The Bitten

by L. A. Banks

  Then the cloud separated again, cutting Rider off and leaving a line of fire down the center of the road so wide that breaching it was impossible. She looked back and saw him go into the slide, firing two-handed. His bike wipeout eminent, he had a Glock in one hand and a shotgun in the other, unloading rounds and screaming at the flying beasts, splattering gook—going down with a fight to the bitter end as his bike tilted, was stripped out from under him, and he hit the ground in a hard, bone-snapping roll.

  His black Harley slammed into parked cars, twisted, flipped, and careened off a parked truck to take out a store window before it exploded. Rider didn’t move.

  “We have to go back! They’ll eat him alive!”

  “No,” Jose shouted. “They don’t want him! They want you!”

  Jose swerved the bike to avoid the epicenter of the cloud, taking the bike up onto sidewalks, jumping curbs, landing hard and skidding into turns, leaning, using his weight, their weight, as a shifting rudder, tearing through parks not on the safety-zone grid. Disoriented and turned around in the frenzied getaway, his bike headed toward King’s Cross.

  “Darlinghurst Street, no!” Damali yelled. “This is taking us toward the red-light district. No hallowed ground there, Jose!”

  She could feel claws pulling at her, attempting to lift her from the back of the bike, and she swung her blade wildly over Jose’s head, breaking the unseen hold as he swerved, pivoted, and headed back in the opposite direction.

  “I’m going past where Rider dropped his bike,” he hollered over the screaming wind. “They’re cutting us off from the sanctuaries at Hyde Park, but daylight’s coming!”

  She held him tight, her glance behind her as the cloud gained speed, mass, and density, fanned out and a large funnel set up a roadblock. Jose popped a wheelie at a hundred miles an hour, she leveled her Isis, closed her eyes, and they charged it—exploding through the mass of billowing sulfur, leaving entrails in their wake.

  He kept going, riding like the wind, burning down the street where Rider had fallen. She felt him swallow hard as they raced by—no sign of Rider, just the smoking destruction left by his bike. Sirens were now blaring in the distance. Everything became a blur as tears flew from her eyes and they skidded onto Cahill Expressway, burned down it, and then went into a hairpin turn to eat up local streets on the way to Holy Trinity Church by the Rocks.

  So much was gone . . . her family destroyed, two Guardians lost—Carlos, and now Rider, and someone she hadn’t even named yet. And God only knew if the rest of the team had made it to sanctuary. An innocent cop was in the back of a Jeep bleeding to?death, a man with a family, children, a wife . . . Pain and tears blinded her. She burrowed her face in Jose’s back.

  Jose rode the bike up the steps, through the church doors as he saw Mike’s arm sling it open and step back and they came to a sliding thud as the bike went down, he and Damali with it, her sword clattering and rolling, skidding toward the altar—stopping five feet in front of it. For a moment, they laid there just breathing.

  Fast hands gathered them up, assessed them, hugged them, hard exhales of relief entering them from warm bodies huddled near.

  “Where’s Rider?” Damali said fast. Jose’s grip tightened on Damali’s waist.

  “Talk to me, Mar. Where’s our boy?”

  Marlene shook her head and looked away. “I saw him go down, we went back . . . they took him to the Rocks in the cove. I can see it.” Marlene covered her mouth with her hand and breathed deep.

  “No!” Jose shouted. “They wanted her, not him.” He broke away from Damali, and went to go get his damaged bike. “I’m going to get him. Who’s riding?”

  Shabazz and Big Mike stepped up. Dan and J.L. shoved new clips into their guns.

  “Let’s do this, we’re bringing everybody home,” Shabazz said, picking up a weapon and pulling out the keys to the Jeep.

  “He’s bait,” Father Patrick said carefully, his eyes sad as they locked with the other clerics. “The key is safe and the detective has been taken down to our sealed vault where he’s receiving medical attention. You all need medical attention . . . Rider is bait to get you all to leave this sanctuary.”

  “So, fuck it,” Jose said. “I’m hooked. But we’re gonna go get our man.”

  “You don’t understand,” Marlene told them, her voice firm and tender at the same time. “They needed to take one of us hostage and put him close to Carlos so we could track him—to get her to—”

  “Carlos!” Damali shouted. “You know where he is?”

  “No. Rider is telling us no, stay back, not to let you see it, no matter what they do to them. Baby, this time—”

  “We ride,” Big Mike said, overruling Marlene.

  Marlene and the clerics formed a human shield barring the door.

  “Tell her,” Marlene said to Father Patrick.

  “It’s ten minutes till dawn. They want you to see him die. Rider will live; he was only put there to draw us. It’s a trap to break your spirit. We won’t lead you to him . . . and only Marlene and I can see where he is. No. You don’t need to see it.” Father Patrick folded his arms and looked down at the floor and swallowed hard.

  “Break my spirit,” Damali laughed, the tone of it hollow and bitter. She held the sides of her ragged, wet dress, and lifted it to her knees. “Look at my legs,” she said. Her voice broke, new tears streaming down her face as she showed Marlene the wind-dried blood staining them. She dropped her dress, her arm flinging outward to point at Jose’s bike. Hysteria bubbled within her chest and came out in a near scream as she implored them. “Look at his bike! My spirit is broken and splattered in the streets of Sydney!” A sob caught in her throat as Marlene went to her.

  “We ride,” Shabazz repeated. “We don’t leave our own.”

  She kept her gaze fastened on the Heavens. Time, time, all she needed was time. Daylight be still. Heaven hold down your curtain and delay dawn just this once. Please God, have mercy. Damali closed her eyes and covered her face with her hands, rocking.

  When the vehicle slowed, she didn’t even wait for it to stop before she propelled herself from it, feet bare, shoes lost a long time ago on the boat. Footsteps sounded behind her but lost distance as she raced ahead of the others, clutching her abdomen.

  Stone pavement, then gravel, then jagged edges cutting into her flesh, running, becoming wind itself, her heart beating out of her chest, her blade not long enough or big enough to conquer what she saw. Standing so close but so far from where she needed to be, blade chiming the air, hitting nothing. Rage. Hurt. Pain. Not like this! They couldn’t kill him like this!

  Each time she ran forward, huge swooping predators that had a dark invisible force around them that stunned like a sonic boom, knocked her back.

  She was an ineffective witness to laughing, circling hawk-like creatures, gray-green tormentors, ripping at Carlos’s chest, flying with massive spans of leathery wings, talons outstretched, diving and opening his abdomen, pulling flesh from his bones, sending his cries to rent the air, designed to call her, draw her, torture her—be her worst nightmare.

  Rider was struggling in tethers, but unmolested. His voice a long holler for the team to get back, screaming curses at the demons; hysteria in him flashing fight-hormone through every Guardian. Weapons firing, trying to clear a path to get to their own, plugging the things that just multiplied and dug into Carlos’s stomach harder, coming away with dripping organs and meat before stopping, hovering, looking directly at Damali—triumphant, their job done, they then flew away into the waiting tornado.

  Big Mike and Shabazz had run to Rider to recover their fallen brother. Jose was in a flat-out chase behind Damali with Father Lopez and Marlene behind her.

  Damali suspended breath as she ran. He was so far away—at the edge of a dangerous crag, pinned to solid rock over the waves. She went down flat on her belly, hands reaching, her eyes connecting with deep brown ones that had been defeated, done unmerciful. She could feel more Guardians at her s
ide, reaching. Her head snapped up as daylight refused to wait. “Noooooo!”

  Carlos’s gaze slowly left hers and went to the sun. He arched hard, and the sound of a slow sizzle blending with his agonized wail almost sent her body over the edge of the crag to reach him. Brute strength lifted her from the ground, and tried to carry her away, but she twisted out of the hold, to resume her futile reach. “Cover him!” she shrieked. “Get a blanket! Something! A jacket! Just cover him.”

  Her request was irrational to her own ears but her voice carried nonetheless. No one moved. They, like her, were transfixed. Carlos was facing her, hand outstretched, transforming. Fangs lowered, eyes red, skin charring and crackling, her name a long echoing cry as the full sun broke the horizon. But she couldn’t turn away, her voice had transformed too, becoming a constant long scream echoing back the word no, turning it into bitter hiccupping sobs as every wound he’d ever sustained as a vampire, every horror they had visited upon him mutated, manifested, and twisted his once whole body into a writhing mass of torn carnage and decay.

  She felt her body lift again, strong arms attempting to carry her away from the gruesome scene, making her fight against family. “No, I won’t leave him until it’s over!” She wept and she was released. “We don’t leave our own to die alone, no matter how horrible.”

  Jose was down a cliff side, Father Lopez sliding, skidding along the perilous rocks beside him, trying to get to what was quickly becoming ash with a suit jacket against the sun. Futile. Human. The last of Carlos’s distant line responding to instinct beyond their own comprehension. Her tears dropping off her nose, hitting cinder with a sizzling pop as Carlos torched, his head still turned toward her, his hand reaching as it crumbed away.

  Father Patrick’s last rites was a far-off drone in her ear. A woman’s hand on her back, rubbing, trying to heal the impossible, was of no use. Brothers beside her on their knees, calling Jose and Lopez back to safety, shouting that it was too late, begging them to come back, were just background noise. It was full daylight.

  Two futile hands clutching ash before it all blew away, sobbing, not caring that they were men, worked and glanced up at her. Jose and Lopez were stuck on a crag as Sydney began to come to life in the morning, holding hope in their fists, wanting to put some of what they held on hallowed ground . . . allowing brothers to pull them to safety but refusing to let go of the ashes. It all seemed so remote, like watching a movie at the very end of it without a frame of reference . . . who were these people?

  There was a woman screaming. She sounded very far away, too. She kept saying “Please God, no!” Damali thought she knew the woman’s voice, recognized it from some distant place in her mind, wasn’t sure who she was, though, as Big Mike picked her up and began walking to a Jeep. She looked up and saw Jose and reached for him, making heads turn, making Big Mike put her down easy, making Rider and Shabazz wipe their eyes. Made clerics stop walking to stand still and pray. Made Marlene close her eyes and turn her chin up to the sky, as Damali ran to the only person who would understand what this was like.

  Arms opened for her, a fist of dust pressed against her back, her plea went into a shoulder that she knew had shared the same pain.

  “Don’t let him die,” she said, shaking her head, her whisper a fervent, irrational, impossible request.

  Another pair of hands touched her shoulders, and kind brown eyes stood with her and Jose, opening her hands. Jose’s face stained wet. Father Lopez’s stained, like hers. Eyes red. Three together, all knowing the same hurt. Male hands pouring a funnel of dust into her cupped ones. A ring forming around them, Guardians.

  “He wasn’t supposed to die, not like this,” she murmured. “He was a good man . . . he was a Guardian—like one of us.”

  “We’ll bury him righteous, D,” Jose whispered. “I promise.”

  “On hallowed ground, we’ll scatter these ashes,” Father Lopez said.

  But their words fell on deaf ears and she dropped to her knees as she let the ashes fall into the dew-drawn grass. Everything she’d ever believed in was a lie. The good died young. The dark side had won, and they’d tortured the man so terribly . . . and those she worked for, those she held faith in, those she’d fought for—her side, the Light, hadn’t interceded. She could feel the circle widen to allow her space to grieve. She opened her arms and let her head fall back. “Where were the angels? Where was the Light? Why didn’t you help him?” Another sob stole her breath. “I prayed and you didn’t come! Where were you when I needed you most—he needed you most?”

  She stood and walked away, leaving Father Lopez and Jose to stoop and touch the fallen ashes, saying good-bye through their fingers, their last connection to his matter. The teams didn’t move. She was done. She’d never pick up the Isis again in battle for the Light. Never again. She ran to the Jeep and retrieved it, and stormed back to where they had all gathered, ignoring the pained, stricken expressions around her, brushing past Marlene with fury. She looked down at the ring Carlos had given her, and wept. It never went back, didn’t dematerialize.

  How cruel of them to leave her his heart—blue ice, and not one with a true pulse. She snatched the solitaire off, and flung it into the pile of ash, raised her sword, and plunged it into the ground through the ashes, sending the ring into the soft earth. “I give it back! I wanted his real heart!” The Isis could be his headstone, his marker, something worthy left for a true Neteru, her equal. It belonged now to him.

  As she turned away, she saw a flash of static from the corner of her eye. Jose and Lopez stood slowly and stepped back. Marlene and Father Patrick moved forward to retrieve the sword, but the others didn’t move near it. They, like her, watched as a current arced between the sword, Father Lopez, and Jose. The wind gathered and the dust swirled around the blade of the sword near the ground. Particles of dust connected, tiny granules of matter flashed static, magnetized, drew together, and began to take shape and form. Marlene rushed toward it and pulled the Isis from the earth, and walked backward slowly as the tip of it dripped red blood.

  “His heart,” she whispered, holding the blade up to the light.

  Father Patrick crossed himself and began murmuring a silent prayer as the dust continued to gather. The clerics fanned out, each taking a directional position of the earth. “Her heart,” he said, his gaze locking with Marlene’s.

  “His line,” Marlene said, her eyes going toward Jose’s and Father Lopez’s, and then going to Damali. “His hope.”

  “His prayer,” the elder cleric said quietly, gazing at Damali. “His faith.”

  “His love,” Marlene and Father Patrick said in unison, holding Damali in their sight, slowly bringing it back to the mass on the ground that was now large, spreading, connecting, shifting, darkening to coal-colored matter.

  Damali ran to it and went down on her hands and knees, hope careening through her, watching a body form from the skeleton out. Muscles and tendons slowly covering bones, even olive-brown skin covering muscles—her hand went to her mouth, and she dared not move, breathe, hope too much, tears making what she was witnessing blur before her eyes, no fear, just awe, reverence, her soul recanting the anger, quietly begging forgiveness for her arrogance, her momentary loss of faith, her lack of understanding, her forgetting about miracles.

  “We don’t know what’s coming back, Mar—get her outta there and away from it, until we know.” Shabazz lunged forward, but Big Mike stopped him.

  “Faith, brother. Faith.” Big Mike closed his eyes, total reverence in his huge countenance. “Believe in things unseen.”

  “Hope,” Rider said quietly, going near but not all the way. He touched Dan’s shoulder. “A collective prayer in trinity.”

  “Love,” Jose said, stepping back to stand by Shabazz, then he turned away. “He’ll never leave her, and will never hurt her.”

  Shabazz’s hand went to Jose’s shoulder. “Destiny, brother. This was written before we were born.”

  Damali looked down into a serene face th
at she dared not touch, and started when it drew a sudden gasp of breath, short fangs catching sunlight then retracting up and into his gums. She could feel every Guardian behind her tense, but she couldn’t move. Her hand reached out, trembling fingers touching the side of a face she remembered, had given up on, needing to be sure she wasn’t hallucinating and that he was real. Carlos.

  A pair of intense, deep brown eyes opened and looked at her, then the irises burned out silver, glowing. His gaze slid from hers to the horizon as he sat up slowly, bracing himself on a shaky arm. His breaths steady, expanding his naked back, his voice low, awed, and far away.

  “Can’t you see them, D?”

  Necks craned, eyes shot to the horizon, then back to the quiet man sitting still, and naked, and damp on the ground.

  “See who?” she whispered, her voice almost nonexistent.

  “There’s so many of them, and they’re beautiful,” he said, tears running down his face as he slowly clasped her hand. “Warriors . . . angels . . . they never left me, never left you, never left their Neterus, us . . . the future.”

  Damali strained to see what held Carlos rapt, but her eyes were only human. All she could make out was brilliant, golden light. Her gaze went to him instead, redemption . . . her hand stroked his hair, and her body came next to his to stare out at the sun with him as he leaned against her and quietly wept with her.

  “Damali . . . I’m finally free.”

  Turn the page for a sneak peek at the next Vampire Huntress Legend novel

  The FORBIDDEN