Lady Renegades (Rebel Belle #3)(6)

And now David was ordering this girl to kill me? I couldn’t believe that.

Something cold pressed against my neck, and I felt like my muscles turned to water, my breath sawing in and out of my lungs so quickly I was almost wheezing.

This couldn’t be how I died. Not on the floor of the changing room at the local pool, cut down when I was helpless and scared.

I was just starting to coil some kind of strength together when the girl was suddenly off me, and I realized another person had come into the changing room.

Bee.





Chapter 3


NOW MY FEAR was all for Bee, and as I heard the gasps and thunks of Bee fighting with the girl, I suddenly found the strength to move. Still weak, I crawled for the door, wanting to hit the lights, but unable to get to my feet just yet. It felt pathetic, shuffling over the carpet, my whole body aching, my throat raw, but lights would help Bee, and that’s all I wanted to do right now.

I shrieked as something hit me hard in the side, and then I was flat on the ground as something fell on top of me. No, over me. In the dark, either Bee or the girl hadn’t seen me and had backed right up onto me and tripped.

“Bee?” I cried out as I heard the sickening thwack of a head rapping against the lockers.

“I’m okay!” she replied, and while she sounded out of breath, she didn’t sound hurt. I pushed myself to my feet and lurched for the wall.

I heard a cry of pain and whirled around. “Bee!” I called again, but she was close to me now, her voice winded.

“That was her,” she said, “but I didn’t touch her.”

The girl cried out again, and I fumbled at the wall. What the heck was going on?

But before my fingers could hit the light switch, there was a movement off to my right, and someone shoved past me and out into the night. When I’d been fighting as a Paladin, I couldn’t stop fighting until someone was dead. How could she have just taken off like that?

The lights flared into life, and when I turned around, Bee was standing near me, breathing hard. The terry-cloth cover-up she’d thrown on over her bathing suit was ripped at the neck, nearly hanging off one shoulder, but other than that, she looked okay.

From the way she was staring at me, I guessed I looked a lot less okay.

Raising one shaking hand to my head, I felt my hair. “Did she tear any out?” I asked, a sudden image of myself half scalped coming to mind.

Bee shook her head. “No. It’s a mess, but I think it’s all there.”

Crossing the room, she took my head in her hands, looking at my face. Then her eyes dropped lower, and her lips fell open a little bit. “Oh my God, she cut you.”

I thought there was a little sting on my neck, and I’d definitely felt the girl hold a knife there. But thinking I’d been cut and having actual confirmation of it were two different things.

Grimacing, I lifted a hand to my neck, and my fingers came away red. It was shallow, but still.

“We need to get out of here,” I told her, and Bee stepped back, glancing around the changing room.

“Should we try to go after her, or—”

There was no doubt in my mind that girl was long gone, and even if we did go after her, I’m not sure how much damage we could’ve done. I was trembling, Bee was clearly freaked out, and that girl had a lot of advantages over us.

Namely, that her Paladin strength was apparently working just fine.

“No,” I told Bee. “At least not now.”

We made our way out of the locker room, the pool quiet except for the occasional sizzle of a bug against the zappers. Bee locked the gate behind us before we walked into the parking lot.

“Do we need to go to the hospital?”

Every muscle in my body ached, and breathing hurt a lot more than it should have; but hospitals meant questions, and questions meant my parents, and my parents probably meant more questions and possibly the police.

So I shook my head, trying not to lean so heavily on Bee as she helped me out to the car. It was dark now, but the streetlights were bright, casting big, comforting pools of illumination on the asphalt as we wound our way through the parking lot. I tried to focus on the big moths battering themselves against the bulbs and not on how shaky and scared I felt. My limbs were tingling, something close to adrenaline moving through me, and I knew I was feeling my Paladin powers seeping back in. That was good. That helped me not feel like what I’d been for a second: a terrified, helpless girl at the mercy of someone I couldn’t see.

Someone who had gotten away.

Bee must have felt me shudder, because she stopped, pulling back to look at me. Her brown eyes were wide enough for me to see the whites almost all the way around her irises. “Harper—” she started, but I waved her off.

“I’m fine.”

I was basically the opposite of fine, and we both knew it.

“Was she just stronger than you, or is something wrong?” she asked, and I swallowed hard. Bee’s own powers seemed fine, and as much as I tried to pretend that mine hadn’t faded, she’d never had to practically hold me up before.

“She just surprised me is all,” I said now. “And it was like I never managed to get off the back foot, you know?”

Bee nodded, but she didn’t say anything. She just moved a little faster, and soon we were at her car, Bee gingerly helping me into the passenger seat. I was able to buckle my seat belt without wincing, so that felt like a minor victory, and it gave me the courage to sit up a little straighter. The sooner I convinced Bee I was okay, the sooner I would feel okay. Or at least that’s what I hoped.