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But the quick spin made Damali fall—Madame Isis was a hand reach away. Raven leapt, coming down, as Damali rolled away, her blade back in her possession. The spilt second that Raven tilted her head as though listening for something was all Damali needed to get back up. Raven took human-vampire form, apparently saving her energy.
Good, she must be getting tired, Damali thought as she heard Dan yell. A holy water vial broke at Damali's feet, making Raven draw back far enough to be in blade range. Rider's gun had stopped firing, but Damali could still hear Rider, Marlene, and Big Mike's grunts of exertion as the team behind her battled. For a second her focus went to those she loved, and a blow caught her in the center of her chest, knocking the wind out of her as Raven's boot connected with her body.
Temporarily dazed, Damali maneuvered herself out of the way of another kick, but realized that when she'd fallen her body had gone in one direction, and Madame Isis had gone in the other.
"Now, whatcha gonna do?" Raven asked through a fanged smile.
Drawing the dagger from her waist, Damali circled the beast. "Kick your unnatural black ass, bitch."
Raven immediately transformed again, using the strength of the shape-shift to her advantage. Crouching low, the panther kept shaking its head as it approached stealthily forward. Damali could feel the adrenaline inside her connecting to tissue, blood, bones, and cartilage. Her hand was on fire from holding the dagger so tightly—the beast's head turned to look into the darkness for a second, which was a second too long. Taking the offensive, Damali rushed the creature, slicing at the paw that spontaneously swiped in reflex, and dropping the animal's limb.
Raven instantly transformed where she was on the ground, holding the bloody stump, screeching, and that gave Damali enough time to reclaim her long blade. The sound of Raven's wails made the other vampires look up for a moment. Rider got one dead in the center of its chest with a short stake produced from his jeans back pocket, and Marlene summarily beheaded it. Big Mike had thrown a sucker-punch, connecting with another vamp—sending it hurdling toward Dan, who torched it with vials that broke around it. Rider ducked as Damali threw the dagger in his direction, connecting to the center of a vampire at his back, incinerating it immediately. Her team was back in control, and it was on.
Raven held the dismembered stub and began to draw away, her spine smacking against a tree. Mike got two more of them in one shot from his reloaded shoulder cannon, while Rider claimed one surrounding Dan with an abandoned crossbow, and Dan hurled his last set of vials. The vials didn't break, but the leather strap tangled around the creature's neck. The vials dangled against its chest and burst into flame, consuming the screeching entity in a slow burn that reeked of sulfur. From out of nowhere, a new vampire rushed Big Mike, but Marlene planted her silver battle-ax blade in the middle of the creature's spine.
Immediately, Raven pushed away from the tree to give flight, but Damali took her out—right in the center of her chest.
Damali pulled Madame Isis out of the wood slowly as ash crumbled and fell away from the tree. Thick plumes of sulfur wafted in the air, and her team—coughing, dirty, and exhausted, came to Damali's side. She studied the blade and then stopped to wipe the black ooze remains on the grass and watched them burn.
"Something was calling her back," Damali murmured. "That's the only reason I had a chance a coupla times."
"Well, who gives a shit why, D? The fine point here, I believe, is that something called her away." Rider picked up the small dagger and gave it to Damali, wiping off the muck on it with the bottom of his boot.
Damali nodded as she stood, accepting Rider's simple assessment.
"Might have been guardian angels, li'l sis, who knows?"
Damali glanced at Marlene for a moment and then looked away. "You should have told me, Mar." Multiple emotions zigzagged through Damali's thoughts. Her team stood still, listening to the quiet.
"I know," Marlene murmured. "My second of hesitation almost cost you and members of the team their lives."
Shaking her head, Damali began walking. "No. That's not why you should have told me, Mar. I deserved to know because it was the truth."
They all walked back to the Hum-V and Marlene's Jeep in silence. Damali allowed her thoughts to fuse with Marlene's as she tried to gather some understanding of why Marlene, of all people, would have deceived her with such a lie of omission. Hurt, anger, and disappointment filled her, almost making it impossible for her to summon her gift. But then she focused on the love… which became a mother's heartbreak. Marlene had been a young woman, frightened of her gift, and forced into the role. Damali heard Marlene swallow hard, and could see her eyes glisten with moisture in the moonlight as they cautiously approached their vehicles. She could feel Marlene opening her mind, allowing the connection to be made, as images floated through Damali's psyche.
Marlene had wanted a normal life… had been in love, was pregnant with Christine—who became Raven after the bite. The elders wanted Marlene to protect a Neteru baby… but how did a young, single mother do that without risk to her own unborn child? A choice was made. Marlene opted for safety and ran away. Only to have what she feared most ultimately hunt her down and mistake Marlene's baby girl for the sought vampire huntress—her. Damali released Marlene from the connection. Yes, she knew there was more to the story, but at this moment, she just couldn't deal. Fatigue clawed at her, as did major sadness. She'd trusted Marlene, but could understand… However, that still didn't take away the sting of it all.
"Guys," Dan said quietly, trailing behind the group, "you're not leaving me, right?"
"Hop in, Dan," Rider said with a sigh. "Because of your stupid ass, the rest of our team might be jacked. So, if you're gonna ride with us—shut up."
"Check him out, first," Big Mike instructed. "One of 'em said they couldn't eat the blond. Why not?"
"Probably because they wanted to use him as a decoy, is all," Damali said on a weary exhale. "Remember, when we found him, he was praying and holding onto his star. If he was a vamp helper, they would have used Dan another way… Dan was just a lure—bait—they knew we wouldn't leave him to be eaten alive." She shook her head, and motioned to Big Mike. "Ride shotgun with Marlene, please. I'll drive with Dan and Rider."
"We've gotta tell J.L. and Jose about Raven, and the other stuff," Mike said, his expression sad. "It's time for everybody to be on the same page."
"I know," Damali murmured as the team swept the vehicles for safety and climbed in.
Carlos watched Damali pull away from a distance. He now knew what a Neteru was. He'd seen her fight, and understood her disappointment in her family member all too well. Her pain made him ache to hold her.
Intense remorse filled him as he walked through the ashes of the dead. If he'd only known before. He'd told Raven to stay away from her and Daniel! But Raven had been so bold as to amass her third generations to disobey his telepathic order. It seemed other things besides a well-placed blade could make a vampire lose its head; jealousy, the green-eyed monster. So Raven wanted to wipe out Damali and have him battle Nuit—for her… foolish.
Carlos shook his head. In order not to blow his cover, there had been nothing he could do to help the guardians ward off the unauthorized attack, but remain unseen and yell for Raven to come to him. By the time he'd arrived, the battle was already under way. He could never let Damali see him for what he was now.
Frustration worked on his reason like a chisel, filing away at him. True, he couldn't say he'd never been told about faith in things unseen—but in those days, he didn't believe. Words he'd heard earlier in the night entered his mind… if a man loses faith, then he loses hope. How long had he walked the planet with no faith, and therefore hoping in all the wrong things? Without hope, one cannot love. When Alejandro went down, he'd lost hope, and they got him. Carlos shut his eyes and drifted through the blackness of the woods. But they had also said that if you still had love, the strongest of all gifts, then hope could be restored, as well as faith.<
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He opened his eyes and followed the Hum-V, watching the red taillights of both guardian vehicles disappear around a curve. The moment that Damali had become seized with worry for her team and electrified by the hunt, her sensations had run all through him. Her breaths had filled his lungs. Her increased heartbeat drummed a rhythm inside his chest. Her tender concern for someone she hardly knew made him taste tears. The sound of her voice made him tremble.
Carlos walked to the side of the road and stared at its vacancy, again closing his eyes, and shuddered when he deeply inhaled the fragrance Damali left behind once more.
"He's with the doctors," Shabazz said quietly as the team entered the waiting room. "I know you're still bent on going, but he won't make it to New Orleans tomorrow… By the time we got him out of the compound, he was almost in a coma."
Damali sat down slowly beside Mike as Shabazz leaned forward with his forearms resting on his thighs.
"We've never sustained a compound attack like that," he whispered, his gaze coming up from the floor to lock stares with each member of the group before going back to Damali. "J.L. almost bought it."
She looked up at J.L. who was pacing like a cat until Mike steadied him with a hand on his shoulder.
"I had to attempt to reboot the security systems to give us enough juice to at least get into the four-by-four and then hope we could get the automatic doors to open… I was only like thirty seconds behind Mar and Shabazz—who was carrying Jose, when the generators got knocked out."
"Mar kicked some butt in the dark, second sight—sister fought blind, like a pro. Took a head with a battle-ax, and her walking stick did the rest so she could catch up with you guys. Glad to see everybody made it back in one piece." Shabazz breathed out hard.
"She used her stick to keep them off my back while I threw a few grenades into the Jeeps to clear them out, and then dumped Jose in—but three of 'em slithered out from under them. They went for J.L. who got one crossbow shot off in the hall. He got one vamp, but then it was on. I almost couldn't get to him fast enough."
"Only thing that saved my ass," J.L. said in a distant voice, "was fiber-optic thread."
The team looked at J.L., and then glanced at each other.
"Me and Jose had been working on a new shark suit design for Damali. We had made these handheld concert lights with the leftovers, trying to think of things we could get mass produced for the audience."
From the back pockets in his jeans, J.L. pulled out two silver-plated, four-inch-long cylinders the width of a double-A battery that had a thicket of nylon-thread hairs sprouting from the tops.
"Looks like the average five-dollar concert trinket, but we put UV bulbs in them. Figured at the big show, we could do an anthem that tells everybody to turn on their light to make sure kids buy them on the way in, and we can sneak them past the vamp crew and any vamp helpers—because they look like nothing harmful. Standard concert junk."
Damali nodded as the group huddled closer, accepting the ingenious decoy with a slow smile. "J.L., you guys are brilliant."
"You shoulda seen him work with 'em though, D," Shabazz murmured, and pounded J.L.'s fist. "Jet Li—type vibe. Brotherman was fighting for his life, running up the sides of the garage walls, leaving a burn with every flip, and backed the two remaining ones up enough for me to get my stake on with Marlene. Then we had to manually open the door—which was not fun."
"You didn't get scratched on the way out, did you?" Big Mike asked, worried, inspecting Marlene, J.L., and Shabazz.
"Naw, man," J.L. said with a breath of relief. "Shabazz and Mar had my back, and I had theirs—we're cool. Was able to get power up, too, from the garage panels."
"So what do we do with Dan?" Rider asked, finally nodding to the one person that everyone had left out of the discussion.
Marlene assessed Dan critically. "You know, if he came running to us under siege like that… might he be a new guardian?"
Although Damali agreed, she was notably quiet. There was much to absorb, and now they even had a new person to contend with. She said nothing. Later. Her second sight was ebbing, as were her other senses. She was exhausted, needed to eat and lie down.
"You have got to be kidding us, Mar," Rider said after a hang-jawed moment, and then slapped his forehead and walked away to flop down in an empty chair.
Ignoring Rider, Marlene stood and walked over to where Dan leaned against the wall.
"Dan, earlier you said it felt like something was chasing you before you saw it, right?"
All eyes were on him, even Rider's now.
"Yeah," he nodded, glancing around the group. "I could tell."
"How?" Damali asked, her voice just a weary murmur as she glanced at Marlene—who still could not look her directly in the eyes. "Describe it."
"My skin got all tingly, like the hairs were standing up on the back of my neck. Like an electric current, or something. Then I felt all creepy, crawly—started sweating, and it was hard to breathe… I could feel myself panicking, but couldn't figure out why. I'd just been in the Blood Music offices, everything was jaky, they said they would hire me, and the next night would show me the deal—the way they did business—and then I split. I didn't even wonder why I had to meet them at night so late—figured, hey, whatever, they're busy, keep artist's hours, ya know? I was feeling great, just glad to be a part of something for once. But then in the elevator, I could almost feel something in there with me." Dan glanced around the group. "I know this all sounds really weird, like I'm tripping, but I swear—"
"No, you're not tripping," Marlene reassured him. "What else?"
"I… I… uh, got out, passed the lobby guard, kept thinking I was the luckiest man in the world, that God was good. Soon as I thought that, this woman came out of nowhere—and she was all that. Baboom," Dan murmured, his gaze going off into the distance as he made the shape of curves and breasts with his hands.
"I was like, now I know God is good, and then she was gone. I stood there for a moment because she had just been behind me, and then the creepy feeling started. I didn't know why, then, but I had the urge to run—so I was trying not to look like a fool in case she was watching me, but I started walking real fast, then trotted, then this terror vibe just slammed me—I said fuck it, and started running headlong toward my car."
"He's got the tactical sensory gift," Marlene whispered, closing her eyes and nodding. "I can see it. His story checks out."
Rider leaned back again with a sigh, as did Big Mike and Shabazz. J.L. sat down and extended a handshake to Dan.
"You're in for the ride of your life, new brother."
"What is going on?"
J.L. shook his head. "Mar will tell you. She briefs all the newbies."
"He's good on the vials, Mar," Big Mike confirmed. "Had dead aim—like a David and Goliath—type capacity. Want me to put him on explosives with me?"
Marlene nodded but glanced at Damali for approval. The team waited. Damali finally nodded.
"That's cool," she said in a distant voice.
"Wait," Dan whispered quickly. "You mean I'll have to hunt more of these things? We're not done?"
"Rude awakening, isn't it?" Rider closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall.
"For how long?" Dan's stricken gaze darted around the group.
"For the rest of your life… may it be a long one, too," Shabazz said, yawning.
"What!"
"Keep your voice down," J.L. told him in a casual tone. "We're in a hospital."
"Dan, Dan, Dan—always be careful what you pray for, 'cause you just might get it," Marlene said on a stretch as she sat down, leaned on Shabazz, and began dozing. "You wanted the exciting, adventurous nightlife. Hmmmph."
But as soon as Marlene had touched Shabazz, he held her back from him, and then glanced at Big Mike and Rider, and then finally stared at Damali. She just nodded. Shit, what was there to say? Marlene studied the floor, as Shabazz pulled her against his chest. J.L. glanced at the group.
"The exciting life—vastly overrated," Rider commented with a yawn. He glanced at Damali and closed his eyes as though trying to keep the conversation light around Dan.
Good move. Rider did have a lot of sense for a wise ass in the group.
"Get some rest, dude," Damali said quietly to Dan as she stood, patting his shoulder and stretching. "Better learn how to catch forty winks in a chair and eat on the run, literally." She needed space. Time alone to process everything that had happened and she had learned.
"Where're you going?" Marlene asked in a weary voice.
Her expression was filled with pain and worry. Her tone was gentle, no longer having the den-mother stridence it often had. This time it sounded like a question asked to a peer, rather than to a child. That, too, oddly made Damali's heart hurt. She'd just lost the only mother she'd ever known; all she could hope for is that one day the trust would rebuild itself so they could be friends. But that would take time… did they have such a luxury?
Marlene's battery had to be on E, just like hers was. She was also beginning to learn that emotional stuff took a toll on second sight. Right now, Damali couldn't see a thing.
"You know where," Damali finally said with a sad smile, trying to leave the door to her heart cracked open for Marlene with the nonsarcastic reply. "To find a hospital vending machine for some chips and orange soda—and I promise to stay inside… I'll even take a concert light, and I've got baby Isis in a leg holster—momma Isis is in the Hum-V. Anybody else want anything?"
Dan looked at her in disbelief, covered his mouth, and dry heaved.
"Now you see why we weren't hungry after that gig in Philly? But noooo, you wanted to go get ribs, or Chinese food—noodles—after we'd smelled barbeque already, and splattered guts." Rider chuckled.
Damali walked away fast as she heard Dan hurl into his hands. Rites of passage; the first time out—the guardian team was a trip the way they teased the poor guy, but Dan was now in the fold. For better or for worse, their crew was formed by the happenstance of fate, as always.