Nancy K. Duplechain - Dark Trilogy 03 - Dark Legacy

by Nancy K. Duplechain

  “No,” he said, breathless. “We can only heal others, not ourselves.”

  “I need to get you to a doctor.”

  “I just need to rest. Let’s just go home. Please.”

  Noah started the car and headed north. But as he re-entered Abbeville, he felt he needed to take action. He went back to the old woman’s house. Both cars were still there.

  “Miles?”

  There was no answer from the back seat.

  Noah parked the car and ran to the front door, rang the bell, and then repeatedly knocked loudly. The blond woman, Mary, came to the door. She looked perplexed at first.

  “Miles,” said Noah.

  She saw the blood on his shirt and jacket. Her eyes widened, and she brought her hand up to her throat. “Where is he?”

  He motioned for her to follow him to the car. He opened the door, and it looked like her heart sank. She climbed in next to him and patted his cheek. “Miles,” she murmured. “Miles.” She felt his pulse and then noticed blood seeping through his shirt. She ran to the house and came right back with some matches and a white candle. She removed his shirt, lit the candle, steadied it on the arm rest in the front seat, cupped her hands and bent over the flame. She inhaled deeply, and when she took her mouth away, the flame had disappeared. She placed her mouth over his wounds and exhaled. Miles moaned, and the flame returned to the candle.

  She sat with him for a few moments, repeating the process several times until Miles was more alert. He looked up at her with grateful eyes, and both he and Mary shared a look of unrequited desire. They held hands and smiled at each other. It lasted for a couple of minutes. Noah looked away, not wanting to be obtrusive. He turned and noticed the old woman was at the door, watching them, her eyes cold and hard.

  7

  Visitors in the Garden District

  When they pulled into Miles’ horseshoe driveway the headlights spotted a small, hunched figure on the front steps. They realized it was Nadia. She was crying.

  Miles rushed to her side, putting his arms around her shoulders. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Mama and Papa! They’re dead!” She buried her face in his chest and sobbed.

  Miles brought her into the house and made her an herbal tea. He and Noah sat with her while she told them that her parents died in a car accident on the way to the airport in France. Noah felt like an intruder on something so private and emotional.

  When her hands stopped shaking, Miles called the convent to tell them that she was at his house. And then he called his friend in Paris to get more details.

  It was just Noah and Nadia in the living room, on opposite ends of the unlit fireplace. Just a couple of lamps casting a soft glow in the large room. He didn’t know what to say. He opened his mouth a few times to say something but then closed it. What could he tell her? That everything would be okay? That he was sorry?

  She sat and stared at the floor, her hands wrapped around the mug with chamomile tea. With the stony silence in the room, he couldn’t help but overhear the conversation in the next room, and he found he could even faintly hear the person on the other end of the line. She had a strong French accent.

  “Charmagne, it’s Miles. Nadia is here. She just told me.”

  “Oh, Miles! I tried to reach you all day.”

  “I’m sorry. I just got home. It was a long day, but we got the grimoire. I’ll call Ben in a little while and tell him.”

  There was a long pause on the other end, and then she said, “Well, that would certainly be joyful news if not for the tragedy that took place today.”

  “Of course,” he said, his voice soothing and heavy with grief.

  “And … Eve lost the baby.”

  “I know,” he murmured.

  She hesitated and then said, “They’ll have to be cremated. The accident was horrific, from what I was told.”

  Miles had no words.

  “Is Nadia … well I don’t believe she would be all right, but how is she?”

  “How you’d expect her to be. I’m having her spend the night tonight. I just called the convent to tell Sister Alice she’s here. Tomorrow, we’ll decide what to do, but of course she’s welcome here for as long as she wants.”

  ***

  “Miles, of course we appreciate all you’ve done for Nadia and for the convent, but I just feel it’s best for a growing young girl to stay with us. Your life is … well, it’s a little too dangerous, wouldn’t you say?”

  He looked like he didn’t want to agree, but he nodded anyway.

  Nadia sat there, uninterested in the conversation or the food that she pushed around the plate with her fork. They were having dinner in the beautiful dining room. A stained glass window was embedded in the ceiling. Noah figured it must have been really pretty when the sun was out and colored shadows danced on the white linen table cloth.

  Noah wasn’t very hungry at the moment. Sister Alice from St. Geneviève’s convent came to Miles’ house to get Nadia. She said she had run away after they told her about her parents.

  “I would feel much better if she stayed with us for the time being,” insisted Sister Alice.

  “Why don’t you ask her what she wants?” said Noah.

  Sister Alice pursed her mouth into a thin line and Miles seemed half amused but tried to hide it.

  It was the first time Nadia looked up from the table. Her eyes met Noah’s briefly before gazing downward again. But in that brief moment, he felt she looked grateful.

  “Nadia?” said Miles, his voice soothing. “What would you like to do, sweetheart?”

  She shrugged and opened her mouth to say something, but before she could speak, the stained glass window shattered into thousands of pieces, and a winged creature landed upright on the table.

  Miles fell back in his chair.

  Nadia’s hands flew to her face, blood already trickling from the glass that sliced into her skin.

  Sister Alice, who also had cuts on her face, ran to Nadia to protect her.

  Noah shrank from the table, his back against the wall.

  The winged creature—a male with dark red skin and wings with silver streaks—spied Miles, hopped off the table, and picked him up by his throat.

  “The grimoire! Where is it?!” it growled.

  Noah gathered his courage and tackled the creature. It released Miles, who slumped to the floor.

  The creature threw Noah through the dining room window. He landed in the shrubs outside.

  Sister Alice tried to usher Nadia into the next room, away from the danger, but Nadia pleaded, “No! We have to help him!”

  The creature whirled around to her, its hungry red eyes taking her all in. Before it lunged, it let out a great roar and sank to its knees. Miles had his hands raised, his eyes keenly focused, his face growing paler by the second.

  Noah climbed back into the dining room, grabbed a knife off the floor and stabbed the creature. Severely weakened, it collapsed in on itself, looking like leathery flesh laid out over bones.

  Out of breath, Noah said, “What the hell was that?!”

  Miles sank once again to the floor, breathing heavily. Sister Alice rushed to him. “Nadia,” she said, gesturing toward a pitcher of water on the table. Nadia handed it to her, and she grabbed a napkin off the floor, dipped it in the water, and applied it to Miles’ face.

  There was a thundering crash that came from the living room. Noah ran there to find two more winged creatures ransacking the room. The bookshelf and the table on the far wall were knocked over, papers scattered everywhere.

  One of them spotted Noah and immediately went on the offensive, flying toward him and crashing him into the wall of the foyer. Noah yelled in agony as he felt his shoulder dislocate. He reached up with one hand to claw at the sickly yellow skin of its face. With its free hand, it pinned his other arm against the wall, and then it did something peculiar; it smelled him, deeply inhaling his scent. It eyed him with keen interest for a moment, and then the other creature called for it
to leave. It dropped Noah to the floor, and the two of them flew out the living room window as Miles made his way into the foyer, leaning on the shoulder of Sister Alice.

  “Are they gone?” he asked Noah.

  Noah groaned in agony on the floor near the staircase. Miles and Sister Alice laid Noah flat out on the floor, and Miles pushed Noah’s shoulder back into the socket. He screamed, and Miles laid his hands upon him. Within seconds, Noah’s pain had subsided, and then Miles passed out.

  ***

  “They were nephils.”

  Noah froze when Sister Alice told him. Was that what he was? One of them? He was more disgusted than ever to know that whatever flowed through their veins flowed through his.

  Sister Alice kneeled beside the couch where Noah had placed Miles, who was still passed out. She left a cool cloth on his head and held his hand. Some of her silver-streaked brown hair fell away from her habit and clung to her forehead. Nadia sat curled up in the wingback chair on the other side of the coffee table. She hadn’t said a word since all the commotion.

  “Is he going to be okay?” said Noah.

  Sister Alice nodded. “He didn’t have his holy water with him, so it was a lot harder on him to heal you. That and draining the life of the other nephil was too much for him. He’ll be okay, though.

  “I think they got the book,” said Noah, looking around the living room. “I saw Miles put it down on the table over there when he came in. It’s not there anymore.”

  “I don’t know anything about this book you’re going on about, but maybe it’s for the best that they have it. At least it’s one less thing to attract the Dark Side here.”

  “How can you say that? Father Ben said—”

  “Oh, that man! He sees things—visions—and then tells Miles, and then trouble happens.”

  “Um, I was under the impression that trouble comes anyway. He just let’s you know ahead of time so you can do something about it.”

  Sister Alice pursed her lips and scowled down at the floor. “Nevertheless, I’m taking Nadia back with me tonight.”

  Noah looked over his shoulder at Nadia who just stared at the empty fireplace. She looked broken, and he supposed she was. “Good idea,” he told the nun.

  8

  The Recruiter

  Monday, Noah went to school as usual. Coming home, as soon as he rounded the corner of his street, he saw a police car parked in the driveway and his mother talking to an officer. Panicked, he ran the rest of the way home, conscious to run at a normal pace. When he got to the driveway, he saw what the problem was. Someone had written JOIN US on the garage door.

  “Noah, honey, how was school?” Selena sounded entirely too nonchalant.

  “School? Mom, our garage was vandalized.”

  “Probably just a prank, love. Some red paint. Someone’s idea of a joke.”

  But Noah knew it wasn’t paint. He could smell the blood from where he stood.”

  Selena eyed him, silently telling him to keep his mouth shut.

  A police officer approached him. “You have any pranksters at your school?”

  “Nah, I don’t know anyone who’d do that.”

  “All right, then.” He turned to Selena. “Not much we can do, but you might want to install a security camera. When you paint over this, they might come back to mess with it again.

  “I’ll do that. Thank you.”

  The police left, and Selena and Noah went inside the house.

  “Mom, that was blood.”

  “I know.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the cops?”

  “Cee Cee saw it before I did. She had come over to drop off a little gris gris bag for me. She told me not to get the police involved, that she would talk to Miles. But ol’ Miss Rita from next door insisted on calling the police to report vandalism. She said she didn’t want someone coming to her house to do that. And then she went on a tirade about what this neighborhood is coming to.”

  “Mom … I don’t think we should stay here tonight.”

  She smiled reassuringly at him. “Baby, it’ll be okay. Cee Cee performed a protection spell around the house. We’re safe in here.”

  “If it’s what I think it is, you don’t know what those things are capable of!”

  She whirled around and eyed him. “Don’t I? I know exactly what they’re capable of, Noah.”

  “Oh … I forgot.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m sorry, Mom. But you know what these things are. We can’t—”

  “Noah.” A dull, tired ache showed in her eyes. “I spent too many years of my life living in fear after what I went through the night you were conceived. Now, I don’t regret having you for one second. I love you more than life itself. But I’m not going to be afraid anymore. And I don’t want to teach you to be afraid.” She touched his cheek. “We’ll be okay, baby. Nothing can get in this house. Nothing can hurt us.”

  Noah wasn’t so sure, but he smiled for her, anyway.

  ***

  The neighborhood was quiet. At 1:30 AM, most everyone on the street had gone to bed—everyone except Noah. He lay awake in his room, the light from his bedside lamp the only light in the house. He wrestled with the decision to tell his mother about her heritage. Maybe if she had his abilities she could protect herself if something happened. But he didn’t want her to have Miles’ life. He wanted her to stay away from danger, not run toward it.

  He was startled to hear a loud rustling followed by a thud in the backyard. He got up and looked out his window. The streetlight from the corner created deep shadows on the small lawn. He couldn’t see anything near the fence line, so he watched for a minute, cautious of the slightest movement.

  Opening the window a crack, he tilted his head, cocking his ear. He found that he didn’t have to strain to hear anything. Normal sounds like distant television sets, the Bullers arguing from the next street over, and the occasional car passing by seemed they like all came from the backyard, clear as a bell.

  The breeze shifted a little, and he caught some kind of scent—a sort of sweet animal scent that he recognized from Miles’ house when they were attacked.

  He heard something just then, a soft scraping sound on the wooden fence. He thought it could be a tree branch, but what he heard next chilled him to the bone. A soft whisper, so soft he might have thought it to be in his mind, said, “I know you can hear me. You and I are the same.” It was a woman’s voice, sultry and enticing.

  Without warning, something big and white took off from the deepest shadow of the fence and flew out of Noah’s line of sight. It was so fast he couldn’t make out any shape or form. All the street lights on his block started popping out, the sound of tinkling glass filling his ears as the darkness grew. He ran downstairs and out the front door, grabbing his jacket on the way out. There were no lights anywhere on the street, the block, or several blocks in either direction. Even the porch lights were out, and with the new moon, the only light to be seen was starlight and a faint glow from the other neighborhoods.

  And then he saw it hovering in the sky, halfway down the block. A slender woman, her naked body ghostly pale, as if carved from white marble. The only color he could see was her long, vibrant red hair that provided a stark contrast to her skin. Her great wings flapped lazily back and forth, and as Noah watched her with his mouth hanging open, she glanced over her shoulder. Her eyes … her eyes were as red as her hair and her lips that curved up into a coy smile as the winter air puffed up around them.

  She took off, headed for the river. Noah shook his disbelief and followed her, running as fast he could with his new-found ability, but she was faster. He lost sight of her as she turned the corner to access the pier. He waited, sweating and breathing hard, ears cocked for the sound of wings.

  Too many shadows on the pier. Shadows from docked boats rocking gently on the Mississippi, a couple of big warehouses, stacks of crates, all casting perfect hiding spots.

  Noah stalked as quietly as possible down the pier, taking precaution
to hug the walls of the warehouses, and then came to a small alley in between the buildings. That’s when the smell hit him again. It wafted from the draft in the alley. He looked up, but saw no woman hovering. It was pitch black in between the walls, and he felt extremely foolish for going in blind.

  But something began to happen the further he walked. He found that he could see, faintly at first, but soon his pupils dilated, and his eyes found every bit of light they could, absorbing every photon, until the alley came into focus, but with exaggerated, sharper colors.

  And there at the end of it, was the woman with the wings. As soon as he noticed her, she flew toward him with a scowl upon her face and, grabbing him by the back of his jacket, lifted him off the ground and turned him around to face her.

  Noah struggled to get her to let go until he realized he was about twenty feet off the ground.

  “Who are you?!”

  She sneered. “I am Arcelia, daughter of Samyaza.” She looked him up and down. “You are becoming quite powerful. Will you join us, son of Gadriel?”

  “Who?”

  “Your father wants you at his side.” She breathed into his ear, “Everything you desire can be yours. Join us.”

  She let him go.

  Noah panicked in those short seconds, but was surprised that he landed nimbly on his feet with little pain. It was more of a shock than anything, but he rebounded quickly. He looked up to the sky, but the woman was gone. Behind him was a homeless man. Noah thought he was asleep at first, but then he saw congealed blood that had pooled around him. He turned him over to see his throat had been ripped out and his head barely hanging on. The blood smelled just like the blood on the door of his garage.

  Her voice echoed in his mind: Join us.

  9

  Re-growth

  When Noah told him what happened with the visit from the woman with the wings, a grim expression befell Miles’ face.