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"I got a newspaper shoved through my front mail slot, and inside of it were some drawings I couldn't understand at first… until this guy came and told me to choose wisely—then rolled. It was the weirdest thing. Said something about New Orleans, and bullshit going down at the big international concert. I figured one or two things—either the guy was whack and could pose a threat, so you should know, or, it had something to do with all this bizarre shit we've seen lately."
One by one the stances before him relaxed, and Carlos kept his attention roving over their expressions. It was a definite standoff, and the monitor behind the guy J.L. disturbed him. It was flashing like wild, but he'd been able to mute the sound. His attention was divided between too many things at once. It was sapping him to project, cover the hole in his shirt, conceal the ring, keep the alarms from sounding, stand away from any unusual lights on the table; the smell of holy water and incense was wearing him out, as was Damali's fragrance. The joint was a freakin' oven, he had to materialize maps, and hope the guardians would heed the tunnel layouts before daylight came and the illusion of the maps torched… and the big guy named Mike kept tilting his head like a bloodhound, like he could hear something, and the hunger was beginning to come back—the energy drain was kickin' his ass. He'd need to feed again after all this.
"Look," Carlos said, tossing the maps out for the guy named Mike to catch. "I don't know why I bothered. Turn off the lights, and I'm out. No need in jeopardizing you all—I have a lot of people looking for me. Dig? I want to slide out of here cool like, and not get sprayed when I roll."
The attention of Damali's palace guards went to the maps, and the blinking monitor no longer made the huge brother keep tilting his head. They descended upon the information like vultures, but he was curious—Damali hung back, near him. Deep.
"Where did you really get that, Carlos?" She'd whispered the question so quietly that she'd almost mouthed it instead of speaking.
The complexity of her question, and the way her voice had murmured, made him step closer to her than was advisable. The nearness was working on the wrong side of his brain, gnawing it away from cool logic.
"Now is not the time, but you have to trust me."
She nodded, and put her hand on his arm. He stood there glancing at her team as they absorbed the information, trying his best not to breathe too much of her in. The heat of her hand was melting his common sense. He needed to get out of there. Now.
"Do you know what this is, dude?" Rider walked around the table and saluted.
Shabazz and Big Mike gave a grudging nod.
"Looks like these things can open up a portal at will—big change," Shabazz muttered. "Not good."
"Apparently, there was an alliance formed," Carlos began with caution. "We're in the last days, the knight said, and key sectors of the demon realms have joined with a major sector of the vampire empire. Evil is concentrating, gaining force."
"A vampire-Amanthra hybrid…" Marlene whispered, making the group stare at her. "I didn't think it was possible, because the two species are enemies. But now it all makes sense."
"That's what the superstitious guy said." Carlos allowed his statement to sink into the wary team around him, and just pointed toward the maps without crossing the invisible boundary that had been drawn between the sides.
"He went on and on about how it used to be that the vampires could only come up through lair sites—burial sites, where they kept their coffins, and had to have human helpers move their coffins from place to place. But, under Fallon Nuit, he made a pact with the demons, and can use demon transport levels to move underground without human support—like high-speed train zones through the third and fourth layers of Hell. Like I said, do what you want with the info. He was talking some crazy shit. I need to go."
"Man, you mean these things can just take a Concorde up from Hell and exit at any demon portal? Or they can jet underground and come up through any of Nuit's or his vampire line's lairs without aboveground movement?"
"Gone are the days of having Igor move a vamp's coffin in a horse and buggy and stow it in a basement, I guess," J.L. said with sarcasm. "This is the era of the global economy, brothers."
Carlos nodded to confirm the answer to Rider's question and to add weight to J.L.'s statement. Things had changed, and it was better that Damali's squad knew that, and didn't underestimate what they were dealing with.
"That's what happened in Philly—it was like sound got sucked right out of the air in a vacuum, then vamps came up. We'd seen 'em manifest before, but not with the total absence of sound." Mike let his breath out and just shook his head. "This is problematic."
"Understatement," Rider muttered.
"The absence of sound is a result of the speed and the matter displacement. Demons move in silence—as do ghosts, but the vampires have more density, which is why they hold their form… unless they will a transformation into something else." Marlene shook her head. "It's all so clear. But I don't know how to block a moving target."
The team passed nervous glances between them. Carlos struggled as much with his desire to tell them more in order to give them a fighting chance, as he did with the oppressive environment they had him now trapped within. But he needed to get them to understand before he got out of there.
"Other master vampires cannot use the tunnels—Nuit was the only one who formed an alliance… the religious guy said." Carlos shrugged, trying to seem blase about the whole thing, but they were staring at him hard. "He said those zones are heavily guarded by very militant elementals that were marginalized by the vampire empire. The shit is getting ready to be on, from what I understand. You have the old vampire guard who can't maintain unilateral power for business as usual, you have the new guard who don't know how to utilize their power without running amuck—and neither side can keep a lid on the chaos. There are side deals and pacts being made everywhere."
"You seem very well-versed—if not intimate, with the whole issue at hand," Shabazz said in an even tone as he slowly looked up from a map.
"I ought to be," Carlos admitted, shaking his head. He had to think fast on his feet. He'd fucked up, had told them way too much in his urgency to protect Damali. He and Shabazz were from the same badlands in the past, and the bottom line was that a brother from the hood could smell bullshit a mile away—sensory gift or not. Shabazz wasn't even one of the noses, but he could feel shit.
Carlos passed his line of vision over the group in a slow, serious rove. "They did my brother, my cousin, my two best friends… you read how they found them—their mothers couldn't even bury them right. So, maybe that's why the Templar dude, being of the cloth and all, had some mercy and filled me in. That 'was cool of him, given that I was on a rampage to find out who did it. Maybe they just didn't want me to snuff somebody innocent and start a damned war."
"You're starting to believe this stuff, aren't you?"
Damali's question hacked at him. If she only knew. Believe? He'd seen both sides: a slice of Heaven and a whole lotta Hell. If he could just draw her into his arms and explain how this crazy bullshit had gone down… and why it was now so important for her to trust him—if it was the last thing she did… even if he was mixing truth with the evasions and lies now—it was coming from a correct place in his heart. He tried to send it by thought, but gave up, afraid to chance it. Not now. He was already spread too thin.
"I'm starting to see things that I never understood before," he told her truthfully. "I don't know what to think, or what to do, so I came here. That's all I can tell you."
"I know exactly where you are," she whispered, and briefly looked away.
When her line of vision broke its hold on his, the absence of those deep, brown orbs of understanding made his chest cavity constrict from the loss. I never want to hurt you, baby… that's why I can't stay much longer. He had to get it together. Pull out of his own thoughts. He'd lapsed, trying to talk to her from his mind.
But that was pushing the envelope—he had to focus to kee
p all illusions intact.
"What's in this level three tunnel, man? Or on level four? A demon grabbed at Damali today, and I'd like to know what we're up against if we have to go after it." Rider had set down his weapon to hold an edge of the map, but kept sniffing, and then appeared to shake off a disturbing scent.
Carlos glanced at her. "You all right, baby?" He could feel possessiveness riddle him. Who'd attacked her?!
She nodded, and he looked up at the team.
"I'm okay," she murmured, and came closer to him, burning his shoulder where her hand landed. "Don't worry."
Carlos remained very, very still. He had to. He simply looked at her as she'd touched him. It had seemed like she'd extended her arm in slow motion, and he could see her pulse beat in the delicate inside of her elbow, right where the forearm connected to the upper arm, and beneath her bronze skin a faint blue-green vein hid… moving life through her. The motion was mesmerizing, as was the scent that the shifted air carried when she'd reached for him. And she wanted him to stay tonight for his own safety… to sleep in her room, love her hard and fast then tender so she didn't have to think about tomorrow. Had she any idea?
"I know you got a torch for my baby sis and all, brother, but you need to check them heat-seeking looks toward her while she's got six glocked-up brothers and a momma who can fight, staring you in the face."
Whoa, bad slip. Way out of order. The big brother had bristled, rightfully so. All Carlos could do was nod and wait for the ruffled feathers to settle. Shit, he had to get out of there. Damali was a telepath—even if he wasn't sending, she was receiving, and it was messing with his cool. Baby, please stop.
"Mike, please," Damali whispered. "Can we stick to the matter at hand?"
This situation was getting confusing, and way too tense. Carlos let out his breath hard and raked his fingers through his hair.
"Listen, man, here's the deal—all bullshit aside. On level one, you have your average run-of-the-mill ghosts, haints, souls that died with a grudge in their hearts, issues, and whateva. Level two, they get a little more trippy—like the poltergeists and the kind of mess that can possess somebody to do some whack shit in one second, then make them all of a sudden wake up from the daze, and not know anything about the three bodies in the room with them."
"Keep talking," Rider said. "The man is making sense here."
"All right," Carlos pressed. "I'ma say this one time like the guy told me, then I'm out. I've got things to do. He said, the further down you go, the less ghost-like the demon becomes, and the more solid it becomes as the density gets thicker—it compresses the soul weight and creates these hideous deformities, and the souls that were once within those things are jacked and stored to be fed on within the levels, twisted like the demon's bodies are. The third level is where vengeance creatures come from and their territory is so wide it overlaps a part of the fourth level… So you've got your recipe for the garden-variety demon. By the time you get all the way down, though, now you are in a very sophisticated space. These are the things that take on the original form of man. The longer the being can hold its human form, the more sophisticated—like the difference between werewolves, a level five, and vamps—level six."
J.L. nodded, appraising the maps. "It's like a deconstruction/ reconstruction pattern. First the body dies, the soul leaves—if it goes down to level one, it remains this floating, unformed negative energy. The further it gets pushed down, based on the weight of the sins on its back, depends on what level it clocks in at. Then there's the crossover zone," he added, pointing on the map that three people held.
"Yeah," Carlos said, pleased. "Level four. From there the physical matter starts trying to come back into its original form for reentry into the world. As above, so below. From above it is a very cool process—that's where babies come from."
Carlos chuckled, and Shabazz and Big Mike gave him a lopsided smile along with Rider.
"But," Marlene said in a quiet voice. "Coming from the other direction, the birth process is backward. It spews up fully formed, already corrupted, and at the end of its life horrible entities—instead of innocent, not fully formed, growing, at the start of its life beauty."
The group fell quiet for a moment, and Carlos studied them, remembering Marlene's loss, and his own. He could have sworn that Damali visibly cringed as Marlene had spoken. It was as though her hand had mentally reached out to touch his face, but then retreated. Maybe it was just the bitter agony of hearing himself described as a creature of the night that had made him believe such a foolish thing. Maybe it was simply knowing that a mother stood in the room, remembering what her baby was like before it had been turned. Although they were blind to him, he could pull from them, and both seers barraged him with truths that hurt too much to think about. Now all of those emotions crushed in on him. But he could still swear that Damali had reached out in her mind to stop the pain.
"What's on level seven?" Dan murmured.
"The exact opposite of what's in seventh Heaven," Damali said softly, "and we don't even name it in this compound."
"Okay," Rider said on a long breath. "So. If Nuit's gang can use the demon high-speed-line, and won't have traditional above-ground coffins, how do we find them?"
Carlos put his hands behind his back and began to pace to keep from touching Damali. "His spot in New Orleans has a door."
"Been there, seen it, done it, not going back," Rider said emphatically, shaking his head.
"It's light sensitive," Mike added. "Breaks up illusion."
"Thought projection," Carlos replied, and then caught himself as the group stared at him. "The church guy said to bring down the light or let the light shine, some shit like that to dispel the illusion. Truth works the same way—all that religious rhetoric—the truth shall set you free. Makes as much sense as the rest of the stuff he said."
Again, he could feel the group relax one by one. Another close call. Damn.
"Nuit has a mansion in Beverly Hills under an assumed name—that's a possibility, and he owns a significant share of the high-rise that the Blood Music offices occupy, and we could place a safe bet that he'll open a channel in each of these five concert locations. If I was a betting man, and believed all the hype some sword-carrying priest told me, then I'd put my money on that as a sure thing."
"So," Damali said, going over to Carlos to touch his arm again, "if time wasn't so tight till the international thing, we could have tried to get invited to perform at one of his major concert locations. That way we could have gripped up and blasted it with light, hit 'em with some serious spoken word of truth, and we would have been able to open up one of his holes—then find the coffin, and stake this bastard. We're already locked in to do your club as a venue, so I don't think we can get to do the big stadium portions at this late juncture. But we know all the locations of where major sections of their concert will be held, so at least we can go back later."
"We only need to take out the head to get to all the second-generation vamps that need to be eliminated, which takes out the thirds, and the fourths, and so on. We can cover all under Nuit with a salvation prayer, and when we take the head of the hydra, the rest of them will perish," Marlene said with a strong voice. "I've gotta do it for Raven."
Carlos didn't say a word. They didn't understand. One had to individually name each soul one wanted to claim back. Not to mention, the only reason it seemed that the seconds and below got dusted, had much to do with territorial realignments. If there was a master to step in, those lower levels weren't going anywhere—unless that master wanted to build from the ground up. But that was way too much detail to drop on an already wary group. So, rather than further indict himself, he just nodded. Later, maybe, he'd explain to Damali.
"It's like an implosion bomb, the empire starts collapsing from the inside out until a whole line dies with one stake to the master's heart." Big Mike folded his arms over his chest. "Judged you wrong, Carlos. My bad. Was serious science you dropped."
"It's cool
," Carlos said quietly.
Just listening to the way they described the wipeout, he wasn't sure why it tugged at him, but it did. Plus, what that big brother was talking about were fairy tales… unless a territorial harvest was turned down—which just didn't happen. And Damali's second touch was still seriously messing with his cool. His equilibrium was off by a long shot. His ten minutes was closing in on him. Marlene was looking at him real strange now, and Damali had come up to him, he could feel a hug pending and that was not the thing for her to do right now. It was time to jet.
"Look, I told you as much as I know, and I know you guys think I'm crazy. I just figured I'd pass on the message. But right now, I need to handle some business in the streets. Hit the lights, and I'm out." He was babbling, and realized that he wasn't making sense. The temperature had kicked up, and that UV border… with Damali calling him from deep inside her head. Oh come on, baby, cut it out.
She filled his arms and hugged him, closing her eyes as her head found the center of his chest where it had been the night before. He could feel tears inside her heart as it thudded in anxiety against the cavity that held his dead one. She breathed life into him by sheer force of will, her grip tightening as her mind tried to get him to understand.
Magnificent, glorious, warmth entered him and radiated out. Didn't she know that she was trying to use her body as a human shield to protect him from outside harm, and yet he was the very harm that she was grasping so tightly against her breasts? But she held him, her eyes siphoning a decision as she looked up, slaying him where he stood, in front of others who would never comprehend. Beautiful vision, they had named her correctly… Still believing in him so much—and he couldn't promise not to manifest everything she abhorred.