by L. A. Banks
He tore a parchment from his pocket, and was so angry that blood filled his crest on its own. This was a grudge match now. He stamped the agreement, tore hers from the air and thrust it toward her. “You satisfied?”
She shook her head no, and the room went still. She turned away from Carlos and slowly assessed the waiting masters. Then a thought so devious, so loaded with treason entered her mind that he caught, and came from her lips so slow and husky as she addressed the other males, he couldn’t move.
Gentlemen, she said in Dananu. You all have been thinking with the wrong head. She laughed and walked deeper into the center of the room, brushing past Carlos.
Damali’s eyes closed and she breathed in deeply. At least one of you fine men have a fair shot at beating me. Think of the odds. She took her time, opened her eyes slowly, baiting them, toying with them, allowing the concept to sink it. But he doesn’t, she murmured, motioning with a nod toward Carlos.
Spontaneous combustion was a definite possibility. He was so enraged that he could barely make out her form as mental flames burned his sight line to her. His thoughts scattered, then began to coalesce into a laser. He’d cut her heart out. She dangled in a very precarious position between breathing and extinction.
I know his greatest weakness like only a throat-bitten mate would . . .
A ring of fire surrounded her; he didn’t move as she casually turned her head and looked at him, unfazed.
“Even Hell has rules, baby,” she said as though talking about basketball. “You do me here, and I don’t think you’ll make it out of the room.”
“No, he won’t,” the African master said, challenging Carlos. “We assure you.”
The firewall around her shot to the ceiling, then sucked back into the floor, his rage blowing out the back wall.
Like I was saying, she went on, not even looking at Carlos. Soooo . . . if I beat him, I’ve now got a throne plus his entire region. If I beat several masters in the game, I’ll own their shit, too. Then whoever beats me, wins not only a council-made female master that can spontaneously produce Neteru, but that lucky sonofabitch rules the world. Game over. You’ve been betting against the wrong horse, fellas . . . haven’t placed your money on a thoroughbred. I’ll give you one minute to revise and place your bets. Who’s in?
The air crackled and popped, searing fire slits opening at dizzying speeds. Damali’s laughter only made the revised agreements appear faster, masters breathing hard, looking at each others’ bids, changing theirs, upping the ante, hollering at their wives to back off and stay out of a man’s business. When they started arguing about who ruled the available territory in near space, several wives sat down on the sofas and wept—one even vomited blood. Mistress Xe had come back into the room and was on her knees begging her husband not to throw it all away, screeching and lamenting about losing all they’d ever worked for, their entire landed wealth to a crazy whore.
Yet Carlos could do nothing. This was business, and there were rules. It was surreal. The offer arrays transitioned so fast that they were mere blurs. It was worse than Wall Street traders at the opening bell with hot stock in their portfolios. Nations ceded everything—a full territory and an old coveted throne was on the bid floor; Neteru driving them nuts.
When there was nothing left for them to bid, Damali slowly walked around the room, collecting their insane offers. “Gentlemen, the floor is now closed for business.” She sounded a bell, laughed, and blew them all a sexy air kiss. “Nice doin’ business with all of you.” It was a beautiful play and she’d played it to the bone. Damali shook her head. Master Vamps weren’t that easy to blow away, not for a booty call. There was much more to this than that. They’d all obviously heard the rumor about the key, perhaps they thought that as the once-legendary Neteru, if they could get in her ear, they’d find the location—or the seal . . . or both? Carlos’s senses hadn’t gotten a lock on any of them, so it had been her turn. And judging from their reaction, her intuition had been dead on.
Master Amin stepped forward and grabbed the Aussie Master by his vest. “Bring the choppers.”
Carlos kept his black-goggled gaze out of the helicopter window and listened to the engine, the blades cutting the air, focused on anything but Damali. For most of the ride, he didn’t speak to her, saying only what was absolutely necessary about the rules of the hunt—one-syllable responses, and only when she asked—and only because it was in her best interest to beat everyone but him. There were no words. Damali was beyond defiant; she was incorrigible.
It was bad enough that she’d doubted his ability to defend her on the front steps—in front of aggressive masters, at that. And, not to mention, she’d had the nerve to quiver when that tall African bastard walked up to her, but she’d made her mate wager for her like the others? Put it all on the line? And she was about to go into a blood sport she knew nothing about—and had put her sweet ass on the line, too—like he could allow her not to win? Like he would just sit in the parlor and wait till she was finished doing a competitor, if she fucked around and lost! He was done!
She swallowed away a smile, her gaze fastened to the quickly passing ground, goggles keeping her eyes shielded from the devastation of the blurring blue-white lines below. This was so sweet a setup that she wanted to throw her head back and laugh. Chaos theory at its best.
Every male on the ground would be trying to dust the competition as much as score points by bringing down a beast. Each one not willing to ally with another region against her husband, because it was winner take a singular prize that they’d never share—the key, or access to the seal. And they’d half kill themselves trying to keep her, the secondary but very coveted prize on the battlefield, from getting hurt. Knowledge was power, and they thought she knew. It made sense. Classic. Old school—right from the streets.
Use the greatest strength as the greatest source of weakness—the art of war, subversion, dance on male ego . . . do a strip tease down it, pole dance that sucker . . . compare territories openly and make them define whose was bigger in public, then walk away from the lot of them . . . primal, make ’em fight it out, and make them think the councilman didn’t have an advantage in her eyes . . . which would truly piss him off and make him go ballistic to be sure to win. This was like street basketball—mugs killing themselves to take the prize home after the game.
She’d have to remember to tell him why she did that . . . when she made it up to him later . . . it was no disrespect, just a li’l extra somethin’ somethin’ to give him the fury advantage, which was a stronger vamp reflex than lust—only one energy octave down, world dominance being the most seductive. Yeah, she knew how to play poker and sit at the table with the big boys. Doubting her was their blind spot. Oh . . . dangerous damned liaisons, that’s what detente was any-ole-way.
The chopper’s descent was swift. The craft lurched, dipped, and bounced twice on the hard, red surface, kicking up dust plumes as it came to a full stop. She could barely wait for the pilot to give the exit-okay nod before hopping out ahead of Carlos. They were gonna rock tonight! Together, they were unstoppable. Demons in the dark. Just like old times. Yeah . . . she bopped as she walked, stretching out her blade arm and flexing her muscles as she approached the vehicles assembled twenty-five yards away in a semicircle, rolling her shoulders to loosen up.
This was gonna be fun. She looked at the buff human vamp-helper drivers. Each stood somber, their eyes hidden behind military night-vision goggles, with a crash helmet under his arm beside an armored Range Rover 4 × 4 that had a driver safety cage added. The open pickup backs had a harpoon mount, roof lights-rack with no lights—just a steel bar for the hunters to grip. She could see where they’d reinforced the side panels and added extra chrome to the grills and back bumpers. In the dark the eerie effect of the added protection made the Rovers appear to have steel fangs.
She stooped to inspect how there was an added steel cage to protect the axle and chassis. Standing, satisfied, she glanced at the solid rubber w
heels and the way deadly spikes had been welded to the lugs to keep the demons away from the tires. Excellent. No chance of a blowout or a wheel being knocked off.
He kept his eyes on her back. This was a perfect place for an abduction—and after that shit she just pulled, he wouldn’t be surprised if one of the masters tried to just grab her and head for the hills. Carlos slowly scanned the group. None of them were focused on the hunt. Out in the pitch-black terrain, only stars and a full moon, were-demons be damned, every master standing there was weighing that option because she’d turned them on so badly. That crazy woman had sent uncut Neteru up their noses, dangled her sweet ass as a carrot, and then threw a throne on the floor like she was throwing down the gauntlet . . . had betrayed her eternal mate in public, then sent them into a bid frenzy without eating! Just downed a bottle of top-shelf in front of them so they could smell it in her veins? It was a nitroglycerine concoction—lust and power and blood—and she was juggling it in her pretty hands.
She didn’t know what she was dealing with. It was in the way they looked at her long and hard, glanced the terrain, shook it off to study their ammo, absently checked their vehicles for potential sabotage, then looked at the terrain again like they wanted to drag her into the desert and take their chances with the weres. Probably the only thing stopping them was that four other very disappointed masters would make it a short night. This was some dangerous shit she was playing. Renewed fury coiled and snapped within him . . . and she’d made him bet, too?
“Drivers! Take your marks,” McGuire finally yelled, his voice echoing in the night. “Readied?”
The Aussie master waited as the confirmations echoed back. “Ladies to the choppers . . . er, minus one.” He glanced at Damali. “You sure about this, darlin’?”
Damali smiled and placed a firm hand on her driver’s shoulder. “Fire this up.”
McGuire drew a steadying breath. “Ma’am, I’ma love to see ya hunt.” As though pulling away from a magnet, he removed his line of vision on her and looked at the group. “You know the rules and the boundary markers. Every man for himself. When the choppers drop the bloody human carcasses, they’ll signal with a flare.” He glanced back at the bait pilots and nodded once the female vampires had been secured in the spectator helicopter.
The masters mounted their vehicles, each stood in the open pickup back and took up a loaded weapon. The drivers put on their helmets, tightened the straps beneath their chins, and climbed into the driver’s cages, then gunned their engines.
Each chopper lifted off and sent a cloud of grit and red sand that covered the landscape into the air. She couldn’t see her hand in front of her face, but sheathed her Isis on her hip, and picked up the crossbow, holding onto the rack rail with a tight grip. Her eyes were trained on the blue-black sky lit by the moon and stars, waiting for the flare as the engine of her Range Rover roared. It was not about losing. It was about going to her core and being the best in the demon hunt. Always. But she couldn’t see because of the dust plumes!
Then Damali closed her eyes, remembering everything she’d been taught as a Neteru. She was one with the universe, created by it, she was wind, she was water, she was fire, and ice, she was stone, earth, there was no particle of natural matter that she was not connected to. She didn’t need normal sight to find the demons to hunt them down.
White light was a source shaped like the tip of her Isis blade to be drawn down through her crown chakra at the top of her head, through each chakra level, her spine one with it, grounding her, turning her entire body into steel—a weapon unparalleled. Her breaths were slow, her focus steady. She was the huntress; a warrior; the millennium had no other. Demons were the enemy. Humanity had to be saved. Anything coming up from Hell had to be eliminated. The were-demons were on the move, beneath the surface, attracted to the blood dripping, bodies falling from the choppers, freed to feed by the full moon. The goal was singular: bring them all down.
Sensing a direction, she signaled her driver to move out before the flare even torched the sly. She knew demon hunting like she knew her name, and she left the masters in the dust, getting an early start.
She could hear vehicles careening behind her.
“Mistress, we don’t know where—”
“Just drive. Swing left,” she commanded, using second sight the way Marlene had taught her . . . her nose like Rider had showed her . . . listening the way Big Mike would . . . feeling for the charge in the air so closely that Shabazz would have been proud. “Gun it to eighty miles per hour—flat out,” she said, so sure she didn’t have to think about it twice.
“Ma’am—”
“Do it, man, and stop questioning me, or I’ll kick your ass out and drive myself!”
The flare streaked the sky, making the thick dust in the atmosphere glow orange. The wind was in her hair, the dust in her face, the speed exhilarating, adrenaline pumping, her weapon cocked and ready, and that’s when she saw it.
Two huge, green glowing eyes parted the dense plumes created by the Range Rover and something leaned over to pick up a body on the ground. Yellow fangs dripping acid caught in the moonlight as the beast screeched in protest, and then the creature stood up, towering fifteen feet next to Damali’s 4 × 4. Short front arms brandishing lethal hooked claws scrabbled at the air, and powerful back legs with blade-sharp spikes stretched, the monster pivoted, and a hard slam from its reptilian scaled tail sideswiped the vehicle.
The Range Rover wobbled and almost overturned on the first hit, but righted itself. She held on, looping her arm under the rail and taking aim over it as the creature began to run. She fired, missed, and reloaded, shouting to the driver to step on the gas.
This was her kill. She glanced back and the vehicle gunned to ninety-five miles an hour as the other masters gained on her. But when her vehicle suddenly swerved away from an opportunity shot, and the creature doubled back to go off in another direction, she lost it.
“What is the matter with you? Just a few more feet and we would have had him!”
“I’ve run this course before, ma’am—I’m their best driver because I basically know where the prayer lines are, even though I’m human. Didn’t you see the lines?”
For a moment, Damali didn’t respond. Then she looked around. Panic nearly stopped her heart. She couldn’t see any blue or white lines. The other masters had dropped back long before she did. Oh, shit . . . she was no longer in the charged house, was out in prayer-rimmed natural lands, and had called down the white light in a Neteru meditation. Ooops. Unnerved, she forced false confidence into her voice.
“Just drive, and get me to that thing.”
“Whatever the lady wants,” the driver said, sounding unsure.
“The demon can’t cross the lines either, so follow its path—if it disappears, loop in an arc and head in the opposite direction—it has to stay within the boundaries, too,” she yelled above the 4 × 4 engine roar. “When it goes the other direction, we’re gonna harpoon that sucker.”
She wrapped the steel tow hook at the front of the open pickup over the grip rail, and traded her crossbow for the huge mounted harpoon gun, dropping the crossbow on the metal floor. She then hooked the towline to the harpoon gun. “If the harpoon gun breaks away from this rail, I still want a line on him. I’m not losing the bastard.”
“He’ll panic, drag the Rover, and could—”
But before the driver could finish his warning, the were-roo had surfaced, Damali had taken dead aim, fired, and it was a direct hit. The beast was punctured deep in its shoulder—but it wasn’t an incineration heart hit. The wound smoldered. The beast reared up on its haunches, screeching, and began a flat-out dash across the plains.
Harpoon line running out at a high speed sounded like a razor cutting the air, then the strain on the weapon began making the grip rail groan. Damali crouched low to keep her balance and held onto the side of the Rover, staying away from the leaning, bending, rail.
“Cut the line, lady!” the driver yell
ed, panicking. “She’ll drag, then flip us!”
Before Damali could respond, the harpoon and rail gave way, flying over the driver’s cage, still attached to the beast. The towline whizzed out in a matter of seconds, stopped hard, lurching the Range Rover, then the demon on the move began to bounce, dragging the 4 × 4 past the other masters, who had to swerve to avoid it.
“She got a hit!” Carlos hollered. But as soon as he saw that there was no way for Damali to regain control of her vehicle, he made his driver turn and take his 4 × 4 to a speed to flank her. “Baby, cut the line!”
“No!” she screamed. “And don’t you screw us by using your power to help me!” Then just as quickly as she’d spoken, her vehicle lurched when the demon changed direction in a wide arch that almost tipped it were it not for a championship driver at the wheel, and the space between her 4 × 4 and Carlos’s widened.
A sudden side bang knocked Carlos’s 4 × 4 as Master Amin rammed his side panel, took aim over Carlos’s shoulder, making Carlos duck, and he nailed a second were-roo that dropped and incinerated fifty yards away. Amin pulled his vehicle off Carlos’s flank with a glance of total victory and pursued Damali’s runaway Rover.
“Drive!” Carlos hollered, making his driver change course to follow Amin. But then a slash of a tail nearly missed his head as one of the huge monsters suddenly appeared from an unseen underground tunnel, and made a fang swipe at Carlos. He dropped to his knees, aimed, and fired, sending the stake into the center of the creature’s forehead, summarily exploding green gook to splatter the cab. His focus immediately returned to Damali. She was now more than a hundred yards away and heading right for a blue band.
“Slow your speed and tire this sucker out. Make him drag us,” she hollered, holding onto the driver’s cage with one hand and trying to aim at the beast with her crossbow in the other. This bastard was going down.