Nancy K. Duplechain - Dark Trilogy 03 - Dark Legacy (9 page)

She didn’t know
how long she spent trying to heal them. It seemed like a long time. Her body
was drained, sweat drenched her clothes, and her breathing was shallow. She
tried to open the door, but it was at an angle, trapped with the wall of the
ditch. She couldn’t even roll down the window because of the electric locks.
Not that she even had the energy to crawl out, anyway. She closed her eyes and
passed out.

When she woke
up, there were headlight beams illuminating a woman in the road, who spoke
frantically into her cell phone. Lyla felt her energy had returned enough. She
did the only thing her mind thought of: she screamed to let the lady know she
was alive. She screamed and didn’t stop until Uncle Lucas pulled her from the
car.

The new kid’s nickname was Panty Waste.
His real name was Peter Waits. Logan had christened Peter with his new name in
P.E. two days after he arrived in the sixth grade class of St. Ignatius
elementary. Peter, a small boy of ten who was intelligent enough to test out of
fifth grade when he transferred, was as inept at sports as he was smart. And
the fact that he had a strong southern drawl didn’t help much.

It was January,
and they usually stayed indoors to play basketball, but the gym was being
worked on that day and the sun was shining, so the coach had them play softball
instead. The first time Peter was up to bat, he shrank back when the ball flew
too closely. He struck out all three times, and only tried to hit the ball on
the last pitch. He blindly swung the bat but hit nothing. On his way back to
the end of the line, Logan muttered, “Nice job, Panty Waste.” Some of
the kids in line laughed. Lyla was one of the few who didn’t.

After school
that day, all the kids waited under the big shed (a large area of the covered
walkway just outside the main office) to wait for their busses. This time of
day is usually loud with excited students grateful to be out of class where
they can talk and cut up with their friends. It was even louder today because
it was Friday.

Uncle Lucas would
be picking up Lyla and Jonathan, as he usually did on Fridays so that she could
spend the night. She loved going to his house because he spoiled the kids on
Saturdays by bringing them breakfast in bed while they watched Saturday morning
cartoons. They usually had to wait until 4:00 for him, though, because he
didn’t leave the police station until around 3:30.

Peter Waits was
always one of the last groups of kids to leave. His bus was the last one, the
one that went to Erath. He usually didn’t leave until about half past three. Unfortunately,
neither did Logan.

Lyla saw Logan
and his entourage huddled together, every now and then one of them leaning over
to look at the back of Peter’s head, and she knew something was coming. She
managed to see what the boys were doing: they had wadded up a big ball of paper
and took turns spitting on it, laughing in hushed whispers.

Lyla felt a knot
growing in her stomach. She knew if she confronted them, she’d get the brunt of
their prank instead of Peter. She thought quickly about what to do. Mr. Travis,
the theatre teacher, stood near the front door. She and Peter were in the same
theatre class. Mr. Travis told them that they’d start doing group projects on
Monday. She knew that when it came time to pick a partner, no one would pick
Peter because he was new.

“Jon, follow
me,” said Lyla.

Jonathan
followed her as she went up to Peter, tapped him on the shoulder and said,
“Hey. I’m Lyla. This is Jon.”

Jonathan waved
happily at Peter, who looked guarded and probably wondered why someone was
talking to him after a day of being picked on by Logan.

“Do you want to
be in a theatre group with me on Monday?” she asked him.

He shrugged. “I
guess.”

Behind his
shoulder, she saw Logan and the boys headed their way. Logan had his hands
behind his back.

“Well, Mr.
Travis is over there. Why don’t we go tell him now?” she said.

Peter shrugged
again and followed Lyla. She glanced back at Logan, who looked irritated that
his target was moving toward a teacher.

“See ya later,
Panty Waste!” shouted Logan.

“That’s very
mature, Logan,” said Mr. Travis, giving him a stern look. “Language of that
nature truly shows how low your intelligence is, and
that
is a
true
waste. Now knock it off!”

Logan rolled his
eyes, and his friends laughed at him, making his cheeks flush.

Peter looked
down at his shoes and looked like he wanted to crawl into a hole in the ground.

“Don’t pay any
attention to those guys. They’re a bunch of dicks,” muttered Lyla.

Jonathan tugged
on her shirt and whispered, “You’re not supposed to say that word!”

Lyla shushed him
and then turned to Peter. “Hey. You wanna come to my house tomorrow afternoon?
Jon and I are going to see if we can catch some turtles in the bayou.”

“What do you
want turtles for?” said Peter.

Lyla shrugged.
“We race ‘em and then let ‘em go.”

“I’ll ask my
mom.”

***

“Do you think we
can go visit your aunt in New Orleans?” said Jonathan.

“Yeah, I talked
to her today. She said we can go to the aquarium,” said Lyla.

“That’s so cool!
I want to see the sharks!”

“I think you can
pet them, too.”

His eyes widened
and his mouth flew open. “Really?!”

“The
baby
sharks.”

“Aw, well that’s
still really cool, though.”

Pieces of stale
bread floated on the surface of the water. They had been trying to bring the
turtles out of their hiding spots for the last twenty minutes.

“I think it’s
too cold for them,” said Lyla. “We’ll probably have to wait ‘til March or at
least after Mardi Gras.”

Jonathan kicked
at the ground. “Aw, man.”

They were quiet
for a little while, sitting on an old fallen cypress trunk, digging their heels
in the ground while watching the water for the first signs of a turtle.

“Can I tell you
something?”

Lyla shrugged.
“Yeah.”

“I’ve been
having bad dreams again.”

Lyla froze, a
memory of the Dark Man flashing before her eyes. “About him again?”

“Huh? Oh, no.
About my dad. He dies.”

She looked at
him with a knot in her heart. “It probably doesn’t mean anything. I dreamed all
kinds of crazy stuff before. None of it came true.”

Jonathan hugged
his knees to his chest and sat quietly. A minute later, they heard footsteps behind
them and turned to see Peter coming their way.

“Your grandma
told me you were back here,” he said, stumbling over a branch. He adjusted his
glasses and said, “She told me to tell you that it’s too cold out here and we
can only stay out for another fifteen minutes.”

“That’s okay,”
she said. “We’re not having any luck anyway. All the turtles are hibernating.
We can go play in the house if you want. I have a bunch of board games.”

Peter looked out
on the bayou and grinned. “This is pretty cool.”

“You never saw a
swamp before?” said Jonathan.

Peter shook his
head. “I’m from Springhill. We don’t have this kind of thing there. We have a
lake nearby, but nothing this cool.”

“Me and Lyla can
do some really cool stuff. I can pick up this log and—”

“Jon!” Lyla stared
at him, her eyes threatening.

“Oh, I forgot,”
he whispered quietly to himself.

“What’s he
talking about?” said Peter.

“Nothing,” said
Lyla.

“He said he can
pick up that log y’all are sitting on.”

“He was just
joking around. You wanna go play some games?” She got up and motioned for Jon
to follow her.

“It didn’t sound
like he was joking. What cool stuff can you guys do?”

Lyla turned to
Jonathan and stared at him again and pursed her lips.

“I’m sorry,”
said Jonathan, frowning with his shoulders slumped.

She marched
toward the tree line that separated the bayou from the sugar cane field that
was next door to Maw Maw Clo’s house. “Y’all come on. I think I have all the
pieces for Monopoly.”

Jon trudged
after her.

“I can do
something pretty cool, too,” said Peter.

They stopped and
looked at him.

Peter raised his
right hand and narrowed his small blue eyes, staring at his palm. His sandy hair
spiked up, and in a matter of seconds a ball of electricity the size of a
baseball hovered over his palm. He grinned at his work. “Can you guys do
anything like that?”

Lyla, awestruck,
said, “Not like that. No.”

He closed his
palm and the ball disappeared.

“Wow!” said
Jonathan, grinning. He ran up to Peter. “Do it again!”

“Jon,” said
Lyla, but she wasn’t scolding him, only wanting him to be cautious. Maw Maw Clo
and Aunt Leigh had made them swear to never tell anyone about their powers. Now
seeing someone else—a kid like them—who has a power, it felt more like a
relief. For the first time in a long time, she felt she could possibly have a
friend to talk to, someone close to her age who could understand.

“I can do better
than that,” said Peter. “Stand back.” He raised both his hands and aimed for a
low-lying branch of a nearby cypress. A long, electric stream of blue shot from
his fingers and wrapped around the limb.

“Wow,” said
Jonathan in awe. He moved closer to Peter, reaching out his little hand to
touch the stream of electricity.

“Jonathan!”
cried Lyla.

The second
Jonathan touched it, he flew backward onto the ground. Peter was also knocked
down. He sat and shook his head, not sure what happened.

Lyla rushed to
Jonathan and shouted, “Jon! Wake up!” She shook him and tapped his cheek.

He didn’t move.

“Jon!”

“Oh, man, I’m so
sorry!” said Peter.

Lyla’s chest and
lungs tightened. She had a hard time breathing as panic set in. She felt for
his heartbeat, but there was none.

“No, no, no, no,
no,” she whispered.

“Is he
breathing?” said Peter.

Lyla put her ear
to Jonathan’s mouth. No breath escaped him.

Forcing herself
to gain composure, she did the only thing she could think of. She placed her
hand over his heart again. She closed her eyes and prayed quietly. Everything
around her—the birds chirping, Peter beginning to panic, the breeze rattling
the branches—faded into nothingness as she poured her concentration into
Jonathan. Her hands began to heat up. No pain, but hot as coals in a roaring
fire.

She felt his
heart beating again, and his eyes fluttered. She looked up, startled to see
tall, translucent beings floating away from Jonathan. Something was different.
Something had changed. But she didn’t know what. She just knew she had done
something for Jonathan that she couldn’t do for her parents.

Its
paws thundered upon earth, scattering fallen leaves, dodging low branches,
gaining on the hare. In just a few seconds it caught up with it and pounced,
rolling over only once with the hare caught in its teeth. There was a loud
squeal, and then it was over.

It put the hare down and used its fangs
to rip the pelt off to get at the tender meat. When it was done, it licked its
paws. The once solid brown fur now had sparse white hairs throughout, which
were stained red for the time being. That would wash off later in the bayou.

It lay for a few minutes in a patch of
shade, feeling satisfied and content. But it heard something far away, near the
bayou. It sounded like humans. Once in a while they came here, but not often.
It had been months.

It trotted up to the far edge of the water
and cocked its pointed ears toward the unmistakable sound of children’s
laughter. It watched them—two boys and a girl—for a few moments and wondered
why they were out here alone. It soon lost interest and turned to leave, but the
wind shifted just then, and a scent made it stop in its tracks. There was no
mistaking the scent of an ancient bond.

“There
is no death.”  Those words echo sometimes, just as I’m about to fall asleep.

I walked up to
the Formica-topped desk and patiently waited for the secretary to finish
stapling papers together. She had noticed me enter. In fact she had seen me
through the glass wall of the office when I entered the building. Even from the
main entrance, I noticed her lips purse and her shoulders droop. Yes, Colleen
La Chance knew I was waiting, but would not lift her frizzy, graying head from
her paperwork until she knew that I knew she was good and ready to acknowledge
my presence. 

I took a deep
breath and drummed my fingers on the chipped countertop. On the front of the
counter was a wooden slab that served as a border for the Formica. On it, some
kid had drawn a very tiny and crude likeness of Colleen, having the body of an
elephant and the feet of a rodent.

I glanced over
my shoulder and saw a petite blonde who was probably in her mid-thirties and
looked like she worshiped the sun or at least the tanning bed. She still had on
her sunglasses and was furiously texting on her phone. I supposed she was the
mother of the boy. 

“Hello, Miss
Leigh,” said Colleen.  “I see you’re back again.”  I saw the corner of her
mouth trying to smirk.  She was showing considerable constraint.  I, on the
other hand …

“Well, if the
school would do its job and properly punish the bullies, then I wouldn’t have
to keep coming back,” I said, cocking my head to one side, daring her to
counteract.

“Bully?!”
scoffed the blonde.  I whirled around to see her push her sunglasses up on top
of her head.  “From what I understand, that niece of yours is the one who’s the
bully.”

“Maybe she wouldn’t
have to fight if you would just teach your child to be a decent human being
instead of picking on her.”

Blondie stood
up, ready to get in my face, when her phone went off with an incoming text. 
She looked down at the message. “Damn it! I don’t have time for this. I need to
be somewhere right now, but instead I have to come down to this school to pick
up my son because of
your
niece!”

“It takes two to
fight, sweetie,” I told her.

“No,” she
retorted.  “That little girl just keeps getting into trouble.”

“
That little
girl
has been through more than you can possibly imagine, so back off!” 

“Ladies, please
settle down,” said Colleen, but I know she secretly liked the drama. 

The door to the
principal’s office opened then, and out walked Principal John Davenport with a
child flanking either side. Lyla’s long brown hair was wild and tangled in a
couple of places. One of her eyes had a dark semi circle around it. Aside from
that, she looked mostly okay. The other boy, however, had two black eyes, a
purple bruise on his left arm and a bandage on his cheek. It was clear who won
the fight, and that made me a little proud, though I’d never tell Lyla that. 

Blondie rushed
over to her son. “Honey, are you okay?” He shrugged off his mother’s embrace.

“I’m fine,” he
said, embarrassed. 

I held out my
hand for Lyla. She came to my side, but she wouldn’t let me put my arm around
her, either. “You okay?” I asked her. She shrugged and stared down at the
floor, breathing hard, like a caged animal wanting to break out. “I’m parked
right outside the door. Go wait by my car.” Lyla did as she was told.

“You both need
to sign them out,” said Colleen. She forked over a clipboard with a sheet on
it. Blondie signed out her little angel, and I signed out Lyla. 

Blondie left
with her son, and I started to follow, but Mr. Davenport stopped me. “Miss Benoit,
that’s the third time Lyla’s been in a fight. According to the rules, she has
to be suspended.”

“Suspended?! For
fights that she didn’t even start?”

“It doesn’t
matter if she started them or not. If she was being picked on, she should have
told—”

“She
did
!
When that girl Taylor or whatever her name is and Logan picked on her for a
month before I could pull it out of Lyla what was bothering her. When she
finally told me, I told her to tell the teacher. She did, and nothing was done
about it! Then more kids started teasing her. She never hit them until they
started getting physical with her—dropping leaves and dirt on her when she was
sitting down reading quietly to herself. Then they started throwing things at
her, like empty soda cans—”

“Yes, we know.
You’ve told us more than once. And, like we told you, if Lyla isn’t going to
identify those who did this to her, then there’s nothing we can do. And she
told me that you told her it’s okay to fight back.”

“Yes.
And?
”

“And, that’s not
the way to go about things. She needs to learn to follow the rules, which she
could have done by reporting everything to us.”

“She
needs
to
learn how to stand her ground! And this school
needs
to learn to take
action when something is reported the first time.”

“I see we’re not
going to get anywhere today. She’s out for a month.”

“A month?! She’s
going to be so far behind!”

“We suggest that
you get her into counseling during this time. You can pick up assignments
daily, and she’ll have to keep up with the work at home.”

I stood there,
not knowing what to say next.

“We’re not
trying to be bad people here,” said Mr. Davenport with a note of sympathy in
his voice. “We want what’s best for all of our students. I know Lyla’s
history—about what happened to her parents. When I say that she should be in
counseling, I mean that. She should have probably been in therapy for the past
year. Please consider that, okay?”

I nodded meekly
and felt myself calming down, my anger turning to regret. It had never occurred
to me that Lyla might need therapy, but it made perfect sense. “I’ll see about
that.  Thank you.” 

I left the
office and went out to the parking lot. Lyla was leaning against the passenger
door of my old black Mustang. She had her arms crossed, and she was staring
down at the cracked pavement, still breathing hard, her jaw clinched. Blondie
was giving her son a look-over to make sure he was really okay. He kept trying
to shrug her off, but she doted away.

I pressed the
button on my key to unlock the doors. When the boy heard the sound, he looked
up and saw me. A great smirk crossed his face, and he said, “You’re aunt’s a
freak, too!”

Blondie barely
had the time to get out the words, “Logan, stop—” before Lyla took off from
around my car and charged at him. I grabbed her by the waist just before she
crashed into him, but she managed to grab a fistful of his golden hair that he
inherited from his mother. He yelled while I made Lyla let go. Blondie freaked
out, screaming at me to get Lyla away from her boy. 

“Keep that
little demon away from my son!” she cried.

“I pulled Lyla
aside and held her arms until I was sure that she wasn’t going to go after him
again. “Lyla! Listen to me! GO IN THE CAR!”

She hesitated
for a moment, staring down Logan who held his head in the spot where some of
his hair was ripped out. She stomped off to the passenger seat and got in,
slamming the door closed.

“That girl needs
to be committed!”

I spun around,
raising my fist. “If you don’t shut your mouth, I’ll do it for you!” I said and
saw the fear in her eyes.

“Get in the car,
Logan.” They got into her SUV and left.

I went back to
my car and put both hands on the steering wheel, trying to get control of my
anger, forcing the adrenaline to dissipate. After I had calmed down a bit, I
said, “Lyla …”

“Can you just
take me home?” she said, defeated.

I nodded, turned
on the ignition and drove out of the parking lot. We didn’t say a word the
whole way to Clothilde’s house.

***

A few weeks
after I came back from New Orleans, I got a job at a boutique in Downtown
Lafayette and moved out of Clothilde’s and into a rent house in the Saint
Streets area in Lafayette. That hurt Lyla, but Clothilde understood, and even
wanted it that way, if nothing else than to protect Lyla. Being a dark paladin
was dangerous for anyone around you. I cried that first night alone. I got so
used to being with a family again, and now it was so lonely. My best friend
Carrie came to visit at times, but I would never let her stay for long because
I was afraid of what would happen. I felt like I was driving everyone away, and
maybe I was, but it was for their own good. Couldn’t they understand that?
Clothilde understood, maybe more than any of us.

When we did get
back to Clothilde’s house, Lyla ran out of the car and through the front door,
slamming it behind her before I could corner her in the passenger seat to talk
to her. I parked near Clothilde’s Grand Marquis and headed for the front door
that was flanked with pumpkins that would be Jack-o-lanterns in a couple of
weeks.

As I dodged the
dead honeysuckle vines hanging from the arbor that led to the back yard, I saw
Clothilde hobbling over to her outdoor kitchen. She had weak knees that got
worse every month, it seemed. Instead of going into the house, I changed
direction and went to the outdoor kitchen, cutting through her immaculate
garden that she used for her traiteur practice. Gourds, pumpkins and other fall
squash took up most of the garden now.

The chickens
clucked noisily as I passed their coop to enter the small, tin building. 
Clothilde was stirring something on the little stove. I smelled garlic, ginger
and sage, and I saw a bottle of locally-made honey on the counter, which meant
that someone had the flu or a very bad cold.  It was October, and while the
weather was still on the warm side in our little corner of Louisiana, viruses
were already popping up. This was the fourth batch of tea she’d made in two
weeks. 

Clothilde sat at
the table, her snow-white head bent over the Bible and quietly reading a Psalm.
She seemed to be doing that more and more lately. 

“Someone else is
sick?” I said.

She held up a
finger and finished reading the last couple of lines of the Psalm, marked the
page, and closed the book.  “Mr. Richard.  He had a sinus infection. I got rid
of the fever, but now it’s turned into bronchitis. This will help with the
cough.” She seemed tired to me as she spoke.

“How are you
knees?” I asked.

“No better. No
worse,” she said, getting up from the table and over to the stove to give the
small pot a stir. I knew she was lying when she said it was no worse.

“I wish you’d
let me take care of your knees.”

She banged the
spoon on the pot a little harder than she should have before setting it down on
the spoon rest on the stove top. “We already had this conversation.”

We did have that
conversation, about a dozen times, and each time it turned into an argument
ever since I became a dark paladin a few months ago.
Dark Paladin
—how I
despised that nomenclature, hating the way it sounded, like some evil being
from a sinister fairy tale. Clothilde had been hiding the disappointment in her
eyes, though not always doing such a good job of hiding it. She even seemed
afraid of me sometimes—or afraid
for
me. Ever since then, it’s been
awkward between us, to say the least.

I heard the
sound of gravel and leaves crunching in the driveway. “I’ll go see who’s here,”
I told her. I went back through the arbor to see Lucas’ old blue Ford coming to
a stop beside my car. Lucas was another issue I had since I changed, though he
didn’t take it quite as hard as Clothilde did.

“Hey!” he said
as he got out the truck.

I walked up to
the porch and sat on the swing where he joined me a couple of seconds later.

“What are you up
to?” I said.

“Have to pick up
Jonathan in a little while. I heard what happened with Lyla, so I thought I’d
stop by and see how she was doing.”

“How did you
know about that?”

“Joey Broussard
told me.” When he saw the perplexed look on my face he added, “You remember
him. He graduated with me and David.”

I barely
remembered a skinny boy with a face full of pimples and shaggy red hair. “Yeah,
I think I remember him.”

“Well, he’s the
P.E. teacher there. That little fight happened while he was on recess duty. He
said Lyla’s quite the slugger.” He softly chuckled at that.

“Not funny,” I
said. “If she gets into another fight, she’ll be kicked out for good. They
suspended her for a month, and they want her in therapy.”

“Therapy?”

“Yeah, and I
agree with it. I mean, she should have been talking to someone a long time ago
after David and Michelle died. I’m so stupid that I didn’t think of that
before!”

“Why don’t you
just talk to her first? Ask her what’s making her so angry and tell her how to
best deal with bullies.”

“How to best
deal with bullies?” I laughed. “Personally, I think kicking their ass like she
did is the best way.”