The Damned

by L. A. Banks

  “Kris, I can’t do this anymore,” he whispered, and then closed his eyes.

  Hurt initially stunned her, but the expression on his face told her that she’d misinterpreted what he’d meant.

  “Why not?” she whispered, already knowing the answer. Each time had become more intense, closer to the inevitable, harder to stop. Their secret shed visits had become more frequent with less time between each stolen moment, and they were both going crazy from it all.

  J.L. opened his eyes. The way he stared at her made her feel like her legs would give out from under her. He offered her a lopsided smile as his gaze went toward a dried-out hay bale, then over to a row of rusted tools on the wall, settling on an ax.

  “Because there’s about fifty things in here for your dad to kill me with.”

  She smiled. “He’s playing cards.”

  “The man isn’t stupid, and he’s armed and extremely dangerous. A cop, remember.”

  “Ex-cop,” she countered, going to J.L. and filling his arms.

  “Worse. That means he’s not worried about losing his job.” J.L. laughed wryly and kissed her forehead.

  “I don’t care,” she murmured as he nuzzled her neck and her hands splayed across his muscular, toned back.

  “I care,” he breathed out hard against her hair.

  “I know you do…. That’s why I love you.”

  “I gotta at least wait till you’re legal.”

  “No you don’t,” she whispered in a rush against his ear. “I want to.”

  His grip tightened around her back as his mouth found hers, palms stroking more desire into her shoulders as they slid against her damp shirt then found her arms. A soft whimper entered his mouth and he swallowed it, her body producing friction against his. She thought she would faint when his fingers sought her hair, not the ache of her breasts…. She’d purposely not worn a bra just for him, and he didn’t seem to notice.

  This time had to be different. They could all die any day. She refused to die never fully knowing him. His featherlight touches during stolen moments had made her crazy. Having nowhere to ever really be alone had made her bold. Sleeping in an overcrowded room with no privacy to bask in the sweet aftermath of a secret interlude, ever, made her tug at his T-shirt and deepen their kiss. Working side by side with him every day, all day and half the night, learning his ways, his laugh, his humor, his moods, his deepest feelings, down to his very scent made her throw caution to the wind.

  Her touch ran down his back, covered his backside, and then traced his hips until she gained the courage to slide them between their bodies. The low sound he made filled her mouth and caused her to tear away from the burning kiss to gasp.

  He shook his head, and spoke in halting, pained bursts. “Just a few more weeks. I love you, Kris, but I won’t make it till then if—”

  She kissed away his words and began frantically working on his belt. Her shirt yanked up, and his hot face pressed against her breasts with a groan, making her cry out. The long-awaited sensation caused tears to spill as she staggered backward, blind, eyes closed, kissing him harder, trusting, knowing he was walking her toward the prickly hay bale and she didn’t care.

  In one martial arts pivot, he was under her, moving in a fluid tide, stripping away her shirt and taking the full punishment of the hay to save her skin.

  When Damali pulled up to the front of the family house, Dan was standing on the steps with a duffel bag in hand. He smiled broadly, the sun catching in his blond hair and making his boyish face seem even younger.

  “Marlene had a hunch you might be needing these,” he said with a smirk, holding out a bag of Carlos’s clothes to Damali.

  Damali chuckled. “I see Marlene hasn’t lost her edge.”

  “Not at all,” Dan said, coming down the steps to hug Damali. “You okay, lady?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine, just a little weary.”

  He looked at her, worried. “How’s our brother?”

  “He’s cool,” Damali said. “Just been through a lot of changes, but he’ll be all right.”

  Dan nodded and glanced back at the screen as Jose appeared within it.

  “You cool, D?” Jose said, coming out onto the porch quickly and keeping his gaze fastened to Damali’s.

  “Yeah. Like I told Dan, everything’s gonna be all right.”

  But it wasn’t all right. She could feel tension crackling all around her. She stepped over the doorsill and the hair on the back of her neck rose.

  Everyone was packed. Suitcases and duffel bags waited by the door. Shabazz was at the table playing cards with Berkfield, Bobby, and Rider. Everything seemed normal, but wasn’t. She could feel Jose and Dan stop for a moment behind her, fidget, and then slide into their seats.

  “Morning, y’all,” she said in a sarcastic tone, addressing their cool reception with testy humor. “Where’s Mar?”

  Shabazz slammed down a card hard. “Went to meditate in the woods, again, before we leave this afternoon. Where else?”

  Damali chewed her bottom lip and forced her voice to become upbeat. “Cool,” she said casually. “Marj around?”

  “At the store,” Berkfield muttered. “Shopping till she drops, since we’re changing locations again. Like we need anything else. If we coulda gotten a morning flight out, then she wouldn’t be running around like a madwoman.” He looked up with a frown.

  “Marlene said a lot of flights have been canceling lately,” Rider muttered, studying his fan of cards. “All transportation is screwed because people aren’t showing up to their jobs. Drama is breaking out everywhere. In my mind, the sooner we can get this show on the road, the better, ’cause the shit is obviously spreading faster than we’d imagined.”

  “I can’t wait to get out of here,” Bobby said, throwing down his hand of cards. “Everything’s making me jumpy.”

  Damali nodded and hoisted the duffel bag up higher. “Guess ’Nez is out and about with Mike?” She glanced around, quietly trying to sense for Juanita without asking her whereabouts.

  “Mike does the heavy lifting, both the ladies are buying what we need for the road,” Shabazz said, glaring up from his hand. “Least that’s the story we got.”

  Static charge was practically lifting Shabazz’s locks off his shoulders. Damali nodded again, trying not to be drawn into the attitudes and vibes that permeated the house. “Cool. All right. Well, maybe I’ll catch up with Krissy just to be sure we have all …” Her voice trailed off as Berkfield’s head snapped up at the same time Shabazz’s and Dan’s did.

  Rider was on his feet with Bobby in seconds, one blocking Dan the other Berkfield.

  “Where’s my daughter?” Berkfield said, looking at Rider hard.

  “Relax, dude,” Rider said as calmly as possible. “Let’s me, you, and old Shabazz here take a fatherly walk.”

  “Fuck that,” Dan shouted before Berkfield could challenge Rider’s reply, making the room go still. “Where’s J.L.?”

  Jose stood slowly, mirroring Shabazz’s moves in a patient dance—and then grabbed Dan as he was about to bolt. Damali dropped the duffel bag and looked at her teammates.

  “Yo, yo, yo, what’s up with all this, guys?” Damali held her hands up. “We’re out of here in—”

  “Damali, get ’em off of me or I swear I’ll—”

  “Let him go,” Damali said quickly, going to Dan, watching hot tears rise in his eyes as his face flushed. “Baby—”

  “I knew it!” Dan shouted, looking at Bobby and then Jose. He rubbed his nose with the back of his hand, and sniffed back tears of frustration as he sputtered his complaint. “You were supposed to have my back, man! You know good and damned well where she is!”

  “Then some-fucking-body tell me,” Berkfield said, shrugging Rider’s grip off his shoulder. “Wanna enlighten her goddamned father? Huh! Somebody?”

  Shabazz shook his head and began walking. “Berkfield, me and you, we take a walk, we talk, and we let cool heads prevail…. Aw’right? Been there. Very r
ecently.”

  Berkfield nodded grudgingly and began to walk. “I need some answers.”

  “It’s best this way,” Shabazz said quietly, putting his arm over Berkfield’s shoulder. “Better on the team than … She’s young, could get jacked in a—”

  Before the other brothers or Damali could react, Dan had cleared the table and was going in the direction of the kitchen, headed for the back door. Instinct kicked in, and every man in the house was on Damali’s heels as she tried to catch up with Dan, who was making a mad dash for the shed.

  “Daniel!” She screamed, closing the gap across the big backyard, her legs pumping as her stride ate up ground. “Don’t do it, Dan! Don’t go in there! J.L.!” Mental prayers came out in fits of breath. Oh, Lord, oh Lord, not on this team, not another one, not today, not this kid! Get dressed y’all. Shit!

  A shotgun blast made her look over her shoulder and lose ten feet of gain. She saw it in slow motion, skidded to grasp the back of Dan’s T-shirt that ripped under her hold. J.L. had stumbled out of the shed, tucking his shirttails into his pants, breathing hard. Berkfield was beet red in the face, lowering a sawed-off and being tackled to the ground. Krissy was crying and trying to get her blouse untwisted. Jose body-blocked Krissy from her father’s scrutiny while she righted her clothes. Bobby slowed down, conflicted, caught in the withered grass between his father, his sister, and his two best friends. Rider and Shabazz were trying to extricate a weapon from a father who was foaming at the mouth. Dan was about to get his ass kicked by a martial arts pro.

  “Stop!” Damali’s heart was beating a bruise into her chest.

  Nothing Neteru was working. Her legs were lead, time wasn’t stopping, the team had snapped its fragile hold on reality. Where was fucking Juanita when another pair of female hands was needed! Damali flung down the ripped fabric, screaming “No!” as Dan hurdled headlong into J.L.’s abdomen and was summarily flipped to land with a thud on his back.

  Dan was up in seconds, pure rage blazing in his bloodshot blue eyes. Tears and dirt had created mud on his face. J.L. almost snarled as murder flit through his normally kind brown eyes. Krissy was sobbing and looking at her father as Rider finally got the gun out of his clenched fist.

  “I’ll kill him!” Berkfield shouted. “In the family house, with me here, I will massacre him! Let me up, goddammit, now!”

  Damali dashed between the two warring brothers, her posture centered low, knees bent, as she hopped in a circle to follow their moves. She eye-spotted Jose and Bobby for assistance. She didn’t want anybody hurt, and that was likely if they collided again.

  “Everybody chill. One family. One—”

  “No!” Dan spat, “Fuck it. No such thing! She lied to me!”

  Damali’s attention swung between both younger Guardians as Krissy cried harder. Not sure what to do, she tried to keep them talking. Dan had totally surprised her. The newbie was faster, stronger, and had more heart than she’d given him credit for, and to see him out there all jacked around was breaking her heart.

  She glanced at Krissy’s disheveled condition and then at J.L.’s. Oh, shit. This man was definitely working before Dan’s red alert, and the girl’s father was in it now? J.L. was not about to calm down. All right, new plan. She gave Jose the subtle nod and he was on Dan in seconds with Bobby helping to pin him to the exterior shed wall.

  “Dan, listen for two seconds. Okay?” She pivoted her attention to J.L. who looked like he was about to break Dan’s neck. “J.L., you can kill him if you two mix it up. He’s no black belt, brother. You have got to calm down!”

  “I will kill this motherfucker where he stands now, D—let him go! He’s been getting on my nerves since Philly, aw’right!” J.L. spat and rolled his shoulders. “This is bullshit!”

  Guttural roars and a daughter’s repeated name amid curses were coming from Berkfield twenty feet away as he wrestled on the dusty ground with Rider and Shabazz and tried to get to J.L.

  “There’s nothing to listen to, D,” Dan hollered, new tears filling his eyes as his focus went to Krissy. “Tell him!”

  “You need to stop playing games, Kris,” Bobby shouted. “I told you to just be honest with my boy! Why’d you put him in a position like this, huh?”

  “I was not playing games,” she screamed, going to Damali and crying harder. “I changed my mind, all right! Is that what you wanna hear? I never slept with Dan!”

  “So the kisses never mattered? Is that what you’re saying? All those nights we talked, and I held you while you cried about being scared didn’t mean shit to you, Kris? Is that it?” Veins were standing in Dan’s neck as he hollered, “Answer me!”

  Pure shock had loosened Jose and Bobby’s hold on Dan, and in a hurt fury he tore his body away from the rusty aluminum shed exterior to walk in a hot circle, raking his hair with dirty fingers. “I cannot believe you.” He made a lunge, but Jose and Bobby had him.

  “Aw, Lawd, Dan, don’t get into …” Damali sighed as Krissy covered her face and wailed. The girl’s business was all over the yard; her father was about to have a stroke.

  “I’ll kill ’em both,” Berkfield shouted, sending up plumes of dust as he struggled. “Rider, lemme up! Shabazz, get the fuck off me! They were both on my baby? Oh, shit, where’s Mike’s cannon!”

  Damali couldn’t hold Krissy and body block J.L. at the same time. But even with the girl near her, she could feel humiliation rising off Krissy’s skin in a thick, pain-filled emulsion. Dan looked like he’d been slapped—better description, gut-punched, but the young fool’s pride was putting him at risk for getting his ass beat. Stand down, Damali whispered in her mind. Please, Daniel, oh, man …

  “Okay, everybody just stop!” Damali finally shouted, so confused and upset she didn’t know what to do. She pointed at Dan. “She made a choice. How she came to that is between you two. Discuss it later—but one thing is for sure, she shouldn’t have to do it out here like this.”

  Dan shrugged out of Bobby and Jose’s hold and stormed away in the opposite direction from the house toward Carlos’s unfinished property.

  “Do I still need to body-block you, J.L.? You got your head together, man?” Damali asked, hands on hips.

  J.L. raked his sweaty hair and grudgingly nodded. He walked in a distracted circle for a moment, and then looked up for the first time at Berkfield. Rage slowly ebbed and awareness set in as Rider kicked the gun farther away while Shabazz held Berkfield down in a shoulder lock. A visible Oh shit flickered in J.L.’s eyes. Terror replaced awareness as he tried to summon speech.

  “Yeah,” Damali said. “Go get your car keys, take a nice, long half-hour ride in the country. Call home on cell before you put your keys in the door, and let Shabazz and Rider have a conversation with a man who is losing his mind, first.” She nodded to Bobby. “Go take a walk with Dan at Carlos’s and make sure he doesn’t do anything rash, and that he’s home by the time we have to leave for our flight.” She shot a glance at Jose, her nerves too frayed to put things in politically correct terms. “Go find ’Nita’s ass and take Krissy over to my house so she can have a good cry and get washed up; give her some of my clean clothes, and let her talk to somebody female—off-site, nowhere near her mom or pop. I’ll be in this yard until Berkfield calms down.”

  When she received grudging nods, Damali sighed, finally hugged Krissy, and whispered in her ear. “It ain’t your fault, been there. Just be cool. We’ll talk later, but … oh, chile, we’ll talk later.”

  Krissy’s head was bobbing up and down on Damali’s shoulder as new tears began to fall, when Berkfield began yelling again. It took everything within Damali not to go over and slap him. But at the same time, she could dig it. Then again, after seeing what this did to the family, her own past transgressions began to rip a hole in her soul. All she could do was hand Krissy off to the most rational, kindest, most compassionate one on the team, Jose.

  “Go ’head, now, hon,” Damali said, as she’d heard Marlene tell her so many times before. “
I’ll talk to your dad. He’s not himself, but he loves you.” She sighed as Berkfield started a new wave of hollering.

  “Krissy, I forbid you to leave this house, young lady! Where the hell are you going! Jose, your ass is mine if you take my daughter off this lot! Bring her back here!”

  Damali ran her hands over her face as her gaze locked with Rider’s and Shabazz’s. Rider nodded. It was a gesture mixed with a silent been there on your behalf, kiddo, and yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ll talk him off the ledge. Shabazz’s eyes were cool as he strained to hold Berkfield and echoed the same silent response. Damali began walking, but something was mentally messing with her so bad that she stopped, turned, and stared out into the dense brush beyond the shed. When Kamal walked out of the thicket and rounded the shed, Damali covered her heart with her hand.

  “I heard gunfire report,” he said as Shabazz stood slowly and released Berkfield. “Felt you all hyped from five miles away. Ain’t been able to lock with Mar. You cool? She cool? Talk to me.”

  Berkfield was on his feet, but seemed torn and no longer in angry pursuit of Krissy. Rider glanced at the shotgun on the ground and got between it and Shabazz.

  “Everything’s cool, partner. You cool?” Rider said in an even tone.

  “Kamal, the timing …” Damali held her head, shut her eyes, and turned her face to the sun. “We cool. Glad you’re healed and not coming out of the bushes in Jag. Thanks for the help in Philly, brother. Aw, Lawd. Rider, grab your brother!”

  Rider and Berkfield had been flipped and dropped hard in two seconds. Shabazz was liquid motion and charging so fast that for a moment Damali wasn’t sure if she could stop him, but she ran headlong toward him, anyway.

  “I didn’t come to fight, mon!” Kamal shouted, but took a stance, anyway. “The teams are fracturing all over the world! Hear me out!”

  Shabazz slowed to a jog but squared off.

  Where was Big Mike when they needed him! Damali glanced at Kamal. “Talk fast, man. A lot of weird shit has been happening.”