curled up in her lap,
purring. The cat had blood on her fur, and her amber eyes studied mine. I was
sure the cougar was the same one I saw out in the bayou, the one I healed.

“That’s some cat you have there,” I
said. “Did you know she could do that?”

Lyla looked numb. “No. Is it
over?”

I shook my head. “Not yet.”

She cast her eyes downward on Smittens
and stroked her fur. She purred happily, not a care in the world.

“Are you hungry or anything?”

She shook her head.

“We don’t have much time, Lyla, but
I want to talk to you about what happened with Maw Maw Clo.” I should have
been with the others, coming up with battle plans, but I was afraid I’d never
be able to talk to her again.

She pulled her closet door shut. I pulled
it back. “Please listen to me. I—”

“Why didn’t you let me save her?!”
Her sudden outburst startled Smittens off of her lap, and she jumped onto the
bed.

“Because she was beyond the point
of saving. She knew that. She told me not to let you help her.”

“But she’d still be here!”
Tears formed in her eyes.

I knelt beside her. She tried to close
the door again, but I held it open. “Yes. She’d still be here, but you’d
be different. You’d be like what I am now.”

She tried to keep from crying, but tears
trickled anyway.

Then I realized something. “You
are
like me. Aren’t you?”

She said nothing.

“When Maw Maw Clo was leaving us, you
said ‘Don’t let them take her.’ You saw them, didn’t you? Tall people who
looked like they were made of light?”

She shrugged.

I looked up at the ceiling, not angry,
but speechless for a minute. “Who was it, Lyla? Who did you save?”

Her voice was so small when she said,
“Jonathan.” I heard the lump in her throat.

“What happened?”

A couple more tears streaked down her
face. It was a long time before she answered me. “There’s a boy at school. He’s
one of us. We were all playing by the bayou. He showed us how he can make
lightning with his hands, and Jon got electrocuted. He couldn’t breathe. I kept
trying to heal him, but I couldn’t. I yelled at him to wake up, but he didn’t.
I tried healing him again, as hard as I could. Then he opened his eyes, and I
passed out after that. When I woke up, he was crying because he thought I was
dead.”

I put my arm around her shoulder.

“I’m sorry. Maw Maw Clo warned me about
bringing back someone who died, but I didn’t want him to be dead! He’s my best
friend!”

“It’s okay, baby,” I murmured. “I would
have done the same thing.”

“I know I wasn’t supposed to try to
help Maw Maw, but I didn’t want her to die. I’m going to be alone now.” She
began to sob.

I hugged her to my side. “Is that
what you think? Honey, I’m still here, and so are Uncle Lucas, and Jonathan and
Carrie. We’re a family, baby. Nothing will change that.” As I said those
words, I remembered being about her age when Clothilde said the same thing to
me after my mom died. How do you convince an eleven-year-old that everything
will be okay when their world is falling apart around them? Jesus, how do you
convince anyone of that?

“Leigh!”

It was Miles, calling me from
downstairs.

I took a moment to hug Lyla and kiss her
head. “Hey,” I softly said to her. She picked up her head and looked
at me with her red eyes and wet cheeks. “I
will
come back for you.
Okay?”

She sniffled and nodded. Before I left
her room, I looked at Smittens, hesitated, and then took her off the bed and
put her back with Lyla in the closet and closed the door.

Miles was waiting for me at the foot of
the stairs. “We have to hurry,” he said, motioning for me to follow
him to the kitchen table where someone had used Clothilde’s good white linen
table cloth to draw a rough map of her property and the surrounding area. My
first thought was that it was a good thing she was dead. Noah, Cee Cee and Ruby
were studying the map. Noah had a black marker in his hand, so I suspected he
was the one who just broke Clothilde’s stopped heart.

I heard voices outside and then laughter
as Felix came in through the front door, followed by Aimee, Casper, Alex,
Oscar, Olivia, Sonja and Saul. Relief washed over me, and I think I smiled for
the first time in days. Even Ruby jumped up and grinned. Cee Cee crossed
herself and said, “Thank you, Jesus!” Miles and Noah looked more
solemn, but I could see in their eyes that their hearts were lightened.

Casper smiled politely, looking around
the living room. “What a quaint little home,” he said to me. It’s the
kind of compliment you give when you want to be just polite enough. I smiled
back, not caring in the least if we left a bitter spot on his Eurocentric
tongue. I was just grateful he was here to help, though I’m sure he needed much
coaxing from Felix and the others. Most likely a favor or two had to be called
in.

“Nice bunch of Nephilim you have
there,” said Alex, grinning. “Love that wet dog smell!”

“They look about as loyal as a pack
of rabid Rottweilers,” said Oscar.

“Don’t worry,” I said, “I
have ‘em under control. It’s good to see you guys.”

Alex clapped me on the back. “No
way we’d miss this!”

“All of you, gather around the
table,” called Miles. “Felix, have you heard from any of your
contacts?”

“Last I heard, they had left
Normandy with the last couple of nephils they could find and they were flying
toward the states. That was several hours ago.”

“How many do they have?” said
Noah.

Felix paused, a hesitant look in his
eyes. “A couple hundred or so.”

None of the others said anything, but I
saw the dread on their faces.

“How long does it take for them to
fly across the Atlantic?” I said.

“Faster than an airplane,”
said Saul. “Once they get to the states, it would take them maybe an hour to
get here.”

“They’re probably somewhere over
the Southeast right now,” said Sonja.

Cee Cee slapped her hand down on the
table. “Well let’s get to it!

Noah gestured toward the map. “I
did a fly over of the area. This is what we have to work with. I’ve included
the tree lines and any body of water. That pond won’t be enough to hold all of
them, but if we can get them back here, on the other side of this field,
there’s a sort of swampy area. We’d stand a better chance there.”

“That’s a small bayou,” I
said. “It’s an off-shoot of the Vermilion River. It’s a little over twenty
acres, I think.”

Miles nodded. “That would
work.”

“But it’s too far from the
house,” I said. “I don’t want to be that far away from Lyla.”

“I’ll be here to protect her, my
baby,” said Cee Cee.

“We’ll lead them away from the
house,” added Noah.

“But Charmagne will be coming for
her, one way or the other,” I insisted. “If we give them any vantage
point, they’ll use it to get to her.” I looked at Cee Cee. “Is there
any spell you can do that can stop that?” I knew the answer was
no
before
I even asked.

No one knew what to say, because they
all knew I was right, and our situation seemed hopeless. Until Ruby spoke.

“I think I know something.”
She looked down at the map and pointed to a section of back road. “Is this
far?” she asked me.

“Kinda far to walk from here.”

“You know how to get there?”

I nodded.

“C’mon. We’ll take my car. The rest
o’ y’all go about your plan. We’ll be back in a little bit.”

***

“Who did you turn for?” I blurted out
the question during the few minutes we rode in silence.

Ruby’s eyebrows scrunched. “Hmm?”

“You became a dark paladin, a line walker,
for someone, didn’t you? I turned for Lucas, Noah for Nadia, Miles for my mom.
Who did you turn for?”

She kept her eyes on the dark road in
front of us, but it looked like they were lost in a memory. She said nothing
and finally came to a stop at a dirt crossroads a couple of miles from
Clothilde’s house. Before we had left the house, she had gone to the back yard
and grabbed a chicken from the coop and placed it in a burlap sack. It clucked
quietly in my lap.

Ruby pulled her staff from the back seat
and went to open the door to get out of the car, but I placed my hand on her
arm to stop her. “You’re not, uh, going to kill this chicken, are
you?”

She rolled her eyes at me. “We
don’t do that anymore.”

We got out of the car and went to the
dead center of the crossroads, where she used her staff to draw a circle in the
dirt and spat in it. She reached into her bag and pulled out a silver dollar,
placing it in the circle. She motioned for me to hand her the sack with the
chicken, and she put it on top of the silver. She then pulled out a small
dagger and grabbed my hand.

“Gonna hurt a little.”

Before I could say anything, she pierced
my palm and drew blood, which she let drip onto the sack in the circle.

“Ow!”

“Told ya.” She used the dagger
to do the same to her hand. I think she was starting to like me, because the
old Ruby wouldn’t have warned me.

She joined my hand with hers, mixing our
blood, and we walked in a square, stopping at each corner, and then diagonally
through the crossroads. Holding our hands above the sack with the chicken, she
called, “Papa Legba! We come with gifts and ask for your help!”

I looked over my shoulder, in the sky,
turned around, squinted at the trees and wild grass and brush.

Nothing.

I was about to make a snarky comment,
but I heard footsteps just then. I peered into the darkness down the dirt road
in front of us, and soon saw a small, twisted figure coming our way: a man in
black, skin dark as night, snow white beard, and wearing a ragged suit,
barefoot, strolling at a leisurely pace. His black eyes held us in their gaze
as he approached. The memory of me slugging Ruby a few months ago came back to
me. She had told me I would pay for it. I panicked for a second, wondering if
payback had come.

He stopped at the very edge of the
circle, bent down, and picked up the sack. He opened it, pulled out the
chicken, and let the sack fall to the ground. After inspecting the bird, he
beamed. “Dat’s a nice, fat one, yeah! Ooo-wie! I like dat!” His voice
was a rich, rolling baritone. Grinning, he picked up the silver dollar and put
it in his pocket. “Nice to get silver sometime. E’rybody always wanna gimme
copper.” He looked at us, one at a time, taking us both in. “What you
need?”