Lady Renegades (18 page)

“D
O Y'ALL
need a map?”

The park ranger in front of me was maybe the perkiest person I had ever seen in my life, and seeing as how I had been a cheerleader
and
in a pageant, that was saying a lot.

“Yes, please,” I said, trying to smile and not shatter into about a billion pieces. Because David was here. I could feel it, and I thought Bee could, too. It was like a constant weight in my chest, a second heartbeat thudding away in there. My Paladin strength and quickness might be gone, but it was clear some thread still connected me to David.

I had to admit he'd chosen a good place, too. The visitor center was a tall, octagonal room with the information desks against one wall, but windows surrounded the rest of the space. They looked out on a wall of green, branches pressing so close to the glass it felt like we were in a tree house. And beyond the trees were the mountains, even though we couldn't really see them from here. The peaks weren't especially high, and the heavy forest blocked most of the view. Still, the mountains were there, and in those
mountains, there were caves, like the ones the ancient Oracles had lived in in Greece.

Who knew that David Stark of all people could be such a drama queen?

Bee had wandered to the big display in the middle of the room, a low table containing a topographical map of the region, and once I had my own paper map, I joined her. I ran my fingers over the ridges and valleys of the mountain—okay, really, the super big hill—we were about to climb, and wished I'd eaten more this morning. I hadn't eaten when Bee, Blythe, and I had stopped yesterday at the motel, either, and my stomach had been too jumpy to even think about anything more than a bag of trail mix from a gas station. But now, looking at this hill, I felt like something more substantial had been called for.

Especially if it was going to be my last meal.

Turning away from the model, I took in a deep breath through my nose. I couldn't think like that, not right now. I was so totally not going to die.
David
was so totally not going to die. I was going to save David or at least talk him out of going all mega Oracle and destroying Pine Grove . . . somehow, and then we were all going to go home and put this behind us.

I just hadn't figured out the
how
yet.

Bee and I left the visitor center, stepping out into the thick heat of late-July Tennessee. Despite the fact that we were technically in the mountains and there was a cover of green over everything, the leaves blocking out almost all of the direct
sunlight, this was still summer in the South, which meant I was sweating every place a girl can sweat.

Next to me, Bee shifted her backpack and slid her sunglasses down from the top of her head. “So . . . we're doing this?” she asked, and I looked up at the trail stretching in front of us. It started just beyond the parking lot, a cheerful brown wooden sign reminding us that we were taking our lives into our own hands, and I nearly laughed at that. Of course, whoever had put up the sign was worried about people falling or possibly getting mauled by black bears, not facing down a supernatural boy in a cave.

I swallowed hard, my mouth dry. “We are,” I said to Bee.

We'd joked about this whole thing being a quest right from the very beginning, like we were knights-errant on an impressive journey, not a group of girls driving through the back roads of the South, eating gas station food and staying in creepy motels. But as Bee and I started climbing up the trail leading into the woods, for the first time, it genuinely
felt
like a quest. The forest was quiet, and there were no other people on the path, probably because it was hotter than Satan's armpit. Or maybe they'd felt something. Not as strongly as I felt it, of course, but something nonetheless, a sense of “wrongness,” like Saylor's brother had described.

I could feel something, too. The higher we climbed, the deeper we got into the woods, the stronger the feeling got. I wasn't sure how long we hiked, ignoring hunger pangs in my stomach and the scratches of thorns and brambles. I was glad I'd decided to wear jeans even though they were heavy and damp
with sweat. But that discomfort was nothing compared to every other sensation. I knew David was close. I couldn't explain
how
I knew, exactly. Just that the feeling, almost as though I had two heartbeats, seemed stronger, heavier.

Now instead of making our way through undergrowth, we were on hard-packed dirt, but the way we needed to go was steep, and I felt my thighs and calves protest as I headed up the ridge.

Behind me, Bee gave a little gasp, and I turned to see her stumble, one hand flailing out as pebbles slid from beneath her feet. Without thinking, I reached down to grab her outstretched arm. Bee was about half a foot taller than me, and heavier, plus she had gravity on her side. Our hands locked together, and I gritted my teeth as I caught her and kept her upright.

But the force of my pull sent me stumbling backward so that I fell hard on my butt, wincing as a loose twig scraped the exposed skin of my ankle.

For a moment, we just sat there, breathing hard, in the middle of the trail, me sitting, Bee half sprawled on the ground. My shoulder ached, and my leg stung, and I had knocked the breath out of myself with that hard fall, so I was nearly wheezing.

If ever there was an appropriate moment for swearwords, this was it. We were halfway up a mountain in Tennessee, going after my magical ex-boyfriend, a guy who had sent superpowered assassins after me. We had ditched the one person who could've maybe helped us in all of this because I hadn't wanted her to hurt David, but what if he was going to hurt
me
?

Lowering my head to my hands, I took a deep breath through my nose. “Bee,” I said, my voice wavering, and to my horror, I could feel stinging at the backs of my eyes, a thickness in my throat. “I effed this up.”

I did not say “effed.” I said the actual word. And it felt so good that I thought maybe I needed to say it again. Lots.

Lifting my head, I looked at Bee and tears spilled down my cheeks. “My effing powers are effing
gone,
and now I've got us into this effed-up situation, and I have
no effing clue
what the eff I'm going to do once we find David. Not a single. Effing. Idea.”

Bee's eyes had gone wide, but I wasn't sure if it was from my confession or the fact that I had just used that word so many times. And honestly, whichever it was, I did not give an eff.

I was openly crying now, and I shook my head. “I don't think I can do this,” I said, and I wasn't sure if I meant I couldn't save David or that I couldn't bring myself to hurt him if it came to that. Honestly, it could have been both. Earlier today, when we'd left the car, I'd almost left the sword behind. Sure, if there ended up being other Paladins in the cave, I might need it, but there was always the thought at the back of my mind that I might have to use it on David.

Rising to her feet, Bee crossed over to me and took me firmly by the shoulders. “You can,” she said, squeezing for emphasis. “Harper, listen to me. Your powers are great and all, and I'm not going to pretend I don't really wish they were working about right now, but . . . being a Paladin isn't what's going to save David.
You
can save him because he loves you. Because you love him.”

Sniffling, I rolled my eyes. “That's very Disney-movie of you, Bee.”

I'd meant to make her smile, but she just gave me another little shake. “I'm serious. Even if your powers had been gone before we started on this whole thing, I would've gone with you.”

She said the words so quietly, so simply, that something in my chest seemed to give way. My becoming a Paladin had hurt Bee. It had gotten her kidnapped and superpowered and nearly killed. But she was still looking at me like she believed in me, and that gave me the strength to nod, reaching out to rest my hands on her forearms.

“Okay,” I said. “You're right. I can do this.”

I repeated the words, almost like a mantra. Satisfied, Bee gave a little smile and stepped back, hoisting her pack.

“So how much farther, do you think?” she asked.

I turned to jerk my chin at the trail winding its way up to a wall of stone and green above us. “Not much farther at all,” I told her, and took a deep breath. “We're here.”

H
ERE IS
A THING
you should know about me: I really hate caves. Maybe it's the damp and the dark, maybe it's the thought of being underground. Who can say? The point is, I've always avoided them, not even going on my class field trip to DeSoto Caverns in the third grade. I'd missed underground mini-golf and a laser show because I hated caves so much.

Which meant that walking into the mouth of that huge fissure in the rock was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. Bee and I made our way up the hill, and even though the air was loud with the sound of buzzing insects, the breeze through the leaves, and our own breathing, it seemed weirdly quiet and still.

The cave was nearly hidden behind a wall of branches and vines, but I pushed those aside, staring into the darkness in front of me. Bee stepped forward, too, shifting her backpack on her shoulder, but I stopped and turned toward her, taking a deep breath.

“I know you're not going to like this,” I started, and she immediately shook her head, almost glaring at me.

“Harper, no,” she said firmly, but I reached out and wrapped
my fingers around her biceps, making her look down into my face.

“This is something I have to do alone,” I told her. “You've come all this way with me, and I couldn't have done any of it without you, you know that, but this—” Breaking off, I turned to look over my shoulder at the gaping mouth of limestone behind me. “This is on me.”

Bee blinked a few times, and her eyes were bright, her face pale. “You don't have your powers anymore,” she said, and her voice trembled.

“Neither do you,” I reminded her, giving her arms a squeeze. “And I can't risk you getting hurt. Not again.”

I wasn't sure I'd ever stop feeling guilty for what had happened to Bee the night of Cotillion, and while I knew I could never make it up to her, this at least let me feel like I was trying. I remembered the way Blythe's eyes had shone as she'd talked about “redeeming” herself, and while she and I might have really different ideas about what redemption meant, I understood why it was so important to her.

“I've screwed up a lot of things,” I told Bee now. “I've lied and I've hurt people I've cared about, and I've made some less-than-stellar decisions about, like, everything, basically. But this?” I nodded back toward the cave. “This I can do. This I
have
to do. And I need you to wait out here.”

Despite that rousing speech, I could tell Bee still wanted to argue. But then, I would've argued, too. That's what best friends do.

But then she looked past me up at the wall of stone, and took a deep breath. “I hate this,” she said. “Like, more than I hate
snakes or humidity or AP Calculus.” And then she looked back down, our eyes meeting. “But if this is what you have to do, it's what you have to do.”

My throat felt tight as I reached down and took her hands, squeezing them. “Best squire ever,” I said, and she tried to laugh, but the sound was kind of choked, and then she was hugging me hard.

“Ten minutes,” she said.

“Fifteen,” I countered, and she rolled her eyes.

“Fine, fifteen, but any longer than that, and I'm coming after you.”

Nodding, I turned back to the mouth of the cave. The air wafting out was cool, and goose bumps rose up on my arms. I reached over my shoulder, my fingers finding the hilt of the sword, still wrapped in its towel, and I took some comfort from the weight of it.

I gave one last look to Bee, who gave me a tight smile, and then, taking another deep breath, I stepped forward.

The rock was slick underneath my feet. Tennis shoes were not exactly the best footwear for this kind of thing, I thought, and I felt a hysterical laugh bubble up in my throat. Man, it seemed like a lot of this Paladin business came down to the right shoes.

Almost a year ago, I'd lain on the floor of the school bathroom, my pink heel clutched in my hands, waiting for someone to kill me. He hadn't. I had killed him. I had won.

If I killed David today, it wouldn't feel the slightest bit like winning.

The cave I found myself standing in wasn't nearly as big as I'd thought it would be, and I took a moment getting my bearings and really wishing I'd gotten a rabies vaccine before I'd left for this trip. While the ceiling of the cave was lost to the darkness, I couldn't help but envision roughly a million bats overhead, and it made me shudder.

But then I realized that, while I could feel David nearby, I sure couldn't
see
him, and the cave seriously didn't seem to be all that huge, so where—

And then I saw it: another little opening in the back of the cave, so small that I thought I might have to hold my breath to squeeze through.

David,
I reminded myself again, which, seriously, was starting to feel like another kind of mantra. Like, if I could just keep repeating his name, picturing his face, I could get through this thing.

I took my pack off, knowing it would make it harder to squeeze through, wondering how David had managed to get himself in there. He wasn't a big guy, but he still had to be wider through the shoulders than I was, and I eyed the crack in the rock speculatively.

My pack made a loud
clank
as it hit the rock floor, and I pulled the sword out of it, moving forward.

Luckily, the passage wasn't as narrow as I'd thought, and once I got inside, I moved through fairly easily, the sword clutched in my hands, pressed tight against my body. For a second, I had a vision of those old tombs of knights you sometimes
see, their swords laid out along their torsos, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to laugh or cry.

If being a Paladin had taught me anything, it was that you could never really prepare for everything. I could think about it, of course, and I had, a lot, over the course of this trip. There had been nights lying in motel beds, staring at popcorn ceilings, and wondering what I would do when I finally saw David again.

Blythe hadn't lied when she'd said that I'd known it might come to killing him. Of course I had, no matter how many times I tried not to think of it. For the past six months, I'd gotten so good at telling myself that I could handle everything, that the worst would never happen.

It seemed like I'd been wrong every time.

As I made my way through that narrow tunnel, taking deep breaths, my palms sweaty around the sword, I reminded myself that I had no idea what I was about to come face-to-face with. That for all I knew, I was minutes away from having to drive a sword through the heart of the boy I loved.

So, yeah, I was prepared for a lot of things when the passageway finally opened up into a wider space.

Prepared for anything but what I saw: David, standing there in plaid pants and a black sweater. Light was pouring in from a hole high in the ceiling, and it made his sandy hair look gold.

But that was the only gold thing about him. There was no light in his eyes, nothing but the normal blue irises behind his glasses, and when he smiled at me, the sword slipped from my suddenly numb fingers.

“Hi, Pres.”